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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Expositions of Holy Scripture, by Alexander
+Maclaren
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture
+       Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John
+
+
+Author: Alexander Maclaren
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2008  [eBook #24674]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Colin Bell, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+   A number of typographical errors have been corrected, and two
+   minor changes have been made to the book's formatting. There
+   is a full list of emendations at the end. The book's inconsistent
+   hyphenation has been preserved, with an educated guess made as
+   to whether those hyphens appearing at ends of the line were
+   intended by the author, or just added because the word was broken
+   at that point.
+
+
+
+
+
+EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EPHESIANS
+EPISTLES OF ST. PETER AND ST. JOHN
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+George H. Doran Company
+
+
+
+
+_EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE_
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+EPHESIANS
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                               PAGE
+SAINTS AND FAITHFUL (Eph i. 1)                                   1
+
+'ALL SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS' (Eph. i. 3)                            8
+
+'ACCORDING TO'--I. (Eph. i. 5, 7)                               18
+
+'ACCORDING TO'--II. (Eph. i. 7)                                 26
+
+GOD'S INHERITANCE AND OURS (Eph. i. 11, 14)                     35
+
+THE EARNEST AND THE INHERITANCE (Eph. i. 14)                    43
+
+THE HOPE OF THE CALLING (Eph. i. 18)                            52
+
+GOD'S INHERITANCE IN THE SAINTS (Eph. i. 18)                    62
+
+THE MEASURE OF IMMEASURABLE POWER (Eph. i. 19, 20)              72
+
+THE RESURRECTION OF DEAD SOULS (Eph. ii. 4, 5)                  81
+
+'THE RICHES OF GRACE' (Eph. ii. 7)                              91
+
+SALVATION: GRACE: FAITH (Eph. ii. 8, R.V.)                      98
+
+GOD'S WORKMANSHIP AND OUR WORKS (Eph. ii. 10)                  108
+
+THE CHIEF CORNER-STONE (Eph. ii. 20, R.V.)                     118
+
+'THE WHOLE FAMILY' (Eph. iii. 15)                              128
+
+STRENGTHENED WITH MIGHT (Eph. iii. 10)                         132
+
+THE INDWELLING CHRIST (Eph. iii. 17)                           142
+
+LOVE UNKNOWABLE AND KNOWN (Eph. iii. 18, 19)                   151
+
+THE PARADOX OF LOVE'S MEASURE (Eph. iii. 18)                   162
+
+THE CLIMAX OF ALL PRAYER (Eph. iii. 19)                        171
+
+MEASURELESS POWER AND ENDLESS GLORY (Eph. iii. 20, 21)         180
+
+THE CALLING AND THE KINGDOM (Eph. iv. 1; Rev. iii. 4)          194
+
+'THE THREEFOLD UNITY' (Eph. iv. 5)                             203
+
+'THE MEASURE OF GRACE' (Eph. iv. 7, R.V.)                      207
+
+THE GOAL OF PROGRESS (Eph. iv. 13, R.V.)                       216
+
+CHRIST OUR LESSON AND OUR TEACHER (Eph. iv. 20, 21)            224
+
+A DARK PICTURE AND A BRIGHT HOPE (Eph. iv. 22)                 233
+
+THE NEW MAN (Eph. iv. 24)                                      247
+
+GRIEVING THE SPIRIT (Eph. iv. 30)                              262
+
+GOD'S IMITATORS (Eph. v. 1)                                    270
+
+WHAT CHILDREN OF LIGHT SHOULD BE (Eph. v. 8)                   277
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE LIGHT (Eph. v. 9, R.V.)                       286
+
+PLEASING CHRIST (Eph. v. 10)                                   295
+
+UNFRUITFUL WORKS OF DARKNESS (Eph. v. 11)                      303
+
+PAUL'S REASONS FOR TEMPERANCE (Eph. v. 11-21)                  313
+
+SLEEPERS AT NOONDAY (Eph. v. 14)                               318
+
+REDEEMING THE TIME (Eph. v. 15, 16)                            327
+
+'THE PANOPLY OF GOD' (Eph. vi. 13)                             337
+
+'THE GIRDLE OF TRUTH' (Eph. vi. 14, R.V.)                      343
+
+'THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS' (Eph. vi. 14)               350
+
+A SOLDIER'S SHOES (Eph. vi. 15)                                353
+
+THE SHIELD OF FAITH (Eph. vi. 16)                              361
+
+'THE HELMET OF SALVATION' (Eph. vi. 17)                        367
+
+'THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT' (Eph. vi. 17)                        373
+
+PEACE, LOVE, AND FAITH (Eph. vi. 23)                           381
+
+THE WIDE RANGE OF GOD'S GRACE (Eph. vi. 24)                    391
+
+
+
+
+SAINTS AND FAITHFUL
+
+     'The saints which are at Ephesus and the faithful in Christ
+      Jesus.'--Eph. i. 1.
+
+
+That is Paul's way of describing a church. There were plenty of very
+imperfect Christians in the community at Ephesus and in the other
+Asiatic churches to which this letter went. As we know, there were
+heretics amongst them, and many others to whom the designation of 'holy'
+seemed inapplicable. But Paul classes them all under one category, and
+describes the whole body of believing people by these two words, which
+must always go together if either of them is truly applied, 'saints' and
+'faithful.'
+
+Now I think that from this simple designation we may gather two or three
+very obvious indeed, and very familiar and old-fashioned, but also very
+important, thoughts.
+
+I. A Christian is a saint.
+
+We are accustomed to confine the word to persons who tower above their
+brethren in holiness and manifest godliness and devoutness. The New
+Testament never does anything like that. Some people fancy that nobody
+can be a saint unless he wears a special uniform of certain conventional
+sanctities. The New Testament does not take that point of view at all,
+but regards all true believers in Jesus Christ as being, therein and
+thereby, saints.
+
+Now, what does it mean by that? The word at bottom simply signifies
+separation. Whatever is told off from a mass for a specific purpose
+would be called, if it were a thing, 'holy.' But there is one special
+kind of separation which makes a person a saint, and that is separation
+to God, for His uses, in obedience to His commandment, that He may
+employ the man as He will. So in the Old Testament the designation
+'holy' was applied quite as much to the high priest's mitre or to the
+sacrificial vessels of the Temple as it was to the people who used them.
+It did not imply originally, and in the first place, moral qualities at
+all, but simply that this person or that thing belonged to God. But then
+you cannot belong to God unless you are like Him. There can be no
+consecration to God except the heart is being purified. So the ordinary
+meaning of holiness, as moral purity and cleanness from sin, necessarily
+comes from the original meaning, separation and devotion to the service
+of God.
+
+Thus we get the whole significance of Christian holiness. We are to
+belong to God, and to know that we do belong to Him. We are to be
+separated from the mass of people and things that have no consciousness
+of ownership and do not yield themselves up to Him for His use. But we
+cannot belong to Him, and be devoted to His service, unless we are being
+made day by day pure in heart, and like Him to whom we say that we
+belong. A human being can only be God's by the surrender of heart and
+will, and through the continual appropriation into his own character and
+life, of righteousness and purity like that which belongs to God.
+Holiness is God's stamp upon a man, His 'mark,' by which He says--This
+man belongs to Me. As you write your name in a book, so God writes His
+name on His property, and the name that He writes is the likeness of His
+own character.
+
+Note, again, that in God's church there is no aristocracy of sanctity,
+nor does the name of saint belong only to those who live high above the
+ordinary tumults of life and the secularities of daily duty. You may be
+as true a saint in a factory--ay! and a far truer one--than in a
+hermitage. You do not need to cultivate a mediæval or Roman Catholic
+type of ascetic piety in order to be called saints. You do not need to
+be amongst the select few to whom it is given here upon earth, but not
+given without their own effort, to rise to the highest summits of holy
+conformity with the divine will. But down amongst all the troubles and
+difficulties and engrossing occupations of our secular work, you may be
+living saintly lives; for the one condition of being holy is that we
+should know whose we are and whom we serve, and we can carry the
+consciousness of belonging to Him into every corner of the poorest, most
+crowded, and most distracted life, recognising His presence and seeking
+to do His will. The saint is the man who says, 'O Lord, truly I am Thy
+servant; Thou hast loosed my bonds.' Because He has loosed my bonds, the
+bonds that held me to my sins, He has therein fastened me with far more
+stringent bonds of love to the sweet and free service of His redeeming
+love. All His children are His saints.
+
+The Old Testament ritual had one sacrifice which carried this truth in
+it. It is the first prescribed in the Book of Leviticus, the ceremonial
+book--namely, the burnt offering. Its especial meaning was this, that
+the whole man is to be laid upon God's altar and there consumed in the
+fire of a divine love. It began with expiation, as all sacrifices must,
+and on the footing of expiation there followed the transformation, by
+the fire of God, from gross earthliness into vapour and odour which
+went up in wreaths of fragrance acceptable to God. So _we_ are to be
+laid upon the divine altar. So, because we have been accepted in the
+Beloved, and have received the atonement for our sins through His great
+sacrifice, we are to be consecrated to His service and, touched by the
+fire which He sends down, we are to be changed into a sweet odour
+acceptable to Him as were 'the saints which are in Ephesus.'
+
+II. Further, Christian men are saints because they are believers.
+
+'The saints' and 'the faithful' are not two sets of people, but one. The
+Apostle starts, as it were, on the surface, and goes down; takes off the
+uppermost layer and lets us see what is below it; begins with the
+flowers or the fruit, and then carries us to the root. The saints are
+saints because they are first of all faithful. 'Faithful' here, of
+course, does not mean, as it usually does in our ordinary language,
+'true' and 'trusty,' 'reliable' and 'keeping our word,' but it means
+simply 'believing'; having faith, not in the sense of _fidelity_, but in
+the sense of _trust_.
+
+So, then, here is Paul's notion--and it is not only Paul's notion, it is
+God's truth--that the only way by which a man ever comes to realise that
+he belongs to God, and to yield himself in glad surrender to His uses,
+and so to become pure and holy like Him whom He loves and aspires to, is
+by humble faith in Jesus Christ. If you want to talk in theological
+terminology, sanctification follows upon faith. It is when we believe
+and trust in Jesus Christ that all the great motives begin to tell upon
+life and heart, which deliver us from our selfishness, which bind us to
+God, which make it a joy to do anything for His service, which kindle in
+our hearts the flame of fructifying and consecrating and transforming
+love. Faith, the simple reliance of a desperate and therefore trusting
+heart upon Jesus Christ for all that it needs, is the foundation of the
+loftiest elevation and attainment of the Christian character. We begin
+down there that we may set the shining topstone of 'Holiness to the
+Lord' upon the heaven-pointing summit of our lives.
+
+Note how here Paul sets forth the object of our faith and the
+blessedness of it. I do not think I am forcing too much meaning into his
+words when I ask you to notice with what distinct emphasis and
+intentional fulness he employs the double name of our Lord here to
+describe the object upon which our faith fixes, 'Faithful in _Christ
+Jesus_.' We must lay hold of the Manhood, and we must lay hold of the
+office. We must rest our soul's salvation on Him as our brother, Jesus
+who was incarnate in sinful flesh for us; and we must also rest it on
+Him as God's anointed, who came in human flesh to fulfil the divine
+loving-kindness and purposes, and in that flesh to die. A faith in a
+Jesus who was not a Christ would not sanctify; a faith in a Christ who
+is not Jesus would be impalpable and impotent. We must take the two
+together, believing and feeling that we lay hold upon a loving Man, 'bone
+of our bone and flesh of our flesh'; and also upon Him who in His very
+humanity is the Messenger and Angel of God's covenant; the Christ for
+whom the way has been being prepared from the beginning, and who has
+come to fulfil all the purposes of the divine heart.
+
+And notice, too, how there is suggested here also, the blessedness of
+that faith, inasmuch as it is a faith _in_ Christ. The New Testament
+speaks in diverse ways about the relation between the believing soul
+and Jesus Christ. It sometimes speaks of faith as being _towards_ Him,
+and that suggests the going out of a hand that, as it were, stretches
+towards what it would lay hold of. It sometimes speaks of faith as being
+_on_ Him, which suggests the idea of a building on its foundation, or a
+hand leaning on a support. And it sometimes speaks, as here, of faith
+being '_in_ Him,' which suggests the folded wings of the dove that has
+found its nest, the repose of faith, the quiet rest in the Lord, and
+'waiting patiently for Him.' Such trust so directed is the one condition
+of such tranquillity. Then, again, note a Christian is all that he is
+because he is 'in Christ.' That phrase 'in Him' is in some sense the
+keynote of this Epistle to the Ephesians. If you will look over the
+letter, and pick out all the connections in which the expression 'in
+Him' occurs, I think you will be astonished to see how rich and full are
+its uses, and how manifold the blessings of which it is the condition.
+But the use which Paul makes of it here is just this--everything in our
+Christian life depends upon our being rooted and grafted in Jesus. Dear
+brethren, the main weakness, I believe, of what is called Evangelical
+Christianity has been that it has not always kept true to the
+proportionate prominence which the New Testament gives to the two
+thoughts, 'Christ for us,' and 'Christ in us.' For one sermon that you
+have heard which has dwelt earnestly and believingly on the thought of
+the indwelling Christ and the Christian indwelling in Him, you have
+heard a hundred about the Sacrifice on the Cross for sins, and the great
+atonement that was made by it. Those of you, who have listened to me
+from Sunday to Sunday, know that I am not to be charged with minimising
+or neglecting that truth, but I want to lay upon all your hearts this
+earnest conviction, that a gospel which throws into enormous prominence
+'Christ for us,' and into very small prominence 'Christ in us,' is lame
+of one foot, is lopsided, untrue to the symmetry and proportion of the
+Gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament, and will never avail for
+the nourishment and maturity of Christian souls. 'Christ for us' by all
+means, and for evermore, but 'Christ _in_ us,' or else He will not be
+'_for_ us.'
+
+III. Lastly, a Christian may be a saint, and a believer, and in Christ
+Jesus, though he is in Ephesus.
+
+Many of you know that probably the words 'in Ephesus' are no part of the
+original text of this epistle, which was apparently a circular letter,
+in which the designation of the various churches to which it was sent
+was left blank, to be filled in with the name of each little community
+to which Paul's messenger from Rome carried it. The copy from which our
+text was taken had probably been delivered at Ephesus; and, at any rate,
+one of the copies would go there. What was Ephesus? Satan's very
+headquarters and seat in Asia Minor, a focus of idolatry, superstition,
+wealth, luxury springing from commerce, and moral corruption. 'Great is
+Diana of the Ephesians.' The books of Ephesus were a synonym for magical
+books. Many of us know how rotten to the core the society of that great
+city was. And there, on the dunghill, was this little garden of fragrant
+and flowering plants. They were 'saints in Christ Jesus,' though they
+were 'saints in Ephesus.'
+
+Never mind about surroundings. It is possible for us to keep ourselves
+in the love of God, and in the fellowship of His Son wherever we are,
+and whatever may lie around us. You and I have too to live in a big,
+wicked city, and to work out our religion in a society honeycombed with
+corruption, because of commerce and other influences. Do not let us
+forget that these people whom Paul called 'saints' and 'faithful' had a
+harder fight to wage than we have, with less to hearten and strengthen
+them in it. Only remember if the 'saints in Ephesus' are to be 'in
+Christ,' they need to keep themselves very straight up. The carbonic
+acid gas is heavy and goes down to the bottom of the cave, and if a man
+will walk bolt upright, he will keep his nostrils above it; but if he
+stoops, he will get down into it. Walk straight up, with your head
+erect, looking to the Master, and your respiratory organs will be above
+the poison. If we are to _be_ in Christ when we are in Ephesus, we need
+to keep ourselves separate and faithful, and to _keep ourselves_ in
+Christ. If the diver comes out of the diving-bell he is drowned. If he
+keeps inside its crystal walls he may be on the bottom of the ocean, but
+he is dry and safe. Keep in the fortress by loyal faith, by humble
+realisation of His presence, by continual effort, and 'nothing shall by
+any means harm you,' but 'your lives shall be holy, being hid with
+Christ in God.'
+
+
+
+
+'ALL SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS'
+
+     'Blessed be God ... who hath blessed us with all spiritual
+      blessings in heavenly places in Christ.'--Eph. i. 3.
+
+
+It is very characteristic of Paul's impetuous fervour and exuberant
+faith that he begins this letter with a doxology, and plunges at once
+into the very heart of his theme. Colder natures reach such heights by
+slow degrees. He gains them at a bound, or rather, he dwells there
+always. Put a pen into his hand, and it is like tapping a blast furnace;
+and out rushes a fiery stream at white heat. But there is a great deal
+more than fervour in the words. In the rush of his thoughts there is
+depth and method. We come slowly after, and try by analysing and
+meditation to recover some of the fervour and the fire of such
+utterances as this.
+
+Notice that buoyant, joyous, emphatic reiteration: 'Blessed,' 'blest,'
+'blessings.' That is more than the fascination exercised over a man's
+mind by a word; it covers very deep thoughts and goes very far into the
+centre of the Christian life. God blesses us by gifts; we bless Him by
+words. The aim of His act of blessing is to evoke in our hearts the love
+that praises. We receive first, and then, moved by His mercies, we give.
+Our highest response to His most precious gifts is that we shall 'take
+the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord,' and in the
+depth of thankful and recipient hearts shall say, 'Blessed be God who
+hath blessed us.'
+
+Now I think that I shall best bring out the deep meaning of these words
+if I simply follow them as they lie before us. I do not wish to say
+anything about our echo in blessing God. I wish to speak about the
+original sweet sound, His blessing to us.
+
+I. And I note, first of all, the character and the extent of these
+blessings which are the constituents of the Christian life.
+
+'All spiritual blessings,' says the Apostle. Now, I am not going to
+weary you with mere exegetical remarks, but I do want to lay stress upon
+this, that, when the Apostle speaks about 'spiritual blessings,' he does
+not merely use that word 'spiritual' as defining the region in us in
+which the blessings are given, though that is also implied; but rather
+as pointing to the medium by which they are conferred. That is to say,
+he calls them 'spiritual,' not because they are, unlike material and
+outward blessings, gifts for the inner man, the true self, but because
+they are imparted to the waiting spirit by that Divine Spirit who
+communicates to men all the most precious things of God. They are
+'spiritual' because the Holy Spirit is the medium of communication by
+which they reach men's spirits.
+
+And I may just pause for one moment--and it shall only be for a
+moment--to point out to you how in-woven into the very texture of the
+writer's thoughts, and all the more emphatic because quite incidental,
+and needing to be looked for to be found, is here the evidence of his
+believing that the name of God was God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
+For it is the Father who is the Giver, the Son who is the Reservoir, the
+Spirit who is the Communicator, of these spiritual gifts. And I do not
+think that any man could have written these words of my text, the main
+purpose of which is altogether different to setting forth the mystery of
+the divine nature, unless he had believed in God the Father, Son, and
+Holy Ghost.
+
+But, apart altogether from that, let me remind you in one sentence of
+how the gifts which thus come to men by that Divine Spirit derive their
+characteristic quality from their very medium of communication. There
+are many other blessings for which we have to say, 'Blessed be God'; for
+all the gifts that come from 'the Father of Lights' are light, and
+everything that the Fountain of sweetness bestows upon mankind is sweet,
+but earthly blessings are but the shadow of blessing. They remain
+without us, and they pass. And if they were all for which we had to
+praise God, our praises had need to be often checked by sobs and tears,
+and often very doubtful and questioning. If there were none other but
+such, and if this poor life were all, then I do not think it would be
+true that it is
+
+        'better to have loved and lost,
+    Than never to have loved at all.'
+
+It is but a quavering voice of praise, with many a sob between, that
+goes up to bless God for anything but spiritual blessings. Though it is
+true that all which comes from the Father of Lights is light, the
+sorrows and troubles that He sends have the light terribly muffled in
+darkness, and it needs strong faith and insight to pierce through the
+cloud to see the gleam of anything bright beneath. But when we turn to
+this other region, and think of what comes to every poor, tremulous,
+human heart, that likes to take it through that Divine Spirit--the
+forgiveness of sins, the rectification of errors, the purification of
+lusts and passions, the gleams of hope on the future, and the access
+with confidence into the standing and place of children; oh, then surely
+we can say, 'Blessed be God for spiritual blessings.'
+
+But if the word which defines may thus seem to limit, the other word
+which accompanies it sweeps away every limit; for it calls upon us to
+bless God for _all_ spiritual blessings. That is to say, there is no gap
+in His gift. It is rounded and complete and perfect. Whatever a man's
+needs may require, whatever his hopes can dream, whatever his wishes can
+stretch out towards, it is all here, compacted and complete. The
+spiritual gifts are encyclopædiacal and all-sufficient. They are not
+segments, but completed circles. When God gives He gives amply.
+
+II. So much, then, for the first point; now, in the second place, note
+the one divine act by which all these blessings have been bestowed.
+
+'Blessed be God who _has_ given'; or, still more definitely, pointing to
+some one specific moment and deed in which the benefaction was
+completed, 'Blessed be God who gave.'
+
+When? Well, ideally in the depths of His own eternal mind the gift was
+complete or ever the recipients were created to receive it, and
+historically the gift was complete in the act of redemption when He
+spared not His Own Son, but gave Him up unto the death for us all. A man
+may destine an estate for the benefit of some community which for
+generations long may continue to enjoy its benefits, but the gift is
+complete when he signs the deed that makes it over. Humphrey Chetham
+gave the boys in his school to-day their education when, centuries ago,
+he assigned his property to that beneficent purpose. So, away back in
+the mists of Eternity the gift was completed, and the signature was put
+to the deed when Jesus Christ was born, and the seal was added when
+Jesus Christ died. 'Blessed be God who _hath_ given.'
+
+So, then, we may not only draw the conclusion which the Apostle drew,
+'how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' but we can
+draw an even grander one, 'Has He not with Him also freely given us all
+things?' And we possess them all to-day if our hearts are resting on
+Jesus Christ. The limit of the gift is only in ourselves. All has been
+given, but the question remains how much has been taken.
+
+Oh, Christian men and women, there is nothing that we require more than
+to have what we have, to possess what is ours, to make our own what has
+been bestowed. You sometimes hear of some beggar, or private soldier, or
+farm labourer, who has come all at once into an estate that was his,
+years before he knew anything about it. There is such a boundless wealth
+belonging by right, and by the Giver's gift, to every Christian soul;
+and yet, here are we, many of us, like the paupers who sometimes turn up
+in workhouses, all in rags, and with deposit-receipts for £200 or £300
+stitched into the rags, that they get no good out of. Here are we, with
+all that wealth, paupers still. Be sure that you have what you have. Do
+you remember the exhortation to a valiant effort in one of the stories
+in the Old Testament--'Know ye that Ramoth-gilead is _ours_, and we take
+it not?' And that is exactly what is true about hosts of professing
+Christians who have not, in any real sense, the possession of what God
+has given them. It is well to ask, for our desires are the measures of
+our capacities. It is well to ask, but we very often ask when what is
+wanted is not that we should get more, but that we should utilise what
+we have. And we make mistakes therein, as if God needed to be besought
+to give, when all the while it is we who need to be stirred up to grasp
+and keep the things that are freely given to us of God.
+
+III. In the next place, notice the one place where all these blessings
+are kept.
+
+'Blessed be God who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in
+heavenly places.' 'In heavenly places.' Now that does not merely define
+the region of origin, the locality where they originated or whence they
+come. It does do that, but it does a great deal more. It does not
+merely tell us, as we often are disposed to think that it does, that
+'every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh
+down'--though that is perfectly true, but it means much rather that in
+order to get the gift we must go up. They are in the heavenly places,
+and they cannot live anywhere else. They have been sticking shrubs in
+tubs outside our public buildings this last week. How long will they
+keep their leaves and their freshness? How soon will they need to be
+shifted and taken back again to the sweeter air, where they can
+flourish? God's spiritual gifts cannot grow in smoke and dirt and a
+polluted atmosphere. And if a professing Christian man lives his life on
+the low levels he will have very few of the heavenly gifts coming down
+to him there. And that is the reason--_the_ reason above all
+others--why, with such a large provision made for all possible
+necessities and longings of all sorts, people who call themselves
+Christians go up and down the world feeble and poor, and with little
+enjoyment of their religion, and having verified scarcely anything of
+the great promises which God has given them.
+
+Brother, according to the old word with which the Mass used to begin,
+'_Sursum corda_'--up with your hearts! The blessings are in the heavens,
+and if we want them we must go where they are. It is not enough to drink
+sparing draughts from the stream as it flows through the plain. Travel
+up to the headwaters, where the great pure fountain is, that gushes out
+abundant and inexhaustible. The gifts are heavenly, and there they
+abide, and thither we must mount if we would possess them.
+
+Now that this understanding of the words is correct I think is clearly
+shown by a verse in the next chapter, where we find the very same
+phrase employed. In this connection the Apostle says that 'God hath
+raised us up together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' That is to
+say, the true ideal of the Christian life is that, even here and now, it
+is a life of such intimate union and incorporation with Jesus Christ as
+that where He is we are, and that even whilst we tabernacle upon earth
+and move about amongst its illusions and changing scenes, in the depth
+of our true being we may be fixed, and sit at rest with Christ where He
+is.
+
+Do not dismiss that as mere pulpit rhetoric. Do not say that it is
+mystical and incomprehensible, and cannot be reduced into practice
+amidst the distractions of daily life. Brethren, it is not so! Jesus
+Christ Himself said about Himself that He came down from heaven, and
+that though He did, even whilst He wore the likeness of the flesh, and
+was one of us, He was 'the Son of Man which _is_ in Heaven,' when He lay
+in the manger, when He worked at the carpenter's bench in Nazareth, when
+He walked with weary feet those blessed acres, when He hung, for our
+advantage, on the bitter Cross. And that was no incommunicable property
+of His mysterious nature, but it was the typical example of what it is
+possible for manhood to be. And you and I, if we are to possess in any
+measure corresponding with the gift of Christ the spiritual blessing
+which God bestows, must have our lives 'hid with Christ in God,' and sit
+together with Him in the heavenly places.
+
+IV. Lastly, note the one Person in whom all spiritual blessings are
+enshrined.
+
+'In the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' You cannot separate between
+Him and His gifts, neither in the way of getting Him without them, nor
+in the way of getting them without Him. They are Himself, and in the
+deepest analysis all spiritual blessings are reducible to one--viz. that
+the Spirit of Jesus Christ Himself shall dwell with us.
+
+Now, that union by which it is possible for poor, empty, sinful
+creatures to be filled with His fulness, animated with His life,
+strengthened with His omnipotence, and sanctified by His
+indwelling--that union is the very kernel of this Epistle to the
+Ephesians.
+
+I dare say I have often drawn your attention to the singular emphasis
+and repetition with which that phrase 'in Christ' occurs throughout the
+letter. Just take the two or three instances of it that I gather as I
+speak. In this first chapter we read, 'the faithful in Jesus Christ.'
+Then comes our text, 'blessings in heavenly places in Christ.' Then, in
+the very next verse, we read, 'chosen us in Him.' Then, a verse or two
+after, we have 'accepted in the Beloved,' which is immediately followed
+by, 'in whom we have redemption through His blood.' Then, again, 'that
+He might gather together in one all things in Christ, in whom also we
+have obtained the inheritance.' I need not make other quotations, but
+throughout the letter every blessing that can gladden or sanctify the
+human spirit is regarded by the Apostle as being stored and shrined in
+Jesus Christ: inseparable from Him, and therefore to be found by us only
+in union with Him.
+
+And that is the point of all which I want to say--viz. that, inasmuch as
+all spiritual blessings that a soul can need are hived in Him in whom is
+all sweetness, the way, and the only way, to get them is that we, too,
+should pass into Him and dwell in Jesus Christ. It is His own teaching:
+'I am the Vine, ye are the branches. Abide in Me. Separate from Me ye
+can do nothing,' and get nothing, and are nothing.
+
+Oh, brethren! it is well that all our treasures should be in one place.
+It is better that they should all be in One Person. And if only we will
+lay our poor emptiness by the side of His fulness there will pass over
+from that infinite abundance and sufficiency everything that we can
+require.
+
+We abide in Him by faith, by meditation, by love, by submission, by
+practical obedience, and, if we are wise, the effort of our lives will
+be to keep close to that Lord. As long as we keep touch with Him we have
+all and abound. Break the connection by wandering away, in thought and
+desire, by indulgence in sin, by letting earthly passions surge in and
+separate us from Him--break the connection by rebellion, by making
+ourselves our own ends and lords, and it is like switching off the
+electricity. Everything falls dead. You cannot have Christ's blessing
+unless you take Christ.
+
+And so, dear brethren, 'abide in Me and I in you.' There is nothing else
+that will make us blessed; there is nothing else that will meet all the
+circumference of our necessities; there is nothing else that will quiet
+our hearts, will sanctify our understandings. Christ is yours if 'ye are
+Christ's.' 'Of His fulness _have_ all we received,' for it all became
+ours when we became His, and Christian growth on earth and heaven is but
+the unfolding of the folded graces that are contained in Him. We possess
+the whole Christ, but eternity is needed to disclose all the
+unsearchable riches of our inheritance in Him.
+
+
+
+
+'ACCORDING TO'--I.
+
+     'According to the good pleasure of His will, ... According to the
+      riches of His grace.'--Eph. i. 5, 7.
+
+
+That phrase, 'according to,' is one of the key-words of this profound
+epistle, which occurs over and over again, like a refrain. I reckon
+twelve instances of it in three chapters of the letter, and they all
+introduce one or other of the two thoughts which appear in the two
+fragments that I have taken for my text. They either point out how the
+great blessings of Christ's mission have underlying them the divine
+purpose, or they point out how the process of the Christian life in the
+individual has for its source and measure the abundances, the wealth of
+the grace and the power of God. So in both aspects the facts of earth
+are traced up to, and declared to be, the outcome of the heavenly
+depths, and that gives solemnity, grandeur, elevation, to this epistle
+all its own. We are carried, as it were, away up into the recesses of
+the mountains of God, and we look down upon the unruffled, mysterious,
+deep lake, from which come the rivers that water all the plains beneath.
+
+Now of these two types of reference to the divine will and the divine
+wealth, I should like to gather together the instances, as they occur in
+this letter, in so far as I can, in the course of a sermon, touching
+them, it must be, very imperfectly. But I fear that it is impossible to
+deal with both the phases of this 'according to,' in one discourse. So I
+confine myself to that which is suggested by the first of our two texts,
+in the hope that some other day we may be able to overtake the other. So
+then, we have set before us here the Christian thought of the divine
+will which underlies, and therefore is manifest by, the work of Jesus
+Christ, in its whole sweep and breadth. And I just take up the various
+instances in which this expression occurs in a great variety of forms,
+but all retaining substantially the same meaning.
+
+I. Note that that divine will which underlies and is operative in, and
+therefore is certified to us by the whole work of Jesus Christ, in its
+facts and its consequences, is a 'good pleasure.'
+
+Now there are few thoughts which the history of the world has shown to
+be more productive of iron and steel in the human character than that of
+the sovereign will of God. That made Islam, and is the secret of its
+power to-day, amidst its many corruptions. Because these wild desert
+tribes were all stiffened, or I might say inflamed, by that profound
+conviction, the sovereign will of God, they came down like a hammer upon
+that corrupt so-called Christian Church, and swept it off the face of
+the earth, as it deserved to be swept. And the same thought of the
+sovereign will, of which we are but instruments--pawns on its
+chessboard--made the grand seventeenth century Puritanism in England,
+and its sister type of men and of religion in Holland. For this is a
+historically proved thesis, that there is nothing which so contributes
+to the formation, and valuation of, and the readiness to die for, civil
+liberty, as the firm grasp of that thought of the divine sovereignty.
+Just because a man realises that the will of God is supreme over all the
+earth, he rebels against all forms of human despotism.
+
+But with all the good that is in that great thought--and the
+Christianity of this day sorely wants the strength that might be given
+it by the exhibition of that steel medicine--it wants another, 'the
+good pleasure of His will.' And that word, 'good pleasure,' does not
+express, as I think, in Paul's usage of it, the simple notion of
+sovereignty, but always the notion of a benevolent sovereignty. It is
+'the good pleasure'--as it is put in another place by the same
+Apostle--'of His goodness.' And that thought, let in upon the solemnity
+and severity of the other one, is all that it needs in order to make the
+man who grasps it not only a hero in conflict, and a patient martyr in
+endurance, but a child in his Father's house, rejoicing in the love of
+his Father everywhere and always.
+
+Paul would have us believe that if we will take the work of Jesus Christ
+in the facts of His life, and its results upon humanity, as our
+horn-book and lesson, we shall draw from that some conceptions of the
+great thing that underlies it, 'the good pleasure of His will.' We stand
+in front of this complex universe, and some of us say: 'Law'; and some
+of us say: 'A Lawgiver behind the law; a Person at the heart of all
+things'; but unless we can say: 'And in the heart of the Person a will,
+which is the expression of a steadfast, omnipotent love,' then the world
+seems to me to be a place of unsolvable riddles and a torture-house.
+There goes the great steam-roller along the road. Everybody can see that
+it crushes down, and makes its own path. Who drives it? The steam in the
+boiler, or is there a hand on the lever? And what drives the hand?
+Christianity answers, and answers with unfaltering lip, rising clear
+above contradictions apparent and difficulties real, 'The good pleasure
+of His will,' and there men can rest.
+
+Then there is another step. Another form in which this 'according to'
+appears in this letter is, if we adopt the rendering, which I am
+disposed to do in the present case, of the Authorised Version rather
+than of the Revised, 'according to His good pleasure ... which He hath
+purposed in Himself.' The Revised Version says, 'Which He hath purposed
+in Him,' and that is a perfectly possible rendering. But to me the old
+one is not only more eloquent, but more in accordance with the
+connection. So I venture to accept it without further ado--'His good
+pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.'
+
+That brings us into the presence of that same great thought, which in
+another aspect is expressed in saying 'His name is Jehovah,' and in yet
+another aspect is expressed in saying 'God is love,' viz. the thought
+which sounds familiar, but which has in it depths of strength and
+illumination and joy, if we rightly ponder it, that, to use human words,
+the motive of the divine action is all found within the divine nature.
+
+We love one another because we discern, or think we discern, lovable
+qualities in the being on whom our love falls. God loves because He is
+God. That great artesian fountain wells up from the depths, by its own
+sweet impulse, and pours itself out; and 'the good pleasure of His
+goodness' has no other explanation than that it is His nature and
+property to be merciful. And so, dear brethren, we get clean past what
+has sometimes been the misapprehension of good people, and has oftener
+been the caricatured representation of Evangelical truth which its
+enemies have put forth--that God was made to love and pity by reason of
+the sacrifice of the Son, whereas the very opposite is the case. God
+loves, therefore He sent His Son, 'that whosoever believeth in Him
+should not perish but have everlasting life,' and the notion of the
+Cross of Christ as changing the divine heart is as far away from
+Evangelical truth as it is from the natural conceptions that men form of
+the divine nature. We shake hands with our so-called antagonists and
+say, 'Yes! we believe as much as you do that God does not love us
+because Christ died, but we believe what perhaps you do not, that Christ
+died because God loves us, and would save us.' 'The good pleasure which
+He hath purposed in Himself.'
+
+Then, still further, there is another aspect of this same divine will
+brought out in other parts of this letter, of which this is a specimen,
+'Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His
+good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself, that in the
+dispensation of the fulness of the times He might gather together in one
+all things in Christ,' which, being turned into more modern phraseology,
+is just this--that the great aim of that divine sovereign will,
+self-originated, full of loving-kindness to the world, is to manifest to
+all men what God is, that all men may know Him for what He is, and
+thereby be drawn back again, and grouped in peaceful unity round His
+Son, Jesus Christ. That is the intention which is deepest in the divine
+heart, the desire which God has most for every one of us. And when the
+Old Testament tells us that the great motive of the divine action is for
+'My own Name's sake,' that expression might be so regarded as to
+disclose an ugly despot, who only wants to be reverenced by abject and
+submissive subjects. But what it really means is this, that the divine
+love which hovers over its poor, prodigal children because it _is_ love,
+and, therefore, lovingly delights in a loving recognition and response,
+desires most of all that all the wanderers should see the light, and
+that every soul of man should be able to whisper, with loving heart, the
+name, 'Abba! Father!' Is not that an uplifting thought as being the
+dominant motive which puts in action the whole of the divine activity?
+God created in order that He might fling His light upon creatures, who
+should thereby be glad. And God has redeemed in order that in Jesus
+Christ we might see Him, and, seeing Him, be at rest, and begin to grow
+like Him. This is the aim, 'That they might know Thee, the only true God
+... whom to know is eternal life.' And so self-communication and
+self-revelation is the very central mystery of the will.
+
+But that is not all. Another of the forms in which this phrase occurs
+tells us that that great purpose, the eternal purpose which He purposed
+in Christ Jesus our Lord, was that, 'Now unto the principalities and
+powers in heavenly places might be known' by the Church 'the manifold
+wisdom of God.' And so we get another thought, that that whole work of
+redemption, operated by the Incarnation, and culminating in the
+Crucifixion and Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ, stands as
+being the means by which other orders of creatures, besides ourselves,
+learn to know 'the manifold wisdom of God.' According to the grand old
+saying, at Creation the 'morning stars sang together for joy.' All
+spiritual creatures, be they 'higher' or 'lower,' can only know God by
+the observation of His acts.
+
+    ''Twas great to speak a world from nought,
+     'Tis greater to redeem,'
+
+and the same angelic lips that sang these praises on the morning of
+Creation have learnt a new song that they sing; 'Glory and honour and
+dominion and power be unto the Lamb that was slain.'
+
+Thus to principalities and powers, a diviner height in the loftiness,
+and a diviner depth in the condescension, and a diviner tenderness in
+the love, and a diviner energy in the power, of the redeeming God have
+been made known, and this is the thought of His eternal purpose. And
+that brings me to another point which is involved in the words that I
+have just quoted, which stand in connection with those that I have
+previously referred to. The phrase 'eternal purpose' literally rendered
+is, 'the purpose of the ages,' and that, no doubt, may mean 'eternal' in
+the sense of running on through all the ages; or it may mean, perhaps,
+that which we usually attach to the word 'eternal,' viz. unbeginning and
+unending. I take the former meaning as the more probable one, that the
+Apostle contemplates that great will of God which culminates in Jesus
+Christ, as coming solemnly sweeping through all the epochs of time from
+the beginning. In a deeper sense than the poet meant it, 'Through the
+ages an increasing purpose runs,' and that binds the epochs of humanity
+together--'the purpose of God in Christ Jesus.' The philosophy of
+history lies there, and it is a true instinct that makes the cradle at
+Bethlehem the pivot around which the world's chronology revolves. For
+the deepest thing about all the ages on the further side of it is that
+they are 'Before Christ,' and the formative fact for all the ages after
+it is that they are _Anno Domini_.
+
+And now the last thing that is suggested by yet another of these
+eloquent expressions is deduced from another part of the same phrase.
+The purpose of the ages is described as that which 'He purposed in
+Christ Jesus our Lord.' Now the word 'purposed' literally is 'made.'
+And it may be a question whether 'purposed' or 'accomplished' is the
+special meaning to be attached to the general word 'made.' Either is
+legitimate. I take it that what the Apostle means here is that the
+purpose of God, which we have thus seen as sovereign, self-originated,
+having for its great aim the communication to all His creatures of the
+knowledge of Himself, and running through the ages, and binding them
+into a unity, reaches its entire accomplishment in the Cradle, and the
+Cross, and the Throne of Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+He fulfils the divine intention. There is that one life, and in that
+life alone of humanity you have a character which is in entire sympathy
+with the divine mind, which is in full possession of the divine truth,
+which never diverges or deviates by a hair's-breadth from the divine
+will, which is the complete and perfect exponent to man of the divine
+heart and character; and that Christ is the fulfilment of all that God
+desired in the depths of eternity, and the abysses of His being. Did He
+will that men should know Him? Christ has declared Him. Did He will that
+men should be drawn back to Him? Christ lifted on the Cross draws all
+men unto Him. Was it 'according to the good pleasure of His goodness'
+that we men should attain to the adoption of sons? By that Son we too
+became sons. Was it the purpose of His will that we should obtain an
+'inheritance'? We obtain it in Jesus Christ, 'being heirs of God, and
+joint-heirs with Christ.' All that God willed to do is done. And when we
+look, on the one hand, up to that infinite purpose, and on the other, to
+the Cross, we hear from the dying lips, 'It is finished!' The purpose
+of the ages is accomplished in Christ Jesus.
+
+Is it accomplished with you? I have been speaking about the divine
+counsel which is a 'good pleasure,' which runs through the whole history
+of mankind. But it is a divine purpose that you can thwart as far as you
+are concerned. 'How often would I have gathered ... and ye would not,'
+and your 'would not' neutralises His 'would.' Do not stand in the way of
+the steam-roller. You cannot stop it, but it can crush you. Do not have
+Him say about you, 'In vain have I smitten, in vain have I loved.' Bow,
+accept, recognise that all God's armoury is brought to bear upon each of
+us in that great Cross and Passion, in that great Incarnation and human
+life. And I beseech you, in your hearts, let the will of God be done
+even as for a world it has been done by the sacrifice of Calvary.
+
+
+
+
+'ACCORDING TO'--II.
+
+     'According to the riches of His grace.'--Eph. i. 7.
+
+
+We have seen, in a previous sermon, that a characteristic note of this
+letter is the frequent occurrence of that phrase 'according to.' I also
+then pointed out that it was employed in two different directions. One
+class of passages, with which I then tried to deal, used it to compare
+the divine purpose in our salvation with the historical process of the
+salvation. The type of that class of reference is found in a verse just
+before my text, 'according to the good pleasure of His will.' There is a
+second class of passages to which our text belongs, where the comparison
+is not between the purpose and its realisation, but between the stores
+of the divine riches and the experiences of the Christian life. The one
+set of passages suggests the ground of our salvation in the deep purpose
+of God; the other suggests the measure of the power which is working out
+that salvation.
+
+The instances of this second use of the phrase, besides the one in my
+text, 'according to the riches of His grace,' are such as these:
+'According to the riches of His glory'; 'According to the power that
+worketh in us'; 'According to the measure of the gift of Christ';
+'According to the energy of the might of His power, which He wrought in
+Christ when He raised Him from the dead.'
+
+Now it is clear that all these are varying forms of the same thing. They
+vary in form, they are identical in substance. What a Jew calls a
+'cubit' an Englishman calls a 'foot,' but the result is pretty nearly
+the same. Shillings, marks, francs, are various standards; they all come
+to substantially the same result. These varying measures of the divine
+gift which is at work in man's salvation, have this in common, that they
+all run out into God's immeasurable, unlimited power, boundless wealth.
+And so, if we gather them together, and try to focus them in a few
+words, they may help to widen our conceptions of what we ought to expect
+from God, to bow us in contrition as to the small use that we have made
+of it, and to open our desires wide, that they may be filled.
+
+I only aspire, then, to deal with these four forms which I have already
+suggested.
+
+I. The measure of our possible attainments is the whole wealth of God.
+
+'According to the riches of His grace.' Another angle at which the same
+thought is viewed appears in another part of the letter, where we have
+this variation in the expression, 'According to the riches of His
+glory.' 'Grace' and 'Glory' are generally opposed antithetically; in
+this epistle they are united, for in the verse before my text I read:
+'To the praise of the glory of His grace.' So the first thought is, the
+whole wealth of God is available for every Christian soul.
+
+Now it seems to me that there are very few things that the popular
+Christianity of this day needs more than a furnishing up of the familiar
+old Christian terminology, which has largely lost the freshness and the
+power that it once had. They tell us that these incandescent burners,
+that we are using nowadays, are very much more bright when they are
+first fixed than after the mantle gets a little worn. So it is with the
+terminology of Christianity. It needs to be re-stated, not in such a way
+as to take the pith out of it, which is what a great deal of the modern
+craze for re-statement means, but in such a way as to brighten it up
+again, and to invest it with something of the 'celestial light' with
+which it was 'apparelled' when it first came. Now that word 'grace,' I
+have no doubt, sounds to you hard, theological, remote. But what does it
+mean? It gathers into one burning point the whole of the rays of that
+conception of God, with which it is the glory of Christianity to have
+flooded and drenched the world. It tells us that at the heart of the
+universe there is a heart; that God is Love, that that love is the
+motive-spring of His activity, that it comes and bends over the lowliest
+with a smile of amity on its lips, with healing and help in its hands,
+with forgiveness for all sins against itself, with boundless wealth for
+the poorest, and that the wealth of His self-communicating love is the
+measure of the wealth that each of us may possess.
+
+God gives 'according to the riches of His grace.' You do not expect a
+millionaire to give half-a-crown to a subscription fund; and God gives
+royally, divinely, measuring His bestowments by the abundance of His
+treasures, and handing over with an open palm large gifts of coined
+money, because there are infinite chests of uncirculated bullion in the
+deep storehouses. 'How great is Thy goodness which Thou hast manifested
+before the sons of men for them that fear Thee. How much greater is Thy
+goodness which Thou hast laid up in store.' But whilst He gives all, the
+question comes to be: What do I receive? The measure of His gift is His
+measureless grace; the measure of my reception is my--alas!
+easily-measured faith. What about the unearned increment? What about the
+unrealised wealth? Too many of us are like some man who has a great
+estate in another land. He knows nothing about it, and is living in
+grimy poverty in a back street. For you have all God's riches waiting
+for you, and 'the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice'
+at your beck and call, and yet you are but poorly realising your
+possible riches. Alas, that when we might have so much we do have so
+little. 'According to the riches of His grace' He gives. But another
+'according to' comes in. 'According to thy faith be it unto thee.' So we
+have to take these two measures together, and the working limit of our
+possession of God's riches comes out of the combination of them both.
+
+Let me remind you, before I pass on, of what I have already suggested is
+but another phase of this same thought, Paul says in this epistle that
+God gives not only 'according to the riches of His grace,' but
+'according to the riches of His glory,' and that the latter expression
+is substantially identical with the former, is plain from the
+combination of the two in an earlier verse of this chapter: 'To the
+praise of the glory of His grace.' Thus we come to the blessed thought
+that the glory of God is essentially the revelation of that stooping,
+pitying, pardoning, enriching love. Not in the physical attributes, not
+in the characteristics of the divine nature which part Him off from men,
+and make Him remote, both from their conceptions and their affections,
+but in the love that bends to them is the true glory of God. All these
+other things are but the fringes; the centre of glory is the Love, which
+is the mightiest and the divinest thing in the Might Divine. The
+sunshine is far stronger than the lightning, and there is more force
+developed in the rain than in an earthquake. That truth is what
+Christianity has made the common possession of the world. It has thereby
+broken the chains of dread; it has bridged over the infinite distance.
+It has given us a God that can love and be loved, can stoop and can
+lift, can pardon and can purify. 'According to the good pleasure of His
+goodness,'--there is the foundation of our salvation. 'According to the
+riches of His grace,'--there is the measure of our salvation.
+
+II. We have another form of the same measure in another set of verses
+which speak of the present working of God's power.
+
+The Apostle speaks in regard to his own apostolic commission of its
+being given 'according to the working of His power'; and he speaks of
+all Christian men as receiving gifts 'according to the power that
+worketh in us.' So there we have a standard that comes, as it were, a
+little closer to ourselves. We do not need to travel up into the dim
+abysses above, or think of the sanctities and the secrecies of that
+divine heart in the light which is inaccessible, but we have the measure
+in ourselves.
+
+The standards of length are kept at Greenwich, the standards of capacity
+are kept in the Tower; but there are local standards distributed
+throughout the land to which men may go and have their measures
+corrected. And so besides all these lofty thoughts about the grace and
+the glory which measures His gift, we can turn within, if we are
+Christian people, and say, 'According to the power that worketh in us.'
+
+Ah, brethren! there are few things that we want more than to revive and
+deepen the conviction that in every Christian man, by virtue of his
+faith, and in proportion to his faith, there is in operation an actual,
+superhuman, divine power moulding his nature, guiding, quickening,
+ennobling, lifting, confirming, and hallowing and shaping him into
+conformity with Jesus Christ. I would that we all believed not as a
+dogma, but realised as a personal experience, that irrefragable truth,
+'Know ye not that the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in you, except ye be
+reprobate?' The life of self is evil; the life of Christ in self is
+good, and only good. And if you are Christian men, and in the
+proportion, as I have said, in which you are living by faith, you have
+working in your spirits the very Spirit of Christ Himself.
+
+And that power is the measure of your possibilities. Obviously 'the
+power that worketh in us' is able to do a great deal more than it is
+doing in any of us. And so with deep significance the Apostle, side by
+side with his adducing of this power as being the measure of our
+possible attainments, speaks about God as being 'able to do for us,
+exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.' 'The power
+that works in us' transcends in its possibilities our present
+experience, it transcends our conceptions, it transcends our desires. It
+is able to do everything; it actually does--well, you know what it does
+in you. And the responsibility of hampering and hindering that power
+from working out its only adequately corresponding results lies at our
+own doors. 'A rushing, mighty wind'--yes; and in myself a scarcely
+perceptible breathing, and often a dead calm, stagnant as in the
+latitudes on either side of the Equator, where, for long, dreary days,
+no freshening motion in the atmosphere is perceptible. 'A fire?'--yes;
+then why is my grate full of grey, cold ashes, and one little spark in
+the corner? 'A fountain springing into everlasting life?'--yes; then why
+in my basin is there so much scum and ooze, mud and defilement, and so
+little of the flashing and brilliant water? 'The power that works in us'
+is sorely hindered by the weakness in which it works.
+
+III. In the third place another form of this measure is stated by the
+Apostle, 'According to the measure of the gift of Christ.'
+
+That means, of course, the gift which Christ bestows. It is
+substantially the same idea as I have just been dealing with, only
+looked at from rather a different point of view. Therefore, I need not
+dwell upon its parallelism with what has just been occupying our
+attention, but rather ask you simply to consider one point in reference
+to it, and that is that, side by side with the reference to the gift of
+Christ as being the measure of our possible attainments, the Apostle
+enlarges on the Infinite variety of the shapes which that one gift
+takes in different people. 'He gave some apostles, some prophets,' etc.;
+one man receiving according to this fashion, and another according to
+that, and to each of us the distribution is made 'according to the
+measure of the gift of Christ.' That is to say, it takes us all, the
+collective goodness and beauty of the whole community of saints, to
+approximate to the fulness of that gift, and all are needed in their
+different types and forms of excellence, sanctity and beauty, in order
+to set forth, even imperfectly, the richness and the manifoldness of His
+great gift. And so 'we all come'--there is a multiplicity--'unto the
+perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ'--there
+is a unity in which the multiplicity inheres.
+
+So try to get a little more of some different type of excellence than
+that to which you are naturally inclined. Seek, and consciously
+endeavour, to appropriate into your character uncongenial excellences,
+and be very charitable in your judgments of the different types of
+Christian conformity to Christ our Lord. The crystals that are set round
+a light do not quarrel with each other as to whether green, or yellow,
+or blue, or red, or violet is the true colour to reflect. We need all
+the seven prismatic tints to make the perfect white light. The gift of
+Christ is many-sided; try not to be one-sided in your reception of it.
+
+IV. And now the last form of this measure is 'according to the energy of
+the might of His power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him
+from the dead.'
+
+When we gazed upon the riches of God's grace, they were high above us,
+when we looked upon 'the power that worketh in us,' we saw it working
+amidst many hindrances and hamperings, but here there is presented to
+us in a concrete example, close beside us, of what God can make of a man
+when the man is wholly pliable to His will, and the recipient of His
+influences. And so there stands before us the guarantee and the pattern
+of immortal life, the Christ whose Manhood died and lives, who is
+clothed with a spiritual body, who wields royal authority in the Kingdom
+of the Most High. And that is the measure of what God can do with me,
+and wishes to do with me, if I will let Him. Christ is my pattern, and
+the measure of my own possibilities.
+
+To be with Him, where and what He is, is the only adequate result of the
+power that works in us, and of the process that is already begun in us,
+if we are Christian people. You are sometimes--there is one eminent
+example of it in that great Medicean Chapel at Florence--a statue
+exquisitely finished in all its limbs, but one part left in the rough.
+That is the best that Christian people come to here. Shall it always be
+so? Do not the very imperfections prophesy completion, and is it not
+certain that the half-finished torso will be carried to the upper
+workshop, and be there disengaged from the dead marble and made to stand
+out in perfect beauty and fullest completeness? Christ is the object of
+our hopes, and no hopes of the Christian life are adequate to the power
+that works in us, or to the progress already made, which do not see in
+the 'energy of the might of the power' which wrought in Christ, the
+example and the guarantee of the exceeding greatness of 'His power which
+is to usward.'
+
+And now, one last word. Besides all these passages which have been
+occupying us, there is another use of this same phrase in this letter
+which presents a very solemn and grim contrast. I can do no better with
+it than simply read it: 'Ye were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein
+in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according
+to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now
+worketh'--mark the allusion to the other words that we have been
+referring to--'in the children of disobedience.' So there you have the
+alternative, either 'dead in trespasses and sins,' whilst living the
+physical and the intellectual life, or partaking of the life of Him 'who
+was dead, and is alive for ever more'; either 'walking according to the
+course of this world,' which is 'disobedience' and 'wrath,' or walking
+'according to the power that worketh in us'; either 'putting on,' or
+rather continuing to wear, 'the old man which is corrupt according to
+the lusts which deceive,' or 'putting on the new man, which according to
+God is created in righteousness and holiness and truth.' The choice is
+before us. May God help us to choose aright!
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S INHERITANCE AND OURS
+
+     'In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, ... the earnest of
+      our inheritance.'--Eph. i. 11, 14.
+
+
+A dewdrop twinkles into green and gold as the sunlight falls on it. A
+diamond flashes many colours as its facets catch the light. So, in this
+context, the Apostle seems to be haunted with that thought of
+'inheriting' and 'inheritance,' and he recurs to it several times, but
+sets it at different angles, and it flashes back different beauties of
+radiance. For the words, which I have wrenched from their context in the
+first of these two verses, are more accurately rendered, as in the
+Revised Version, in 'whom also we were made,' _not_ 'have
+obtained'--'an inheritance.' Whose inheritance? God's! The Christian
+community is God's possession. Then, in my second text, we have the
+converse thought--'the earnest of _our_ inheritance.' What is the
+Christian's possession? The same God whose possession is the Christian.
+So, then, there is a deep and a wonderful relation between the believing
+soul and God, and however different must be the two sides of that
+relation, the resemblance is greater than the difference. Surely that is
+the deepest, most blessed, and most strength-giving conception of the
+Christian life. Other notions of it lay stress, and that rightly, upon
+certain correspondence between us and God. My faith corresponds to His
+faithfulness and veracity. My obedience corresponds to His authority. My
+weakness lays hold on His strength. My emptiness is replenished by His
+fulness. But here we rise above the region of correspondences into that
+of similarity. In these other aspects the convexity fits the concavity;
+in this aspect the two hemispheres go together and make the complete
+globe. We possess God, and God possesses us, and it is the same set of
+facts which are set forth in the two thoughts, 'We were made an
+inheritance, ... the earnest of our inheritance.'
+
+I. Now, then, let me ask you to look first at this mutual possession.
+
+We possess God; God possesses us. What does that mean? Well, it means
+plainly and chiefly this, a mutual love. For we all know--and many of us
+thankfully can bear witness to the truth of it in our earthly
+relationships,--that the one way by which a human spirit can possess a
+spirit is by the sweet mutual love which abolishes 'mine' and 'thine,'
+and all but abolishes 'me' and 'thee.' And so God sets little store by
+the ownership which depends on divinity and creation, though, of
+course, that relation brings with it a duty. As the old psalm has it,
+'It is He that hath made us, and we are His'; still, such a relationship
+as this, based upon the connection that subsists between the Maker and
+the work of His hands, is so purely external, and harsh, and
+superficial, that God does not reckon it to be a possession at all.
+
+You perhaps remember how, in the great word which underlies all these
+New Testament conceptions of God's ownership of His people, viz. the
+charter that constituted Israel into a nation, He said, 'Ye shall be
+unto Me a people for a possession above all nations, for all the earth
+is Mine.' And yet, though that ownership and mastership extended over
+everything that His hands had made, He--if I might so say--contemned it,
+and relegated it to a secondary position, and told the people that His
+heart hungered for something deeper, more real, more vital than such a
+possession, and that therefore, just because all the earth was His, and
+that was not enough to satisfy His heart, He took them and made them a
+peculiar treasure above all nations. We have, then, to think of that
+great Divine Love which possesses us when He loves us, and when we love
+Him.
+
+But remember that of this sweet commerce and reverberation of love which
+constitutes possession, the origination must be in His heart. 'We love
+Him because He first loved us.' The mirrors are set all round the great
+hall, but their surfaces are cold and lifeless until the great
+candelabrum in the centre is lit, and then, from every polished sheet
+there flashes back an echoing, answering light, and they repeat and
+repeat, until you scarce can tell which is the original and which is
+the reflection. But quench the centre-light, and the daughter-radiances
+vanish into darkness. The love on either side is on one side spontaneous
+and underived, and on the other side is secondary and evoked, but it
+_is_ love on both sides. His possession of us is, as it were, the upper
+side, and our possession of Him is, as it were, the underside of the one
+golden bond. It matters not whether you look at the stream with your
+face to its source or with your face to its mouth, the silvery plain is
+the same; and the deepest tie that knits men to God is the same as the
+tie that knits God to men. There is mutual possession because there is
+mutual love.
+
+Then again, in this same thought of mutual possession there lies a
+mutual surrender. For to give is the life-breath of all true love, and
+there is nothing which the loving heart more desires than to be able to
+pour _itself_ out--much rather than any subordinate gifts--on its
+object. But that, if it is one-sided, is misery, and only when it is
+reciprocal, is it blessed. God gives Himself to us, as we know, most
+chiefly in that unspeakable gift of His Son, and we possess Him by
+virtue of His self-communication which depends upon His love. And then
+we possess Him, and He possesses us, not less by the answering surrender
+of ourselves, which is the expression of our love. No love subsists if
+it is only recipient; no love subsists if it is only communicated.
+Exports and imports must both be realised in this sweet commerce, and we
+enrich ourselves far more by what we give to the Beloved than by what we
+keep for ourselves.
+
+The last, the hardest thing to surrender, is our own wills. To give them
+up by constraint is slavery that degrades. To give them up because we
+love is a sacrifice which sanctifies, even in the lowest reaches of
+daily life. And the love that knits us to God is not invested with all
+its blessed possession of Him, until it has surrendered its will, and
+said, 'Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.' The traveller in the old fable
+gathered his cloak around him all the more closely, and held it the more
+tightly, because of the tempest that blew, but when the warm sunbeams
+fell he dropped it. He that would coerce my will, stiffens it into
+rebellion; but when a beloved one says, 'Though I might be much bold to
+enjoin thee, yet for love's sake I rather beseech,' then yielding is
+blessedness, and the giving ourselves away is the finding of God and
+ourselves.
+
+I need not touch, in more than a word, upon another aspect of this
+mutual possession, brought into view lovingly in many parts of
+Scripture, and that is that there is in it not only mutual love and
+mutual surrender, but mutual indwelling, 'He that dwelleth in love
+dwelleth in God, and God in him.' Jesus Christ has said the same thing
+to us, 'I am the Vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in Me
+bringeth forth much fruit.' We dwell in God, possessing Him; He dwells
+in us, possessing us. We dwell in God, being possessed by Him. He dwells
+in us, being possessed by us. And He moves in the heart that loves, as
+the Master walking through His house, as the divinity is present in the
+temple, and as the soul permeates the body, and is sight in the eye and
+colour in the cheek, and force in the arm, and deftness in the finger,
+and swiftness in the foot. So the indwelling God breathes through all
+the capacities, and all the desires, and all the needs of the soul which
+He inhabits, and makes them all blessed. The very same set of facts--the
+presence of a divine life in the life of the believing spirit--may
+either be looked at from the lower end, and then they are that I possess
+God, and find in Him the nutriment and the stimulus for all my being, or
+may be looked at from the upper end, that He possesses me and finds in
+me capacities and a nature the emptiness of which He fills, and organs
+which He uses. In both cases mutual love, mutual surrender, mutual
+inhabitation, make up God's possession of me and my possession of God.
+
+II. And now let me point you in a very few words to some of the plain,
+practical issues of this mutual possession. God's possession of us
+demands our consecration. 'Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a
+price,' therefore, to live for self is to fly in the face of the very
+purpose of Christ's mission and of God's communication of Himself to us.
+There are slaves who run away from their masters and 'deny the Lord that
+bought them.' _We_ do that whenever, being God's slaves, we set up
+anything else than His will as our law, or anything else than His glory
+as the aim of our lives. To live for self is to die, to die to self is
+to live. And the solemn obligations of that most blessed possession by
+God of us are as solemn as the possession is blessed, and can only be
+discharged when we turn to Him, and yield the whole control of our
+nature to His merciful hand, believing that He has not only the right to
+dispose of us, but that His disposition of us will always coincide with
+our sanest conceptions of good, and our wisest desires for happiness.
+Yield yourselves to God, for He has yielded Himself to you, and in the
+yielding we realise our largest and most blessed possession. It is a
+good bargain to give myself and to get God.
+
+God's possession of us not only demands consecration, but it ensures
+safety. Remember that great word, 'No man is able to pluck them out of
+My Father's hand.' God is not a careless owner who leaves His treasures
+to be blown by every wind, or filched by every petty robber. He is not
+like the king of some decrepit monarchy, slices of whose territory his
+neighbours are for ever paring off and annexing. What God has God
+preserves. 'He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him
+against that day.' 'They are Mine, saith the Lord, My jewels in the day
+which I make.' But our security depends on our consecration. 'No man is
+able to pluck them out of My Father's hand.' No! But you can wriggle
+yourself out of your Father's hand, if you will. And the security avails
+only so long as you realise that you belong to God, and are living not
+for yourself.
+
+Possessing God we are rich. There is nothing that is truly our wealth
+which remains outside of us, and can be separated from us. 'Shrouds have
+no pockets,' says the Spanish proverb. 'His glory shall not descend
+after him,' says the grim psalm. But if God possesses me He is not going
+to let His treasures be lost in the grave. And if I possess Him then I
+shall pass through death as a beam of light does through some denser
+medium--a little refracted indeed, but not broken up; and I shall carry
+with me all my wealth to begin another world with. And that is more than
+you can do with the money that you make here. If you have God, you have
+the capital to commence a new condition of things beyond the grave.
+
+And so that mutual possession is the real pledge of immortal life, for
+nothing can be more incredible than that a soul which has risen to have
+God for its very own, and has bowed itself to accept God's ownership of
+it, can be affected by such a transient and physical incident as what we
+call death. We rise to the assurance of immortality because we have an
+inheritance which is God Himself. And in that inexhaustible Inheritance
+there lies the guarantee that we shall live while He lives, because He
+lives, and until we have incorporated into our lives all the majesty and
+the purity and the wisdom and the power that belong to us because they
+are God's.
+
+But we have to notice the two words that lie at the beginning of our
+first text--'_In whom_ we were made an inheritance.' That opens up the
+whole question of the means by which this mutual possession becomes
+possible for us men. Jesus Christ has died. That breaks the bondage
+under which the whole world is held. For the true slavery which
+interferes with the free service and the full possession of God is the
+slavery of self and sin. Jesus Christ has died. 'If the Son make you
+free ye shall be free indeed.' That great sacrifice not only 'breaks the
+power of cancelled sin,' but it also moves the heart, in the measure in
+which we truly accept it, to the love and the surrender which make the
+mutual possession of which we have been speaking. And so it is in Him
+that we become an Inheritance, that God comes to His rights in regard to
+each of us. And it is in Him that we, trusting the Son, have the
+inheritance for ours, and 'are heirs with God, and joint heirs with
+Christ.' So, dear friends, if we would 'be meet for the inheritance of
+the saints in light,' we must unite ourselves to that Lord by faith, and
+through Him and faith in Him, we shall receive 'the remission of sins
+and inheritance among all them that are sanctified.'
+
+
+
+
+THE EARNEST AND THE INHERITANCE
+
+     'The earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the
+      purchased possession.'--Eph. i. 14.
+
+
+I have dealt with a portion of this verse in conjunction with the
+fragment of another in this chapter. I tried to show you how much the
+idea of the mutual possession of God by the believing soul, and of the
+believing soul by God, was present to the Apostle's thoughts in this
+context. These two ideas are brought into close juxtaposition in the
+verse before us, for, as you will see if you use the Revised Version,
+the latter clause is there rightly paraphrased by the addition of a
+supplement, and reads 'until the redemption of God's own possession.' So
+that in the first clause we have 'our inheritance,' and in the second we
+have 'God's possession.' This double idea, however, has appended to it
+in this verse some very striking and important thoughts. The possession
+of both sides is regarded as incomplete, for what _we_ have is the
+'earnest' of the 'inheritance,' and '_God's_ own possession' has yet to
+be 'redeemed,' in the fullest sense of that word, at some point in the
+future. An 'earnest' is a fraction of an inheritance, or of a sum
+hereafter to be paid, and is the guarantee and pledge that the whole
+shall one day be handed over to the man who has received the foretaste
+of it in the 'earnest.' The soldier's shilling, the ploughman's 'arles,'
+the clod of earth and tuft of grass which, in some forms of transfer,
+were handed over to the purchaser, were all the guarantee that the rest
+was going to come. So the great future is sealed to us by the small
+present and the experiences of the Christian life to-day, imperfect,
+fragmentary, defective as they are, are the best prophecy and the most
+glorious pledge of that great to-morrow. The same law of continuity
+which, in application to our characters, and our work, and our daily
+life, makes 'to-morrow as this day, and much more abundant,' in its
+application to the future life makes the life here its parent, and the
+life yonder the prolongation and the raising to its highest power, of
+what is the main though often impeded tendency and direction of the
+present. The earnest of the 'inheritance' is the pledge until the full
+redemption of 'God's own possession.' I wish, then, to draw attention to
+these additional thoughts which are here attached to the main idea with
+which we were dealing in the last sermon.
+
+I. And I ask you to look with me, first, at the incompleteness of the
+present possession.
+
+I tried to show in my last sermon how those great thoughts of God's
+having us, and our having God, rested upon the three ideas of mutual
+love, mutual communication, and mutual indwelling. On His side the love,
+the impartation, the indwelling, are all perfect. On our side they are
+incomplete, broken, defective; and, therefore, the incompleteness on our
+side hinders both God's possession of us, and our possession of Him; so
+that we have but the 'earnest' and not the 'inheritance.' That is to
+say, the ownership may be perfect in idea, but in realisation it is
+imperfect.
+
+And then, if we turn to the word in the other clause, 'the redemption of
+the purchased possession,' that suggests the incompleteness with which
+God as yet owns us. For though the initial act of redeeming is complete,
+yet redemption is a process, and not an act. And we 'are having' it, as
+the Apostle says in another place very emphatically, in continual and
+growing experience. The estate has been acquired, but has not yet been
+fully subdued. For there are tribes in the jungles and in the hills who
+still hold out against the reign of Him who has won it for Himself. And
+so seeing that the redemption in its fulness is relegated to some point
+in the future, towards which we are progressively approximating, and
+seeing that the best that can be said about the Christian experience
+here is that we have an 'earnest of the inheritance,' we must recognise
+the incompleteness to-day of our possession of God, and of God's
+possession of us.
+
+That is a matter of experience. We know that only too well. 'I have
+God'--have I? I have a drop at the bottom of a too often unsteadily held
+and spilling cup, and the great ocean rolls unfathomable and boundless
+at my feet. How partial, how fragmentary, how clouded with doubts and
+blank ignorance, how intermittent, and, alas! rare, is our knowledge of
+Him. We sometimes go down our streets between tall houses, walking in
+their shadow, and now and then there is a cross street down which a
+blaze of sunshine comes, and when we reach it, and the houses fall back,
+we see the blue beyond. But we go on, and we are in the shadow again.
+And so our earthly lives are passed, to a large extent, beneath the
+shade of the grimy buildings that we ourselves have put up, and which
+shut out heaven from us, and only now and then a slanting beam comes
+through some opening, and carries wistful thoughts and longings into the
+Empyrean beyond. And how feeble our faith, and how little of His power
+comes into our hearts, and how little of the joy of the Lord is realised
+in our daily experience we all know, and it is sometimes good for us to
+force ourselves to feel it is but an 'earnest' of the 'inheritance'
+that the best of us has.
+
+'God has us.' Has He? Has He my will, which submits itself, and finds
+joy in submitting itself, to Him? How many competitors are there for my
+love which come in in front of Him, and we 'cannot get at Him for the
+press'! How many other motives are dominant in our lives, and how often
+we wrench ourselves away from our submission to Him, and try to set up a
+little dominion of our own, and say, 'Our lives are ours; who is lord
+over us?' Oh, brethren! we have God if we are Christians at all, and God
+has us. But alas! surely all honest experience tells us that there are
+awful gaps in the circle, and that our possession of Him, and His
+possession of us, are wofully incomplete.
+
+Now, let me remind you that this incompleteness is mainly our own fault.
+Of course, I know that for the absolute completeness, either of my
+possession of God or of His of me, I must pass from out this world, and
+enter upon another stage and manner of being. But it is not being in the
+flesh, but it is being dominated by the flesh, that is the reason for
+the incompleteness of our mutual possession. And it is not being in the
+world, but it is being seduced and tyrannised over by the influx of
+worldly desires and thoughts, surging into our hearts, that drives God
+from out of our hearts, and draws us away from the sweet security of
+being possessed by, and living close to, Him. Death does a great deal
+for a man in advancing him in the scale of being, and in changing the
+centre of gravity, as it were, of this life. But there is no reason to
+believe that anything in death, or beyond it, will so alter the set and
+direction of his soul as that it will lead him into that possession of
+God, and being possessed by Him, which he has not here. There are many
+of us who, if we were to die this instant, would no more have God for
+ours, or belong to God, than we do now. It is our fault if the circle is
+broken into so many segments, if the moments of mutual love, communion,
+and indwelling are so rare and interrupted in our lives. The
+incompleteness which is due to our earthly condition is nothing as
+compared with the incompleteness which is due to our own sin.
+
+But this incompleteness is one which may be progressively diminished,
+and we may be tending moment by moment, and year by year, nearer and
+nearer, and ever nearer, to the unreachable ideal of the entire
+possession of, and being possessed by, our God. There is a continual
+process of redemption of 'God's own possession' going on if a Christian
+man is true to himself and to that Divine Spirit which is the 'earnest'
+of the 'inheritance.' Mark that in my text, as it stands in our Bibles,
+and reads 'until the redemption,' there seems to be merely a pointing
+onwards to a future epoch, but that, in the more accurate rendering
+which you will find in the Revised Version, instead of 'until' we have
+'_unto_,' and that teaches us that the Divine Spirit, which in one
+aspect is the 'earnest of the inheritance,' is also operating upon men's
+hearts and minds so as to bring about the gradual completion of the
+process of redemption.
+
+So, dear brethren, seeing that by our own faults the possession is
+incomplete, and seeing that in the incompleteness there is given to each
+of us, if we rightly use it, a mighty power which is working ever
+towards the completion, it becomes us day by day to draw into our
+spirits more and more of that divine influence, and to let it work more
+fully upon the sins and faults which, far more than the body of flesh,
+or the connection with the world which it brings about, are the reasons
+for the incompleteness of the possession. We have, if we are wise, the
+task to discharge of daily enclosing, so to speak, more and more of the
+broad land which is all given over to us for our inheritance, but of
+which only so much as we fence in and cultivate, and make our own, is
+our own.
+
+The incompleteness is progressively completed, and it is our work as
+much as God's work to complete it. For though in our text that
+redemption is conceived of as a divine act, it is not an act in which we
+are but passive. The air goes into the lungs, and that oxygenates the
+blood, but the lung has to inflate if the air is to penetrate all its
+vesicles. And so the Spirit which seals us unto the redemption of the
+possession has to be received, held, diffused throughout, and utilised
+by our own effort.
+
+II. Now, secondly, notice the certainty of the completion of the
+incompleteness.
+
+As I have already said, the clod of earth and the handful of grass, the
+servant's wages, the soldier's shilling, are all guarantees that the
+whole of the inheritance or of the pay will be forthcoming in due time.
+And so there emerges from this consideration of the Divine Spirit as the
+'earnest,' the thought that the present experiences of a Christian soul
+are the surest proofs, and the irrefragable guarantees, of that perfect
+future. We ask for proofs of a future life. They may be very useful in
+certain states of mind, and to certain phases of opinion, but as it
+seems to me, far deeper than the region of logical understanding, and
+far more conclusive than anything that can be cast into the form of a
+syllogism, is the experience of a soul which knows that God is its, and
+that it is God's. 'I think, therefore, I am,' said the philosopher. 'I
+have God; therefore I shall always be,' says the Christian. Whilst that
+evidence is available only for himself, it is absolutely conclusive for
+himself. And the fact that it does spring in the hearts which are
+purest, because nearest God, is no small matter to be considered by men
+who may be groping for proofs of a life to come. If the selected moments
+of the purest devotion here on earth bring with them inevitably the
+confidence of the unending continuance of that communion, then those who
+do not believe in that future have to account for the fact as best they
+may. As for us who do know, though brokenly, and by reason of our own
+faults very imperfectly, what it is to have God, and be had by Him, we
+do not need to travel out to dim and doubtful analogies, nor do we even
+depend entirely upon the fact of a risen Christ ascended to the heavens,
+and living evermore, but we can say, 'I am God's; God is mine, and death
+has no power over such a mutual possession.'
+
+The very incompleteness adds strength to the assurance, for the facts of
+the Christian life are such as to demand, both by its greatness and by
+its littleness, by its loftiness and by its lapses into lowliness, by
+the floodtide of devotion that sometimes sweeps rejoicingly over the
+mud-shoals and by the ebb that sometimes leaves them all black and
+festering, a future life wherein what was manifestly meant to be, and
+capable of being, dominant, supreme, but was hampered and hindered here,
+shall reach its full development, and where the plant that was dwarfed
+in this alien soil, transplanted into that higher house, shall blossom
+and bear immortal fruits. The new moon has a ragged edge, and each of
+the protrusions and concavities are the prophecy of the perfect orb
+which shall ere long fill the night with calm light from its silvery
+shield. The incompleteness prophesies completion.
+
+And if the incompleteness is so blessed, what will the completeness be?
+A shilling to a million pounds, Knowledge which is partial and
+intermittent, like the twilight, as contrasted with the blaze of
+noonday, Joy like winter sunshine as compared with the warmth and heat
+of the midday sun at the zenith on the Equator. The 'earnest' of the
+'inheritance' is wealth; the inheritance itself shall be unaccountable
+treasure.
+
+III. And so, lastly, a word about the completion of the possession.
+
+The 'earnest' is always of the same nature as, and a part of the
+'inheritance.' Therefore, since the Holy Spirit is the earnest, the
+conclusion is plain, that the inheritance is nothing less than God
+Himself. Heaven is to possess God, and to be possessed by Him. That is
+the highest conception that we can form of that future life. And it is
+sorely to be lamented that subsidiary conceptions, which are all useful
+in their subordinate places, have, by popular Christianity, been far too
+much elevated into being the central blessedness of that future heaven.
+It is all right that we should cast the things which it is 'impossible
+for men to utter' into the shape of symbols which may a little relieve
+the necessary inarticulateness; but golden streets, and crystal
+pavements, and white robes, and golden palms, and all such
+representations, are but the dimmest shadows of that which they intend
+to express, and do often, as is the vice of all symbols, obscure. We can
+only conceive of a condition of which we have had no experience, by the
+two ways of symbolism and of negation. We can say, 'There shall be no
+night there; there shall be no curse there; they need no candle, neither
+light of the sun; they rest not day nor night; there shall be no more
+death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain,
+for the former things are passed away.' But all these negations, like
+their sister symbols, are but surface work, and we have to go deeper
+than all of them.
+
+But to possess God, and to be possessed by Him, and in either case
+fully, perfectly in degree, progressively in measure, eternal in
+duration, is the Heaven of heaven.
+
+If that is the true conception of the inheritance, then it follows
+indubitably that such a Heaven is not for everybody. God would fain have
+us all for His there, as He would fain have each of us here and now, but
+it may not be. There are creatures which live beneath stones, and if you
+turn their coverings up, and let light fall on them, it kills them. And
+there are men who have refused to belong to God here, and refused to
+claim their portion in Him, and such cannot possess that true Heaven
+which is God Himself. Then, if its possession is not a mere matter of
+divine volition, giving a man what he is not capable of receiving, it
+plainly follows that the preparation must begin now and here by the
+incomplete possession of which my text is discoursing. And the way of
+such preparation is plain. The context says: 'In whom, after that ye
+believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.' Faith in
+Jesus Christ, and trust in Him and His work as my forgiveness, my
+acceptance, my changed nature and heart--is the condition of being
+'sealed' with that Spirit whose sealing of us is the condition of our
+love, our surrender, and mutual indwelling, which are our possession of
+God and being possessed by Him, and are the condition of our future
+complete possession of the 'inheritance.' We must begin with faith in
+Christ. Then comes the sealing, then comes the earnest, then comes the
+growing redemption, and in due time shall come the fulness of the
+possession. 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ' if thou wouldst have the
+earnest, whilst thou dost tabernacle in tents in the wilderness of Time,
+and if thou wouldst have the inheritance when thou crossest the flood
+into the goodly land.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOPE OF THE CALLING
+
+     'That ye may know what is the hope of His calling.'--Eph. i. 18.
+
+
+A man's prayers for others are a very fair thermometer of his own
+religious condition. What he asks for them will largely indicate what he
+thinks best for himself; and how he asks it will show the firmness of
+his own faith and the fervour of his own feeling. There is nothing
+colder than the intercession of a cold Christian; and, on the other
+hand, in no part of the fervid Apostle Paul's writings do his words come
+more winged and fast, or his spirit glow with greater fervour of
+affection and holy desire than in his petitions for his friends.
+
+In that great prayer, of which my text forms a part, we have his
+response to the good news that had reached him of the steadfastness in
+faith and abundance in love of these Ephesian Christians. As the best
+expression of his glad love he asks for them the knowledge of three
+things, of which my text is the first, and the other two are the
+'riches of the glory of the inheritance' and 'the exceeding greatness of
+God's power.'
+
+Now if we take the 'hope' in my text, as is often done, as meaning the
+thing hoped for, there seems to be but a shadowy difference between the
+first and the second of these subjects of the apostolic petition.
+Whereas, if we take it as meaning, not the object on which the emotion
+is fixed, but the emotion itself, then all the three stand in a natural
+gradation and connection. We have, first, the Christian emotion; then
+the object upon which it is fixed; 'the glory of the inheritance'; then
+the power by which the latter is brought and the former is realised. We
+shall consider the second and third of these petitions in following
+sermons. For the present I confine myself to this first, the Apostle's
+great desire for Christians who had already made considerable progress
+in the Christian life, 'that they may know,' by experiencing it, 'what
+is the hope of His calling.'
+
+I. Now the first thought that these words suggest to me is this, that
+the Christian hope is based upon the facts of Christian experience.
+
+What does the Apostle mean by naming it 'the hope of his calling'? He
+means this, that the great act of the divine mercy revealed to us in the
+Gospel, by which God summons and invites men to Himself, will naturally
+produce in those who have yielded to it a hope of immortal and perfect
+life. Because God has called men, therefore the man who has yielded to
+the call may legitimately, and must, if he is to do his duty, cherish
+such a hope. It is clear enough that this is so, inasmuch as, unless
+there be a heaven of completeness for us who have yielded to the summons
+and obeyed the invitation of God in His Gospel, His whole procedure is
+enigmatical and bewildering. The fact of the call is inexplicable; the
+cost of it is no less so. It was not worth while for God to make the
+world unless with respect to another which was to follow. It is still
+less worth His while to redeem the world if the results of that
+redemption, as they are exhibited here and now, and as they are capable
+of being exhibited in this present condition of things, are all that are
+to flow from it. It was not worth Christ's while to die, it was not
+worth God's while to send His Son, there was no sense or consistency in
+that great voice that echoes from heaven, calling us to love and serve
+Him, unless, beyond the jangling contradictions, and imperfect
+attainments, and foiled aspirations, and fragmentary faith, and broken
+services of earth, there be a region of completeness where all that was
+tendency here shall have become effect; and all that was but in germ
+here, and sorely frostbitten by the ungenial climate, and shrivelled by
+the foul vapours in the atmosphere, shall blossom and burgeon into
+eternal life. The Christian life, as it is to-day, in its attainments
+and imperfections, is at once the witness of the reality of the power
+that has produced it, and clamantly calls for a sphere and environment
+in which that power shall be able to produce the effects which it is
+capable of producing.
+
+God is 'not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should
+repent.' Men begin grand designs which never get further than the paper
+that they are drawn on; or they build a porch, and then they are
+bankrupt, or change their minds, or die, and the palace remains
+unrealised, and all that pass by mock and say, 'This man began to build
+and was not able to finish.' But God's designs are certain of
+accomplishment. Unless we are to be reduced to a state of utter
+intellectual bewilderment and confusion, and forgo our belief in His
+veracity and resources to execute His designs, the design that lies in
+the calling must needs lead on to the realm of perfectness. If we
+consider the agent by which it is effected, even the risen Christ; if we
+consider the cost at which it was accomplished, even the death on the
+Cross, the mission of His Son, and His assumption of the limitations of
+an incarnate life; if we consider the manifest potencies of the power
+that He has brought into operation in the present Christian life; and if
+we consider, side by side with these, the stark, staring contradictions
+and as manifest inevitable limitations of the effects of that power, His
+calling carries in its depths the assurance that what He means shall be
+done, that Jesus Christ has not died in vain, that He has not ascended
+to fill a solitary throne, but is the Firstfruits of a great harvest;
+and that we shall one day be all that it is in the gospel of our
+salvation to make us, unhindered by the limitations and unthwarted by
+the antagonisms of this poor human life of ours. Unless there be a
+heaven in which all desires shall be satisfied, all evils removed, all
+good perfected, all ragged trees made symmetrical and full-grown, and
+all souls that love Him radiant with His own perfect image, then the
+light that seemed a light from heaven is the most delusive of all the
+marsh-fires of earth, and nothing in the illusions of sense or of men's
+cunning is so cruel or so tragic as the calling that seemed to be the
+voice of God, and summoned us to a heaven which was only a dream.
+
+II. And so, secondly, notice how this hope of our text is in some sense
+the very topstone of the Christian life.
+
+Paul has heard, concerning these people in Ephesus, of their faith and
+love. And because he has heard of these, therefore he brings this
+prayer. These two--the faith which apprehends the manifestation of God
+in Jesus Christ, and the love which that faith produces in the heart
+that accepts the revelation of the infinite love--are crowned by, and
+are imperfect without, and naturally lead on to the brightness of this
+great hope, Faith--the reliance of the spirit upon the veracity of the
+revealing God--gives hope its contents; for the Christian hope is not
+spun out of your own imaginations, nor is it the mere making objective
+in a future life of the unfulfilled desires of this disappointing
+present, but it is the recognition by the trusting spirit of the great
+and starry truths that are flashed upon it by the Word of God. Faith
+draws back the curtain, and Hope gazes into the supernal abysses. My
+hope, if it be anything else than the veriest will-o'-the-wisp and
+delusion, is the answer of my heart to the revealed truth of God.
+
+Similarly the love which flows from faith not only necessarily leads on
+to the expectation of union being perfected with the object of its warm
+affection, but also so works upon the heart and character as that the
+false and seducing loves which draw away, like some sluice upon a river,
+the current of life from its true channel, are all sanctified and no
+more hinder hope. Loving, we hope for that which, unless we loved, would
+not draw desires nor yield foretastes of sweetness which, like perfumed
+oil, feed the pure flame of hope.
+
+The triad of Christian graces is completed by Hope. Without her fair
+presence something is wanting to the completeness of her elder sisters.
+The great Campanile at Florence, though it be inlaid with glowing
+marbles, and fair sculptures, and perfect in its beauty, wants the
+gilded, skyward-pointing pinnacle of its topmost pyramid; and so it
+stands incomplete. And thus faith and love need for their crowning and
+completion the topmost grace that looks up to the sky, and is sure of a
+mansion there.
+
+Brethren, our Christianity is wofully imperfect unless faith and love
+find their acme, their outstretching completion, in this Christian hope.
+Do you seek to complete your faith and love by a living hope full of
+immortality?
+
+III. Thirdly, notice how this hope is an all-important element in the
+Christian life.
+
+The Apostle asks for it as the best thing that can befall these Ephesian
+Christians, as the one thing that they need to make them strong and good
+and blessed. There are many other aspects of desire for them which
+appear in other parts of this letter. But here all Christian progress is
+regarded as being held in solution and included in vigorous hope.
+
+Why is the activity of hope thus important for Christian life? Because
+it stimulates effort, calms sorrows, takes the fascination out of
+temptations, supplies a new aim for life and a new measure for the
+things of time and sense.
+
+If we lived, as we ought to live, in the habitual apprehension of the
+great future awaiting all real Christians, would it not change the whole
+aspect of life? The world is very big when it is looked at from any
+point upon its surface; but suppose it could be looked at from the
+central sun, how large would it appear then? We can shift our station in
+like fashion, and then we get the true measure at once of the
+insignificance and of the greatness of life. This world means nothing
+worthy, except as an introduction to another. Not that thereby there
+will follow in any wise man contempt for the present, for the very same
+reference to the future which dwarfs the greatnesses and dwindles the
+sorrows, and almost extinguishes the dazzling lights of this present,
+does also lift it to its true significance and importance. It is the
+vestibule of that future, and that future is conditioned throughout by
+the results of the few years that we live here. An apprenticeship may be
+a very poor matter, looked at in itself; and the boy may say What is the
+use of my working at all these trivial things? but, since it is
+apprenticeship, it is worth while to attend to every trifle in its
+course, for attention to them will affect the standing of the man all
+his days.
+
+Here and now we are getting ready for the great workshop yonder;
+learning the trick of the tools, and how to use our fingers and our
+powers, and, when the schooling is done, we shall be set to nobler work,
+and receive ample wages for the years here. Because that great
+'to-morrow will be as this day' of earthly life, 'and much more
+abundant,' therefore it is no trifle to work amongst the trifles; and
+nothing is small which may tell on our condition yonder. The least
+deflection from the straight line, however acute may be the angle which
+the divergent lines enclose at the starting, and however small may seem
+to be the deviation from parallelism, will, if prolonged to infinity,
+have room between the two for all the stars, and the distance between
+them will be that the one is in heaven and the other is in hell. And so
+it is a great thing to live amongst the little things, and life gains
+its true significance when we dwarf and magnify it by linking it with
+the world to come.
+
+If we only kept that hope bright before us, how little discomforts and
+sorrows and troubles would matter! Life would become 'a solemn scorn of
+ills.' It does not matter much what kind of cabin accommodation we have
+if we are only going a short voyage; the main thing is to make the port.
+If we, as Christian people, cherish, as we ought to do, this great hope,
+then we shall be able to control, and not to despise but to exalt this
+fleeting and transient scene, because it is linked inseparably with the
+life that is to come.
+
+IV. Lastly, this hope needs enlightened eyes.
+
+The Apostle prays that God may give to these Ephesians 'the spirit of
+wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,' and then he adds, as the
+result of that gift, the desire that the Ephesian believers may have
+'the eyes of their hearts enlightened.' That is a remarkable expression.
+It does not mean, as an English reader might suppose it to mean, that
+the affections are the agents by which this knowledge reaches us; but
+'heart' is here used, as it often is in Scripture, as a general
+expression for the whole inward life, and all that the Apostle means is
+that, by the gift of the Divine Spirit of wisdom, a man's inner nature
+may be so touched as to be capable of perceiving and grasping the 'hope
+of the calling.'
+
+Observe, too, the language, 'that ye may know the hope.' How can you
+_know_ a hope? How do you know any kind of feeling? By having it. The
+only way of knowing what is the hope is to hope, and this is only
+possible by dint of these eyes of the understanding being enlightened.
+For our inward nature, as we have it, and as we use it, without the
+touch of that Divine Spirit, is so engrossed with this present that the
+far-off blessedness to which my text refers has no chance of entering
+there. No man can look at something beside him with one eye, and at
+something half a mile off with the other. You have to focus the eye
+according to the object; and he who is gazing upon the near is thereby
+made blind to that which is afar off. If we go crawling along the low
+levels with our eyes upon the dust, then of course we cannot see the
+crown above.
+
+We need more than the historical revelation of the light in order to
+enlighten the inward nature. There is many a man here now who knows all
+about the immortality that is brought to light by Jesus Christ just as
+well as the Christian man whose soul is full of the hope of it, and who
+yet, for all his knowledge, does not know the hope, because he has not
+felt it. You have to get further than to the acceptance intellectually
+of the historical facts of a risen and ascended Saviour before there can
+be, in your heart, any vital hope of immortality. The inward eye must be
+cleared and strengthened, cross lights must be shut out so that we may
+direct the single eye of our hearts towards the great objects which
+alone are worthy of its fixed contemplation. And we cannot do that
+without a divine help, that Spirit of wisdom which will fill our hearts
+if we ask for it, which will fix our affections, which will clear our
+eyesight, which will withdraw it from seeing vanity as well as give it
+reality to see.
+
+But we must observe the conditions. Since this clearness of hope comes
+not merely from the acceptance as a truth of the fact of Christ's
+Resurrection and Ascension, but comes through the gift of that Divine
+Spirit, then to have it you must ask for it. Christian people, do you
+ask for it? Do you ever pray--I do not mean in words, but in real
+desire--that God would help you to keep steadily before you that great
+future to which we are all going so fast? If you do you will get the
+answer. Seek for that Spirit; use it, and do not resist its touches. Do
+not fix your gaze on the world when God is trying to draw you to fix it
+upon Himself. Think more about Jesus Christ, more about God's high
+calling, live nearer to Him, and try more honestly, more earnestly, more
+prayerfully, more habitually, even amidst all the troubles and
+difficulties and trivialities of each day, to cultivate that great
+faculty of joyful and assured hope.
+
+Surely God did not endue us with the power of hoping that we might fling
+it all away on trivial, transient things. We are all far too
+short-sighted; our fault is not that we do not hope, but that we hope
+for such near things, for such small things, like the old mariners who
+had no compass nor sextant, and were obliged to creep timidly along the
+coasts, and steer from headland to headland. But we ought to launch
+boldly out into mid-ocean, knowing that we have before us that star that
+cannot guide us amiss. Do not set your hopes on the things that perish,
+for if you do, hopes fulfilled and hopes disappointed will be equally
+bitter in your mouths. And you older people who, like myself, are
+drawing near the end of your days, and have little else left to hope for
+in this world, do you see to it that your anticipations extend 'above
+the ruinable skies.' _There_ is an object beyond experience, above
+imagination, without example, for which the creation wants a comparison,
+we an apprehension, and the Word of God itself a sufficient revelation.
+'It doth not yet appear what we shall be.' God hath called us to His
+eternal kingdom and glory; let us seek to walk in the light of the 'hope
+of His calling.'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S INHERITANCE IN THE SAINTS
+
+     'That ye may know what is the riches of the glory of His
+      inheritance in the saints.'--Eph. i. 18.
+
+
+The misery of Hope is that it so often owes its materials to the
+strength of our desires or to the activity of our imagination. But when
+mere wishes or fancies spin the thread, Hope cannot weave a lasting
+fabric. And so one of the old prophets, in speaking of the delusive
+hopes of man, says that they are like 'spiders' webs,' and 'shall not
+become garments.' Paul, then, having been asking for these Ephesian
+Christians that they might have hopes lofty and worthy, and such as
+God's summons to them would inspire, passes on to ask that they might
+have the material out of which they could weave such hope, namely, a
+sure and clear knowledge of the future blessings. The language in which
+he describes that future is remarkable--'the riches of the glory of His
+inheritance in the saints.' He calls it God's inheritance, not as
+meaning that God is the Inheritor, but the Giver. He speaks of it as
+'in the saints,' meaning that, just as the land of Canaan was
+distributed amongst tribes and families, and each man got his own little
+plot, so that broad land is parted out amongst those who are 'partakers
+of the inheritance of the saints in light.'
+
+And so my text suggests to me three points to which I seek to call your
+attention. First, the inheritance; second, the heirs; and third, the
+heirs' present knowledge of their future possession.
+
+I. First, then, note the inheritance.
+
+Now we must discharge from the word some of its ordinary associations.
+There is no reference to the thought of succession in it, as the mere
+English reader is accustomed to think--to whom inheritance means
+possession by the death of another. The idea is simply that of
+possession. The figure which underlies the word is, of course, that of
+the ancient partition of the land of Canaan amongst the tribes, but we
+must go a great deal deeper than that in order to understand its whole
+sweep and fulness of meaning.
+
+What is the portion for a soul? God. God is Heaven, and Heaven is God.
+No interpretation of 'the inheritance,' however it may run into cheap
+and vulgar sensuous descriptions of a future glory, has come within
+sight of the meaning of the word, unless it has grasped this as the
+central thought: 'Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon
+earth that I desire beside Thee.' Only God can be the portion of a human
+spirit. And none else can fill the narrowest and the smallest of man's
+needs.
+
+So, then, if there were realised all the accumulated changes of progress
+in blessedness, and the withdrawal of all external causes of disquiet
+and weariness and weeping, still the heart would hunger and be empty of
+its true possession unless God Himself had flowed into it. It were but a
+poor advancement and the gain of a loss, if yearnings were made
+immortal, and the aching vacuity, which haunts every soul that is parted
+from God, were cursed with immortality. It would be so, if it be not
+true that the inheritance is nothing less than the fuller possession of
+God Himself.
+
+And how do men possess God? How do we possess one another, here and now?
+By precisely the same way, only indefinitely expanded and exalted, do we
+possess Him here, and shall we possess Him hereafter. Heart to heart is
+joined by love which is mutual and interpenetrating possession; where
+'mine' and 'thine' become blended, like the several portions of the one
+ray of white light, in the blessed word 'ours.' Contemplation makes us
+possessors of God. Assimilation to His character makes us own and have
+Him. They who love and gaze, and are being changed by still degrees into
+His likeness, possess Him. This is the central idea of man's future
+destiny and highest blessedness, a union with God closer and more
+intimate in degree, but yet essentially the same in kind, as is here
+possible amidst the shows and vanities and wearinesses of this mortal
+life. 'His servants shall serve Him, and see His face, and His name
+shall be on their foreheads.' Obedience, contemplation, transformation,
+these are the hands by which we here lay hold on God; and they in the
+heavens grasp Him just as we here on earth may do. The 'inheritance' is
+God Himself.
+
+Surely that is in accordance with the whole teaching of Scripture, and
+is but the expansion of plain words which tell us that we 'are heirs of
+God.' If that be so, then all the other subsidiary blessings which have
+been, to the sore detriment of Christian anticipation and of Christian
+life in a hundred ways, elevated into disproportionate importance, fall
+into their right places, and are more when they are looked upon as
+secondary than when they are looked upon as primary.
+
+Ah, brethren! neither the sensuous metaphors which, in accommodation to
+our weakness, Scripture has used to paint that future so that we may, in
+some measure, comprehend it, nor the translation of these, in so far as
+they refer to circumstances and externals, are enough for us. It is
+blessed to know that 'there shall be no night there'--blessed to grasp
+all those sweet negatives which contradict the miseries of the world,
+and to think of no sin, no curse, no tears, no sighing nor sorrow,
+neither any more pain, 'because the former things have passed away.' It
+is sweet and ennobling to think that, when we are discharged of the load
+of this cumbrous flesh, we shall be much more ourselves, and able to see
+where now is but darkness, and to feel where now is but vacancy. It is
+blessed to think of the recognising of lost and loved ones. But all
+these blessednesses, heaped together, as it seems to me, would become
+sickeningly the same if prolonged through eternity, unless we had God
+for our very own. _Eternal_ is an awful word, even when the noun that
+goes with it is _blessedness_. And I know not how even the redeemed
+could be saved, as the long ages rolled on, from the oppression of
+monotony, and the feeling, 'I would not live always,' unless God was
+'the strength of their hearts, and their portion for ever.' We must rise
+above everything that merely applies to changes in our own natures and
+in our relations to the external universe, and to other orders of
+creatures; and grasp, as the hidden sweetness that lies in the calyx of
+the gorgeous flower, the possession of God Himself as the rapture of
+our joy and the heaven of our heaven.
+
+And if that be so, then these accumulated words with which the Apostle,
+in his fiery, impetuous way, tries to set forth the greatness of what he
+is speaking about, receive a loftier meaning than they otherwise would
+have.
+
+'The riches of the glory of His inheritance'--now that word 'riches,' or
+'wealth,' is a favourite of Paul's; and in this single letter occurs, if
+I count rightly, five times. In addition to our text, it is used twice
+in connection with God's grace, 'the riches of His grace' once in
+connection with Jesus, 'the unsearchable riches of Christ'; and once in
+a similar connection to, though with a different application from, our
+text, 'the riches of His glory.' Always, you see, it is applied to
+something that is special and properly divine. And here, therefore, it
+applies, not to the abundance of any creatural good, however exuberant
+and inexhaustible the store of it may be, but simply and solely to that
+unwearying energy, that self-feeding and ever-burning and never-decaying
+light, which is God. Of Him alone it can be said that work does not
+exhaust, nor Being tend to its own extinction, nor expenditure of
+resources to their diminution. The guarantee for eternal blessedness is
+the 'riches' of the eternal God, and so we may be sure that no time can
+exhaust, nor any expenditure empty, either His storehouse or our wealth.
+
+And again, the 'glory' is not the lustrous light, however dazzling to
+our feeble eyes that may be, of any creature that reflects the light of
+God, but it is the far-flashing and never-dying radiance of His own
+manifestation of Himself to the hearts and souls of them that love Him.
+And so the 'inheritance is incorruptible and undefiled, and fadeth not
+away'; not merely by reason of the communicated will of God operating
+upon creatures whom He preserves untarnished by corruption, and ungnawed
+by decay, but because He Himself is the 'inheritance,' and on Him time
+hath no power. On His wealth all His creatures may hang for ever; and it
+shall be as it was in the sweet parable of the miracle of old, the
+fragments that remain will be more than when the meal began. 'The riches
+of the glory of His inheritance.'
+
+II. Now notice, secondly, the heirs.
+
+The words of my text receive, perhaps, their best commentary and
+explanation in those words which the writer of them heard, on the
+Damascus road, when the voice from heaven spoke to him about men
+'obtaining an inheritance among them that are sanctified.' It almost
+sounds like an echo of that long past, but never-to-be-forgotten voice,
+when our Apostle writes as he does in our text.
+
+Now what does he mean by 'saints'? Who are these amongst whom the broad
+acres of that infinite prairie are to be parted out? The word has
+attracted to itself contemptuous meanings and ascetical meanings, and
+meanings which really deny the true democracy of Christianity and the
+equality of all believers in the sight of God. But its scriptural use
+has none of these narrowing and confusing associations adhering to it,
+nor does it even directly and at first mean, as we generally take it to
+mean, pure men, holy in the sense of clean and righteous. But something
+goes before that phase of meaning, and it is this--a saint is a man
+separated and set apart for God, as His property. That is the true
+meaning of the word. It is its meaning as it is applied to the vessels
+of the Temple, the priests, the services, and the altar. It is its
+meaning, only with the necessary substitution of spirit for body, as it
+is applied in the New Testament as a designation co-extensive with that
+of believers.
+
+How does a man belong to God?
+
+We asked a minute or two ago how God belonged to men. The answer to the
+converse question is almost identical. A man belongs to God by the
+affection of his heart, by the submission of his will, by the reference
+of his actions to Him; and he who thus belongs to God, in the same act
+in which he gives himself to God, receives God as his possession. The
+thing must be reciprocal. 'All mine is Thine'; and God answers, 'And all
+Mine is thine.' He ever meets our 'O Lord, I yield myself to Thee,' with
+His 'And My child, I give Myself to thee.' It is so in regard of our
+earthly loves. It is so in regard of our relations to Him. And that
+being the case, purity, which is generally taken by careless readers as
+being the main idea of sanctity, will follow this self-surrender, which
+is the basis of all goodness, everywhere and always.
+
+If that be true, and I do not think it can be effectively denied, then
+the next step is a very plain one, and that is that for the perfect
+possession of God, which is heaven, the same thing is needed in its
+perfection which is required for the partial possession of Him that
+makes the Christian life of earth. And just as here we get Him for ours
+in proportion as we give up ourselves to be His, so yonder the
+inheritance belongs, and can only belong to, 'the saints.' So, then, one
+can see that there is nothing arbitrary in this limitation of a
+possession, which in its very nature cannot go beyond the bounds which
+are thus marked out for it. If heaven were the vulgar thing that some of
+you think it, if that future life were desirable simply because you
+escaped from some external punishment and got all sorts of outward
+blessings and joys, felicities and advantages, hung round the neck, or
+pinned upon the breast, as they do to successful fighters, why then, of
+course, there might be partiality in the distribution of the
+decorations. But if that possession hinges upon our yielding ourselves
+to Him, then there is not an arbitrary link in the whole chain. Faith is
+set forth as the condition of heaven, because faith is the means of
+union with Christ, by and from whom alone we draw the motives for
+self-surrender and the power for sanctity. You cannot have heaven unless
+you have God. That is step number one. You cannot have God unless you
+have 'holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.' That is step
+number two. You cannot have holiness without faith. That is step number
+three. 'An inheritance among them that are sanctified'; and then there
+is added, 'by faith which is in Me.'
+
+It is clear, too, what a fatal delusion some of us are under who think
+that we shall, and fancy that we should like to, as we say, 'go to
+heaven when we die.' Why, heaven is here, round about you, a present
+heaven in the imitation of God, in the practice of righteousness, in the
+cultivation of dependence upon Him, in the yielding of yourselves up to
+Him. Heaven is here, and by your own choice you stop outside of it.
+There must be a correspondence between environment and nature for
+blessedness. 'The mind is its own place,' as the great Puritan poet
+taught us, 'and makes a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' Fishes die on
+the shore, and the man that drew them out dies in the water. Gills
+cannot breathe where lungs are useful, and lungs cannot, where gills
+come into play. If you have not here and now the holiness which knits
+you to God, and gives you possession of Him, you would not like
+'heaven,' if it were possible to carry you to that place, in so far as
+it is a place. It is rather strange, if you hope to go to heaven when
+you die, that you should be very unwilling to spend a little time in it
+whilst you are alive, and that you should expect blessedness then from
+that presence of God which brings you no blessedness now.
+
+III. Lastly, we have here the heirs' present knowledge of their future
+blessedness.
+
+The Apostle asks that these men may know a thing that clearly seems
+unknowable. It is an impossible petition, we might be ready to say,
+because it is clear enough that there can be no true knowledge of the
+conditions and details of that future life. The dark mountains that lie
+between us and it hide their secret well, and few or no stray beams have
+reached us. An unborn babe, or a chrysalis in a hole in the ground or in
+a chink of a tree, might think as wisely about its future condition as
+we can do about that life beyond. There can be no knowledge until there
+is experience.
+
+What, then, does Paul mean by framing such a petition as this? The
+answer is found in noticing that the knowledge which he is imploring
+here is a consequence of a previous knowledge. For, in a former verse,
+he prays that these men may have 'the spirit of wisdom in the knowledge
+of God'; and when they have got the knowledge of God he thinks that they
+will have got the knowledge of 'the riches of the glory of His
+inheritance in the saints.' Now, turn that into other words, and it is
+just this, that the knowledge of God, which comes by faith and love
+here, is in kind so identical with the fullest and loftiest riches of
+the knowledge of Him hereafter, that, if we have the one, we are not
+without the other. The one is in germ, the other, no doubt, full blown;
+the one is the twinkling of the rushlight, as it were, the other is the
+blaze of the sunshine. The two states of being are so correspondent that
+from the one we draw our clearest knowledge of the other. There are
+telescopes, in using which you do not look up when you want to see the
+stars, but down on to a reflecting mirror, and there you see them. Such
+a reflecting mirror, though it be sometimes muddied and dimmed and
+always very small, are the experiences of the Christian soul here.
+
+So, dear friends, if we want to know as much as may be known of the
+blessedness of heaven, let us seek to possess as much as may be
+possessed of the knowledge and love of God on earth. Then we shall know
+the centre, at any rate; and that is light, though the circumference may
+be very dark. Much will remain obscure. That is of very small
+consequence to Hope, which does not need information half so much as it
+needs assurance. Like some flower in the cranny of the rock, it can
+spread a broad bright blossom on little soil, if only it be firmly
+rooted.
+
+The path for us all is plain. Come to Jesus Christ as sinful men, and
+take what He has given, who has given Himself for us. Touched by His
+love, let us love Him back again, and yield ourselves to Him, and He
+will give Himself to us. They who can say, 'O Lord! I am Thine,' are
+sure to hear from heaven, 'I am thine.' And they who possess, in being
+possessed by, God Himself, do not need to die in order to go to heaven,
+but are at least doorkeepers in the house of the Lord now, and stand
+where they can see into the inner sanctuary which they will one day
+tread. A life of faith brings Heaven to us, and thereby gives us the
+surest and the clearest knowledge of what we shall be, and have, when we
+are brought to heaven.
+
+
+
+
+THE MEASURE OF IMMEASURABLE POWER
+
+     'That ye may know ... what is the exceeding greatness of His power
+      to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty
+      power, which He wrought in Christ.'--Eph. i. 19, 20.
+
+
+'The riches of the glory of the inheritance' will sometimes quench
+rather than stimulate hope. He can have little depth of religion who has
+not often felt that the transcendent glory of that promised future
+sharpens the doubt--'and can _I_ ever hope to reach it?' Our paths are
+strewn with battlefields where we were defeated; how should we expect
+the victor's wreath? And so Paul does not think that he has asked all
+which his friends in Ephesus need when he has asked that they may know
+the hope and the inheritance. There is something more wanted, something
+more even for our knowledge of these, and that is the knowledge of the
+power which alone can fulfil the hope and bring the inheritance. His
+language swells and peals and becomes exuberant and noble with his
+theme. He catches fire, as it were, as he thinks about this power that
+worketh in us. It is 'exceeding.' Exceeding what? He does not tell us,
+but other words in this letter, in the other great prayer which it
+contains, may help us to supply the missing words. He speaks of the
+'love of Christ which passeth knowledge,' and of God being 'able to do
+exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.' The power
+which is really at work in Christian men to-day is in its nature
+properly transcendent and immeasurable, and passes thought and desire
+and knowledge.
+
+And yet it has a measure. 'According to the working of the strength of
+the might which He wrought in Christ.' Is that heaping together of
+synonyms or all but synonyms, mere tautology? Surely not. Commentators
+tell us that they can distinguish differences of meaning between the
+words, in that the first of them is the more active and outward, and the
+last of them is the more inward. And so they liken them to fruit and
+branch and root; but we need simply say that the gathering together of
+words so nearly co-extensive in their meaning is witness to the effort
+to condense the infinite within the bounds of human tongue, to speak the
+unspeakable; and that these reiterated expressions, like the blows of
+the billows that succeed one another on the beach, are hints of the
+force of the infinite ocean that lies behind.
+
+And then the Apostle, when he has once come in sight of his risen Lord,
+as is his wont, is swept away by the ardour of his faith and the
+clearness of his vision, and breaks from his purpose in order to dilate
+on the glories of his King. We do not need to follow him into that. I
+limit myself now to the words which I have read as my text, with only
+such reference to the magnificent passage which succeeds as may be
+necessary for the exposition of this.
+
+I. So, then, I ask you to look, first, at the measure and example of the
+immeasurable power that works in Christian men.
+
+'According to the working of the strength of the might which He wrought
+in Christ'--the Resurrection, the Ascension, the session at the right
+hand of God, the rule over all creatures, and the exaltation above all
+things on earth or in the heavens--these are the facts which the Apostle
+brings before us as the pattern-works, the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the
+power that is operating in all Christians. The present glories of the
+ascended Christ are glories possessed by a Man, and, that being so, they
+are available as evidences and measures of the power which works in
+believing souls. In them we see the possibilities of humanity, the ideal
+for man which God had when He created and breathed His blessing upon
+him. It is one of ourselves who has strength enough to bear the burden
+of the glory, one of ourselves who can stand within the blaze of
+encircling and indwelling Divinity and be unconsumed. The possibilities
+of human nature are manifest there. If we want to know what the Divine
+Power can make of us, let us turn to look with the eye of faith upon
+what it has made of Jesus Christ.
+
+But such a thought, glorious as it is, still leaves room for doubt as to
+my personal attainment of such an ideal. Possibility is much, but we
+need solid certainty. And we find it in the truth that the bond between
+Christ and those who truly love and trust Him is such as that the
+possibility must become a reality and be consolidated into a certainty.
+The Vine and its branches, their Head and the members, the Christ and
+His Church, are knit together by such closeness of union as that
+wheresoever and whatsoever the one is, there and that must the others
+also be. Therefore, when doubts and fears, and consciousness of our own
+weakness, creep across us, and all our hopes are dimmed, as some star in
+the heavens is, when a light mist floats between us and it, let us turn
+away to Him our brother, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and
+think that He, in His calm exaltation and regal authority and infinite
+blessedness, is not only the pattern of what humanity may be, but the
+pledge of what His Church must be. 'Where I am, there shall also My
+servant be.' 'The glory that Thou gavest Me I have given them.'
+
+Nor is that all. Not only a possibility and a certainty for the future
+are for us the measure of the power that worketh in us, but as this same
+letter teaches us, we have, as Christians, a present scale by which we
+may estimate the greatness of the power. For in the next chapter, after
+that glorious burst as to the dignity of his Lord, which we have not the
+heart to call a digression, the Apostle, recurring to the theme of my
+text, goes on to say, 'And you hath He quickened,' and then, catching it
+up again a verse or two afterwards, he reiterates, clause by clause,
+what had been done on Jesus as having been done on us Christians. If
+that Divine Spirit raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own
+right hand in the heavenly places, it is as true that the same power
+hath 'raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places
+in Christ Jesus.' And so not only the far-off, though real and
+brilliant, and eye and heart-filling glories of the ascended Christ give
+us the measure of the power, but also the limited experience of the
+present Christian life, the fact of the resurrection from the true
+death, the death of sin, the fact of union with Jesus Christ so real and
+close as that they who truly experience it do live, as far as the roots
+of their lives and the scope and the aim of them are concerned, 'in the
+heavens,' and 'sit with Him in heavenly places'--these things afford us
+the measure of the power that worketh in us.
+
+Then, because a Man is King of kings and Lord of lords; and because He
+who is our Life 'is exalted high above all principalities and powers';
+and because from His throne He has quickened us from the death of sin,
+and has drawn us so near to Himself that if we are His we truly live
+beside Him, even whilst we stumble here in the darkness, we may know the
+exceeding greatness of His power, according to the working of the
+strength of the might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from
+the dead.
+
+II. Secondly, notice the knowledge of the unknowable power.
+
+We have already come across the same apparent paradox, covering a deep
+truth, in the former sections of this series of petitions. I need only
+remind you, in reference to this matter, that the knowledge which is
+here in question is not the intellectual perception of a fact as
+revealed in Scripture, but is that knowledge to which alone the New
+Testament gives the noble name, being knowledge verified by inward
+experience, and the result of one's own personal acquaintance with its
+object.
+
+How do we know a power? By thrilling beneath its force. How are we to
+know the greatness of the power but because it comes surging and
+rejoicing into our aching emptiness, and lifts us buoyant above our
+temptations and weakness? Paul was not asking for these people
+theological conceptions. He was asking that their spirits might be so
+saturated with and immersed in that great ocean of force that pours from
+God as that they should never, henceforth, be able to doubt the
+greatness of that power which wrought in them. The knowledge that comes
+from experience is the knowledge that we all ought to seek. It is not
+merely to be desired that we should have right and just conceptions, but
+that we should have the vital knowledge which is, and which comes from,
+life eternal.
+
+And that power, which thus we may all know by feeling it working upon
+ourselves, though it be immeasurable, has its measure; though it be, in
+its depth and fulness, unknowable and inexhaustible, may yet be really
+and truly known. You do not need a thunderstorm to experience the
+electric shock; a battery that you can carry in your pocket will do that
+for you. You do not need to have traversed all the length and breadth
+and depth and height of some newly-discovered country to be sure of its
+existence, and to have a real, though it may be a vague, conception of
+the magnitude of its shores. And so, really, though boundedly, we have
+the knowledge of God, and can rely upon it as valid, though partial; and
+similarly, by experience we have such a certified acquaintance with Him
+and His power as needs no enlargement to be trusted, and to become the
+source of blessings untold. We may see but a strip of the sky through
+the narrow chinks of our prison windows, and many a grating may further
+intercept the view, and much dust that might be cleared away may dim the
+glass but yet it _is_ the sky that we see, and we can think of the great
+horizon circling round and round, and of the infinite depths above
+there, which neither eye nor thought can travel unwearied. Though all
+that we see be but an inch in breadth and a foot or two in height, yet
+we do see. We know the unknowable power that passeth knowledge.
+
+And let me remind you of how large importance this knowledge of and
+constant reference to the measureless power manifested in Christ is for
+us. I believe there can be no vigorous, happy Christian life without it.
+It is our only refuge from pessimism and despair for the world. The old
+psalm said, 'Thou hast crowned Him with glory and honour, and hast given
+Him dominion over the works of Thy hands,' and hundreds of years
+afterwards the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews commented on it
+thus, 'We see not yet all things put under Him.' Was the old vision a
+dream, was it never intended to be fulfilled? Apparently so, if we take
+the history of the past into account, and the centuries that have passed
+since have done nothing to make it more probable, apart from Jesus
+Christ, that man will rise to the height which the Psalmist dreamed of.
+When we look at the exploded Utopias that fill the past; when we think
+of the strange and apparently fatal necessity by which evil is developed
+from every stage of what men call progress, and how improvement is
+perverted, almost as soon as effected, into another fortress of weakness
+and misery; when we look on the world as it is to-day, I know not whence
+a man is to draw bright hopes, or what is to deliver him from pessimism
+as his last word about himself and his fellows, except the 'working of
+the strength of the might which He wrought in Christ.' 'We see not yet
+all things put under Him'--be it so, 'but we see Jesus,' and, looking to
+Him, hope is possible, reasonable, and imperative.
+
+The same knowledge is our refuge from our own consciousness of weakness.
+We look up, as a climber may do in some Alpine ravine, upon the smooth
+gleaming walls of the cliff that rises above us. It is marble, it is
+fair, there are lovely lands on the summit, but nothing that has not
+wings can get there. We try, but slip backwards almost as much as we
+rise. What is to be done? Are we to sit down at the foot of the cliff,
+and say, 'We cannot climb, let us be content with the luscious herbage
+and sheltered ease below?' Yes! That is what we are tempted to say. But
+look! a mighty hand reaches over, an arm is stretched down, the hand
+grasps us, and lifts us, and sets us there.
+
+'No man hath ascended up into heaven save He that came down from
+heaven,' and having returned thither stoops thence, and will lift us to
+Himself. I am a poor, weak creature. Yes! I am all full of sin and
+corruption. Yes! I am ashamed of myself every day. Yes! I am too heavy
+to climb, and have no wings to fly, and am bound here by chains
+manifold. Yes! But we know the exceeding greatness of the power, and we
+triumph in Him.
+
+That knowledge should shame us into contrition, when we think of such
+force at our disposal, and such poor results. That knowledge should
+widen our conceptions, enlarge our desires, breathe a brave confidence
+into our hopes, should teach us to expect great things of God, and to be
+intolerant of present attainments whilst anything remains unattained.
+And it should stimulate our vigorous effort, for no man will long seek
+to be better, if he is convinced that the effort is hopeless.
+
+Learn to realise the exceeding greatness of the power that will clothe
+your weakness. 'Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created
+these things, for that He is strong in might, not one faileth.' That is
+wonderful, but here is a far nobler operation of the divine power. It is
+great to 'preserve the ancient heavens' fresh and strong by His might,
+but it is greater to come down to my weakness, to 'give power to the
+faint,' and 'increase strength to them that have no might.' And that is
+what He will do with us.
+
+III. Lastly, notice the conditions for the operations of the power.
+
+'To usward who believe,' says Paul. He has been talking to these
+Ephesians, and saying 'ye,' but now, by that 'us,' he places himself
+beside them, identifies himself with them, and declares that all his
+gifts and strength come to him on precisely the same conditions on which
+theirs do to them; and that he, like them, is a waiter upon that grace
+which God bestows on them that trust Him.
+
+'To usward who believe.' Once more we are back at the old truth which we
+can never make too emphatic and plain, that the one condition of the
+weakest among us being strong with the strength of the Lord is simple
+trust in Him, verified, of course, by continuance and by effort.
+
+How did the water go into the Ship Canal at Eastham last week? First of
+all they cut a trench, and then they severed the little strip of land
+between the hole and the sea, and the sea did the rest. The wider and
+deeper the opening that we make in our natures by our simple trust in
+God, the fuller will be the rejoicing flood that pours into us. There is
+an old story about a Christian father, who, having been torturing
+himself with theological speculations about the nature of the Trinity,
+fell asleep and dreamed that he was emptying the ocean with a thimble!
+Well, you cannot empty it with a thimble, but you can go to it with one,
+and, if you have only a thimble in your hand, you will only bring away a
+thimbleful. The measure of your faith is the measure of God's power
+given to you.
+
+There are two measures of the immeasurable power--the one is that
+infinite limit, of 'the power which He wrought in Christ,' and the other
+the practical limit. The working measure of our spiritual life is our
+faith. In plain English, we can have as much of God as we want. We do
+have as much as we want. And if, in touch with the power that can
+shatter a universe, we only get a little thrill that is scarcely
+perceptible to ourselves, and all unnoticed by others, whose fault is
+that? If, coming to the fountain that laughs at drought, and can fill a
+universe with its waters, we scarcely bear away a straitened drop or
+two, that barely refreshes our parched lips, and does nothing to
+stimulate the growth of the plants of holiness in our gardens, whose
+fault is that? The practical measure of the power is for us the measure
+of our belief and desire. And if we only go to Him, as I pray we all
+may, and continue there, and ask from Him strength, according to the
+riches that are treasured in Jesus Christ, we shall get the old answer,
+'According to your faith be it unto you.'
+
+
+
+
+THE RESURRECTION OF DEAD SOULS
+
+     'God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved
+      us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with
+      Christ.'--Eph. ii. 4, 5.
+
+
+Scripture paints man as he is, in darker tints, and man as he may
+become, in brighter ones, than are elsewhere found. The range of this
+portrait painter's palette is from pitchiest black to most dazzling
+white, as of snow smitten by sunlight. Nowhere else are there such sad,
+stern words about the actualities of human nature; nowhere else such
+glowing and wonderful ones about its possibilities. This Physician
+knows that He can cure the worst cases, if they will take His medicine,
+and is under no temptation to minimise the severity of the symptoms or
+the fatality of the disease. We have got both sides in my text; man's
+actual condition, 'dead in trespasses'; man's possible condition, and
+the actual condition of thousands of men--made to live again in Jesus
+Christ, and with Him raised from the dead, and with Him gone up on high,
+and with Him sitting at God's right hand. That is what you and I may be
+if we will; if we will not, then we must be the other.
+
+So there are three things here to look at for a few moments--the dead
+souls; the pitying love that looks down upon them; and the resurrection
+of the dead.
+
+I. First, here is a picture, a dogmatic statement if you like, about the
+actual condition of human nature apart from Jesus Christ--'Dead in
+trespasses.'
+
+The Apostle looks upon the world--many-coloured, full of activity, full
+of intellectual stir, full of human emotions, affections, joys, sorrows,
+fluctuations--as if it were one great cemetery, and on every gravestone
+there were written the same inscription. They all died of the same
+disease--'dead _through_ sin,' as the original more properly means.
+
+Now, I dare say many who are listening to me are saying in their hearts,
+'Oh! Exaggeration! The old gloomy, narrow view of human nature cropping
+up again.' Well, I am not at all unwilling to acknowledge that truths
+like this have very often been preached both with a tone and in a manner
+that repels, and which is rightly chargeable with exaggeration and undue
+gloom and narrowness. But let me remind you that it is not the
+Evangelical preacher nor the Apostle only who have to bear the
+condemnation of exaggeration, if this representation of my text be not
+true to facts, but it is Jesus Christ too; for He says, 'Except ye eat
+the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have no life in
+you.' And I think that be He divine or not divine, His words about the
+religious condition of men go so surely to the mark that a man must be
+tolerably impregnable in his self-conceit who charges _Him_ with
+narrowness and exaggeration. At all events, I am content to say after
+Him, and I pray that you and I, when we accept Him as our Teacher, may
+take not only His gracious, but His stern, words, assured that a deep
+graciousness lies in these, too, if we rightly understand them.
+
+Let me remind you that the phrase of my text is by no means confined to
+Christian teachers, but that, in common speech, we hear from all high
+thinkers about the lower type of humanity being dead to the loftier
+thoughts in which they live and move and have their being. It has passed
+into a commonplace of language to speak of men being 'dead to honour,'
+'dead to shame,' 'dead' to this, that, and the other good and noble and
+gracious thing. And the same metaphor, if you like, lies here in my
+text--that men who have given their wills and inmost natures over to the
+dominion of self--and that is the definition of sin--that such men are,
+_ipso facto_, by reason of that very surrender of themselves to their
+worst selves, dead on what I may call the top side of their nature, and
+that all that is there is atrophied and dwindling away.
+
+Unconsciousness is one characteristic of death. And oh! as I look round
+I know that there are tens, and perhaps hundreds, of men and women who
+are all but utterly unconscious of a whole universe in which are the
+only realities, and to which it becomes them to have access. You live,
+in the physical sense, and move and have your being in God, and yet your
+inmost life would not be altered one hair's-breadth if there were no God
+at all. You pass the most resplendent instances and illustrations of His
+presence, His work, and you see nothing. You are blind on that side of
+your natures; or, as my text says, dead to the whole spiritual realm.
+Just as if there were a brick wall run against some man's windows so
+that he could see nothing out of them; so you, by your persistent
+adherence to the paltry present, the material, the visible, the selfish,
+have reared up a wall against the windows of your souls that look
+heavenwards; and of God, and all the lofty starry realities that cluster
+round Him, you are as unconscious as the corpse upon its bier is of the
+sunshine that plays upon its pallid features, or of the dew that falls
+on its stiffened limbs. Dead, because of sin--is that exaggeration? Is
+it exaggeration which charges all but absolute unconsciousness of
+spiritual realities upon worldly men like some of you?
+
+And, then, take another illustration. Another of the signatures of death
+is inactivity. And oh! what faculties in some of my friends listening to
+me now are shrivelled and all but extinct! They are dormant, at any
+rate, to use another word, for the death of my text is not so absolute a
+death but that a resurrection is possible, and so _dormant_ comes to
+express pretty nearly the same thing. Faculties of service, of
+enthusiasm, of life for God, of noble obedience to Him--what have you
+done with them? Left them there until they have stiffened like an unused
+lock, or rusted like the hinges of an unopened door; and you are as
+little active in all the noblest activities of spirit, which are
+activities in submission to and dependence upon Him, as if you were laid
+in your coffin with your idle hands crossed for evermore upon an
+unheaving breast.
+
+There is another illustration that I may suggest for a moment. Decay is
+another characteristic and signature of death. And your best self, in
+some of you, is rotting to corruption by sin.
+
+Ay! Dear brethren, when we think of these tragedies of suicide that are
+going on in thousands of men round about us to-day, it seems to me as if
+the metaphor and the reality were reversed; and instead of saying that
+my text is a violent metaphor, transferring the facts of material death
+and corruption to the spiritual realm, I am almost disposed to say it is
+the other way about, and the real death is the death of the spirit; and
+the outer dissolution and unconsciousness and inactivity of the material
+body is only a kind of parable to preach to men what are the awful
+invisible facts ever associated with the fact of transgression.
+
+There are three lives possible for each of us; two of them involuntary,
+the third requiring our consent and effort, but all of them sustained by
+the same cause. The first of them is that which we call life, the
+activity and the consciousness of the bodily frame; and that continues
+as long as the power of God keeps the body in life. When He withdraws
+His hand there comes what the senses call death. Then there is the
+natural life of thinking, loving, willing, enjoying, sorrowing, and the
+like, and that continues as long as He who is the life and light of men
+breathes into them the breath of that life. And these two are lived or
+died largely without the man's own consent or choice.
+
+But there is a third life, when all that lower is lifted to God, and
+thinking and willing and loving and enjoying and aspiring and trusting
+and obeying, and all these natural faculties find their home and their
+consecration and their immortality in Him. That life is only lived by
+our own will and it is the true life, and the others are, as I said, but
+parables, and envelopes, and vehicles, as it were, in which this life is
+carried, that is more precious than they. In the physical realm,
+separate the body from God, and it dies. In the natural conscious life,
+separate the soul, as we call it, from God, and it dies. And in the
+higher region, separate the spirit, which is the man grasping God, from
+God, and he dies; and that is the real death. Both the others are
+nothing in comparison with it.
+
+It may co-exist with a large amount of intellectual and other forms of
+activity, as we see all round about us, and that makes it only the more
+ghastly and the sadder. You are full of energy in regard to all other
+subjects, but smitten into torpor about the highest; ready to live, to
+work, to enjoy, to think, to will, in all other directions, and utterly
+unconscious and unconcerned, or all but utterly unconscious and
+unconcerned, in regard to God.
+
+Oh! a death which is co-existent with such feverish intensity of life as
+the most of you are expending all the week at your business and your
+daily pursuits is among the saddest of all the tragedies that angels are
+called upon to weep over, and that men are fools enough to enact.
+Brother! If the representation is a gloomy one, do not you think that it
+is better to ask the question--Is it a true one? than, Is it a cheerful
+one? I lay it upon your hearts that he that lives to God and with God is
+alive to the centre as well as out to the finger tips and circumference
+of his visible being. He that is dead to God is dead indeed whilst he
+lives.
+
+II. Now, notice, in the second place, the pitying love that looks down
+on the cemetery.
+
+'God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us.'
+Thus the great truth that is taught us here, first of all, is that that
+divine love of the Divine Father bends down over His dead children and
+cherishes them still. Oh! you can do much in separating yourselves from
+God through selfishness, selfwill, sensuality, or other forms of sin,
+but there is one thing you cannot do, you cannot prevent His loving you.
+If I might venture without seeming irreverent, I would point to that
+pathetic page in the Old Testament history where the king hears of the
+death, red-handed in treason, of his darling son, and careless of
+victory and forgetful of everything else, and oblivious that Absalom was
+a rebel, and only remembering that he was his boy, burst into that
+monotonous wail that has come down over all the centuries as the deepest
+expression of undying fatherly love. 'Oh! my son Absalom, my son, my son
+Absalom! Oh! Absalom, my son, my son!' The name and the relationship
+will well up out of the Father's heart, whatever the child's crime. We
+are all His Absaloms, and though we are dead in trespasses and in sins,
+God, who is rich in mercy, bends over us and loves us with His great
+love.
+
+The Apostle might well expatiate in these two varying forms of speech,
+both of them intended to express the same thing--'rich in mercy' and
+'great in love.' For surely a love which takes account of the sin that
+cannot repel it, and so shapes itself into mercy, sparing, and
+departing from the strict line of retribution and justice, is great. And
+surely a mercy which refuses to be provoked by seventy times seven
+transgressions in an hour, not to say a day, is rich. That mercy is
+wider than all humanity, deeper than all sin, was before all rebellion,
+and will last for ever. And it is open for every soul of man to receive
+if he will.
+
+But there is another point to be noticed in reference to this wonderful
+manifestation of the divine love looking down upon the myriads of men
+dead in sin, and that is that this love shapes the divine action. Mark
+the language of our text, in which the Apostle attributes a certain line
+of conduct in the divine dealings with us to the fact of His great love.
+Because 'He loved us' therefore He did so and so. Now about that I have
+only two remarks to make, and I will make them very briefly. The one is,
+here is a demonstration, for some of you people who do not believe in
+the Evangelical doctrine of an Atonement by the sacrifice of Jesus
+Christ, that the true scriptural representation of that doctrine is not
+that which caricaturists have represented it--viz. that the sacrifice of
+Jesus Christ changed in any manner the divine heart and disposition. It
+is not as unfriendly critics (who, perhaps, are not to be so much blamed
+for their unfriendliness as for their superficiality) would have us to
+believe, that the doctrine of Atonement says that God loves because
+Christ died. But the Apostle who preached that doctrine and looked upon
+it as the very heart and centre of his message to the world here puts as
+the true sequence--Christ died because God loves. Jesus Christ said the
+same thing, 'God so loved the world that He sent His Son, that whosoever
+believeth on Him should be saved.'
+
+And that brings me to the second of the remarks which I wish briefly to
+make--viz. this, that the Divine Love, great, patient, wonderful,
+unrepelled by men's sin, as it is, has to adopt a process to reach its
+end. God by His love does not, because He cannot, raise these dead souls
+into a life of righteousness without Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ
+comes to be the channel and the medium through which the love of God may
+attain its end. God's pitying love, because 'He is rich in mercy,' is
+not turned away by man's sin; and God's pitying love, because 'He is
+rich in mercy,' quickens men not by a bare will, but by the mission and
+work of His dear Son.
+
+III. And so that is the last thing on which I speak a word--viz. the
+resurrection of the dead souls.
+
+They died of sin. That was the disease that killed them. They cannot be
+quickened unless the disease be conquered. Dear brethren, I have to
+preach--not to argue, but to preach--and to press upon each soul the
+individual acceptance of the Death of Jesus Christ as being for each of
+us, if we will trust Him, the death of our death, and the death of our
+sin. By His great sacrifice and sufficient oblation He has borne the
+sins of the world and has taken away their guilt. And in Him the inmost
+reality of the spiritual death, and its outermost parable of corporeal
+dissolution, are equally and simultaneously overcome. If you will take
+Him for your Lord you will rise from the death of guilt, condemnation,
+selfishness, and sin into a new life of liberty, sonship, consecration,
+and righteousness, and will never see death.
+
+And, on the other hand, the life of Jesus Christ is available for all of
+us. If we will put our trust in Him, His life will pass into our
+deadness; He Himself will vitalise our being, dormant capacities will
+be quickened and brought into blessed activity, a new direction will be
+given to the old faculties, desires, aspirations, emotions of our
+nature. The will will tower into new power because it obeys. The heart
+will throb with a better life because it has grasped a love that cannot
+change and will never die. And the thinking power will be brought into
+living, personal contact with the personal Truth, so that whatsoever
+darknesses and problems may still be left, at the centre there will be
+light and satisfaction and peace. You will live if you trust Christ and
+let Him be your Life.
+
+And if thus, by simple faith in Him, knowing that the power of His
+atoning death has destroyed the burden of our guilt and condemnation,
+and knowing the quickening influences of His constraining love as
+drawing us to love new things and make us new creatures, we receive into
+our inmost spirits 'the law of the spirit of life' which was in Christ
+Jesus, and are thereby made 'free from the law of sin and death,' then
+it is only a question of time, when the vitalising force shall flow into
+all the cracks and crannies of our being and deliver us wholly from the
+bondage of corruption in the outer as well as in the inner life; for
+they who have learned that Christ is the life of their lives upon earth
+can never cease their appropriation of the fulness of His quickening
+power until He has 'changed the body of their humiliation into the
+likeness of the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He
+is able to subdue even all things unto Himself.'
+
+Brethren! He Himself has said, and His words I beseech you to remember
+though you forget all mine, 'He that believeth in Me, though he were
+dead, yet shall he live, and he that liveth and believeth in Me shall
+never die.' 'Believest thou this?'
+
+
+
+
+'THE RICHES OF GRACE'
+
+     'That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His
+      grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.'--Eph. ii. 7.
+
+
+One very striking characteristic of this epistle is its frequent
+reference to God's purposes, and what, for want of a better word, we
+must call His motives, in giving us Jesus Christ. The Apostle seems to
+rise even higher than his ordinary height, while he gazes up to the
+inaccessible light, and with calm certainty proclaims not only what God
+has done, but why He has done it. Through all the earlier portions of
+this letter, the things on earth are contemplated in the light of the
+things in heaven. The great work of redemption is illuminated by the
+thought of the will and meaning of God therein; for example, we read in
+Chapter i. that He 'hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in
+Christ, according as He hath chosen us in Him,' and immediately after we
+read that He 'has predestinated us unto the adoption of children by
+Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will.' Soon after, we
+hear that 'He hath revealed to us the mystery of His will, according to
+His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself'; and that our
+predestination to an inheritance in Christ is 'according to the purpose
+of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.'
+
+Not only so, but the motive or reason for the divine action in the gift
+of Christ is brought out in a rich variety of expression as being 'the
+praise of the glory of His grace' (1-6), or 'that He might gather
+together in one all things in Christ' (1-10), or that 'we should be to
+the praise of His glory' (1-12), or that 'unto the principalities and
+powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold
+wisdom of God.'
+
+In like manner our text follows a sublime statement of what has been
+bestowed upon men in Jesus, with an equally sublime insight into the
+divine purpose of thereby showing 'the exceeding riches of His grace.'
+Such heights are not for our unaided traversing; it is neither reverent
+nor safe to speculate, and still less to dogmatise, concerning the
+meaning of the divine acts, but here, at all events, we have, as I
+believe, not a man making unwarranted assertions about God's purposes,
+but God Himself by a man, letting us see so far into the depths of Deity
+as to know the very deepest meaning of His very greatest acts, and when
+God speaks, it is neither reverent nor safe to refuse to listen.
+
+I. The purpose of God in Christ is the display of His grace.
+
+Of course we cannot speak of motives in the divine mind as in ours; they
+imply a previous state of indecision and an act of choice, from which
+comes the slow emerging of a resolve like that of the moon from the sea.
+A given end being considered by us desirable, we then cast about for
+means to secure it, which again implies limitation of power. Still we
+can speak of God's motives, if only we understand, as this epistle puts
+it so profoundly, that His 'is an eternal purpose which He purposed in
+Himself,' which never began to be formed, and was not formed by reason
+of anything external.
+
+With that caution Paul would have us think that God's chiefest purpose
+in all the wondrous facts which make up the Gospel is the setting forth
+of Himself, and that the chiefest part of Himself, which He desires that
+all men should come to know, is the glory of His grace. Of course very
+many and various reasons for these acts may be alleged, but this is the
+deepest of them all. It has often been misunderstood and made into a
+very hard and horrible doctrine, which really means little else than
+all-mighty selfishness, but it is really a most blessed one; it is the
+proclamation in tenderest, most heart-melting fashion of the truth that
+God is Love, and therefore delights in imparting that which is His
+creatures' life and blessedness; it bids us think that He, too, amidst
+the blessedness of His infinite Being, knows the joy of communicating
+which makes so large a part of the blessedness of our finite selves, and
+that He, too, is capable of being touched and gladdened by the joy of
+expression. As an artist in his noblest work paints or chisels simply
+for love of pouring out his soul, so, but in infinitely loftier fashion,
+the great Artist delights to manifest Himself, and in manifesting to
+communicate somewhat of Himself. Creation is divine self-revelation, and
+we might say, with all reverence, that God acts as birds sing, and
+fountains leap, and stars shine.
+
+But our text leads us still farther into mysteries of glory, when it
+defines what it is in God that he most desires to set forth. It is the
+'exceeding riches of Grace,' in which wonderful expression we note the
+Apostle's passionate accumulation of epithets which he yet feels to be
+altogether inadequate to his theme. It would carry us too far to attempt
+to bring out the whole wealth contained in these words which glide so
+easily over unthinking lips, but we may lovingly dwell for a few moments
+upon them. Grace, in Paul's language, means love lavished upon the
+undeserving and sinful, a love which is not drawn forth by the
+perception of any excellence in its objects, but wells up and out like a
+fountain, by reason of the impulse in its subject, and which in itself
+contains and bestows all good and blessing. There may be, as this very
+letter shows, other aspects of the divine nature which God is glad that
+man should know. His power and His wisdom have their noblest
+illustration in the work of Jesus, and are less conspicuously manifested
+in all His work; but His grace is shrined in Christ alone, and from Him
+flows forth into a thirsty world. That love, 'unmerited and free,' holds
+in solution power, wisdom and all the other physical or metaphysical
+perfections belonging to God with all their energies. It is the elixir
+in which they are all contained, the molten splendour into which have
+been dissolved gold and jewels and all precious things. When we look at
+Christ, we see the divinest thing in God, and that is His grace. The
+Christ who shows us and certifies to us the grace of God must surely be
+more than man. Men look at Him and see it; He shows us that grace
+because He was full of grace and truth.
+
+But Paul is here not propounding theological dogmas, but pouring out a
+heart full of personal experience, and so adds yet other words to
+express what he himself has found in the Divine Grace, and speaks of its
+riches. He has learned fully to trust its fulness, and in his own daily
+life has had the witness of its inexhaustible abundance, which remains
+the same after all its gifts. It 'operates unspent.' That continually
+self-communicating love pours out in no narrower stream to its last
+recipient than to its first. All 'eat and are filled,' and after they
+are satisfied, twelve baskets full of fragments are taken up. These
+riches are exceeding; they surpass all human conception, all parallel,
+all human needs; they are properly transcendent.
+
+This, then, is what God would have us know of Himself. So His love is at
+once the motive of His great message to us in Jesus Christ, and is the
+whole contents of the message, like some fountain, the force of whose
+pellucid waters cleanses the earth, and rushes into the sunshine, being
+at once the reason for the flow and that which flows. God reveals
+because He loves, and His love is that which He reveals.
+
+II. The great manifestation of grace is God's kindness to us in Christ.
+
+All the revelation of God in Creation and Providence carries the same
+message, but it is often there hard to decipher, like some
+half-obliterated inscription in a strange tongue. In Jesus the writing
+is legible, continuous, and needs no elaborate commentary to make its
+meaning intelligible. But we may note that what the Apostle founds on
+here is not so much Christ in Himself, as that which men receive in
+Christ. As he puts it in another part of this epistle, it is 'through
+the Church' that 'principalities and powers in heavenly places' are made
+to 'know the manifold wisdom of God.' It is 'His kindness towards us' by
+which 'to the ages to come,' is made known the exceeding riches of
+grace, and that kindness can be best estimated by thinking what we were,
+namely, dead in trespasses and sins; what we are, namely, quickened
+together in Christ; raised up with Him, and with Him made to sit in
+heavenly places, as the immediately preceding clauses express it. All
+this marvellous transformation of conditions and of self is realised 'in
+Christ Jesus.' These three words recur over and over again in this
+profound epistle, and may be taken as its very keynote. It would carry
+us beyond all limits to deal with the various uses and profound meanings
+of this phrase in this letter, but we may at least point out how
+intimately and inseparably it is intertwined with the other aspect of
+our relations to Christ in which He is mainly regarded as dying for us,
+and may press upon you that these two are not, as they have sometimes
+been taken to be, antagonistic but complementary. We shall never
+understand the depths of the one Apostolic conception unless we bring it
+into closest connection with the other. Christ is for us only if we are
+in Christ; we are in Christ only because He died for us.
+
+God's kindness is all 'in Christ Jesus'; in Him is the great channel
+through which His love comes to men, the river of God which is full of
+water. And that kindness is realised by us when we are 'in Christ.'
+Separated from Him we do not possess it; joined to Him as we may be by
+true faith in Him, it is ours, and with it all the blessings which it
+brings into our else empty and thirsting hearts. Now all this sets in
+strong light the dignity and work of Christian men; the profundity and
+clearness of their religious character is the great sign to the world of
+the love of God. The message of Christ to man lacks one chief evidence
+of its worth if they who profess to have received it do not, in their
+lives, show its value. The characters of Christian people are in every
+age the clearest and most effectual witnesses of the power of the
+Gospel. God's honour is in their hands. The starry heavens are best seen
+by reflecting telescopes, which, in their field, mirror the brightness
+above.
+
+III. The manifestation of God through men 'in Christ' is for all ages.
+
+In our text the ages to come open up into a vista of undefined duration,
+and, just as in another place in this epistle, Paul regards the Church
+as witnessing to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, so
+here he regards it as the perennial evidence to all generations of the
+ever-flowing riches of God's grace. Whatever may have been the Apostle's
+earlier expectations of the speedy coming of the day of the Lord, here
+he obviously expects the world to last through a long stretch of
+undefined time, and for all its changing epochs to have an unchanging
+light. That standing witness, borne by men in Christ, of the grace which
+has been so kind to them, is not to be antiquated nor superseded, but is
+as valid to-day as when these words gushed from the heart of Paul. Eyes
+which cannot look upon the sun can see it as a golden glory, tinging the
+clouds which lie cradled around it. And as long as the world lasts, so
+long will Christian men be God's witnesses to it.
+
+There are then two questions of infinite importance to us--do we show in
+character and conduct the grace which we have received by reverently
+submitting ourselves to its transforming energy? We need to be very
+close to Him for ourselves if we would worthily witness to others of
+what we have found Him to be. We have but too sadly marred our witness,
+and have been like dim reflectors round a lamp which have received but
+little light from it, and have communicated even less than we have
+received. Do we see the grace that shines so brightly in Jesus Christ?
+God longs that we should so see; He calls us by all endearments and by
+loving threats to look to that Incarnation of Himself. And when we lift
+our eyes to behold, what is it that meets our gaze? Intolerable light?
+The blaze of the white throne? Power that crushes our puny might? No!
+the 'exceeding riches of grace.' The voice cries, 'Behold your God!' and
+what we see is, 'In the midst of the throne a lamb as it had been
+slain.'
+
+
+
+
+SALVATION: GRACE: FAITH
+
+     'By grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of
+      yourselves: it is the gift of God.'--Eph. ii. 8 (R.V.).
+
+
+Here are three of the key-words of the New Testament--'grace,' 'saved,'
+'faith.' Once these terms were strange and new; now they are old and
+threadbare. Once they were like lava, glowing and cast up from the
+central depths; but it is a long while since the eruption, and the
+blocks have got cold, and the corners have been rubbed off them. I am
+afraid that some people, when they read such a text, will shrug the
+shoulder of weariness, and think that they are in for a dreary sermon.
+
+But the more familiar a word is, the more likely are common ideas about
+it to be hazy. We substitute acquaintance with the sound for penetration
+into the sense. A frond of sea-weed, as long as it is in the ocean,
+unfolds its delicate films and glows with its subdued colours. Take it
+out, and it is hard and brown and ugly, and you have to plunge it into
+the water again before you see its beauty. So with these well-worn
+Christian terms; you have to put them back, by meditation and thought,
+especially as to their bearing on yourself, in order to understand their
+significance and to feel their power. And, although it is very hard, I
+want to try and do that for a few moments with this grand thought that
+lies in my text.
+
+I. Here we have the Christian view of man's deepest need, and God's
+greatest gift.
+
+'Ye have been saved.' Now, as I have said, 'saved,' and 'salvation,' and
+'Saviour,' are all threadbare words. Let us try to grasp the whole
+throbbing meaning that is in them. Well, to begin with, and in its
+original and lowest application, this whole set of expressions is
+applied to physical danger from which it delivers, and physical disease
+which it heals. So, in the Gospels, for instance, you find 'Thy faith
+hath made thee whole'--literally, '_saved thee_' And you hear one of the
+Apostles crying, in an excess of terror and collapse of faith, 'Save!
+Master! we perish!' The two notions that are conveyed in our familiar
+expression 'safe and sound,' both lie in the word--deliverance from
+danger, and healing of disease.
+
+Then, when you lift it up into the loftier region, into which
+Christianity buoyed it up, the same double meaning attaches to it. The
+Christian salvation is, on its negative side, a deliverance from
+something impending--peril--and a healing of something infecting us--the
+sickness of sin.
+
+It is a deliverance; what from? Take, in the briefest possible language,
+three sayings of Scripture to answer that question--what am I to be
+saved _from_? 'His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His
+people from their sins.' He 'delivers'--or saves--'us from the wrath to
+come.' He 'saves a soul from death.' Sin, wrath death, death spiritual
+as well as physical, these are the dangers which lie in wait; and the
+enemies which have laid their grip upon us. And from these, as the
+shepherd drags the kid from the claws of the lion or the bear's hug, the
+salvation of the Gospel wrenches and rescues men.
+
+The same general conceptions emerge, if we notice, on the other
+side--what are the things which the New Testament sets forth as the
+opposites of its salvation? Take, again, a brief reference to Scripture
+words: 'The Son of Man came _not to condemn_ the world, but that the
+world through Him might be saved.' So the antithesis is between judgment
+or condemnation on the one hand, and salvation on the other. That
+suggests thoughts substantially identical with the preceding but still
+more solemn, as bringing in the prospect a tribunal and a judge. The
+Gospel then reveals the Mighty Power that lifts itself between us and
+judgment, the Mighty Power that intervenes to prevent absolute
+destruction, the Power which saves from sin, from wrath, from death.
+
+Along with them we may take the other thought, that salvation, as the
+New Testament understands it, is not only the rescue and deliverance of
+a man from evils conceived to lie round about him, and to threaten his
+being from without, but that it is his healing from evils which have so
+wrought themselves into his very being, and infected his whole nature,
+as that the emblem for them is a sickness unto death for the healing
+from which this mighty Physician comes. These are the negative sides of
+this great Christian thought.
+
+But the New Testament salvation is more than a shelter, more than an
+escape. It not only trammels up evil possibilities, and prevents them
+from falling upon men's heads, but it introduces all good. It not only
+strips off the poisoned robe, but it invests with a royal garb. It is
+not only negatively the withdrawal from the power, and the setting above
+the reach, of all evil, in the widest sense of that word, physical and
+moral, but it is the endowment with every good, in the widest sense of
+that word, physical and moral, which man is capable of receiving, or God
+has wealth to bestow. And this positive significance of the Christian
+salvation, which includes not only pardon, and favour, and purity, and
+blessedness here in germ, and sure and certain hope of an overwhelming
+glory hereafter--this is all suggested to us by the fact that in
+Scripture, more than once, to 'have everlasting life,' and to 'enter
+into the Kingdom of God,' are employed as equivalent and alternative
+expressions for being saved with the salvation of God.
+
+And that leads me to another point--my text, as those of you who have
+used the Revised Version will observe, is there slightly modified in
+translation, and reads 'Ye _have been saved_,'--a past act, done once,
+and with abiding present consequences, which are realised progressively
+in the Christian life, and reach forward into infinitude. So the
+Scripture sometimes speaks of salvation as past, 'He saved us by His
+mercy': sometimes of it as present and progressive, 'The Lord added to
+the Church daily those that were (in process of) being saved': sometimes
+of it as future, 'now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.' In
+that future all that is involved in the word will be evolved from it in
+blessed experience onwards through eternity.
+
+I have said that we should try to make an effort to fathom the depth of
+meaning in this and other familiar commonplace terms of Scripture. But
+no effort prior to experience will ever fathom it. There was in the
+papers some time ago an account of some extraordinary deep-sea soundings
+that have been made away down in the South Pacific, 29,400 feet and no
+bottom, and the wire broke. The highest peak of the Himalayas might be
+put into that abyss, and there would be hundreds of feet between it and
+the surface. He 'casts all our sins,' mountainous as they are, behind
+His back 'into the depths of the sea'; and no plummet that man can drop
+will ever reach its profound abyss. 'Thy judgments are a great deep,'
+and deeper than the judgments is the depth of Thy salvation.
+
+And now, brethren, before I go further, notice the--I was going to say
+theory, but that is a cold word--the facts of man's condition and need
+that underlie this great Christian term of salvation--viz. we are all in
+deadly peril; we are all sick of a fatal disease. 'Ah!' you say, 'that
+is Paul.' Yes! it is Paul. But it is not Paul only; it is Paul's Master,
+and, I hope, your Master; for He not only spoke loving, gentle words to
+and about men, and not only was grace poured into His lips, but there is
+another side to His utterances. No one ever spoke sadder, sterner words
+about the real condition of men than Jesus Christ did. Lost sheep, lost
+coins, prodigal sons, builders of houses on the sand that are destined
+to be blown down and flooded away, men in danger of an undying worm and
+unquenchable fire--these are parts of Christ's representations of the
+condition of humanity, and these are the conceptions that underlie this
+great thought of salvation as being man's deepest need.
+
+It goes far deeper down than any of the superficial constructions of
+what humanity requires, which are found among non-Christian, social and
+economical, and intellectual and political reformers. It includes all
+that is true in the estimate of any of these people, and it supplies all
+that they aim at. But it goes far beyond them. And as they stand
+pottering round the patient, and administering--what shall I say? 'pills
+for the earthquake,' as we once heard--it comes and brushes them aside
+and says, 'Physicians of no value! here is _the_ thing that is
+wanted--salvation that comes from God.'
+
+Brother! it is what you need. Do not be led away by the notion that
+wealth, or culture, or anything less than Christ's gift to men will meet
+your necessities. If once we catch a glimpse of what we really are,
+there will be no words wanted to enforce the priceless value of the
+salvation that the Gospel offers. It is sure to be an uninteresting word
+and thing to a man who does not feel himself to be a sinner. It is sure
+to be of perennial worth to a man who does. Life-belts lie unnoticed on
+the cabin-shelf above the berth as long as the sun is bright, and the
+sea calm, and everything goes well; but when the ship gets on the rocks
+the passengers fight to get them. If you know yourself, you will know
+that salvation is what you need.
+
+II. Here we have the Christian unfolding of the source of salvation.
+
+'By grace ye have been saved.' There is another threadbare word. It is
+employed in the New Testament with a very considerable width of
+signification, which we do not need to attend to here. But, in regard of
+the present context, let me just point out that the main idea conveyed
+by the word is that of favour, or lovingkindness, or goodwill,
+especially when directed to inferiors, and most eminently when given to
+those who do not deserve it, but deserve its opposite. 'Grace' is love
+that stoops and that requites, not according to desert, but bestows
+upon those who deserve nothing of the kind; so when the Apostle declares
+that the source of salvation is 'grace.' he declares two things. One is
+that the fountain of all our deliverance from sin, and of our healing of
+our sicknesses, lies in the deep heart of God, from which it wells up
+undrawn, unmotived, uncaused by anything except His own infinite
+lovingkindness. People have often presented the New Testament teaching
+about salvation as if it implied that God's love was brought to man
+because Jesus Christ died, and turned the divine affections. That is not
+New Testament teaching. Christ's death is not the cause of God's love,
+but God's love is the cause of Christ's death. 'God so loved the world
+that He gave His only begotten Son.'
+
+When we hear in the Old Testament, 'I am that I am,' we may apply it to
+this great subject. For that declaration of the very inmost essence of
+the divine nature is not merely the declaration, in half metaphysical
+terms, of a self-substituting, self-determining Being, high above
+limitation and time and change, but it is a declaration that when He
+loves He loves freely and unmodified save by the constraint of His own
+Being. Just as the light, because it is light and must radiate, falls
+upon dunghills and diamonds, upon black rocks and white snow, upon
+ice-peaks and fertile fields, so the great fountain of the Divine Grace
+pours out upon men by reason only of its own continual tendency to
+communicate its own fulness and blessedness.
+
+There follows from that the other thought, on which the Apostle mainly
+dwells in our context, that the salvation which we need, and may have,
+is not won by desert, but is given as a gift. Mark the last words of my
+text--'that not of yourselves it is the gift of God.' They have often
+been misunderstood, as if they referred to the faith which is mentioned
+just before. But that is a plain misconception of the Apostle's meaning,
+and is contradicted by the whole context. It is not faith that is the
+gift of God, but it is salvation by grace. That is plain if you will
+read on to the next verse. 'By grace are ye saved through faith, and
+that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works lest any man
+should boast.' What is it that is 'not of works'? Faith? certainly not.
+Nobody would ever have thought it worth while to say, 'faith is _not_ of
+works,' because nobody would have said that it _was_. The two clauses
+necessarily refer to the same thing, and if the latter of them must
+refer to salvation by grace, so must the former. Thus, the Apostle's
+meaning is that we get salvation, not because we work for it but because
+God gives it as a free gift, for which we have nothing to render, and
+which we can never deserve.
+
+Now, I am sure that there are some of you who are saying to yourselves,
+'This is that old, threadbare, commonplace preaching again!' Well! shame
+on us preachers if we have made a living Gospel into a dead theology.
+And shame no less on you hearers if by you the words that should be good
+news that would make the tongue of the dumb sing, and the lame man leap
+as a hart, have been petrified and fossilised into a mere dogma.
+
+I know far better than you do how absolutely inadequate all my words
+are, but I want to bring it to you and to lay it not on your heads only
+but on your hearts, as the good news that we all need, that we have not
+to buy, that we have not to work to get salvation, but that having got
+it we have to work thereafter. 'What shall we do that we might work the
+works of God?' A whole series of diverse, long, protracted, painful
+toils? Christ swept away the question by striking out the 's' at the end
+of the word, and answered, 'This is the _work_' (not 'works') 'of God,'
+the one thing which will open out into all heroism and practical
+obedience, 'that ye believe on Him to whom He hath sent.'
+
+III. That leads me to the last point--viz. the Christian requirement of
+the condition of salvation.
+
+Note the precision of the Apostle's prepositions: 'Ye have been saved
+_by_ grace'; there is the source--'Ye have been saved by grace,
+_through_ faith'--there is the medium, the instrument, or, if I may so
+say, the channel; or, to put it into other words, the condition by which
+the salvation which has its source in the deep heart of God pours its
+waters into my empty heart. 'Through faith,' another threadbare word,
+which, withal, has been dreadfully darkened by many comments, and has
+unfortunately been so represented as that people fancy it is some kind
+of special attitude of mind and heart, which is only brought to bear in
+reference to Christ's Gospel. It is a thousand pities, one sometimes
+thinks, that the word was not translated 'trust' instead of 'faith,' and
+then we should have understood that it was not a theological virtue at
+all, but just the common thing that we all know so well, which is the
+cement of human society and the blessedness of human affection, and
+which only needs to be lifted, as a plant that had been running along
+the ground, and had its tendrils bruised and its fruit marred might be
+lifted, and twined round the pillar of God's throne, in order to grow up
+and bear fruit that shall be found after many days unto praise, and
+honour, and glory.
+
+Trust; that is the condition. The salvation rises from the heart of God.
+You cannot touch the stream at its source, but you can tap it away down
+in its flow. What do you want machinery and pumps for? Put a yard of
+wooden pipe into the river, and your house will have all the water it
+needs.
+
+So, dear brethren, here is the condition--it is a condition only, for
+there is no virtue in the act of trust, but only in that with which we
+are brought into living union when we do trust. When salvation comes,
+into my heart by faith it is not my faith but God's grace that puts
+salvation there.
+
+Faith is only the condition, ay! but it is the indispensable condition.
+How many ways are there of getting possession of a gift? One only, I
+should suppose, and that is, to put out a hand and take it. If salvation
+is _by_ grace it must be '_through_ faith.' If you will not accept you
+cannot have. That is the plain meaning of what theologians call
+justification by faith; that pardon is given on condition of taking it.
+If you do not take it you cannot have it. And so this is the upshot of
+the whole--trust, and you have.
+
+Oh, dear friends! open your eyes to see your dangers. Let your
+conscience tell you of your sickness. Do not try to deliver, or to heal
+yourselves. Self-reliance and self-help are very good things, but they
+leave their limitations, and they have no place here. 'Every man his own
+Redeemer' will not work. You can no more extricate yourself from the
+toils of sin than a man can release himself from the folds of a python.
+You can no more climb to heaven by your own effort than you can build a
+railway to the moon. You must sue _in forma pauperis_, and be content to
+accept as a boon an unmerited place in your Father's heart, an
+undeserved seat at His bountiful table, an unearned share in His wealth,
+from the hands of your Elder Brother, in whom is all His grace, and who
+gives salvation to every sinner if he will trust Him. 'By grace have ye
+been saved through faith.'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S WORKMANSHIP AND OUR WORKS
+
+     'We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
+      which God hath before ordained that we should walk in
+      them.'--Eph. ii. 10.
+
+
+The metal is molten as it runs out of the blast furnace, but it soon
+cools and hardens. Paul's teaching about salvation by grace and by faith
+came in a hot stream from his heart, but to this generation his words
+are apt to sound coldly, and hardly theological. But they only need to
+be reflected upon in connection with our own experience, to become vivid
+and vital again. The belief that a man may work towards salvation is a
+universal heresy. And the Apostle, in the context, summons all his force
+to destroy that error, and to substitute the great truth that we have to
+begin with an act of God's, and only after that can think about our
+acts. To work up towards salvation is, in the strict sense of the words,
+_preposterous_; it is inverting the order of things. It is beginning at
+the wrong end. It is saying X Y Z before you have learnt to say A B C.
+We are to work downwards from salvation because we have it, not that we
+may get it. And whatever 'good works' may mean, they are the
+consequences, not the causes, of 'salvation,' whatever that may mean.
+But they are consequences, and they are the very purpose of it. So says
+Paul in the archaic language of my text--which only wants a little
+steadfast looking at to be turned into up-to-date gospel--'We are His
+workmanship, created unto good works'; and the fact that we are is one
+great reason for the assertion which he brings it in to buttress, that
+we are saved by grace, not by works. Now, I wish, in the simplest
+possible way, to deal with these great words, and take them as they lie
+before us.
+
+I. We have, first, then, this as the root of everything, the divine
+creation.
+
+Now, you will find that in this profound letter of the Apostle there are
+two ideas cropping up over and over again, both of them representing the
+facts of the Christian life and of the transition from the unchristian
+to the Christian; and the one is Resurrection and the other is Creation.
+They have this in common, that they suggest the idea that the great gift
+which Christianity brings to men--no, do not let me use the abstract
+word 'Christianity'--the great gift which _Christ_ brings to men--is a
+new life. The low popular notion that salvation means mainly and
+primarily immunity from the ultimate, most lasting future consequences
+of transgression, a change of place or of condition, infects us all, and
+is far too dominant in our popular notions of Christianity and of
+salvation. And it is because people have such an unworthy, narrow,
+selfish idea of what 'salvation' is that they fall into the bog of
+misconception as to how it is to be attained. The ordinary man's way of
+looking at the whole matter is summed up in a sentence which I heard not
+long since about a recently deceased friend of the speaker's, and the
+like of which you have no doubt often heard and perhaps said, 'He is
+sure to be saved because he has lived so straight.' And at the
+foundation of that confident epitaph lay a tragical, profound
+misapprehension of what salvation was.
+
+For it is something done in you; it is _not_ something that you get, but
+it is something that you become. The teaching of this letter, and of the
+whole New Testament, is that the profoundest and most precious of all
+the gifts which come to us in Jesus Christ, and which in their totality
+are summed up in the one word that has so little power over us, because
+we understand it so little, and know it so well--'salvation'--is a
+change in a man's nature so deep, radical, vital, as that it may fairly
+be paralleled with a resurrection from the dead.
+
+Now, I venture to believe that it is something more than a strong
+rhetorical figure when that change is described as being the creation of
+a new man within us. The resurrection symbol for the same fact may be
+treated as but a symbol. You cannot treat the teaching of a new life in
+Christ as being a mere figure. It is something a great deal more than
+that, and when once a man's eye is opened to look for it in the New
+Testament it is wonderful how it flashes out from every page and
+underlies the whole teaching. The Gospel of John, for example, is but
+one long symphony which has for its dominant theme 'I am come that they
+might have life.' And that great teaching--which has been so vulgarised,
+narrowed, and mishandled by sacerdotal pretensions and sacramentarian
+superstitions--that great teaching of Regeneration, or the new birth,
+rests upon this as its very basis, that what takes place when a man
+turns to Jesus Christ, and is saved by Him, is that there is
+communicated to him not in symbol but in spiritual fact (and spiritual
+facts are far more true than external ones which are called real) a
+spark of Christ's own life, something of 'that spirit of life which was
+in Christ Jesus,' and by which, and by which alone, being transfused
+into us, we become 'free from the law of sin and death.' I beseech you,
+brethren, see that, in your perspective of Christian truth, the thought
+of a new life imparted to us has as prominent and as dominant a place as
+it obviously has in the teaching of the New Testament. It is not so
+dominant in the current notions of Christianity that prevail amongst
+average people, but it is so in all men who let themselves be guided by
+the plain teaching of Christ Himself and of all His servants. Salvation?
+Yes! And the very essence of the salvation is the breathing into me of a
+divine life, so that I become partaker of 'the divine nature.'
+
+Now, there is another step to be taken, and that is that this new life
+is realised in Christ Jesus. Now, this letter of the Apostle is
+distinguished even amongst his letters by the extraordinary frequency
+and emphasis with which he uses that expression 'in Christ Jesus.' If
+you will take up the epistle, and run your eye over it at your leisure,
+I think you will be surprised to find how, in all connections, and
+linked with every sort of blessing and good as its condition, there
+recurs that phrase. It is 'in Christ' that we obtain the inheritance; it
+is 'in Christ' that we receive 'redemption, even the forgiveness of
+sins'; it is in Him that we are 'builded together for a habitation of
+God'; it is in Him that all fulness of divine gifts, and all blessedness
+of spiritual capacities, is communicated to us; and unless, in our
+perspective of the Christian life, that expression has the same
+prominence as it has in this letter, we have yet to learn the sweetest
+sweetness, and have yet to receive the most mighty power, of the Gospel
+that we profess. 'In Christ'--a union which leaves the individuality of
+the Saviour and of the saint unimpaired, because without such
+individuality sweet love were slain, and there were no communion
+possible, but which is so close, so real, so vital, as that only the
+separating wall of personality and individual consciousness comes in
+between--that is the New Testament teaching of the relation of the
+Christian to Christ. Is it your experience, dear brother? Do not be
+frightened by talking about mysticism. If a Christianity has no
+mysticism it has no life. There is a wholesome mysticism and there is a
+morbid one, and the wholesome one is the very nerve of the Gospel as it
+is presented by Jesus Himself: 'I am the Vine, ye are the branches.
+Abide in Me, and I in you.' If our nineteenth century busy Christianity
+could only get hold of that truth as firmly as it grasps the
+representative and sacrificial character of Christ's work, I believe it
+would come like a breath of spring over 'the winter of our discontent,'
+and would change profoundly and blessedly the whole contexture of modern
+Christianity.
+
+And now there is another step to take, and that is that this union with
+Christ, which results in the communication of a new life, or, as my text
+puts it, a new creation, depends upon our faith. We are not passive in
+the matter. There is the condition on which the entrance of the life
+into our spirits is made possible. You must open the door, you must
+fling wide the casement, and the blessed warm morning air of the sun of
+righteousness, with healing in its beams, will rush in, scatter the
+darkness and raise the temperature. 'Faith' by which we simply mean the
+act of the mind in accepting and of the will and heart in casting one's
+self upon Christ as the Saviour--that act is the condition of this new
+life. And so each Christian is 'God's workmanship, created in Christ
+Jesus.'
+
+And now, says Paul--and here some of us will hesitate to follow
+him--that new creation has to go before what you call 'good works.' Now,
+do not let us exaggerate. There has seldom been a more disastrous and
+untrue thing said than what one of the Fathers dared to say, that the
+virtues of godless men were 'splendid vices.' That is not so, and that
+is not the New Testament teaching. Good is good, whoever does it. But,
+then, no man will say that actions, however they may meet the human
+conception of excellence, however bright, pure, lofty in motive and in
+aim they may be, reach their highest possible radiance and are as good
+as they ought to be, if they are done without any reference to God and
+His love. Dear brethren, we surely do not need to have the alphabet of
+morality repeated to us, that the worth of an action depends upon its
+motive, that no motive is correspondent to our capacities and our
+relation to God and our consequent responsibilities, except the motive
+of loving obedience to Him. Unless that be present, the brightest of
+human acts must be convicted of having dark shadows in it, and all the
+darker because of the brightness that may stream from it. And so I
+venture to assert that since the noblest systems of morality, apart from
+religion, will all coincide in saying that to be is more than to do, and
+that the worth of an action depends upon its motive, we are brought
+straight up to the 'narrow, bigoted' teaching of the New Testament, that
+unless a man is swayed by the love of God in what he does, you cannot,
+in the most searching analysis, say that his deed is as good as it ought
+to be, and as it might be. To be good is the first thing, to do good is
+the second. Make the tree good and its fruit good. And since, as we have
+made ourselves we are evil, there must come a re-creation before we can
+do the good deeds which our relation to God requires at our hands.
+
+II. I ask you to look at the purpose of this new creation brought out in
+our text.
+
+'Created in Christ Jesus unto good works.' That is what life is given to
+you for. That is why you are saved, says Paul. Instead of working
+upwards from works to salvation, take your stand at the received
+salvation, and understand what it is for, and work downwards from it.
+
+Now, do not let us take that phrase, 'good works,' which I have already
+said came hot from the Apostle's heart, and is now cold as a bar of
+iron, in the limited sense which it has come to bear in modern religious
+phraseology. It means something a great deal more than that. It covers
+the whole ground of what the Apostle, in another of his letters, speaks
+of when he says, 'Whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, if
+there be any virtue'--to use for a moment the world's word, which has
+such power to conjure in Greek ethics--'or if there be any praise'--to
+use for a moment the world's low motive, which has such power to sway
+men--'think of these things,' and these things do. That is the width of
+the conception of 'good works'; everything that is 'lovely and of good
+report.' That is what you receive the new life for.
+
+Contrast that with other notions of the purpose of revelation and
+redemption. Contrast it with what I have already referred to, and so
+need not enlarge upon now, the miserably inadequate and low notions of
+the essentials of salvation which one hears perpetually, and which many
+of us cherish. It is no mere immunity from a future hell. It is no mere
+entrance into a vague heaven. It is not escaping the penalty of the
+inexorable law, 'Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap,' that
+is meant by 'salvation,' any more than it is putting away the rod, which
+the child would be all the better for having administered to him, that
+is meant by 'forgiveness.' But just as forgiveness, in its essence,
+means not suspension nor abolition of penalty, but the uninterrupted
+flow of the Father's love, so salvation in its essence means, not the
+deliverance from any external evil or the alteration of anything in the
+external position, but the revolution and the re-creation of the man's
+nature. And the purpose of it is that the saved man may live in
+conformity with the will of God, and that on his character there may be
+embroidered all the fair things which God desires to see on His child's
+vesture.
+
+Contrast it with the notion that an orthodox belief is the purpose of
+revelation. I remember hearing once of a man that 'he was a very shady
+character, but sound on the Atonement.' What is the use of being 'sound
+on the Atonement' if the Atonement does not make you live the Christ
+life? And what is the good of all your orthodoxy unless the orthodoxy of
+creed issues in orthopraxy of conduct? There are far too many of us who
+half-consciously do still hold by the notion that if a man believes
+rightly then that makes him a Christian. My text shatters to pieces any
+such conception. You are saved that you may be good, and do good
+continually; and unless you are so doing you may be steeped to the
+eyebrows in the correctest of creeds, and it will only drown you.
+
+Contrast this conception of the purpose of Christianity with the far too
+common notion that we are saved, mainly in order that we may indulge in
+devout emotions, and in the outgoing of affection and confidence to
+Jesus Christ. Emotional Christianity is necessary, but Christianity,
+which is mainly or exclusively emotional, lives next door to hypocrisy,
+and there is a door of communication between them. For there is nothing
+more certain and more often illustrated in experience than that there is
+a strange underground connection between a Christianity which is mainly
+fervid and a very shady life. One sees it over and over again. And the
+cure of that is to apprehend the great truth of my text, that we are
+saved, not in order that we may know aright, nor in order that we may
+feel aright, but in order that we may be good and do 'good works.' In
+the order of things, right thought touches the springs of right feeling,
+and right feeling sets going the wheels of right action. Do not let the
+steam all go roaring out of the waste-pipe in however sacred and blessed
+emotions. See that it is guided so as to drive the spindles and the
+shuttles and make the web.
+
+III. And now, lastly, and only a word--here we have the field provided
+for the exercise of the 'good works.'
+
+'Created unto good works which God has before prepared'--before the
+re-creation--'that we should walk in them.' That is to say, the true way
+to look at the life is to regard it as the exercising-ground which God
+has prepared for the development of the life that, through Christ, is
+implanted in us. He cuts the channels that the stream may flow. That is
+the way to look at tasks, at difficulties. Difficulty is the parent of
+power, and God arranges our circumstances in order that, by wrestling
+with obstacles, we may gain the 'thews that throw the world,' and in
+order that in sorrows and in joys, in the rough places and the smooth,
+we may find occasions for the exercise of the goodness which is lodged
+potentially in us, when He creates us in Christ Jesus. So be sure that
+the path and the power will always correspond. God does not lead us on
+roads that are too steep for our weakness, and too long for our
+strength. What He bids us do He fits us for; what He fits us for He
+thereby bids us do.
+
+And so, dear brother, take heed that you are fulfilling the purpose for
+which you receive this new life. And let us all remember the order in
+which being and doing come. We must _be_ good first, and then, and only
+then, shall we _do_ good. We must have Christ for us first, our
+sacrifice and our means of receiving that new life, and then, Christ in
+us, the soul of our souls, the Life of our lives, the source of all our
+goodness.
+
+    'If any power we have, it is to ill,
+     And all the power is Thine to do and eke to will.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE CHIEF CORNER-STONE'
+
+     'Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ
+      Jesus Himself being the chief corner-stone.'--Eph. ii. 20 (R.V.).
+
+
+The Roman Empire had in Paul's time gathered into a great unity the
+Asiatics of Ephesus, the Greeks of Corinth, the Jews of Palestine, and
+men of many another race, but grand and imposing as that great unity
+was, it was to Paul a poor thing compared with the oneness of the
+Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Asiatics of Ephesus, Greeks of Corinth, Jews of
+Palestine and members of many another race could say, 'Our citizenship
+is in heaven.' The Roman Eagle swept over wide regions in her flight,
+but the Dove of Peace, sent forth from Christ's hand, travelled further
+than she. As Paul says in the context, the Ephesians had been strangers,
+'aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,' wandering like the remnants of
+some 'broken clans,' but now they are gathered in. That narrow community
+of the Jewish nation has expanded its bounds and become the
+mother-country of believing souls, the true 'island of saints.' It was
+not Rome which really made all peoples one, but it was the weakest and
+most despised of her subject races. 'Of Zion it shall be said,' 'Lo!
+this and that man was born in her.'
+
+To emphasise the thought of the great unity of the Church, the Apostle
+uses here his often-repeated metaphor of a temple, of which the Ephesian
+Christians are the stones, apostles and prophets the builders, and
+Christ Himself the chief corner-stone. Of course the representation of
+the foundation, as being laid by apostles and prophets, refers to them
+as proclaiming the Gospel. The real laying of the foundation is the
+work of the divine power and love which gave us Christ, and it is the
+Divine Voice which proclaims, 'Behold _I_ lay in Zion a foundation!' But
+that divine work has to be made known among men, and it is by the making
+of it known that the building rises course by course. There is no
+contradiction between the two statements, 'I have laid the foundation'
+and Paul's 'As a wise master-builder I have laid the foundation.'
+
+A question may here rise as to the meaning of 'prophets.' Unquestionably
+the expression in other places of the Epistle does mean New Testament
+prophets, but seeing that here Jesus is designated as the foundation
+stone which, standing beneath two walls, has a face into each, and binds
+them strongly together, it is more natural to see in the prophets the
+representatives of the great teachers of the old dispensation as the
+apostles were of the new. The remarkable order in which these two
+classes are named, the apostles being first, and the prophets who were
+first in time being last in order of mention, confirms this explanation,
+for the two co-operating classes are named in the order in which they
+lie in the foundation. Digging down you come to the more recent first,
+to the earlier second, and deep and massive, beneath all, to the
+corner-stone on whom all rests, in whom all are united together.
+Following the Apostle's order we may note the process of building;
+beneath that, the foundation on which the building rests; and beneath
+it, the corner-stone which underlies and unites the whole.
+
+I. The process of building.
+
+In the previous clauses the Apostle has represented the condition of the
+Ephesian Christians before their Christianity as being that of strangers
+and foreigners, lacking the rights of citizenship anywhere, a mob
+rather than in any sense a society. They had been like a confused heap
+of stones flung fortuitously together; they had become fellow-citizens
+with the saints. The stones had been piled up into an orderly building.
+He is not ignoring the facts of national, political, or civic
+relationships which existed independent of the new unity realised in a
+common faith. These relationships could not be ignored by one who had
+had Paul's experience of their formidable character as antagonists of
+him and of his message, but they seemed to him, in contrast with the
+still deeper and far more perfect union, which was being brought about
+in Christ, of men of all nationalities and belonging to mutually hostile
+races, to be little better than the fortuitous union of a pile of stones
+huddled together on the roadside. Measured against the architecture of
+the Church, as Paul saw it in his lofty idealism, the aggregations of
+men in the world do not deserve the name of buildings. His point of view
+is the exact opposite of that which is common around us, and which,
+alas! finds but too much support in the present aspects of the so-called
+churches of this day.
+
+It is to be observed that in our text these stones are, in accordance
+with the propriety of the metaphor, regarded as _being_ built, that is,
+as in some sense the subjects of a force brought to bear upon them,
+which results in their being laid together in orderly fashion and
+according to a plan, but it is not to be forgotten that, according to
+the teaching, not of this epistle alone, but of all Paul's letters, the
+living stones are active in the work of building, as well as beings
+subject to an influence. In another place of the New Testament we read
+the exhortation to 'build up yourselves on your most holy faith,' and
+the means of discharging that duty are set forth in the words which
+follow it; as being 'Praying in the Holy Spirit, keeping yourselves in
+the love of God, and looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.'
+
+Throughout the Pauline letters we have frequent references to
+_edifying_, a phrase which has been so vulgarised by much handling that
+its great meaning has been all but lost, but which still, rightly
+understood, presents the Christian life as one continuous effort after
+developing Christian character. Taking into view the whole of the
+apostolic references to this continuous process of building, we cannot
+but recognise that it all begins with the act of faith which brings men
+into immediate contact and vital union with Jesus Christ, and which is,
+if anything that a man does is, the act of his very inmost self passing
+out of its own isolation and resting itself on Jesus. It is by the vital
+and individual act of faith that any soul escapes from the dreary
+isolation of being a stranger and a foreigner, wandering, homeless and
+solitary, and finds through Jesus fellowship, an elder Brother, a
+Father, and a home populous with many brethren. But whilst faith is the
+condition of beginning the Christian life, which is the only real life,
+that life has to be continued and developed towards perfection by
+continuous effort. 'Tis a life-long toil till the lump be leavened.'
+
+One of the passages already referred to varies the metaphor of building,
+in so far as it seems to represent 'your most holy faith' as the
+foundation, and may be an instance of the doubtful New Testament usage
+of 'faith,' as meaning the believed Gospel, rather than the personal act
+of believing. But however that may be, context of the words clearly
+suggests the practical duties by which the Christian life is preserved
+and strengthened. They who build up themselves do so, mainly, by keeping
+themselves in the love of God with watchful oversight and continual
+preparedness for struggle against all foes who would drag them from that
+safe fortress, and subsidiarily, by like continuity in prayer, and in
+fixing their meek hope on the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto
+eternal life. If Christian character is ever to be made more Christian,
+it must be by a firmer grasp and a more vivid realisation of Christ and
+His truth. The more we feel ourselves to be lapped in the love of God,
+the more shall we be builded up on our most holy faith. There is no
+mystery about the means of Christian progress. That which, at the
+beginning, made a man a Christian shapes his whole future course; the
+measure of our faith is the measure of our advance.
+
+But the Apostle, in the immediately following words, goes on to pass
+beyond the bounds of his metaphor, and with complete indifference to the
+charge of mixing figures, speaks of the building as growing. That
+thought leads us into a higher region than that of effort. The process
+by which a great forest tree thickens its boles, expands the sweep of
+its branches and lifts them nearer the heavens, is very different from
+that by which a building rises slowly and toilsomely and with manifest
+incompleteness all the time, until the flag flies on the roof-tree. And
+if we had not this nobler thought of a possible advance by the
+increasing circulation within us of a mysterious life, there would be
+little gospel in a word which only enjoined effort as the condition of
+moral progress, and there would be little to choose between Paul and
+Plato. He goes on immediately to bring out more fully what he means by
+the growth of the building, when he says that if Christians are in
+Christ, they are 'built up for an habitation of God in the Spirit.'
+Union with Christ, and a consequent life in the Spirit, are sure to
+result in the growth of the individual soul and of the collective
+community. That divine Spirit dwells in and works through every
+believing soul, and while it is possible to grieve and to quench It, to
+resist and even to neutralise Its workings, these are the true sources
+of all our growth in grace and knowledge. The process of building may be
+and will be slow. Sometimes lurking enemies will pull down in a night
+what we have laboured at for many days. Often our hands will be slack
+and our hearts will droop. We shall often be tempted to think that our
+progress is so slow that it is doubtful if we have ever been on the
+foundation at all or have been building at all. But 'the Spirit helpeth
+our infirmities,' and the task is not ours alone but His in us. We have
+to recognise that effort is inseparable from building, but we have also
+to remember that growth depends on the free circulation of life, and
+that if we are, and abide in, Jesus, we cannot but be built 'for an
+habitation of God in the Spirit.' We may be sure that whatever may be
+the gaps and shortcomings in the structures that we rear here, none will
+be able to say of us at the last, 'This man began to build and was not
+able to finish.'
+
+II. The foundation on which the building rests.
+
+In the Greek, as in our version, there is no definite article before
+'prophets,' and its absence indicates that both sets of persons here
+mentioned come under the common _vinculum_ of the one definite article
+preceding the first named. So that apostles and prophets belong to one
+class. It may be a question whether the foundation is theirs in the
+sense that they constitute it, an explanation in favour of which can be
+quoted the vision in the Apocalypse of the new Jerusalem, in the twelve
+foundations of which were written the names of the twelve apostles of
+the Lamb, or whether, as is more probable, the foundation is conceived
+of as laid by them. In like manner the Apostle speaks to the Corinthians
+of having 'as a wise master-builder laid the foundation,' and to the
+Romans of making it his aim to preach especially where Christ was not
+already named, that he might 'not build upon another man's foundation.'
+Following these indications, it seems best to understand the preaching
+of the Gospel as being the laying of the foundation.
+
+Further, the question may be raised whether the prophets here mentioned
+belong to the Old Testament or to the New. The latter alternative has
+been preferred on the ground that the apostles are named first, but, as
+we have already noticed, the order here begins at the top and goes
+downwards, what was last in order of time being first in order of
+mention. We need only recall Peter's bold words that 'all the prophets,
+as many as have spoken, have told of the days' of Christ, or Paul's
+sermon in the synagogue of Antioch in which he passionately insisted on
+the Jewish crime of condemning Christ as being the fulfilment of the
+voices of the prophets, and of the Resurrection of Jesus as being God's
+fulfilment of the promise made unto the fathers to understand how here,
+as it were, beneath the foundation laid by the present preaching of the
+apostles, Paul rejoices to discern the ancient stones firmly laid by
+long dead hands.
+
+The Apostle's strongest conviction was that he himself had become more
+and not less of a Jew by becoming a Christian, and that the Gospel which
+he preached was nothing more than the perfecting of that Gospel before
+the Gospel, which had come from the lips of the prophets. We know a
+great deal more than he did as to the ways in which the progressive
+divine revelation was presented to Israel through the ages, and some of
+us are tempted to think that we know more than we do, but the true
+bearing of modern criticism, as applied to the Old Testament, is to
+confirm, even whilst it may to some extent modify, the conviction common
+to all the New Testament writers, and formulated by the last of the New
+Testament prophets, that 'the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of
+prophecy.' Whatever new light may shine on the questions of the origin
+and composition of the books of the Old Testament, it will never obscure
+the radiance of the majestic figure of the Messiah which shines from the
+prophetic page. The inner relation between the foundation of the
+apostles and that of the prophets is best set forth in the solemn
+colloquy on the Mount of Transfiguration between Moses and Elias and
+Jesus. They 'were with Him' as witnessing to Him to whom law and ritual
+and prophecy had pointed, and they 'spake of His decease which He should
+accomplish at Jerusalem' as being the vital centre of all His work which
+the lambs slain according to ritual had foreshadowed, and the prophetic
+figure of the Servant of the Lord 'wounded for our transgressions and
+bruised for our iniquities' had more distinctly foretold.
+
+III. The corner-stone which underlies and unites the whole.
+
+Of course the corner-stone here is the foundation-stone and not 'the
+head-stone of the corner.' Jesus Christ is both. He is the first and
+the last; the Alpha and Omega. In accordance with the whole context, in
+which the prevailing idea is that which always fired Paul's imagination,
+viz. that of reconciling Jew and Gentile in one new man, it is best to
+suppose a reference here to the union of Jew and Gentile. The stone laid
+beneath the two walls which diverge at right angles from each other
+binds both together and gives strength and cohesion to the whole. In the
+previous context the same idea is set forth that Christ 'preached peace
+to them that were afar off (Gentiles) and to them that were nigh
+(Jews).' By His death He broke down another wall, the middle wall of
+partition between them, and did so by abolishing 'the law of
+commandments contained in ordinances.' The old distinction between Jew
+and Gentile, which was accentuated by the Jew's rigid observance of
+ordinances and which often led to bitter hatred on both sides, was swept
+away in that strange new thing, a community of believers drawn together
+in Jesus Christ. The former antagonistic 'twain' had become one in a
+third order of man, the Christian man. The Jew Christian and the Gentile
+Christian became brethren because they had received one new life, and
+they who had common feelings of faith and love to the same Saviour, a
+common character drawn from Him, and a common destiny open to them by
+their common relation to Jesus, could never cherish the old emotions of
+racial hate.
+
+When we, in this day, try to picture to ourselves that strange new
+thing, the love which bound the early Christians together and buried as
+beneath a rushing flood the formidable walls of separation between them,
+we may well penitently ask ourselves how it comes that Jesus seems to
+have so much less power to triumph over the divisive forces that part us
+from those who should be our hearts' brothers. In our modern life there
+are no such gulfs of separation from one another as were filled up
+unconsciously in the experience of the first believers, but the narrower
+chinks seem to remain in their ugliness between those who profess a
+common faith in one Lord, and who are all ready to assert that they are
+built on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, and that Jesus
+Christ is from them the chief corner-stone.
+
+If in reality He is so to us, and He is so if we have been builded upon
+Him through our faith, the metaphor of corner-stone and building will
+fail to express the reality of our relation to Him, for our corner-stone
+has in it an infinite vitality which rises up through all the courses of
+the living stones, and moulds each 'into an immortal feature of
+loveliness and perfection.' So it shall be for each individual, though
+here the appropriation of the perfect gift is imperfect. So it shall be
+in reference to the history of the world. Christ is its centre and
+foundation-stone, and as His coming makes the date from which the
+nations reckon, and all before it was in the deepest sense preparatory
+to His incarnation, all which is after it is in the deepest sense the
+appropriating of Him and the developing of His work. The multitudes
+which went before and that followed cried, saying, 'Blessed is He that
+cometh in the name of the Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE WHOLE FAMILY'
+
+    'The whole family in heaven and earth.'--Eph. iii. 15.
+
+
+Grammatically, we are driven to recognise that the Revised Version is
+more correct than the Authorised, when it reads 'every family,' instead
+of 'the whole family.' There is in the expression no reference to the
+thought, however true it is in itself, that the redeemed in heaven and
+the believers on earth make up but one family. The thought rather is,
+that, as has been said, 'the father makes the family,' and if any
+community of intelligent beings, human, or angelic, bears the great name
+of family, the great reason for that lies 'in God's paternal
+relationship.'
+
+But my present purpose in selecting this text is not so much to speak of
+_it_ as to lay hold of the probably incorrect rendering in the
+Authorised Version, as suggesting, though here inaccurately, the thought
+that believers struggling here and saints and angels glorious above 'but
+one communion make,' and in the light of that thought, to consider the
+meaning of the Lord's Supper. I am, of course, fully conscious that in
+thus using the words, I am diverting them from their original purpose;
+but possibly in this case, open confession, _my_ open confession, may
+merit your forgiveness and at all events, it, in some degree, brings me
+my own.
+
+I. Consider the Lord's Supper as a sign that the Church on earth is a
+family.
+
+The Passover was essentially a family feast, and the Lord's Supper,
+which was grafted on it, was plainly meant to be the same. The domestic
+character of the rite shines clearly out in the precious simplicity of
+the arrangements in the upper room. When Christ and the twelve sat down
+there, it was a family meal at which they sat. He was the head of the
+household; they were members of His family. The early examples of the
+rite, when the disciples 'gathered together to break bread,' obviously
+preserved the same familiar character, and stand in extraordinary
+contrast to the splendours of high mass in a Roman Catholic Cathedral.
+The Church, as a whole, is a household, and the very form of the rite
+proclaims that 'we, being many, are one bread.' The conception of a
+family brings clearly into view the deepest ground of Christian unity.
+It is the possession of a common life, just as men are born into an
+earthly family, not of their own will, nor of their own working, and
+come without any action of their own into bonds of blood relationship
+with brothers and sisters. When we become sons of God and are born
+again, we become brethren of all His children. That which gives us life
+in Him makes us kindred with all through whose veins flows that same
+life. It is the common partaking in the one bread which makes us one.
+The same blood flows in the veins of all the children.
+
+Hence, the only ground on which the Church rests is this common
+possession of the life of Christ, and that ground makes, and ought to be
+felt to make, Christian union a far deeper, more blessed, and more
+imperative bond than can be found in any shallow similarities of aim--or
+identities of opinion or feeling. The deepest fact of Christian
+consciousness is the foundation fact of Christian brotherhood; each is
+nearer to every Christian than to any besides. A very solemn view of
+Christian duty arises from these thoughts, familiar as they are:
+
+    'No distance breaks the tie of blood,
+     Brothers are brothers ever more.'
+
+and every tongue is loud in condemnation of any man who is ashamed or
+afraid to recognise his brother and stand by him, whatever may be the
+difference in their worldly positions. 'Every one who loveth Him that
+begat, loveth Him also that is begotten of Him.'
+
+II. The Lord's Supper as a prophecy of the family at home above.
+
+The prophetic character was stamped on the first institution of the
+Lord's Supper by Christ's own words 'until it be fulfilled in the
+kingdom of God,' and by His declaration that He appointed unto them a
+kingdom, that they might eat and drink at His table in His kingdom. We
+may also recall the mysterious feast spread on the shore of the lake,
+where, with obvious allusion both to his earlier miracles and to the sad
+hour in the upper room, he came 'and taketh the bread and gave it to
+them.' Blending these two together we get most blessed, though dim,
+thoughts of that future; they speak to us of an eternal home, an eternal
+feast, and an eternal society. We have to reverse not a few of the
+characteristics of the upper room in order to reach those of the table
+in the kingdom. The Lord's Supper was followed for Him by Gethsemane and
+Calvary, and for them by going out to betray and to deny and to forsake
+Him. From that better table there is no more going out. The servant
+comes in from the field, spent with toil and stained with many a splash,
+but the Master Himself comes forth and serves His servant.
+
+In the eternal feast, which is spread above, the bread as well as the
+wine is new, even whilst it is old, for there will be disclosed new
+depths of blessing and power in the old Christ, and new draughts of joy
+and strength in the old wine which will make the feasters say, in
+rapture and astonishment, to the Master of the feast, 'Thou hast kept
+the good wine until now.' There and then all broken ties will be
+re-knit, all losses supplied, and no shadow of change, nor fear of
+exhaustion, pass across the calm hearts.
+
+III. The Lord's Supper is a token of the present union of the two.
+
+If it thus prophesies the perfectness of heaven, it also shows us how
+the two communities of earth and heaven are united. They, as we, live by
+derivation of the one life; they, as we, are fed and blessed by the one
+Lord. The occupations and thoughts of Christian life on earth and of the
+perfect life of Saints above are one. They look to Christ as we do, when
+we live as Christians, though the sun which is the light of both regions
+shows there a broader disc, and pours forth more fervid rays, and is
+never obscured by clouds, nor ever sets in night. Whether conscious of
+us or not, they are doing there, in perfect fashion, what we imperfectly
+attempt, and partially accomplish.
+
+    'The Saints on earth and all the Dead
+     But one communion make.'
+
+Heaven and earth are equally mansions in the Father's house.
+
+To the faith which realises this great truth, death dwindles to a small
+matter. The Lord's table has an upper and a lower level. Sitting at the
+lower, we may feel that those who have gone from our sides, and have
+left empty places which never can be filled, are gathered round Him in
+the upper half, and though a screen hangs between the two, yet the feast
+is one and the family is one. Singly our dear ones go, and singly we all
+shall go. The table spread in the presence of enemies will be left
+vacant to its last place, and the one spread above will be filled to
+its last place, and so shall we ever be with the Lord, and the unity
+which was always real be perfectly and permanently manifested at the
+last.
+
+
+
+
+STRENGTHENED WITH MIGHT
+
+     'That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory; to
+      be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner
+      man.'--Eph. iii. 16.
+
+
+In no part of Paul's letters does he rise to a higher level than in his
+prayers, and none of his prayers are fuller of fervour than this
+wonderful series of petitions. They open out one into the other like
+some majestic suite of apartments in a great palace-temple, each leading
+into a loftier and more spacious hall, each drawing nearer the
+presence-chamber, until at last we stand there.
+
+Roughly speaking, the prayer is divided into four petitions, of which
+each is the cause of the following and the result of the
+preceding--'That He would grant you, according to the riches of His
+glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner
+man'--that is the first. 'In order that Christ may dwell in your hearts
+by faith,' 'ye being rooted and grounded in love'--such is the second,
+the result of the first, and the preparation for the third. 'That ye may
+be able to comprehend with all saints ... and to know the love of Christ
+which passeth knowledge,' such is the third, and all lead up at last to
+that wonderful desire beyond which nothing is possible--'that ye might
+be filled with all the fulness of God.'
+
+I venture to contemplate dealing with these four petitions in successive
+sermons, in order, God helping me, that I may bring before you a fairer
+vision of the possibilities of your Christian life than you ordinarily
+entertain. For Paul's prayer is God's purpose, and what He means with
+all who profess His name is that these exuberant desires may be
+fulfilled in them. So let us now listen to that petition which is the
+foundation of all, and consider that great thought of the divine
+strength-giving power which may be bestowed upon every Christian soul.
+
+I. First, then, I remark that God means, and wishes, that all Christians
+should be strong by the possession of the Spirit of might.
+
+It is a miserably inadequate conception of Christianity, and of the
+gifts which it bestows, and the blessings which it intends for men, when
+it is limited, as it practically is, by a large number--I might almost
+say the majority--of professing Christians to a simple means of altering
+their relation to the past, and to the broken law of God and of
+righteousness. Thanks be to His name! His great gift to the world begins
+in each individual case with the assurance that all the past is
+cancelled. He gives that blessed sense of forgiveness, which can never
+be too highly estimated unless it is forced out of its true place as the
+introduction, and made to be the climax and the end, of His gifts. I do
+not know what Christianity means, unless it means that you and I are
+forgiven for a purpose; that the purpose, if I may so say, is something
+in advance of the means towards the purpose, the purpose being that we
+should be filled with all the strength and righteousness and
+supernatural life granted to us by the Spirit of God.
+
+It is well that we should enter into the vestibule. There is no other
+path to the throne but through the vestibule. But do not let us forget
+that the good news of forgiveness, though we need it day by day, and
+need it perpetually repeated, is but the introduction to and porch of
+the Temple, and that beyond it there towers, if I cannot say a loftier,
+yet I may say a further gift, even the gift of a divine life like His,
+from whom it comes, and of which it is in reality an effluence and a
+spark. The true characteristic blessing of the Gospel is the gift of a
+new power to a sinful weak world; a power which makes the feeble strong,
+and the strongest as an angel of God.
+
+Oh, brethren! we who know how, 'if any power we have, it is to ill'; we
+who understand the weakness, the unaptness of our spirits to any good,
+and our strength for every vagrant evil that comes upon them to tempt
+them, should surely recognise as a Gospel in very deed that which
+proclaims to us that the 'everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the
+ends of the earth,' who Himself 'fainteth not, neither is weary.' hath
+yet a loftier display of His strength-giving power than that which is
+visible in the heavens above, where, 'because He is strong in might not
+one faileth.' That heaven, the region of calm completeness, of law
+unbroken and therefore of power undiminished, affords a lesser and
+dimmer manifestation of His strength than the work that is done in the
+hell of a human heart that has wandered and is brought back, that is
+stricken with the weakness of the fever of sin, and is healed into the
+strength of obedience and the omnipotence of dependence. It is much to
+say 'for that He is strong in might, not one of these faileth;' it is
+more to say 'He giveth power to them that have failed; and to them that
+have no might He increaseth strength.' The Gospel is the gift of pardon
+for holiness, and its inmost and most characteristic bestowment is the
+bestowment of a new power for obedience and service.
+
+And that power, as I need not remind you, is given to us through the
+gift of the Divine Spirit. The very name of that Spirit is the 'Spirit
+of Might.' Christ spoke to us about being 'endued with power from on
+high.' The last of His promises that dropped from His lips upon earth
+was the promise that His followers should receive the power of the
+Spirit coming upon them. Wheresoever in the early histories we read of a
+man who was full of the Holy Ghost, we read that he was 'full of power.'
+According to the teaching of this Apostle, God hath given us the 'Spirit
+of power,' which is also the Spirit 'of love and of a sound mind.' So
+the strength that we must have, if we have strength at all, is the
+strength of a Divine Spirit, not our own, that dwells in us, and works
+through us.
+
+And there is nothing in that which need startle or surprise any man who
+believes in a living God at all, and in the possibility, therefore, of a
+connection between the Great Spirit and all the human spirits which are
+His children. I would maintain, in opposition to many modern
+conceptions, the actual supernatural character of the gift that is
+bestowed upon every Christian soul. My reading of the New Testament is
+that as distinctly above the order of material nature as is any miracle,
+is the gift that flows into a believing heart. There is a direct passage
+between God and my spirit. It lies open to His touch; all the paths of
+its deep things can be trodden by Him. You and I act upon one another
+from without, He acts upon us within. We wish one another blessings; He
+gives the blessings. We try to train, to educate, to incline, and
+dispose, by the presentation of motives and the urging of reasons; He
+can plant in a heart by His own divine husbandry the seed that shall
+blossom into immortal life. And so the Christian Church is a great,
+continuous, supernatural community in the midst of the material world;
+and every believing soul, because it possesses something of the life of
+Jesus Christ, has been the seat of a miracle as real and true as when He
+said 'Lazarus, come forth!' Precisely this teaching does our Lord
+Himself present for our acceptance when He sets side by side, as
+mutually illustrative, as belonging to the same order of supernatural
+phenomena, 'the hour is coming when the dead shall hear the voice of the
+Son of God and they that hear shall live,' which is the supernatural
+resurrection of souls dead in sin,--and 'the hour is coming in the which
+all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth,'
+which is the future resurrection of the body, in obedience to His will.
+
+So, Christian men and women, do you set clearly before you this: that
+God's purpose with you is but begun when He has forgiven you, that He
+forgives you for a design, that it is a means to an end, and that you
+have not reached the conception of the large things which He intends for
+you unless you have risen to this great thought--He means and wishes
+that you should be strong with the strength of His own Divine Spirit.
+
+II. Now notice, next, that this Divine Power has its seat in, and is
+intended to influence the whole of, the inner life.
+
+As my text puts it, we may be 'strengthened with might by His Spirit _in
+the inner man_.' By the 'inner man' I suppose, is not meant the new
+creation through faith in Jesus Christ which this Apostle calls 'the
+new man,' but simply what Peter calls the 'hidden man of the heart' the
+'soul,' or unseen self as distinguished from the visible material body
+which it animates and informs. It is this inner self, then, in which the
+Spirit of God is to dwell, and into which it is to breathe strength. The
+leaven is hid deep in three measures of meal until the whole be
+leavened. And the point to mark is that the whole inward region which
+makes up the true man is the field upon which this Divine Spirit is to
+work. It is not a bit of your inward life that is to be hallowed. It is
+not any one aspect of it that is to be strengthened, but it is the whole
+intellect, affections, desires, tastes, powers of attention, conscience,
+imagination, memory, will. The whole inner man in all its corners is to
+be filled, and to come under the influence of this power, 'until there
+be no part dark, as when the bright shining of a candle giveth thee
+light.'
+
+There is no part of my being that is not patent to the tread of this
+Divine Guest. There are no rooms of the house of my spirit into which He
+may not go. Let Him come with the master key in His hand into all the
+dim chambers of your feeble nature; and as the one life is light in the
+eye, and colour in the cheek, and deftness in the fingers, and strength
+in the arm, and pulsation in the heart, so He will come with the
+manifold results of the one gift to you. He will strengthen your
+understandings, and make you able for loftier tasks of intellect and of
+reason than you can face in your unaided power; He will dwell in your
+affections and make them vigorous to lay hold upon the holy things that
+are above their natural inclination, and will make it certain that their
+reach shall not be beyond their grasp, as, alas! it so often is in the
+sadness and disappointments of human love. He will come into that
+feeble, vacillating, wayward will of yours, that is only obstinate in
+its adherence to the low and the evil, as some foul creature, that one
+may try to wrench away, digs its claws into corruption and holds on by
+that. He will lift your will and make it fix upon the good and abominate
+the evil, and through the whole being He will pour a great tide of
+strength which shall cover all the weakness. He will be like some subtle
+elixir which, taken into the lips, steals through a pallid and wasted
+frame, and brings back a glow to the cheek and a lustre to the eye, and
+swiftness to the brain, and power to the whole nature. Or as some plant,
+drooping and flagging beneath the hot rays of the sun, when it has the
+scent of water given to it, will, in all its parts, stiffen and erect
+itself, so, when the Spirit is poured out on men, their whole nature is
+invigorated and helped.
+
+That indwelling Spirit will be a power for suffering. The parallel
+passage to this in the twin epistle to the Colossians is--'strengthened
+with all might unto all patience and long-suffering with gentleness.'
+Ah, brethren! unless this Divine Spirit were a power for patience and
+endurance it were no power suited to us poor men. So dark at times is
+every life; so full at times of discouragements, of dreariness, of
+sadness, of loneliness, of bitter memories, and of fading hopes does the
+human heart become, that if we are to be strong we must have a strength
+that will manifest itself most chiefly in this, that it teaches us how
+to bear, how to weep, how to submit.
+
+And it will be a power for conflict. We have all of us, in the discharge
+of duty and in the meeting of temptation, to face such tremendous
+antagonisms that unless we have grace given to us which will enable us
+to resist, we shall be overcome and swept away. God's power given by the
+Divine Spirit does not absolve us from the fight, but it fits us for the
+fight. It is not given in order that, holiness may be won without a
+struggle, as some people seem to think, but it is given to us in order
+that in the struggle for holiness we may never lose 'one jot of heart or
+hope,' but may be 'able to withstand in the evil day, and having done
+all to stand.'
+
+It is a power for service. 'Tarry ye in Jerusalem till ye be endued with
+power from on high.' There is no such force for the spreading of
+Christ's Kingdom, and the witness-bearing work of His Church, as the
+possession of this Divine Spirit. Plunged into that fiery baptism, the
+selfishness and the sloth, which stand in the way of so many of us, are
+all consumed and annihilated, and we are set free for service because
+the bonds that bound us are burnt up in the merciful furnace of His
+fiery power.
+
+'Ye shall be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man'--a
+power that will fill and flood all your nature if you will let it, and
+will make you strong to suffer, strong to combat, strong to serve, and
+to witness for your Lord.
+
+III. And now, lastly, let me point you still further to the measure of
+this power. It is limitless with the boundlessness of God Himself. 'That
+he would grant you' is the daring petition of the Apostle, 'according to
+the riches of His glory to be strengthened.'
+
+There is the measure. There is no limit except the uncounted wealth of
+His own self-manifestation, the flashing light of revealed divinity.
+Whatsoever there is of splendour in that, whatsoever there is of power
+there, in these and in nothing on this side of them, lies the limit of
+the possibilities of a Christian life. Of course there is a working
+limit at each moment, and that is our capacity to receive; but that
+capacity varies, may vary indefinitely, may become greater and greater
+beyond our count or measurement. Our hearts may be more and more capable
+of God; and in the measure in which they are capable of Him they shall
+be filled by Him. A limit which is always shifting is no limit at all. A
+kingdom, the boundaries of which are not the same from one year to
+another, by reason of its own inherent expansive power, may be said to
+have no fixed limit. And so we appropriate and enclose, as it were,
+within our own little fence, a tiny portion of the great prairie that
+rolls boundlessly to the horizon. But to-morrow we may enclose more, if
+we will, and more and more; and so ever onwards, for all that is God's
+is ours, and He has given us His whole self to use and to possess
+through our faith in His Son. A thimble can only take up a thimbleful of
+the ocean, but what if the thimble be endowed with a power of expansion
+which has no term known to men? May it not, then, be that some time or
+other it shall be able to hold so much of the infinite depth as now
+seems a dream too audacious to be realised?
+
+So it is with us and God. He lets us come into the vaults, as it were,
+where in piles and masses the ingots of uncoined and uncounted gold are
+stored and stacked; and He says, 'Take as much as you like to carry.'
+There is no limit except the riches of His glory.
+
+And now, dear friends, remember that this great gift, offered to each of
+us, is offered on conditions. To you professing Christians especially I
+speak. You will never get it unless you want it, and some of you do not
+want it. There are plenty of people who call themselves Christian men
+that would not for the life of them know what to do with this great gift
+if they had it. You will get it if you desire it. 'Ye have not because
+ye ask not.'
+
+Oh! when one contrasts the largeness of God's promises and the miserable
+contradiction to them which the average Christian life of this
+generation presents, what can we say? 'Hath His mercy clean gone for
+ever? Doth His promise fail for evermore?' Ye weak Christian people,
+born weakling and weak ever since, as so many of you are, open your
+mouths wide. Rise to the height of the expectations and the desires
+which it is our sin not to cherish; and be sure of this, as we ask so
+shall we receive. 'Ye are not straitened in God.' Alas! alas! 'ye are
+straitened in yourselves.'
+
+And mind, there must be self-suppression if there is to be the triumph
+of a divine power in you. You cannot fight with both classes of weapons.
+The human must die if the divine is to live. The life of nature,
+dependence on self, must be weakened and subdued if the life of God is
+to overcome and to fill you. You must be able to say 'Not I!' or you
+will never be able to say 'Christ liveth in me.' The patriarch who
+overcame halted on his thigh; and all the life of nature was lamed and
+made impotent that the life of grace might prevail. So crush self by the
+power and for the sake of the Christ, if you would that the Spirit
+should bear rule over you.
+
+See to it, too, that you use what you have of that Divine Spirit. 'To
+him that hath shall be given.' What is the use of more water being sent
+down the mill lade, if the water that does come in it all runs away at
+the bottom, and none of it goes over the wheel? Use the power you have,
+and power will come to the faithful steward of what he possesses. He
+that is faithful in a little shall get much to be faithful over. Ask and
+use, and the ancient thanksgiving may still come from your lips. 'In the
+day when I cried, Thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with
+strength in my soul.'
+
+
+
+
+THE INDWELLING CHRIST
+
+     'That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; ye being rooted and
+      grounded in love.'--Eph. iii. 17.
+
+
+We have here the second step of the great staircase by which Paul's
+fervent desires for his Ephesian friends climbed towards that wonderful
+summit of his prayers--which is ever approached, never reached,--'that
+ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.'
+
+Two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for the
+lessons of these verses. The first is as to the relation of this clause
+to the preceding. It might appear at first sight to be simply parallel
+with the former, expressing substantially the same ideas under a
+somewhat different aspect. The operation of the strength-giving Spirit
+in the inner man might very naturally be supposed to be equivalent to
+the dwelling of Christ in our hearts by faith. So many commentators do,
+in fact, take it; but I think that the two ideas may be distinguished,
+and that we are to see in the words of our text, as I have said, the
+second step in this prayer, which is in some sense a result of the
+'strengthening with might by the Spirit in the inner man.' I need not
+enter in detail into the reasons for taking this view of the connection
+of the clause, which is obviously in accordance with the climbing-up
+structure of the whole verse. It is enough to point it out as the basis
+of my further remarks.
+
+And now the second observation with which I will trouble you, before I
+come to deal with the thoughts of the verse, is as to the connection of
+the last words of it. You may observe that in reading the words of my
+text I omitted the 'that' which stands in the centre of the verse. I did
+so because the words, 'Ye being rooted and grounded in love,' in the
+original, do stand before the '_that_,' and are distinctly separated by
+it from the subsequent clause. They ought not, therefore, to be shifted
+forward into it, as our translators and the Revised Version have, I
+think, unfortunately done, unless there were some absolute necessity
+either from meaning or from construction. I do not think that this is
+the case; but on the contrary, if they are carried forward into the next
+clause, which describes the result of Christ's dwelling in our hearts by
+faith, they break the logical flow of the sentence by mixing together
+result and occasion. And so I attach them to the first part of this
+verse, and take them to express at once the consequence of Christ's
+dwelling in the heart by faith, and the preparation or occasion for our
+being able to comprehend and know the love of Christ which passeth
+knowledge. Now that is all with which I need trouble you in the way of
+explanation of the meaning of the words. Let us come now to deal with
+their substance.
+
+I. Consider the Indwelling of Christ, as desired by the Apostle for all
+Christians.
+
+To begin with, let me say in the plainest, simplest, strongest way that
+I can, that that dwelling of Christ in the believing heart is to be
+regarded as being a plain literal fact.
+
+To a man who does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, of course
+that is nonsense, but to those of us who do see in Him the manifested
+incarnate God, there ought to be no difficulty in accepting this as the
+simple literal force of the words before us, that in every soul where
+faith, howsoever feeble, has been exercised, there Jesus Christ does
+verily abide.
+
+It is not to be weakened down into any notion of participation in His
+likeness, sympathy with His character, submission to His influence,
+following His example, listening to His instruction, or the like. A dead
+Plato may so influence his followers, but that is not how a living
+Christ influences His disciples. What is meant is no mere influence
+derived but separable from Him, however blessed and gracious that
+influence might be, but it is the presence of His own self, exercising
+influences which are inseparable from His presence, and only to be
+realised when He dwells in us.
+
+I think that Christian people as a rule do far too little turn their
+attention to this aspect of the Gospel teaching, and concentrate their
+thoughts far too much upon that which is unspeakably precious in itself,
+but does not exhaust all that Christ is to us, viz. the work that He
+wrought for us upon Calvary; or to take a step further, the work that He
+is now carrying on for us as our Intercessor and Advocate in the
+heavens. You who listen to me Sunday after Sunday will not suspect me of
+seeking to minimise either of these two aspects of our Lord's mission
+and operation, but I do believe that very largely the glad thought of an
+indwelling Christ, who actually abides and works in our hearts, and is
+not only for us in the heavens, or with us by some kind of impalpable
+and metaphorical presence, but in simple, that is to say, in spiritual
+reality is in our spirits, has faded away from the consciousness of the
+Christian Church.
+
+And so we are called 'mystics' when we preach Christ in the heart. Ah,
+brother! unless your Christianity be in the good deep sense of the word
+'mystical,' it is mechanical, which is worse. I preach, and rejoice that
+I have to preach, a 'Christ that died, yea! rather that is risen again;
+who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for
+us.' Nor do I stop there, but I preach a Christ that is in us, dwelling
+in our hearts if we be His at all.
+
+Well, then, further observe that the special emphasis of the prayer here
+is that this 'indwelling' may be an unbroken and permanent one. Any of
+you who can consult the original for yourselves will see that the
+Apostle here uses a compound word which conveys the idea of intensity
+and continuity. What he desires, then, is not merely that these Ephesian
+Christians may have occasional visits of the indwelling Lord, or that at
+some lofty moments of spiritual enthusiasm they may be conscious that He
+is with them, but that always, in an unbroken line of deep, calm
+receptiveness, they may possess, and know that they possess, an
+indwelling Saviour.
+
+And this, I think, is one of the reasons why we may and must distinguish
+between the apparently very similar petition in the previous verse,
+about which we spoke in the last sermon, and the petition which is now
+occupying us; for, as I shall have to show you, it is only as
+'strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man' that we are
+capable of the continuous abiding of that Lord within us.
+
+Oh! what a contrast to that idea of a perpetual unbroken inhabitation of
+Jesus in our spirits and to our consciousness is presented by our
+ordinary life! 'Why shouldst Thou be as a wayfaring man that turneth
+aside to tarry for a night?' may well be the utterance of the average
+Christian. We might, with unbroken blessedness, possess Him in our
+hearts, and instead, we have only 'visits short and far between' Alas,
+alas, how often do we drive away that indwelling Christ, because our
+hearts are 'foul with sin,' so that He
+
+    'Can but listen at the gate
+     And hear the household jar within.'
+
+Christian men and women! here is the ideal of our lives, capable of
+being approximated to (if not absolutely in its entirety reached) with
+far more perfection than it ever has yet been by us. There might be a
+line of light never interrupted running all through our religious
+experience. Instead of that there is a light point here, and a great gap
+of darkness there, like the straggling lamps by the wayside in the
+half-lighted squalid suburbs of some great city. Is that your Christian
+life, broken by many interruptions, and having often sounding through it
+the solemn words of the retreating divinity which the old profound
+legend tells us were heard the night before the Temple on Zion was
+burnt:--'Let us depart?' 'I will arise and return unto My place till
+they acknowledge their offences.' God means and wishes that Christ may
+continuously dwell in our hearts. Does He to your own consciousness
+dwell in yours?
+
+And then the last thought connected with this first part of my subject
+is that the heart, strengthened by the Spirit, is fitted to be the
+Temple of the indwelling Christ. How shall we prepare the chamber for
+such a guest? How shall some poor occupant of some wretched hut by the
+wayside fit it up for the abode of a prince? The answer lies in these
+words that precede my text. You cannot strengthen the rafters and lift
+the roof and adorn the halls and furnish the floor in a manner befitting
+the coming of the King; but you can turn to that Divine Spirit who will
+expand and embellish and invigorate your whole spirit, and make it
+capable of receiving the indwelling Christ.
+
+That these two things which are here considered as cause and effect may,
+in another aspects be considered as but varying phases of the same
+truth, is only part of the depth and felicity of the teaching that is
+here; for if you come to look more deeply into it, the Spirit that
+strengtheneth with might is the Spirit of Christ; and He dwells in men's
+hearts by His own Spirit. So that the apparent confusion, arising from
+what in other places are regarded as identical being here conceived as
+cause and effect, is no confusion at all, but is explained and
+vindicated by the deep truth that nothing but the indwelling of the
+Christ can fit for the indwelling of the Christ. The lesser gift of His
+presence prepares for the greater measure of it; the transitory
+inhabitation for the more permanent. Where He comes in smaller measure
+He opens the door and makes the heart capable of His own more entire
+indwelling. 'Unto him that hath shall be given.' It is Christ in the
+heart that makes the heart fit for Christ to dwell in the heart. You
+cannot do it by your own power; turn to Him and let Him make you temples
+meet for Himself.
+
+II. So now, in the second place, notice the open door through which the
+Christ comes in to dwell--'that He may dwell in your hearts by faith.'
+
+More accurately we may render 'through faith' and might even venture to
+suppose that the thought of faith as an open door through which Christ
+passes into the heart, floated half distinctly before the Apostle's
+mind. Be that as it may, at all events faith is here represented as the
+means or condition through which this dwelling takes effect. You have
+but to believe in Him and He comes, drawn from heaven, floating down on
+a sunbeam, as it were, and enters into the heart and abides there.
+
+Trust, which is faith, is self-distrust. 'I dwell in the high and holy
+place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.' Rivers do
+not run on the mountain tops, but down in the valleys. So the heart that
+is lifted up and self-complacent has no dew of His blessing resting upon
+it, but has the curse of Gilboa adhering to its barrenness; but the low
+lands, the humble and the lowly hearts, are they in which the waters
+that go softly scoop their course and diffuse their blessings. Faith is
+self-distrust. Self-distrust brings the Christ.
+
+Faith is desire. Never, never in the history of the world has it been or
+can it be that a longing towards Him shall be a longing thrown back
+unsatisfied upon itself. You have but to trust, and you possess. We open
+the door for the entrance of Christ by the simple act of faith, and
+blessed be His name! He can squeeze Himself through a very little chink,
+and He does not require that the gates should be flung wide open in
+order that, with some of His blessings, He may come in.
+
+Mystical Christianity of the false sort has much to say about the
+indwelling of God in the soul, but it spoils all its teaching by
+insisting upon it that the condition on which God dwells in the soul is
+the soul's purifying itself to receive Him. But you cannot cleanse your
+hearts so as to bring Christ into them, you must let Him come and
+cleanse them by the process of His coming, and fit them thereby for His
+own indwelling. And, assuredly, He will so come, purging us from our
+evil and abiding in our hearts.
+
+But do not forget that the faith which brings Christ into the spirit
+must be a faith which works by love, if it is to keep Christ in the
+spirit. You cannot bring that Lord into your hearts by anything that you
+do. The man who cleanses his own soul by his own strength, and so
+expects to draw God into it, has made the mistake which Christ pointed
+out when He told us that when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man he
+leaves his house empty, though it be swept and garnished. Moral
+reformation may turn out the devils, it will never bring in God, and in
+the emptiness of the swept and garnished heart there is an invitation to
+the seven to come back again and fill it.
+
+And whilst that is true, remember, on the other hand, that a Christian
+man can drive away his Master by evil works. The sweet song-birds and
+the honey-making bees are said always to desert a neighbourhood before a
+pestilence breaks out in it. And if I may so say, similarly quick to
+feel the first breath of the pestilence is the presence of the Christ
+which cannot dwell with evil. You bring Christ into your heart by faith,
+without any work at all; you keep Him there by a faith which produces
+holiness.
+
+III. And the last point is the gifts of this indwelling Christ,--'ye
+being,' or as the words might more accurately be translated, 'Ye having
+been rooted and grounded in love.'
+
+Where He comes He comes not empty-handed. He brings His own love, and
+that, consciously received, produces a corresponding and answering love
+in our hearts to Him. So there is no need to ask the question here
+whether 'love' means Christ's love to me, or my love to Christ. From the
+nature of the case both are included--the recognition of His love and
+the response by mine are the result of His entering into the heart. This
+love, the recognition of His and the response by mine, is represented in
+a lovely double metaphor in these words as being at once the soil in
+which our lives are rooted and grow, and the foundation on which our
+lives are built and are steadfast.
+
+There is no need to enlarge upon these two things, but let me just touch
+them for a moment. Where Christ abides in a man's heart, love will be
+the very soil in which his life will be rooted and grow. That love will
+be the motive of all service, it will underlie, as its productive cause,
+all fruitfulness. All goodness and all beauty will be its fruit. The
+whole life will be as a tree planted in this rich soil. And so the life
+will grow not by effort only, but as by an inherent power drawing its
+nourishment from the soil. This is blessedness. It is heaven upon earth
+that love should be the soil in which our obedience is rooted, and from
+which we draw all the nutriment that turns to flowers and fruit.
+
+Where Christ dwells in the heart, love will be the foundation upon which
+our lives are builded steadfast and sure. The blessed consciousness of
+His love, and the joyful answer of my heart to it, may become the basis
+upon which my whole being shall repose, the underlying thought that
+gives security, serenity, steadfastness to my else fluctuating life. I
+may so plant myself upon Him, as that in Him I shall be strong, and
+then my life will not only grow like a tree and have its leaf green and
+broad, and its fruit the natural outcome of its vitality, but it will
+rise like some stately building, course by course, pillar by pillar,
+until at last the shining topstone is set there. He that buildeth on
+that foundation shall never be confounded.
+
+For, remember that, deepest of all, the words of my text may mean that
+the Incarnate Personal Love becomes the very soil in which my life is
+set and blossoms, on which my life is founded.
+
+    'Thou, my Life, O let me be
+     Rooted, grafted, built in Thee.'
+
+Christ is Love, and Love is Christ. He that is rooted and grounded in
+love has the roots of his being, and the foundation of his life fixed
+and fastened in that Lord.
+
+So, dear brethren, go to Christ like those two on the road to Emmaus;
+and as Fra Angelico has painted them on his convent wall, put out your
+hands and lay them on His, and say, 'Abide with us. Abide with us!' And
+the answer will come:--'This is my rest for ever; here'--mystery of
+love!--'will I dwell, for I have desired it,' even the narrow room of
+your poor heart.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE UNKNOWABLE AND KNOWN
+
+     'That ye ... may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the
+      breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of
+      Christ, which passeth knowledge.'--Eph. iii. 18, 19.
+
+
+This constitutes the third of the petitions in this great prayer of
+Paul's, each of which, as we have had occasion to see in former sermons,
+rises above, and is a consequence of the preceding, and leads on to,
+and is a cause or occasion of the subsequent one.
+
+The two former petitions have been for inward strength communicated by a
+Divine Spirit, in order that Christ may dwell in our hearts, and so we
+may be rooted and grounded in love. The result of these desires being
+realised in our hearts is here set forth in two clauses which are
+substantially equivalent in meaning. 'To comprehend' may be taken as
+meaning nearly the same as 'to know,' only that perhaps the former
+expresses an act more purely intellectual. And, as we shall see in our
+next sermon, 'the breadth and length and depth and height' are the
+unmeasurable dimensions of the love which in the second clause is
+described as 'passing knowledge.' I purpose to deal with these measures
+in a separate discourse, and, therefore, omit them from consideration
+now.
+
+We have, then, mainly two thoughts here, the one, that only the loving
+heart in which Christ dwells can know the love of Christ; and the other
+that even that heart can _not_ know the love of Christ. The paradox is
+intentional, but it is intelligible. Let me deal then, as well as I can,
+with these two great thoughts.
+
+I. First, we have this thought that only the loving heart can know
+Christ's love.
+
+Now the Bible uses that word _know_ to express two different things; one
+which we call mere intellectual perception; or to put it into plainer
+words, mere head knowledge such as a man may have about any subject of
+study, and the other a deep and living experience which is possession
+before it is knowledge, and knowledge because it is possession.
+
+Now the former of these two, the knowledge which is merely the work of
+the understanding, is, of course, independent of love. A man may know
+all about Christ and His love without one spark of love in his heart.
+And there are thousands of people who, as far as the mere intellectual
+understanding is concerned, know as much about Jesus Christ and His love
+as the saint who is closest to the Throne, and yet have not one trace of
+love to Christ in them. That is the kind of people that a widely
+diffused Christianity and a habit of hearing sermons produce. There are
+plenty of them, and some of us among them, who, as far as their heads
+are concerned, know quite as much of Jesus Christ and His love as any of
+us do, and could talk about it and argue about it, and draw inferences
+from it, and have the whole system of evangelical Christianity at their
+fingers' ends. Ay! It is at their fingers' _ends_, it never gets any
+nearer them than that.
+
+There is a knowledge with which love has nothing to do, and it is a
+knowledge that for many people is quite sufficient. 'Knowledge puffeth
+up,' says the Apostle; into an unwholesome bubble of self-complacency
+that will one day be pricked and disappear, but 'love buildeth up'--a
+steadfast, slowly-rising, solid fabric. There be two kinds of knowledge:
+the mere rattle of notions in a man's brain, like the seeds of a
+withered poppy-head; very many, very dry, very hard; that will make a
+noise when you shake them. And there is another kind of knowledge which
+goes deep down into the heart, and is the only knowledge worth calling
+by the name; and that knowledge is the child, as my text has it, of
+love.
+
+Now let us think about that for a moment. Love, says Paul, is the parent
+of all knowledge. Well, now, can we find any illustrations from similar
+facts in other regions? Yes! I think so. How do we know, really know,
+any emotions of any sort whatever? Only by experience. You may talk for
+ever about feelings, and you teach nothing about them to those who have
+not experienced them. The poets of the world have been singing about
+love ever since the world began. But no heart has learned what love is
+from even the sweetest and deepest songs. Who that is not a father can
+be taught paternal love by words, or can come to a perception of it by
+an effort of mind? And so with all other emotions. Only the lips that
+have drunk the cup of sweetness or of bitterness can tell how sweet or
+how bitter it is, and even when they, made wise by experience, speak out
+their deepest hearts, the listeners are but little the wiser, unless
+they too have been scholars in the same school. Experience is our only
+teacher in matters of feeling and emotion, as in the lower regions of
+taste and appetite. A man must be hungry to know what hunger is; he must
+taste honey or wormwood in order to know the taste of honey or wormwood,
+and in like manner he cannot know sorrow but by feeling its ache, and
+must love if he would know love. Experience is our only teacher, and her
+school-fees are heavy.
+
+Just as a blind man can never be made to understand the glories of
+sunrise, or the light upon the far-off mountains; just as a deaf man may
+read books about acoustics, but they will not give him a notion of what
+it is to hear Beethoven, so we must have love to Christ before we know
+what love to Christ is, and we must consciously experience the love of
+Christ ere we know what the love of Christ is. We must have love to
+Christ in order to have a deep and living possession of love of Christ,
+though reciprocally it is also true that we must have the love of Christ
+known and felt by our answering hearts, if we are ever to love Him back
+again.
+
+So in all the play and counterplay of love between Christ and us, and in
+all the reaction of knowledge and love this remains true, that we must
+be rooted and grounded in love ere we can know love, and must have
+Christ dwelling in our hearts, in order to that deep and living
+possession which, when it is conscious of itself, is knowledge, and is
+for ever alien to the loveless heart.
+
+    'He must be loved, ere that to you
+     He will seem worthy of your love.'
+
+If you want to know the blessedness of the love of Christ, love Him, and
+open your hearts for the entrance of His love to you. Love is the parent
+of deep, true knowledge.
+
+Of course, before we can love an unseen person and believe in his love,
+we must know about him by the ordinary means by which we learn about all
+persons outside the circle of our sight. So before the love which is
+thus the parent of deep, true knowledge, there must be the knowledge by
+study and credence of the record concerning Christ, which supplies the
+facts on which alone love can be nourished. The understanding has its
+part to play in leading the heart to love, and then the heart becomes
+the true teacher. He that loveth, knoweth God, for God is love. He that
+is rooted and grounded in love because Christ dwells in his heart, will
+be strengthened to know the love in which he is rooted. The Christ
+within us will know the love of Christ. We must first 'taste,' and then
+we shall 'see' that the Lord is good, as the Psalmist puts it with deep
+truth. First, the appropriation and feeding upon God, then the clear
+perception by the mind of the sweetness in the taste. First the
+enjoyment; then the reflection on the enjoyment. First the love; and
+then the consciousness of the love of Christ possessed and the love to
+Christ experienced. The heart must be grounded in love that the man may
+know the love which passeth knowledge.
+
+Then notice that there is also here another condition for this deep and
+blessed knowledge laid down in these words, 'That ye may be able to
+comprehend _with all saints_.' That is to say, our knowledge of the love
+of Jesus Christ depends largely on our sanctity. If we are pure we shall
+know. If we were wholly devoted to Him we should wholly know His love to
+us, and in the measure in which we are pure and holy we shall know it.
+This heart of ours is like a reflecting telescope, the least breath upon
+the mirror of which will cause all the starry sublimities that it should
+shadow forth to fade and become dim. The slightest moisture in the
+atmosphere, though it be quite imperceptible where we stand, will be
+dense enough to shut out the fair, shining, snowy summits that girdle
+the horizon and to leave nothing visible but the lowliness and
+commonplaceness of the prosaic plain.
+
+If you want to know the love of Christ, first of all, that love must
+purify your souls. But then you must keep your souls pure, assured of
+this, that only the single eye is full of light, and that they who are
+not 'saints' grope in the dark even at midday, and whilst drenched by
+the sunshine of His love, are unconscious of it altogether. And so we
+get that miserable and mysterious tragedy of men and women walking
+through life, as many of you are doing, in the very blaze and focus of
+Christ's love, and never beholding it nor knowing anything about it.
+
+Observe again the beginning of this path of knowledge, which we have
+thus traced. There must be, says my text, an indwelling Christ, and so
+an experience, deep and stable, of His love, and then we shall know the
+love which we thus experience. But how comes that indwelling? That is
+the question for us. The knowledge of His love is blessedness, is peace,
+is love, is everything; as we shall see in considering the last stage of
+this prayer. That knowledge arises from our fellowship with and our
+possession of the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ. How does that
+fellowship with, and possession of the love of God in Jesus Christ,
+come? That is the all-important question. What is the beginning of
+everything? 'That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.' There is
+the gate through which you and I may come, and by which we must come if
+we are to come at all into the possession and perception of Christ's
+great love. Here is the path of knowledge. First of all, there must be
+the simple historical knowledge of the facts of Christ's life and death
+for us, with the Scripture teaching of their meaning and power. And then
+we must turn these truths from mere notions into life. It is not enough
+to know the love that God has to us, in that lower sense of the word
+'knowledge.' Many of you know that, who never got any blessing out of it
+all your days, and never will, unless you change. Besides the 'knowing'
+there must be the 'believing' of the love. You must translate the notion
+into a living fact in your experience. You must pass from the simple
+work of understanding the Gospel to the higher act of faith. You must
+not be contented with knowing, you must trust. And if you have done that
+all the rest will follow, and the little, narrow, low doorway of humble
+self-distrusting faith, through which a man creeps on his knees,
+leaving outside all his sin and his burden, opens out into the temple
+palace--the large place in which Christ's love is imparted to the soul.
+
+Brethren, this doctrine of my text ought to be for every one of us a joy
+and a gospel. There is no royal road into the sweetness and the depth of
+Christ's love, for the wise or the prudent. The understanding is no more
+the organ for apprehending the love of Christ than the ear is the organ
+for perceiving light, or the heart the organ for learning mathematics.
+Blessed be God! the highest gifts are not bestowed upon the clever
+people, on the men of genius and the gifted ones, the cultivated and the
+refined, but they are open for all men; and when we say that love is the
+parent of knowledge, and that the condition of knowing the depths of
+Christ's heart is simple love which is the child of faith, we are only
+saying in other words what the Master embodied in His thanksgiving
+prayer, 'I thank Thee, Father! Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou
+hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them
+unto babes.'
+
+And that is so, not because Christianity, being a foolish system, can
+only address itself to fools; not because Christianity, contradicting
+wisdom, cannot expect to be received by the wise and the cultured, but
+because a man's brains have as little to do with his trustful acceptance
+of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a man's eyes have to do with his
+capacity of hearing a voice. Therefore, seeing that the wise and
+prudent, and the cultured, and the clever, and the men of genius are
+always the minority of the race, let us vulgar folk that are neither
+wise, nor clever, nor cultured, nor geniuses, be thankful that all that
+has nothing to do with our power of knowing and possessing the best
+wisdom and the highest treasures, but that upon this path the wayfaring
+man though a fool shall not err, and all narrow foreheads and limited
+understandings, and poor, simple uneducated people as well as
+philosophers and geniuses have to learn love by their hearts and not by
+their heads, and by a sense of need and a humble trust and a daily
+experience have to appropriate and suck out the blessing that lies in
+the love of Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name! The end of all
+aristocracies of culture and superciliousness of intellect lies in that
+great truth that we possess the deepest knowledge and highest wisdom
+when we love and by our love.
+
+II. Now a word in the next place as to the other thought here, that not
+even the loving heart can know the love of Christ.
+
+'It passeth knowledge,' says my text. Now I do not suppose that the
+paradox here of knowing the love of Christ which 'passeth knowledge' is
+to be explained by taking 'know' and 'knowledge' in the two different
+senses which I have already referred to, so as that we may experience,
+and know by conscious experience, that love which the mere understanding
+is incapable of grasping. That of course is an explanation which might
+be defended, but I take it that it is much truer to the Apostle's
+meaning to suppose that he uses the words 'know' and 'knowledge' both
+times in the same sense. And so we get familiar thoughts which I touch
+upon very briefly.
+
+Our knowledge of Christ's love, though real, is incomplete, and must
+always be so. You and I believe, I hope, that Christ's love is not a
+man's love, or at least that it is more than a man's love. We believe
+that it is the flowing out to us of the love of God, that all the
+fulness of the divine heart pours itself through that narrow channel of
+the human nature of our Lord, and therefore that the flow is endless and
+the Fountain infinite.
+
+I suppose I do not need to show you that it is possible for people to
+have, and that in fact we do possess a real, a valid, a reliable
+knowledge of that which is infinite; although we possess, as a matter of
+course, no adequate and complete knowledge of it. But I only remind you
+that we have before us in Christ's love something which, though the
+understanding is not by itself able to grasp it, yet the understanding
+led by the heart can lay hold of, and can find in it infinite treasures.
+We can lay our poor hands on His love as a child might lay its tiny palm
+upon the base of some great cliff, and hold that love in a real grasp of
+a real knowledge and certitude, but we cannot put our hands round it and
+feel that we _com_prehend as well as _ap_prehend. Let us be thankful
+that we cannot.
+
+His love can only become to us a subject of knowledge as it reveals
+itself in its manifestations. Yet after even these manifestations it
+remains unuttered and unutterable even by the Cross and grave, even by
+the glory and the throne. 'It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do?
+deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer
+than the earth, and broader than the sea.'
+
+We have no measure by which we can translate into the terms of our
+experience, and so bring within the grasp of our minds, what was the
+depth of the step, which Christ took at the impulse of His love, from
+the Throne to the Cross. We know not what He forewent; we know not, nor
+ever shall know, what depths of darkness and soul-agony He passed
+through at the bidding of His all-enduring love to us. Nor do we know
+the consequences of that great work of emptying Himself of His glory. We
+have no means by which we can estimate the darkness and the depth of the
+misery from which we have been delivered, nor the height and the
+radiance of the glory to which we are to be lifted. And until we can
+tell and measure by our compasses both of these two extremes of possible
+human fate, till we have gone down into the deepest abyss of a
+bottomless pit of growing alienation and misery, and up above the
+highest reach of all unending progress into light and glory and
+God-likeness, we have not stretched our compasses wide enough to touch
+the two poles of this great sphere, the infinite love of Jesus Christ.
+So we bow before it, we know that we possess it with a knowledge more
+sure and certain, more deep and valid, than our knowledge of ought but
+ourselves; but yet it is beyond our grasp, and towers above us
+inaccessible in the altitude of its glory, and stretches deep beneath us
+in the profundity of its condescension.
+
+And, in like manner, we may say that this known love passes knowledge,
+inasmuch as our experience of it can never exhaust it. We are like the
+settlers on some great island continent--as, for instance, on the
+Australian continent for many years after its first discovery--a thin
+fringe of population round the seaboard here and there, and all the
+bosom of the land untraversed and unknown. So after all experiences of
+and all blessed participation in the love of Jesus Christ which come to
+each of us by our faith, we have but skimmed the surface, but touched
+the edges, but received a drop of what, if it should come upon us in
+fulness of flood like a Niagara of love, would overwhelm our spirits.
+
+So we have within our reach not only the treasure of creatural
+affections which bring gladness into life when they come, and darkness
+over it when they depart; we have not only human love which, if I may so
+say, is always lifting its finger to its lips in the act of bidding us
+adieu; but we may possess a love which will abide with us for ever. Men
+die, Christ lives. We can exhaust men, we cannot exhaust Christ. We can
+follow other objects of pursuit, all of which have limitation to their
+power of satisfying and pall upon the jaded sense sooner or later, or
+sooner or later are wrenched away from the aching heart. But here is a
+love into which we can penetrate very deep and fear no exhaustion; a sea
+into which we can cast ourselves, nor dread that like some rash diver
+flinging himself into shallow water where he thought there was depth, we
+may be bruised and wounded. We may find in Christ the endless love that
+an immortal heart requires. Enter by the low door of faith, and your
+finite heart will have the joy of an infinite love for its possession,
+and your mortal life will rise transfigured into an immortal and growing
+participation in the immortal Love of the indwelling and inexhaustible
+Christ.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARADOX OF LOVE'S MEASURE
+
+     'The breadth, and length, and depth, and height.'--Eph. iii. 18.
+
+
+Of what? There can, I think, be no doubt as to the answer. The next
+clause is evidently the continuation of the idea begun in that of our
+text, and it runs: 'And to know the _love of Christ_ which passeth
+knowledge.' It is the immeasurable measure, then; the boundless bounds
+and dimensions of the love of Christ which fire the Apostle's thoughts
+here. Of course, he had no separate idea in his mind attaching to each
+of these measures of magnitude, but he gathered them together simply to
+express the one thought of the greatness of Christ's love. Depth and
+height are the same dimension measured from opposite ends. The one
+begins at the top and goes down, the other begins at the bottom and goes
+up, but the distance is the same in either case. So we have the three
+dimensions of a solid here--breadth, length, and depth.
+
+I suppose that I may venture to use these expressions with a somewhat
+different purpose from that for which the Apostle employs them; and to
+see in each of them a separate and blessed aspect of the love of God in
+Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+I. What, then, is the breadth of that love?
+
+It is as broad as humanity. As all the stars lie in the firmament, so
+all creatures rest in the heaven of His love. Mankind has many common
+characteristics. We all suffer, we all sin, we all hunger, we all
+aspire, hope, and die; and, blessed be God! we all occupy precisely the
+same relation to the divine love which lies in Jesus Christ. There are
+no step-children in God's great family, and none of them receives a more
+grudging or a less ample share of His love and goodness than every
+other. Far-stretching as the race, and curtaining it over as some great
+tent may enclose on a festal day a whole tribe, the breadth of Christ's
+love is the breadth of humanity.
+
+And it is universal because it is divine. No human mind can be stretched
+so as to comprehend the whole of the members of mankind, and no human
+heart can be so emptied of self as to be capable of this absolute
+universality and impartiality of affection. But the intellectual
+difficulties which stand in the way of the width of our affections, and
+the moral difficulties which stand still more frowningly and
+forbiddingly in the way, have no power over that love of Christ's which
+is close and tender, and clinging with all the tenderness and closeness
+and clingingness of a human affection and lofty and universal and
+passionless and perpetual, with all the height and breadth and calmness
+and eternity of a divine heart.
+
+And this broad love, broad as humanity, is not shallow because it is
+broad. Our love is too often like the estuary of some great stream which
+runs deep and mighty as long as it is held within narrow banks, but as
+soon as it widens becomes slow and powerless and shallow. The intensity
+of human affection varies inversely as its extension. A universal
+philanthropy is a passionless sentiment. But Christ's love is deep
+though it is wide, and suffers no diminution because it is shared
+amongst a multitude. It is like the great feast that He Himself spread
+for five thousand men, women, and children, all seated on the grass,
+'and they did all eat and were filled.'
+
+The whole love is the property of each recipient of it. He does not love
+as we do, who give a part of our heart to this one and a part to that
+one, and share the treasure of our affections amongst a multitude. All
+this gift belongs to every one, just as all the sunshine comes to every
+eye, and as every beholder sees the moon's path across the dark waters,
+stretching from the place where He stands to the centre of light.
+
+This broad love, universal as humanity, and deep as it is broad, is
+universal because it is individual. You and I have to generalise, as we
+say, when we try to extend our affections beyond the limits of
+household and family and personal friends, and the generalising is a
+sign of weakness and limitation. Nobody can love an abstraction, but
+God's love and Christ's love do not proceed in that fashion. He
+individualises, loving each and therefore loving all. It is because
+every man has a space in His heart singly and separately and
+conspicuously, that all men have a place there. So our task is to
+individualise this broad, universal love, and to say, in the simplicity
+of a glad faith, 'He loved me and gave Himself for me.' The breadth is
+world-wide, and the whole breadth is condensed into, if I may so say, a
+shaft of light which may find its way through the narrowest chink of a
+single soul. There are two ways of arguing about the love of Christ,
+both of them valid, and both of them needing to be employed by us. We
+have a right to say, 'He loves all, therefore He loves me.' And we have
+a right to say, 'He loves me, therefore He loves all.' For surely the
+love that has stooped to me can never pass by any human soul.
+
+What is the breadth of the love of Christ? It is broad as mankind, it is
+narrow as myself.
+
+II. Then, in the next place, what is the length of the love of Christ?
+
+If we are to think of Him only as a man, however exalted and however
+perfect, you and I have nothing in the world to do with His love. When
+He was here on earth it may have been sent down through the ages in some
+vague way, as the shadowy ghost of love may rise in the heart of a great
+statesman or philanthropist for generations yet unborn, which He dimly
+sees will be affected by His sacrifice and service. But we do not call
+that love. Such a poor, pale, shadowy thing has no right to the warm
+throbbing name; has no right to demand from us any answering thrill of
+affection. Unless you think of Jesus Christ as something more and other
+than the purest and the loftiest benevolence that ever dwelt in human
+form, I know of no intelligible sense in which the length of His love
+can be stretched to touch you.
+
+If we content ourselves with that altogether inadequate and lame
+conception of Him and of His nature, of course there is no present bond
+between any man upon earth and Him, and it is absurd to talk about His
+present love as extending in any way to me. But we have to believe,
+rising to the full height of the Christian conception of the nature and
+person of Christ, that when He was here on earth the divine that dwelt
+in Him so informed and inspired the human as that the love of His man's
+heart was able to grasp the whole, and to separate the individuals who
+should make up the race till the end of time; so as that you and I,
+looking back over all the centuries, and asking ourselves what is the
+length of the love of Christ, can say, 'It stretches over all the years,
+and it reached then, as it reaches now, to touch me, upon whom the ends
+of the earth have come.' Its length is conterminous with the duration of
+humanity here or yonder.
+
+That thought of eternal being, when we refer it to God, towers above us
+and repels us; and when we turn it to ourselves and think of our own
+life as unending, there come a strangeness and an awe that is almost
+shrinking, over the thoughtful spirit. But when we transmute it into the
+thought of a love whose length is unending, then over all the shoreless,
+misty, melancholy sea of eternity, there gleams a light, and every
+wavelet flashes up into glory. It is a dreadful thing to think, 'For
+ever, Thou art God.' It is a solemn thing to think, 'For ever I am to
+be'; but it is life to say: 'O Christ! Thy love endureth from
+everlasting to everlasting; and because it lives, I shall live
+also'--'Oh! give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy
+endureth for ever.'
+
+There is another measure of the length of the love of Christ. 'Master!
+How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?--I say not
+unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.' So said the
+Christ, multiplying perfection into itself twice--two sevens and a
+ten--in order to express the idea of boundlessness. And the law that He
+laid down for His servant is the law that binds Himself. What is the
+length of the love of Christ? Here is one measure of it--howsoever long
+drawn out my sin may be, this is longer; and the white line of His love
+runs out into infinity, far beyond the point where the black line of my
+sin stops. Anything short of eternal patience would have been long ago
+exhausted by your sins and mine, and our brethren's. But the pitying
+Christ, the eternal Lover of all wandering souls, looks down from heaven
+upon every one of us; goes with us in all our wanderings, bears with us
+in all our sins, in all our transgressions still is gracious. His
+pleadings sound on, like some stop in an organ continuously persistent
+through all the other notes. And round His throne are written the divine
+words which have been spoken about our human love modelled after His:
+'Charity suffereth long and is kind; is not easily provoked, is not soon
+angry, beareth all things.' The length of the love of Christ is the
+length of eternity, and outmeasures all human sin.
+
+III. Then again, what is the depth of that love?
+
+Depth and height, as I said at the beginning of these remarks, are but
+two ways of expressing the same dimension. For the one we begin at the
+top and measure down, for the other we begin at the bottom and measure
+up. The top is the Throne; and the downward measure, how is it to be
+stated? In what terms of distance are we to express it? How far is it
+from the Throne of the Universe to the manger of Bethlehem, and the
+Cross of Calvary, and the sepulchre in the garden? That is the depth of
+the love of Christ. Howsoever far may be the distance from that
+loftiness of co-equal divinity in the bosom of the Father, and radiant
+with glory, to the lowliness of the form of a servant, and the sorrows,
+limitations, rejections, pains and death--that is the measure of the
+depth of Christ's love. We can estimate the depth of the love of Christ
+by saying, 'He came from above, He tabernacled with us,' as if some
+planet were to burst from its track and plunge downwards in amongst the
+mist and the narrowness of our earthly atmosphere.
+
+A well-known modern scientist has hazarded the speculation that the
+origin of life on this planet has been the falling upon it of the
+fragments of a meteor, or an aerolite from some other system, with a
+speck of organic life upon it, from which all has developed. Whatever
+may be the case in regard to physical life, that is absolutely true in
+the case of spiritual life. It all originates because this
+heaven-descended Christ has come down the long staircase of Incarnation,
+and has brought with Him into the clouds and oppressions of our
+terrestrial atmosphere a germ of life which He has planted in the heart
+of the race, there to spread for ever. That is the measure of the depth
+of the love of Christ.
+
+And there is another way to measure it. My sins are deep, my helpless
+miseries are deep, but they are shallow as compared with the love that
+goes down beneath all sin, that is deeper than all sorrow, that is
+deeper than all necessity, that shrinks from no degradation, that turns
+away from no squalor, that abhors no wickedness so as to avert its face
+from it. The purest passion of human benevolence cannot but sometimes be
+aware of disgust mingling with its pity and its efforts, but Christ's
+love comes down to the most sunken. However far in the abyss of
+degradation any human soul has descended, beneath it are the everlasting
+arms, and beneath it is Christ's love. When a coalpit gets blocked up by
+some explosion, no brave rescuing party will venture to descend into the
+lowest depths of the poisonous darkness until some ventilation has been
+restored. But this loving Christ goes down, down, down into the
+thickest, most pestilential atmosphere, reeking with sin and corruption,
+and stretches out a rescuing hand to the most abject and undermost of
+all the victims. How deep is the love of Christ! The deep mines of sin
+and of alienation are all undermined and countermined by His love. Sin
+is an abyss, a mystery, how deep only they know who have fought against
+it; but
+
+    'O love! thou bottomless abyss,
+     My sins are swallowed up in thee.'
+
+'I will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.' The depths of
+Christ's love go down beneath all human necessity, sorrow, suffering,
+and sin.
+
+IV. And lastly, what is the height of the love of Christ?
+
+We found that the way to measure the depth was to begin at the Throne,
+and go down to the Cross, and to the foul abysses of evil. The way to
+measure the height is to begin at the Cross and the foul abysses of
+evil, and to go up to the Throne. That is to say, the topmost thing in
+the Universe, the shining apex and pinnacle, glittering away up there in
+the radiant unsetting light, is the love of God in Jesus Christ. Other
+conceptions of that divine nature spring high above us and tower beyond
+our thoughts, but the summit of them all, the very topmost as it is the
+very bottommost, outside of everything, and therefore high above
+everything, is the love of God which has been revealed to us all, and
+brought close to us sinful men in the manhood and passion of our dear
+Christ.
+
+And that love which thus towers above us, and gleams like the shining
+cross on the top of some lofty cathedral spire, does not flash up there
+inaccessible, nor lie before us like some pathless precipice, up which
+nothing that has not wings can ever hope to rise, but the height of the
+love of Christ is an hospitable height, which can be scaled by us. Nay,
+rather, that heaven of love which is 'higher than our thoughts,' bends
+down, as by a kind of optical delusion the physical heaven seems to do
+towards each of us, only with this blessed difference, that in the
+natural world the place where heaven touches earth is always the
+furthest point of distance from us: and in the spiritual world the place
+where heaven stoops to me is always right over my head, and the nearest
+possible point to me. He has come to lift us to Himself, and this is the
+height of His love, that it bears us, if we will, up and up to sit upon
+that throne where He Himself is enthroned.
+
+So, brethren, Christ's love is round about us all, as some sunny
+tropical sea may embosom in its violet waves a multitude of luxuriant
+and happy islets. So all of us, islanded on our little individual lives,
+lie in that great ocean of love, all the dimensions of which are
+immeasurable, and which stretches above, beneath, around, shoreless,
+tideless, bottomless, endless.
+
+But, remember, this ocean of love you can shut out of your lives. It is
+possible to plunge a jar into mid-Atlantic, further than soundings have
+ever descended, and to bring it up on deck as dry inside as if it had
+been lying on an oven. It is possible for men and women--and I have them
+listening to me at this moment--to live and move and have their being in
+that sea of love, and never to have let one drop of its richest gifts
+into their hearts or their lives. Open your hearts for Him to come in,
+by humble faith in His great sacrifice for you. For if Christ dwell in
+your heart by faith, then and only then will experience be your guide;
+and you will be able to comprehend the boundless greatness, the endless
+duration, and absolute perfection, and to know the love of Christ which
+passeth knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+THE CLIMAX OF ALL PRAYER
+
+     'That ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.'--Eph.
+     iii. 19.
+
+
+The Apostle's many-linked prayer, which we have been considering in
+successive sermons, has reached its height. It soars to the very Throne
+of God. There can be nothing above or beyond this wonderful petition.
+Rather, it might seem as if it were too much to ask, and as if, in the
+ecstasy of prayer, Paul had forgotten the limits that separate the
+creature from the Creator, as well as the experience of sinful and
+imperfect men, and had sought to 'wind himself too high for mortal life
+beneath the sky.' And yet Paul's prayers are God's promises; and we are
+justified in taking these rapturous petitions as being distinct
+declarations of God's desire and purpose for each of us; as being the
+end which He had in view in the unspeakable gift of His Son; and as
+being the certain outcome of His gracious working on all believing
+hearts.
+
+It seems at first a paradoxical impossibility; looked at more deeply and
+carefully it becomes a possibility for each of us, and therefore a duty;
+a certainty for all the redeemed in fullest measure hereafter; and,
+alas! a rebuke to our low lives and feeble expectations. Let us look,
+then, at the petition, with the desire of sounding, as we may, its
+depths and realising its preciousness.
+
+I. First of all, think with me of the significance of this prayer.
+
+'The fulness of God' is another expression for the whole sum and
+aggregate of all the energies, powers, and attributes of the divine
+nature, the total Godhead in its plenitude and abundance.
+
+'God is love,' we say. What does that mean, but that God desires to
+impart His whole self to the creatures whom He loves? What is love in
+its lofty and purest forms, even as we see them here on earth; what is
+love except the infinite longing to bestow one's self? And when we
+proclaim that which is the summit and climax of the revelation of our
+Father in the person of His Son, and say with the last utterances of
+Scripture that 'God is love,' we do in other words proclaim that the
+very nature and deepest desire and purpose of the divine heart is to
+pour itself on the emptiness and need of His lowly creatures in floods
+that keep back nothing. Lofty, wonderful, incomprehensible to the mere
+understanding as this thought may be, clearly it is the inmost meaning
+of all that Scripture tells us about God as being the 'portion of His
+people,' and about us, as being by Christ and in Christ 'heirs of God,'
+and possessors of Himself.
+
+We have, then, as the promise that gleams from these great words, this
+wonderful prospect, that the divine love, truth, holiness, joy, in all
+their rich plenitude of all-sufficient abundance, may be showered upon
+us. The whole Godhead is our possession; for the fulness of God is no
+far-off remote treasure that lies beyond human grasp and outside of
+human experience. Do not we believe that, to use the words of this
+Apostle in another letter, 'it pleased the Father that in Him should all
+the fulness dwell'? Do we not believe that, to use the words of the same
+epistle, 'In Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily'? Is
+not that abundance of the resources of the whole Deity insphered and
+incarnated in Jesus Christ our Lord, that it may be near us, and that we
+may put out our hand and touch it? This may be a paradox for the
+understanding, full of metaphysical puzzles and cobwebs, but for the
+heart that knows Christ, most true and precious. God is gathered into
+Jesus Christ, and all the fulness of God, whatever that may mean, is
+embodied in the Man Christ Jesus, that from Him it may be communicated
+to every soul that will.
+
+For, to quote other words of another of the New Testament teachers, 'Of
+His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace,' and to quote
+words in another part of the same epistle, we may 'all come to a perfect
+man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.' High
+above us, then, and inaccessible though that awful thought, 'the fulness
+of God,' may seem, as the zenith of the unscaleable heavens seems to us
+poor creatures creeping here upon the flat earth, it comes near, near,
+near, ever nearer, and at last tabernacles among us, when we think that
+in Him all the fulness dwells, and it comes nearer yet and enters into
+our hearts when we think that 'of His fulness have we all received.'
+
+Then, still further, observe another of the words in this
+petition:--'That ye may be filled.' That is to say, Paul's prayer and
+God's purpose and desire concerning us is, that our whole being may be
+so saturated and charged with an indwelling divinity as that there shall
+be no room in our present stature and capacity for more, and no sense of
+want or aching emptiness.
+
+Ah, brethren! when we think of how eagerly we have drunk at the stinking
+puddles of earth, and how after every draught there has yet been left a
+thirst that was pain, it is something for us to hear Him say:--'The
+water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up
+into everlasting life,'--and 'he that drinketh of this water shall never
+thirst.' Our empty hearts, with their experiences of the insufficiency
+and the vanity of all earthly satisfaction, stand there like the
+water-pots at the rustic marriage, and the Master says, 'Fill them to
+the brim.' And then, by His touch, the water of our poor savourless,
+earthly enjoyments is transmuted and elevated into the new wine of His
+Kingdom. We may be filled, satisfied with the fulness of God.
+
+There is another point as to the significance of this prayer, on which I
+must briefly touch. As our Revised Version will tell you, the literal
+rendering of my text is, 'filled _unto_' (not exactly _with_) 'all the
+fulness of God'; which suggests the idea not of a completed work but of
+a process, and of a growing process, as if more and more of that great
+fulness might pass into a man. Suppose a number of vessels, according to
+the old illustration about degrees of glory in heaven; they are each
+full, but the quantity that one contains is much less than that which
+the other may hold. Add to the illustration that the vessels can grow,
+and that filling makes them grow; as a shrunken bladder when you pass
+gas into it will expand and round itself out, and all the creases will
+be smoothed away. Such is the Apostle's idea here, that a process of
+filling goes on which may satisfy the then desires, because it fills us
+up to the then capacities of our spirits; but in the very process of so
+filling and satisfying makes those spirits capable of containing larger
+measures of His fulness, which therefore flow into it. Such, as I take
+it, in rude and faint outline, is the significance of this great prayer.
+
+II. Now turn, in the next place, to consider briefly the possibility of
+the accomplishments of this petition.
+
+As I said, it sounds as if it were too much to desire. Certainly no wish
+can go beyond this wish. The question is, can a sane and humble wish go
+as far as this; and can a man pray such a prayer with any real belief
+that he will get it answered here and now? I say yes!
+
+There are two difficulties that at once start up.
+
+People will say, does such a prayer as this upon man's lips not forget
+the limits that bound the creature's capacity? Can the finite contain
+the Infinite?
+
+Well, that is a verbal puzzle, and I answer, yes! The finite can contain
+the Infinite, if you are talking about two hearts that love, one of them
+God's and one of them mine. We have got to keep very clear and distinct
+before our minds the broad, firm line of demarcation between the
+creature and the Creator, or else we get into a pantheistic region where
+both creature and Creator expire. But there is a Christian as well as an
+atheistic pantheism, and as long as we retain clearly in our minds the
+consciousness of the personal distinction between God and His child, so
+as that the child can turn round and say, 'I love Thee' and God can look
+down and say, 'I bless thee'; then all identification and mutual
+indwelling and impartation from Him of Himself are possible, and are
+held forth as the aim and end of Christian life.
+
+Of course in a mere abstract and philosophical sense the Infinite cannot
+be contained by the finite; and attributes which express infinity, like
+omnipresence and omniscience and omnipotence and so on, indicate things
+in God that we can know but little about, and that cannot be
+communicated. But those are not the divinest things in God. 'God is
+love.' Do you believe that that saying unveils the deepest things in
+Him? God is light, 'and in Him is no darkness at all.' Do you believe
+that His light and His love are nearer the centre than these attributes
+of power and infinitude? If we believe that, then we can come back to my
+text and say, 'The love, which is Thee, can come into me; the light,
+which is Thee, can pour itself into my darkness; the holiness, which is
+Thee, can enter into my impurity. The heaven of heavens cannot contain
+Thee. Thou dwellest in the humble and in the contrite heart.'
+
+So, dear brethren, the old legends about mighty forms that contracted
+their stature and bowed their divine heads to enter into some poor man's
+hut, and sit there, are simple Christian realities. And instead of
+puzzling ourselves with metaphysical difficulties which are mere
+shadows, and the work of the understanding or the spawn of words, let us
+listen to the Christ when He says, 'We will come unto him and make our
+abode with him' and believe that it was no impossibility which fired the
+Apostle's hope when he prayed, and in praying prophesied, that we might
+be filled with all the fulness of God.
+
+Then there is another difficulty that rises before our minds; and
+Christian men say, 'How is it possible, in this region of imperfection,
+compassed with infirmity and sin as we are, that such hopes should be
+realised for us here?' Well, I would rather answer that question by
+retorting and saying: 'How is it possible that such a prayer should have
+come from inspired lips unless the thing that Paul was asking might be?'
+Did he waste his breath when he thus prayed? Are we not as Christian men
+bound, instead of measuring our expectations by our attainments, to try
+to stretch our attainments to what are our legitimate expectations, and
+to hear in these words the answer to the faithless and unbelieving doubt
+whether such a thing is possible, and the assurance that it is possible.
+
+An impossibility can never be a duty, and yet we are commanded: 'Be ye
+perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.' An impossibility can
+never be a duty, and yet we are commanded to let Christ abide in our
+hearts.
+
+Oh! if we believed less in the power of our sin it would have less power
+upon us. If we believed more in the power of an indwelling Christ He
+would have more power within us. If we said to ourselves, 'It is
+possible,' we should make it possible. The impossibility arises only
+from our own weakness, from our own sinful weakness; and though it may
+be true, and is true, that none of us will live without sin as long as
+we abide here, it is also true that each moment of interruption of our
+communion with Christ and therefore each moment of interruption of that
+being 'filled with the fulness of God,' might have been avoided. We know
+about every such time that we could have helped it if we had liked, and
+it is no use bringing any general principles about sin cleaving to men
+in order to break the force of that conviction. But if that conviction
+be a real one, and if whenever a Christian man loses the consciousness
+of God in his heart, making him blessed, he is obliged to say: 'It was
+my own fault and Thou wouldst have stayed if I had chosen,' then there
+follows from this, that it is possible, notwithstanding all the
+imperfection and sin of earth, that we may be 'filled with all the
+fulness of God.'
+
+So, dear brethren, take you this prayer as the standard of your
+expectations; and oh! take it as we must all take it, as the sharpest of
+rebukes to our actual attainments in holiness and in likeness to our
+Master. Set by the side of these wondrous and solemn words--'filled with
+the fulness of God,' the facts of the lives of the average professing
+Christians of this generation, and of this congregation; their
+emptiness, their ignorance of the divine indwelling, their want of
+anything in their experience that corresponds in the least degree to
+such words as these. Judge whether a man is not more likely to be bowed
+down in wholesome sense of his own sinfulness and unworthiness, if he
+has before him such an ideal as this of my text, than if it, too, has
+faded out of his life. I believe, for my part, that one great cause of
+the worldliness and the sinfulness and mechanical formalities that are
+eating the life out of the Christianity of this generation is the fact
+of the Church having largely lost any real belief in the possibility
+that Christian men may possess the fulness of God as their present
+experience. And so, when they do not find it in themselves they say:
+'Oh! it is all right; it is the necessary result of our imperfect
+fleshly condition.' No! It is all wrong; and His purpose is that we
+should possess Him in the fulness of His gladdening and hallowing power,
+at every moment in our happy lives.
+
+III. One word to close with, as to the means by which this prayer may be
+fulfilled.
+
+Remember, it comes as the last link in a chain. I shall have wasted my
+breath for a month, as far as you are concerned, if you do not feel that
+the preceding links are needful before this can be attained.
+
+But I only touch upon the nearest of them and remind you that it must be
+Christ dwelling in our hearts, that fills them with the fulness of God.
+Where He comes God comes. And where does He come? He comes where faith
+opens the door for Him. If you will trust Jesus Christ, if you will
+distrust yourselves, if you will turn your thoughts and your hearts to
+Him, if you will let Him come into your souls, and not shut Him out
+because your souls are so full that there is no room for Him there, then
+when He comes He will not come empty-handed, but will bring the full
+Godhead with Him.
+
+There must be the emptying of self, if there is to be the filling with
+God. And the emptying of self is realised in that faith which forsakes
+self-confidence, self-righteousness, self-dependence, self-control,
+self-pleasing, and yields itself wholly to the dear Lord.
+
+There is another condition that is required, and that is the previous
+link in this braided chain. The conscious experience of the love which
+is in Christ will bring to us 'the fulness of God.' Love is power; love
+is God; and when we live in the sense and experience of God's love to us
+then we have the power and we have the God. It is as in some of these
+petrifying streams, the water is charged with particles which it
+deposits upon everything that is laid in its course. So, if we plunge
+our hearts into that fountain of the love of Christ, as it flows it will
+clothe us with all the divine energies which are held in solution in the
+divinest thing in God--His own love. Plunged into the love we are filled
+with the fulness.
+
+Then keep near your Master. It all comes to that. Meditate upon Him; do
+not let days pass, as they do pass, without a thought being turned to
+Him. Do not go about your daily work without a remembrance of Him. Keep
+yourselves in Christ. Seek to experience His love, that love which
+passeth knowledge, and is only known by them who possess it. And then,
+as the old painters with deep truth used to paint the Apostle of Love
+with a face like his Master, living near Christ and looking upon Him you
+will receive of His fulness, and 'we all, with open face, beholding the
+glory, shall be changed into the glory.'
+
+
+
+
+MEASURELESS POWER AND ENDLESS GLORY
+
+     'Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all
+     that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
+     21. Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all
+     ages, world without end. Amen.'--Eph. iii. 20, 21.
+
+
+One purpose and blessing of faithful prayer is to enlarge the desires
+which it expresses, and to make us think more loftily of the grace to
+which we appeal. So the Apostle, in the wonderful series of
+supplications which precedes the text, has found his thought of what he
+may hope for his brethren at Ephesus grow greater with every clause. His
+prayer rises like some songbird, in ever-widening sweeps, each higher in
+the blue, and nearer the throne; and at each a sweeter, fuller note.
+
+'Strengthened with might by His Spirit'; 'that Christ may dwell in your
+hearts by faith'; 'that ye may be able to know the love of Christ';
+'that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.' Here he touches
+the very throne. Beyond that nothing can be conceived. But though that
+sublime petition may be the end of thought, it is not the end of faith.
+Though God can give us nothing more than it is, He can give us more than
+we think it to be, and more than we ask, when we ask this. Therefore the
+grand doxology of our text crowns and surpasses even this great prayer.
+The higher true prayer climbs, the wider is its view; and the wider is
+its view, the more conscious is it that the horizon of its vision is far
+within the borders of the goodly land. And as we gaze into what we can
+discern of the fulness of God, prayer will melt into thanksgiving and
+the doxology for the swift answer will follow close upon the last words
+of supplication. So is it here; so it may be always.
+
+The form of our text then marks the confidence of Paul's prayer. The
+exuberant fervour of his faith, as well as his natural impetuosity and
+ardour, comes out in the heaped-up words expressive of immensity and
+duration. He is like some archer watching, with parted lips, the flight
+of his arrow to the mark. He is gazing on God confident that he has not
+asked in vain. Let us look with him, that we, too, may be heartened to
+expect great things of God. Notice then--
+
+I. The measure of the power to which we trust.
+
+This epistle is remarkable for its frequent references to the divine
+rule, or standard, or measure, in accordance with which the great facts
+of redemption take place. The 'things on the earth'--the historical
+processes by which salvation is brought to men and works in men--are
+ever traced up to the 'things in heaven'; the divine counsels from which
+they have come forth. That phrase, 'according to,' is perpetually
+occurring in this connection in the epistle. It is applied mainly in two
+directions. It serves sometimes to bring into view the ground, or
+reason, of the redemptive facts, as, for instance, in the expression
+that these take place 'according to His good pleasure which He hath
+purposed in Himself' It serves sometimes to bring into view the measure
+by which the working of these redemptive facts is determined; as in our
+text, and in many other places.
+
+Now there are three main forms under which this standard, or measure, of
+the Redeeming Power is set forth in this epistle, and it will help us to
+grasp the greatness of the Apostle's thought if we consider these.
+
+Take, then, first, that clause in the earlier portion of the preceding
+prayer, 'that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory.'
+The measure, then, of the gift that we may hope to receive is the
+measure of God's own fulness. The 'riches of His glory' can be nothing
+less than the whole uncounted abundance of that majestic and far-shining
+Nature, as it pours itself forth in the dazzling perfectness of its own
+Self-manifestation. And nothing less than this great treasure is to be
+the limit and standard of His gift to us. We are the sons of the King,
+and the allowance which He makes us even before we come to our
+inheritance is proportionate to our Father's wealth. The same stupendous
+thought is given us in that prayer, heavy with the blessed weight of
+unspeakable gifts, 'that ye might be filled with all the fulness of
+God.' This, then, is the measure of the grace that we may possess. This
+limitless limit alone bounds the possibilities for every man, the
+certainties for every Christian.
+
+The effect must be proportioned to the cause. And what effect will be
+adequate as the outcome of such a cause as 'the riches of His glory'?
+Nothing short of absolute perfectness, the full transmutation of our
+dark, cold being into the reflected image of His own burning brightness,
+the ceaseless replenishing of our own spirits with all graces and
+gladnesses akin to His, the eternal growth of the soul upward and
+Godward. Perfection is the sign manual of God in all His works, just as
+imperfection and the falling below our thought and wish is our 'token in
+every epistle' and deed of ours. Take the finest needle, and put it
+below a microscope, and it will be all ragged and irregular, the fine,
+tapering lines will be broken by many a bulge and bend, and the point
+blunt and clumsy. Put the blade of grass to the same test, and see how
+regular its outline, how delicate and true the spear-head of its point.
+God's work is perfect, man's is clumsy and incomplete. God does not
+leave off till He has finished. When He rests, it is because, looking on
+His work, He sees it all 'very good.' His Sabbath is the Sabbath of an
+achieved purpose, of a fulfilled counsel. The palaces which we build
+are ever like that one in the story, where one window remains dark and
+unjewelled, while the rest blaze in beauty. But when God builds, none
+can say, 'He was not able to finish.' In His great palace He makes her
+'windows of agates' and _all_ her 'borders of pleasant stones.'
+
+So we have a right to enlarge our desires and stretch our confidence of
+what we may possess and become to this, His boundless bound--'The riches
+of glory.'
+
+But another form in which the standard, or measure, is stated in this
+letter is: 'The working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ,
+when He raised Him from the dead' (i. 19, 20); or, as it is put with a
+modification, 'grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ'
+(iv. 7). That is to say, we have not only the whole riches of the divine
+glory as the measure to which we may lift our hopes, but lest that
+celestial brightness should seem too high above us, and too far from us,
+we have Christ in His human-divine manifestation, and especially in the
+great fact of the Resurrection, set before us, that by Him we may learn
+what God wills we should become. The former phase of the standard may
+sound abstract, cloudy, hard to connect with any definite anticipations;
+and so this form of it is concrete, historical, and gives human features
+to the fair ideal. His Resurrection is the high-water mark of the divine
+power, and to the same level it will rise again in regard to every
+Christian. The Lord, in the glory of His risen life, and in the riches
+of the gifts which He received when He ascended up on high, is the
+pattern for us, and the power which fulfils its own pattern. In Him we
+see what man may become, and what His followers must become. The limits
+of that power will not be reached until every Christian soul is
+perfectly assimilated to that likeness, and bears all its beauty in its
+face, nor till every Christian soul is raised to participation in
+Christ's dignity and sits on His throne. Then, and not till then, shall
+the purpose of God be fulfilled and the gift which is measured by the
+riches of the Father's glory, and the fulness of the Son's grace, be
+possessed or conceived in its measureless measure.
+
+But there is a third form in which this same standard is represented.
+That is the form which is found in our text, and in other places of the
+epistle: 'According to the power that worketh in us.'
+
+What power is that but the power of the Spirit of God dwelling in us?
+And thus we have the measure, or standard, set forth in terms
+respectively applying to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. For
+the first, the riches of His glory; for the second, His Resurrection and
+Ascension; for the third, His energy working in Christian souls. The
+first carries us up into the mysteries of God, where the air is almost
+too subtle for our gross lungs; the second draws nearer to earth and
+points us to an historical fact that happened in this everyday world;
+the third comes still nearer to us, and bids us look within, and see
+whether what we are conscious of there, if we interpret it by the light
+of these other measures, will not yield results as great as theirs, and
+open before us the same fair prospect of perfect holiness and conformity
+to the divine nature.
+
+There is already a Power at work within us, if we be Christians, of
+whose workings we may be aware, and from them forecast the measure of
+the gifts which it can bestow upon us. We may estimate what will be by
+what we know has been, and by what we feel is. That is to say, in other
+words, the effects already produced, and the experiences we have already
+had, carry in them the pledge of completeness.
+
+I suppose that if the mediæval dream had ever come true, and an
+alchemist had ever turned a grain of lead into gold, he could have
+turned all the lead in the world in time, and with crucibles and
+furnaces enough. The first step is all the difficulty, and if you and I
+have been changed from enemies into sons, and had one spark of love to
+God kindled in our hearts, that is a mightier change than any that
+remains to be effected in order to make us perfect. One grain has been
+changed, the whole mass will be so in due time.
+
+The present operations of that power carry in them the pledge of their
+own completion. The strange mingling of good and evil in our present
+nature, our aspirations so crossed and contradicted, our resolution so
+broken and falsified, the gleams of light, and the eclipses that
+follow--all these in their opposition to each other, are plainly
+transitory, and the workings of that Power within us, though they be
+often overborne, are as plainly the stronger in their nature, and meant
+to conquer and to endure. Like some half-hewn block, such as travellers
+find in long abandoned quarries, whence Egyptian temples, that were
+destined never to be completed, were built, our spirits are but partly
+'polished after the similitude of a palace,' while much remains in the
+rough. The builders of these temples have mouldered away and their
+unfinished handiwork will lie as it was when the last chisel touched it
+centuries ago, till the crack of doom; but stones for God's temple will
+be wrought to completeness and set in their places. The whole threefold
+divine cause of our salvation supplies the measure, and lays the
+foundation for our hopes, in the glory of the Father, the grace of the
+Son, the power of the Holy Ghost. Let us lift up our cry: 'Perfect that
+which concerneth me, forsake not the works of thine own hands,' and we
+shall have for answer the ancient word, fresh as when it sounded long
+ago from among the stars to the sleeper at the ladder's foot, 'I will
+not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.'
+
+II. Notice the relation of the divine working to our thoughts and
+desires.
+
+The Apostle in his fervid way strains language to express how far the
+possibility of the divine working extends. He is able, not only to do
+all things, but 'beyond all things'--a vehement way of putting the
+boundless reach of that gracious power. And what he means by this
+'beyond all things' is more fully expressed in the next words, in which
+he labours by accumulating synonyms to convey his sense of the
+transcendent energy which waits to bless: 'exceeding abundantly above
+what we ask.' And as, alas! our desires are but shrunken and narrow
+beside our thoughts, he sweeps a wider orbit when he adds 'above what we
+_think_.' He has been asking wonderful things, and yet even his
+farthest-reaching petitions fall far on this side of the greatness of
+God's power. One might think that even it could go no further than
+filling us 'with all the fulness of God.' Nor can it; but it may far
+transcend our conceptions of what that is, and astonish us by its
+surpassing our thoughts, no less than it shames us by exceeding our
+prayers.
+
+Of course, all this is true, and is meant to apply, only about the
+inward gifts of God's grace. I need not remind you that, in the outer
+world of Providence and earthly gifts, prayers and wishes often surpass
+the answers; that there a deeper wisdom often contradicts our thoughts
+and a truer kindness refuses our petitions, and that so the rapturous
+words of our text are only true in a very modified and partial sense
+about God's working _for_ us in the world. It is His work _in_ us
+concerning which they are absolutely true.
+
+Of course we know that in all regions of His working He is _able_ to
+surpass our poor human conceptions, and that, properly speaking, the
+most familiar, and, as we insolently call them, 'smallest' of His works
+holds in it a mystery--were it none other than the mystery of
+Being--against which Thought has been breaking its teeth ever since men
+began to think at all.
+
+But as regards the working of God on our spiritual lives, this passing
+beyond the bounds of thought and desire is but the necessary result of
+the fact already dealt with, that the only measure of the power is God
+Himself, in that Threefold Being. That being so, no plummet of our
+making can reach to the bottom of the abyss; no strong-winged thought
+can fly to the outermost bound of the encircling heaven. Widely as we
+stretch our reverent conceptions, there is ever something beyond. After
+we have resolved many a dim nebula in the starry sky, and found it all
+ablaze with suns and worlds, there will still hang, faint and far before
+us, hazy magnificences which we have not apprehended. Confidently and
+boldly as we may offer our prayers, and largely as we may expect, the
+answer is ever more than the petition. For indeed, in every act of His
+quickening grace, in every God-given increase of our knowledge of God,
+in every bestowment of His fulness, there is always more bestowed than
+we receive, more than we know even while we possess it. Like some gift
+given in the dark, its true preciousness is not discerned when it is
+first received. The gleam of the gold does not strike our eye all at
+once. There is ever an unknown margin felt by us to be over after our
+capacity of receiving is exhausted. 'And they took up of the fragments
+that remained, twelve baskets full.'
+
+So, then, let us remember that while our thoughts and prayers can never
+reach to the full perception, or reception either, of the gift, the
+exuberant amplitude with which it reaches far beyond both is meant to
+draw both after it. And let us not forget either that, while the grace
+which we receive has no limit or measure but the fulness of God, the
+working limit, which determines what we receive of the grace, is these
+very thoughts and wishes which it surpasses. We may have as much of God
+as we can hold, as much as we wish. All Niagara may roar past a man's
+door, but only as much as he diverts through his own sluice will drive
+his mill, or quench his thirst. God's grace is like the figures in the
+Eastern tales, that will creep into a narrow room no bigger than a
+nutshell, or will tower heaven high. Our spirits are like the magic tent
+whose walls expanded or contracted at the owner's wish--we may enlarge
+them to enclose far more of the grace than we have ever possessed. We
+are not straitened in God, but in ourselves. He is 'able to do exceeding
+abundantly above what we ask or think.' Therefore let us stretch desires
+and thoughts to their utmost, remembering that, while they can never
+reach the measure of His grace in itself, they make the practical
+measure of our possession of it. 'According to thy faith' is the real
+measure of the gift received, even though 'according to the riches of
+His glory' be the measure of the gift bestowed. Note, again,
+
+III. The glory that springs from the divine work.
+
+'The glory of God' is the lustre of His own perfect character, the
+bright sum total of all the blended brilliances that compose His name.
+When that light is welcomed and adored by men, they are said to 'give
+glory to God,' and this doxology is at once a prophecy that the working
+of God's power on His redeemed children will issue in setting forth the
+radiance of His Name yet more, and a prayer that it may. So we have here
+the great thought expressed in many places of Scripture, that the
+highest exhibition of the divine character for the reverence and
+love--of the whole universe, shall we say?--lies in His work on
+Christian souls, and the effect produced thereby on them. God takes His
+stand, so to speak, on this great fact in His dealings, and will have
+His creatures estimate Him by it. He reckons it His highest praise that
+He has redeemed men, and by His dwelling in them fills them with His own
+fulness. And this chiefest praise and brightest glory accrues to Him 'in
+the Church in Christ Jesus.' The weakening of the latter word into _by_
+Christ Jesus,' as in the English version, is to be regretted, as
+substituting another thought, Scriptural no doubt and precious, for the
+precise shade of meaning in the Apostle's mind here. As has been well
+said, 'the first words denote the outward province; the second, the
+inward and spiritual sphere in which God was to be praised.' His glory
+is to shine in the Church, the theatre of His power, the standing
+demonstration of the might of redeeming love. By this He will be judged,
+and this He will point to if any ask what is His divinest work, which
+bears the clearest imprint of His divinest self. His glory is to be set
+forth by men on condition that they are 'in Christ,' living and moving
+in Him, in that mysterious but most real union without which no fruit
+grows on the dead branches, nor any music of praise breaks from the dead
+lips.
+
+So, then, think of that wonder that God sets His glory in His dealings
+with us. Amid all the majesty of His works and all the blaze of His
+creation, this is what He presents as the highest specimen of His
+power--the Church of Jesus Christ, the company of poor men, wearied and
+conscious of many evils, who follow afar off the footsteps of their
+Lord. How dusty and toil-worn the little group of Christians that landed
+at Puteoli must have looked as they toiled along the Appian Way and
+entered Rome! How contemptuously emperor and philosopher and priest and
+patrician would have curled their lips, if they had been told that in
+that little knot of Jewish prisoners lay a power before which theirs
+would cower and finally fade! Even so is it still. Among all the
+splendours of this great universe, and the mere obtrusive tawdrinesses
+of earth, men look upon us Christians as poor enough; and yet it is to
+His redeemed children that God has entrusted His praise, and in their
+hands that He has lodged the sacred deposit of His own glory.
+
+Think loftily of that office and honour, lowly of yourselves who have it
+laid upon you as a crown. His honour is in our hands. We are the
+'secretaries of His praise.' This is the highest function that any
+creature can discharge. The Rabbis have a beautiful bit of teaching
+buried among their rubbish about angels. They say that there are two
+kinds of angels--the angels of service and the angels of praise, of
+which two orders the latter is the higher, and that no angel in it
+praises God twice, but having once lifted up his voice in the psalm of
+heaven, then perishes and ceases to be. He has perfected his being, he
+has reached the height of his greatness, he has done what he was made
+for, let him fade away. The garb of legend is mean enough, but the
+thought it embodies is that ever true and solemn one, without which life
+is nought--'Man's chief end is to glorify God.'
+
+And we can only fulfil that high purpose in the measure of our union
+with Christ. 'In Him' abiding, we manifest God's glory, for in Him
+abiding we receive God's grace. So long as we are joined to Him, we
+partake of His life, and our lives become music and praise. The electric
+current flows from Him through all souls that are 'in Him' and they glow
+with fair colours which they owe to their contact with Jesus. Interrupt
+the communication, and all is darkness. So, brethren, let us seek to
+abide in Him, severed from whom we are nothing. Then shall we fulfil the
+purpose of His love, who 'hath shined in our hearts' that we might give
+to others 'the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
+Jesus Christ' Notice, lastly,
+
+IV. The eternity of the work and of the praise.
+
+As in the former clauses the idea of the transcendent greatness of the
+power of God was expressed by accumulated synonyms, so here the kindred
+thought of its eternity, and consequently of the ceaseless duration of
+the resulting glory, is sought to be set forth by a similar aggregation.
+The language creaks and labours, as it were, under the weight of the
+great conception. Literally rendered, the words are--'to all
+generations of the age of the ages'--a remarkable fusing together of two
+expressions for unbounded duration, which are scarcely congruous. We can
+understand 'to all generations' as expressive of duration as long as
+birth and death shall last. We can understand 'the age of the ages' as
+pointing to that endless epoch whose moments are 'ages'; but the
+blending of the two is but an unconscious acknowledgment that the speech
+of earth, saturated, as it is, with the colouring of time, breaks down
+in the attempt to express the thought of eternity. Undoubtedly that
+solemn conception is the one intended by this strange phrase.
+
+The work is to go on for ever and ever, and with it the praise. As the
+ages which are the beats of the pendulum of eternity come and go, more
+and more of God's power will flow out to us, and more and more of God's
+glory will be manifested in us. It must be so; for God's gift is
+infinite, and man's capacity of reception is indefinitely capable of
+increase. Therefore eternity will be needful in order that redeemed
+souls may absorb all of God which He can give or they can take. The
+process has no limits, for there is no bound to be set to the possible
+approaches of the human spirit to the divine, and none to the exuberant
+abundance of the beauty and glory which God will give to His child.
+Therefore we shall live for ever: and for ever show forth His praise and
+blaze out like the sun with the irradiation of His glory. We cannot die
+till we have exhausted God. Till we comprehend all His nature in our
+thoughts, and reflect all His beauty in our character; till we have
+attained all the bliss that we can think, and received all the good that
+we can ask; till Hope has nothing before her to reach towards, and God
+is left behind: we 'shall not die, but live, and declare the works of
+the Lord.'
+
+Let His grace work on you, and yield yourselves to Him, that His fulness
+may fill your emptiness. So on earth we shall be delivered from hopes
+which mock and wishes that are never fulfilled. So in heaven, after
+'ages of ages' of growing glory, we shall have to say, as each new wave
+of the shoreless, sunlit sea bears us onward, 'It doth not yet appear
+what we shall be.'
+
+
+
+
+THE CALLING AND THE KINGDOM
+
+     'I beseech you, that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye
+      are called.'--Eph. iv. 1.
+
+     'They shall walk with Me in white; for they are worthy.'--Rev.
+      iii. 4.
+
+
+The estimate formed of a centurion by the elders of the Jews was, 'He is
+worthy for whom Thou shouldst do this' and in contrast therewith the
+estimate formed by himself was, 'I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come
+under my roof.' From these two statements we deduce the thought that
+merit has no place in the Christian's salvation, but all is to be traced
+to undeserved, gracious love. But that principle, true and all-important
+as it is, like every other great truth, may be exaggerated, and may be
+so isolated as to become untrue and a source of much evil. And so I
+desire to turn to the other side of the shield, and to emphasise the
+place that worthiness has in the Christian life, and its personal
+results both here and hereafter. To say that character has nothing to do
+with blessedness is untrue, both to conscience and to the Christian
+revelation; and however we trace all things to grace, we must also
+remember that we get what we have fitted ourselves for.
+
+Now, my two texts bring out two aspects which have to be taken in
+conjunction. The one of them speaks about the present life, and lays it
+as an imperative obligation on all Christian people to be worthy of
+their Christianity, and the other carries us into the future and shows
+us that there it is they who are 'worthy' who attain to the Kingdom. So
+I think I shall best bring out what I desire to emphasise if I just take
+these two points--the Christian calling and the life that is worthy of
+it, and the Christian heaven and the life that is worthy of it.
+
+I. The Christian calling and the life that is worthy of it.
+
+'I beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are
+called.' Now, that thought recurs in other places in the Apostle's
+writings, somewhat modified in expression. For instance, in one passage
+he speaks of 'walking worthily of the God who has called us to His
+kingdom and glory,' and in another of the Christian man's duty to 'walk
+worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing.' There is a certain vocation to
+which a Christian man is bound to make his life correspond, and his
+conduct should be in some measure worthy of the ideal that is set before
+it. Now, we shall best understand what is involved in such worthiness if
+we make clear to ourselves what the Apostle means by this 'calling' to
+which he appeals as containing in itself a standard to which our lives
+are to be conformed.
+
+Suppose we try to put away the technical word 'calling' and instead of
+'calling' say 'summons,' which is nearer the idea, because it conveys
+the notions more fully of the urgency of the voice, and of the
+authority of the voice, which speaks to us. And what is that summons?
+How do we hear it? One of the other Apostles speaks of God as calling us
+'by His own glory and virtue,' that is to say, wherever God reveals
+Himself in any fashion, and by any medium, to a man, the man fails to
+understand the deepest meaning of the revelation unless his purged ear
+hears in it the great voice saying, 'Come up hither.' For all God's
+self-manifestation, in the creatures around us, in the deep voice of our
+own souls, in the mysteries of our own personal lives, and in the slow
+evolution of His purpose through the history of the world, all these
+revelations of God bear in them the summons to us that hear and see them
+to draw near to Him, and to mould ourselves into His likeness. And thus,
+just as the sun by the effluence of its beams gathers all the
+ministering planets, as it were, round its feet, and draws them to
+itself, so God, raying Himself out into the waste, fills the waste with
+magnetic influences which are meant to draw men to nobleness, goodness,
+God-pleasingness, and God-likeness.
+
+But in another place in this Apostle's writings we read of 'the high
+calling of God in Christ Jesus.' Yes, there, as focussed into one strong
+voice, all the summonses are concentrated and gathered. For in Jesus
+Christ we see the possibilities of humanity realised, and we have the
+pattern of what we ought to be, and are called thereby to be. And in
+Christ we get the great motives which make this summons, as it comes
+mended from His lips, no longer the mere harsh voice of an authoritative
+legislator, but the gentle invitation, 'Come unto Me, ... and ye shall
+find rest unto your souls.' The summons is honeyed, sweetened, and made
+infinitely mightier when we hear it from His gracious lips. It is the
+blessed peculiarity of the Christian ideal, that the manifestation of
+the ideal carries with it the power to realise it. And just as the
+increasing strength of the spring sunshine summons the buds from out of
+their folds, and the snowdrops hear the call and force themselves
+through the frozen soil, so when Christ summons He inclines the ears
+that hear, and enables the men that own them to obey the summons, and to
+be what they are commanded. And thus we have 'the high calling of God in
+Christ Jesus.'
+
+Now, if that is the call, if the life of Christ is that to which we are
+summoned, and the death of Christ is that by which we are inclined to
+obey the summons, and the Spirit of Christ is that by which we are
+enabled to do so, what sort of a life will be worthy of these? Well, the
+context supplies part of the answer. 'I beseech you that ye walk worthy
+of the vocation ... with all meekness and lowliness, with
+long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.' That is one side of the
+vocation, and the life that is worthy of it will be a life emancipated
+from the meanness of selfishness, and delivered from the tumidities of
+pride and arrogance, and changed into the sweetness of gentleness and
+the royalties of love.
+
+And then, on the other side, in one of the other texts where the same
+general set of ideas is involved, we get a yet more wondrous exhibition
+of the life which the Apostle considered to be worthy. I simply
+signalise its points of detail without venturing to dwell upon them.
+'Unto all pleasing'; the first characteristic of life that is 'worthy of
+our calling' and to which, therefore, every one of us Christian people
+is imperatively bound, is that it shall, in all its parts, please God,
+and that is a large demand. Then follow details: 'Fruitful in every good
+work'--a many-sided fruitfulness, an encyclopædiacal beneficent
+activity, covering all the ground of possible excellence; and that is
+not all; 'increasing in the knowledge of God,'--a life of progressive
+acquaintance with Him; and that is not all:--'strengthened with all
+might unto all patience and long-suffering'; nor is that all, for the
+crown of the whole is 'giving thanks unto the Father.' So, then, 'ye see
+your calling, brethren.' A life that is 'worthy of the vocation
+wherewith ye are called' is a life that conforms to the divine will,
+that is 'fruitful in all good,' that is progressive in its acquaintance
+with God, that is strengthened for all patience and long-suffering, and
+that in everything is thankful to Him. That is what we are summoned to
+be, and unless we are in some measure obeying the summons, and bringing
+out such a life in our conduct, then, notwithstanding all that we have
+to say about unmerited mercy, and free grace, and undeserved love, and
+salvation being not by works but by faith, we have no right to claim the
+mercy to which we say we trust.
+
+Now, this necessity of a worthy life is perfectly harmonious with the
+great truth that, after all, every man owes all to the undeserved mercy
+of God. The more nearly we come to realise the purpose of our calling,
+the more 'worthy' of it we are, the deeper will be our consciousness of
+our unworthiness. The more we approximate to the ideal, and come closer
+up to it, and so see its features the better, the more we shall feel how
+unlike we are to it. The law for Christian progress is that the sense of
+unworthiness increases in the precise degree in which the worthiness
+increases. The same man that said, 'Of whom (sinners) I am chief,' said
+to the same reader, 'I have kept the faith, henceforth there is laid up
+for me a crown of righteousness.' And so the two things are not
+contradictory but complementary. On the one side 'worthy' has nothing to
+do with the outflow of Christ's love to us; on the other side we are to
+'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called.'
+
+II. And now, let us turn to the other thought, the Christian heaven and
+the life that is worthy of it.
+
+Some of you, I have no doubt, would think that that was a tremendous
+heresy if there were not Scriptural words to buttress it. Let us see
+what it means. My text out of the Revelation says, 'They shall walk with
+Me in white, for they are worthy.' And the same voice that spake these,
+to some of us, astounding, words, said, when He was here on earth, 'They
+which shall be counted worthy to attain to the life of the resurrection
+from the dead,' etc. The text brings out very clearly the continuity and
+congruity between the life on earth and the life in heaven. Who is it of
+whom it is said that 'they are worthy' to 'walk in white'? It is the
+'few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments.' You
+see the connection; clean robes here and shining robes hereafter; the
+two go together, and you cannot separate them. And no belief that
+salvation, in its incipient germ here, and salvation in its fulness
+hereafter, are the results 'not of works of righteousness which we have
+done, but of His mercy,' is to be allowed to interfere with that other
+truth that they who are worthy attain to the Kingdom.
+
+I must not be diverted from my main purpose, tempting as the theme would
+be, to say more than just a sentence about what is included in that
+great promise, 'They shall walk with Me in white' And if I do touch
+upon it at all, it is only in order to bring out more clearly that the
+very nature of the heavenly reward demands this worthiness which the
+text lays down as the condition of possessing it. 'They shall
+walk'--activity on an external world. That opens a great door, but
+perhaps we had better be contented just with looking in. 'They shall
+walk'--progress; 'with me'--union with Jesus Christ; 'in
+white'--resplendent purity of character. Now take these four
+things--activity on an outward universe, progress, union with Christ,
+resplendent purity of character, and you have almost all that we know of
+the future; the rest is partly doubtful and is mostly symbolical or
+negative, and in any case subordinate. Never mind about 'physical
+theories of another life'; never mind about all the questions--to some
+of us how torturing they sometimes are!--concerning that future life.
+The more we keep ourselves within the broad limits of these promises
+that are intertwined and folded up together in that one saying, 'They
+shall walk with Me in white,' the better, I think, for the sanity and
+the spirituality of our conception of a future life.
+
+That being understood, the next thing clearly follows, that only those
+who in the sense of the word as it is used here, are 'worthy,' can enter
+upon the possession of such a heaven. From the nature of the gift it is
+clear that there must be a moral and religious congruity between the
+gift and the recipient, or, to put it into plainer words, you cannot get
+heaven unless your nature is capable of receiving these great gifts
+which constitute heaven. People talk about the future state as being 'a
+state of retribution.' Well! that is not altogether a satisfactory form
+of expression, for retribution may convey the idea, such as is
+presented in earthly rewards and punishments, of there being no natural
+correspondence between the crime and its punishment, or the virtue and
+its reward. A bit of bronze shaped into the form of a cross may be the
+retribution 'For Valour,' and a prison cell may be the retribution by
+legal appointment for a certain crime. But that is not the way that God
+deals out rewards and punishments in the life which is to come. It is
+not a case of retribution, meaning thereby the arbitrary bestowment of a
+certain fixed gift in response to certain virtues, but it is a case of
+_outcome_, and the old metaphor of sowing and reaping is the true one.
+We sow here and we reap yonder. We pass into that future, 'bringing our
+sheaves with us,' and we have to grind the corn and make bread of it,
+and we have to eat the work of our own hands. They drink as they have
+brewed. 'Their works do follow them,' or they go before them and
+'receive them into everlasting habitations.' Outcome, the necessary
+result, and not a mere arbitrary retribution, is the relation which
+heaven bears to earth.
+
+That is plain, too, from our own nature. We carry ourselves with us
+wherever we go. The persistence of character, the continuity of personal
+being, the continuity of memory, the _unobliterable_--if I may coin a
+word--results upon ourselves of our actions, all these things make it
+certain that what looks to us a cleft, deep and broad, between the
+present life and the next, is to those that have passed it, and see it
+from the other side, but a little crack in the soil scarcely observable,
+and that we carry on into another world the selves that we have made
+here. Whatever death does--and it does a great deal that we do not know
+of--it does not alter, it only brings out, and, as I suppose,
+intensifies, the main drift and set of a character. And so they who
+'have not defiled their garments shall walk with Me in white, for they
+are worthy.'
+
+Ah, brethren! how solemn that makes life; the fleeting moment carries
+Eternity in its bosom. It passes, and the works pass, but nothing human
+ever dies, and we bear with us the net results of all the yesterdays
+into that eternal to-day. You write upon a thin film of paper and there
+is a black leaf below it. Yes, and below the black leaf there is another
+sheet, and all that you write on the top one goes through the dark
+interposed page, and is recorded on the third, and one day that will be
+taken out of the book, and you will have to read it and say, 'What I
+have written I have written.'
+
+So, dear friends, whilst we begin with that unmerited love, and that
+same unmerited love is the sole ground on which the gates of the kingdom
+of heaven are by the Death and Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus
+Christ opened to believers, their place there depends not only on faith
+but on the work which is the fruit of faith. There is such a thing as
+being 'saved yet so as by fire,' and there is such a thing as 'having an
+entrance ministered abundantly unto us'; we have to make the choice.
+There is such a thing as the sore punishment of which they are thought
+worthy who have rejected the Son of God, and counted the blood of the
+Covenant an unholy thing; and there is such a thing as a man saying, 'I
+am not worthy that Thou shouldest come unto me,' and Christ answering,
+'He shall walk with Me in white, for he is worthy' and we have to make
+that choice also.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREEFOLD UNITY
+
+     'One Lord, one faith, one baptism.'--Eph. iv. 5.
+
+
+The thought of the unity of the Church is very prominent in this
+epistle. It is difficult for us, amidst our present divisions, to
+realise how strange and wonderful it then was that a bond should have
+been found which drew together men of all nations, ranks, and
+characters. Pharisee and philosopher, high-born women and slaves, Roman
+patricians and gladiators, Asiatic Greeks and Syrian Jews forgot their
+feuds and sat together as one in Christ. It is no wonder that Paul in
+this letter dwells so long and earnestly on that strange fact. He is
+exhorting here to a unity of spirit corresponding to it, and he names a
+seven-fold oneness--one body and one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one
+faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. The outward institution
+of the Church, as a manifest visible fact, comes first in the catalogue.
+One Father is last, and between these there lie the mention of the one
+Spirit and the one Lord. The 'body' is the Church. 'Spirit, Lord, God,'
+are the triune divine personality. Hope and faith are human acts by
+which men are joined to God; Baptism is the visible symbol of their
+incorporation into the one body. These three clauses of our text may be
+considered as substantially including all the members of the series. We
+deal with them quite simply now, and consider them in the order in which
+they stand here.
+
+I. The one Lord.
+
+The deep foundation of Christian unity is laid in the divine Christ.
+Here, as generally in the New Testament, the name 'Lord' designates
+Christ in His authority as ruler of men and in His divinity as
+Incarnation of God. It would not be going too far to suggest that we
+have in the name, standing as it does, for the most part, in majestic
+simplicity, a reference to the Old Testament name of Jehovah, which in
+the Greek translation familiar to Paul is generally rendered by this
+same word. Nor can we ignore the fact that in this great catalogue of
+the Christian unities the Lord stands in the centre of the three
+personalities named, and is regarded as being at once the source of the
+Spirit and the manifestation of the Father. The place which this name
+occupies in relation to the Faith which is next named suggests that the
+living personal Christ is the true uniting principle amongst men. The
+one body realises its oneness in its common relation to the one Lord. It
+is one, not because of identity in doctrine, not because of any of the
+bonds which hold men together in human associations, precious and sacred
+as many of these are, but 'we being many are one bread, for we are all
+partakers of that one bread.' The magnet draws all the particles to
+itself and holds them in a mysterious unity.
+
+II. One faith.
+
+The former clause set forth in one great name all the objective elements
+of the Church's oneness; this clause sets forth, with equally
+all-comprehending simplicity, the subjective element which makes a
+Christian. The one Lord, in the fulness of His nature and the
+perfectness of His work, is the all-inclusive object of faith. He, in
+His own living person, and not any dogmas about Him, is regarded as the
+strong support round which the tendrils of faith cling and twine and
+grow. True, He is made known to us as possessing certain attributes and
+as doing certain things which, when stated in words, become doctrines,
+and a Christ without these will never be the object of faith. The
+antithesis which is so often drawn between Christ's person and Christian
+doctrines is by no means sound, though the warning not to substitute the
+latter for the former is only too necessary at all times.
+
+The subjective act which lays hold of Christ is faith, which in our text
+has its usual meaning of saving trust, and is entirely misconceived if
+it is taken, as it sometimes is, to mean the whole body of beliefs which
+make up the Christian creed. That which unites us to Jesus Christ is an
+infinitely deeper thing than the acceptance of any creed. A man may
+believe thirty-nine or thirty-nine hundred articles without having any
+real or vital connection with the one Lord. The faith which saves is the
+outgoing of the whole self towards Christ. In it the understanding, the
+emotions, and the will are all in action. The New Testament _faith_ is
+absolutely identical with the Old Testament _trust_, and the prophet who
+exhorted Israel, 'Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah
+is everlasting strength,' was preaching the very same message as the
+Apostle who cried, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be
+saved.'
+
+That 'saving faith' is the same in all Christians, however different
+they may be in condition and character and general outlook and opinion
+upon many points of Christian knowledge. The things on which they differ
+are on the surface, and sometimes by reason of their divergencies
+Christians stand like frowning cliffs that look threateningly at one
+another across a narrow gorge, but deep below ground they are continuous
+and the rock is unbroken. In many and melancholy ways 'the unity of
+faith and knowledge' is contradicted in the existing organisations of
+the Church, and we are tempted to postpone its coming to the day of the
+new Jerusalem which is compact together; but the clarion note of this
+great text may encourage us to hope, and to labour in our measure for
+the fulfilment of the hope, that all, who by one faith have been joined
+to the one Lord, may yet know themselves to be one in Him, and present
+to the world the fair picture of one body animated by one spirit.
+
+III. One baptism.
+
+Obviously in Paul's mind baptism here means, not the baptism with the
+Spirit, but the rite, one and the same for all, by which believers in
+Christ enter into the fellowship of the Church. It was then a perpetual
+rite administered as a matter of course to all who professed to have
+been joined to the one Lord by their one faith. The sequence in the
+three clauses of our text is perfectly clear. Baptism is the expression
+and consequence of the faith which precedes it. Surely there is here a
+most distinct implication that it is a declaration of personal faith.
+Without enlarging on the subject, I venture to think that the order of
+the Apostle's thought negatives other conceptions of Christian baptism,
+such as, that it is a communication of Grace, or an expression of the
+feelings and desires of parents, or a declaration of some truth about
+redeemed humanity. Paul's order is Christ's when He said, 'He that
+believeth and is baptized shall be saved.'
+
+It is very remarkable and instructive that whilst thus our text shows
+that baptism was a matter of course and universally practised, the
+references to it in the epistles are so few. The inference is not that
+it was neglected, but that, as being a rite, it could not be as
+important as were Christian truths and Christian character. May we, in a
+word, suggest the contrast between the frequency and tone of the
+Apostolic references to baptism and those which we find in many quarters
+to-day?
+
+It is remarkable that here the Lord's Supper is not mentioned, and all
+the more so, that in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the passage which
+we have already quoted does put emphasis upon it as a token of Christian
+unity. The explanation of the omission may be found in the fact that, in
+these early days, the Lord's Supper was not a separate rite, but was
+combined with ordinary meals, or perhaps more probably in the
+consideration that baptism was what the Lord's Supper was not--an
+initial rite which incorporated the possessors of one faith into the one
+body.
+
+
+
+
+'THE MEASURE OF GRACE'
+
+     'But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the
+      measure of the gift of Christ.'--Eph. iv. 7 (R.V.).
+
+
+The Apostle here makes a swift transition from the thought of the unity
+of the Church to the variety of gifts to the individual. 'Each' is
+contrasted with 'all.' The Father who stands in so blessed and gracious
+a relationship to the united whole also sustains an equally gracious and
+blessed relationship to each individual in that whole. It is because
+each receives His individual gift that God works in all. The Christian
+community is the perfection of individualism and of collectivism, and
+this rich variety of the gifts of grace is here urged as a reason
+additional to the unity of the one body, for the exhortation to the
+endeavour to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
+
+I. Each Christian soul receives grace through Christ.
+
+The more accurate rendering of the Revised Version reads '_the_ grace,'
+and the definite article points to it as a definite and familiar fact in
+the Ephesian believers to which the Apostle could point with the
+certainty that their own consciousness would confirm his statement. The
+wording of the Greek further implies that the grace was given at a
+definite point in the past, which is most naturally taken to have been
+the moment in which each believer laid hold on Jesus by faith. It is
+further to be noted that the content of the gift is the grace itself and
+not the graces which are its product and manifestation in the Christian
+life. And this distinction, which is in accordance with Paul's habitual
+teaching, leads us to the conclusion, that the essential character of
+the grace given through the act of our individual faith is that of a new
+vital force, flowing into and transforming the individual life. From
+that unspeakable gift which Paul supposed to be verifiable by the
+individual experience of every Christian, there would follow the graces
+of Christian character in which would be included the deepening and
+purifying of all the natural capacities of the individual self, and the
+casting out from thence of all that was contrary to the transforming
+power of the new life.
+
+Such an utterance as this, so quietly and confidently taking for granted
+that the experience of every believer verifies it in his own case, may
+well drive us all to look more earnestly into our own hearts, to see
+whether in them are any traces of a similar experience. If it be true,
+that to every one of us is given _the_ grace, how comes it that so many
+of us dare not profess to have any vivid remembrance of possessing it,
+of having possessed it, or of any clear consciousness of possessing it
+now? There may be gifts bestowed upon unconscious receivers, but surely
+this is not one of these. If we do not know that we have it, it must at
+least remain very questionable whether we do have it at all, and very
+certain that we have it in scant and shrivelled fashion.
+
+The universality of the gift was a startling thing in a world which, as
+far as cultivated heathenism was concerned, might rightly be called
+aristocratic, and by the side of a religion of privilege into which
+Judaism had degenerated. The supercilious sarcasm in the lips of
+Pharisees, 'This people which knoweth not the law are cursed,' but too
+truly expresses the gulf between the Rabbis and the 'folk of the earth'
+as the masses were commonly and contemptuously designated by the former.
+Into the midst of a society in which such distinctions prevailed, the
+proclamation that the greatest gift was bestowed upon all must have come
+with revolutionary force, and been hailed as emancipation. Peter had
+penetrated to grasp the full meaning and wondrous novelty of that
+universality, when on Pentecost he pointed to 'that which had been
+spoken by the prophet Joel' as fulfilled on that day, 'I will pour forth
+of my Spirit upon all flesh ... Yea, and on my servants and handmaidens
+... will I pour forth of my Spirit.' The rushing, mighty wind of that
+day soon dropped. The fiery tongues ceased to quiver on the disciples'
+heads, and the many voices that spoke were silenced, but the gift was
+permanent, and is poured out now as it was then, and now, as then, it is
+true that the whole company of believers receive the Spirit, though
+alas! by their own faults it is not true that 'they are all _filled_
+with the Holy Spirit.'
+
+Christ is the giver. He has 'power over the Spirit of Holiness' and as
+the Evangelist has said in his comment on our Lord's great words, when
+'He stood and cried,' 'If any man thirst let him come unto Me and
+drink,' 'This spake He of the Spirit which they that believed on Him
+were to receive.' We cannot pierce into the depth of the mutual
+relations of the three divine Persons mentioned in the context, but we
+can discern that Christ is for us the self-revealing activity of the
+divine nature, the right arm of the Father, or, to use another metaphor,
+the channel through which the else 'closed sea' of God flows into the
+world of creatures. Through that channel is poured into believing hearts
+the river of the water of life, which proceeds out of the one 'throne of
+God and of the Lamb.' This gift of the Spirit of Holiness to all
+believers is the deepest and truest conception of Christ's gifts to His
+Church. His past work of sacrifice for the sins of the world was
+finished, as with a parting cry He proclaimed on Calvary, and the power
+of that sacrifice will never be exhausted, but the taking away of the
+sins of the world is but the initial stage of the work of Christ, and
+its further stages are carried on through all the ages. He 'worketh
+hitherto,' and His present work, in so far as believers are concerned,
+is not only the forthputting of divine energy in regard to outward
+circumstances, but the imparting to them of the Divine Spirit to be the
+very life of their lives and the Lord of their spirits. Christian people
+are but too apt to give undue prominence to what Christ did for them
+when He died, and to lose sight, in the overwhelming lustre of His
+unspeakable sacrifice, of what He is doing for them whilst He lives. It
+would tend to restore the proportions of Christian truth and to touch
+our hearts into a deeper and more continuous love to Him, if we more
+habitually thought of Him, not only as the Christ who died, but also as
+the Christ who rather is risen again, who is even at the right hand of
+God, who also maketh intercession for us.
+
+II. The gift of this grace is in itself unlimited.
+
+Our text speaks of it as being according to the measure of the gift of
+Christ, and that phrase may either mean the gift which Christ receives
+or that which He gives. Probably the latter is the Apostle's meaning
+here, as seems to be indicated by the following words that 'when He
+ascended on high, He gave gifts unto men,' but what He gives is what He
+possesses, and the Apostle goes on to point out that the ultimate issue
+of His giving to the Church is that it attains to the measure of the
+stature of the fulness of Christ.
+
+It may cast some light on this point if we note the remarkable variety
+of expressions in this epistle for the norm or standard or limit of the
+gift. In one place the Apostle speaks of the gift bestowed upon
+believers as being according to the riches of the Father's glory; then
+it has no limit short of a participation in the divine fulness. God's
+glory is the transcendent lustre of His own infinite character in its
+self-manifestation. The Apostle labours to flash through the dim medium
+of words the glory of that light by blending incongruously, but
+effectively, the other metaphor of riches, and the two together suggest
+a wonderful, though vague thought of the infinite wealth and the
+exhaustless brightness which we call Abba, Father. The humblest child
+may lift longing and confident eyes and believe that he has received in
+very deed, through his faith in Jesus Christ, a gift which will increase
+in riches and in light until it makes him perfect as his Father in
+heaven was perfect. It was an old faith, based upon insight far inferior
+to ours, which proclaimed with triumph over the frowns of death. 'I
+shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.' Would that those
+who have so much more for faith to build on, built as nobly as did
+these!
+
+The gift has in itself no limit short of participation in the likeness
+of Christ. In another place in this letter the measure of that might
+which is the guarantee of Christian hope is set forth with an abundance
+of expression which might almost sound as an unmeaning accumulation of
+synonyms, as being 'according to the working of the strength of His
+might which He wrought in Christ'; and what is the range of the working
+of that might is disclosed to our faith in the Resurrection of Jesus,
+and the setting of Him high above all rule and authority and power and
+lordship and every creature in the present or in any future. Paul's
+continual teaching is that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was wrought
+in Him, not as a mere human individual but as our head and
+representative. Through Him we rise, not only from an ethical death of
+sin and separation from God, but we shall rise from physical death, and
+in Him the humblest believer possessing a vital union with the Lord of
+life has a share in His dominion, and, as His own faithful word has
+promised, sits with Him on His throne, even as He is set down with the
+Father on His throne.
+
+That gift has in itself no limit short of its own energy. In another
+part of this epistle the Apostle indicates the measure up to which our
+being filled is to take effect, as being 'all the fulness of God' and in
+such an overwhelming vision breaks forth into fervent praise of Him who
+is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, and
+then supplies us with a measure which may widen and heighten our
+petitions and expectations when He tells us that we are to find the
+measure of God's working for us, not in the impoverishment of our
+present possessions, but in the exceeding riches of the power that
+worketh in us--that is to say, that we are to look for the limit of the
+limitless gift in nothing short of the boundless energy of God Himself.
+In the Epistle to the Colossians Paul uses the same illustration with an
+individual reference to his own labours. In our text he associates with
+himself all believers, as being conscious of a power working in them,
+which is really the limitless power of God, and heartens them to
+anticipate that whatever limitless power can effect in them will
+certainly be theirs. God does not leave off till He has done and till He
+can look upon His completed work and pronounce it very good.
+
+III. This boundless grace is in each individual case bounded for the
+time by our own faith.
+
+When I lived near the New Forest I used to hear much of what they called
+'rolling fences.' A man received or took a little piece of Crown land on
+which he built a house and put round it a fence which could be
+judiciously and silently pushed outwards by slow degrees and enclosed,
+year by year, a wider area. We Christian people have, as it were, our
+own small, cultivated plot on the boundless prairie, the extent of which
+we measure for ourselves and which we can enlarge as we will. We have
+been speaking of the various aspects under which the boundlessness of
+the gift is presented by the Apostle, but there is another 'according
+to' in Christ's own words, 'According to your faith be it unto you,' and
+that statement lays down the practical limits of our present possession
+of the boundless gift. We have as much as we desire; we have as much as
+we take; we have as much as we use; we have as much as we can hold. We
+are admitted into the treasure house, and all around us lie ingots of
+gold and vessels full of coins; we ourselves determine how much of the
+treasure should be ours, and if at any time we feel like empty-handed
+paupers rather than like possible millionaires, the reason lies in our
+own slowness to take that which is freely given to us of God. His word
+to us all is, 'Ye are not straitened in Me, ye are straitened in
+yourselves.' It is well for us to keep ever before us the boundlessness
+of the gift in itself and the working limit in ourselves which
+conditions our actual possession of the riches. For so, on the one hand,
+should we be encouraged to expect great things from God, and, on the
+other hand, be humbled by the contrast between what we might be and what
+we are. The river that rushes full of water from the throne can send but
+a narrow and shallow trickle through the narrow channel choked with much
+rubbish, which we provide for it. It is of little avail that the sun in
+the heavens pours down its flood of light and warmth if the windows of
+our hearts are by our own faults so darkened that but a stray beam,
+shorn of its brightness and warmth, can find its way into our darkness.
+The first lesson which we have to draw from the contrast between the
+boundlessness of the gift and the narrow limits of our individual
+possession and experience of it, is the lesson of penitent recognition
+and confession of the unbelief which lurks in our strongest faith. 'Lord
+I believe, help Thou mine unbelief,' should be the prayer of every
+Christian soul.
+
+Not less surely will the recognition that the form and amount of the
+grace of God, which is possessed by each, is determined by the faith of
+each, lead to tolerance of the diversity of gifts. We have received our
+own proper gift of God, that which the strength and purity of our faith
+is capable of possessing, and it is not for us to carp at our brethren,
+either at those in advance of us or at those behind us. We have to
+remember that as it takes all sorts of people to make up a world, so it
+takes all varieties of Christian character to make a church. It is the
+body and not the individual members which represents Christ to the
+world. The firmest adherence to our own form of the universal gift will
+combine with the widest toleration of the gifts of others. The white
+light appears when red, green, and blue blend together, not when each
+tries to be the other. 'Every man hath his own proper gift of God, one
+after this fashion and another after that,' and we shall be true to the
+boundlessness of the gift and to the limitations of our own possession
+of it, in the measure of which we combine obedience to the light which
+shines in us, with thankful recognition of that which is granted to
+others.
+
+The contrast between these two must be kept vivid if we would live in
+the freedom of the hope of the glory of God, for in the contrast lies
+the assurance of endless growth. A process is begun in every Christian
+soul of which the only natural end is the full possession of God in
+Christ, and that full possession can never be reached by a finite
+creature, but that does not mean that the ideal mocks us and retreats
+before us like the pot of gold, which the children fancy is at the end
+of the rainbow. Rather it means a continuous succession of our
+realisations of the ideal in ever fuller and more blessed reality. In
+this life we may, on condition of our growth in faith, grow in the
+possession of the fulness of God, and yet at each moment that possession
+will be greater, though at all moments we may be filled. In the
+Christian life to-morrow may be safely reckoned as destined to be 'as
+yesterday and much more abundant,' and when we pass from the
+imperfections of the most perfect earthly life, there will still remain
+ever before us the glory, which, according to the measure of our
+capacity, is also in us, and we shall draw nearer and nearer to it, and
+be for ever receiving into our expanding spirits more and more of the
+infinite fulness of God.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOAL OF PROGRESS
+
+     'Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the
+      knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown man, unto the
+      measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.'--Eph. iv. 13
+      (R.V.).
+
+
+The thought of the unity of the Church is much in the Apostle's mind in
+this epistle. It is set forth in many places by his two favourite
+metaphors of the body and the temple, by the relation of husband and
+wife and by the family. It is contemplated in its great historical
+realisation by the union of Jew and Gentile in one whole. In the
+preceding context it is set forth as already existing, but also as lying
+far-off in the future. The chapter begins with an earnest exhortation to
+preserve this unity and with an exhibition of the oneness which does
+really exist in body, spirit, hope, lord, faith, baptism. But the
+Apostle swiftly passes to the corresponding thought of diversity. There
+are varieties in the gifts of the one Spirit; whilst each individual in
+the one whole receives his due portion, there are broad differences in
+spiritual gifts. These differences do not break the oneness, but they
+may tend to do so; they are not causes of separation and do not
+necessarily interfere with unity, but they may be made so. Their
+existence leaves room for brotherly helpfulness, and creates a
+necessity for it. The wiser are to teach; the more advanced are to lead;
+the more largely gifted are to encourage and stimulate the less richly
+endowed. Such outward helps and brotherly impartations of gifts is, on
+the one hand, a result of the one gift to the whole body, and is on the
+other a sign of, because a necessity arising from, the imperfect degree
+in which each individual has received of Christ's fulness; and these
+helps of teaching and guidance have for their sole object to make
+Christian men able to do without them, and are, as the text tells us, to
+cease when, and to last till, we all attain to the fulness of Christ. To
+Paul, then, the manifest unity of the Church was to be the end of its
+earthly course, but it also was real, though incomplete, in the present,
+and the emphasis of our text is not so much laid on telling us when this
+oneness was to be manifested as in showing us in what it consists. We
+have here a threefold expression of the true unity, as consisting in a
+oneness of relation to Christ, a consequent maturity of manhood and a
+perfect possession of all which is in Christ.
+
+I. The true unity is oneness of relation to Christ.
+
+The Revised Version is here to be preferred, and its 'attain unto'
+brings out the idea which the Authorised Version fails to express, that
+the text is intended to point to the period at which Christ's provision
+of helpful gifts to the growing Church is to cease, when the individuals
+composing it have come to their destined unity and maturity in Him. The
+three clauses of our text are each introduced by the same preposition,
+and there is no reason why in the second and third it should be rendered
+'unto' and in the first should be watered down to 'in.'
+
+There are then two regions in which this unity is to be realised. These
+are expressed by the great words, 'the unity of the faith and knowledge
+of the Son of God.' These words are open to a misunderstanding, as if
+they referred to a unity as between faith and knowledge; but it is
+obvious to the slightest reflection that what is meant is the unity of
+all believers in regard to their faith, and in regard to their
+knowledge. It is to be noted that the Apostle has just said that there
+is one faith, now he points to the realisation of that oneness as the
+very end and goal of all discipline and growth. I suppose that we have
+to think here of the manifold and sad differences existing in Christian
+men, in regard to the depth and constancy and formative power of their
+faith. There are some who have it so strong and vigorous that it is a
+vision rather than a faith, a trust, deep and firm and settled, to which
+the present is but the fleeting shadow, and the unseen the eternal and
+only reality; but, alas! there are others in whom the light of faith
+burns feebly and flickers. Nor are these differences the attributes of
+different men, but the same man varies in the power of his faith, and we
+all of us know what it is to have it sometimes dominant over our whole
+selves, and sometimes weak and crushed under the weight of earthly
+passions. To-day we may be all flame, to-morrow all ice. Our faith may
+seem to us to be strong enough to move mountains, and before an hour is
+past we may find it, by experience, to be less than a grain of mustard
+seed. 'Action and reaction are always equal and contrary,' and that law
+is as true in reference to our present spiritual life as it is true in
+regard to physical objects. We have, then, the encouragement of such a
+word as that of our text for looking forward to and straining towards
+the reversal of these sad alterations in a fixed and continuous faith
+which should grasp the whole Christ and should always hold Him. There
+may still be diversities and degrees, but each should have his measure
+always full. 'Thy Sun shall no more go down'; there will no longer be
+the contrast between the flashing waters of a flood-tide and the dreary
+mud-banks disclosed at low water. We shall stand at different points,
+but the faces of all will be turned to Him who is the Light of all, and
+every face will shine with the likeness of His, when we see Him as He
+is.
+
+But our text points us to another form of unity--the oneness of the
+knowledge of the Son of God.
+
+The Apostle uses an emphatic term which is very familiar on his lips to
+designate this knowledge. It means not a mere intellectual apprehension,
+but a profound and vital acquaintance, dependent indeed upon faith, and
+realised in experience. It is the knowledge for which Paul was ready to
+'count all things but loss' that he might know Jesus, and winning which
+he would count himself to 'have apprehended.' The unity in this deep and
+blessed knowledge has nothing to do with identity of opinion on the
+points which have separated Christians. It is not to be sought by
+outward unanimity, nor by aggregation in external communities. The
+Apostle's great thought is made small and the truth of it is falsified
+when it is over-hastily embodied in institutions. It has been sought in
+a uniformity which resembles unity as much as a bundle of faggots, all
+cut to the same length, and tied together with a rope, resemble the tree
+from which they were chopped, waving in the wind and living one life to
+the tips of its furthest branches. Men have made out of the Apostle's
+divine vision of a unity in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God 'a
+staunch and solid piece of framework as any January could freeze
+together,' and few things have stood more in the way of the realisation
+of his glowing anticipations than the formation of the great
+Corporation, imposing from its bulk and antiquity, to part from which
+was branded as breaking the unity of the spirit.
+
+Paul gives no clear definition here of the time when the one body of
+Christian believers should have attained to the unity of the faith and
+knowledge of the Son of God, and the question may not have presented
+itself to him. It may appear that in view of the immediate context he
+regards the goal as one to be reached in our present life, or it may be
+that he is thinking rather of the Future, when the Master 'should bring
+together every joint and member and mould them into an immortal feature
+of loveliness and perfection.' But the time at which this great ideal
+should be attained is altogether apart from the obligation pressing upon
+us all, at all times, to work towards it. Whensoever it is reached it
+will only be by our drawing 'nearer, day by day, each to his brethren,
+all to God,' or rather, each to God and so all to his brethren. Take
+twenty points in a great circle and let each be advanced by one half of
+its distance to the centre, how much nearer will each be to each? Christ
+is our unity, not dogmas, not polities, not rituals: our oneness is a
+oneness of life. We need for our centre no tower with a top reaching to
+heaven, we have a living Lord who is with us, and in Him, we being many,
+are one.
+
+II. Oneness in faith and knowledge knits all into a 'perfect man.'
+
+'Perfect,' the Apostle here uses in opposition to the immediately
+following expression in the next verse, of 'children.' It therefore
+means not so much moral perfection as maturity or fulness of growth. So
+long as we fall short of the state of unity we are in the stage of
+immaturity. When we come to be one in faith and knowledge we have
+reached full-grown manhood. The existence of differences belongs to the
+infancy and boyhood of the Church, and as we grow one we are putting
+away childish things. What a contrast there is between Paul's vision
+here and the tendency which has been too common among Christians to
+magnify their differences, and to regard their obstinate adherence to
+these as being 'steadfastness in the faith'! How different would be the
+relations between the various communities into which the one body has
+been severed, if they all fully believed that their respective
+shibboleths were signs that they had not yet attained, neither were
+already perfect! When we began to be ashamed of these instead of
+glorying in them we should be beginning to grow into the maturity of our
+Christian life.
+
+But the Apostle speaks of 'a perfect man' in the singular and not of
+'men' in the plural, as he has already described the result of the union
+of Jew and Gentile as being the making 'of twain one new man.' This
+remarkable expression sets forth, in the strongest terms, the vital
+unity which connects all members of the one body so closely that there
+is but one life in them all. There are many members, but one body. Their
+functions differ, but the life in them all is identical. The eye cannot
+say to the hand, 'I have no need of thee,' nor again the head to the
+feet, 'I have no need of you.' Each is necessary to the completeness of
+the whole, and all are necessary to make up the one body of Christ. It
+is His life which manifests itself in every member and which gives
+clearness of vision to the eye, strength and deftness to the hand. He
+needs us all for His work on the world and for His revelation to the
+world of the fulness of His life. In some parts of England there are
+bell-ringers who stand at a table on which are set bells, each tuned to
+one note, and they can perform most elaborate pieces of music by swiftly
+catching up and sounding each of these in the right place. All Christian
+souls are needed for the Master's hand to bring out the note of each in
+its place. In the lowest forms of life all vital functions are performed
+by one simple sac, and the higher the creature is in the scale the more
+are its organs differentiated. In the highest form of all, 'as the body
+is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being
+many, are one body, so also is Christ.'
+
+III. This perfect manhood is the possession of all who are in Christ.
+
+The fulness of Christ is the fulness which belongs to Him, or that of
+which He is full. All which He is and has is to be poured into His
+servants, and when all this is communicated to them the goal will be
+reached. We shall be full-grown men, and more wonderful still, we all
+shall make one perfect man, and individual completenesses will blend
+into that which is more complete than any of these, the one body, which
+corresponds to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
+
+This is the goal of humanity in which, and in which alone, the dreams of
+thinkers about perfectibility will become facts, and the longings that
+are deeply rooted in every soul will find their fulfilment. By our
+personal union with Jesus Christ through faith, our individual
+perfection, both in the sense of maturity and in that of the realisation
+of ideal manhood, is assured, and in Him the race, as well as the
+individual, is redeemed, and will one day be glorified. The Utopias of
+many thinkers are but partial and distorted copies of the kingdom of
+Christ. The reality which He brings and imparts is greater than all
+these, and when the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven, and is
+planted on the common earth, it will outvie in lustre and outlast in
+permanence all forms of human association. The city of wisdom which was
+Athens, the city of power which was Rome, the city of commerce which is
+London, the city of pleasure which is Paris, 'pale their ineffectual
+fires' before the city in the light whereof the nations should walk.
+
+The beginning of the process, of which the end is this inconceivable
+participation in the glory of Jesus, is simple trust in Him. 'He that is
+joined to the Lord is one spirit,' and he who trusts in Him, loves Him,
+and obeys Him, is joined to Him, and thereby is started on a course
+which never halts nor stays so long as the faith which started him
+abides, till he 'grows up into Him in all things which is the head, even
+Christ.' The experience of the Christian life as God means it to be, and
+by the communication of His grace makes it possible for it to become, is
+like that of men embarked on some sun-lit ocean, sailing past shining
+headlands, and ever onwards, over the boundless blue, beneath a calm sky
+and happy stars. The blissful voyagers are in full possession at every
+moment of all which they need and of all of His fulness which they can
+contain, but the full possession at every moment increases as they, by
+it, become capable of fuller possession. Increasing capacity brings
+with it increasing participation in the boundless fulness of Him who
+filleth all in all.
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST OUR LESSON AND OUR TEACHER
+
+     'But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard
+      Him, and have been taught in Him.'--Eph. iv. 20, 21.
+
+
+The Apostle has been describing in very severe terms the godlessness and
+corruption of heathenism. He reckons on the assent of the Ephesian
+Christians when he paints the society in which they lived as alienated
+from God, insensible to the restraints of conscience, and foul with all
+uncleanness. That was a picture of heathenism drawn from the life and
+submitted to the judgment of those who knew the original only too well.
+It has been reserved for modern eulogists to regard such statements as
+exaggerations. Those who knew heathenism from the inside knew that they
+were sober truth. The colonnades of the stately temple of Ephesus stank
+with proofs of their correctness.
+
+Out of that mass of moral putridity these Ephesian Christians had been
+dragged. But its effects still lingered in them, and it was all about
+them with its pestilential miasma. So the first thing that they needed
+was to be guarded against it. The Apostle, in the subsequent context,
+with great earnestness gives a series of moral injunctions of the most
+elementary kind. Their very simplicity is eloquent. What sort of people
+must they have formerly been who needed to be bade not to steal and not
+to lie?
+
+But before he comes to the specific duties, he lays down the broad
+general principle of which all these are to be but manifestations--viz.
+that they and we need, as the foundation of all noble conduct and of
+all theoretical ethics, the suppression and crucifixion of the old self
+and the investiture with a new self. And this double necessity, says the
+Apostle in my text, is the plain teaching of Jesus Christ to all His
+disciples.
+
+Now the words which I have selected as my text are but a fragment of a
+closely concatenated whole, but I may deal with them separately at this
+time. They are very remarkable. They lay, as it seems to me, the basis
+for all Christian conduct; and they teach us how there is no real
+knowledge of Jesus Christ which does not effloresce into the practice of
+these virtues and graces which the Apostle goes on to describe.
+
+I. First, Christ our Lesson and Christ our Teacher.
+
+Mark the singular expression with which this text begins. 'Ye have not
+so learned _Christ_.' Now, we generally talk about learning a subject, a
+language, a science, or an art; but we do not talk about learning
+people. But Paul says we are Christ's disciples, not only in the sense
+that we learn of Him as Teacher--which follows in the next clause--but
+that we learn Him as the theme of our study.
+
+That is to say, the relation of the person of Jesus Christ to all that
+He has to teach and reveal to the world is altogether different from
+that of all other teachers of all sorts of truth, to the truth which
+they proclaim. You can accept the truths and dismiss into oblivion the
+men from whom you got them. But you cannot reject Christ and take
+Christianity. The two are inseparably united. For, in regard to all
+spiritual and to all moral truth--truth about conduct and
+character--Jesus Christ _is_ what He teaches. So we may say, turning
+well-known words of a poet in another direction: 'My lesson is in
+Thee.'
+
+But that is not all. My text goes on to speak about another thing: 'Ye
+have learned Christ if so be that ye have _heard Him_ and been taught.'
+Now that 'If so be' is not the 'if' of uncertainty or doubt, but it is
+equivalent to 'if, as I know to be the case,' or '_since_ ye have heard
+Him.' Away there in Ephesus, years and years after the crucifixion,
+these people who had never seen Christ in the flesh, nor heard a word
+from the lips 'into which grace was poured,' are yet addressed by the
+Apostle as those who had listened to Him and heard Him speak. They had
+'heard Him and been taught.' So He was Lesson and He was Teacher. And
+that is as true about us as it was about them. Let me say only a word or
+two about each of these two thoughts.
+
+I have already suggested that the underlying truth which warrants the
+first of them is that Jesus Christ's relation to His message and
+revelation is altogether different from that of other teachers to what
+they have to communicate to the world. Of course we all know that, in
+regard to the wider sphere of religious and Christian truth, it is not
+only what Christ said, but even more what He did and was, that makes His
+revelation of the Father's heart. Precious as are the words which drop
+from His lips, which are spirit and are life, His life itself is more
+than all His teachings; and it is when we learn, not _from_ Him, but
+when we _learn_ Him, that we see the Father. But my text has solely
+reference to conduct, and in that aspect it just implies this thought,
+that the sum of all duty, the height of all moral perfectness, the
+realised ideal of humanity, is in Christ, and that the true way to know
+what a man or a nation ought to do is to study Him.
+
+How strange it is, when one comes to consider it, that the impression
+of absolute perfection, free from all limitations of race or country or
+epoch or individual character--and yet not a vague abstraction but a
+true living Person--has been printed upon the minds and hearts of the
+world by these four little pamphlets which we call gospels! I do not
+think that there is anything in the whole history of literature to
+compare with the impression of veracity and historical reality and
+individual personality which is made by these fragmentary narratives.
+And although it has nothing to do with my present subject, I may just
+say in a sentence that it seems to me that the character of Jesus Christ
+as painted in the Gospels, in its incomparable vividness and vitality,
+is one of the strongest evidences for the simple faithfulness as
+biographies, of these books. Nothing else but the Man seen could have
+resulted in such compositions.
+
+But apart altogether from that, how blessed it is that we have not to
+enter upon any lengthened investigations, far beyond the power of
+average minds, in order to get hold of the fundamental laws of moral
+conduct! How blessed it is that all the harshness of 'Obey this law or
+die' is by His life changed into 'Look at Me, and, for My love's sake,
+study Me and be like Me!' This is the blessed peculiarity which gives
+all its power and distinctive characteristic to the morality of the
+Gospel, that law is changed from a statuesque white ideal, pure as
+marble and cold and lifeless as it, into a living Person with a
+throbbing heart of love, and an outstretched hand of help, whose word
+is, 'If ye love Me, keep My commandments, and be like Me.'
+
+Christian men and women! study Jesus Christ. That is the Alpha and Omega
+of all right knowledge of duty and of all right practice of it. Learn
+Him, His self-suppression, His self-command, His untroubled calmness,
+His immovable patience, His continual gentleness, His constant reference
+of all things to the Father's will. Study these. To imitate Him is
+blessedness; to resemble Him is perfection. 'Ye have learned Christ' if
+you are Christians at all. You have at least begun the alphabet, but oh!
+in Him 'are hid all the treasures,' not only 'of wisdom and knowledge,'
+but of 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report'; and 'if there
+is any virtue, and if there is any praise,' we shall find them in Him
+who is our Lesson, our perfect Lesson.
+
+But that is not all. Lessons are very well, but--dear me!--the world
+wants something besides lessons. It has had plenty of teaching. The
+trouble is not that we are not instructed, but that we do not take the
+lessons that are laid before us. And so my text suggests another thing
+besides the wholly inadequate conception, as it would be if it stood
+alone, of a mere exhibition of what we ought to be.
+
+'If so be that ye have _heard_ Him.' As I said, these Ephesian
+Christians, far away in Asia Minor, with seas and years between them and
+the plains of Galilee and the Cross of Calvary, are yet regarded by the
+Apostle as having listened to Jesus Christ. We, far away down the ages,
+and in another corner of the world, as really, without metaphor, in
+plain fact, may have Jesus Christ speaking to us, and may hear His
+voice. These Ephesians had heard Him, not only because they had heard
+about Him, nor because they had heard Him speaking through His servant
+Paul and others, but because, as Paul believed, that Lord, who had
+spoken with human lips words which it was possible for a man to utter
+when He was here on earth, when caught up into the third heaven was
+still speaking to men, even according to His own promise, which He gave
+at the very close of His career, 'I have declared Thy name unto My
+brethren, and _will_ declare it.' So, though 'He began both to do and to
+teach' before He was taken up, after His Ascension He continues both the
+doing and the tuition. And, in verity, we all may hear His voice
+speaking in the depths of our hearts; speaking through the renewed
+conscience; speaking by that Spirit who will guide us into all the truth
+that we need; speaking through the ages to all who will listen to His
+voice.
+
+The conception of Christ as a Teacher, which is held by many who deny
+His redeeming work and dismiss as incredible His divinity, seems to me
+altogether inadequate, unless it be supplemented by the belief that He
+now has and exercises the power of communicating wisdom and knowledge
+and warning and stimulus to waiting hearts; and that when we hear within
+the depth of our souls the voice saying to us, 'This is the way, walk ye
+in it,' or saying to us, 'Pass not by, enter not into it,' if we have
+waited for Him, and studied His example and character, and sought, not
+to please ourselves, but to be led by His wisdom, we may be sure that it
+is Christ Himself who speaks. Reverence the inward monitor, and when He
+within thy heart, by His Spirit, calls thee, do thou answer, 'Speak,
+Lord! Thy servant heareth.' 'Ye have learned Christ if so be that ye
+have hearkened to Him.'
+
+II. Secondly, mark the condition of learning the Lesson and hearing the
+Teacher.
+
+Our Authorised Version, in accordance with its very frequent practice,
+has evacuated the last words of my text of their true force by the
+substitution of the more intelligible '_by_ Him' for what the Apostle
+writes--'_in_ Him.' The true rendering gives us the condition on which
+we learn our Lesson and hear our Teacher. '_In_ Him,' is no mere
+surplusage, and is not to be weakened down, as this translation of ours
+does, into a mere '_by_ Him' but it declares that, unless we keep
+ourselves in union with Jesus Christ, His voice will not be heard in our
+hearts, and the lesson will pass unlearned.
+
+You know, dear brother, how emphatically and continually in the New
+Testament this doctrine of the dwelling of the believing soul in Christ,
+and the reciprocal dwelling of Christ in the believing soul, is insisted
+upon. And I, for my part, believe that one great cause of the
+unsatisfactory condition of the average Christianity of this day is the
+slurring over and minimising of these twin great and solemn truths. I
+would fain bring you back to the Master's words, as declaring the
+deepest truths in relation to the connection between the believing soul
+and the Christ in whom it believes:--'Abide in Me, and I in you.' I wish
+you would go home and take this Epistle to the Ephesians and read it
+over, putting a pencil mark below each place in which occurs the words
+'in Christ Jesus.' I think you would learn something if you would do it.
+
+But all that I have to say at present is that, if we would keep
+ourselves, by faith, by love, by meditation, by aspiration, by the
+submission of the will, and by practical obedience, in Jesus Christ,
+enclosed in Him as it were--then, and then only, should we learn His
+lesson, and then, and then only, should we hear Him speak. Why! if you
+never think about Him, how can you learn Him? If you seldom, or
+sleepily, take up your Bibles and read the Gospels, of what good is His
+example to you? If you wander away into all manner of regions of thought
+and enjoyment instead of keeping near to Him, how can you expect that He
+will communicate Himself to you? If we keep ourselves in touch with that
+Lord, if we bring all our actions to Him, and measure our conduct by His
+pattern, then we shall learn His lesson. What does a student in a school
+of design do? He puts his feeble copy of some great picture beside the
+original, and compares it touch for touch, line for line, shade for
+shade, and so corrects its errors. Take your lives to the Exemplar in
+that fashion, and go over them bit by bit. Is _this_ like Jesus Christ;
+is _that_ what He would have done? Then '_in_ Him,' thus in contact with
+Him, thus correcting our daubs by the perfect picture, we shall learn
+our lesson and listen to our Teacher.
+
+Still your passions, muzzle your inclinations, clap a bridle on your
+will, and, as some tumultuous crowd would be hushed into silence that
+they might listen to the king speaking to them, make a great silence in
+your hearts, and you will 'hear Him' and be taught 'in Him'.
+
+III. Lastly, the test and result of having learned the Lesson and
+listened to the Teacher is unlikeness to surrounding corruption.
+
+'Ye have _not so_ learned Christ.' Of course the hideous immoralities of
+Ephesus are largely, but by no means altogether, gone from Manchester.
+Of course, nineteen centuries of Christianity have to a very large
+extent changed the tone of society and influenced the moral judgments
+and practices even of persons who are not Christians. But there still
+remains a _world_, and there still remains unfilled up the gulf between
+the worldly and the godly life. And I believe it is just as needful as
+ever it was, though in different ways, for Christians to exhibit
+unlikeness to the world. 'Not so,' must be our motto; or, as the Jewish
+patriot said, 'So did not I, because of the fear of the Lord.'
+
+I do not wish you to make yourselves singular; I do not wish you to wear
+conventional badges of unlikeness to certain selected evil habits. A
+Christian man's unlikeness to the world consists a great deal more in
+doing or being what it does not do and is not than in not doing or being
+what it does and is. It is easy to abstain from conventional things; it
+is a great deal harder to put in practice the unworldly virtues of the
+Christian character.
+
+There are wide regions of life in which all men must act alike, be they
+saints or sinners, be they believers, Agnostics, Mohammedans, Turks,
+Jews, or anything else. There are two ways of doing the same thing. If
+two women were sitting at a grindstone, one of them a Christian and the
+other not, the one that pushed her handle half round the circle for
+Christ's sake would do it in a different fashion from the other one who
+took it from her hand and brought it round to the other side of the
+stone, and did it without reference to God.
+
+Brethren, be sure of this, that if you and I do not find in ourselves
+the impulse to abstain from coarse enjoyments, to put our feet upon
+passions and desires, appetites and aims, which godless men recognise
+and obey without qualm or restraint, we need to ask ourselves: 'In what
+sense am I a Christian, or in what sense have I heard Christ?' It is a
+poor affair to fling away our faithful protest against the world's evils
+for the sake of receiving the world's smile. Modern Christianity is
+often not vital enough to be hated by a godless world; and it is not
+hated because it only deserves to be scorned. Keep near Jesus Christ,
+live in the light of His face, drink in the inspiration and instruction
+of His example, and the unlikeness will come, and no mistake. Dwell near
+Him, keep in Him, and the likeness will come, as it always comes to
+lovers, who grow to resemble that or those whom they love. 'It is enough
+for the disciple to be as his Teacher, and for the slave to be like his
+Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+A DARK PICTURE AND A BRIGHT HOPE
+
+     'That ye put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man,
+      which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.'--Eph. iv. 22.
+
+
+If a doctor knows that he can cure a disease he can afford to give full
+weight to its gravest symptoms. If he knows he cannot he is sorely
+tempted to say it is of slight importance, and, though it cannot be
+cured, can be endured without much discomfort.
+
+And so the Scripture teachings about man's real moral condition are
+characterised by two peculiarities which, at first sight, seem somewhat
+opposed, but are really harmonious and closely connected. There is no
+book and no system in the whole world that takes such a dark view of
+what you and I are; there is none animated with so bright and confident
+a hope of what you and I may become. And, on the other hand, the common
+run of thought amongst men minimises the fact of sin, but when you say,
+'Well, be it big or little, can I get rid of it anyhow?' there is no
+answer to give that is worth listening to. Christ alone can venture to
+tell men what they are, because Christ alone can radically change their
+whole nature and being. There are certain diseases of which a constant
+symptom is unconsciousness that there is anything the matter. A
+deep-seated wound does not hurt much. The question is not whether
+Christian thoughts about a man's condition are gloomy or not, but
+whether they are true. As to their being gloomy, it seems to me that the
+people who complain of our doctrine of human nature, as giving a
+melancholy view of men, do really take a far more melancholy one. We
+believe in a fall, and we believe in a possible and actual restoration.
+The man to whom evil is not an intrusive usurper can have no confidence
+that it will ever be expelled. Which is the gloomy system--that which
+paints in undisguised blackness the facts of life, and over against
+their blackest darkness, the radiant light of a great hope shining
+bright and glorious, or one that paints humanity in a uniform monotone
+of indistinguishable grey involving the past, the present, and the
+future--which, believing in no disease, hopes for no cure? My text,
+taken in conjunction with the grand words which follow, about 'The new
+man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness,'
+brings before us some very solemn views (which the men that want them
+most realise the least) with regard to what we are, what we ought to be
+and cannot be, and what, by God's help, we may become. The old man is
+'corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,' says Paul. _There_ are a set
+of characteristics, then, of the universal sinful human self. Then there
+comes a hopeless commandment--a mockery--if we are to stop with it, 'put
+it off.' And then there dawns on us the blessed hope and possibility of
+the fulfilment of the injunction, when we learn that 'the truth in
+Jesus' is, that we put off the old man with his deeds. Such is a
+general outline of the few thoughts I have to suggest to you.
+
+I. I wish to fix, first of all, upon the very significant, though brief,
+outline sketch of the facts of universal sinful human nature which the
+Apostle gives here.
+
+These are three, upon which I dilate for a moment or two. 'The old man'
+is a Pauline expression, about which I need only say here that we may
+take it as meaning that form of character and life which is common to us
+all, apart from the great change operated through faith in Jesus Christ.
+It is universal, it is sinful. There is a very remarkable contrast,
+which you will notice, between the verse upon which I am now commenting
+and the following one. The old man is set over against the new. One is
+created, the other is corrupted, as the word might be properly rendered.
+The one is created after God, the other is rotting to pieces under the
+influence of its lusts. The one consists of righteousness and holiness,
+which have their root in truth; the other is under the dominion of
+passions and desires, which, in themselves evil, are the instruments of
+and are characterised by deceit.
+
+The first of the characteristics, then, of this sinful self, to which I
+wish to point for a moment is, that every Christless life, whatsoever
+the superficial differences in it, is really a life shaped according to
+and under the influence of _passionate desires_. You see I venture to
+alter one word of my text, and that for this simple reason; the word
+'lusts' has, in modern English, assumed a very much narrower
+signification than either that of the original has, or than itself had
+in English when this translation was made. It is a very remarkable
+testimony, by the by, to the weak point in the bulk of men--to the side
+of their nature which is most exposed to assaults--that this word,
+which originally meant strong desire of any kind, should, by the
+observation of the desires that are strongest in the mass of people,
+have come to be restricted and confined to the one specific meaning of
+strong animal, fleshly, sensuous desires. It may point a lesson to some
+of my congregation, and especially to the younger portion of the men in
+it. Remember, my brother, that the part of your nature which is closest
+to the material is likewise closest to the animal, and is least under
+dominion (without a strong and constant effort) of the power which will
+save the flesh from corruption, and make the material the vehicle of the
+spiritual and divine. Many a young man comes into Manchester with the
+atmosphere of a mother's prayers and a father's teaching round about
+him; with holy thoughts and good resolutions beginning to sway his heart
+and spirit; and flaunting profligacy and seducing tongues beside him in
+the counting-house, in the warehouse, and at the shop counter, lead him
+away into excesses that banish all these, and, after a year or two of
+riot and sowing to the flesh, he 'of the flesh reaps corruption,' and
+that very literally--in sunken eye, and trembling hand, and hacking
+cough, and a grave opened for him before his time. Ah, my dear young
+friends! 'they promise them liberty.' It is a fine thing to get out of
+your father's house, and away from the restrictions of the society where
+you are known, and loving eyes--or unloving ones--are watching you. It
+is a fine thing to get into the freedom and irresponsibility of a big
+city! 'They promise them liberty,' and 'they themselves become the bond
+slaves of corruption.'
+
+But, then, that is only the grossest and the lowest form of the truth
+that is here. Paul's indictment against us is not anything so
+exaggerated and extreme as that the animal nature predominates in all
+who are not Christ's. That is not true, and is not what my text says.
+But what it says is just this: that, given the immense varieties of
+tastes and likings and desires which men have, the point and
+characteristic feature of every godless life is that, be these what they
+may, they become the dominant power in that life. Paul does not, of
+course, deny that the sway and tyranny of such lusts and desires are
+sometimes broken by remonstrances of conscience; sometimes suppressed by
+considerations of prudence; sometimes by habit, by business, by
+circumstances that force people into channels into which they would not
+naturally let their lives run. He does not deny that often and often in
+such a life there will be a dim desire for something better--that high
+above the black and tumbling ocean of that life of corruption and
+disorder, there lies a calm heaven with great stars of duty shining in
+it. He does not deny that men are a law to themselves, as well as a
+bundle of desires which they obey; but what he charges upon us, and what
+I venture to bring as an indictment against you, and myself too, is
+this: that apart from Christ it is not conscience that rules our lives;
+that apart from Christ it is not sense of duty that is strongest; that
+apart from Christ the real directing impulse to which the inward
+proclivities, if not the outward activities, do yield in the main and on
+the whole, is, as this text says, the things that we like, the
+passionate desires of nature, the sensuous and godless heart.
+
+And you say, 'Well, if it is so, what harm is it? Did not God make me
+with these desires, and am not I meant to gratify them?' Yes, certainly.
+The harm of it is, first of all, this, that it is an inversion of the
+true order. The passionate desires about which I am speaking, be they
+for money, be they for fame, or be they for any other of the gilded
+baits of worldly joys--these passionate dislikes and likings, as well as
+the purely animal ones--the longing for food, for drink, for any other
+physical gratification--these were never meant to be men's guides. They
+are meant to be impulses. They have motive power, but no directing
+power. Do you start engines out of a railway station without drivers or
+rails to run upon? It would be as reasonable as that course of life
+which men pursue who say, 'Thus I wish; thus I command; let my desire
+stand in the place of other argumentation and reason.' They take that
+part of their nature that is meant to be under the guidance of reason
+and conscience looking up to God, and put it in the supreme place, and
+so, setting a beggar on horseback, ride where we know such equestrians
+are said in the end to go! The desires are meant to be impelling powers.
+It is absurdity and the destruction of true manhood to make them, as we
+so often do, directing powers, and to put the reins into their hand.
+They are the wind, not the helm; the steam, not the driver. Let us keep
+things in their right places. Remember that the constitution of human
+nature, as God has meant it, is this: down there, under hatches, under
+control, the strong impulses; above them, the enlightened understanding;
+above that, the conscience, which has a loftier region than that of
+thought to move in, the moral region; and above that, the God, whose
+face, shining down upon the apex of the nature thus constituted,
+irradiates it with light which filters through all the darkness, down to
+the very base of the being; and sanctifies the animal, and subdues the
+impulses, and enlightens the understanding, and calms and quickens the
+conscience, and makes ductile and pliable the will, and fills the heart
+with fruition and tranquillity, and orders the life after the image of
+Him that created it.
+
+I cannot dwell any longer on this first point; but I hope that I have
+said enough, not to show that the words are true--that is a very poor
+thing to do, if that were all that I aimed at--but to bring them home to
+some of our hearts and consciences. I pray God to impress the conviction
+that, although there be in us all the voice of conscience, which all of
+us more or less have tried at intervals to follow; yet in the main it
+abides for ever true--and it is true, my dear brethren, about you--a
+Christless life is a life under the dominion of tyrannous desires. Ask
+yourself what I cannot ask for you, Is it I? My hand fumbles about the
+hinges and handle of the door of the heart. You yourself must open it
+and let conviction come in!
+
+Still further, the words before us add another touch to this picture.
+They not only represent the various passionate desires as being the real
+guides of 'the old man' but they give this other characteristic--that
+these desires are in their very nature the instruments of deceit and
+lies.
+
+The words of my text are, perhaps, rather enfeebled by the form of
+rendering which our translators have here, as in many cases, thought
+proper to adopt. If, instead of reading 'corrupt according to the
+deceitful lusts,' we read 'corrupt according to the desires of deceit,'
+we should have got not only the contrast between the old man and the new
+man, 'created in righteousness and holiness of truth'--but we should
+have had, perhaps, a clearer notion of the characteristic of these
+lusts, which the Apostle meant to bring into prominence. These desires
+are, as it were, the tools and instruments by which deceit betrays and
+mocks men; the weapons used by illusions and lies to corrupt and mar the
+soul. They are strong, and their nature is to pursue after their objects
+without regard to any consequences beyond their own gratification; but,
+strong as they are, they are like the blinded Samson, and will pull the
+house down on themselves if they be not watched. Their strength is
+excited on false pretences. They are stirred to grasp what is after all
+a lie. They are 'desires of deceit.'
+
+That just points to the truth of all such life being hollow and
+profitless. If regard be had to the whole scope of our nature and
+necessities, and to the true aim of life as deduced therefrom, nothing
+is more certain than that no man will get the satisfaction that his
+ruling passions promise him, by indulging them. It is very sure that the
+way never to get what you need and desire is always to do what you like.
+
+And that for very plain reasons. Because, for one thing, the object only
+satisfies for a time. Yesterday's food appeased our hunger for the day,
+but we wake hungry again. And the desires which are not so purely animal
+have the same characteristic of being stilled for the moment, and of
+waking more ravenous than ever. 'He that drinketh of this water shall
+thirst again.' Because, further, the desire grows and the object of it
+does not. The fierce longing increases, and, of course, the power of the
+thing that we pursue to satisfy it decreases in the same proportion. It
+is a fixed quantity; the appetite is indefinitely expansible. And so,
+the longer I go on feeding my desire, the more I long for the food; and
+the more I long for it, the less taste it has when I get it. It must be
+more strongly spiced to titillate a jaded palate. And there soon comes
+to be an end of the possibilities in that direction. A man scarcely
+tastes his brandy, and has little pleasure in drinking it, but he cannot
+do without it, and so he gulps it down in bigger and bigger draughts
+till delirium tremens comes in to finish all. Because, for another
+thing, after all, these desires are each but a fragment of one's whole
+nature, and when one is satisfied another is baying to be fed. The grim
+brute, like the watchdog of the old mythology, has three heads, and each
+gaping for honey cakes. And if they were all gorged, there are other
+longings in men's nature that will not let them rest, and for which all
+the leeks and onions of Egypt are not food. So long as these are unmet,
+you 'spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for
+that which satisfieth not.'
+
+So we may lay it down as a universal truth, that whoever takes it for
+his law to do as he likes will not for long like what he does; or, as
+George Herbert says,
+
+    'Shadows well mounted, dreams in a career,
+     Embroider'd lies, nothing between two dishes--
+            These are the pleasures here.'
+
+Do any of you remember the mournful words with which one of our greatest
+modern writers of fiction closes his saddest, truest book: 'Ah! _vanitas
+vanitatum_! Which of us is happy in this world? which of us has his
+desire? or, having it, is satisfied?' No wonder that with such a view of
+human life as that the next and last sentence should be, 'Come,
+children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for the play is played
+out.' Yes! if there be nothing more to follow than the desires which
+deceive, man's life, with all its bustle and emotion, is a subject for
+cynical and yet sad regard, and all the men and women that toil and fret
+are 'merely players.'
+
+Then, again, one more point in this portraiture of 'the old man,' is
+that these _deceiving desires corrupt_. The language of our text conveys
+a delicate shade of meaning which is somewhat blurred in our version.
+Properly, it speaks of 'the old man which is _growing_ corrupt,' rather
+than 'which is corrupt,' and expresses the steady advance of that inward
+process of decay and deterioration which is ever the fate of a life
+subordinated to these desires. And this growing evil, or rather inward
+eating corruption which disintegrates and destroys a soul, is contrasted
+in the subsequent verse with the 'new man which is _created_ in
+righteousness.' There is in the one the working of life, in the other
+the working of death. The one is formed and fashioned by the loving
+hands and quickening breath of God; the other is gradually and surely
+rotting away by the eating leprosy of sin. For the former the end is
+eternal life; for the latter, the second death.
+
+And the truth that underlies that awful representation is the familiar
+one to which I have already referred in another connection, that, by the
+very laws of our nature, by the plain necessities of the case, all our
+moral qualities, be they good or bad, tend to increase by exercise. In
+whatever direction we move, the rate of progress tends to accelerate
+itself. And this is preeminently the case when the motion is downwards.
+Every day that a bad man lives he is a worse man. My friend! you are on
+a sloping descent. Imperceptibly--because you will not look at the
+landmarks--but really, and not so very slowly either; convictions are
+dying out, impulses to good are becoming feeble, habits of neglect of
+conscience are becoming fixed, special forms of sin--avarice, or pride,
+or lust--are striking their claws deeper into your soul, and holding
+their bleeding booty firmer. In all regions of life exercise strengthens
+capacity. The wrestler, according to the old Greek parable, who began by
+carrying a calf on his shoulders, got to carry an ox by and by.
+
+It is a solemn thought this of the steady continuous aggravation of sin
+in the individual character. Surely nothing can be small which goes to
+make up that rapidly growing total. Beware of the little beginnings
+which 'eat as doth a canker.' Beware of the slightest deflection from
+the straight line of right. If there be two lines, one straight and the
+other going off at the sharpest angle, you have only to produce both far
+enough, and there will be room between them for all the space that
+separates hell from heaven! Beware of lading your souls with the weight
+of small single sins. We heap upon ourselves, by slow, steady accretion
+through a lifetime, the weight that, though it is gathered by grains,
+crushes the soul. There is nothing heavier than sand. You may lift it by
+particles. It drifts in atoms, but heaped upon a man it will break his
+bones, and blown over the land it buries pyramid and sphynx, the temples
+of gods and the homes of men beneath its barren solid waves. The leprosy
+gnaws the flesh off a man's bones, and joints and limbs drop off--he is
+a living death. So with every soul that is under the dominion of these
+lying desires--it is slowly rotting away piecemeal, 'waxing corrupt
+according to the lusts of deceit.'
+
+II. Note how, this being so, we have here the hopeless command to put
+off the old man.
+
+That command 'put it off' is the plain dictate of conscience and of
+common sense. But it seems as hopeless as it is imperative. I suppose
+everybody feels sometimes, more or less distinctly, that they ought to
+make an effort and get rid of these beggarly usurpers that tyrannise
+over will, and conscience, and life. Attempts enough are made to shake
+off the yoke. We have all tried some time or other. Our days are full of
+foiled resolutions, attempts that have broken down, unsuccessful
+rebellions, ending like the struggles of some snared wild creature, in
+wrapping the meshes tighter round us. How many times, since you were a
+boy or a girl, have you said--'Now I am _determined_ that I will never
+do that again. I have flung away opportunities. I have played the fool
+and erred exceedingly--but I now turn over a new leaf!' Yes, and you
+have turned it--and, if I might go on with the metaphor, the first gust
+of passion or temptation has blown the leaf back again, and the old page
+has been spread before you once more just as it used to be. The history
+of individual souls and the tragedy of the world's history recurring in
+every age, in which the noblest beginnings lead to disastrous ends, and
+each new star of promise that rises on the horizon leads men into
+quagmires and sets in blood, sufficiently show how futile the attempt in
+our own strength to overcome and expel the evils that are rooted in our
+nature.
+
+Moralists may preach, 'Unless above himself he can erect himself, how
+mean a thing is man'; but all the preaching in the world is of no avail.
+The task is an impossibility. The stream cannot rise above its source,
+nor be purified in its flow if bitter waters come from the fountain.
+'Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?' There is no power in
+human nature to cast off this clinging self. As in the awful vision of
+the poet, the serpent is grown into the man. The will is feeble for
+good, the conscience sits like a discrowned king issuing empty mandates,
+while all his realm is up in rebellion and treats his proclamations as
+so much waste paper. How can a man re-make himself? how cast off his own
+nature? The means at his disposal themselves need to be cleansed, for
+themselves are tainted. It is the old story--who will keep the
+keepers?--who will heal the sick physicians? You will sometimes see a
+wounded animal licking its wounds with its own tongue. How much more
+hopeless still is our effort by our own power to stanch and heal the
+gashes which sin has made! 'Put off the old man'--yes--and if it but
+clung to the limbs like the hero's poisoned vest, it might be possible.
+But it is not a case of throwing aside clothing, it is stripping oneself
+of the very skin and flesh--and if there is nothing more to be said than
+such vain commonplaces of impossible duty, then we must needs abandon
+hope, and wear the rotting evil till we die.
+
+But that is not all. 'What the law could not do, in that it was weak
+through the flesh,' God sending His own Son did--He condemned sin in the
+flesh. So we come to
+
+III. The possibility of fulfilling the command.
+
+The context tells us how this is possible. The law, the pattern, and the
+power for complete victory over the old sinful self, are to be found,
+'as the truth is--in Jesus.' Union with Christ gives us a real
+possession of a new principle of life, derived from Him, and like His
+own. That real, perfect, immortal life, which hath no kindred with evil,
+and flings off pollution and decay from its pure surface, will wrestle
+with and finally overcome the living death of obedience to the
+deceitful lusts. Our weakness will be made rigorous by His inbreathed
+power. Our gravitation to earth and sin will be overcome by the yearning
+of that life to its source. An all-constraining motive will be found in
+love to Him who has given Himself for us. A new hope will spring as to
+what may be possible for us, when we see Jesus, and in Him recognise the
+true Man, whose image we may bear. We shall die with Him to sin, when,
+resting by faith on Him who has died for sin, we are made conformable to
+His death, that we may walk in newness of life. Faith in Jesus gives us
+a share in the working of that mighty power by which He makes all things
+new. The renovation blots out the past, and changes the direction of the
+future. The fountain in our hearts sends forth bitter waters that cannot
+be healed. 'And the Lord showed him a tree,' even that Cross whereon
+Christ was crucified for us, 'which, when he had cast into the waters,
+the waters were made sweet.'
+
+I remember a rough parable of Luther's, grafted on an older legend, on
+this matter, which runs somewhat in this fashion: A man's heart is like
+a foul stable. Wheelbarrows and shovels are of little use, except to
+remove some of the surface filth, and to litter all the passages in the
+process. What is to be done with it? 'Turn the Elbe into it,' says he.
+The flood will sweep away all the pollution. Not my own efforts, but the
+influx of that pardoning, cleansing grace which is in Christ will wash
+away the accumulations of years, and the ingrained evil which has
+stained every part of my being. We cannot cleanse ourselves, we cannot
+'put off' this old nature which has struck its roots so deep into our
+being; but if we turn to Him with faith and say--Forgive me, and
+cleanse, and strip from me the foul and ragged robe fit only for the
+swine-troughs in the far-off land of disobedience, He will receive us
+and answer all our desires, and cast around us the pure garment of His
+own righteousness. 'The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus shall
+make us free from the law of sin and death.'
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW MAN
+
+     'And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in
+      righteousness and true holiness.'--Eph. iv. 24.
+
+
+We had occasion to remark in a former sermon that Paul regards this and
+the preceding clauses as the summing up of 'the truth in Jesus'; or, in
+other words, he considers the radical transformation and renovation of
+the whole moral nature as being the purpose of the revelation of God in
+Christ. To this end they have 'heard Him.' To this end they have
+'learned Him.' To this end they have been 'taught in Him,' receiving, by
+union with Him, all the various processes of His patient discipline.
+This is the inmost meaning of all the lessons in that great school in
+which all Christians are scholars, and Christ is the teacher and the
+theme, and union to Him the condition of entrance, and the manifold
+workings of His providence and His grace the instruments of training,
+and heaven the home when school time is over--that we should become new
+men in Christ Jesus.
+
+This great practical issue is set forth here under three aspects--one
+negative, two positive. The negative process is single and simple--'put
+off the old man.' The positive is double--a spiritual 'renewal' effected
+in our spirits, in the deep centre of our personal being, by that
+Divine Spirit who, dwelling in us, is 'the spirit of our minds'; and
+then, consequent upon that inward renewal, a renovation of life and
+character, which is described as being the 'putting on,' as if it were a
+garment, of 'the new man,' created by a divine act, and consisting in
+moral and spiritual likeness to God. It is not necessary to deal, except
+incidentally, with the two former, but I desire to consider the last of
+these--the putting on of the new man--a little more closely, and to try
+to bring out the wealth and depth of the Apostle's words in this
+wonderful text.
+
+The ideas contained seem to me in brief to be these--the great purpose
+of the Gospel is our moral renewal; that moral renewal is a creation
+after God's image; that new creation has to be put on or appropriated by
+us; the great means of appropriating it is contact with God's truth. Let
+us consider these points in order.
+
+I. The great purpose of the Gospel is our moral renewal; 'the new man
+... created in righteousness and ... holiness.'
+
+Now, of course, there are other ways of stating the end of the Gospel.
+This is by no means an exhaustive setting forth of its purpose. We may
+say that Christ has come in order that men may know God. We may say that
+He comes in order that the Divine Love, which ever delights to
+communicate, may bestow itself, and may conceive of the whole majestic
+series of acts of self-revelation from the beginning as being--if I may
+so say--for the gratification of that impulse to impart itself, which is
+the characteristic of love in God and man. We may say that the purpose
+of the whole is the deliverance of men from the burden and guilt of sin.
+But whether we speak of the end of the Gospel as the glory of God, or
+the blessedness of man, or as here, as being the moral perfection of
+the individual or of the race, they are all but various phrases of the
+one complete truth. The Gospel is the consequence and the manifestation
+of the love of God, which delights to be known and possessed by loving
+souls, and being known, changes them into its own likeness, which to
+know is to be happy, which to resemble is to be pure.
+
+The first thing that strikes me about this representation of our text is
+the profound sense of human sinfulness which underlies it.
+
+The language is utterly unmeaning--or at all events grossly
+exaggerated--unless all have sinned, and the nature which belongs to men
+universally, apart from the transforming power of Christ's Spirit, be
+corrupt and evil. And that it is so is the constant view of Scripture.
+The Bible notion of what men need in order to be pure and good is very
+different from the superficial notions of worldly moralists and
+philanthropists. We hear a great deal about 'culture,' as if all that
+were needed were the training and strengthening of the nature, as if
+what was mainly needed was the development of the understanding. We hear
+about 'reformation' from some who look rather deeper than the
+superficial apostles of culture. And how singularly the very word
+proclaims the insufficiency of the remedy which it suggests!
+'Re-formation' affects form and not substance. It puts the old materials
+into a new shape. Exactly so--and much good may be expected from that!
+They are the old materials still, and it matters comparatively little
+how they are arranged. It is not re-formation, but re-novation, or, to
+go deeper still, re-generation, that the world needs; not new forms, but
+a new life; not the culture and development of what it has in itself,
+but extirpation of the old by the infusion of something now and pure
+that has no taint of corruption, nor any contact with evil. 'Verily, I
+say unto you, ye must be born again.'
+
+All slighter notions of the need and more superficial diagnoses of the
+disease lead to a treatment with palliatives which never touch the true
+seat of the mischief, The poison flowers may be plucked, but the roots
+live on. It is useless to build dykes to keep out the wild waters.
+Somewhere or other they will find a way through. The only real cure is
+that which only the Creating hand can effect, who, by slow operation of
+some inward agency, can raise the level of the low lands, and lift them
+above the threatening waves. What is needed is a radical transformation,
+going down to the very roots of the being; and that necessity is clearly
+implied in the language of this text, which declares that a nature
+possessing righteousness and holiness is 'a new man' to be 'put on' as
+from without, not to be evolved as from within.
+
+It is to be further noticed what the Apostle specifies as the elements,
+or characteristics of this new nature--righteousness and holiness.
+
+The proclamation of a new nature in Christ Jesus, great and precious
+truth as it is, has often been connected with teaching which has been
+mystical in the bad sense of that word, and has been made the stalking
+horse of practical immorality. But here we have it distinctly defined in
+what that new nature consists. There is no vague mystery about it, no
+tampering with the idea of personality. The people who put on the new
+man are the same people after as before. The newness consists in moral
+and spiritual characteristics. And these are all summed up in the
+two--righteousness and holiness. To which is added in the substantially
+parallel passage in Colossians, 'Renewed in knowledge after the image of
+Him that created Him,' where, I suppose, we must regard the 'knowledge'
+as meaning that personal knowledge and acquaintance which has its
+condition in love, and is the foundation of the more purely moral
+qualities of which our text speaks.
+
+Is there, then, any distinction between these two? I think there is very
+obviously so. 'Righteousness' is, I suppose, to be understood here in
+its narrower meaning of observance of what is right, the squaring of
+conduct according to a solemn sovereign law of duty. Substantially it is
+equivalent to the somewhat heathenish word 'morality,' and refers human
+conduct and character to a law or standard. What, then, is 'holiness'?
+It is the same general conduct and character, considered, however, under
+another aspect, and in another relation. It involves the reference of
+life and self to God, consecration to, and service of Him. It is not a
+mere equivalent of purity, but distinctly carries the higher reference.
+The obedience now is not to a law but to a Lord. The perfection now does
+not consist in conformity to an ideal standard, but in likeness and
+devotion to God. That which I ought to do is that which my Father in
+heaven wills. Or, if the one word may roughly represent the more secular
+word 'morality,' the other may roughly represent the less devout phrase,
+'practical religion.'
+
+These are 'new,' as actually realised in human nature. Paul thinks that
+we shall not possess them except as a consequence of renovation. But
+they are not 'new' in the sense that the contents of Christian morality
+are different from the contents of the law written on men's hearts. The
+Gospel proclaims and produces no fantastic ethics of its own. The
+actions which it stamps in its mint are those which pass current in all
+lands--not a provincial coinage, but recognised as true in ring, and of
+full weight everywhere. Do not fancy that Christian righteousness is
+different from ordinary 'goodness,' except as being broader and deeper,
+more thorough-going, more imperative. Divergences there are, for our law
+is more than a republication of the law written on men's hearts. Though
+the one agrees with the other, yet the area which they cover is not the
+same. The precepts of the one, like some rock-hewn inscriptions by
+forgotten kings, are weathered and indistinct, often illegible, often
+misread, often neglected. The other is written in living characters in a
+perfect life. It includes all that the former attempts to enjoin, and
+much more besides. It alters the perspective, so to speak, of heathen
+morals, and brings into prominence graces overlooked or despised by
+them. It breathes a deeper meaning and a tenderer beauty into the words
+which express human conceptions of virtue, but it does take up these
+into itself. And instead of setting up a 'righteousness' which is
+peculiar to itself, and has nothing to do with the world's morality,
+Christianity says, as Christ has taught us, 'Except your righteousness
+_exceed_ the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not
+enter into the kingdom of God.' The same apostle who here declares that
+actual righteousness and holiness are new things on the earth, allows
+full force to whatsoever weight may be in the heathen notion of
+'virtue,' and adopts the words and ideas which he found ready made to
+his hands, in that notion--as fitly describing the Christian graces
+which he enjoined. Grecian moralists supplied him with the names true,
+honest, just, and pure. His 'righteousness' accepted these as included
+within its scope. And we have to remember that we are not invested with
+that new nature, unless we are living in the exercise of these common
+and familiar graces which the consciences and hearts of all the world
+recognise for 'lovely' and 'of good report,' hail as 'virtue,' and crown
+with 'praise.'
+
+So, then, let me pause here for a moment to urge you to take these
+thoughts as a very sharp and salutary test. You call yourselves
+Christian people. The purpose of your Christianity is your growth and
+perfecting in simple purity, and devotion to, and dependence on, our
+loving Father. Our religion is nothing unless it leads to these.
+Otherwise it is like a plant that never seeds, but may bear some feeble
+blossoms that drop shrunken to the ground before they mature. To very
+many of us the old solemn remonstrance should come with awakening
+force--'Ye did run well, what did hinder you?' You have apprehended
+Christ as the revealer and bringer of the great mercy of God, and have
+so been led in some measure to put your confidence in Him for your
+salvation and deliverance. But have you apprehended Him as the mould
+into which your life is to be poured, that life having been made fluent
+and plastic by the warmth of His love? You have apprehended Him as your
+refuge; have you apprehended Him as your inward sanctity? You have gone
+to Him as the source of salvation from the guilt and penalties of sin;
+have you gone to Him, and are you daily growing in the conscious
+possession of Him, as the means of salvation from the corruption and
+evil of sin? He comes to make us good. What has He made you? Anything
+different from what you were twenty years ago? Then, if not, and in so
+far as you are unchanged and unbettered, the Gospel is a failure for
+you, and you are untrue to it. The great purpose of all the work of
+Christ--His life, His sorrows, His passion, His resurrection, His glory,
+His continuous operation by the Spirit and the word is to make new men
+who shall be just and devout, righteous and holy.
+
+II. A second principle contained in these words, is that this moral
+Renewal is a Creation in the image of God.
+
+The new man is 'created after the image of God'--that is, of course,
+according to or in the likeness of God. There is evident reference here
+to the account of man's creation in Genesis, and the idea is involved
+that this new man is the restoration and completion of that earlier
+likeness, which, in some sense, has faded out of the features and form
+of our sinful souls. It is to be remembered, however, that there is an
+image of God inseparable from human nature, and not effaceable by any
+obscuring or disturbance caused by sin. Man's likeness to God consists
+in his being a person, possessed of a will and self-consciousness, and
+that mysterious gift of personality abides whatever perishes. But beyond
+that natural image of God, as we may call it, there is something else
+which fades wholly with the first breath of evil, like the reflexion of
+the sky on some windless sea. The natural likeness remains, and without
+it no comparison would be possible. We should not think of saying that a
+stone or an eagle were unlike God. But while the personal being makes
+comparison fitting, what makes the true contrast? In what respect is man
+unlike God? In moral antagonism. What is the true likeness? Moral
+harmony. What separates men from their Father in heaven? Is it that His
+'years are throughout all generations,' and 'my days are as an
+handbreadth'? Is it that His power is infinite, and mine all thwarted by
+other might and over tending to weakness and extinction? Is it that His
+wisdom, sunlike, waxes not nor wanes, and there is nothing hid from its
+beams, while my knowledge, like the lesser light, shines by reflected
+radiance, serves but to make the night visible, and is crescent and
+decaying, changeful and wandering? No. All such distinctions based upon
+what people call the sovereign attributes of God--the distinctions of
+creator and created, infinite and finite, omnipotent and weak, eternal
+and transient--make no real gulf between God and man. If we have only to
+say, 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are' His 'ways higher
+than' our 'ways,' that difference is not unlikeness, and establishes no
+separation; for low and flat though the dull earth be, does not heaven
+bend down round it, and send rain and sun, dew and blessing? But it is
+because 'your ways are not _as_ my ways'--because there is actual
+opposition, because the _directions_ are different--that there is
+unlikeness. The image of God lies not only in that personality which the
+'Father of Lies' too possesses, but in 'righteousness and holiness.'
+
+But besides this reference to the original creation of man, there is
+another reason for the representation of the new nature as being a work
+of divine creative power. It is in order to give the most emphatic
+expression possible to the truth that we do not make our righteousness
+for ourselves, but receive it as from Him. The new man is not our work,
+it is God's creation. As at the beginning, the first human life is
+represented as not originated in the line of natural cause and effect,
+but as a new and supernatural commencement, so in every Christian soul
+the life which is derived from God, and will unfold itself in His
+likeness, comes from His own breath inbreathed into the nostrils. It too
+is out of the line of natural causes. It too is a direct gift from God.
+It too is a true supernatural being--a real and new creation.
+
+May I venture a step further? 'The new man' is spoken of here as if it
+had existence ere we 'put it on.' I do not press that, as if it
+necessarily involved the idea which I am going to suggest, for the
+peculiar form of expression is probably only due to the exigencies of
+the metaphor. Still it may not be altogether foreign to the whole scope
+of the passage, if I remind you that the new man, the true likeness of
+God, has, indeed, a real existence apart from our assumption of it. Of
+course, the righteousness and holiness which make that new nature in me
+have no being till they become mine. But we believe that the
+righteousness and holiness which we make ours come from another, who
+bestows them on us. 'The new man' is not a mere ideal, but has a
+historical and a present existence. The ideal has lived and lives, is a
+human person, even Jesus Christ the express image of the Father, who is
+the beginning of the new creation, who of God is made unto us wisdom and
+righteousness. That fair vision of a humanity detached from all
+consequences of sin, renewed in perfect beauty, stainless and Godlike,
+is no unsubstantial dream, but a simple fact. He ever liveth. His word
+to us is, 'I counsel thee to buy of me--white raiment.' And a full
+parallel to the words of our text, which bid us 'put on the new man,
+created after God in righteousness and holiness,' is found in the other
+words of the same Apostle--'Let us cast off the works of darkness, and
+let us put on the armour of light. Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.'
+
+In accordance with this--
+
+III. It is further to be noticed that this new creation has to be put on
+and appropriated by us.
+
+The same idea which, as I have already remarked, is conveyed by the
+image of a new creation, is reiterated in this metaphor of putting on
+the new nature, as if it were a garment. Our task is not to weave it,
+but to wear it. It is made and ready.
+
+And that process of assumption or putting on has two parts. We are
+clothed upon with Christ in a double way, or rather in a double sense.
+We are 'found in Him not having our own righteousness,' but invested
+with His for our pardon and acceptance. We are clothed with His
+righteousness for our purifying and sanctifying.
+
+Both are the conditions of our being like God. Both are the gifts of
+God. The one, however, is an act; the other a process. Both are
+received. The one is received on condition of simple faith; the other is
+received by the medium of faithful effort. Both are included in the wide
+conception of salvation, but the law for the one is 'Not by works of
+righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us'; and the
+law for the other is--'Work out your own salvation with fear and
+trembling.' Both come from Christ, but for the one we have the
+invitation, 'Buy of Me white raiment that thou mayest be clothed'; and
+for the other we have the command, 'Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
+make not provision for the flesh.' There is the assumption of His
+righteousness which makes a man a Christian, and has for its condition
+simple faith. There is the assumption of His righteousness sanctifying
+and transforming us which follows in a Christian course, as its
+indispensable accompaniment and characteristic, and that is realised by
+daily and continuous effort.
+
+And one word about the manner, the effort as set forth here; twofold, as
+I have already pointed out--a negative and positive. We are not
+concerned here with the relations of these amongst themselves, but I may
+remark that there is no growth in holiness possible without the constant
+accompanying process of excision and crucifixion of the old. If you want
+to grow purer and liker Christ, you must slay yourselves. You cannot
+gird on 'righteousness' above the old self, as some beggar might buckle
+to himself royal velvet with its ermine over his filthy tatters. There
+must be a putting off in order to and accompanying the putting on. Strip
+yourselves of yourselves, and then you 'shall not be found naked,' but
+clothed with the garments of salvation, as the bride with the robe which
+is the token of the bridegroom's love, and the pledge of her espousals
+to him.
+
+And let nobody wonder that the Apostle here commands us, as by our own
+efforts, to put on and make ours what is in many other places of
+Scripture treated as God's gift. These earnest exhortations are
+perfectly consistent with the belief that all comes from God. Our
+faithful adherence to our Lord and Master, our honest efforts in His
+strength to secure more and more of His likeness, determine the extent
+to which we shall possess that likeness. The new nature is God's gift,
+and it is given to us according to His own fulness indeed, but also
+according to the measure of our faith. Blessed be His name! we have
+nothing to do but to accept His gift. The garment with which He clothes
+our nakedness and hides our filth is woven in no earthly looms. As with
+the first sinful pair, so with all their children since, 'the Lord God
+made them' the covering which they cannot make for themselves. But we
+have to accept it, and we have by daily toil, all our lives long, to
+gather it more and more closely around us, to wrap ourselves more and
+more completely in its ample folds. We have by effort and longing, by
+self-abnegation and aspiration, by prayer and work, by communion and
+service, to increase our possession of that likeness to God which lives
+in Jesus Christ, and from Him is stamped ever more and more deeply on
+the heart. For the strengthening of our confidence and our gratitude, we
+have to remember with lowly trust that it is true of us, 'If any man be
+in Christ he is a new creature.' For the quickening of our energy and
+faithful efforts we have to give heed to the command, and fulfil it in
+ourselves--'Be ye renewed in the Spirit of your minds, and put on the
+new man.'
+
+IV. And, finally, the text contains the principle that the means of
+appropriating this new nature is contact with the truth.
+
+If you will look at the margins of some Bibles you will see that our
+translators have placed there a rendering, which, as is not unfrequently
+the case, is decidedly better than that adopted by them in the text.
+Instead of 'true holiness,' the literal rendering is 'holiness of
+truth'--and the Apostle's purpose in the expression is not to
+particularise the quality, but the origin of the 'holiness.' It is 'of
+truth,' that is, produced by the holiness which flows from the truth as
+it is in Jesus, of which he has been speaking a moment before.
+
+And we come, therefore, to this practical conclusion, that whilst the
+agent of renovation is the Divine Spirit, and the condition of
+renovation is our cleaving to Christ, the medium of renovation and the
+weapon which transforming grace employs is 'the word of the truth of the
+Gospel' whereby we are sanctified. There we get the law, and there we
+get the motive and the impulse. There we get the encouragement and the
+hope. In it, in the grand simple message--'God was in Christ,
+reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto
+them,' lie the germs of all moral progress. And in proportion as we
+believe that--not with the cold belief of our understandings, but with
+the loving affiance of our hearts and our whole spiritual being--in
+proportion as we believe that, in that proportion shall we grow in
+'knowledge,' shall we grow in 'righteousness,' in the 'image of Him that
+created us.' The Gospel is the great means of this change, because it is
+the great means by which He who works the change comes near to our
+understandings and our hearts.
+
+So let us learn how impossible are righteousness and holiness, morality
+and religion in men, unless they flow from this source. It is the truth
+that sanctifies. It is the Spirit who wields that truth who sanctifies.
+It is Christ who sends the Spirit who sanctifies. But, brethren, beyond
+the range of this light is only darkness, and that nature which is not
+cleansed by His priestly hand laid upon it remains leprous, and he who
+is clothed with any other garment than His righteousness will find 'the
+covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.' And let us
+learn, on the other hand, the incompleteness and monstrosity of a
+professed belief in 'the truth' which does not produce this
+righteousness and holiness. It may be real--God forbid that we should
+step into His place and assume His office of discerning the thoughts of
+the heart, and the genuineness of Christian professions! But, at any
+rate, it is no exaggeration nor presumption to say that a professed
+faith which is not making us daily better, gentler, simpler, purer, more
+truthful, more tender, more brave, more self-oblivious, more loving,
+more strong--more like Christ--is wofully deficient either in reality or
+in power--is, if genuine, ready to perish--if lit at all, smouldering to
+extinction. Christian men and women! is 'the truth' moulding you into
+Christ's likeness? If not, see to it whether it be the truth which you
+are holding, and whether you are holding the truth or have unconsciously
+let it slip from a grasp numbed by the freezing coldness of the world.
+
+And for us all, let us see that we lay to heart the large truths of this
+text, and give them that personal bearing without which they are of no
+avail. _I_ need renovation in my inmost nature. Nothing can renew _my_
+soul but the power of Christ, who is _my_ life. _I_ am naked and foul.
+Nothing can cleanse and clothe _me_ but He. The blessed truth which
+reveals Him calls for _my_ individual faith. And if _I_ put _my_
+confidence in that Lord, He will dwell in _my_ inmost spirit, and so
+sway _my_ affections and mould _my_ will that _I_ shall be transformed
+unto His perfect likeness. He begins with each one of us by bringing the
+best robe to cast over the rags of the returning prodigal. He ends not
+with any who trust Him, until they stand amid the hosts of the heavens
+who follow Him, clothed with fine linen clean and white, which is the
+righteousness of His Holy ones.
+
+
+
+
+GRIEVING THE SPIRIT
+
+     'Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the
+      day of redemption.'--Eph. iv. 30.
+
+
+The miracle of Christianity is the Incarnation. It is not a link in a
+chain, but a new beginning, the entrance into the cosmic order of a
+Divine Power. The sequel of Bethlehem and Calvary and Olivet is the
+upper room and the Pentecost. There is the issue of the whole mission
+and work of Christ--the planting in the heart of humanity of a new and
+divine life. All Christendom is professing to commemorate that fact
+to-day, [Preached on Whitsunday] but a large portion of us forget that
+it was but a transient sign of a perpetual reality. The rushing mighty
+wind has died down into a calm; the fiery tongues have ceased to flicker
+on the disciples' heads, but the miracle, which is permanent, and is
+being repeated from day to day, in the experience of every believing
+soul, is the inrush of the very breath of God into their lives, and the
+plunging of them into a fiery baptism which melts their coldness and
+refines away their dross. Now, my text brings before us some very
+remarkable thoughts as to the permanent working of the Divine Spirit
+upon Christian souls, and upon this it bases a very tender and
+persuasive exhortation to conduct. And I desire simply to try to bring
+out the fourfold aspect in those words. There is, first, a wondrous
+revelation; second, a plain lesson as to what that Divine Spirit chiefly
+does; third, a solemn warning as to man's power and freedom to thwart
+it; and, lastly, a tender motive for conduct. 'Grieve not the Holy
+Spirit, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.'
+
+Now let us look briefly at these four thoughts: Here we have--
+
+I. A wonderful revelation.
+
+Wonderful to all, startling to some. If you can speak of grief, you must
+be speaking of a person. An influence cannot be sorry, whatever may
+happen to it. And that word of my text is no more violent metaphor or
+exaggeratedly strong way of suggesting a motive, but it keeps rigidly
+within the New Testament limits, in reference to that Divine Spirit,
+when to Him it attributes this personal emotion of sorrow with its
+correlation of possible joy.
+
+Now, I do not need to dwell upon the thought here, but I do desire to
+emphasise it, especially in view of the strangely hazy and defective
+conceptions which so many Christian people have upon this matter. And I
+desire to remind you that the implied assumption of a personal Spirit,
+capable of being 'grieved,' which is in this text, is in accordance with
+all the rest of the New Testament teaching.
+
+What did Jesus Christ mean when He spoke of one who 'will guide you into
+all truth'; of one who 'whatsoever He shall hear, those things shall He
+speak'? What does the book of the Acts mean when it says that the Spirit
+said to the believers in Antioch, 'Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the
+work whereunto I have called them'? What did Paul mean when he said, 'In
+every city the Holy Ghost testifieth that bonds and afflictions await
+me'? What does the minister officiating in baptism mean when he says, 'I
+baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
+Ghost'? That form presents, according to many interpretations, a Divine
+Person, a Man, and an Influence. Why are these bracketed together? And
+what do we mean when, at the end of every Christian service, we invoke
+'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and
+the fellowship of the Holy Spirit'? A Man, and God, and an Influence--is
+that the interpretation? You cannot get rid from the New Testament
+teaching, whether you accept it or not--you cannot eliminate from it
+this, that the divine causality of our salvation is threefold and one,
+the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
+
+Now, brethren, I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that
+practically the average orthodox believer believes in a duality, and not
+a Trinity, in the divine nature. I do not care about the scholastic
+words, but what I would insist upon is that the course of Christian
+thinking has been roughly this. First of all, in the early Church, the
+question of the Divine nature came into play, mainly in reference to the
+relation of the Eternal Word to the Eternal Father, and of the
+Incarnation to both. And then, when that was roughly settled, there came
+down through many ages, and there still subsists, the endeavour to cast
+into complete and intelligible forms the doctrine, if I must use the
+word, of Christ's nature and work. And now, as I believe, to a very
+large extent, the foremost and best thinking of the Christian Church is
+being occupied with that last problem, the nature and work of that
+Divine Spirit. I believe that we stand on the verge of a far clearer
+perception of, and of a far more fervent and realising faith in, the
+Spirit of God, than ever the Churches have seen before. And I pray you
+to remember that however much your Christian thought and Christian
+faith may be centred upon, and may be drawing its nourishment and its
+joy from, the work of Jesus Christ who died on the Cross for our
+salvation, and lives to be our King and Defender, there is a gap--not
+only in your Christian Creed, but also in your Christian experiences and
+joys and power, unless you have risen to this thought, that the Divine
+Spirit is not only an influence, a wind, a fire, an oil, a dove, a dew,
+but a Divine Person. We have to go back to the old creed--'I believe in
+God the Father Almighty ... and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord
+... I believe in the Holy Ghost.'
+
+But further, this same revelation carries with it another, and to some
+of us a startling thought. 'Grieve not the Holy Spirit': that Divine
+Person is capable of grief. I do not believe that is rhetorical
+exaggeration. Of course I know that we should think of God as the
+ever-blessed God, but we also in these last days begin to think more
+boldly, and I believe more truly, that if man is in the image of God,
+and there is a divine element in humanity, there must be a human element
+in divinity. And though I know that it is perilous to make affirmations
+about a matter so far beyond our possibility of verification by
+experience, I venture to think that perhaps the doctrine that God is
+lifted up high above all human weaknesses and emotions does not mean
+that there can be no shadow cast on the divine blessedness by the dark
+substance of human sin. I do not venture to assert: I only suggest; and
+this I know, that He who said to us, 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
+Father,' had His eyes filled with tears, even in His hour of triumph, as
+He looked across the valley and saw the city sparkling in the rays of
+the morning sun. May we venture to see there an unveiling of the divine
+heart? Love has an infinite capacity of sorrow as of joy. But I leave
+these perhaps too presumptuous and lofty thoughts, to turn to the other
+points involved in the words before us.
+
+I said, in the second place, there was--
+
+II. A plain lesson here, as to the great purpose for which the Divine
+Spirit has been lodged in the heart of humanity.
+
+I find that in the two words of my text, 'the Holy Spirit,' and 'ye were
+thereby sealed unto the day of redemption.' If the central
+characteristic which it imports us to know and to keep in mind is that
+implied by the name, 'the Holy Spirit' then, of course, the great work
+that He has to perform upon earth is to make men like Himself. And that
+is further confirmed by the emblem of the seal which is here; for the
+seal comes in contact with the thing sealed, and leaves the impression
+of its own likeness there. And whatever else--and there is a great deal
+else that I cannot touch now--may be included in that great thought of
+the sealing by the Divine Spirit, these things are inseparably connected
+with, and suggested by it, viz. the actual contact of the Spirit of God
+with our spirits, which is expressed, as you may remember, in the other
+metaphors of being baptized in and anointed with, and yet more
+important, the result purposed by that contact being mainly to make us
+holy.
+
+Now, I pray you to think of how different that is from all other notions
+of inspiration that the world has ever known, and how different it is
+from a great many ideas that have had influence within the Christian
+Church. People say there are not any miracles now, and say we are worse
+off than when there used to be. That Divine Spirit does not come to give
+gifts of healing, interpretations of tongues, and all the other abnormal
+and temporary results which attended the first manifestations. These,
+when they were given, were but means to an end, and the end subsists
+whilst the means are swept away. It is better to be made good than to be
+filled with all manner of miraculous power. 'In this rejoice, not that
+the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names
+are written in heaven.' All the rest is transient. It is gone; let it
+go, we are not a bit the poorer for want of it. This remains--not
+tongues, nor gifts of healing, nor any other of these miraculous and
+extraordinary and external powers--but the continual operation of a
+divine influence, moulding men into its own likeness.
+
+Christianity is intensely ethical, and it sets forth, as the ultimate
+result of all its machinery, changing men into the likeness of God.
+Holiness is that for which Christ died, that for which the Divine Spirit
+works. Unless we Christian people recognise the true perspective of the
+Spirit's gifts, and put at the base the extraordinary, and higher than
+these, but still subordinate, the intellectual, and on top of all the
+spiritual and moral, we do not understand the meaning of the central
+gift and possible blessing of Christianity, to make us holy, or, if you
+do not like the theological word, let us put it into still plainer and
+more modern English, to make you and me good men and women, like God.
+That is the mightiest work of that Divine Spirit.
+
+We have here--
+
+III. A plain warning as to the possibility of thwarting these
+influences.
+
+Nothing here about irresistible grace; nothing here about a power that
+lays hold upon a man, and makes him good, he lying passive in its hands
+like clay in the hands of the potter! You will not be made holy without
+the Divine Spirit, but you will not be made holy without your working
+along with it. There is a possibility of resisting, and there is a
+possibility of co-operating. Man is left free. God does not lay hold of
+any one by the hair of his head, and drag him into paths of
+righteousness whether he will or no. But whilst there is the necessity
+for co-operation, which involves the possibility of resistance, we must
+also remember that that new life which comes into a man, and moulds his
+will as well as the rest of his nature, is itself the gift of God. We do
+not get into a contradiction when we thus speak, we only touch the edge
+of a great ocean in which our plummets can find no bottom. The same
+unravellable knot as to the co-operation of the divine and the creatural
+is found in the natural world, as in the experiences of the Christian
+soul. You have to work, and your work largely consists in yielding
+yourselves to the work of God upon you. 'Work out your own salvation
+with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you.' Brethren!
+If you and I are Christian people, we have put into our hearts and
+spirits the talent. It depends on us whether we wrap it in a napkin, and
+stow it away underground somewhere, or whether we use it, and fructify
+and increase it. If you wrap it in a napkin and put it away underground,
+when you come to take it out, and want to say, 'Lo! there Thou hast that
+is Thine,' you will find that it was not solid gold, which could not
+rust or diminish, but that it has been like some volatile essence, put
+away in an unventilated place, and imperfectly secured: the napkin is
+there, but the talent has vanished. We have to work with God, and we can
+resist. Ay, and there is a deeper and a sadder word than that applied by
+the same Apostle in another letter to the same subject. We can 'quench'
+the light and extinguish the fire.
+
+What extinguishes it? Look at the catalogue of sins that lie side by
+side with this exhortation of my text! They are all small
+matters--bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil-speaking, malice,
+stealing, lying, and the like; very 'homely' transgressions, if I may so
+say. Yes, and if you pile enough of them upon the spark that is in your
+hearts you will smother it out. Sin, the wrenching of myself away from
+the influences, not attending to the whispers and suggestions, being
+blind to the teaching of the Spirit through the Word and through
+Providence: these are the things that 'grieve the Holy Spirit of God.'
+
+And so, lastly, we have here--
+
+IV. A Tender Motive, a dissuasive from sin, a persuasive to yielding and
+to righteousness.
+
+Many a man has been kept from doing wrong things by thinking of a sad
+pale face sitting at home waiting for him. Many a boy has been kept from
+youthful transgressions which war against his soul here, on the streets
+of Manchester, full as they are of temptations, by thinking that it
+would grieve the poor old mother in her cottage, away down in the
+country somewhere. We can bring that same motive to bear, with
+infinitely increased force, in regard to our conduct as Christian
+people. 'Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.' A father feels a pang if he
+sees that his child makes no account of some precious gift that he has
+bestowed upon him, and leaves it lying about anywhere. A loving friend,
+standing on the margin of the stream, and calling to his friends in a
+boat when they are drifting to the rapids, turns away sad if they do not
+attend to his voice. That Divine Spirit pleads with us, and proffers its
+gifts to us, and turns away--I was going to use too strong a word,
+perhaps--sick at heart, not because of wounded authority, but because of
+wounded love and baffled desire to help, when we, in spite of It, will
+take our own way, neglect the call that warns us of our peril, and leave
+untouched the gifts that would have made us safe.
+
+Dear brethren, surely such a dissuasive from evil, and such a persuasive
+to good, is mightier than all abstractions about duty and conscience and
+right, and the like. 'Do it rightly' says Paul, 'and you will please Him
+that hath called you'; leave the evil thing undone, 'and my heart shall
+be glad, even mine.' You and I can grieve the Christ whose Spirit is
+given to us. You and I can add something to 'the joy of our Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S IMITATORS
+
+     'Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children'--Eph. v. 1.
+
+
+The Revised Version gives a more literal and more energetic rendering of
+this verse by reading, 'Be ye, therefore, _imitators_ of God, _as
+beloved_ children.' It is the only place in the Bible where that bold
+word 'imitate' is applied to the Christian relation to God. But, though
+the expression is unique, the idea underlies the whole teaching of the
+New Testament on the subject of Christian character and conduct. To be
+like God, and to set ourselves to resemble Him, is the sum of all duty;
+and in the measure in which we approximate thereto, we come to
+perfection. So, then, there are here just two points that I would
+briefly touch upon now--the one is the sublime precept of the text, and
+the other the all-sufficient motive enforcing it. 'Be ye imitators of
+God as'--because you are, and know yourselves to be--'beloved children,'
+and it therefore behoves you to be like your Father.
+
+I. First, then, this sublime precept.
+
+Now notice that, broad as this precept is, and all-inclusive of every
+kind of excellence and duty as it may be, the Apostle has a very
+definite and specific meaning in it. There is one feature, and only one,
+in which, accurately speaking, a man may be like God. Our limited
+knowledge can never be like the ungrowing perfect wisdom of God. Our
+holiness cannot be like His, for there are many points in our nature and
+character which have no relation or correspondence to anything in the
+divine nature. But what is left? Love is left. Our other graces are not
+like the God to whom they cleave. My faith is not like His faithfulness.
+My obedience is not like His authority. My submission is not like His
+autocratic power. My emptiness is not like His fulness. My aspirations
+are not like His gratifying of them. They correspond to God, but
+correspondence is not similarity; rather it presupposes unlikeness. Just
+as a concavity will fit into a convexity, for the very reason that it is
+concave and not convex, so the human unlikenesses, which are
+correspondent to God, are the characteristics by which it becomes
+possible that we should cleave to Him and inhere in Him. But whilst
+there is much in which He stands alone and incomparable, and whilst we
+have all to say, 'Who is like unto Thee, O Lord?' or what likeness shall
+we compare unto Him? we yet can obey in reference to one thing,--and to
+one thing only, as it seems to me--the commandment of my text, 'Be ye
+imitators of God.' We can be _like_ Him in nothing else, but our love
+not only corresponds to His, but is of the same quality and nature as
+His, howsoever different it may be in sweep and in fervour and in
+degree. The tiniest drop that hangs upon the tip of a thorn will be as
+perfect a sphere as the sun, and it will have its little rainbow on its
+round, with all the prismatic colours, the same in tint and order and
+loveliness, as when the bow spans the heavens. The dew-drop may imitate
+the sun, and we are to be imitators of God; knit to Him by the one thing
+in us which is kindred to Him in the deepest sense--the love that is the
+life of God and the perfecting of man.
+
+Well, then, notice how the Apostle in the context fastens upon a certain
+characteristic of that divine love which we are to imitate in our lives;
+and thereby makes the precept a very practical and a very difficult one.
+Godlike love will be love that gives as liberally as His does. What is
+the very essence of all love? Longing to be like. And the purest and
+deepest love is love which desires to impart itself, and that is God's
+love. The Bible seems to teach us that in a very mysterious sense, about
+which the less we say the less likely we are to err, there is a quality
+of giving up, as well as of giving, in God's love; for we read of the
+Father that 'spared not His Son,' by which is meant, not that He did not
+shrink from inflicting something upon the Son, but that He did not
+grudgingly keep that Son for Himself. 'He spared not His own Son, but
+delivered Him up to the death for us all.' And if we can say but little
+about that surrender on the part of the infinite Fountain of all love,
+we can say that Jesus Christ, who is the activity of the Father's love,
+spared not Himself, but, as the context puts it, 'gave Himself _up_ for
+us.'
+
+And that is the pattern for us. That thought is not a subject to be
+decorated with tawdry finery of eloquence, or to be dealt with as if it
+were a sentimental prettiness very fit to be spoken of, but impossible
+to be practised. It is the duty of every Christian man and woman, and
+they have not done their duty unless they have learned that the bond
+which unites them to men is, in its nature, the very same as the bond
+which unites men to God; and that they will not have lived righteously
+unless they learn to be 'imitators of God,' in the surrender of
+themselves for their brother's good.
+
+Ah, friend, that grips us very tight--and if there were a little more
+reality and prose brought into our sentimental talk about Christian
+love, and that love were more often shown in action, in all the
+self-suppression and taking a lift of a world's burdens, which its great
+Pattern demands, the world would be less likely to curl a scornful lip
+at the Church's talk about brotherly love.
+
+You say that you are a Christian--that is to say a child of God. Do you
+know anything, and would anybody looking at you see that you knew
+anything, about the love which counts no cost and no sacrifice too great
+to be lavished on the unworthy and the sinful?
+
+But that brings me to another point. The Apostle here, in the context,
+not for the sake of saying pretty things, but for the sake of putting
+sharp points on Christian duty, emphasises another thought, that Godlike
+love will be a forgiving love. Why should we be always waiting for the
+other man to determine our relations to him, and consider that if he
+does not like us we are absolved from the duty of loving him? Why should
+we leave him to settle the terms upon which we are to stand? God has
+love, as the Sermon on the Mount puts it, 'to the unthankful and the
+evil,' and we shall not be imitating His example unless we carry the
+same temper into all our relationships with our fellows.
+
+People sit complacently and hear all that I am now trying to enforce,
+and think it is the right thing for me to say, but do you think it is
+the right thing for you to do? When a man obviously does not like you,
+or perhaps tries to harm you, what then? How do you meet him? 'He maketh
+His sun to shine, and sendeth His rain, on the unthankful and the evil.'
+'Be ye imitators of God, as beloved children.'
+
+Now note the all-sufficient motive for this great precept.
+
+The sense of being loved will make loving, and nothing else will. The
+only power that will eradicate, or break without eradicating, our
+natural tendency to make ourselves our centres, is the recognition that
+there, at the heart, and on the central throne of the universe, and the
+divinest thing in it, there sits perfect and self-sacrificing Love,
+whose beams warm even us. The only flame that kindles love in a man's
+heart, whether it be to God or to man, is the recognition that he
+himself stands in the full sunshine of that blaze from above, and that
+God has loved him. Our hearts are like reverberating furnaces, and when
+the fire of the consciousness of the divine love is lit in them, then
+from sides and roof the genial heat is reflected back again to intensify
+the central flame. Love begets love, and according to Paul, and
+according to John, and according to the Master of both of them, if a man
+loves God, then that glowing beam will glow whether it is turned to
+earth or turned to heaven.
+
+The Bible does not cut love into two, and keep love to God in one
+division of the heart and love to man in another, but regards them as
+one and the same; the same sentiment, the same temper, the same attitude
+of heart and mind, only that in the one case the love soars, and in the
+other it lives along the level. The two are indissolubly tied together.
+
+It is because a man knows himself to be beloved that therefore he is
+stimulated and encouraged to be an 'imitator of God' and, on the other
+hand, the sense of being God's child underlies all real imitation of
+Him. Imitation is natural to the child. It is a miserable home where a
+boy does not imitate his father, and it is the father's fault in nine
+cases out of ten if he does not. Whoever feels himself to be a beloved
+child is thereby necessarily drawn to model himself on the Father that
+he loves, because he knows that the Father loves him.
+
+So I come to the blessed truth that Christian morality does not say to
+us, 'Now begin, and work, and tinker away at yourselves, and try to get
+up some kind of excellence of character, and then come to God, and pray
+Him to accept you.' That is putting the cart before the horse. The order
+is reversed. We are to begin with taking our personal salvation and
+God's love to us for granted, and to work from that. Realise that you
+are beloved children, and then set to work to live accordingly. If we
+are ever to do what is our bounden duty to do, in all the various
+relations of life, we must begin with recognising, with faithful and
+grateful hearts, the love wherewith God has loved us. We are to think
+much and confidently of ourselves as beloved of God, and that, and only
+that, will make us loving to men.
+
+The Nile floods the fields of Egypt and brings greenness and abundance
+wherever its waters are carried, because thousands of miles away, close
+up to the Equator, the snows have melted and filled the watercourses in
+the far-off wilderness. And so, if we are to go out into life, living
+illustrations and messengers of a love that has redeemed even us, we
+must, in many a solitary moment, and in the depths of our quiet hearts,
+realise and keep fast the conviction that God hath loved us, and Christ
+hath died for us.
+
+But a solemn consideration has to be pressed on all our consciences, and
+that is that there is something wrong with a man's Christian confidence
+whose assurance that he himself possesses a share in the love of God in
+Christ, is not ever moving him to imitation of the love in which he
+trusts. It is a shame that any one without Christian faith and love
+should be as charitable, as open to pity and to help, as earnest in any
+sort of philanthropic work, as Christian men and women are. But godless
+and perfectly secular philanthropy treads hard on the heels of Christian
+charity to-day. The more shame to us if we have been eating our morsels
+alone, and hugging ourselves in the possession of the love which has
+redeemed us; and if it has not quickened us to the necessity of copying
+it in our relations to our fellows. There is something dreadfully wrong
+about such a Christian character. 'He that loveth not his brother whom
+he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?'
+
+Take these plain principles, and honestly fit them to your characters
+and lives, and you will revolutionise both.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT CHILDREN OF LIGHT SHOULD BE
+
+     'Walk as children of light.'--Eph. v. 8.
+
+
+It was our Lord who coined this great name for His disciples. Paul's use
+of it is probably a reminiscence of the Master's, and so is a hint of
+the existence of the same teachings as we now find in the existing
+Gospels, long before their day. Jesus Christ said, 'Believe in the
+light, that ye may be the children of light'; and Paul gives
+substantially the same account of the way by which a man becomes a Son
+of the Light when he says, in the words preceding my text, 'Ye were
+sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.'
+
+Union with Him makes light, just as the bit of carbon will glow as long
+as it is in contact with the electric force, and subsides again into
+darkness when that is switched off. To be in Christ is to be a child of
+light, and to believe in Christ is to be in Him.
+
+But the intense moral earnestness of our Apostle is indicated by the
+fact that on both occasions in which he uses this designation he does
+so, not for the purpose of heightening the sense of the honour and
+prerogative attached to it, but for the sake of deducing from it plain
+and stringent moral duties, and heightening the sense of obligation to
+holy living.
+
+'Walk as children of light.' Be true to your truest, deepest self.
+Manifest what you are. Let the sweet, sacred secrets of inward communion
+come out in the trivialities of ordinary conduct; make of your every
+thought a deed, and see to it that every deed be vitalised and purified
+by its contact with the great truths and thoughts that lie in this name.
+These are various ways of putting this one all-sufficient directory of
+conduct.
+
+Now, in the context, the Apostle expands this concentrated exhortation
+in three or four different directions, and perhaps we may best set forth
+its meaning if we shape our remarks by these, I venture to cast them,
+for the sake of emphasis, into a hortatory form.
+
+I. Aim at an all-round productiveness of the natural fruits of the
+light.
+
+The true reading is, 'Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the
+light' (not _spirit_, as the Authorised Version reads it) 'is in all
+goodness and righteousness and truth.' Now, it is obvious that the
+alteration of 'light' instead of 'spirit' brings the words into
+connection with the preceding and the following. The reference to the
+'fruits of the spirit' would be entirely irrelevant in this place; a
+reference to the 'fruit of the _light_,' as being every form of goodness
+and righteousness and truth, is altogether in place.
+
+There is, then, a natural tendency in the light to blossom out into all
+forms and types of goodness. 'Fruit' suggests the idea of natural,
+silent, spontaneous, effortless growth. And, although that is by no
+means a sufficient account of the process by which bad men become good
+men, it is an inseparable element, in all true moral renovation, that it
+be the natural outcome and manifestation of an inward principle;
+otherwise it is mere hypocritical adornment, or superficial appearance.
+If we are to do good we must first of all _be_ good. If from us there
+are to come righteousness and truth, and all other graces of character,
+there must, first of all, be the radical change which is involved in
+passing from separateness in the darkness to union with Jesus Christ in
+the light. The Apostle's theory of moral renovation is that you must
+begin with the implantation in the spirit of the source of all moral
+goodness--viz. Jesus Christ--brought into the heart by the uniting power
+of humble faith. And then there will be lodged in our being a vital
+power, of which the natural outcome will be all manner of fair and pure
+things. Effort is needed, as I shall have to say; but prior to effort
+there must be union with Jesus Christ.
+
+This wide, general commandment of our text is sufficiently definite,
+thinks Paul; for if the light be in you it will naturally effloresce
+into all forms of beauty. Light is the condition of fruitfulness.
+Everywhere the vital germ is only acted upon by the light. No sunshine,
+no flowers; darkness produces thin, etiolated, whitened, and feeble
+shoots at the best. Let the light blaze in, and the blanched feebleness
+becomes vigorous and unfolds itself. How much more will light be the
+condition of fruitfulness when the very light itself is the seed from
+which all fruit is developed.
+
+But, still further, mark how there must be an all-round completeness in
+order that we shall fairly set forth the glory and power of the light of
+which our faith makes us children and partakers. The fruit 'is in all
+goodness and righteousness and truth.' These three aspects--the good,
+the right, the true--may not be a scientific, ethical classification,
+but they give a sufficiently plain and practical distinction. Goodness,
+in which the prevailing idea is beneficence and the kindlier virtues;
+righteousness, which refers to the sterner graces of justice; truth, in
+which the prevalent idea is conformity in action with facts and the
+conditions of man's life and entire sincerity--these three do cover,
+with sufficient completeness, the whole ground of possible human
+excellence. But the Apostle widens them still further by that little
+word _all_.
+
+We all tend to cultivate those virtues which are in accordance with our
+natural dispositions, or are made most easy to us by our circumstances.
+And there is nothing in which we more need to seek comprehensiveness
+than in the effort to educate ourselves into, and to educe from
+ourselves, kinds of goodness and forms of excellence which are not
+naturally in accordance with our dispositions, or facilitated by our
+circumstances. The tree planted in the shrubbery will grow all lopsided;
+the bushes on the edge of the cliff will be shorn away on the windward
+side by the teeth of the south-western gale, and will lean over
+northwards, on the side of least resistance. And so we all are apt to
+content ourselves with doing the good things that are easiest for us, or
+that fit into our temperament and character. Jesus Christ would have us
+to be all-round men, and would that we should seek to aim after and
+possess the kinds of excellence that are least cognate to our
+characters. Are you strong, and do you pride yourself upon your
+firmness? Cultivate gentleness. Are you amiable, and pride yourself,
+perhaps, upon your sympathetic tenderness? Try to get a little iron and
+quinine into your constitution. Seek to be the man that you are least
+likely to be, and aim at a comprehensive development of '_all_
+righteousness and goodness and truth.'
+
+Further, remember that this all-round completeness is not attained as
+the result of an effortless growth. True, these things are the fruits of
+the light, but also true, they are the prizes of struggle and the
+trophies of warfare. No man will ever attain to the comprehensive moral
+excellence which it is in his own power to win; no Christian will ever
+be as all-round a good man as he has the opportunities of being, unless
+he makes it his business, day by day, to aim after the conscious
+increase of gifts that he possesses, and the conscious appropriation and
+possession of those of which he is still lacking. 'Nothing of itself
+will come,' or very little. True, the light will shine out in variously
+tinted ray if it be in a man, as surely as from the seed come the blade
+and the ear and the full corn in the ear, but you will not have nor keep
+the light which thus will unfold itself unless you put forth appropriate
+effort. Christ comes into our hearts, but we have to bring Him there.
+Christ dwells in our hearts, but we have to work into our nature, and
+work out in action, the gifts that He bestows. They will advance but
+little in the divine life who trust to the natural unfolding of the
+supernatural life within them, and do not help its unfolding by their
+own resolute activity. 'Walk as children of the light.' There is your
+duty, for 'the fruit of the light is all righteousness.' One might have
+supposed that the commandments would be, 'Be passive as children of the
+light, for the light will grow.' But the Apostle binds together, as
+always, the two things, the divine working and the human effort at
+reception, retention, and application of that divine work, just as he
+does in the great classical passage, 'Work out your own salvation, for
+it is God that worketh in you.'
+
+II. Secondly, the general exhortation of my text widens out itself into
+this--test all things by Christ's approval of them.
+
+'Proving what is well pleasing unto the Lord.' That, according to the
+natural construction of the Greek, is the main way by which the Apostle
+conceives that his general commandment of 'walking as children of the
+light' is to be carried out. You do it if, step by step, and moment by
+moment, and to every action of life, you apply this standard--Does
+Christ like it? Does it please Him? When that test is rigidly applied,
+then, and only then, will you walk as becomes the children of the light.
+
+So, then, there is a standard--not what men approve, not what my
+conscience, partially illuminated, may say is permissible, not what is
+recognised as allowable by the common maxims of the world round about
+us, but Christ's approval. How different the hard, stern, and often
+unwelcome prescriptions of law and rigidity of some standards of right
+become when they are changed into that which pleases the Divine Lord and
+Lover! Surely it is something blessed that the hard, cold, and to such a
+large extent powerless conceptions of duty or obligation shall be
+changed into pleasing Jesus Christ; and that so our hearts shall be
+enlisted in the service of our consciences, and love shall be glad to do
+the Beloved's will. There are many ways by which the burden of life's
+obligations is lightened to the Christian. I do not know that any of
+them is more precious than the fact that law is changed into His will,
+and that we seek to do what is right because it pleases the Master.
+There is the standard.
+
+It will be easy for us to come to the right appreciation of individual
+actions when we are living in the light. Union with Jesus Christ will
+make us quick to discern His will. We have a conscience;--well, that
+needs educating and enlightening, and very often correcting. We have the
+Word of God;--well, that needs explanation, and needs to be brought
+close to our hearts. If we have Christ dwelling in us, in the measure
+in which we are in sympathy with Him, we shall be gifted with clear
+eyes, not indeed to discern the expedient--that belongs to another
+region altogether--but we shall be gifted with very clear eyes to
+discern right from wrong, and there will be an instinctive recoil from
+the evil, and an instinctive attachment of ourselves to the good. If we
+are in the Lord we shall easily be able to prove what is acceptable and
+well-pleasing to Him.
+
+We shall never walk as the children of the light, unless we have the
+habit of referring everything, trifles and great things, to His
+arbitrament, and seeking in them all to do what is pleasing in His
+sight. The smallest deed may be brought under the operation of the
+largest principles. Gravitation influences the microscopic grain of sand
+as well as planets and sun. There is nothing so small but you can bring
+it into this category--it either pleases or displeases Jesus Christ. And
+the faults into which Christian men fall and in which they continue are
+very largely owing to their carelessness in applying this standard to
+the small things of their daily lives. The sleepy Custom House officers
+let the contraband article in because it seems to be of small bulk.
+There are old stories about how strong castles were taken by armed men
+hidden in an innocent-looking cart of forage. Do you keep up a rigid
+inspection at the frontier, and see to it that everything vindicates its
+right to enter because it is pleasing to Jesus Christ.
+
+III. Thirdly, we have here another expansion of the general command, and
+that is--keep well separate from the darkness.
+
+Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather
+reprove them.' Now, your time will not allow me to dwell, as I had hoped
+to do, upon the considerations to be suggested here. The very briefest
+possible mention of them is all that I can afford.
+
+'The unfruitful works of darkness';--well, then, the darkness has its
+works, but though they be works they are not worth calling fruit. That
+is to say, nothing except the conduct which flows from union with Jesus
+Christ so corresponds to the man's nature and relations, or has any such
+permanence about it as to entitle it to be called fruit. Other acts may
+be 'works' but Paul will not dishonour the great word 'fruit' by
+applying it to such rubbish as these, and so he brands them as
+'unfruitful works of darkness.'
+
+Keep well clear of them, says the Apostle. He is not talking here about
+the relations between Christians and others, but about the relations
+between Christian men and the _works_ of darkness. Only, of course, in
+order to avoid fellowship with the works you will sometimes have to keep
+yourselves well separate from their doers. Much association with such
+men is forced upon us by circumstances, and much is the imperative duty
+of Christian beneficence and charity. But I venture to express the
+strong and growing conviction that there are few exhortations that the
+secularised Church of this generation needs more than this commandment
+of my text: 'Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness'
+'What communion hath light with darkness?' Ah! we see plenty of it,
+unnatural as it is, in the so-called Church of to-day. 'What concord
+hath Christ with Belial? What part hath he that believeth with an
+infidel? Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate.'
+
+And, brethren, remember, a part of the separation is that your light
+shall be a constant condemnation of the darkness. 'But rather reprove
+them,' says my text; that is a work that devolves upon all Christians.
+It is to be done, no doubt, by the silent condemnation of evil which
+ever comes from the quiet doing of good. As an old preacher has it, 'The
+presence of a saint hinders the devil of elbow-room for doing his
+tricks.' The old legend told us that the fire-darting Apollo shot his
+radiant arrows against the pythons and 'dragons of the slime.' The sons
+of light have the same office--by their light of life to make the
+darkness aware of itself, and ashamed of itself; and to change it into
+light.
+
+But silent reproving is not all our duty. The Christian Church has
+wofully fallen beneath its duty, not only in regard to its complicity
+with the social crimes of each generation, but in regard to its cowardly
+silence towards them; especially when they flaunt and boast themselves
+in high places. What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to
+war? What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to impurity?
+What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to drunkenness? What
+has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to the social vices that
+are honeycombing society and this city to-day? If you are the sons of
+light, walk as the sons of light, and have 'no fellowship with the
+unfruitful works of darkness'; but set the trumpet to your lips, and
+'declare unto My people their transgressions, and to the house of Israel
+their sin.'
+
+
+
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE LIGHT
+
+     'The fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and
+      truth.'--Eph. v. 9 (R.V.).
+
+
+This is one of the cases in which the Revised Version has done service
+by giving currency to an unmistakably accurate and improved reading.
+That which stands in our Authorised Version, 'the fruit of the Spirit'
+seems to have been a correction made by some one who took offence at the
+violent metaphor, as he conceived it, that 'light' should bear 'fruit'
+and desired to tinker the text so as to bring it into verbal
+correspondence with another passage in the Epistle to the Galatians,
+where 'the fruits of the Spirit' are enumerated. But the reading, 'the
+fruit of the _light_,' has not only the preponderance of manuscript
+authority in its favour, but is preferable because it preserves a
+striking image, and is in harmony with the whole context.
+
+The Apostle has just been exhorting his Ephesian friends to walk as
+'children of the light' and before he goes on to expand and explain that
+injunction he interjects this parenthetical remark, as if he would say,
+To be true to the light that is in you is the sum of duty, and the
+condition of perfectness, '_for_ the fruit of the light is in all
+goodness and righteousness and truth' That connection is entirely
+destroyed by the substitution of 'spirit.' The whole context, both
+before and after my text, is full of references to the light as working
+in the life; and a couple of verses after it we read about 'the
+unfruitful works of darkness' an expression which evidently looks back
+to my text.
+
+So please do understand that our text in this sermon is--'The fruit of
+the _light_ consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth.'
+
+I. Now, first of all, I have just a word to say about this light which
+is fruitful.
+
+Note--for it is, I think, not without significance--a minute variation
+in the Apostle's language in this verse and in the context. He has been
+speaking of 'light,' now he speaks of '_the_ light'; and that, I think,
+is not accidental. The expression, 'walk as children of light,' is more
+general and vague. The expression, 'the fruit of _the_ light,' points to
+some specific source from which all light flows. And observe, also, that
+we have in the previous context, 'Ye were sometime darkness, but now are
+ye light _in the Lord_,' which evidently implies that the light of which
+my text speaks is not natural to men, but is the result of the entrance
+into their darkness of a new element.
+
+Now I do not suppose that we should be entitled to say that Paul here is
+formally anticipating the deep teaching of the Apostle John that Jesus
+Christ is '_the_ Light of men,' and especially of Christian men. But he
+is distinctly asserting, I think, that the light which blesses and
+hallows humanity is no diffused glow, but is all gathered and
+concentrated into one blazing centre, from which it floods the hearts of
+men. Or, to put away the metaphor, he is here asserting that the only
+way by which any man can cease to be, in the doleful depths of his
+nature, darkness in its saddest sense is by opening his heart through
+faith, that into it there may rush, as the light ever does where an
+opening--be it only a single tiny cranny--is made, the light which is
+Christ, and without whom is darkness.
+
+I know, of course, that, apart altogether from the exercise of faith in
+Jesus Christ, there do shine in men's hearts rays of the light of
+knowledge and of purity; but if we believe the teaching of Scripture,
+these, too, are from Christ, in His universally-diffused work, by which,
+apart altogether from individual faith, or from a knowledge of
+revelation, He is 'the light that lighteth every man coming into the
+world.' And I hold that, wheresoever there is conscience, wheresoever
+there is judgment and reason, wheresoever there are sensitive desires
+after excellence and nobleness, _there_ is a flickering of a light which
+I believe to be from Christ Himself. But that light, as widely diffused
+as humanity, fights with, and is immersed in, darkness. In the physical
+world, light and darkness are mutually exclusive: where the one is the
+other comes not; but in the spiritual world the paradox is true that the
+two co-exist. Apart from revelation and the acceptance of Jesus Christ's
+person and work by our humble faith, the light struggles with the
+darkness, and the darkness obstinately refuses to admit its entrance,
+and 'comprehendeth it not.' And so, ineffectual but to make restless and
+to urge to vain efforts and to lay up material for righteous judgment,
+is the light that shines in men whose hearts are shut against Christ.
+The fruitful light is Christ within us, and, unless we know and possess
+it by the opening of heart and mind and will, the solemn words preceding
+my text are true of us: 'Ye were sometime darkness.' Oh, brother! do you
+see to it that the subsequent words are true of you: 'Now are ye light
+in the Lord.' Only if you are in Christ are you truly light.
+
+II. Now, secondly, notice the fruitfulness of this indwelling light.
+
+Of course the metaphor that light, like a tree, grows and blossoms and
+puts forth fruit, is a very strong one. And its very violence and
+incongruity help its force. Fruit is generally used in Scripture in a
+good sense. It conveys the notion of something which is the natural
+outcome of a vital power, and so, when we talk about the light being
+fruitful, we are setting, in a striking image, the great Christian
+thought that, if you want to get right conduct, you must have renewed
+character; and that if you have renewed character you will get right
+conduct. This is the principle of my text. The light has in it a
+productive power; and the true way to adorn a life with all things
+beautiful, solemn, lovely, is to open the heart to the entrance of Jesus
+Christ.
+
+God's way is--first, new life, then better conduct. Men's way is,
+'cultivate morality, seek after purity, try to be good.' And surely
+conscience and experience alike tell us that that is a hopeless effort.
+To begin with what should be second is an anachronism in morals, and
+will be sure to result in failure in practice. He is not a wise man that
+tries to build a house from the chimneys downwards. And to talk about
+making a man's doings good before you have secured a radical change in
+the doer, by the infusion into him of the very life of Jesus Christ
+Himself, is to begin at the top story, instead of at the foundation.
+Many of us are trying to put the cart before the horse in that fashion.
+Many of us have made the attempt over and over again, and the attempt
+always has failed and always will fail. You may do much for the mending
+of your characters and for the incorporation in your lives of virtues
+and graces which do not grow there naturally and without effort. I do
+not want to cut the nerves of any man's stragglings, I do not want to
+darken the brightness of any man's aspirations, but I do say that the
+people who, apart from Jesus Christ, and the entrance into their souls
+by faith of His quickening power, are seeking, some of them nobly, some
+of them sadly, and all of them vainly, to cure their faults of
+character, will never attain anything but a superficial and fragmentary
+goodness, because they have begun at the wrong end.
+
+But 'make the tree good' and its fruit will be good. Get Christ into
+your heart, and all fair things will grow as the natural outcome of His
+indwelling. The fruitfulness of the light is not put upon its right
+basis until we come to understand that the light is Christ Himself, who,
+dwelling in our hearts by faith, is made _in_ us as well as '_unto_ us
+wisdom, and righteousness, and salvation, and redemption.' The beam that
+is reflected from the mirror is the very beam that falls on the mirror,
+and the fair things in life and conduct which Christian people bring
+forth are in very deed the outcome of the vital power of Jesus Christ
+which has entered into them. 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in
+me,' is the Apostle's declaration in the midst of his struggles; and the
+perfected saints before the throne cast their crowns at His feet, and
+say, 'Not unto us! not unto us, but unto Thy name be the glory.' The
+talent is the Lord's, only the spending of it is the servant's. And so
+the order of the Divine appointment is, first, the entrance of the
+light, and then the conduct that flows from it.
+
+Note, too, how this same principle of the fruitfulness of the light
+gives instruction as to the true place of effort in the Christian life.
+The main effort ought to be to get more of the light into ourselves.
+'Abide in Me, and I in you.' And so, and only so, will fruit come.
+
+And such an effort has to take in hand all the circumference of our
+being, and to fix thoughts that wander, and to still wishes that
+clamour, and to empty hearts that are full of earthly loves, and to
+clear a space in minds that are crammed with thoughts about the
+transient and the near, in order that the mind may keep in steadfast
+contemplation of Jesus, and the heart may be bound to Him by cords of
+love that are not capable of being snapped, and scarcely of being
+stretched, and the will may in patience stand saying, 'Speak, Lord! for
+Thy servant heareth'; and the whole tremulous nature may be rooted and
+built up in and on Him. Ah, brother! if we understand all that goes to
+the fulfilment of that one sweet and merciful injunction, 'Abide in Me,'
+we shall recognise that there is the field on which Christian effort is
+mainly to be occupied.
+
+But that is not all. For there must be likewise the effort to
+appropriate, and still more to manifest in conduct, the fruit-bringing
+properties of that indwelling light. 'Giving all diligence add to your
+faith.' 'Having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all
+filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the
+Lord.' We are often told that just as we trust Christ for our
+forgiveness and acceptance, so we are to trust Him for our sanctifying
+and perfecting. It is true, and yet it is not true. We are to trust Him
+for our sanctifying and our perfecting. But the faith which trusts Him
+for these is not a substitute for effort, but it is the foundation of
+effort. And the more we rely on His power to cleanse us from all evil,
+the more are we bound to make the effort in His power and in dependence
+on Him, to cleanse ourselves from all evil, and to secure as our own the
+natural outcomes of His dwelling within us, which are 'the fruits of the
+light.'
+
+III. And so, lastly, notice the specific fruits which the Apostle here
+dwells upon.
+
+They consist, says he, in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Now
+'goodness' here seems to me to be used in its narrower sense, just as
+the same Apostle uses it in the Epistle to the Romans, in contrast with
+'righteousness,' where he says, 'for a good man some would even dare to
+die.' There he means by 'good,' as he does here by 'goodness,' not the
+general expression for all forms of virtue and gracious conduct, but the
+specific excellence of kindliness, amiability, or the like.
+'Righteousness' again, is that which rigidly adheres to the strict law
+of duty, and carefully desires to give to every man what belongs to him,
+and to every relation of life what it requires. And 'truth' is rather
+the truth of sincerity, as opposed to hypocrisy and lies and shams, than
+the intellectual truth as opposed to error.
+
+Now, all these three types of excellence--kindliness, righteousness,
+truthfulness--are apt to be separated. For the first of
+them--amiability, kindliness, gentleness--is apt to become too soft, to
+lose its grip of righteousness, and it needs the tonic of the addition
+of those other graces, just as you need lime in water if it is to make
+bone. Righteousness, on the other hand, is apt to become stern, and
+needs the softening of goodness to make it human and attractive. The
+rock is grim when it is bare; it wants verdure to drape it if it is to
+be lovely. Truth needs kindliness and righteousness, and they need
+truth. For there are men who pride themselves on 'speaking out,' and
+take rudeness and want of regard for other people's sensitive feelings
+to be sincerity. And, on the other hand, it is possible that amiability
+may be sweeter than truth is, and that righteousness may be hypocritical
+and insincere. So Paul says, 'Let this white light be resolved in the
+prism of your characters into the threefold rays of kindliness,
+righteousness, truthfulness.'
+
+And then, again, he desires that each of us should try to make our own a
+fully developed, all-round perfection--_all_ goodness and righteousness
+and truth; of every sort, that is, and in every degree. We are all apt
+to cultivate graces of character which correspond to our natural
+disposition and make. We are all apt to become _torsos_, fragmentary,
+one-sided, like the trees that grow against a brick wall, or those which
+stand exposed to the prevailing blasts from one quarter of the sky. But
+we should seek to appropriate types of excellence to which we are least
+inclined, as well as those which are most in harmony with our natural
+dispositions. If you incline to kindliness, try to brace yourselves with
+righteousness; if you incline to righteousness, to take the stern,
+strict view of duty, and to give to every man what he deserves, remember
+that you do not give men their dues unless you give them a great deal
+more than their deserts, and that righteousness does not perfectly allot
+to our fellows what they ought to receive from us, unless we give them
+pity and indulgence and forbearance and forgiveness when it is needed.
+The one light breaks into all colours--green in the grass, purple and
+red in the flowers, flame-coloured in the morning sky, blue in the deep
+sea. The light that is in us ought, in like manner, to be analysed
+into, and manifested in, 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good
+report.'
+
+And so, dear friends, here is a test for us all. Devout emotion,
+orthodox creed, practical diligence in certain forms of benevolence and
+philanthropic work, are all very well; but Jesus Christ came to make us
+like Himself, and to turn our darkness into light that betrays its
+source by its resemblance, though it be a weakened one, to the sun from
+which it came. We have no right to call ourselves Christ's followers
+unless we are, in some measure, Christ's pictures.
+
+Here is a message of cheer and hope for us all. We have all tried, and
+tried, and tried, over and over again, to purge and mend these poor
+characters of ours. How long the toil, how miserable and poor the
+results! A million candles will not light the night; but when God's
+mercy of sunrise comes above the hills, beasts of prey slink to their
+dens and birds begin to sing, and flowers open, and growth resumes
+again. We cannot mend ourselves except partially and superficially; but
+we can open will, heart, and mind, by faith, for His entrance; and where
+He comes, there He slays the evil creatures that live in and love the
+dark, and all gracious things will blossom into beauty. If we are in the
+Lord we shall be light; and if the Lord, who is the Light, is in us, we,
+too, shall bear fruits of 'all righteousness and goodness and truth.'
+
+
+
+
+PLEASING CHRIST
+
+     'Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.'--Eph. v. 10.
+
+
+These words are closely connected with those which precede them in the
+8th verse--'Walk as children of light.' They further explain the mode by
+which that commandment is to be fulfilled. They who, as children of
+light, mindful of their obligations and penetrated by its brightness,
+seek to conform their active life to the light to which they belong, are
+to do so by making experiment of, or investigating and determining, what
+is 'acceptable to the Lord.' It is the sum of all Christian duty, a
+brief compendium of conduct, an all-sufficient directory of life.
+
+There need only be two remarks made by way of explanation of my text.
+One is that the expression rendered 'acceptable' is more accurately and
+forcibly given, as in the Revised Version, by the plainer word
+'well-pleasing.' And the other is that 'the Lord' here, as always in the
+New Testament--unless the context distinctly forbids it--means Jesus
+Christ. Here the context distinctly demands it. For only a sentence or
+two before, the Apostle has been speaking about 'those who were sometime
+darkness having been made light in the Lord'--which is obviously in
+Jesus Christ.
+
+And here, therefore, what pleases _Christ_ is the Christian's highest
+duty, and the one prescription which is required to be obeyed in order
+to walk in the light is, to do that which pleases Him.
+
+I. So, then, in these brief words, so comprehensive, and going so deep
+into the secrets of holy and noble living, I want you to notice that we
+have, first, the only attitude which corresponds to our relations to
+Christ.
+
+How remarkable it is that this Apostle should go on the presumption that
+our conduct affects Him, that it is possible for us to please, or to
+displease Jesus Christ now. We often wonder whether the beloved dead are
+cognisant of what we do; and whether any emotions of something like
+either our earthly complacency or displeasure, can pass across the
+undisturbed calm of their hearts, if they are aware of what their loved
+ones here are doing. That question has to be left very much in the dark,
+however our hearts may sometimes seek to enforce answers. But this we
+know, that that loving Lord, not merely by the omniscience of His
+divinity, but by the perpetual knowledge and sympathy of His perfect
+manhood, is not only cognizant of, but is affected by, the conduct of
+His professed followers here on earth. And since it is true that He now
+is not swept away into some oblivious region where the dead are, but is
+close beside us all, cognizant of every act, watching every thought, and
+capable of having something like a shadow of a pang passing across the
+Divine depth of His eternal joy and repose at the right hand of God,
+then, surely, the only thing that corresponds to such a relationship as
+at present subsists between the Christian soul and the Lord is that we
+should take as our supreme and continual aim that, 'whether present or
+absent, we should be well-pleasing to Him.' Nor does that demand rest
+only upon the realities of our present relation to that Lord, but it
+goes back to the past facts on which our present relation rests. And the
+only fitting response to what He has been and done for us is that we
+should, each of us, in the depth of our hearts, and in the widest
+circumference of the surface of our lives, enthrone Him as absolute
+Lord, and take His good pleasure as our supreme law. Jesus Christ is
+King because He is Redeemer. The only adequate response to what He has
+done for me is that I should absolutely submit myself to Him, and say to
+Him, 'O Lord! truly I am Thy servant! Thou hast loosed my bonds.' The
+one fitting return to make for that Cross and Passion is to enthrone His
+will upon my will, and to set Him as absolute Monarch over the whole of
+my nature. Thoughts, affections, purposes, efforts, and all should crown
+Him King, because He has died for me. The conduct which corresponds to
+the relations which we bear to Christ as the present Judge of our work,
+and the Redeemer of our souls by His mighty deed in the past, is this of
+my text, to make my one law His will, and to please Him that hath called
+me to be His soldier.
+
+The meaning of being a Christian is that, in return for the gift of a
+whole Christ, I give my whole self to Him. 'Why call ye me Lord! Lord!
+and do not the things which I say?' If He is what He assuredly is to
+every one of us, nothing can be plainer than that we are thereby bound
+by obligations which are not iron, but are more binding than if they
+were, because they were woven out of the cords of love and the bands of
+a man, bound to serve Him supremely, Him only, Him always, Him by the
+suppression of self, and the making His pleasure our law.
+
+II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to notice that we have here the
+all-sufficient guide for practical life.
+
+It sounds very mystical, and a trifle vague, to say, Do everything to
+please Jesus Christ. It is all-comprehensive; it is mystical in the
+sense that it goes down below the mere surface of prescriptions about
+conduct. But it is not vague, and it is capable of immediate application
+to every part, and to every act, of every man's life.
+
+For what is it that pleases Jesus Christ? His own likeness; as,
+according to the old figure--which is, I suppose, true to spiritual
+facts, whether to external facts or not--the refiner knows that the
+metal is ready to flow when he can see his own face in it. Jesus Christ
+desires most that we should all be like Him. That we are to bear His
+image is as comprehensive, and at the same time as specific, a way of
+setting forth the sum of Christian duty, as are the words of my text.
+The two phrases mean the same thing.
+
+And what is the likeness to Jesus Christ which it is thus our supreme
+obligation and our truest wisdom and perfection to bear? Well! we can
+put it all into two words--self-suppression and continual consciousness
+of obedience to the Divine will. The life of Jesus Christ, in its brief
+records in Scripture, is felt by every thoughtful man to contain within
+its narrow compass adequate direction for, and to set forth the ideal
+of, human life. That is not because He went through all varieties of
+earthly experience, for He did not. The life of a Jewish peasant
+nineteen centuries ago was extremely unlike the life of a Manchester
+merchant, of a college professor, of a successful barrister, of a
+struggling mother, in this present day. But in the narrow compass of
+that life there are set forth these two things, which are the basis of
+all human perfection--the absolute annihilation of self-regard, and the
+perpetual recognition of a Divine will. These are the things which every
+Christian man and woman is bound by the power of Christ's Cross to
+translate into the actions correspondent with their particular
+circumstances. And so the student at his desk and the sailor on his
+deck, the miner in his pit, the merchant on 'Change, the worker in
+various handicrafts, may each be sure that they are doing what is
+pleasing to Christ if, in their widely different ways, they seek to do
+what they can do in all the varieties of life--crucify self, and commune
+with God.
+
+That is not easy. Whatever may be the objections to be brought against
+this summary of Christian duty, the objection that it is vague is the
+last that can be sustained. Try it, and you will find out that it is
+anything but vague. It will grip tight enough, depend upon it. It will
+go deep enough down into all the complexities of our varying
+circumstances. If it has a fault (which it has not) it is in the
+direction of too great stringency for unaided human nature. But the
+stringency is not too great when we depend upon Him to help us, and an
+impossible ideal is a certain prophet of its own fulfilment some day.
+
+So, brethren, here is the sufficient guide, not because it cumbers us
+with a mass of wretched little prescriptions such as a martinet might
+give, about all sorts of details of conduct. That is left to profitless
+casuists like the ancient rabbis. But the broad principles will
+effloresce into all manner of perfectnesses and all fruits. He that has
+in his heart these thoughts, that the definition of virtue is pleasing
+Jesus Christ, that the concrete form of goodness is likeness to Him, and
+that the elements of likeness to Him are these two, that I should never
+think about myself, and always think about God, needs no other guide or
+instructor to fill his life with 'whatsoever things are lovely and of
+good report,' and to make his own all that the world calls virtue, and
+all which the consciences of good men have conspired to praise.
+
+But not only does this guide prove its sufficiency by reason of its
+comprehensiveness, but also because there is no difficulty in
+ascertaining what at each moment it prescribes. Of course, I know that
+such a precept as this cannot contain in itself guidance in matters of
+mere practical expediency. But, apart from these--which are to be
+determined by the ordinary exercise of prudence and common sense--in
+regard to the right and the wrong of our actions, I believe that if a
+man wants to know Christ's will, and takes the way of knowing it which
+Christ has appointed, he shall not be left in darkness, but shall have
+the light of life.
+
+For love has a strange power of divining love's wishes, as we all know,
+and as many a sweetness in the hearts and lives of many of us has shown
+us. If we cherish sympathy with Jesus Christ we shall look on things as
+He looks on them, and we shall not be left without the knowledge of what
+His pleasure is. If we keep near enough to Him the glance of His eye
+will do for guidance, as the old psalm has it. They are rough animal
+natures that do not understand how to go, unless their instructors be
+the crack of the whip or the tug of the bridle. 'I will guide thee with
+Mine eye.' A glance is enough where there are mutual understanding and
+love. Two musical instruments in adjoining rooms, tuned to the same
+pitch, have a singular affinity, and if a note be struck on the one the
+other will vibrate to the sound. And so hearts here that love Jesus
+Christ and keep in unison with Him, and are sympathetic with His
+desires, will learn to know His will, and will re-echo the music that
+comes from Him. And if our supreme desire is to know what pleases Jesus
+Christ, depend upon it the desire will not be in vain, 'If any man wills
+to do His will he shall know of the doctrine.' Ninety per cent. of all
+our perplexities as to conduct come from our not having a pure and
+simple wish to do what is right in His sight, clearly supreme above all
+others. When we have that wish it is never left unsatisfied.
+
+And even if sometimes we do make a mistake as to what is Christ's
+pleasure, if our supreme wish and honest aim in the mistake have been to
+do His pleasure, we may be sure that He will be pleased with the deed.
+Even though its body is not that which He willed us to do, its spirit is
+that which He does desire. And if we do a wrong thing, a thing in itself
+displeasing to Him, whilst all the while we desired to please Him, we
+shall please Him in the deed which would otherwise have displeased Him.
+And so two Christian men, for instance, who take opposite sides in a
+controversy, may both of them be doing what is well-pleasing in His
+sight, whilst they are contradicting one another, if they are doing it
+for His sake. And it is possible that the inquisitor and his victim may
+both have been serving Christ. At all events, let us be sure of this,
+that whensoever we desire to please Him, He will help us to do it, and
+ordinarily will help us by making clear to us the path on which His
+smile rests.
+
+III. Again, notice that we have here an all-powerful motive for
+Christian life.
+
+The one thing which all other summaries of duty lack is motive power to
+get themselves carried into practice. But we all know, from our own
+happy human experience, that no motive which can be brought to bear upon
+men is stronger, when there are loving hearts concerned, than this
+simple one, 'Do it to please me.' And that is what Jesus Christ really
+says. That is no piece of mere sentiment, brethren, nor of mere pulpit
+rhetoric. That is the deepest thought of Christian morality, and is the
+distinctive peculiarity which gives the morality of the New Testament
+its clear supremacy over all other. There are precepts in it far nobler
+and loftier than can be found elsewhere. The perspective of virtues and
+graces in it is different from that which ordinarily prevails amongst
+men. But I do not think that it is in the details of its precepts so
+much as in the communication of power to obey them, and in the
+suggestion of the motive which makes them all easy, that the difference
+of Christ's ethics from all the teaching of the world beside is most
+truly to be found.
+
+And here lies the excellence thereof. It is a poor, cold thing to say to
+a man, 'Do this because it is right.' It is a still more powerless thing
+to say to him, 'Do this because it is expedient' 'Do this because, in
+the long run, it leads to happiness.' It is all different when you say,
+'Do this to please Jesus Christ, to please that Christ who pleased not
+Himself but gave Himself for you.' That is the fire that melts the ore.
+That is the heat that makes flexible the hard, stiff material. That is
+the motive which makes duty delight, which makes 'the rough places
+plain' and 'the crooked things straight.' It does not abolish natural
+tastes, it does not supersede natural disinclinations, but it does
+smooth and soften unwelcome and hard tasks, and it invests service with
+a halo of glory, and changes the coldness of duty into rosy light; as
+when the sunrise strikes on the peaks of the frozen mountains. The one
+motive which impels men, and can be trusted to secure in them whatsoever
+things are noble, is to please Him.
+
+So we have the secret of blessedness in these words. For self-submission
+and suppression are blessedness. Our miseries come from our unbridled
+wills, far more than from our sensitive organisations. It is because we
+do not accept providences that providences hurt. It is because we do not
+accept the commandments that the commandments are burdensome. Those who
+have no will, except as it is vitalised by God's will, have found the
+secret of blessedness, and have entered into rest. In the measure in
+which we approximate to that condition, our wills will be strengthened
+as well as our hearts set at ease.
+
+And blessedness comes, too, because the approbation of the Master, which
+is the aim of the servant, is reflected in the satisfaction of an
+approving conscience, which points onwards to the time when the Master's
+approval shall be revealed in the servant's glory.
+
+I was reading the other day about a religious reformer who arose in
+Eastern lands a few years since, and gathered many disciples. He and his
+principal follower were seized and about to be martyred. They were
+suspended by cords from a gibbet, to be fired at by a platoon of
+soldiers. And as they hung there, the disciple turned to his teacher,
+and as his last word on earth said, 'Master! are you satisfied with me?'
+His answer was a silent smile; and the next minute a bullet was in his
+heart. Dear brethren, do you turn to Jesus Christ with the same
+question, 'Master! art Thou satisfied with me?' and you will get His
+smile here; and hereafter, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'
+
+
+
+
+UNFRUITFUL WORKS OF DARKNESS
+
+     'And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but
+      rather reprove them.'--Eph. v. 11.
+
+
+We have seen in a former sermon that 'the fruit,' or outcome, 'of the
+Light' is a comprehensive perfection, consisting in all sorts and
+degrees of goodness and righteousness and truth. Therefore, the
+commandment, 'Walk as children of the light,' sums up all Christian
+morality. Is there need, then, for any additional precept? Yes; for
+Christian people do not live in an empty world. If there were no evil
+round them, and no proclivity to evil within them, it would be amply
+sufficient to say to them, 'Be true to the light which you behold.' But
+since both these things are, the commandment of my text is further
+necessary. We do not work _in vacuo_, and therefore friction and
+atmosphere have to be taken account of; and an essential part of
+'walking as children of the light' is to know how to behave ourselves
+when confronted with 'the works of darkness.'
+
+These Ephesian Christians lived in a state of society honeycombed with
+hideous immorality, the centre of which was the temple, which was their
+city's glory and shame. It was all but impossible for them to have
+nothing to do with the works of evil, unless, indeed, they went out of
+the world. But the difficulty of obedience does not affect the duty of
+obedience, nor slacken in the smallest degree the stringency of a
+command. This obligation lies upon us as fully as it did upon them, and
+the discharge of it by professing Christians would bring new life to
+moribund churches.
+
+I. Let me ask you to note with me, first, the fruitlessness inherent in
+all the works of darkness.
+
+You may remember that I pointed out, in a former discourse on the
+context, that the Apostle, here and elsewhere, draws a very significant
+distinction between 'works' and 'fruit,' and that distinction is put
+very strikingly in the words of my text. There are works which are
+barren. It is a grim thought that there may be abundant activity which,
+in the eyes of God, comes to just nothing; and that pages and pages of
+laborious calculations, when all summed up, have for result a great
+round 0. Men are busy, and hosts of them are doing what the old fairy
+stories tell us that evil spirits were condemned to do--spinning ropes
+out of sea-sand; and their life-work is nought when they come to reckon
+it up.
+
+I have no time to dwell upon this thought, but I wish, just for a moment
+or two, to illustrate it.
+
+All godless life is fruitless, inasmuch as it has no permanent results.
+Permanent results of a sort, indeed, follow everything that men do, for
+all our actions tend to make character, and they all have a share in
+fixing that which depends upon character--viz. destiny, both here and
+yonder. And thus the most fleeting of our deeds, which in one aspect is
+as transitory as the snow upon the great plains when the sun rises,
+leaves everlasting traces upon ourselves and upon our condition. But yet
+acts concerned with transitory things may have permanent fruit, or may
+be as transient as the things with which they are concerned. And the
+difference depends on the spirit in which they are done. If the roots
+are only in the surface-skin of soil, when that is pared off the plant
+goes. A life that is to be eternal must strike its roots through all the
+superficial _humus_ down to the very heart of things. When its roots
+twine themselves round God then the deeds which blossom from them will
+blossom unfading for ever.
+
+Think of men going empty-handed into another world, and saying, 'O Lord!
+I made a big fortune in Manchester when I lived there, and I left it all
+behind me'; or, 'I mastered a science, and one gleam of the light of
+eternity has antiquated it'; or, 'I gained prizes, won my aims, and they
+have all dropped from my hands, and here I stand, having to say in the
+most tragic sense: Nothing in my hands I bring.' And another man dies in
+the Lord, and his 'works do follow' him. It is not every vintage that
+bears exportation. Some wines are mellowed by crossing the ocean; some
+are turned into vinegar. The works of darkness are unfruitful because
+they are transient.
+
+And they are unfruitful because, whilst they last, they yield no real
+satisfaction. The Apostle could say to another Church with a certainty
+as to what the answer would be, 'What fruit had ye _then_'--when ye were
+doing them--'in the things whereof ye are now ashamed?' And the answer
+is 'None!' Of course, it is true that men do bad things because they
+like them better than good. Of course, it is true that the misery of
+mankind is that they have no appetite in the general for the only real
+satisfaction. But it is also true that no man who feeds his heart and
+mind on anything short of God is really at rest in anything that he does
+or possesses. Occasional twinges of conscience, dim perceptions that
+after all they are walking in a vain show; glimpses of nobler
+possibilities, a vague unrest, an unwillingness to reflect and look the
+facts of their condition in the face, like men that will not take stock
+because they half suspect that they are insolvent--these are the
+conditions that attach to all godless men's lives. There is no real
+fruit for their thirsty lips to feed upon. The smallest man is too large
+to be satisfied with anything short of Infinity, The human heart is like
+some narrow opening on a hill-side, so narrow that it looks as if a
+glassful of water would fill it. But it goes away down, down, down into
+the depths of the mountain, and you may pour in hogsheads and no effect
+is visible. God, and God alone, brings to the thirsty heart the fruit
+that it needs.
+
+Another solemn thought illustrates the unfruitfulness of a godless life.
+There is no correspondence between what such a man does and what he is
+intended to do. Think of what the most degraded and sensuous wretch that
+shambles about the slums of a city, sodden with beer and rotten with
+profligacy, could be. Think of the raptures of devout contemplation and
+the energies of holy work which are possible for that soul, and then
+say--though it is an extreme case, the principle holds in less extreme
+cases--Are these things that men do apart from God, however shining,
+noble, illustrious they may be in the eyes of the world, and trumpeted
+forth by the mouthpieces of popular opinion, are these things worth
+calling fruits fit to be borne by such a tree? No more than the cankers
+on a rose-bush or the galls on an oak-tree are worthy of being called
+fruit are these works that some of you have as the only products of a
+life's activity. 'Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth
+grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?'
+
+II. And now, secondly, notice the plain Christian duty of abstinence.
+
+'Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.' Now, the
+text, as it stands in our version, seems to suggest that these dark
+works are personified as companions whom a good man ought to avoid; and
+that, therefore, the bearing of the exhortation is, 'Have nothing to do,
+in your own individual lives, with evil things that one man can commit.'
+But I take it that, important as that injunction and prohibition is,
+the Apostle's meaning is somewhat different, and that my text would
+perhaps be more accurately translated if another word were substituted
+for 'have no fellowship with.' The original expression seems rather to
+mean, 'Do not go partners with other people in works of darkness, which
+it takes more than one to commit.' Or, to put it into another language,
+the Apostle is regarding Christian people here as members of society,
+and exhorting them to a certain course of conduct in reference to plain
+and palpable existing evils around them. And such an exhortation to the
+duty of plain abstinence from things that the opinion of the world
+around us has no objection to, but which are contrary to the light, is
+addressed to all Christian people.
+
+The need of it I do not require to illustrate at any length. But let me
+remind you that the devil has no more cunning way of securing a long
+lease of life for any evil than getting Christian people and Christian
+Churches to give it their sanction. What was it that kept slavery alive
+for centuries? Largely, that Christian men solemnly declared that it was
+a divine institution. What is it that has kept war alive for all these
+centuries? Largely, that bishops and preachers have always been ready to
+bless colours, and to read a Christening service over a man-of-war--and,
+I suppose, to ask God that an eighty-ton gun might be blessed to smash
+our enemies to pieces, and not to blow our sailors to bits. And what is
+it that preserves the crying evils of our community, the immoralities,
+the drunkenness, the trade dishonesty, and all the other things that I
+do not need to remind you of in the pulpit? Largely this, that
+professing Christians are mixed up with them. If only the whole body of
+those who profess and call themselves Christians would shake their hands
+clear of all complicity with such things, they could not last.
+Individual responsibility for collective action needs to be far more
+solemnly laid to heart by professing Christians than ever it has been.
+
+Nor need I remind you, I suppose, with what fatal effects on the Gospel
+and the Church itself all such complicity is attended. Even the
+companions of wrongdoers despise, whilst they fraternise with, the
+professing Christian who has no higher standard than their own. What was
+it that made the Church victorious over the combined forces of imperial
+persecution, pagan superstition, and philosophic speculation? I believe
+that among all the causes that a well-known historian has laid down for
+the triumph of Christianity, what was as powerful as--I was going to say
+even more than--the Gospel of peace and love which the Church proclaimed
+was the standard of austere morality which it held up to a world rotting
+in its own filth. And sure I am that wherever the Church says, 'So do
+not I, because of the fear of the Lord,' it will gain a power, and will
+be regarded with a possibly reluctant, but a very real, respect which no
+easy-going coming down to the level of popular moralities will ever
+secure for a silver-slippered Christianity. And so, brethren, I would
+say to you, Do not be afraid of the old name _Puritan_. Ignorant people
+use it as a scoff. It should be a crown of glory. 'Have no fellowship
+with the unfruitful works of darkness.'
+
+But how is this to be done? Well, of course, there is only one way of
+abstaining, and that is, to abstain. But there are a great many
+different ways of abstaining. Light is not fire. And the more that
+Christian people feel themselves bound to stand aloof from common evils,
+the more are they bound to see that they do it in the spirit of the
+Master, which is meekness. It is always an invidious position to take
+up. And if we take it up with any heat and temper, with any lack of
+moderation, with any look of ostentation of superior righteousness, or
+with any trace of the Boanerges spirit which says, 'Let us call down
+fire from heaven and consume them,' our testimony will be weakened, and
+the world will have a right to say to us, 'Jesus we know, and Paul we
+know; but who are ye?' 'Who made this man a judge and a divider over
+us?' 'In meekness instructing them that oppose themselves.'
+
+III. Lastly, note the still harder Christian duty of vigorous protest.
+
+The further duty beyond abstinence which the text enjoins is
+inadequately represented by our version, 'but rather reprove them.' For
+the word rendered in our version 'reprove' is the same which our Lord
+employed when He spoke of the mission of the Comforter as being to
+'convince (or convict) the world of sin.' And it does not merely mean
+'reprove,' but so to reprove as to produce the conviction which is the
+object of the reproof.
+
+This task is laid on the shoulders of all professing Christians. A
+_silent_ abstinence is not enough. No doubt, the best way, in some
+circumstances, to convict the darkness is to shine. Our holiness will
+convict sin of its ugliness. Our light will reveal the gloom. The
+presentation of a Christian life is the Christian man's mightiest weapon
+in his conflict with the world's evil. But that is not all. And if
+Christian people think that they have done all their duty, in regard to
+clamant and common iniquities, by simply abstaining from them and
+presenting a nobler example, they have yet to learn one very important
+chapter of their duty. A dumb Church is a dying Church, and it ought to
+be; for Christ has sent us here in order, amongst other things, that we
+may bring Christian principles to bear upon the actions of the
+community; and not be afraid to speak when we are called upon by
+conscience to do so.
+
+Now I am not going to dwell upon this matter, but I want just to point
+out to you how, in the context here, there are two or three very
+important principles glanced at which bear upon it. And one of them is
+this, that one reason for speaking out is the very fact that the evils
+are so evil that a man is ashamed to speak about them. Did you ever
+notice this context, in which the Apostle, in the next verse to my text,
+gives the reason for his commandment to 'reprove' thus--'_For_ it is a
+shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret'?
+Did you ever hear of a fantastic tenderness for morality so very
+sensitive that it is not at all shocked when the immoral things are
+_done_, but glows with virtuous indignation when a Christian man speaks
+out about them? There are plenty of people nowadays who tell us that it
+is 'indelicate' and 'indecent' and 'improper,' and I do not know how
+much else, for a Christian teacher or minister to say a word about
+certain moral scandals. But they do not say anything about the
+immorality and the indelicacy and the indecency of doing them. Let us
+have done with that hypocrisy, brethren. I am arguing for no disregard
+for proprieties; I want all fitting reticence observed, and I do not
+wish indiscriminate rebukes to be flung at foul things; but it is too
+much to require that, by reason of the very inky cloud of filth that
+they fling up like cuttlefish, they should escape censure. Let us
+remember Paul's exhortation, and reprove _because_ the things are too
+bad to be spoken about.
+
+Further, note in the context the thought that the conviction of the
+darkness comes from the flashing upon it of the light. 'All things when
+they are reproved are made manifest by the light.' Which, being
+translated into other words, is this:--Be strong in your brave protest,
+because it only needs that the thing should be seen as it is, and called
+by its right name, in order to be condemned.
+
+The Assyrians had a belief that if ever, by any chance, a demon saw
+himself in a mirror, he was frightened at his own ugliness and
+incontinently fled. And if Christian people would only hold up the
+mirror of Christian principle to the hosts of evil things that afflict
+our city and our country, they would vanish like ghosts at sunrise. They
+cannot stand the light, therefore let us cast the light upon them.
+
+And do not forget the other final principle here, which is imperfectly
+represented by our translation. We ought to read, 'Whatever is made
+manifest is light.' Yes. In the physical world when light falls upon a
+thing, you see it because there is on it a surface of light. And in the
+moral world the intention of all this conviction is that the thing
+disclosed to be darkness should, in the very disclosure, cease to be
+dark, should forsake its nature and be transformed into light. Such
+transformation is not always the case. Alas! There are evil deeds on
+which the light falls, and it does nothing. But the purpose in all cases
+should be, and the issue in many will be, that the merciful conviction
+by the light will be followed by the conversion of darkness into light.
+
+And so, dear brethren, I bring this text to your hearts, and lay it upon
+your consciences. We may not all be called upon to speak; we are all
+called upon to _be_. You can shine, and by shining show how dark the
+darkness is. The obligation is laid upon us all; the commandment still
+comes to every Christian which was given to the old prophet, 'Declare
+unto My people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their
+sin.' A quaint old writer says that the presence of a saint 'hinders the
+devil of elbow room to do his tricks.' We can all rebuke sin by our
+righteousness, and by our shining reveal the darkness to itself. We do
+not walk as children of the light unless we keep ourselves from all
+connivance with works of darkness, and by all means at our disposal
+reprove and convict them. 'Come out from among them, and be ye separate,
+and touch no unclean thing, saith the Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+PAUL'S REASONS FOR TEMPERANCE
+
+     'And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but
+      rather reprove them. 12. For it is a shame even to speak of those
+      things which are done of them in secret. 13. But all things that
+      are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth
+      make manifest is light. 14. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that
+      sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee
+      light. 15. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but
+      as wise, 16. Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. 17.
+      Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the
+      Lord is. 18. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be
+      filled with the Spirit; 19. Speaking to yourselves in psalms, and
+      hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart
+      to the Lord; 20. Giving thanks always for all things unto God and
+      the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; 21. Submitting
+      yourselves one to another in the fear of God.'--Eph. v. 11-21.
+
+
+There are three groups of practical exhortations in this passage, of
+which the first deals with the Christian as a reproving light in
+darkness; the second, with the Christian life as wisdom in the midst of
+folly; and the third with Christian sobriety and inspiration as the true
+exhilaration in contrast with riotous drunkenness. Probably such
+intoxication was prevalent in Ephesus in connection with the worship of
+'Diana of the Ephesians,' for Paul was not the man to preach vague
+warnings against vices to which his hearers were not tempted. An
+under-current of allusion to such orgies accompanying the popular cult
+may be discerned in his words.
+
+These two preceding sets of precepts can only be briefly touched on now.
+They lead up to the third, and the second is built on the first by a
+'therefore' (ver. 15). The Apostle has just been saying that Christians
+were 'darkness, but are now light in the Lord,' and thence drawing the
+law for their life, to walk as 'children of light.' A very important
+part of such walk is recoiling from all share in 'the unfruitful works
+of darkness,'--a significant expression branding such deeds as being
+both bad in their source and in their results. Dark doings have
+consequences tragic enough and certain enough, but they are barren of
+all such issues as correspond to men's obligations and capacities. Their
+outcome is like the growths on a tree, which are not fruit, but products
+of disease. There is no fruit grown in the dark; there is no worthy
+product from us unless Christ is our light. If He is, and we are
+therefore 'light in the Lord,' we shall 'reprove' or 'convict' the
+Christless life. Its sinfulness will be shown by the contrast with the
+Christ-life. A thunder-cloud never looks so lividly black as when
+smitten by sunshine.
+
+Our lives ought to make evil things ashamed to show their ugly faces.
+Christians should be, as it were, the incarnate conscience of a
+community. The Apostle is not thinking so much of words as of deeds,
+though words are not to be withheld when needful. The agent of reproof
+is 'the light,' which here is the designation of character as
+transformed by Jesus, and the process of reproof or conviction is simply
+the manifestation of the evil in its true nature, which comes from
+setting it in the beams of the light. To show sin as it is, is to
+condemn it; 'for everything that is made manifest is light.' Observe
+that Paul here speaks of 'light,' not 'the light,'--that is, he is
+speaking now not of Christian character, which he had likened to light,
+but of physical light to which he had likened it, and is backing up his
+figurative statement as to the reproving and manifesting effects of the
+former, by the plain fact as to the latter, that, when daylight shines
+on anything, it is revealed, and, as it were, becomes light. He clenches
+his exhortation by quoting probably an early Christian hymn, which
+regards Christ as the great illuminator, ready to shine on all drowsy,
+dark souls as soon as they stir and rouse themselves from drugged and
+fatal sleep.
+
+The second set of exhortations here is connected with the former by a
+'therefore,' which refers to the whole preceding precept. Because the
+Christian is to shake himself free from complicity with works of
+darkness, and to be their living condemnation, he must take heed to his
+goings. A climber on a glacier has to look to his feet, or he will slip
+and fall down a crevasse, perhaps, from which he will never be drawn up.
+Heedlessness is folly in such a world as this. '"Don't care" comes to
+the gallows.' The temptation to 'go as you please' is strong in youth,
+and it is easy to scoff at 'cold-blooded folks who live by rule,' but
+they are the wise people, after all. A great element in that heedfulness
+is a quick insight into the special duty and opportunity of the moment,
+for life is not merely made up of hours, but each has its own particular
+errand for us, and has some possibility in it which, neglected, may be
+lost for ever.
+
+The mystic solemnity of time is that it is made up of 'seasons.' We
+shall walk heedfully in the degree in which we are awake to the moment's
+meaning, and grasp opportunity by the forelock, or, as Paul says, 'buy
+up the opportunity.' But wise heed to our walk is not enough, unless we
+have a sure standard by which to regulate it. A man may take great care
+of his watch, but unless he can compare it with a chronometer, or, as
+they do in Edinburgh, pull out their watches when the one o'clock gun is
+fired on a signal from Greenwich, he may be far out and not know it. So
+the Apostle adds the one way to keep our lives right, and the one source
+of true, practical wisdom--the 'understanding what the will of the Lord
+is.' He will not go far wrong whose instinctive question, as each new
+moment, with its solemn, animating possibilities, meets him, is, 'What
+wilt Thou have me to do?' He will not be nearly right who does not first
+of all ask that.
+
+Then Paul comes to his precept of temperance. It naturally flows from
+the preceding, inasmuch as a drunken man is as sure to be incapable of
+taking heed to his conduct as of walking straight. He reels in both. He
+is stone-blind to the meaning of the moments. He hears no call, though
+the 'voice of the trumpet' may be 'exceeding loud,' and as for
+understanding what the will of the Lord is, that is far beyond him. The
+intoxication of an hour or the habit of drinking makes obedience to the
+foregoing precepts impossible. This master vice carries all other vices
+in its pocket.
+
+Paul makes a daring, and, as some would think, an irreverent,
+comparison, when he proposes being 'filled with the Spirit' as the
+Christian alternative or substitute to being 'drunken with wine.' But
+the daring comparison suggests deep truth. The spurious exhilaration,
+the loosening of the bonds of care, the elevation above the pettiness
+and monotony of daily life, which the drunkard seeks, and is degraded
+and deceived in proportion as he momentarily finds, are all ours,
+genuinely, nobly, and to our infinite profit, if we have our empty
+spirits filled with that Divine Life. That exhilaration does not froth
+away, leaving bitter dregs in the cup. That loosening of the bonds of
+care, and elevation above life's sorrows, does not flow from foolish
+oblivion of facts, nor end in their being again roughly forced on us.
+'Riot' bellows itself hoarse, and is succeeded by corresponding
+depression; but the calm joys of the Spirit-filled spirit last, grow,
+and become calmer and more joyful every day.
+
+The boisterous songs of boon companions are set in contrast with the
+Christian 'psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,' which were already in
+use, and a snatch from one of which Paul has just quoted.
+Good-fellowship tempts men to drink together, and a song is a
+shoeing-horn for a glass; but the _camaraderie_ is apt to end in blows,
+and is a poor caricature of the bond knitting all who are filled with
+the Spirit to one another, and making them willing to serve one another.
+The roystering or maudlin geniality cemented by drink generally ends in
+quarrels, as everybody knows that the truculent stage of intoxication
+succeeds the effusively affectionate one. But they who have the Spirit
+in them, and not only 'live in the Spirit,' but 'walk in the Spirit,'
+esteem each the other better than themselves. In a word, to be filled
+with the Spirit is the way to possess all the highest forms of the good
+which men are tempted to intoxication to secure, and which in it they
+find only for a moment, and which is coarse and unreal.
+
+
+
+
+SLEEPERS AT NOONDAY
+
+     'Wherefore He saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the
+      dead, and Christ shall give thee light,'--Eph. v. 14.
+
+
+This is the close of a short digression about 'light.' The 'wherefore'
+at the beginning of my text seems to refer to the whole of the verses
+that deal with that subject. It is as if the Apostle had said, 'I have
+been telling you about light and its blessed effects. Now I tell you how
+you may win it for yours. The condition on which it is to be received by
+men is that they awake and arise from the dead.'
+
+'_He saith._' Who? The speaker whose words are quoted is not named, but
+this is the common formula of quotation from the _Old Testament_. It is,
+therefore, probable that the word 'Creator' or 'God' is to be supplied.
+But there is no Old Testament passage which exactly corresponds to the
+words before us; the nearest approach to such being the ringing
+exhortation of the prophet to the Messianic Church, 'Arise! Shine, for
+thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.' And it
+is probable that the Apostle is here quoting, without much regard either
+to the original connection or the primary purpose of the word, a
+well-known old saying which seemed to him appropriately to fall in with
+the trend of his thoughts. Like other writers he often adorns his own
+words with the citation of those of others without being very careful
+as to whether he, in some measure, diverts these from their original
+intention. But the words of my text fairly represent the prophetic
+utterance, in so far as they echo the call to the sleepers to wake, and
+share the prophet's confidence that light is streaming out for all those
+whose eyes are opened.
+
+The want of precise correspondence between our text and the prophetic
+passage has led some to suppose that we have here the earliest recorded
+fragment of a Christian hymn. It would be interesting if that were so,
+but the formula of citation seems to oblige us to look to Scripture for
+the source from which my text is taken. However, let us leave these
+thoughts, and come to the text itself. It is an earnest call from God.
+It describes a condition, peals forth a summons, and gives a promise.
+Let us listen to what 'He saith' in all these regards.
+
+I. First of all, then, the condition of the persons addressed.
+
+The two sad metaphors, _slumberers_ and _dead_, are applied to the same
+persons. There must, therefore, be some latitude in the application of
+the figures and they must be confined in their interpretation to some
+one or more points in which sleep and death are alike.
+
+Now we all know that, as the proverb says, 'sleep is the image of
+death.' And what is the point of comparison? Mainly this, that the
+sleeper and the corpse are alike unconscious of an external world,
+unable to receive impressions from it, or to put forth action on it; and
+there, as I take it, is especially the point which is in the Apostle's
+view.
+
+The sleeper and the dead man alike are in the midst of an order of
+things of which they are all unaware. And you and I live in two worlds,
+one, this low, fleeting, material one; and the other the white, snowy
+peaks that girdle it as do the Alps the Lombard plains; and men live all
+unconscious of that which lies on their horizon. But the metaphor of a
+level ground encircled by mountains does not fully represent the
+closeness of the connection between these two worlds, of both of which
+every one of us is a denizen. For on all sides, pressing in upon us,
+enfolding us like an atmosphere, penetrating into all the material,
+underlying all which is visible, all of which has its roots in the
+unseen, is that world which the mass of men are in a conspiracy to
+ignore and forget. And just as the sleeper is unconscious of all around
+him in his chamber, and of all the stir and beauty of the world in which
+he lives, so the bulk of us go blind and darkling through life, absorbed
+in the things seen, and never lift even a momentary and lack-lustre
+glance to the august realities which lie behind these, and give them all
+their significance and beauty.
+
+Yes; and just as in a dream men are busy with baseless phantoms that
+vanish and are forgotten, and seem to themselves to be occupied, whilst
+all the while they are lying prone and passive, so the mass of us are
+sleep-walkers. What are many men who will be hurrying on to the
+Manchester Exchange on Tuesday? What are they but men who are dreaming
+that they are at work, but are only at work on dreams which will vanish
+when the eyes are opened? Practical men, who are busy and absorbed with
+affairs and with the things of this present, curl their lips about
+'idealists' of all sorts, be they idealists of thought, or of art, or of
+benevolence, or of religion, and call them dreamers. The boot is on the
+other leg. It is the idealists that are awake, and it is you people that
+live for to-day, and have not learned that to-day is a little fragment
+and sliver of eternity--it is you who are dreamers, and all these things
+round about us--the solid-seeming realities--are illusions, and
+
+    'Like the bubbles on a river,
+     Sparkling, bursting, borne away,'
+
+they will disappear. There is only one reality, and that is God, and the
+only lives that lay hold of the substance are those which grasp Him. The
+rest of you are shadows hunting for shadows.
+
+The two metaphors of my text coincide in suggesting another thing, and
+that is the awful contrast in the average life between what is in a man
+and what comes out of him. 'Dormant power,' we talk about. Ah, how
+tragically the true man is dormant in all the work of worldly hearts!
+God has made a great mistake in making you what you are, if there is no
+place for you to exercise your powers in but this present world, and
+nothing to exercise them on except the things that pass and perish.
+Travellers in lands where civilisation used to be, and barbarism now is,
+find sculptured stones from temples turned into fences for cattle-sheds
+and walls round pigstyes. And that is something like what men do with
+the faculties that God has given them. Why, the best part of you,
+brother, if you are not a Christian, and living a Christian life--the
+best part of you is asleep, and it is only the lower nature of you that
+is awake! Sometimes the sleepers stir uneasily. It used to be said that
+earthquakes were caused by a giant rolling himself from side to side in
+his troubled slumber. And there are earthquakes in your heart and
+spirit caused by the half-waking of the dormant self, the true man, who
+is immersed and embruted in sense and the things of time. Some of you by
+earthly lusts, some of you by over-indulgence in fleshly appetites,
+eating and drinking and the like; some of you by absorption in the mere
+externals of trade and profession and occupation to the entire neglect
+of the inward thing which would glorify and exalt these--but all of us
+somehow, unless we are living for God, have lulled our best, true,
+central self into slumber, and lie as if dead.
+
+Now, brethren, do not forget that this exhortation of my text, and
+therefore this description, is addressed to a community of professing
+Christians. I hope you will not misunderstand me as if I thought that
+such a picture as I have been trying to draw applies only to men that
+have no religion in them at all. It applies in varying degrees to men
+that have, as--I was going to say the bulk, but perhaps that is
+exaggeration, let me say a tragically large number--of professing
+Christians, and a proportionate number of the professing Christians in
+this audience have, a little life and a great circumference of death.
+Dear brethren, you may call yourselves, and may be Christian people, and
+have somewhat shaken off the torpor, and roused yourself from the
+slumbering death of which I have been speaking. Remember that it still
+hangs to you, and that it was of Christians that the Master said:
+'Whilst the Lord was away they all slumbered and slept'; and that it was
+of a Christian Church, and not of a pagan world, that the same voice
+from heaven said: 'Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.' And
+so I beseech you, bear with me, and do not think I am scolding, or
+flinging about wild words at random, when I make a very earnest appeal
+to each individual professing, and real, Christian in this congregation,
+and ask them to consider, each for themselves, how much of sleep is
+still in their drowsy eyes, and how far it is true that the quickening
+life of Jesus Christ has penetrated, as the sunbeams into the darkness,
+into the heavy mass of their natural death.
+
+II. Secondly, let me ask you to look at the summons to awake.
+
+It comes like the morning bugle to an army, 'Awake, thou that sleepest,
+and arise from the dead.' Now, I am not going to waste your time by
+talking about the old, well-worn, interminable, and unprofitable
+controversy as to God's part and man's in this awaking, but I do wish to
+insist upon this plain fact, that the command here presupposes upon our
+parts, whether we be Christian people or not, the ability to obey. God
+would not mock a man by telling him to do what he cannot do. And it is
+perfectly clear that the one attitude in which we may be sure of God's
+help to keep any of His commandments, and this amongst the rest, is when
+we are trying to keep them. 'Stretch out thy hand,' said Christ to the
+man whose disease was that he could not stretch it out. 'Arise and
+walk,' said Christ to the man whose lifelong sadness it was that his
+limbs had no power. 'Lazarus, come forth,' said Christ unto the dull,
+cold ear of death. And Lazarus heard, wherever he was, and, though his
+feet were tangled with the graveclothes, he came stumbling out, because
+the power to do what he was bid had come wrapped in the command to do
+it. And if these other two men had turned to Jesus and said, 'What is
+the use of telling me to stretch out my hand, or me to move my limbs?
+Thou knowest that I can not,' they would have lain there paralysed till
+they died. But when they heard the command there came a tingling sense
+of new ability into the withered limb. 'And he stretched forth his hand,
+and it was restored whole as the other.' Ay, but the process of
+restoration began when he willed to stretch it out in obedience to the
+command, which was a promise as much as a command. So we need not
+trouble ourselves with the question how the dead man can arise, or how
+the sleeper can wake himself.
+
+This, at all events, is clear, that if what I have been saying is true
+as to the main point in view in both the metaphors, viz. the
+unconsciousness of the unseen world, and the slumbering powers that we
+have within us, then the remedy for that _is_ in our own hands. There
+are scarcely any limits to be put to a man's capacity of determining for
+himself what shall be the object of his thought, his interest, his
+affection, or his pursuits. You can withdraw your desires and
+contemplations from the intrusive and absorbing present. You can coerce
+yourselves to concentrate more thought than you do, more interest,
+affection, and effort than you have ever done, upon the things that are
+unseen. You can turn your gaze thither. You cannot directly and
+immediately regulate your feelings, but you can settle the thoughts
+which shall guide the feelings, and you can, and you _do_, fix for
+yourselves, though not consciously, the things which shall be uppermost
+in your regard, and supreme in the ordering of your life.
+
+And so the commandment of my text is but this, 'Wake from the illusions;
+rouse yourselves to the contemplation of the things unseen and eternal.
+Let the Lord always be before your face.' And you will be awake and
+alive.
+
+III. And so my last point is the promise of the morning light which
+gladdens the wakeful eye. 'Christ shall give thee light.'
+
+Now, if the words of my text are an allusion to the prophecy to which I
+have already referred, it is striking to observe, though I cannot dwell
+upon the thought, that Paul here unhesitatingly ascribes to Jesus Christ
+an action which, in the source of his quotation, is ascribed to Jehovah.
+'Arise, shine, for thy light has come, and the glory of _Jehovah_ is
+risen upon thee,' says the prophet. 'Arise! thou that sleepest,' says
+Paul, 'and _Christ_ shall give thee light.' As always, he regards his
+Lord as possessed of fully divine attributes; and he has learned the
+depth of the Master's own saying, 'Whatsoever things the Father doeth,
+these also doeth the Son _likewise_.' But I turn from that to the main
+point to be insisted upon here, that the Apostle is setting forth this
+as a certainty, that if a man will open his eyes he will have light
+enough. The sunshine is flooding the world. It falls upon the closed
+eyelids of the sleepers, and would fain gently lift them, that it might
+enter. A man needs nothing more than to shake off the slumber, and bring
+himself into the conscious presence of the unseen glories that surround
+us, in order to get light enough and to spare--whether you mean by light
+knowledge for guidance on the path of life, or whether you mean by it
+purity that shall scatter the darkness of evil from the heart, or
+whether you mean by it the joy that comes in the morning, radiant and
+fresh as the sunrise over the Eastern hills. 'Awake, and Christ _shall_
+give thee light.'
+
+The miracle of Goshen is reversed, in the case of many of us, the land
+is flashing in the sunshine, but within our houses there is midnight
+darkness, not because there is not light around, but because the
+shutters are shut. Oh, brethren, it is a solemn thing to choose the
+darkness rather than the light. And you do that--though not consciously,
+and in so many words, making your election--by indifference, by neglect,
+by the direction of the main current of your thoughts and desires and
+aims to perishable things, and by the deeds that follow from such a
+disposition. These choose for you, and you, in effect, choose by them.
+
+I beseech you, do not let Christ's own trumpet-call fall upon your ears,
+as if faint and far away, like the unwelcome summons that comes to a
+drowsy man in the morning. You know that if, having been called, he
+makes up his mind to lie a little longer, he is almost sure to fall more
+dead asleep than he was before. And if you hear, however dim, distantly,
+and through my poor words, Christ's voice saying to you, 'Awake! thou
+that sleepest,' do not neglect it. The only safe course is to spring up
+at once. If thou dost, 'Christ shall give thee light,' never fear. The
+light is all about you. You only need to open your eyes, and it will
+pour in. If you do not, you surround yourself with darkness that may be
+felt here, and ensures for yourself a horror of great darkness in the
+death hereafter.
+
+
+
+
+REDEEMING THE TIME
+
+     'See, then, that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
+      redeeming the time, because the days are evil.'--Eph. v. 15, 16.
+
+
+Some of us have, in all probability, very little more 'time' to
+'redeem.' Some of us have, in all probability, the prospect of many
+years yet to live. For both classes my text presents the best motto for
+another year. The most frivolous among us, I suppose, have some thoughts
+when we step across the conventional boundary that seems to separate the
+unbroken sequence of moments into periods; and as you in your business
+take stock and see how your accounts stand, so I would fain, for you and
+myself, make this a moment in which we may see where we are going, what
+we are doing, and how we are using this great gift of life.
+
+My text gives us the true Christian view of time. It tells us what to do
+with it, and urges by implication certain motives for the conduct.
+
+I. We have, first, what we ought to think about 'the time.'
+
+There are two words in the New Testament, both of which are translated
+_time_, but they mean very different things. One of them, the more
+common, simply implies the succession of moments or periods; the other,
+which is employed here, means rather a definite portion of time to which
+some definite work or occurrence belongs. It is translated sometimes
+_season_, sometimes _opportunity_. Both these renderings occur in
+immediate proximity in the Epistle to the Galatians, where the Apostle
+says: 'As we have therefore opportunity let us do good to all men, for
+in due season we shall reap, if we faint not....' And, again, it is
+employed side by side with the other word to which I have referred, in
+the Acts of the Apostles, where we read, 'It is not for you to know the
+times or the seasons'--the former word simply indicating the succession
+of moments, the latter word indicating epochs or crises to which special
+work or events belong.
+
+And so here 'redeeming the _time_' does not merely mean making the most
+of moments, but means laying hold of, and understanding the special
+significance of, life as a whole, and of each succeeding instant of it
+as the season for some specific duty. It is not merely 'time,' it is
+'_the_ time'; not merely the empty succession of beats of the pendulum,
+but these moralised, as it were, heightened, and having significance,
+because each is apprehended as having a special mission, and affording
+an opportunity for a special work.
+
+Now, there are two aspects of that general thought, on each of which I
+would touch. The Apostle here uses the singular number, and speaks not
+of the times, but of 'the time'; as if the whole of life were an
+opportunity, a season for some one clear duty which manifestly belongs
+to it, and is meant to be done in it.
+
+What is that? There are a great many ways of answering that question,
+but even more important perhaps than the way of answering is the mood of
+mind which asks it. If we could only get into this, as our habitual
+temper and disposition, asking ourselves what life is for, then we
+should have conquered nine-tenths of our temptations, and all but
+secured that we shall aim at the purpose which thus clearly and
+constantly shines before us. Oh! if I could get some of my friends here
+this morning, who have never really looked this solemn question in the
+face, to rise above the mere accidents of their daily occupations, and
+to take their orders, not from circumstances, or from the people whom
+they admire and imitate, but at first hand from considering what they
+really are here for, and why their days in their whole sweep are given
+them, I should not have spoken in vain. The sensualist answers the
+question in one way, the busy Manchester man in another, the careful,
+burdened mother in another, the student in another, the moralist in
+another. But all that is good in each answer is included in the wider
+one, that the end of life, the purpose for which 'the season' is granted
+us, is that 'we should glorify God and enjoy Him for ever.'
+
+I do not care whether you say that the end for which we live is the
+salvation of our souls, or whether you put it in other words, and say
+that it is the cultivation and perfecting of a Christ-like and
+God-pleasing character, or whether you admit still another aspect, and
+say that it is the intention of time to prepare us for that which lies
+beyond time. Time is the lackey of eternity, and the chamberlain that
+opens the gates of the Kingdom of God. All these various answers are at
+bottom one. Life is ours mainly in order that, by faith in Jesus Christ,
+we should struggle, and do, and by struggles, by sorrows, and by all
+that befalls us, should grow liker Him, and so fitter for the calm joys
+of that place where the throb of the pendulum has ceased, and the hours
+are stable and eternal. We live here in order to get ready for living
+yonder. And we get ready for living yonder, when here we understand that
+every moment of life is granted us for the one purpose, which can be
+pursued through all life--viz. the becoming liker our dear Lord, and the
+drinking in to our own hearts more of His Spirit, and moulding our
+characters more in conformity with His image. That is what my life and
+yours are given us for. If we succeed in that, we succeed all round. If
+we fail in that, whatever else we succeed in, we have failed altogether.
+
+But then, remember, still further, the other aspect in which we can look
+at this thought. That ultimate, all-embracing end is reached through a
+multitude of nearer and intermediate ones. Whilst life, as a whole, is
+the season for learning to know and for possessing God, life is broken
+up into smaller portions and periods, each of which has some special
+duty appropriate to it and a 'lesson for the day.'
+
+Now many of us, who entirely agree, theoretically, in saying that all
+life is granted for this highest purpose, go wrong here and fail to
+discern the significance of single moments. To-day is always
+commonplace; it is yesterday that is beautiful, and to-morrow that is
+full of possibilities, to the vulgar mind. But to-day is common and low.
+There are mountains ahead and mountains behind, purple with distance and
+radiant with sunshine, and the sky bends over them and seems to touch
+their crests. But here, on the spot where we stand, life seems flat and
+mean, and far away from the heavens. We admit the meaning of life taken
+altogether, but it is very hard to break up that recognition into
+fragments, and to feel the worth of these fleeting moments which, just
+because they are here, seem to be of small account. So we forget that
+life is only the aggregate of small present instants, and that the hour
+is sixty times sixty insignificant seconds, and the day twenty-four
+brief hours, and the year 365 commonplace days, and the life threescore
+years and ten. Brethren, carry your theoretical recognition of the
+greatness and solemnity of the purposes for which life has been given
+here into each of the moments of the passing day, and you will find that
+there is nothing so elastic as time; and that you can crowd into a day
+as much as a languid thousand years do sometimes hold, of sacrifice and
+service, of holy joys, and of likeness to Jesus Christ. He who has
+learned that all the moments are heavy with significance, and pregnant
+with immortal issues, he, too, in some measure may share in the
+prerogative of the timeless God, and to Him 'one day may be as a
+thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' It is not the beat of
+the pendulum or the tick of the clock that measure time, but it is the
+deeds which we crowd into it, and the feelings and thoughts which it
+ministers to us. This passing life draws all its importance from the
+boundless eternal issues to which it leads. Every little puddle on the
+paving-stones this morning, a quarter of an inch broad and a film deep,
+will be mirroring bright sunshine, and blue with the reflected heaven.
+And so we may make the little drop of our lives radiant with the image
+of God, and bright with the certainties of immortality.
+
+II. Now, note secondly, how to make the most of the season.
+
+'Redeeming the time,' says the Apostle. The figure is very simple and
+natural, and has only been felt to be difficult and obscure, because
+people have tried to ride the metaphor further than it was meant. The
+questions of who is the seller and what is the price do not enter into
+the Apostle's mind at all. Metaphors are not to be driven so far as
+that. We have to confine ourselves to the simple thought that there is a
+need for making the opportunity which is given truly our own; and that
+that can only be done by giving something in exchange for it. That is
+the notion of purchase, is it not? Acquisition, by giving something
+else. Thus, says Paul, you have to buy the opportunity which time
+affords us.
+
+That is to say, to begin with, life gives us opportunities and no more.
+We _may_, in and through it, become wise, good, pure, happy, noble,
+Christ-like, or we may not. The opportunity is there, swinging, as it
+were, _in vacuo_. Lay hold of it, says he, and turn it into more than an
+opportunity--even an actuality and a fact.
+
+And how is that to be done? We have to give something away, if we get
+the opportunity for our very own. What have we to give away? Well,
+mainly the lower ends for which the moment might serve. These have to be
+surrendered--sometimes abandoned altogether, always rigidly restricted
+and kept in utter subordination to the highest purposes. To-day is given
+us mainly that we may learn to know God better, and to love Him more,
+and to serve Him more joyfully. Our daily duties are given us for the
+same purpose. But if we go about them without thinking of God or the
+highest ends which life is meant to serve, then we shall certainly lose
+the highest ends, and an opportunity will go past us unimproved. But if,
+on the other hand, whilst we follow our daily business for the sake of
+legitimate temporal gain, we see, above that, the aspect of daily life
+as educating in all Christian nobleness and lofty thoughts and purposes,
+then we shall have given away the lower ends for the sake of attaining
+the higher. You live, suppose, to found a business, to become masters of
+your trade, to gain wisdom and knowledge, to establish for yourselves a
+position amongst your fellow-men, to cultivate your character so as to
+grow in wisdom and purity, apart from God. Or you live in order to win
+affection and move thankfully in the heaven of loving associations in
+your home, amongst your children. Or you live for the sake of carrying
+some lower but real good amongst men. Many of these ends are beautiful
+and noble, and necessary for the cultivation and discharge of the
+various duties and relationships of life; but unless they are all kept
+secondary, and there towers above them this other, life is wasted. If
+life is not to be wasted, they must be bartered for the higher, and we
+must recognise that to give all things for the sake of Christ and His
+love is wise merchandise and good exchange. 'What things were gain to
+me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea! doubtless, and I count all
+things but loss that I may win Him and be found of Him.' You must barter
+the lower if you are to secure the higher ends for which life is the
+appointed season.
+
+And then, still more minutely, my text gives us another suggestion about
+this 'redeeming the time.' 'See, then,' says the Apostle, 'that ye walk
+circumspectly.' The word rendered circumspectly might better, perhaps,
+be translated in some such way as 'strictly,' 'rigidly,' 'accurately,'
+'punctiliously.' As I take it, it is to be connected with the 'walk,'
+and not with the 'see, then,' as the Revised Version does.
+
+So here is a practical direction, walk strictly, accurately, looking to
+your feet; as a man would do who was upon what they call in the Alps an
+_arrête_. Suppose a narrow ridge of snow piled on the top of a ledge of
+rock, with a precipice of 5000 feet on either side, and a cornice of
+snow hanging over empty space. The climber puts his alpenstock before
+his foot, he tests with his foot before he rests his weight, for a false
+step and down he goes!
+
+'See that you walk circumspectly,' rigidly, accurately, punctiliously.
+Live by law--that is to say, live by principles which imply duties; for
+to live by inclination is ruin. The only safety is, look to your feet
+and look to your road, and restrain yourselves, 'and so redeem the
+time.'
+
+There is something else to look to. Feet? Yes! Road? Yes! But also look
+to your guide. Tread in Christ's footsteps, 'follow the Lamb
+whithersoever He goeth.' Make Him the pattern and example, and then you
+shall walk safely; and the path will carry you right into 'His presence
+where there is fulness of joy.' No great, noble, right, blessed life is
+lived without rigid self-control, self-denial, and self-crucifixion. Do
+not fancy that that means the absence of joy and spontaneity. 'I will
+walk at liberty for I keep Thy precepts.' Hedges are blessings when, on
+the other side, there are bottomless swamps of poisonous miasma, into
+which if a man ventures he will either drown or be plague-stricken. The
+narrow way that leads to life is the way of peace, just because it is a
+way of restrictions. Better to walk on the narrowest path that leads to
+the City than to be chartered libertines, wandering anywhere at our own
+bitter wills, and finding 'no end, in devious mazes lost.' Freedom
+consists in obeying from the heart the restriction of love; and walking
+punctiliously.
+
+III. Lastly, note the motives for this course.
+
+The Apostle says, 'see that ye walk strictly, not as fools but as wise.'
+That is to say, such limitation, which buys the opportunity and uses it
+for the highest purposes, is the only true wisdom. If you take the mean,
+miserable, partial, fleeting purposes for which some of us, alas, are
+squandering our lives, and contrast these with the great, perfect,
+all-satisfying, blessed, and eternal end for which it was given us, how
+can we escape being convicted of folly? One day, dear friends, it will
+be found out that the virgins that were not ready when the Lord came
+were the foolish ones. One day it will be asked of you and of me, 'What
+did you do with the life which I gave you, that you might know Me?' And
+if we have only the answer, 'O Lord! I founded a big business in
+Manchester--I made a fortune--I wrote a clever book, that was most
+favourably reviewed--I brought up a family'--the only thing fit to be
+said to us is, 'Thou fool!' The only wisdom is the wisdom that secures
+the end for which life was given.
+
+Then there is another motive here. 'Redeeming the time _because_ the
+days are evil.' That is singular. 'The days' are 'the time,' and yet
+they are 'evil' days, which being translated into other words is just
+this--we are to make a definite effort to keep in view, and to effect,
+the purposes for which all the days of our lives are given us, because
+these days have in themselves a tendency to draw us away from the true
+path and to blind us as to their real meaning. The world is full of
+possibilities of good and evil, and the same day which, in one aspect,
+is the 'season' for serving God is, in another aspect, an 'evil' day
+which may draw us away from Him. And if we do not put out manly effort,
+it certainly will do so. The ocean is meant to bear the sailor to his
+port, but from the waves rise up fair forms, siren voices, with sweet
+harps and bright eyes that tempt the weary mariner to his destruction.
+And the days which may be occasions for our getting nearer God, if we
+let them work their will upon us, will be evil days which draw us away
+from Him.
+
+Let me add one last motive which is not stated in my text, but is
+involved in the very idea of _opportunity_ or _season_--viz. that the
+time for the high and noble purposes of which I have been speaking is
+rigidly limited and bounded; and once past is irrevocable. The old, wise
+mythological story tells us that Occasion is bald behind, and is to be
+grasped by the forelock. The moment that is past had in it wonderful
+possibilities for us. If we did not grasp them with promptitude and
+decision they have gone for ever. You may as well try to bring back the
+water that has been sucked over Niagara, and churned into white foam at
+its base, as to recall the wasted opportunities. They stand all along
+the course of our years, solemn monuments of our unfaithfulness, and
+none of them can ever return again. Life is full of too-lates; that sad
+sound that moans through the roofless ruins of the past, like the wind
+through some deserted temple. 'Too late, too late; ye cannot enter now.'
+'The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore he shall
+beg in harvest and have nothing.' Oh! let us see to it that we wring out
+of the passing moments their highest possibilities of noblest good. Let
+us begin to live; for only he who lives to God really lives. Life is
+given to us that we may know Jesus Christ--trust Him, love Him, serve
+Him, be like Him. That is the pearl which, if we bring up from the sea
+of time, we shall not have been cast in vain into its stormy waves. Do
+you take care that this new year which is dawning upon us go not to join
+the many wasted years that lie desolate behind us, but let us all see to
+it that the flood which sweeps us and it away bears us straight to God,
+Who is our home. 'Now is the accepted time, now is the day of
+salvation.'
+
+
+
+
+THE PANOPLY OF GOD
+
+     'Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+      withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to
+      stand.'--Eph. vi. 13.
+
+
+The military metaphor of which this verse is the beginning was obviously
+deeply imprinted on Paul's mind. It is found in a comparatively
+incomplete form in his earliest epistle, the first to the Thessalonians,
+in which the children of the day are exhorted to put on the breastplate
+of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. It reappears,
+in a slightly varied form, in the Epistle to the Romans, where those
+whose salvation is nearer than when they believed, are exhorted, because
+the day is at hand, to cast off, as it were, their night-gear, and to
+put on the 'armour of light'; and here, in this Epistle of the
+Captivity, it is most fully developed. The Roman legionary, to whom Paul
+was chained, here sits all unconsciously for his portrait, every detail
+of which is pressed by Paul into the service of his vivid imagination;
+the virtues and graces of the Christian character, which are 'the armour
+of light,' are suggested to the Apostle by the weapon which the soldier
+by his side wore. The vulgarest and most murderous implements assume a
+new character when looked upon with the eyes of a poet and a Christian.
+Our present text constitutes the general introduction to the great
+picture which follows, of 'the panoply of God.'
+
+I. We must be ready for times of special assaults from evil.
+
+Most of us feel but little the stern reality underlying the metaphor,
+that the whole Christian life is warfare, but that in that warfare there
+are crises, seasons of special danger. The interpretation which makes
+the 'evil day' co-extensive with the time of life destroys the whole
+emphasis of the passage: whilst all days are days of warfare, there will
+be, as in some prolonged siege, periods of comparative quiet; and again,
+days when all the cannon belch at once, and scaling ladders are reared
+on every side of the fortress. In a long winter there are days sunny and
+calm followed, as they were preceded, by days when all the winds are let
+loose at once. For us, such times of special danger to Christian
+character may arise from temporal vicissitudes. Joy and prosperity are
+as sure to occasion them as are sorrows, for to Paul the 'evil day' is
+that which especially threatens moral and spiritual character, and these
+may be as much damaged by the bright sunshine of prosperity as by the
+midwinter of adversity, just as fierce sunshine may be as fatal as
+killing frost. They may also arise, without any such change in
+circumstances, from some temptation coming with more than ordinary
+force, and directed with terrible accuracy to our weakest point.
+
+These evil days are ever wont to come on us suddenly; they are heralded
+by no storm signals and no falling barometer. We may be like soldiers
+sitting securely round their camp fire, till all at once bullets begin
+to fall among them. The tiger's roar is the first signal of its leap
+from the jungle. Our position in the world, our ignorance of the future,
+the heaped-up magazines of combustibles within, needing only a spark,
+all lay us open to unexpected assaults, and the temptation comes
+stealthily, 'as a thief in the night.' Nothing is so certain as the
+unexpected. For these reasons, then, because the 'evil day' will
+certainly come, because it may come at any time, and because it is most
+likely to come 'when we look not for it,' it is the dictate of plain
+common sense to be prepared. If the good man of the house had known at
+what hour the thief would have come, he would have watched; but he would
+have been a wiser man if he had watched all the more, because he did
+_not_ know at what hour the thief would come.
+
+II. To withstand these we must be armed against them before they come.
+
+The main point of the exhortation is this previous preparation. It is
+clear enough that it is no time to fly to our weapons when the enemy is
+upon us. Aldershot, not the battlefield, is the place for learning
+strategy. Belshazzar was sitting at his drunken feast while the Persians
+were marching on Babylon, and in the night he was slain. When great
+crises arise in a nation's history, some man whose whole life has been
+preparing him for the hour starts to the front and does the needed work.
+If a sailor put off learning navigation till the wind was howling and a
+reef lay ahead, his corpse would be cast on the cruel rocks. It is well
+not to be 'over-exquisite,' to cast the fashion of 'uncertain evils,'
+but certain ones cannot be too carefully anticipated, nor too sedulously
+prepared for.
+
+The manner in which this preparation is to be carried out is distinctly
+marked here. The armour is to be put on before the conflict begins. Now,
+without anticipating what will more properly come in considering
+subsequent details, we may notice that such a previous assumption
+implies mainly two things--a previous familiarity with God's truth, and
+a previous exercise of Christian virtues. As to the former, the
+subsequent context speaks of taking the sword of the Spirit, which is
+the word of God, and of having the loins girt with truth, which may be
+objective truth. As to the latter, we need not elaborate the Apostle's
+main thought that resistance to sudden temptations is most vigorous when
+a man is accustomed to goodness. One of the prophets treats it as being
+all but impossible that they who have been accustomed to evil shall
+learn to do well, and it is at least not less impossible that they who
+have been accustomed to do well shall learn to do evil. Souls which
+habitually walk in the clear spaces of the bracing air on the mountains
+of God will less easily be tempted down to the shut-in valleys where
+malaria reigns. The positive exercise of Christian graces tends to
+weaken the force of temptation. A mind occupied with these has no room
+for it. Higher tastes are developed which makes the poison sweetness of
+evil unsavoury, and just as the Israelites hungered for the strong,
+coarse-smelling leeks and garlic of Egypt, and therefore loathed 'this
+light bread,' so they whose palates have been accustomed to manna will
+have little taste for leeks and garlic. The mental and spiritual
+activity involved in the habitual exercise of Christian virtues will go
+far to make the soul unassailable by evil. A man, busily occupied, as
+the Apostle would have us to be, may be tempted by the devil, though
+less frequently the more he is thus occupied; but one who has no such
+occupations and interests tempts the devil. If our lives are inwardly
+and secretly honeycombed with evil, only a breath will be needed to
+throw down the structure. It is possible to become so accustomed to the
+calm delights of goodness, that it would need a moral miracle to make a
+man fall into sin.
+
+III. To be armed with this armour, we must get it from God.
+
+Though it consists mainly of habitudes and dispositions of our own
+minds, none the less have we to receive these from above. It is 'the
+panoply of God,' therefore we are to be endued with it, not by exercises
+in our own strength, but by dependence on Him. In old days, before a
+squire was knighted, he had to keep a vigil in the chapel of the castle,
+and through the hours of darkness to watch his armour and lift his soul
+to God, and we shall never put on the armour of light unless in silence
+we draw near to Him who teaches our hands to war and our fingers to
+fight. Communion with Christ, and only communion with Christ, receives
+from Him the life which enables us to repel the diseases of our spirits.
+What He imparts to those who thus wait upon Him, and to them only, is
+the Spirit which helps their infirmities and clothes their undefended
+nakedness with a coat of mail. If we go forth to war with evil, clothed
+and armed only with what we can provide, we shall surely be worsted in
+the fray. If we go forth into the world of struggle from the secret
+place of the Most High, 'no weapon that is formed against us shall
+prosper,' and we shall be more than conquerors through Him that loved
+us.
+
+But waiting on God to receive our weapons from Him is but part of what
+is needful for our equipment. It is we who have to gird our loins and
+put on the breastplate, and shoe our feet, and take the shield of faith,
+and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. The cumbrous
+armour of old days could only be put on by the help of another pulling
+straps, and fixing buckles, and lifting and bracing heavy shields on
+arms, and fastening helmets upon heads; but we have, by our own effort,
+to clothe ourselves with God's great gift, which is of no use to us, and
+is in no real sense ours, unless we do. It takes no small effort to
+keep ourselves in the attitude of dependence and receptivity, without
+which none of the great gifts of God come to us, and, least of all, the
+habitual practice of Christian virtues. The soldier who rushed into the
+fight, leaving armour and arms huddled together on the ground, would
+soon fall, and God's giving avails nothing for our defence unless there
+is also our taking. It is the woful want of taking the things that are
+freely given to us of God, and of making our own what by His gift is our
+own, that is mainly responsible for the defeats of which we are all
+conscious. Looking back on our own evil days, we must all be aware that
+our defeats have mainly come from one or other of the two errors which
+lie so near us all, and which are intimately connected with each
+other--the one being that of fighting in our own strength, and the other
+being that of leaving unused our God-given power.
+
+IV. The issue of successful resistance is increased firmness of footing.
+
+If we are able to 'withstand in the evil day,' we shall 'stand' more
+securely when the evil day has stormed itself away. If we keep erect in
+the shock of battle, we shall stand more secure when the wild charge has
+been beaten back. The sea hurls tons of water against the slender
+lighthouse on the rock, and if it stands, the smashing of the waves
+consolidates it. The reward of firm resistance is increased firmness. As
+the Red Indians used to believe that the strength of the slain enemies
+whom they had scalped passed into their arms, so we may have power
+developed by conflict, and we shall more fully understand, and more
+passionately believe in, the principles and truths which have served us
+in past fights. David would not wear Saul's armour because, as he said,
+'I have not proved it,' and the Christian who has come victoriously
+through one struggle should be ready to say, 'I have proved it'; we have
+the word of the Lord, which is _tried_, to trust to, and not we only,
+but generations, have tested it, and it has stood the tests. Therefore,
+it is not for us to hesitate as to the worth of our weapons, or to doubt
+that they are more than sufficient for every conflict which we may be
+called upon to wage.
+
+The text plainly implies that all our life long we shall be in danger of
+sudden assaults. It does contemplate victory in the evil day, but it
+also contemplates that after we have withstood, we have still to stand
+and be ready for another attack to-morrow. Our life here is, and must
+still be, a continual warfare. Peace is not bought by any victories;
+'There is no discharge in that war.' Like the ten thousand Greeks who
+fought their way home through clouds of enemies from the heart of Asia,
+we are never safe till we come to the mountain-top, where we can cry,
+'The Sea!' But though all our paths lead us through enemies, we have
+Jesus, who has conquered them all, with us, and our hearts should not
+fail so long as we can hear His brave voice encouraging us: 'In the
+world ye have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the
+world.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE GIRDLE OF TRUTH'
+
+     'Stand, therefore, having girded your loins with truth.'--Eph.
+      vi. 14 (R.V.).
+
+
+The general exhortation here points to the habitual attitude of the
+Christian soldier. However many conflicts he may have waged, he is still
+to be ever ready for fresh assaults, for in regard to them he may be
+quite sure that to-morrow will bring its own share of them, and that the
+evil day is never left behind so long as days still last. That general
+exhortation is followed by clauses which are sometimes said to be
+cotemporaneous with it, and to be definitions of the way in which it is
+to be accomplished, but they are much rather statements of what is to be
+done before the soldier takes his stand. He is to be fully equipped
+first: he is to take up his position second. We may note that, in all
+the list of his equipment, there is but one weapon of offence--the sword
+of the Spirit; all the rest are defensive weapons. The girdle, which is
+the first specified, is not properly a weapon at all, but it comes first
+because the belt keeps all the other parts of the armour in place, and
+gives agility to the wearer. Having girded your loins (R.V.) is better
+than having your loins girded (A.V.), as bringing out more fully that
+the assumption of the belt is the soldier's own doing.
+
+I. We must be braced up if we are to fight.
+
+Concentration and tension of power is an absolute necessity for any
+effort, no matter how poor may be the aims to which it is directed, and
+what is needed for the successful prosecution of the lowest transient
+successes will surely not be less indispensable in the highest forms of
+life. If a poor runner for a wreath of parsley or of laurel cannot hope
+to win the fading prize unless all his powers are strained to the
+uttermost, the Christian athlete has still more certainly to run, so as
+the racer has to do, 'that he may obtain.' Loose-flowing robes are
+caught by every thorn by the way, and a soul which is not girded up is
+sure to be hindered in its course. 'This one thing I do' is the secret
+of all successful doing, and obedience to the command of Jesus, 'let
+your loins be girded about,' is indispensable, if we would avoid
+polluting contact with evil. His other command associated with it will
+never be accomplished without it. The lamps will not be burning unless
+the loins are girt. The men who scatter their loves and thoughts over a
+wide space, and to whom the discipline which confines their energies
+within definite channels is distasteful, are destined to be failures in
+the struggle of life. It is better to have our lives running between
+narrow banks, and so to have a scour in the stream, than to have them
+spreading wide and shallow, with no driving force in all the useless
+expanse. Such concentration and bracing of oneself up is needful, if any
+of the rest of the great exhortations which follow are to be fulfilled.
+
+It may be that Paul here has haunting his memory our Lord's words which
+we have just quoted; and, in any case, he is in beautiful accord with
+his brother Peter, who begins all the exhortations of his epistle with
+the words, 'Wherefore, girding up the loins of your mind, be sober, and
+set your minds perfectly upon the grace that is to be brought unto you
+at the revelation of Jesus Christ.' Peter, indeed, is not thinking of
+the soldier's belt, but he is, no doubt, remembering many a time when,
+in the toils of the fishing-boat, he had to tighten his robes round his
+waist to prepare for tugging at the oar, and he feels that such
+concentration is needful if a Christian life is ever to be sober, and to
+have its hope set perfectly on Christ and His grace.
+
+II. The girdle is to be truth.
+
+The question immediately arises as to whether truth here means objective
+truth--the truth of the Gospel, or subjective truth, or, as we are
+accustomed to say, truthfulness. It would seem that the former
+signification is rather included in the sword of the Spirit, which is
+the word of God, and it is best to regard the phrase 'with (literally
+"in") truth' here as having its ordinary meaning, of which we may take
+as examples the phrases, 'the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth';
+'love rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth';
+'whom I love in truth.' Absolute sincerity and transparent truthfulness
+may well be regarded as the girdle which encloses and keeps secure every
+other Christian grace and virtue.
+
+We do not need to go far to find a slight tinge of unreality marring the
+Christian life: we have only to scrutinise our own experiences to detect
+some tendency to affectation, to saying a little more than is quite
+true, even in our sincerest worship. And we cannot but recognise that in
+all Christian communities there is present an element of conventionalism
+in their prayers, and that often the public expression of religious
+emotions goes far beyond the realities of feeling in the worshippers. In
+fact, terrible as the acknowledgment may be, we shall be blind if we do
+not recognise that the average Christianity of this day suffers from
+nothing more than it does from the lack of this transparent sincerity,
+and of absolute correspondence between inward fact and outward
+expression. Types of Christianity which make much of emotion are, of
+course, specially exposed to such a danger, but those which make least
+of it are not exempt, and we all need to lay to heart, far more
+seriously than we ordinarily do, that God 'desires truth in the outward
+parts.' The sturdy English moralist who proclaimed 'Clear your mind of
+cant' as the first condition of attaining wisdom, was not so very far
+from Paul's point of view in our text, but his exhortation covered but
+a small section of the Apostle's.
+
+This absolute sincerity is hard to attain, and still harder to retain.
+Hideous as the fact of posing or attitudinising in our religion may be,
+it is one that comes very easily to us all, and, when it comes, spreads
+fast and spoils everything. Just as the legionary's armour was held in
+its place by the girdle, and if that worked loose or was carelessly
+fastened, the breastplate would be sure to get out of position, so all
+the subsequent graces largely depend for their vigorous exercise on the
+prime virtue of truthfulness. Righteousness and faith will be weakened
+by the fatal taint of insincerity, and, on the other hand, conscious
+truthfulness will give strength to the whole man. Braced up and
+concentrated, our powers for all service and for all conflict will be
+increased. 'The bond of perfectness' is, no doubt, 'Love,' but that
+perfect bond will not be worn by us, unless we have girded our loins
+with truthfulness.
+
+It may be that in Paul's memory there is floating Isaiah's great vision
+of the 'Branch' out of the stock of Jesse, on whom the Spirit of the
+Lord was to rest, and on whom it was proclaimed that faithfulness (or as
+it is rendered in the Septuagint, by the same phrase which the Apostle
+here employs, 'in truth') was to be the girdle of his reins; but, at all
+events, that which the prophet saw to be in the ideal Messiah, the
+Apostle sees as essential to all the subjects of that King.
+
+III. Our truthfulness is the work of God's truth.
+
+We have already pointed out that the expression in the text may either
+be taken as referring to the subjective quality of truthfulness, or to
+the objective truth of God as contained in the Gospel, but these two
+interpretations may be united, for the main factor in producing the
+former is the faithful use of the latter and an honest submission to its
+operation. The Psalmist of old had learned that the great safeguard
+against sin was the resolve, 'Thy word have I hid in my heart.' That
+word brings to bear the mightiest motives that can sway life. It moves
+by love, by fear, by hope: it proposes the loftiest aim, even to imitate
+God as dear children; it gives clear directions, and draws straight and
+plain the pilgrim's path; it holds out the largest promises, and in a
+measure fulfils them, even in the narrowest and most troubled lives. If
+we have made God's truth our own, and are faithfully applying it to the
+details of daily life and submitting our whole selves to its operation,
+we shall be truthful and shall instinctively shrink from all unreality.
+If we know the truth as it is in Jesus, and walk in it, that 'truth will
+make us free,' and if thus 'we are in Him that is true, even in His Son,
+Jesus Christ,' that truth abiding in us, and with us, for ever, will
+make us truthful. In a heart so occupied and filled there is no room for
+the make-believes which are but too apt to creep into religious
+experience. Such a soul will recoil with an instinct of abhorrence from
+all that savours of ostentation, and will feel that its truest treasure
+cannot be shown. It is our duty not to hide God's righteousness within
+our hearts, but it is equally our duty to hide His word there. We have
+to seek to make manifest the 'savour of His knowledge in every place,'
+but we have also to remember that in our hearts there is a secret place,
+and that 'not easily forgiven are they who draw back the curtains,' and
+let a careless world look in. It is not for others to pry into the
+hidden mysteries of the fellowship of a soul with the indwelling
+Christ, however it may be the Christian duty to show to all and sundry
+the blessed and transforming effects of that fellowship.
+
+But God's truth must be received and its power submitted to, if it is to
+implant in us the supreme grace of perfect truthfulness. Our minds and
+hearts must be saturated with it by many an hour of solitary reflection,
+by meditation which will diffuse its aroma like a fragrant perfume
+through our characters, and by the habit of bringing all circumstances,
+moods, and desires to be tested by its infallible criterion, and by the
+unreluctant acceptance of its guidance at every moment of our lives.
+There are many of us who, in a real though terribly imperfect sense,
+hold the truth, but who know nothing, or next to nothing, of its power
+to make us truthful. If it is to be of any use to us, we must make it
+ours in a far deeper sense than it is ours now; for many of us the
+girdle has been but carelessly fastened and has worked loose, and
+because, by our own faults, we have not 'abode in the truth,' it has
+come to pass that there is 'no truth in us.' We have set before us in
+the text the one condition on which all Christian progress depends, and
+if by any slackness we loosen the girdle of truthfulness, and admit into
+our religious life any taint of unreality, if our prayers say just a
+little more than is quite true, and our penitence a little less, we
+shall speedily find that hypocrisy and trivial insincerity are separated
+by very narrow limits. God's truth in the Gospel cleanses the inner man,
+but not without his own effort, and, therefore, we are commanded to
+'cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting
+holiness, in the fear of the Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS'
+
+     'Having put on the breastplate of righteousness.'--Eph. vi. 14.
+
+
+There can be no doubt that in this whole context the Apostle has in mind
+the great passage in Isaiah lix. where the prophet, in a figure of
+extreme boldness, describes the Lord as arming Himself to deliver the
+oppressed faithful, and coming as a Redeemer to Zion. In that passage
+the Lord puts on righteousness as a breastplate--that is to say, God, in
+His manifestation of Himself for the deliverance of His people, comes
+forth as if arrayed in the glittering armour of righteousness. Paul does
+not shrink from applying the same metaphor to those who are to be
+'imitators of God as beloved children,' and from urging upon them that,
+in their humble degree and lowly measure, they too are to be clothed in
+the bright armour of moral rectitude. This righteousness is manifested
+in character and in conduct, and as the breastplate guards the vital
+organs from assault, it will keep the heart unwounded.
+
+We must note that Paul here gathers up the whole sum of Christian
+character and conduct into one word. All can be expressed, however
+diversified may be the manifestations, by the one sovereign term
+'righteousness,' and that is not merely a hasty generalisation, or a too
+rapid synthesis. As all sin has one root and is genetically one, so all
+goodness is at bottom one. The germ of sin is living to oneself: the
+germ of goodness is living to God. Though the degrees of development of
+either opposite are infinite, and the forms of its expression
+innumerable, yet the root of each is one.
+
+Paul thinks of righteousness as existent before the Christian soldier
+puts it on. In this thought we are not merely relying on the metaphor of
+our text, but bringing it into accord with the whole tone of New
+Testament teaching, which knows of only one way in which any soul that
+has been living to self, and therefore to sin, can attain to living to
+God, and therefore can be righteous. We must receive, if we are ever to
+possess, the righteousness which is of God, and which becomes ours
+through Jesus Christ. The righteousness which shines as a fair but
+unattainable vision before sinful men, has a real existence, and may be
+theirs. It is not to be self-elaborated, but to be received.
+
+That existent righteousness is to be put on. Other places of Scripture
+figure it as the robe of righteousness; here it is conceived of as the
+breastplate, but the idea of assumption is the same. It is to be put on,
+primarily, by faith. It is given in Christ to simple belief. He that
+hath faith thereby has the righteousness which is through faith in
+Christ, for in his faith he has the one formative principle of reliance
+on God, which will gradually refine character and mould conduct into
+whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. That righteousness
+which faith receives is no mere forensic treating of the unjust as just,
+but whilst it does bring with it pardon and oblivion from past
+transgressions, it makes a man in the depths of his being righteous,
+however slowly it may afterwards transform his conduct. The faith which
+is a departure from all reliance on works of righteousness which we have
+done, and is a single-eyed reliance on the work of Jesus Christ, opens
+the heart in which it is planted to all the influences of that life
+which was in Jesus, that from Him it may be in us. If Christ be in us
+(and if He is not, we are none of His), 'the spirit is life because of
+righteousness,' however the body may still be 'dead because of sin.'
+
+But the putting on of the breastplate requires effort as well as faith,
+and effort will be vigorous in the measure in which faith is vivid, but
+it should follow, not precede or supplant, faith. There is no more
+hopeless and weary advice than would be the exhortation of our text if
+it stood alone. It is a counsel of despair to tell a man to put on that
+breastplate, and to leave him in doubt where he is to find it, or
+whether he has to hammer it together by his own efforts before he can
+put it on. There is no more unprofitable expenditure of breath than the
+cry to men, Be good! Be good! Moral teaching without Gospel preaching is
+little better than a waste of breath.
+
+This injunction is continuously imperative upon all Christian soldiers.
+They are on the march through the enemy's country, and can never safely
+lay aside their armour. After all successes, and no less after all
+failures, we have still to arm ourselves for the fight, and it is to be
+remembered that the righteousness of which Paul speaks differs from
+common earthly moralities only as including and transcending them all.
+It is, alas, too true that Christian righteousness has been by
+Christians set forth as something fantastic and unreal, remote from
+ordinary life, and far too heavenly-minded to care for common virtues.
+Let us never forget that Jesus Himself has warned us, that except our
+righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, we
+shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The greater orbit encloses
+the lesser within itself.
+
+The breastplate of righteousness is our defence against evil. The
+opposition to temptation is best carried on by the positive cultivation
+of good. A habit of righteous conduct is itself a defence against
+temptation. Untilled fields bear abundant weeds. The used tool does not
+rust, nor the running water gather scum. The robe of righteousness will
+guard the heart as effectually as a coat of mail. The positive
+employment with good weakens temptation, and arms us against evil. But
+so long as we are here our righteousness must be militant, and we must
+be content to live ever armed to meet the enemy which is always hanging
+round us, and watching for an opportunity to strike. The time will come
+when we shall put off the breastplate and put on the fine linen 'clean
+and white,' which is the heavenly and final form of the righteousness of
+Saints.
+
+
+
+
+A SOLDIER'S SHOES
+
+     'Your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.'--Eph.
+      vi. 15.
+
+
+Paul drew the first draft of this picture of the Christian armour in his
+first letter. It is a finished picture here. One can fancy that the
+Roman soldier to whom he was chained in his captivity, whilst this
+letter was being written, unconsciously sat for his likeness, and that
+each piece of his accoutrements was seized in succession by the
+Apostle's imagination and turned to a Christian use. It is worth
+noticing that there is only one offensive weapon mentioned--'the sword
+of the Spirit.' All the rest are defensive--helmet, breastplate, shield,
+girdle, and shoes. That is to say, the main part of our warfare consists
+in defence, in resistance, and in keeping what we have, in spite of
+everybody, men and devils, who attempt to take it from us. 'Hold fast
+that thou hast; let no man take thy crown.'
+
+Now, it seems to me that the ordinary reader does not quite grasp the
+meaning of our text, and that it would be more intelligible if, instead
+of 'preparation,' which means the process of getting a thing ready, we
+read 'preparedness,' which means the state of mind of the man who is
+ready. Then we have to notice that the little word 'of' does duty to
+express two different relations, in the two instances of its use here.
+In the first case--'the preparedness of the Gospel'--it states the
+origin of the thing in question. That condition of being ready comes
+from the good news of Christ. In the second case--'the Gospel of
+peace'--it states the result of the thing in question. The good news of
+Christ gives peace. So, taking the whole clause, we may paraphrase it by
+saying that the preparedness of spirit, the alacrity which comes from
+the possession of a Gospel that sheds a calm over the heart and brings a
+man into peace with God, is what the Apostle thinks is like the heavy
+hob-nailed boots that the legionaries wore, by which they could stand
+firm, whatever came against them.
+
+I. The first thing that I would notice here is that the Gospel brings
+peace.
+
+I suppose that there was ringing in Paul's head some echoes of the music
+of Isaiah's words, 'How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him
+that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good
+tidings of good!' But there is a great deal more than an unconscious
+quotation of ancient words here; for in Paul's thought, the one power
+which brings a man into harmony with the universe and to peace with
+himself, is the power which proclaims that God is at peace with him. And
+Jesus Christ is our peace, because He has swept away the root and bitter
+fountain of all the disquiet of men's hearts, and all their chafing at
+providences--the consciousness that there is discord between themselves
+and God. The Gospel brings peace in the deepest sense of that word, and,
+primarily, peace with God, from out of which all other kinds of
+tranquillity and heart-repose do come--and they come from nothing
+besides.
+
+But what strikes me most here is not so much the allusion to the blessed
+truth that was believed and experienced by these Ephesian Christians,
+that the Gospel brought peace, and was the only thing that did, as the
+singular emergence of that idea that the Gospel was a peace-bringing
+power, in the midst of this picture of fighting. Yes, it brings both. It
+brings us peace first, and then it says to us, 'Now, having got peace in
+your heart, because peace with God, go out and fight to keep it.' For,
+if we are warring with the devil we are at peace with God; and if we are
+at peace with the devil we are warring with God. So the two states of
+peace and war go together. There is no real peace which has not conflict
+in it, and the Gospel _is_ 'the Gospel of peace,' precisely because it
+enlists us in Christ's army and sends us out to fight Christ's battles.
+
+So, then, dear brother, the only way to realise and preserve 'the peace
+of God which passes understanding' is to fling ourselves manfully into
+the fight to which all Christ's soldiers are pledged and bound. The two
+conditions, though they seem to be opposite, will unite; for this is the
+paradox of the Christian life, that in all regions it makes compatible
+apparently incompatible and contradictory emotions. 'As sorrowful'--and
+Paul might have said 'therefore' instead of 'yet'--'as sorrowful yet
+always rejoicing; as having nothing yet'--therefore--'possessing all
+things'; as in the thick of the fight, and yet kept in perfect peace,
+because the soul is stayed on God. The peace that comes from friendship
+with Him, the peace that fills a heart tranquil because satisfied, the
+peace that soothes a conscience emptied of all poison and robbed of all
+its sting, the peace that abides because, on all the horizon in front of
+us nothing can be seen that we need to be afraid of--that peace is the
+peace which the Gospel brings, and it is realised in warfare and is
+consistent with it. All the armies of the world may camp round the
+fortress, and the hurtling noise of battle may be loud in the plains,
+but up upon the impregnable cliff crowned by its battlements there is a
+central citadel, with a chapel in the heart of it; and to the
+worshippers there none of the noise ever penetrates. The Gospel which
+laps us in peace and puts it in our hearts makes us soldiers.
+
+II. Further, this Gospel of peace will prepare us for the march.
+
+A wise general looks after his soldiers' boots. If they give out,
+nothing else is of much use. The roads are very rough and very long, and
+there need to be strong soles and well-sewed uppers, and they will be
+none the worse for a bit of iron on the heels and the toes, in order
+that they may not wear out in the midst of the campaign. 'Thy shoes
+shall be iron and brass,' and these metals are harder than any of the
+rock that you will have to clamber over. Which being translated into
+plain fact is just this--a tranquil heart in amity with God is ready for
+all the road, is likely to make progress, and is fit for anything that
+it may be called to do.
+
+A calm heart makes a light foot; and he who is living at peace with God,
+and with all disturbance within hushed to rest, will, for one thing, be
+able to see what his duty is. He will see his way as far as is needful
+for the moment. That is more than a good many of us can do when our eyes
+get confused, because our hearts are beating so loudly and fast, and our
+own wishes come in to hide from us God's will. But if we are weaned from
+ourselves, as we shall be if we are living in possession of the peace of
+God which passes understanding, the atmosphere will be transparent, as
+it is on some of the calm last days of autumn, and we shall see far
+ahead and know where we ought to go.
+
+The quiet heart will be able to fling its whole strength into its work.
+And that is what troubled hearts never can do, for half their energy is
+taken up in steadying or quieting themselves, or is dissipated in going
+after a hundred other things. But when we are wholly engaged in quiet
+fellowship with Jesus Christ we have the whole of our energies at our
+command, and can fling ourselves wholly into our work for Him. The
+steam-engine is said to be a very imperfect machine which wastes more
+power than it utilises. That is true of a great many Christian people;
+they have the power, but they are so far away from that deep sense of
+tranquillity with God, of which my text speaks, that they waste much of
+the power that they have. And if we are to have for our motto 'Always
+Ready.' as an old Scottish family has, the only way to secure that is by
+having 'our feet shod with the preparedness' that comes from the Gospel
+that brings us peace. Brethren, duty that is done reluctantly, with
+hesitation, is not done. We must fling ourselves into the work gladly
+and be always 'ready for all Thy perfect will.'
+
+There was an English commander, who died some years ago, who was sent
+for to the Horse Guards one day and asked, 'How long will it take for
+you to be ready to go to Scinde?' 'Half an hour,' said he; and in
+three-quarters he was in the train, on his road to reconquer a kingdom.
+That is how we ought to be; but we never shall be, unless we live
+habitually in tranquil communion with God, and in the full faith that we
+are at peace with Him through the blood of His Son. A quiet heart makes
+us ready for duty.
+
+III. Again, the Gospel of peace prepares us for combat.
+
+In ancient warfare battles were lost or won very largely according to
+the weight of the masses of men that were hurled against each other; and
+the heavier men, with the firmer footing, were likely to be the victors.
+Our modern scientific way of fighting is different from that. But in the
+old time the one thing needful was that a man should stand firm and
+resist the shock of the enemies as they rushed upon him. Unless our
+footing is good we shall be tumbled over by the onset of some unexpected
+antagonist. And for good footing there are two things necessary. One is
+a good, solid piece of ground to stand on, that is not slippery nor
+muddy, and the other is a good, strong pair of soldier's boots, that
+will take hold on the ground and help the wearer to steady himself.
+Christ has set our feet on the rock, and so the first requisite is
+secured. If we, for our part, will keep near to that Gospel which brings
+peace into our hearts, the peace that it brings will make us able to
+stand and bear unmoved any force that may be hurled against us. If we
+are to be 'steadfast, unmovable,' we can only be so when our feet are
+shod with the preparedness of the Gospel of peace.
+
+The most of your temptations, most of the things that would pluck you
+away from Jesus Christ, and upset you in your standing will come down
+upon you unexpectedly. Nothing happens in this world except the
+unexpected; and it is the sudden assaults that we were not looking for
+that work most disastrously against us. A man may be aware of some
+special weakness in his character, and have given himself carefully and
+patiently to try to fortify himself against it, and, lo! all at once a
+temptation springs up from the opposite side; the enemy was lying in
+hiding there, and whilst his face was turned to fight with one foe, a
+foe that he knew nothing about came storming behind him. There is only
+one way to stand, and that is not merely by cultivating careful
+watchfulness against our own weaknesses, but by keeping fast hold of
+Jesus Christ manifested to us in His Gospel. Then the peace that comes
+from that communion will itself guard us.
+
+You remember what Paul says in one of his other letters, where he has
+the same beautiful blending together of the two ideas of peace and
+warfare: 'The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall
+garrison your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.' It will be, as it were,
+an armed force within your heart which will repel all antagonism, and
+will enable you to abide in that Christ, through whom and in whom alone
+all peace comes. So, because we are thus liable to be overwhelmed by a
+sudden rush of unexpected temptation, and surprised into a sin before we
+know where we are, let us keep fast hold by that Gospel which brings
+peace, which will give us steadfastness, however suddenly the masked
+battery may begin to play upon us, and the foe may steal out of his
+ambush and make a rush against our unprotectedness. That is the only
+way, as I think, by which we can walk scatheless through the world.
+
+Now, dear brethren, remember that this text is part of a commandment. We
+are to put on the shoes. How is that to be done? By a very simple way: a
+way which, I am afraid, a great many Christian people do not practise
+with anything like the constancy that they ought. For it is the Gospel
+that brings the peace, and if its peace brings the preparedness, then
+the way to get the preparedness is by soaking our minds and hearts in
+the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
+
+You hear a good deal nowadays about deepening the spiritual life, and
+people hold conventions for the purpose. All right; I have not a word to
+say against that. But, conventions or no conventions, there is only one
+thing that deepens the spiritual life, and that is keeping near the
+Christ from whom all the fulness of the spiritual life flows. If we will
+hold fast by our Gospel, and let its peace lie upon our minds, as the
+negative of a photograph lies upon the paper that it is to be printed
+upon, until the image of Jesus Christ Himself is reproduced in us, then
+we may laugh at temptation. For there will be no temptation when the
+heart is full of Him, and there will be no sense of surrendering
+anything that we wish to keep when the superior sweetness of His grace
+fills our souls. It is empty vessels into which poison can be poured. If
+the vessel is full there will be no room for it. Get your hearts and
+minds filled with the wine of the kingdom, and the devil's venom of
+temptation will have no space to get in. It is well to resist
+temptation; it is better to be lifted above it, so that it ceases to
+tempt. And the one way to secure that is to live near Jesus Christ, and
+let the Gospel of His grace take up more of our thoughts and more of
+our affections than it has done in the past. Then we shall realise the
+fulfilment of the promise: 'He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SHIELD OF FAITH
+
+     'Above all, taking the shield of faith, whereby ye shall be able to
+      quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.'--Eph. vi. 16.
+
+
+There were two kinds of shields in use in ancient warfare--one smaller,
+carried upon the arm, and which could be used, by a movement of the arm,
+for the defence of threatened parts of the body in detail; the other
+large, planted in front of the soldier, fixed in the ground, and all but
+covering his whole person. It is the latter which is referred to in the
+text, as the word which describes it clearly shows. That word is
+connected with the Greek word meaning 'door,' and gives a rough notion
+of the look of the instrument of defence--a great rectangular oblong,
+behind which a man could stand untouched and untouchable. And that is
+the kind of shield, says Paul, which we are to have--no little defence
+which may protect some part of the nature, but a great wall, behind
+which he who crouches is safe.
+
+'Above all' does not mean here, as superficial readers take it to mean,
+most especially and primarily, as most important, but it simply means
+_in addition to_ all these other things. Perhaps with some allusion to
+the fact that the shield protected the breastplate, as well as the
+breastplate protected the man, there may be a reference to the kind of
+double defence which comes to him who wears that breastplate and lies
+behind the shelter of a strong and resolute faith.
+
+I. Now, looking at this metaphor from a practical point of view, the
+first thing to note is the missiles, 'the fiery darts of the wicked.'
+
+Archæologists tell us that there were in use in ancient warfare javelins
+tipped with some kind of combustible, which were set on fire, and flung,
+so that they had not only the power of wounding but also of burning; and
+that there were others with a hollow head, which was in like manner
+filled, kindled, and thrown into the ranks of the enemy. I suppose that
+the Apostle's reason for specifying these fiery darts was simply that
+they were the most formidable offensive weapons that he had ever heard
+of. Probably, if he had lived to-day, he would have spoken of
+rifle-bullets or explosive shells, instead of fiery darts. But, though
+probably the Apostle had no further meaning in the metaphor than to
+suggest that faith was mightier than the mightiest assaults that can be
+hurled against it, we may venture to draw attention to two particulars
+in which this figure is specially instructive and warning. The one is
+the action of certain temptations in setting the soul on fire; the other
+is the suddenness with which they assail us.
+
+'The fiery darts.' Now, I do not wish to confine that metaphor too
+narrowly to any one department of human nature, for our whole being is
+capable of being set on fire, and 'set on fire of hell,' as James says.
+But there are things in us all to which the fiery darts do especially
+appeal: desires, appetites, passions; or--to use the word which refined
+people are so afraid of, although the Bible is not, '_lusts_--which war
+against the soul,' and which need only a touch of fire to flare up like
+a tar-barrel, in thick foul smoke darkening the heavens. There are fiery
+darts that strike these animal natures of ours, and set them all aflame.
+
+But, there are other fiery darts than these. There are plenty of other
+desires in us: wishes, cowardices, weaknesses of all sorts, that, once
+touched with the devil's dart, will burn fiercely enough. We all know
+that.
+
+Then there is the other characteristic of suddenness. The dart comes
+without any warning. The arrow is invisible until it is buried in the
+man's breast. The pestilence walks in darkness, and the victim does not
+know until its poison fang is in him. Ah! yes! brethren, the most
+dangerous of our temptations are those that are sprung upon us unawares.
+We are going quietly along the course of our daily lives, occupied with
+quite other thoughts, and all at once, as if a door had opened, not out
+of heaven but out of hell, we are confronted with some evil thing that,
+unless we are instantaneously on our guard, will conquer us almost
+before we know. Evil tempts us because it comes to us, for the most
+part, without any beat of drum or blast of trumpet to say that it is
+coming, and to put us upon our guard. The batteries that do most harm to
+the advancing force are masked until the word of command is given, and
+then there is a flash from every cannon's throat and a withering hail of
+shot that confounds by its unexpectedness as well as kills by its blow.
+The fiery darts that light up the infernal furnace in a man's heart, and
+that smite him all unawares and unsuspecting, these are the weapons that
+we have to fear most.
+
+II. Consider next, the defence: 'the shield of faith.'
+
+Now, the Old Testament says things like this: 'Fear not, Abraham; I am
+thy Shield.' The psalmist invoked God, in a rapturous exuberance of
+adoring invocations, as his fortress, and his buckler, and the horn of
+his salvation, and his high tower. The same psalm says, 'The Lord is a
+shield to all them that put their trust in Him'; and the Book of
+Proverbs, which is not given to quoting psalms, quotes that verse.
+Another psalm says, 'The Lord God is a sun and shield.'
+
+And then Paul comes speaking of 'the shield of _faith_.' What has become
+of the other one? The answer is plain enough. My faith is nothing except
+for what it puts in front of me, and it is God who is truly my shield;
+my faith is only called a shield, because it brings me behind the bosses
+of the Almighty's buckler, against which no man can run a tilt, or into
+which no man can strike his lance, nor any devil either. God is a
+defence; and my trust, which is nothing in itself, is everything because
+of that with which it brings me into connection. Faith is the condition,
+and the only condition, of God's power flowing into me, and working in
+me. And when that power flows into me, and works in me, then I can laugh
+at the fiery darts, because 'greater is He that is with us than all they
+that are with them.'
+
+So all the glorification which the New Testament pours out upon the act
+of faith properly belongs, not to the act itself, but to that with which
+the act brings us into connection. Wherefore, in the first Epistle of
+John, the Apostle, who recorded Christ's saying, 'Be of good cheer; I
+have overcome the world,' translates it into, 'This is the victory that
+overcometh the world'--_not_, our Christ, but--'even our faith.' And it
+overcomes because it binds us in deep, vital union with Him who has
+overcome; and then all His conquering power comes into us.
+
+That is the explanation and vindication of the turn which Paul gives to
+the Old Testament metaphor here, when he makes our shield to be faith.
+Suppose a man was exercising trust in one that was unworthy of it, would
+that trust defend him from anything? Suppose you were in peril of some
+great pecuniary loss, and were saying to yourself, 'Oh! I do not care.
+So-and-so has guaranteed me against any loss, and I trust to him,' and
+suppose he was a bankrupt, what would be the good of your trust? It
+would not bring the money back into your pocket. Suppose a man is
+leaning upon a rotten support; the harder he leans the sooner it will
+crumble. So there is no defence in the act of trust except what comes
+into it from the object of trust; and my faith is a shield only because
+it grasps the God who is the shield.
+
+But, then, there is another side to that thought. My faith will quench,
+as nothing else will, these sudden impulses of fiery desires, because my
+faith brings me into the conscious presence of God, and of the unseen
+realities where He dwells. How can a man sin when God's eye is felt to
+be upon him? Suppose conspirators plotting some dark deed in a corner,
+shrouded by the night, as they think; and suppose, all at once, the day
+were to blaze in upon them, they would scatter, and drop their designs.
+Faith draws back the curtain which screens off that unseen world from so
+many of us, and lets in the light that shines down from above and shows
+us that we are compassed about by a cloud of witnesses, and the Captain
+of our Salvation in the midst of them. Then the fiery darts fizzle out,
+and the points drop off them. No temptation continues to flame when we
+see God.
+
+They have contrivances in mills that they call 'automatic sprinklers.'
+When the fire touches them it melts away a covering, and a gas is set
+free that puts the fire out. And if we let in the thought of God, it
+will extinguish any flame. 'The sun puts out the fire in our grates,'
+the old women say. Let God's sun shine into your heart, and you will
+find that the infernal light has gone out. The shield of faith quenches
+the fiery darts of the 'wicked.'
+
+Yes! and it does it in another way. For, according to the Epistle to the
+Hebrews, faith realises 'the things hoped for,' as well as 'unseen.' And
+if a man is walking in the light of the great promises of Heaven, and
+the great threatenings of a hell, he will not be in much danger of being
+set on fire, even by 'the fiery darts of the wicked.' He that receives
+into his heart God's strength; he that by faith is conscious of the
+divine presence in communion with him; he that by faith walks in the
+light of eternal retribution, will triumph over the most sudden, the
+sharpest, and the most fiery of the darts that can be launched against
+him.
+
+III. The Grasp of the Shield.
+
+'_Taking_ the shield,' then, there is something to be done in order to
+get the benefit of that defence. Now, there are a great many very good
+people at present who tell Christian men that they ought to exercise
+faith for sanctifying, as they exercise it for justifying and
+acceptance. And some of them--I do not say all--forget that there is
+effort needed to exercise faith for sanctifying; and that our energy has
+to be put forth in order that a man may, in spite of all resistance,
+keep himself in the attitude of dependence. So my text, whilst it
+proclaims that we are to trust for defence against, and victory over,
+recurring temptations, just as we trusted for forgiveness and
+acceptance at the beginning, proclaims also that there must be effort to
+grasp the shield, and to realise the defence which the shield gives to
+us.
+
+For to trust is an act of the heart and will far more than of the head,
+and there are a great many hindrances that rise in the way of it; and to
+keep behind the shield, and not depend at all upon our own wit, our
+wisdom, or our strength, but wholly upon the Christ who gives us wit and
+wisdom, and strengthens our fingers to fight--that will take work! To
+occupy heart and mind with the object of faith is not an easy thing.
+
+So, brethren, effort to compel the will and the heart to trust; effort
+to keep the mind in touch with the verities and the Person who are the
+objects of our faith; and effort to keep ourselves utterly and wholly
+ensconced behind the Shield, and never to venture out into the open,
+where our own arm has to keep our own heads, but to hang wholly upon
+Him--these things go to 'taking' the shield of faith. And it is because
+we fail in these, and not because there are any holes or weak places in
+the shield, that so many of the fiery darts find their way through, and
+set on fire and wound us. The Shield is impregnable, beaten as we have
+often been. 'This is the victory that overcometh the world'--and the
+devil and his darts--'even our faith.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE HELMET OF SALVATION'
+
+     'Take the helmet of salvation.'--Eph. vi. 17.
+
+
+We may, perhaps, trace a certain progress in the enumeration of the
+various pieces of the Christian armour in this context. Roughly
+speaking, they are in three divisions. There are first our graces of
+truth, righteousness, preparedness, which, though they are all conceived
+as given by God, are yet the exercises of our own powers. There is next,
+standing alone, as befits its all-comprehensive character, faith which
+is able to ward against and overcome not merely this and that
+temptation, but all forms of evil. That faith is the root of the three
+preceding graces, and makes the transition to the two which follow,
+because it is the hand by which we lay hold of God's gifts. The two
+final parts of the Christian armour are God's gifts, pure and
+simple--salvation and the word of God. So the progress is from
+circumference to centre, from man to God. From the central faith we have
+on the one hand that which it produces in us; on the other, that which
+it lays hold of from God. And these two last pieces of armour, being
+wholly God's gift, we are bidden with especial emphasis which is shown
+by a change in construction, to take or receive these.
+
+I. The Salvation.
+
+Once more Old Testament prophecy suggests the words of this exhortation.
+In Isaiah's grand vision of God, arising to execute judgment which is
+also redemption, we have a wonderful picture of His arraying Himself in
+armour. Righteousness is His flashing breastplate: on His head is an
+helmet of salvation. The gleaming steel is draped by garments of
+retributive judgment, and over all is cast, like a cloak, the ample
+folds of that 'zeal' which expresses the inexhaustible energy and
+intensity of the divine nature and action. Thus arrayed He comes forth
+to avenge and save. His redeeming work is the manifestation and issue of
+all these characteristics of His nature. It flames with divine fervour:
+it manifests the justice which repays, but its inmost character is
+righteousness, and its chief purpose is to save. His helmet is
+salvation; the plain, prose meaning of which would appear to be that His
+great purpose of saving men is its own guarantee that His purpose should
+be effected, and is the armour by which His work is defended.
+
+The Apostle uses the old picture with perfect freedom, quoting the words
+indeed, but employing them quite differently. God's helmet of salvation
+is His own purpose; man's helmet of salvation is God's gift. He is
+strong to save because He wills to save; we are strong and safe when we
+take the salvation which He gives.
+
+It is to be further noticed that the same image appears in Paul's rough
+draft of the Christian armour in Thessalonians, with the significant
+difference that there the helmet is 'the hope of salvation,' and here it
+is the salvation itself. This double representation is in full accord
+with all Scripture teaching, according to which we both possess and hope
+for salvation, and our possession determines the measure of our hope.
+That great word negatively implies deliverance from evil of any kind,
+and in its lower application, from sickness or peril of any sort. In its
+higher meaning in Scripture the evil from which we are saved is most
+frequently left unexpressed, but sometimes a little glimpse is given, as
+when we read that 'we are saved from wrath through Him' or 'saved from
+sin.' What Christ saves us from is, first and chiefly, from sin in all
+aspects, its guilt, its power, and its penalty; but His salvation
+reaches much further than any mere deliverance from threatening evil,
+and positively means the communication to our weakness and emptiness of
+all blessings and graces possible for men. It is inward and properly
+spiritual, but it is also outward, and it is not fully possessed until
+we are clothed with 'salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.'
+
+Hence, in Scripture our salvation is presented as past, as present, and
+as future. As past it is once for all received by initial faith in
+Christ; and, in view of their faith, Paul has no scruples as to saying
+to the imperfect Christians whose imperfections he scourges, 'Ye have
+been saved,' or in building upon that past fact his earnest exhortations
+and his scathing rebukes. The salvation is present if in any true sense
+it is past. There will be a daily growing deliverance from evil and a
+daily growing appropriation and manifestation of the salvation which we
+have received. And so Paul more than once speaks of Christians as 'being
+saved.' The process begun in the past is continued throughout the
+present, and the more a Christian man is conscious of its reality even
+amidst flaws, failures, stagnation, and lapses, the more assured will be
+his hope of the perfect salvation in the future, when all that is here,
+tendency often thwarted, and aspirations often balked, and sometimes
+sadly contradicted, will be completely, uninterruptedly, and eternally
+realised. If that hope flickers and is sometimes all but dead, the
+reason mainly lies in its flame not being fed by present experience.
+
+II. The helmet of salvation.
+
+This salvation in its present form will keep our heads in the day of
+battle. Its very characteristic is that it delivers us from evil, and
+all the graces with which Paul equips his ideal warrior are parts of the
+positive blessings which our salvation brings us. The more assured we
+are in our own happy consciousness of possessing the salvation of God,
+the more shall we be defended from all the temptations that seek to stir
+into action our lower selves. There will be no power in our fears to
+draw us into sin, and the possible evils that appeal to earthly passions
+of whatever sort will lose their power to disturb us, in the precise
+measure in which we know that we are saved in Christ. The consciousness
+of salvation will tend to damp down the magazine of combustibles that we
+all carry within us, and the sparks that fall will be as innocuous as
+those that light on wet gunpowder. If our thoughts are occupied with the
+blessings which we possess they will be guarded against the assaults of
+evil. The full cup has no room for poison. The eye that is gazing on the
+far-off white mountains does not see the filth and frivolities around.
+If we are living in conscious possession and enjoyment of what God gives
+us, we shall pass scatheless through the temptations which would
+otherwise fall on us and rend us. A future eagerly longed for, and
+already possessed in germ, will kill a present that would otherwise
+appeal to us with irresistible force.
+
+III. Take the helmet.
+
+We might perhaps more accurately read _receive_ salvation, for that
+salvation is not won by any efforts of our own, but if we ever possess
+it, our possession is the result of our accepting it as a gift from God.
+The first word which the Gospel speaks to men and which makes it a
+Gospel, is not Do this or that, but Take this from the hands that were
+nailed to the Cross. The beginning of all true life, of all peace, of
+all self-control, of all hope, lies in the humble and penitent
+acceptance by faith of the salvation which Christ brings, and with which
+we have nothing to do but to accept it.
+
+But Paul is here speaking to those whom he believes to have already
+exercised the initial faith which united them to Christ, and made His
+salvation theirs, and to these the exhortation comes with special
+force. To such it says, 'See to it that your faith ever grasps and feeds
+upon the great facts on which your salvation reposes--God's changeless
+love, Christ's all-sufficient sacrifice and ascended life, which He
+imparts to us if we abide in Him. Hold fast and prolong by continual
+repetition the initial act by which you received that salvation. It is
+said that on his death-bed Oliver Cromwell asked the Puritan divine who
+was standing by it whether a man who had once been in the covenant could
+be lost, and on being assured that he could not, answered, 'I know that
+I was once in it'; but such a building on past experiences is a building
+on sand, and nothing but continuous faith will secure a continuous
+salvation. A melancholy number of so-called Christians in this day have
+to travel far back through the years before they reach the period when
+they took the helmet of salvation. They know that they were far better
+men, and possessed a far deeper apprehension of Christ and His power in
+the old days than is theirs now, and they need not wonder if God's great
+gift has unnoticed slipped from their relaxed grasp. A hand that clings
+to a rock while a swollen flood rushes past needs to perpetually be
+tightening its grip, else the man will be swept away; and the present
+salvation, and, still more, the hope of a future salvation, are not ours
+on any other terms than a continual repetition of the initial act by
+which we first received them. But there must also be a continually
+increased appropriation and manifestation in our lives of a progressive
+salvation that will come as a result of a constantly renewed faith; but
+it will not come unless there be continuous effort to work into our
+characters, and to work out in our lives, the transforming and
+vitalising power of the life given to us in Jesus Christ. If our
+present experience yields no sign of growing conformity to the image of
+our Saviour, there is only too abundant reason for doubting whether we
+have experienced a past salvation or have any right to anticipate a
+perfect future salvation.
+
+The last word to be said is, Live in frequent anticipation of that
+perfect future. If that anticipation is built on memory of the past and
+experience of the present, it cannot be too confident. That hope maketh
+not ashamed. In the region of Christian experience alone the weakest of
+us has a right to reckon on the future, and to be sure that when that
+great to-morrow dawns for us, it 'shall be as this day and much more
+abundant.' With this salvation in its imperfect form brightening the
+present, and in its completeness filling the future with unimaginable
+glory, we can go into all the conflicts of this fighting world and feel
+that we are safe because God covers our heads in the day of battle.
+Unless so defended we shall go into the fight as the naked Indians did
+with the Spanish invaders, and be defeated as they were. The plumes may
+be shorn off the helmet, and it may be easily dinted, but the head that
+wore it will be unharmed. And when the battle and the noise of battle
+are past, the helmet will be laid aside, and we shall be able to say, 'I
+have fought a good fight, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
+righteousness.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT'
+
+     'The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.'--Eph. vi. 17.
+
+
+We reach here the last and only offensive weapon in the panoply. The
+'of' here does not indicate apposition, as in the 'shield of faith,' or
+'the helmet of salvation,' nor is it the 'of' of possession, so that
+the meaning is to be taken as being the sword which the Spirit wields,
+but it is the 'of' expressing origin, as in the 'armour of God'; it is
+the sword which the Spirit supplies. The progress noted in the last
+sermon from subjective graces to objective divine facts, is completed
+here, for the sword which is put into the Christian soldier's hand is
+the gift of God, even more markedly than is the helmet which guards his
+head in the day of battle.
+
+I. Note what the word of God is.
+
+The answer which would most commonly and almost unthinkingly be given
+is, I suppose, the Scriptures; but while this is on the whole true, it
+is to be noted that the expression employed here properly means a word
+spoken, and not the written record. Both in the Old and in the New
+Testaments the word of God means more than the Bible; it is the
+authentic utterance of His will in all shapes and applying to all the
+facts of His creation. In the Old Testament 'God said' is the expression
+in the first chapter of Genesis for the forthputting of the divine
+energy in the act of creation, and long ages after that divine poem of
+creation was written a psalmist re-echoed the thought when he said 'For
+ever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in the heavens. Thou hast established
+the earth and it abideth.'
+
+But, further, the expression designates the specific messages which
+prophets and others received. These are not in the Old Testament spoken
+of as a unity: they are individual words rather than a word. Each of
+them is a manifestation of the divine will and purpose; many of them are
+commandments; some of them are warnings; and all, in some measure,
+reveal the divine nature.
+
+That self-revelation of God reaches for us in this life its permanent
+climax, when He who 'at sundry times and in divers manner spake unto the
+fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by a
+Son.' Jesus is the personal 'word of God' though that name by which He
+is designated in the New Testament is a different expression from that
+employed in our text, and connotes a whole series of different ideas.
+
+The early Christian teachers and apostles had no hesitation in taking
+that sacred name--the word of the Lord--to describe the message which
+they spoke. One of their earliest prayers when they were left alone was,
+that with all boldness they might speak Thy word; and throughout the
+whole of the Acts of the Apostles the preached Gospel is designated as
+the word of God, even as Peter in his epistle quotes one of the noblest
+of the Old Testament sayings, and declares that the 'word of the Lord'
+which 'abideth for ever' is 'the word which by the gospel is preached
+unto you.'
+
+Clearly, then, Paul here is exhorting the Ephesian Christians, most of
+whom probably were entirely ignorant of the Old Testament, to use the
+spoken words which they had heard from him and other preachers of the
+Gospel as the sword of the Spirit. Since he is evidently referring to
+Christian teaching, it is obvious that he regards the old and the new as
+one whole, that to him the proclamation of Jesus was the perfection of
+what had been spoken by prophets and psalmists. He claims for his
+message and his brethren's the same place and dignity that belonged to
+the former messengers of the divine will. He asserts, and all the more
+strongly, because it is an assertion by implication only, that the same
+Spirit which moved in the prophets and saints of former days is moving
+in the preachers of the Gospel, and that their message has a wider
+sweep, a deeper content, and a more radiant light than that which had
+been delivered in the past. The word of the Lord had of old partially
+declared God's nature and His will: the word of God which Paul preached
+was in his judgment the complete revelation of God's loving heart, the
+complete exhibition to men of God's commandments of old; longing eyes
+had seen a coming day and been glad and confidently foretold it, now the
+message was 'the coming one has come.'
+
+It is as the record and vehicle of that spoken Gospel, as well as of its
+earlier premonitions, that the Bible has come to be called the word of
+God, and the name is true in that He speaks in this book. But much harm
+has resulted from the appropriation of the name exclusively to the book,
+and the forgetfulness that a vehicle is one thing and that which it
+carries quite another.
+
+II. The purpose and power of the word.
+
+The sword is the only offensive weapon in the list. The spear which
+played so great a part in ancient warfare is not named. It may well be
+noted that only a couple of verses before our text we read of the Gospel
+of peace, and that here with remarkable freedom of use of his metaphors,
+Paul makes the word of God, which as we have seen is substantially
+equivalent to the preached Gospel, the one weapon with which Christian
+men are to cut and thrust. Jesus said 'I come not to send peace, but a
+sword,' but Paul makes the apparent contradiction still more acute when
+he makes the very Gospel itself the sword. We may recall as a parallel,
+and possibly a copy of our text, the great words of the Epistle to the
+Hebrews which speak of the word of God as 'living and active and sharper
+than any two-edged sword.' And we cannot forget the magnificent
+symbolism of the Book of Revelation which saw in the midst of the
+candlestick one like unto a Son of Man, and 'out of His mouth proceeded
+a sharp, two-edged sword.' That image is the poetic embodiment of our
+Lord's own words which we have just quoted, and implies the penetrating
+power of the word which Christ's gentle lips have uttered. Gracious and
+healing as it is, a Gospel of peace, it has an edge and a point which
+cut down through all sophistications of human error, and lay bare the
+'thoughts and intents of the heart.' The revelation made by Christ has
+other purposes which are not less important than its ministering of
+consolation and hope. It is intended to help us in our fight with evil,
+and the solemn old utterance, 'with the breath of His mouth He will slay
+the wicked,' is true in reference to the effect of the word of Christ on
+moral evil. Such slaying is but the other side of the life-giving power
+which the word exercises on a heart subject to its influence. For the
+Christian soldier's conflict with evil as threatening the health of his
+own Christian life, or as tyrannising over the lives of others, the
+sword of the Spirit is the best weapon.
+
+We are not to take the rough-and-ready method, which is so common among
+good people, of identifying this spirit-given sword with the Bible. If
+for no other reason, yet because it is the Spirit which supplies it to
+the grasp of the Christian soldier, our possession of it is therefore a
+result of the action of that Spirit on the individual Christian spirit;
+and what He gives, and we are to wield, is 'the _engrafted_ word which
+is able to save our souls.' That word, lodged in our hearts, brings to
+us a revelation of duty and a chart of life, because it brings a loving
+recognition of the character of our Father, and a glad obedience to His
+will. If that word dwell in us richly, in all wisdom, and if we do not
+dull the edge of the sword by our own unworthy handling of it, we shall
+find it pierce to the 'dividing asunder of joints and marrow,' and the
+evil within us will either be cast out from us, or will shrivel itself
+up, and bury itself deep in dark corners.
+
+Love to Christ will be so strong, and the things that are not seen will
+so overwhelmingly outweigh the things that are seen, that the solemn
+majesty of the eternal will make the temporal look to our awed eyes the
+contemptible unreality which it really is. They who humbly receive and
+faithfully use that engrafted word, have in it a sure touchstone against
+which their own sins and errors are shivered. It is for the Christian
+consciousness the true Ithuriel's spear, at the touch of which 'upstarts
+in his own shape the fiend' who has been pouring his whispered poison
+into an unsuspicious ear. The standard weights and measures are kept in
+government custody, and traders have to send their yard measures and
+scales thither if they wish them tested; but the engrafted word,
+faithfully used and submitted to, is always at hand, and ready to
+pronounce its decrees, and to cut to the quick the evil by which the
+understanding is darkened and conscience sophisticated.
+
+III. The manner of its use.
+
+Here that is briefly but sufficiently expressed by the one commandment,
+'take,' or perhaps more accurately, 'receive.' Of course, properly
+speaking, that exhortation does not refer to our manner of fighting with
+the sword, but to the previous act by which our hand grasps it. But it
+is profoundly true that if we take it in the deepest sense, the
+possession of it will teach the use of it. No instruction will impart
+the last, and little instruction is needed for the first. What is needed
+is the simple act of yielding ourselves to Jesus Christ, and looking to
+Him only, as our guide and strength. Before all Christian warfare must
+come the possession of the Christian armour, and the commandment that
+here lies at the beginning of all Paul's description of it is '_Take_.'
+Our fitness for the conflict all depends on our receiving God's gift,
+and that reception is no mere passive thing, as if God's grace could be
+poured into a human spirit as water is into a bucket. Hence, the
+translation of this commandment of Paul's by 'take' is better than that
+by 'receive,' inasmuch as it brings into prominence man's activity,
+though it gives too exclusive importance to that, to the detriment of
+the far deeper and more essential element of the divine action. The two
+words are, in fact, both needed to cover the whole ground of what takes
+place when the giving God and the taking man concur in the great act by
+which the Spirit of God takes up its abode in a human spirit. God's gift
+is to be received as purely His gift, undeserved, unearned by us. But
+undeserved and unearned as it is, and given 'without money and without
+price,' it is not ours unless our hand is stretched out to take, and our
+fingers closed tightly over the free gift of God. There is a dead lift
+of effort in the reception; there is a still greater effort needed for
+the continued possession, and there is a life-long discipline and effort
+needed for the effective use in the struggle of daily life of the sword
+of the Spirit.
+
+If that engrafted word is ever to become sovereign in our lives, there
+must be a life-long attempt to bring the tremendous truths as to God's
+will for human conduct which it plants in our minds into practice, and
+to bring all our practice under their influence. The motives which it
+brings to bear on our evils will be powerless to smite them, unless
+these motives are made sovereign in us by many an hour of patient
+meditation and of submission to their sweet and strong constraint. One
+sometimes sees on a wild briar a graft which has been carefully inserted
+and bandaged up, but which has failed to strike, and so the strain of
+the briar goes on and no rosebuds come. Are there not some of us who
+profess to have received the engrafted word and whose daily experience
+has proved, by our own continual sinfulness, that it is unable to 'save
+our souls'?
+
+There are in the Christian ranks some soldiers whose hands are too
+nerveless or too full of worldly trash to grasp the sword which they
+have received, much less to strike home with it at any of the evils that
+are devastating their own lives or darkening the world. The feebleness
+of the Christian conflict with evil, in all its forms, whether
+individual or social, whether intellectual or moral, whether heretical
+or grossly and frankly sensual, is mainly due to the feebleness with
+which the average professing Christians grasp the sword of the Spirit.
+When David asked the priests for weapons, and they told him that
+Goliath's sword was lying wrapt in a cloth behind the ephod, and that
+they had none other, he said, 'There is none like that, give it me.' If
+we are wise, we will take the sword that lies in the secret place, and,
+armed with it, we shall not need to fear in any day of battle.
+
+We do well that we take heed to the word of God, 'as unto a lamp shining
+in a dark place until the day dawn,' when swords will be no more needed,
+and the Word will no longer shine in darkness but be the Light that
+makes the Sun needless for the brightness of the New Jerusalem.
+
+
+
+
+PEACE, LOVE, AND FAITH
+
+     'Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith.'--Eph. vi. 23.
+
+
+The numerous personal greetings usually found at the close of Paul's
+letters are entirely absent from this Epistle. All which we have in
+their place is this entirely general good wish, and the still more
+general and wider one in the subsequent verse.
+
+There is but one other of the Apostle's letters similarly devoid of
+personal messages, viz. the Epistle to the Galatians, and their absence
+there is sufficiently accounted for by the severe and stern tone of that
+letter. But it is very difficult to understand how they should not
+appear in a letter to a church with which the Apostle had such prolonged
+and cordial relations as he had with the church at Ephesus. And hence
+the absence of these personal greetings is a strong confirmation of the
+opinion that this Epistle was not originally addressed to the church at
+Ephesus, but was a kind of circular intended to go round the various
+churches in Asia Minor, and only sent first to that at Ephesus. That
+opinion is further confirmed by the fact known to many of you that in
+some good ancient manuscripts the words 'at Ephesus' are omitted from
+the first verse of the letter; which thus stands without any specific
+address.
+
+Be that as it may, this trinity of inward graces is Paul's highest and
+best wish for his friends. He has no earthly prosperity to wish for
+them. His ambition soars higher than that; he desires for them peace,
+love, faith.
+
+Now, will you take the lesson? There is no better test of a man than the
+things that he wishes for the people that he loves most. He desires for
+them, of course, his own ideal of happiness. What do you desire most for
+those that are dearest to you? You parents, do you train up your
+children, for instance, so as to secure, or to do your best to secure,
+not outward prosperity, but these loftier gifts; and for yourselves,
+when you are forming your wishes, are these the things that you want
+most? 'Set your affections on things above,' and remember that whoso has
+that trinity of graces, peace, love, faith, is rich and blessed,
+whatsoever else he has or needs. And whoso has them not is miserable and
+poor.
+
+But I wish especially to look a little more closely at these three
+things in themselves and in their relation to one another. I take it
+that the Apostle is here tracking the stream to its fountain; that he is
+beginning with effects and working backwards and downwards to causes; so
+that to get the order of nature and of time we must reverse the order
+here, and begin where he ends and end where he begins. The Christian
+life in its higher vigour and excellence is rooted in faith. That faith
+associates to itself, and is inseparably connected with love, and the
+faith and love together issue in a deep restful tranquillity which
+nothing can break.
+
+Now, let us look at these three things as the three greatest blessings
+that any can bear in their hearts, and wring out of time, sorrow, and
+change.
+
+I. First, the root of everything is a continuous and growing trust.
+
+Remember that this prayer or wish of my text was spoken in reference to
+brethren; that is to say, to those who, by the hypothesis, already
+possessed Christian faith. And Paul wishes for them, and can wish for
+them, nothing better and more than the increase and continuousness of
+that which they already possess. The highest blessing that the brethren
+can receive is the enlargement and the strengthening of their faith.
+
+Now we talk so much in Christian teaching about this 'faith' that, I
+fancy, like a worn sixpence in a man's pocket, its very circulation from
+hand to hand has worn off the lettering. And many of us, from the very
+familiarity of the word, have only a dim conception of what it means. It
+may not be profitless, then, to remind you, first of all, that this
+faith is neither more nor less than a very familiar thing which you are
+constantly exercising in reference to one another--that is to say,
+simple confidence. You trust your husband, your wife, your child, your
+parent, your friend, your guide, your lawyer, your doctor, your banker.
+Take that very same emotion and attitude of the mind by which you put
+your well-being, in different aspects and provinces, into the hands of
+men and women round about you; lift the trailing flowers that go all
+straggling along the ground, and twine them round the pillars of God's
+throne, and you get the confidence, the trust, of the praises and
+glories of which the New Testament is full. There is nothing mysterious
+in it, it is simply the exercise of confidence, the familiar cement that
+binds all human relationship together, and makes men brotherly and
+kindred with their kind. Faith is trust, and trust saves a man's soul.
+
+Then, remember further that the faith which is the foundation of
+everything is essentially personal trust reposing upon a person, upon
+Jesus Christ. You cannot get hold of a man in any other way than by
+that. The only real bond that binds people together is the personal bond
+of confidence, manifesting itself in love. And it is no mere doctrine
+that we present for a man's faith, but it is the person about whom the
+doctrine speaks. We say, indeed, that we can only know the person on
+whom we must trust by the revelation of the truths concerning Him which
+make the Christian doctrines; but a man may believe the whole of them,
+and have no faith. And what is the step in advance which is needed in
+order to turn credence into faith--belief in a doctrine into trust? In
+one view it is the step from the doctrine to the person. When you grasp
+Christ, the living Christ, and not merely the doctrine, for yours, then
+you have faith.
+
+Only remember, my brother, if you say you trust Christ, the question has
+immediately to be asked: What Christ is it that you are trusting? Is it
+the Christ that died for your sins on the Cross, or is it a Christ that
+taught you some great moral truths and set you a lovely example of life
+and conduct? Which of the two is it? for these two Christs are very
+different, and the faith that grasps the one is extremely unlike the
+faith that grasps the other. And so I press upon you this question: What
+Christ is it to Whom your confidence turns, and for what is it that you
+are looking to Him? Is it for help and guidance of some vague kind; is
+it for pattern or example, or is it for the salvation of your sinful
+souls, by the might of His great sacrifice?
+
+Then, remember still further, that this personal outgoing of confidence,
+which is the action both of a man's will and of a man's intellect, to
+the person revealed to us in the great doctrines of the Gospel--that
+this faith, if it is to be worth anything, must be continuous. Paul
+could desire nothing better for his Ephesian friends than that they
+should have that which they had--faith; that they should continue to
+have it, and that it should be perennial and increasing all through
+their lives. You can no more get present good from past faith than the
+breath you drew yesterday into your lungs will be sufficient to
+oxygenate your blood at this moment. As soon as you break the electric
+contact, the electric light goes out, and no matter how long a man has
+been living a life of faith, that past life will not in the smallest
+degree help him at the present moment unless the faith is continuous.
+Remember this, then, a broken faith is a broken peace; a broken faith is
+a broken salvation; and so long, and only so long, as you are knit to
+Jesus Christ by the conscious exercise of a faith realised at the
+moment, are you in the reception of blessing from Him at the moment.
+
+And, still further, this faith ought to be progressive. So Paul desired
+it to be with these people. If there is no growth, do you think there is
+much life? I know I am speaking to plenty of people who call themselves
+Christians, whose faith is not one inch better to-day than it was when
+it was born--perhaps a little less rather than more. Oh! the hundreds
+and thousands of professing Christians, average Christians, that clog
+and weaken all churches, whose faith has no progressive element in it,
+and is not a bit stronger by all the discipline of life and by their
+experience of its power. Brethren! is it so with us? Let us ask
+ourselves that; and let us ask very solemnly this other question: If my
+faith has no growth, how do I know that it has got any life?
+
+And so let me remind you further that this faith, the personal outgoing
+of a man's intellect and will to the personal Saviour revealed in the
+Scriptures as the sacrifice for our sins, and the life of our spirits,
+which ought to be continuous and progressive, is the foundation of all
+strength, blessedness, goodness, in a human character; and if we have it
+we have the germ of all possible excellence and growth, not because of
+what it is in itself, for in itself it is nothing more than the opening
+of the heart to the reception of the celestial influences of grace and
+righteousness that He pours down. And, therefore, this is the thing that
+a wise man will most desire for himself, and for those that are dearest
+to him.
+
+Depend upon it, whether it is what we want most or not, it is what God
+wants most for us. He does not care nearly so much that our lives should
+be joyful as that they should be righteous and full of faith; and He
+subjects us to many a sorrow and loss and disappointment in order that
+the life of nature may be broken and the life of faith may be strong. If
+we rightly understand the relative value of outward and of inward
+things, we shall be thankful for the storms that drive us nearer to Him;
+for the darkening earth that may make the pillar of cloud glow at the
+heart into a pillar of fire, and for all the discipline, painful though
+it may be, with which God answers the prayer, 'Lord, increase our
+faith.'
+
+II. And now, next, notice how inseparably associated with a true faith
+is love.
+
+The one is effect that never is found without its cause; the other is
+cause which never but produces its effect. These two are braided
+together by the Apostle as inseparable in reality and inseparable in
+thought. And that it is so is plain enough, and there follow from it
+some practical lessons that I desire to lay upon your hearts and my own.
+
+There are, then, here two principles, or rather two sides of one
+thought; no faith without love, no love without faith.
+
+No faith is genuine and deep which does not at once produce in the heart
+where it is lodged an answering love to God. That is clear enough. Faith
+is, as I have said, the recognition and the reception of the divine love
+into the heart; and we are so constituted as that if a man once knows
+and believes in any real sense the love that God has to him, he answers
+it back again with his love as certainly as an echo which gives back the
+sound that reaches it.
+
+Our faith is, if I may so say, like a burning-glass, which concentrates
+the rays of the divine love upon our hearts, and focuses them into a
+point that kindles our hearts into flame. If we have the confidence that
+God loves us, in any real depth, we shall answer by the gush of our love
+to Him.
+
+And so here is a test for men's faith. You call yourselves Christians.
+If I were to come to you and ask you, 'Do you believe in the Lord Jesus
+Christ?' most of you would say, 'Yes!' Try your faith, my friend, by
+this test: Does it make you love Him at all? If it does not, it is more
+words than anything else; and it needs a wonderful deepening before it
+can have any real power in your hearts. There is no faith worthy the
+name unless its child, all but as old as itself, be the answer of the
+heart to Him, pouring itself out in thankful gratitude.
+
+No love without faith; 'we love Him because He first loved us.' God must
+begin, we can only come second. Man's natural selfishness is only
+overcome by the clearest demonstration of the love of God to him; and
+until that love, in its superbest because its lowliest form, the form of
+the sacrifice on the Cross, has penetrated into a man's heart through
+his faith, there will be no love.
+
+So then, dear friends, there is a test for your love. We hear a great
+deal said nowadays, as there has always been a great deal said, about
+the essence of all religion consisting in love to God; and about men
+'rejecting the cumbrous dogmas of the New Testament, and falling back
+upon the great and simple truths, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
+all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with
+all thy strength; and thy neighbour as thyself,' and saying 'that is
+their religion.' Well, I venture to say that without the faith of the
+heart in, not the cumbrous dogmas, but the central fact of the New
+Testament, that Christ died on the Cross for me, you will never get the
+old commandment of love to God with heart and soul and strength and mind
+really kept and carried out; and that if you want men to have their
+hearts and wills bound into loving fellowship with God, it is only by
+the path of faith in Him who is the sacrifice for sin that such
+fellowship is reached. Hence there follows a very plain, practical
+advice. Do you want your heart's love to be increased? Learn the way to
+do it. You cannot work yourselves into a fervour of religious emotion of
+any valuable kind. A man cannot get to love more by saying, 'I am
+determined I will.' We have no direct control over our affections in
+that fashion. You cannot make water boil except by one way, and that is
+by putting plenty of fire under it; and you cannot make your affections
+melt and flow except by heating them by the contemplation of the truth
+which is intended to bring them out. That is to say, the more we
+exercise our minds on the contemplation of Christ's great love to us,
+and the more we put forth the energies of our souls in the act of
+simple self-distrust and reliance upon Him, the more will our love be
+fervent and strong. You can only increase love by increasing the faith
+from which it comes. So do you see to it, if you call yourselves
+Christians, that you try to deepen all your Christian affections by an
+honest, meditative, prayerful contemplation and grasp of the great love
+of God in Jesus Christ. And do not wonder if your Christian life be, as
+it is in so many of us, stunted, not progressive, bringing no blessing
+to ourselves and little good to anybody else. The explanation is easy
+enough. You do not look at the Cross of Christ, nor live in the
+contemplation and reception of His great grace.
+
+III. And now, lastly, these two inseparably associated graces of faith
+and love bring with them, and lead to, the third--peace.
+
+It seems to be but a very modest, sober-tinted wish which the Apostle
+here has for his brethren that the highest and best thing he can ask for
+them is only quiet. Very modest by the side of joy and excitement, in
+their coats of many colours, and yet the deepest and truest blessing
+that any of us can have--peace. It comes to us by one path, and that is
+by the path of faith and love.
+
+These two bring peace with God, peace in our inmost spirits, the peace
+of self-annihilation and submission, the peace of obedience, the peace
+of ceasing from our own works, and entering, therefore, into the rest of
+God. Trust is peace. There is no tranquillity like that of feeling 'I am
+not responsible for this: He is; and I rest myself on Him.'
+
+Love is peace. There is no rest for our hearts but on the bosom of some
+one that is dear to us, and in whom we can confide. But ah, brother!
+every tree in which the dove nestles is felled down sooner or later, and
+the nest torn to pieces, and the bird flies away. But if we turn
+ourselves to the undying Christ, the perpetual revelation of the eternal
+God, then, then our love and our faith will bring us rest. There will be
+peace in trusting Him whom we never can trust and be put to shame. There
+will be peace in loving Him who is more than worthy of and able to repay
+the deep and perennial love of all hearts.
+
+Self-surrender is peace. It is our wills that trouble us. Disturbance
+comes, not from without, but from within. When the will bows, when I
+say, 'Be it then as Thou wilt,' when in faith and love I cease to
+strive, to murmur, to rebel, to repine, and enter into His loving
+purposes, then there is peace.
+
+Obedience is peace. To recognise a great will that is sovereign, and to
+bow myself to it, not because it is sovereign, but because it is sweet,
+and sweet because I love it, and love Him whose it is--that is peace.
+And then, whatever may be outward circumstances, there shall be 'peace
+subsisting at the heart of endless agitation'; and deep in my soul I may
+be tranquil, though all about me may be the hurly-burly of the storm.
+
+The Christian peace is an armed peace, paradoxical as it appears; and
+according to the great word of the Apostle, is a sentry which garrisons
+the beleaguered heart and mind, surrounded by many foes, and keeps them
+in Christ Jesus.
+
+'There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked,' he is 'as a troubled
+sea which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt'; but over the
+wildest commotion one Voice, low, gentle, omnipotent, says: 'Peace! be
+still!' and the heart quiets itself, though there may be a ground
+swell, and the weather clears. He is your peace, trust Him, love Him,
+and you cannot but possess the 'peace of God which passeth
+understanding.'
+
+
+
+
+THE WIDE RANGE OF GOD'S GRACE
+
+     'Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in
+      sincerity.'--Eph. vi. 24.
+
+
+In turning to the great words which I have read as a text, I ask you to
+mark their width and their simplicity. They are wide; they follow a very
+comprehensive benediction, with which, so to speak, they are concentric.
+But they sweep a wider circle. The former verse says, 'Peace be to the
+brethren.' But beyond the brethren in these Asiatic churches (as a kind
+of circular letter to whom this epistle was probably sent) there rises
+before the mind of the Apostle a great multitude, in every nation, and
+they share in his love, and in the promise and the prayer of my text.
+Mark its simplicity: everything is brought down to its most general
+expression. All the qualifications for receiving the divine gift are
+gathered up in one--love. All the variety of the divine gifts is summed
+up in that one comprehensive expression--'grace.'
+
+I. So then, note, first, the comprehensive designation of the recipients
+of grace.
+
+They are 'all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption.' Little
+need be said explanatory of the force of this general expression. We
+usually find that where Scripture reduces the whole qualification for
+the reception of the divine gift, and the conditions which unite to
+Jesus Christ, to one, it is faith, not love, that is chosen. But here
+the Apostle takes the process at the second stage, and instead of
+emphasising the faith which is the first step, he dwells upon the love
+which is its uniform consequence. This love rests upon the faith in
+Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+Then note the solemn fulness of the designations of the object of this
+faith-born love. 'Jesus Christ our Lord'--the name of His humanity; the
+name of His office; the designation of His dominion. He is Jesus the
+Man. Jesus is the Christ, the Fulfiller of all prophecy; the flower of
+all previous revelation; the Anointed of God with the fulness of His
+Divine Spirit as Prophet, Priest, and King. Jesus Christ is the
+Lord--which, at the lowest, expresses sovereignty, and if regard be had
+to the Apostolic usage, expresses something more, even participation in
+Deity. And it is this whole Christ, the Jesus, the Christ, the Lord; the
+love to whom, built upon the faith in Him in all these aspects and
+characteristics, constitutes the true unity of the true Church.
+
+That Church is not built upon a creed, but it is built upon a whole
+Christ, and not a maimed one. And so we must have a love which answers
+to all those sides of that great revealed character, and is warm with
+human love to Jesus; and is trustful with confiding love to the Christ;
+and is lowly with obedient love to the Lord. And I venture to go a step
+further, and say,--and is devout with adoring love to the eternal Son of
+the Father. This is the Apostle's definition of what makes a Christian:
+Faith that grasps the whole Christ and love that therefore flows to Him.
+It binds all who possess it into one great unity. As against a spurious
+liberalism which calls them Christians who lay hold of a fragment of the
+one entire and perfect chrysolite, we must insist that a Christian is
+one who knows Jesus, who knows Christ, who knows the Lord, and who
+loves Him in all these aspects. Only we must remember, too, that many a
+time a man's heart outruns his creed, and that many a soul glows with
+truer, deeper, more saving devotion and trust to a Christ whom the
+intellect imperfectly apprehends, than are realised by unloving hearts
+that are associated with clearer heads. Orchids grow in rich men's
+greenhouses, fastened to a bit of stick, and they spread a fairer
+blossom that lasts longer than many a plant that is rooted in a more
+fertile soil. Let us be thankful for the blessed inconsistencies which
+knit some to the Christ who is more to them than they know.
+
+There is also here laid down for us the great principle, as against all
+narrowness and all externalism, and all so-called ecclesiasticism, that
+to be joined to Jesus Christ is the one condition which brings a man
+into the blessed unity of the Church. Now it seems to me that, however
+they may be to be lamented on other grounds, and they are to be lamented
+on many, the existence of diverse Churches does not necessarily
+interfere with this deep-seated and central unity. There is a great deal
+said to-day about the reunion of Christendom, by which is meant the
+destruction of existing communions and the formation of a wider one. I
+do not believe, and I suppose you do not, that our existing
+ecclesiastical organisations are the final form of the Church of the
+living God. But let us remember that the two things are by no means
+contradictory, the belief in, and the realising of, the essential unity
+of the Church, and the existence of diverse communions. You will see on
+the side of many a Cumberland hill a great stretch of limestone with
+clefts a foot or two deep in it--there are flowers in the clefts, by the
+bye--but go down a couple of yards and the divisions have all
+disappeared, and the base-rock stretches continuously. The separations
+are superficial; the unity is fundamental. Do not let us play into the
+hands of people whose only notion of unity is that of a mechanical
+juxtaposition held together by some formula or orders; but let us
+recognise that the true unity is in the presence of Jesus Christ in the
+midst, and in the common grasp of Him by us all.
+
+There is a well-known hymn which was originally intended as a High
+Church manifesto, which thrusts at us Nonconformists when it sings:
+
+    '_We_ are not divided,
+     All one body _we_.'
+
+And oddly enough, but significantly too, it has found its way into all
+our Nonconformist hymn-books, and we, 'the sects,' are singing it, with
+perhaps a nobler conception of what the oneness of the body, and the
+unity of the Church is, than the writer of the words had. 'We are not
+divided,' though we be organised apart. 'All one body we,' for we all
+partake of that one bread, and the unifying principle is a common love
+to the one Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+II. Mark the impartial sweep of the divine gifts.
+
+My text is a benediction, or a prayer; but it is also a prophecy, or a
+statement, of the inevitable and uniform results of love to Jesus
+Christ. The grace will follow that love, necessarily and certainly, and
+the lovers will get the gift of God because their love has brought them
+into living contact with Jesus Christ; and His life will flow over into
+theirs. I need not remind you that the word 'grace' in Scripture means,
+first of all, the condescending love of God to inferiors, to sinners, to
+those who deserved something else; and, secondly, the whole fulness of
+blessing and gift that follow upon that love. And, says Paul, these
+great gifts from heaven, the one gift in which all are comprised, will
+surely follow the opening of the heart in love to Jesus Christ.
+
+Ah, brethren! God's grace makes uncommonly short work of ecclesiastical
+distinctions. The great river flows through territories that upon men's
+maps are painted in different colours, and of which the inhabitants
+speak in different tongues. The Rhine laves the pine-trees of
+Switzerland, and the vines of Germany, and the willows of Holland; and
+God's grace flows through all places where the men that love Him do
+dwell. It rises, as it were, right over the barriers that they have
+built between each other. The little pools on the sea-shore are separate
+when the tide is out, but when it comes up it fills all the pot-holes
+that the pebbles have made, and unifies them in one great flashing,
+dancing mass; and so God's grace comes to all that love Him, and
+confirms their unity.
+
+Surely that is the true test of a living Church. 'When Barnabas came,
+and saw the grace of God, he was glad.' It was not what he had expected,
+but he was open to conviction. The Church where he saw it had been very
+irregularly constituted; it had no orders and no sacraments, and had
+been set a-going by the spontaneous efforts of private Christians, and
+he came to look into the facts. He asked for nothing more when he saw
+that the converts had the life within them. And so we, with all our
+faults--and God forbid that I should seem to minimise these--with all
+our faults, we poor Nonconformists, left to the uncovenanted mercies,
+have our share of that gift of grace as truly, and, if our love be
+deeper, more abundantly, than the Churches that are blessed with orders
+and sacraments, and an 'unbroken historical continuity.' And when we
+are unchurched for our lack of these, let us fall back upon St.
+Augustine's 'Where Christ is, there the Church is'; and believe that to
+us, even to us also, the promise is fulfilled, 'Lo! I am with you
+always, even to the end of the world.'
+
+III. Lastly, note the width to which our sympathies should go.
+
+The Apostle sends out his desires and prayers so as to encircle the same
+area as the grace of God covers and as His love enfolds. And we are
+bound to do the same.
+
+I am not going to talk about organic unity. The age for making new
+denominations is, I suppose, about over. I do not think that any sane
+man would contemplate starting a new Church nowadays. The rebound from
+the iron rigidity of a mechanical unity that took place at the
+Reformation naturally led to the multiplication of communities, each of
+which laid hold of something that to it seemed important. The folly of
+ecclesiastical rulers who insisted upon non-essentials lays the guilt of
+the schism at _their_ doors, and not at the doors of the minority who
+could not, in conscience, accept that which never should have been
+insisted upon as a condition. But whilst we must all feel that power is
+lost, and much evil ensues from the isolation, such as it is, of the
+various Churches, yet we must remember that re-union is a slow process;
+that an atmosphere springs up round each body which is a very subtle,
+but none the less a very powerful, force, and that it will take a very,
+very long time to overcome the difficulties and to bring about any
+reconstruction on a large scale. But why should there be three
+Presbyterian Churches in Scotland, with the same creed, confessions of
+faith, and ecclesiastical constitution? Why should there be half a dozen
+Methodist bodies in England, of whom substantially the same thing may
+be said? Will it always pass the wit of man for Congregationalists and
+Baptists to be one body, without the sacrifice of conviction upon either
+side? Surely no! You young men may see these fair days; men like me can
+only hope that they will come and do a little, such as may be possible
+in a brief space, to help them on.
+
+Putting aside, then, all these larger questions, I want, in a sentence
+or two, to insist with you upon the duty that lies on us all, and which
+every one of us may bear a share in discharging. There ought to be a far
+deeper consciousness of our fundamental unity. They talk a great deal
+about 'the rivalries of jarring sects.' I believe that is such an
+enormous exaggeration that it is an untruth. There is rivalry, but you
+know as well as I do that, shabby and shameful as it is, it is a kind of
+commercial rivalry between contiguous places of worship, be they chapels
+or churches, be they buildings belonging to the same or to different
+denominations. I, for my part, after a pretty long experience now, have
+seen so little of that said bitter rivalry between the Nonconformist
+sects, _as sects_, that to me it is all but non-existent. And I believe
+the most of us ministers, going about amongst the various communities,
+could say the same thing. But in the face of a cultivated England
+laughing at your creed of Jesus, the Christ, the Lord; and in the face
+of a strange and puerile recrudescence of sacerdotalism and
+sacramentarianism, which shoves a priest and a rite into the place where
+Christ should stand, it becomes us Nonconformists who believe that we
+know a more excellent way to stand shoulder to shoulder, and show that
+the unities that bind us are far more than the diversities that
+separate.
+
+It becomes us, too, to further conjoint action in social matters. Thank
+God we are beginning to stir in that direction in Manchester--not before
+it was time. And I beseech you professing Christians, of all Evangelical
+communions, to help in bringing Christian motives and principles to bear
+on the discussion of social and municipal and economical conditions in
+this great city of ours.
+
+And there surely ought to be more concert than we have had in aggressive
+work; that we should a little more take account of each other's action
+in regulating our own; and that we should not have the scandal, which we
+too often have allowed to exist, of overlapping one another in such a
+fashion as that rivalry and mere trade competition is almost inevitable.
+
+These are very humble, prosaic suggestions, but they would go a long
+way, if they were observed, to sweeten our own tempers, and to make
+visible to the world our true unity. Let us all seek to widen our
+sympathies as widely as Christ's grace flows; to count none strangers
+whom He counts friends; to discipline ourselves to feel that we are
+girded with that electric chain which makes all who grasp it one, and
+sends the same keen thrill through them all. If a circle were a mile in
+diameter, and its circumference were dotted with many separate points,
+how much nearer each of these would be if it were moved inwards, on a
+straight line, closer to the centre, so as to make a circle a foot
+across. The nearer we come to the One Lord, in love, communion, and
+likeness, the nearer shall we be to one another.
+
+
+
+
+        _EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE_
+
+        ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+        FIRST AND SECOND PETER
+        AND FIRST JOHN
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER
+
+                                                                PAGE
+SOJOURNERS OF THE DISPERSION (1 Peter i. 1)                       1
+
+BY, THROUGH, UNTO (1 Peter i. 5)                                  7
+
+SORROWFUL, YET ALWAYS REJOICING (1 Peter i. 6)                   17
+
+THE TRUE GOLD AND ITS TESTING (1 Peter i. 7)                     27
+
+JOY IN BELIEVING (1 Peter i. 8)                                  34
+
+CHRIST AND HIS CROSS THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE
+    (1 Peter i. 10, 11, 12)                                      41
+
+HOPE PERFECTLY (1 Peter i. 13)                                   51
+
+THE FAMILY LIKENESS (1 Peter i. 15)                              61
+
+FATHER AND JUDGE (1 Peter i. 17)                                 69
+
+PURIFYING THE SOUL (1 Peter i. 22)                               76
+
+LIVING STONES ON THE LIVING FOUNDATION STONE (1 Peter ii. 4, 5)  86
+
+SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES (1 Peter ii. 5)                             92
+
+MIRRORS OF GOD (1 Peter ii. 9)                                  101
+
+CHRIST THE EXEMPLAR (1 Peter ii. 21)                            107
+
+HALLOWING CHRIST (1 Peter iii. 14, 15)                          116
+
+CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM (1 Peter iv. 1-8)                          123
+
+THE SLAVE'S GIRDLE (1 Peter v. 5)                               130
+
+SYLVANUS (1 Peter v. 12, R.V.)                                  138
+
+AN APOSTOLIC TESTIMONY AND EXHORTATION (1 Peter v. 12)          146
+
+THE CHURCH IN BABYLON (1 Peter v. 13)                           154
+
+MARCUS, MY SON (1 Peter v. 13)                                  161
+
+
+THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER
+
+LIKE PRECIOUS FAITH (2 Peter i. 1)                              170
+
+MAN SUMMONED BY GOD'S GLORY AND ENERGY (2 Peter i. 3)           178
+
+PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE (2 Peter i. 4)                   189
+
+THE POWER OF DILIGENCE (2 Peter i. 5)                           198
+
+GOING OUT AND GOING IN (2 Peter i. 11, 15)                      206
+
+THE OWNER AND HIS SLAVES (2 Peter ii. 1)                        215
+
+BE DILIGENT (2 Peter iii. 14)                                   224
+
+GROWTH (2 Peter iii. 18)                                        234
+
+
+THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN
+
+THE MESSAGE AND ITS PRACTICAL RESULTS (1 John i. 5-ii. 6)      247
+
+WALKING IN THE LIGHT (1 John i. 7)                             253
+
+THE COMMANDMENT, OLD YET NEW (1 John ii. 7, 8)                 261
+
+YOUTHFUL STRENGTH (1 John ii. 14)                              269
+
+RIVER AND ROCK (1 John ii. 17)                                 279
+
+THE LOVE THAT CALLS US SONS (1 John iii. 1)                    289
+
+THE UNREVEALED FUTURE OF THE SONS OF GOD (1 John iii. 2)       301
+
+THE PURIFYING INFLUENCE OF HOPE (1 John iii. 3)                310
+
+PRACTICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS (1 John iii. 7)                        320
+
+CHRIST'S MISSION THE REVELATION OF GOD'S LOVE (1 John iv. 10)  329
+
+THE SERVANT AS HIS LORD (1 John iv. 17)                        338
+
+LOVE AND FEAR (1 John iv. 18)                                  347
+
+THE RAY AND THE REFLECTION (1 John iv. 19)                     355
+
+
+
+
+I. PETER
+
+
+
+
+SOJOURNERS OF THE DISPERSION
+
+     'Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers
+      scattered ...'--1 Peter i. 1.
+
+
+The words rendered 'strangers scattered' are literally 'sojourners of
+the Dispersion,' and are so rendered in the Revised Version. The
+Dispersion was the recognised name for the Jews dwelling in Gentile
+countries; as, for instance, it is employed in John's Gospel, when the
+people in Jerusalem say, 'Whither will this man go that we shall not
+find Him? Will he go to the Dispersion amongst the Greeks?' Obviously,
+therefore the word here may refer to the scattered Jewish people, but
+the question arises whether the letter corresponds to its apparent
+address, or whether the language which is employed in it does not almost
+oblige us to see here a reference, not to the Jew, but to the whole body
+of Christian people, who, whatever may be their outward circumstances,
+are, in the deepest sense, in the foundations of their life, if they be
+Christ's, 'strangers of the Dispersion.'
+
+Now if we look at the letter we find such words as these--'The times of
+your ignorance'--'your vain manner of life handed down from your
+fathers'--'in time past were not a people'--'the time past may suffice
+to have wrought the will of the Gentiles'--all of which, as you see, can
+only be accommodated to Jewish believers by a little gentle violence,
+but all of which find a proper significance if we suppose them
+addressed to Gentiles, to whom they are only applicable in the higher
+sense of the words to which I have referred. If we understand them so,
+we have here an instance of what runs all through the letter; the taking
+hold of Jewish ideas for the purpose of lifting them into a loftier
+region, and transfiguring them into the expression of Christian truth.
+For example, we read in it: 'Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a
+holy nation'; and again: 'Ye are built up a spiritual house, to be a
+holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices.' These and other
+similar passages are instances of precisely the same transference of
+Jewish ideas as I find, in accordance with many good commentators, in
+the words of my text.
+
+So, then, here is Peter's notion of--
+
+I. What the Christian Life is.
+
+All those who really have faith in Jesus Christ are 'strangers of the
+Dispersion'; scattered throughout the world, and dwelling dispersedly in
+an order of things to which they do not belong, 'seeking a city which
+hath foundations.' The word 'strangers' means, originally, persons for a
+time living in an alien city. And that is the idea that the Apostle
+would impress upon us as true for each of us, in the measure in which
+our Christianity is real. For, remember, although all men may be truly
+spoken of as being 'pilgrims and sojourners upon the earth' by reason of
+both the shortness of the duration of their earthly course and the
+disproportion between their immortal part and the material things
+amongst which they dwell, Peter is thinking of something very different
+from either the brevity of earthly life or the infinite necessities of
+an immortal spirit when he calls his Christian brethren strangers. Not
+because we are men, not because we are to die soon, and the world is to
+outlast us; not because other people will one day live in our houses and
+read our books and sit upon our chairs, and we shall be forgotten, but
+because we are Christ's people are we here sojourners, and must regard
+this as not our rest. Not because our immortal soul cannot satisfy
+itself, however it tries, upon the trivialities of earth any more than a
+human appetite can on the husks that the swine do eat, but because new
+desires, tastes, aspirations, affinities, have been kindled in us by the
+new life that has flowed into us; therefore the connection that other
+men have with the world, which makes some of them altogether 'men of the
+world, whose portion is in this life,' is for us broken, and we are
+strangers, scattered abroad, solitary, not by reason of the inevitable
+loneliness in which, after all love and companionship, every soul lives;
+not by reason of losses or deaths, but by reason of the contrariety
+between the foundation of our lives, and the foundation of the lives of
+the men round us; therefore we stand lonely in the midst of crowds;
+strangers in the ordered communities of the world.
+
+Ah, there is no solitude so utter as the solitude of being the only man
+in a crowd that has a faith in his heart, and there is no isolating
+power like the power of rending all ties that true attachment with Jesus
+Christ has. 'Think not that I am come to bring peace on earth, but a
+sword'--to set a man against his own household, if they be not of the
+household of faith. These things are the inevitable issues of
+religion--to make us strangers, isolated in the midst of this world.
+
+And now let us think of--
+
+II. Some of the plain consequent duties that arise from this
+characteristic of the Christian Life.
+
+Let me put them in the shape of one or two practical counsels. First let
+us try to keep up, vivid and sharp, a sense of separation. I do not mean
+that we should withdraw ourselves from sympathies, nor from services,
+nor from the large area of common ground which we have with our fellows,
+whether they be Christians or no--with our fellow-citizens; with those
+who are related to us by various bonds, by community of purpose, of aim,
+of opinion, or of affection. But just as Abraham was willing to go down
+into the plain and fight for Lot, though he would not go down and live
+in Sodom, and just as he would enter into relations of amity with the
+men of the land, and yet would not abandon his black camels'-hair tent,
+pitched beneath the terebinth tree, in order to go into their city and
+abide with them, so one great part of the wisdom of a Christian man is
+to draw the line of separation decisively, and yet to keep true to the
+bond of union. Unless Christian people do make a distinct effort to keep
+themselves apart from the world and its ways, they will get confounded
+with these, and when the end comes they will be destroyed with them.
+
+Sometimes voyagers find upon some lonely island an English castaway, who
+has forgotten home, and duty, and everything else, to luxuriate in an
+easy life beneath tropical skies, and has degraded himself to the level
+of the savage islanders round him. There are professing
+Christians--perhaps in my audience--who, like that poor castaway, have
+'forgotten the imperial palace whence they came,' and have gone down and
+down and down, to live the fat, contented, low lives of the men who
+find their good upon earth and not in heaven. Do you, dear brethren, try
+to keep vivid the sense that you belong to another community. As Paul
+puts it, with a metaphor drawn from Gentile instead of from Jewish life,
+as in our text, 'Our citizenship is in heaven.' Philippi, to the
+Christian Church of which that was said, was a Roman colony; and the
+characteristics of a Roman colony were that the inhabitants were
+enrolled as members of the Roman tribes, and had their names on the
+register of Rome, and were governed by its laws. So we, living here in
+an outlying province, have our names written in the 'Golden Book' of the
+citizens of the new Jerusalem. Do not forget, if I might use a very
+homely illustration, what parish your settlement is in; remember what
+kingdom you belong to.
+
+Again, if we are strangers of the Dispersion, let us live by our own
+country's laws, and not by the codes that are current in this foreign
+land where we are settled for a time. You remember what was the
+complaint of the people in Persia to Esther's king? 'There is a people
+whose laws are different from all the peoples that be upon the earth.'
+That was an offence that could not be tolerated in a despotism that
+ground everything down to the one level of a slavish uniformity. It will
+be well for us Christian people if men look at us, and say, 'Ah, that
+man has another rule of conduct from the one that prevails generally. I
+wonder what is the underlying principle of his life; it evidently is not
+the same as mine.'
+
+Live by our King's law. People in our colonies, at least the officials,
+set wonderful store by the approbation of the Colonial Office at home.
+It does not matter what the colonial newspapers say, it is 'what will
+they say in Downing Street?' And if a despatch goes out approving of
+their conduct, neighbours may censure and sneer as they list. So we
+Christians have to report to Home, and have so to live 'that whether
+present or absent'--in a colony or in the mother country--'we may be
+well pleasing unto Him.'
+
+Keep up the honour and advance the interests of your own country. You
+are here, among other reasons, to represent your King, and people take
+their notions of Him very considerably from their experience of you. So
+see to it that you live like the Master whom you say you serve.
+
+The Russian Government sends out what are called military colonies,
+studded along the frontier, with the one mission of extending the
+empire. We are set along the frontier with the same mission. The
+strangers are scattered. Congested, they would be less useful;
+dispersed, they may push forward the frontiers. Seed in a seed-basket is
+not in its right place; but sown broadcast over the field, it will be
+waving wheat in a month or two. 'Ye are the salt of the earth'--salt is
+_sprinkled_ over what it is intended to preserve. You are the strangers
+of the Dispersion, that you may be the messengers of the Evangelisation.
+
+Lastly, let us be glad when we think, and let us often think, of--
+
+III. The Home in Glory.
+
+That is a beautiful phrase which pairs off with the one in my text, in
+which another Apostle speaks of the ultimate end as 'our gathering
+together in Christ.' All the scattered ones, like chips of wood in a
+whirlpool, drift gradually closer and closer, until they unite in a
+solid mass in the centre. So at the last the 'strangers' are to be
+brought and settled in their own land, and their lonely lives are to be
+filled with happy companionship, and they to be in a more blessed unity
+than now. 'Fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God.'
+If we, dwelling in this far-off land, were habitually to talk, as
+Australians do of coming to England of 'going home,' though born in the
+colony, it would be a glad day for us when we set out on the journey. If
+Christian people lived more by faith, as they profess to do, and less by
+sight, they would oftener think of the home-coming and the union; and
+would be happy when they thought that they were here but for awhile, and
+when they realised these two blessed elements of permanence and of
+companionship, which another Apostle packs into one sentence, along with
+that which is greater than them both, 'so shall we ever be with the
+Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+BY, THROUGH, UNTO
+
+     '... Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to
+     be revealed in the last time.'--1 Peter i. 5.
+
+
+The Revised Version substitutes 'guarded' for 'kept,' and the
+alteration, though slight, is important, for it not only more accurately
+preserves the meaning of the word employed, but it retains the military
+metaphor which is in it. The force of the expression will appear if I
+refer, in a sentence, to other cases in which it is employed in the New
+Testament. For instance, we read that the governor of Damascus '_kept_
+the city with a garrison,' which is the same word, and in its purely
+metaphorical usage Paul employs it when he says that 'the peace of God
+shall keep'--guard, garrison--'your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.'
+We have to think of some defenceless position, some unwalled village out
+in the open, with a strong force round it, through which no assailant
+can break, and in the midst of which the weakest can sit secure. Peter
+thinks that every Christian has assailants whom no Christian by himself
+can repel, but that he may, if he likes, have an impregnable ring of
+defence drawn round him, which shall fling back in idle spray the
+wildest onset of the waves, as a breakwater or a cliff might do.
+
+Then there is another very beautiful and striking point to be made, and
+that is the connection between the words of my text and those
+immediately preceding. The Apostle has been speaking about 'the
+inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away,' and
+he says 'it is reserved in Heaven for you who are kept.' So, then, the
+same power is working on both sides of the veil, preserving the
+inheritance for the heirs, and preserving the heirs for the inheritance.
+It will not fail them, and they will not miss it. It were of little
+avail to care for either of the two members separately, but the same
+hand that is preparing the inheritance and making it ready for the
+owners is round about the pilgrims, and taking care of them till they
+get home.
+
+So, then, our Apostle is looking at this keeping in three aspects,
+suggested by his three words 'by,' 'through,' 'unto,' which respectively
+express the real cause or power, the condition or occasion on which that
+power works, and the end or purpose to which it works. So these three
+little words will do for lines on which to run our thoughts now--'by,'
+'through,' 'for.'
+
+I. In the first place, what are we guarded for?
+
+'Guarded ... unto salvation.' Now that great word 'salvation' was a new
+and strange one to Peter's readers--so new and strange that probably
+they did not understand it in its full nobleness and sweep. Our
+understanding of it, or, at least, our impression of it, is weakened by
+precisely the opposite cause. It has become so tarnished and
+smooth-rubbed that it creates very little definite impression. Like a
+bit of seaweed lifted out of the sunny waves which opened its fronds and
+brightened its delicate colours, it has become dry and hard and sapless
+and dim. But let me try for one moment to freshen it for our conceptions
+and our hearts. Salvation has in it the double idea of being made safe,
+and being made sound. Peril threatening to slay, and sickness unto
+death, are the implications of the conditions which this great word
+presupposes. The man that needs to be saved needs to be rescued from
+peril and needs to be healed of a disease. And if you do not know and
+feel that that is _you_, then you have not learned the first letters of
+the alphabet which are necessary to spell 'salvation.' You, I, every
+man, we are all sick unto death, because the poison of self-will and sin
+is running hot through all our veins, and we are all in deadly peril
+because of that poison-peril of death, peril arising from the weight of
+guilt that presses upon us, peril from our inevitable collision with the
+Divine law and government which make for righteousness.
+
+And so salvation means, negatively, the deliverance from all the evils,
+whether they be evils of sorrow or evils of sin, which can affect a man,
+and which do affect us all in some measure. But it means far more than
+that, for God's salvation is no half-and-half thing, contented, as some
+benevolent man might be, in a widespread flood or disaster, with
+rescuing the victims and putting them high up enough for the water not
+to reach them, and leaving them there shivering cold and starving. But
+when God begins by taking away evils, it is in order that He may clear a
+path for flooding us with good. And so salvation is not merely what some
+of you think it is, the escape from a hell, nor only what some of you
+more nobly take it to be, a deliverance from the power of sin in your
+hearts; but it is the investiture of each of us with every good and
+glory, whether of happiness or of purity, which it is possible for a man
+to receive and for God to give. It is the great word of the New
+Testament, and they do a very questionable service to humanity who
+weaken the grandeur and the greatness of the Scriptural conception of
+salvation, by weakening the darkness and the terribleness of the
+Scriptural conception of the dangers and the sicknesses from which it
+delivers.
+
+But, then, there is another point that I would suggest raised by the
+words of my text in their connection. Peter is here evidently speaking
+about a future manifestation of absolute exemption from all the ills
+that flesh and spirit are heir to, and radiant investure with all the
+good that humanity can put on, which lies beyond the great barrier of
+this mortal life. And that complete salvation, in its double aspect, is
+obviously the end for which all that guarding of life is lavished upon
+us, as it is the end for which all the discipline of life is given to
+us, and as it is the end for which the bitter agony and pain of the
+Christ on the Cross were freely rendered. But that ultimate and
+superlative perfection has its roots and its beginning here. And so in
+Scripture you find salvation sometimes regarded as a thing in the past
+experience of every Christian man which he received at the very
+beginning of his course, and sometimes you have it treated as being
+progressive, running on continually through all his days; and sometimes
+you have it treated, as in my text, as laid up yonder, and only to be
+reached when life is done with. But just a verse or two after my text we
+read that the Christian man here, on condition of his loving Jesus
+Christ and believing in Him, rejoices because he here and now 'receives
+the end of his faith, even the salvation of his soul.' And so there are
+the two things--the incipient germ to-day, the full-foliaged
+fruit-bearing tree planted in the higher house of the Lord.
+
+These two things are inseparably intertwined. The Christian life in its
+imperfection here, the partial salvation of to-day demands, unless the
+universe is a chaos and there is no personal God the centre of it, a
+future life, in which all that is here tendency shall be realised
+possession, and in which all that here but puts up a pale and feeble
+shoot above the ground, shall grow and blossom and bear fruit unto life
+eternal. 'Like the new moon with a ragged edge, e'en in its
+imperfections beautiful,' all the characteristics of Christian life on
+earth prophesy that the orb is crescent, and will one day round itself
+into its pure silvery completeness. If you see a great wall in some
+palace, with slabs of polished marble for most of its length, and here
+and there stretches of course rubble shoved in, you would know that that
+was not the final condition, that the rubble had to be cased over, or
+taken out and replaced by the lucent slab that reflected the light, and
+showed, by its reflecting, its own mottled beauty. Thus the very
+inconsistencies, the thwarted desires, the broken resolutions, the
+aspiration that never can clothe themselves in the flesh of reality,
+which belong to the Christian life, declare that this is but the first
+stage of the structure, and point onwards to the time when the
+imperfections shall be swept away, 'and for brass He will bring gold,
+for iron He will bring silver,' and then the windows shall be set 'in
+agates, and the gates in carbuncles, and all the borders in pleasant
+stones.' Perfect salvation is obviously the only issue of the present
+imperfect salvation.
+
+That is what you are 'kept' for. That is what Christ died to bring you.
+That is what God, like a patient workman bringing out the pattern in his
+loom by many a throw of a sharp-pointed shuttle, and much twisting of
+the threads into patterns, is trying to make of you, and that is what
+Christ on the Cross has died to effect. Brethren, let us think more than
+we do, not only of the partial beginnings here, but of that perfect
+salvation for which Christian men are being 'kept' and guarded, and
+which, if you and I will observe the conditions, is as sure to come as
+that X, Y, Z follow A, B, C. That is what we are kept for.
+
+II. Notice what we are guarded by.
+
+'The _power_ of God,' says Peter, laying hold of the most general
+expression that he can find, not caring to define ways and means, but
+pointing to the one great force that is sure to do it.
+
+Now if we were to translate with perfect literality, we should read, not
+_by_ the power of God, but _in_ the power of God. And whilst it is quite
+probable that what Peter meant was 'by,' I think it adds great force and
+beauty to the passage, and is entirely accordant with the military
+metaphor, which I have already pointed out, if we keep the simple local
+sense of the word, and read, 'guarded _in_ the power of God.' And that
+suggests a whole stream of Scriptural representations, both in the Old
+and in the New Testament. Let me recall one or two. 'The name of the
+Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe.' 'He
+that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the
+shadow of the Almighty.' 'Israel shall dwell safely,' says one of the
+old prophets, 'in unwalled villages, for I will be a wall of fire round
+about her.' The psalmist said, 'The Angel of the Lord encampeth round
+about them that fear Him.' And all these representations concur in this
+one thought, that we are safe, enclosed in God, and that He, by His
+power, compasses us about. And so no foe can get at us who cannot break
+down or climb over the encircling wall of defence. An army in an enemy's
+country will march in hollow square, and put its most precious
+treasures, or its weaker members, its sick, its women, its children, its
+footsore, into the middle there, and with a line of lances on either
+side, and stalwart arms to wield them, the feeblest need fear no foe. We
+'are kept in the power of God unto salvation.'
+
+But do not forget how, far beyond the psalmist and prophet, and in
+something far more sublime and wonderful than a poetic figure, the New
+Testament catches up the same phrase, and gives us, as the condition of
+vitality, as the condition of fertility, as the condition of
+tranquillity, as the condition of security, the same thing--'in Christ.'
+Remember His very last words prior to His great intercessory prayer, in
+which He spoke about keeping those that were given Him in His name. And
+just before that He said to them, 'In the world ye shall have
+tribulation, but in Me ye shall have peace.' Kept, guarded as behind the
+battlements of some great fort, which has in its centre a quiet,
+armoured chamber into which no noise of battle, nor shout of foeman, can
+ever come. 'In Christ,' though the world is all in arms without, 'ye
+shall have peace.' 'Guarded in the power of God unto salvation.'
+
+III. Lastly, what we are kept through.
+
+'Through faith.' Now there we come across another of the words which we
+know so well that we do not understand them. You all think that it is
+the right thing for me to preach about 'faith.' I daresay some of you
+have never tried to apprehend what it means. And I daresay there are a
+great many of you to whom the utterance of the word suggests that I am
+plunging into the bathos and commonplaces of the pulpit. Perhaps, if you
+would try to understand it, you would find it was a bigger thing than
+you fancied. What is faith? I will give you another expression that has
+not so many theological accretions sticking to it, and which means
+precisely the same thing--trust. And we all know that we do not trust
+with our heads, but with our hearts and wills. You may believe
+undoubtedly, and have no faith at all, for it is the heart and the will
+that go forth, and clutch at the thing trusted; or, as I should rather
+say, at the person trusted; for, at bottom, what we trust is always a
+person, and even when we 'trust to nature,' it is because, more or less
+clearly, we feel that somehow or other at the back of nature there is a
+Will and an Intelligence that are working and trustworthy. However, that
+is a subject that I do not need to touch upon here. Faith is trust,
+trust in a Person, trust that, like the fabled goddess rising, radiant
+and aspiring to the heavens, out of the roll of the tempestuous ocean,
+springs from the depths of absolute self-distrust and diffidence. There
+is a spurious kind of faith which has no good in it, just because it
+did not begin with going down into the depths of one's own heart, and
+finding out how rotten and hopeless everything was there. My friend, no
+man has a vigorous Christian faith who has not been very near utter
+despair. 'Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee.' The zenith, which
+is the highest point in the sky above us, is always just as far aloft as
+the nadir, which is the lowest point in the sky at the Antipodes, is
+beneath us. Your faith is measured by your self-despair.
+
+Further, why is it that I must have faith in order to get God's power at
+work in me? Many people seem to think that faith is appointed by God as
+the condition of salvation out of mere arbitrary selection and caprice.
+Not at all. If God could save you without your faith, He would do it. He
+does not, because He cannot. Why must I have faith in order that God's
+power may keep me? Why must you open your window in order to let the
+fresh air in? Why must you pull up the blind in order to let the light
+in? Why must you take your medicine or your food if you want to be cured
+or nourished? Why must you pull the trigger if your revolver is to go
+off? Unless I trust God, distrusting myself, and the spark of faith is
+struck out of the rock of my heart by the sharp steel in the midst of
+the darkness of despair, God cannot pour out upon me His power. There is
+nothing arbitrary about it. It is inseparable from the very nature of
+the case. If you do not want Him, you cannot have Him. If you do not
+know that you need Him, you cannot have Him. If you do not trust that He
+will come to you and help you, you will not have Him.
+
+So then, brother, your faith, my faith, anybody's faith is nothing of
+itself. It is only the valve that opens and lets the steam rush in. It
+is only the tap you turn to let Thirlmere come into your basins. It is
+not you that saves yourself. It is not your faith that keeps you, any
+more than it is the outstretched hand with which a man, ready to
+stumble, grasps the hand of a stalwart, steadfast man on the pavement by
+his side that keeps him up. It is the other man's hand that holds you
+up, but it is your hand that lays hold of him. It is God that saves, it
+is God that guards, it is God that is able to keep us from falling, and
+to give us an inheritance among all them that are sanctified. He will do
+it if we turn to Him, and ask and expect Him to do it. If you will
+comply with the conditions and not else, He will fulfil His promise and
+accomplish His purpose. But my unbelief can thwart Omnipotence, and
+hinder Christ's all-loving purpose, just as on earth we read that 'He
+could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief.' I am sure
+that there are people here who all their lives long have been thus
+hampering Omnipotence and neutralising the love of Christ, and making
+His sacrifice impotent and His wish to save them vain. Stretch out your
+hands as this very Peter once did, crying, 'Lord, save, or I perish';
+and He will answer, not by word only, but by act: 'According to thy
+faith be it unto thee.' Salvation, here and hereafter, is God's work
+alone. It cannot be exercised towards a man who has not faith. It will
+certainly be exercised towards any man who has.
+
+Help us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, to live the lives which we live in the
+flesh by the faith of the Son of God. And may we know what it is to be
+in him, strengthened within the might of His spirit.
+
+
+
+
+SORROWFUL, YET ALWAYS REJOICING
+
+     'Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be,
+      ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.'--1 Peter i. 6.
+
+
+You will remember the great saying of our Lord's in the Sermon on the
+Mount, in which He makes the last of the beatitudes, that which He
+pronounces upon His disciples, when men shall revile them and persecute
+them, and speak all manner of evil falsely against them for His sake,
+and bids them rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is their reward
+in Heaven.
+
+Now it seems to me that in the words of my text there is a distinct echo
+of that saying of Christ's. For not only is the whole context the same,
+but a somewhat unusual and very strong word which our Lord employs is
+also employed here by Peter. 'Rejoice and be _exceeding glad_,' said
+Christ. 'Ye _rejoice greatly_,' said the Apostle, and he is echoing his
+Master's word. Then with regard to the context; Christ proposes to His
+followers this exceeding gladness as evoked in their hearts by the very
+thing that might seem to militate against it--viz., men's antagonism.
+Similarly, Peter, throughout this whole letter, and in my text, is
+heartening the disciples against impending persecution, and, like his
+Lord, he bids them face it, if not 'with frolic welcome' at all events
+with undiminished and undimmed serenity and cheerfulness. Christ based
+the exhortation on the thought that great would be their reward in
+Heaven. Peter points to the salvation ready to be revealed as being the
+ground of the joy that he enjoined. So in the words and in the whole
+strain and structure of the exhortation the servant is copying his
+Master.
+
+But, of course, although the immediate application of these words is to
+Churches fronting the possibility and probability of actual persecution
+and affliction for the sake of Jesus Christ, the principle involved
+applies to us all. And the worries and the sorrows of our daily life
+need the exhortation here, quite as much as did the martyr's pains.
+White ants will pick a carcass clean as soon as a lion will, and there
+is quite as much wear and tear of Christian gladness arising from the
+small frictions of our daily life as from the great strain and stress of
+persecution.
+
+So our Apostle has a word for us all. Now it seems to me that in this
+text there are three things to be noticed: a paradox, a possibility, a
+duty. 'In which ye rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are
+in heaviness through manifold temptations.' Look at these three points.
+
+I. This paradox.
+
+Two emotions diametrically opposed are to be contained within the narrow
+room of one disposition and temper. 'Ye greatly rejoice.... Ye are in
+heaviness.' Can such a thing be? Well! let us think for a moment. The
+sources of the two conflicting emotions are laid out before us; they may
+be constantly operative in every life. On the one hand, 'in which ye
+greatly rejoice.' Now that 'in which' does not point back only to the
+words that immediately precede, but to the whole complex clause that
+goes before. And what is the 'which' that is there? These things; the
+possession of a new life--'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
+Jesus Christ who hath begotten us again!'--the springing up in a man's
+heart of a strange new hope, like a new star that swims into the sky,
+and sheds a radiance all about it--'Begotten unto a lively hope by the
+resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead'; a new wealth--an
+'inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away; a new
+security--guarded by the power of God through faith unto salvation.'
+These things belong, _ipso facto_, and in the measure of his faith, to
+every Christian man, a new life, a new hope, a new wealth, and a new
+security; and in their conjoint action, all four of them brought to bear
+upon a man's temper and spirit, will, if he is realising them, make him
+glad.
+
+Then, on the other hand, we have other fountains pouring their streams
+into the same reservoir. And just as the deep fountains which are open
+to us by faith will, if we continue to exercise that faith, flood our
+spirits with sweet waters, so these other fountains will pour their
+bitter floods over every heart more or less abundantly and continually.
+'Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold
+temptations.' There are confluent streams that one has sometimes seen,
+where a clear river joins, and flows in the same bed with, one all foul
+with half-melted ice, and the two run side by side for a space, scarcely
+mingling their waters. Thus the paradox of the Christian life is that
+within the same narrow banks may flow the sunny and the turbid, the
+clear and the dark, the sorrow that springs from earthly fountains, the
+joy that pours from the heavenly heights.
+
+Now notice that this is only one case of the paradox of the whole
+Christian life. For the peculiarity of it is that it owns two;--it
+belongs to, and is exposed to, all the influences of the forces and
+things of time, whilst in regard to its depths, it belongs to, and is
+under the influence of, 'the things that are unseen and eternal'; so
+that you have the external life common to the Christian and to all
+other people, and then you have the life 'hid with Christ in God,' the
+roots of it going down through all the superficial soil, and grappling
+the central rock of all things. Thus a series of paradoxes and perennial
+contradictions describes the twofold life that every believing spirit
+lives, 'as unknown and yet well known, as dying and, behold we live, as
+sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making rich, as having
+nothing and yet possessing all things.'
+
+Remember, too, that according to Peter's conception neither of these two
+sources pours out a flood which obliterates or dams back the other. They
+are to co-exist. The joy is not to deprive the heaviness of its weight,
+nor the sorrow of its sting. There is no artificial stoicism about
+Christianity, no attempt to sophisticate one's self out of believing in
+the reality of the evils that assail us, or to forbid that we shall feel
+their pain and their burden. Many good people fail to get the good of
+life's discipline, because they have somehow come to think that it is
+wrong to weep when Christ sends sorrows, and wrong to feel, as other men
+feel, the grip and bite of the manifold trials of our earthly lives.
+'Weep for yourselves,' for the feeling of the sorrow is the precedent
+condition to the benefit from the sorrow, and it yields 'the peaceable
+fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.'
+
+But, on the other hand, the black stream is not to bank up the sunny
+one, or prevent it from flowing into the heart, ay! and flowing over,
+the other. And so the co-existence of the joys that come from above, and
+the sorrows that spring from around, and some of them from beneath, is
+the very secret of the Christian life.
+
+II. Further, consider the blessed possibility of this paradox.
+
+Can two conflicting emotions live in a man's heart at once? Rather, we
+might ask, are there ever emotions in a man's heart that are not hemmed
+in by conflicting ones? Is there ever such a thing in the world's
+experience as a pure joy, or as a confidence which has no trace of fear
+in it? Are there any pictures without shadows? They are only daubs if
+they are. Instead of wondering at this co-existence of joy and sorrow,
+we must recognise that it is in full accord with all our experience,
+which never brings a joy, but, like the old story of the magic palace,
+there is one window unlighted, and which never brings a sorrow so black
+and over-arching so completely the whole sky, but that somewhere, if the
+eye would look for it, there is a bit of blue. The possibility of the
+paradox is in accordance with all human experience.
+
+But then, you say, 'my feelings of joy or sorrow are very largely a
+matter of temperament, and still more largely a matter of responding to
+the facts round about me. And I cannot pump up emotions to order; and if
+I could they would be factitious, artificial, insincere, and do me more
+harm than good.' Perfectly true. There are a great many ugly names for
+manufactured emotions, and none of them a bit too ugly. Peter does not
+wish you to try to get up feeling to order. It is the bane of some type
+of Christianity that that is done. You cannot thus manufacture emotion.
+No; but I will tell you what you can do. You can determine what you will
+think about most, and what you will look at most, and if you settle
+that, that will settle what you feel. And so, though it is by a
+roundabout way, we can regulate our emotions. A man travelling in a
+railway train can choose which side of the carriage he will look out
+at, either the one where the sunshine is falling full on the front of
+each grass-blade and tree, or the side where it is the shadowed side of
+each that is turned to him. If he will look out of the one window, he
+will see everything verdant and bright, and if he will look out at the
+other, there will be a certain sobriety and dulness over the landscape.
+You can settle which window you are going to look out at. If the
+one--'in which ye greatly rejoice.' If the other--'ye are in heaviness
+through manifold temptations.' You have seen patterns wrought in black
+and white, you may focus your eye so as to get white on a black ground,
+or black on a white ground, just as you like. You can do that with your
+life, and either fix upon the temptations and the heaviness as the main
+thing, or you can fix upon the new life, and the new wealth, and the new
+hope, and the new security as the main things. If you do the one, down
+you will go into the depths of gloom, and if you do the other, up you
+will spring into the ethereal heights of sober and Christian gladness.
+
+So then, brethren, this possibility depends on these things, the choice
+of our main object of contemplation, and that breaks up into two
+thoughts about which I wish to say a word. The reason why so many
+Christian people have only religion enough to make them gloomy, or to
+weight them with a sense of burdens and unfulfilled aspirations and
+broken resolutions, and have not enough to make them glad, is mainly
+because they do not think enough about the four things in which they
+might 'greatly rejoice.' I believe that most of us would be altogether
+different people, as professing Christians, if we honestly tried to keep
+the mightiest things uppermost, and to fill heart and mind far more than
+we do with the contemplation of these great facts and truths which,
+when once they are beheld and cleaved to, are certain to minister
+gladness to men's souls. These great truths which you and I say we
+believe, and which we profess to live by, will only work their effect
+upon us, so long as they are present to our minds and hearts. You can no
+more expect Christian verities to keep you from falling, or to
+strengthen you in weakness, or to gladden you in sorrow, if you are not
+thinking about them, than you can expect the most succulent or most
+nutritive food to nourish you if you do not eat it. As long as Christ
+and His grace are present in our hearts and minds by thought, so long,
+and not one moment longer, do they minister to us the joy of the Lord.
+You switch off from the main current, and out go all the lights, and
+when you switch off from Christ out goes the gladness.
+
+Then another thing I would point out is that the possibility of this
+co-existence of joy and of heaviness depends further on our taking the
+right point of view from which to look at the sources of the heaviness.
+Notice how beautifully, although entirely incidentally, and without
+calling attention to it, Peter here minimises the 'manifold temptations'
+which he does expect, however minimised, will make men heavy. He calls
+them 'temptations.' Now that is rather an unfortunate word, because it
+suggests the idea of something that desires to drag a man into sin. But
+suppose, instead of 'temptations,' with its unfortunate associations,
+you were to substitute a word that means the same thing, and is free
+from that association--viz.,'trial,'--you would get the right point of
+view. As long as I look at my sorrows mainly in regard to their power to
+sadden me, I have not got to the right point of view for them. They
+_are_ meant to sadden me, they are meant to pain, they are meant to
+bring the tears, they are meant to weight the heart and press down the
+spirits, but what for? To test what I am made of, and by testing to
+bring out and strengthen what is good, and to cast out and destroy what
+is evil. We shall never understand, even so much as it is possible for
+us to understand, and that is not very much, of the mystery of pain
+until we come to recognise that its main purpose is to help in making
+character. And when you think of your sorrows, disappointments, losses,
+when you think of your pains and sickness, and all the ills that flesh
+is heir to, principally as being 'trials,' in the deep sense of that
+word--viz., a means of testing you, and thereby helping you, bettering
+you, and building up character--then it is more possible to blend the
+sorrow that they produce with the joy to which they may lead. The
+Apostle adds the other thought of the transitoriness of sorrow, and yet
+further, the other of its necessity for the growth of humanity. So they
+are not only to be felt, not only to be wept over, not only to make us
+sad, but they are to be accepted, and used as means by which we may be
+perfected. And when once you get occupied in trying to get all the good
+that is in it out of a grief, you will be astonished to find how the
+bitterness that was in it was diminished.
+
+We may have the oil on the water, calming, though not ending, its
+agitation. We may carry our own atmosphere with us, and like the diver
+that goes down into depths of the sea, and cannot be reached by the
+hungry water around his crystal bell, and has communication with the
+upper air, where the light of the sun is, so you and I, down at the
+slimy bottom, and with the waste of water all around us, which if it
+could get at us would choke us, may walk at liberty, in peace and
+gladness. And so, 'though the labour of the olive shall fail and the fig
+tree not blossom, though the flocks be cut off from the folds and the
+herd from the stalls,' we may joy in the Lord, and 'rejoice in the God
+of our salvation.'
+
+III. Now lastly, we have here a duty.
+
+Peter takes it for granted that these good people, who had persecution
+hanging over them, were still rejoicing greatly in the Lord. He does not
+feel it necessary to enjoin it upon them. It is a matter of course in
+their Christian life. And you will find that all through the New
+Testament this same tone is adopted which recognises gladness as being,
+on the one hand, an inseparable characteristic of the Christian
+experience, and on the other hand as being a thing that is a Christian
+man's duty to cultivate. Now I do not believe that the most of Christian
+people have ever looked at the thing in that light at all. If joy has
+come to them, they have been thankful for it, but they have very, very
+seldom felt that, if they are not glad, there is something wrong. And a
+great many of us, I am sure, have never recognised the fact that it is
+our duty to 'rejoice in the Lord always.' Have you realised it? I do not
+mean have you tried to get up, as I have been saying, factitious
+emotions, but have you felt that if you are doing what, as Christian men
+or women, it is your plain duty to do, there will come into your hearts
+this joy of the Lord. I have told you why you are not happier
+Christians, why so many of us have, as I said, only got religion enough
+to make you gloomy and burdened. It is because you do not think enough
+about Jesus Christ, and what He has given you, and what He is doing for
+you and in you. It is because you have not the new life in strong
+experience and possession, and because you have not the new hope
+springing in your hearts, and because you have not the new wealth
+realised often in present possession, and because you have not the new
+security which He is ready to give you. It is your duty, Christian man
+and woman, to be a joyful Christian, and if you are not, then the
+negligence is sin.
+
+It is a hard duty. It is not easy to turn away from that which is
+torturing flesh or sense or natural desires or human affections, and to
+realise the unseen. It is not easy, but it is possible. And, like all
+other difficult things, it is worth doing. For there is nothing more
+helpful, more recommendatory, of our Christianity to other people, and
+more certain to tell on the vigour and efficiency of our Christian
+service, than that we should be rejoicing in the Lord, and living in the
+possession of the experience of Christ's joy which He has left for us.
+
+There is one other thing I must say. I have been talking about the
+co-existence of joy and sorrows. In one form or another that
+co-existence is universal. The difference is this. A Christian man has
+superficial sorrows and central gladness, and other men have superficial
+gladness and central sorrow. 'Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful.'
+Many of you know what that means--the black aching centre, full of
+unrest, grimly unparticipant of the dancing delights going on about it,
+like some black rock that stands up in the midst of a field flooded with
+sunshine, and gay with flowers. 'The end of that mirth is heaviness.'
+Better a surface sadness and a core of joy than the opposite, a skin of
+verdure over the scarcely cold lava. Better a transient sorrow with an
+eternal joy than the opposite, mirth, 'like the crackling of thorns
+under a pot,' which dies down into a doleful ring of black ashes in the
+pathless desert. Choose whether you will have joy dwelling with and
+conquering sorrow, or unrest and sorrow, darkening and finally
+shattering your partial and fleeting joys.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRUE GOLD AND ITS TESTING
+
+     'That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of
+      gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found
+      unto praise and honour and glory ...'--1 Peter i. 7.
+
+
+The Apostle is fond of that word 'precious.' In both his letters he uses
+it as an epithet for diverse things. According to one translation, he
+speaks of Christ as 'precious to you which believe.' He certainly speaks
+of 'the precious blood of Christ,' and of 'exceeding great and precious
+promises,' and here in my text, as well as in the Second Epistle, he
+speaks about 'precious faith.' It is a very wide general term, not
+expressing anything very characteristic beyond the one notion of value.
+But in the text, according to our Authorised Version, it looks at first
+sight as if it were not the faith, but the _trial_ of the faith that the
+Apostle regards as thus valuable. There are difficulties of rendering
+which I need not trouble you with. Suffice it to say that, speaking
+roughly and popularly, the 'trial of your faith' here seems to mean
+rather the _result of_ that trial, and might be fairly represented by
+the slightly varied expression, 'your faith having been tried, might be
+found,' etc.
+
+I must not be tempted to discourse about the reasons why such a
+rendering seems to express the Apostle's meaning more fully, but, taking
+it for granted, there are just three things to notice--the true wealth,
+the testing of the wealth, and the discovery at last of the preciousness
+of the wealth.
+
+I. Peter pits against each other faith that has been tried, and 'gold
+that perisheth'; he puts away all the other points of comparison and
+picks out one, and that is that the one lasts and the other does not.
+Now I must not be seduced into going beyond the limits of my text to
+dilate upon the other points of contrast and pre-eminence; but I would
+just notice in a sentence that everybody admits, yet next to nobody acts
+upon, the admission that inward good is far more valuable than outward
+good. 'Wisdom is more precious than rubies,' say people, and yet they
+will choose the rubies, and take no trouble to get the wisdom. Now the
+very same principles of estimating value which set cultivated
+understandings and noble hearts above great possessions and large
+balances at the bankers, set the life of faith high above all others.
+And the one thought which Peter wishes to drive into our heads and
+hearts is that there is only one kind of wealth that will never be
+separated from its possessor. Nothing is truly ours that remains outside
+of us.
+
+     ''Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands.'
+
+Nothing that is there whilst I am here is really mine. I do not own it
+if it is possible that I shall lose it. And so with profound meaning our
+Lord speaks about 'that which is another's' in comparison with 'that
+which is your own.' It is another's because it passes, like quicksilver
+under pressure, from hand to hand, and no man really holds it, but it
+leaps away from his grasp. And if a man retains it all his days, still,
+according to the grim old proverb, 'shrouds have no pockets,' and when
+he dies his hands open, or sometimes they clutch together, but there is
+nothing inside the palms, and they only close upon themselves. Dear
+brethren, if there is anything that can be filched away from us,
+anything about which it is true that, on the one hand, 'moth and
+rust'--natural processes--'do corrupt' it, on the other hand, 'thieves
+break through and steal'--accidents of human conduct can deprive us of
+it, then we may _call_ it ours, but it is not ours. It possesses us, if
+we are devoted to it as our best good, and fighting and toiling, and
+sometimes lying and cheating, and flinging the whole fierce energy of
+our nature into first gripping and then holding it; it possesses us; we
+do not possess it. But if there is anything that can become so
+interwoven and interlaced with the very fibres of a man's heart that
+they and it cannot be parted, if there is anything that empty hands will
+clasp the closer, because they _are_ emptied of earth's vanities, then
+that is truly possessed by its possessor. And our faith, which will not
+be trodden in the grave, but will go with us into the world beyond, and
+though it be lost in one aspect, in sight, it will be eternal as trust,
+will be ours, imperishable as ourselves, and as God. Therefore, do not
+give all the energy of your lives to amassing the second-best riches.
+Seek the highest things most. 'Covet earnestly the best gifts,' and let
+the coveting regulate your conduct. And do not be put off with wealth
+that will fail you sooner or later.
+
+II. Note, again, the testing of the wealth.
+
+I need not dwell upon that very familiar metaphor of the furnace for
+gold, and the fining-pot for silver, only remember that there are two
+purposes for which metallurgists apply fire to metals. The one is to
+test them, and the other is to cleanse them, or, to use technical words,
+one is for the purpose of assaying them, and the other is for the
+purpose of refining them. And so, linking the words of my text with the
+words of the previous verse, we find that the Apostle lays it down that
+the purpose of all the diverse trials, or 'temptations' as he calls
+them, that come to us, is this one thing, that our faith should be
+'tried,' and 'found, unto praise and honour and glory.' The fire carries
+away the dross; it makes the pure metal glow in its lustre. It burns up
+the 'wood, hay, stubble'; it makes the gold gleam and the precious
+stones coruscate and flash.
+
+And so note this general notion here of the intention of all life's
+various aspects being to test character is specialised into this, that
+it is meant to test faith, first of all. Of course it is meant to test
+many other things. A man's whole character is tested by the experiences
+of his daily life, all that is good and all that is evil in him, and we
+might speak about the effect of life's discipline upon a great many
+different sides of our nature. But here the whole stress is put upon the
+effect of life in testing and clarifying and strengthening one part of a
+Christian's character, and that is his faith. Why does Peter pick out
+faith? Why does he not say 'trial of your hope,' of your 'love,' of your
+'courage,' of half a dozen other graces? Why 'the trial of your
+_faith_?' For this reason, because as the man's faith is, so is the man.
+Because faith is the tap-root, in the view of the New Testament, of all
+that is good and strong and noble in humanity. Because if you strengthen
+a man's trust you strengthen everything that comes from it. Reinforce
+the centre and all is reinforced. Your faith is the vital point from
+which your whole life as Christians is developed, and whatever
+strengthens that strengthens you. And, therefore, although everything
+that befalls you calls for the exercise of, and therefore tests, and
+therefore, rightly undergone, strengthens a great many various virtues
+and powers and beauties in a human character, the main good of it all is
+that it deepens, if the man is right, his simple trust in God manifested
+by his trust in and love to Jesus Christ: and so it reinforces the faith
+which works by love, and thus tends to make all things in life good and
+fair.
+
+Now if thus the main end of life is to strengthen faith, let us remember
+that we have to give a wider meaning to the word 'trials' than
+'afflictions.' Ah! there is as sharp a trial of my faith in prosperity
+as in any adversity. People say, 'It is easy to trust God when things
+are going well with us.' That is quite true. But it is a great deal
+easier to stop trusting God, or thinking about Him, when things are
+going well with us, and we do not seem to need Him so much, as in the
+hours of darkness. You remember the old story about the traveller, when
+the sun and the wind tried which could make him take off his cloak; and
+the sun did it. Some of us, I daresay, have found out that the faith
+which gripped God when we felt we needed Him, because we had not
+anything else but Him, is but too apt to lose hold of Him when fleeting
+delights and apparent treasures come and whisper invitations in our
+hearts. There are diseases that are proper to the northern, dark,
+ice-bound regions of the earth. Yes! and there are a great many more
+that belong to the tropics; as there is such a thing as sunstroke, which
+is, perhaps, as dangerous as the cramping cold from the icebergs of the
+north. Some of us should understand what that Scripture means: 'Because
+they have no changes, therefore they fear not God.' Prosperity,
+untroubled lives, lives even as the lives of those of the majority of
+mankind now, have their own most searching trials of faith.
+
+But on the other hand, if there are 'ships that have gone down at sea,
+when heaven was all tranquillity,' there come also dark and nights of
+wild tempest when we have to lay to and ride out the gale with a
+tremendous strain on the cable. Our sorrows, our disappointments, our
+petty annoyances, and the great irrevocable griefs that sooner or later
+darken the very earth, are all to be classified under this same purpose,
+'that the trial of your faith ... might be found unto praise and honour
+and glory.' And so, I beseech you, open your eyes to the meaning of
+life, and do not suppose that you have found the last word to say about
+it when you say 'I am afflicted,' or 'I am at ease.' The affliction and
+the ease, like two wheels in some great machine working in opposite
+directions, fit with their cogs into one another and move something
+beyond them in one uniform direction. And affliction and ease cooperate
+to this end, that we might be partakers of His holiness.
+
+I believe experience teaches the most of us, if we will lay its lessons
+to heart, that the times when Christian people grow most in the divine
+life is in their times of sorrow. One of the old divines says, 'Grace
+grows best in winter'; and there are edible plants which need a touch of
+frost before they are good to eat. So it is with our faith. Only let us
+take care that the fire does not burn it up, as 'wood, hay, stubble,'
+but irradiates it and glorifies it, as 'gold, silver, and precious
+stones.'
+
+III. Now a word, lastly, about the ultimate discovery.
+
+'Might be found unto praise and honour and glory.' Note these three
+words, which I think are often neglected, and sometimes
+misunderstood--'praise, honour, glory.' Whose? People sometimes say
+'God's,' since His people's ultimate salvation redounds to His praise;
+but it is much better to understand the praise as given to the
+Christians whose faith has stood the testing fires. 'Well done, good and
+faithful servant'--is not that praise from lips, praise from which is
+praise indeed? As Paul says, 'then shall every man have praise of God.'
+We are far too much afraid of recognising the fact that Jesus Christ in
+Heaven, like Jesus Christ on earth, will praise the deeds that come from
+love to Him, though the deeds themselves may be very imperfect. Do you
+remember 'She hath wrought a good work on Me,' said about a woman that
+had done a perfectly useless thing, which was open to a great many very
+shrewd objections? But Jesus Christ accepted it. Why? Because it was the
+pure utterance of a loving heart. And, depend upon it, though we have to
+say 'Unclean! unclean! We are unprofitable servants,' He will say 'Come!
+ye blessed of My Father.' Praise from Christ is praise indeed.
+
+'Honour.' That suggests bystanders, a public opinion, if I may so say;
+it suggests 'have thou authority over ten cities,' and that men will
+have their deeds round them as a halo, in that other world. As 'praise'
+suggests the redeemed man's relation to his Lord, so 'honour' suggests
+the redeemed man's relation to the fellow-citizens of the New Jerusalem.
+'Glory' speaks of the man himself as transfigured and lifted up into
+the light and lustre of communion with, and conformity to, the image of
+the Lord. 'Then shall we appear with Him in glory. Then shall the
+righteous blaze forth like the sun in My heavenly Father's Kingdom.'
+
+'Shall be found.' Ah! there will be many surprises yonder. Do you
+remember that profound revelation of our Master when He represents those
+on whom He lavishes His eulogies as the Judge, as turning to Him and
+saying, 'Lord! when saw we Thee in ... prison and visited thee?' They do
+not recognise themselves or their acts in Christ's account of them. They
+have found that their lives were diviner than they knew. There will be
+surprises there. As one of the prophets represents the ransomed Israel,
+to her amazement, surrounded by clinging troops of children, and asking,
+'These! Where have they been? I was left alone,' so many a poor, humble
+soul, fighting along in this world, having no recognition on earth, and
+the lowliest estimate of all its own actions, will be astonished at the
+last when it receives 'praise, and honour, and glory, at the appearing
+of Jesus Christ.'
+
+
+
+
+JOY IN BELIEVING
+
+     'In Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with
+      joy unspeakable and full of glory.'--1 Peter i. 8.
+
+
+The Apostle has just previously been speaking about the great and
+glorious things which are to come to Christians on the appearing of
+Jesus Christ, and that naturally suggests to him the thought of the
+condition of believing souls during the period of the Lord's absence and
+comparative concealment. Having lifted his readers' hopes to that great
+Future, when they would attain to 'praise and honour and glory' at
+Christ's appearing, he drops to the present and to earth, and recalls
+the disadvantages and deprivations of the present Christian experience
+as well as its privileges and blessings. 'Whom having not seen, ye
+love,' that is a very natural thought in the mind of one whose love to
+Jesus rested on the ever-remembered blessed experience of years of happy
+companionship, when addressing those who had no such memories. It points
+to an entirely unique fact. There is nothing else in the world parallel
+to that strange, deep personal attachment which fills millions of hearts
+to this Man who died nineteen centuries ago, and which is utterly unlike
+the feelings that any men have to any other of the great names of the
+past. To love one unseen is a paradox, which is realised only in the
+relation of the Christian soul to Jesus Christ.
+
+Then the Apostle goes on with what might at first seem a mere repetition
+of the preceding thought, but really brings to view another strange
+anomaly. 'In Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice
+with joy unspeakable and full of glory.' Love longs for the presence of
+the beloved, and is restless and defrauded of its gladness so long as
+absence continues. But this strange love, which is kindled by an unseen
+Man, does not need His visible presence in order to be a fountain of joy
+unspeakable and full of glory. Thus the Apostle takes it for granted
+that every one who believes knows what this joy is. It is a large
+assumption, contradicted, I am afraid, by the average experience of the
+people that at this day call themselves Christians.
+
+We notice--
+
+I. The All-sufficient Ground or Source of this Glad Emotion.
+
+'In whom,' with all the disabilities and pains and absence, 'yet
+believing,' you can put out a long arm of faith across the gulf that
+lies, not only between to-day and eighteen centuries ago, but the deeper
+and more impassible gulf that lies between earth and heaven, and clasp
+Christ with a really firm grasp, which will fill the hand, and which we
+shall feel has laid hold of something, or rather has laid hold of a
+living person and a loving heart. That is faith. The Apostle uses a very
+strong form of expression here, which is only very partially represented
+by our English version. He does not say only '_in_ whom believing,' but
+'_towards_ whom'; putting emphasis upon the effort and direction of the
+faith, rather than upon the repose of the heart when it has found its
+object and rests upon Him. And so the conception of the true Christian
+attitude is that of a continual outgoing of Trust and its child Love; of
+Desire and its child Possession; and of Expectation and its child
+Fruition towards that unseen Christ. It is much to believe Him, it is
+more to believe in Him; it is--I was going to say--most of all to
+believe towards Him. For in this region, quite as much as, and I think
+more than, in the one to which the saying was originally applied,
+'search is better than attainment.' Our condition must always be that of
+'forgetting the things that are behind'; and however much we may realise
+the union with the unseen Christ in the act of resting upon Him, that
+must never be suffered to interfere with the longing for the larger
+possession of myself, and fuller consequent likeness to Him, which is
+expressed in that great though simple phrase of my text 'believing
+towards Him.' Such a continual outgoing of effort, as well as the rest
+and blessedness of reposing on Him, is indispensable for all true
+gladness. For the intensest activity of our whole being is essential to
+the real joy of any part of it, and we shall never know the rapture of
+which humanity, even here and now, is capable until we gather our whole
+selves, heart, will, and all our practical, as well as our intellectual,
+powers in the effort to make more of Christ our own, and to minimise the
+distance between us to a mere vanishing point, 'Believing towards whom
+ye rejoice.'
+
+That act of trust, however inadequate the object upon which it rests,
+and however mistaken may be our conceptions of that on which we lean,
+always brings a gladness which is real, until disappointment
+disillusionises and saddens us. There is nothing that so sheds peace
+over the heart as reliance, absolute and quiet, upon some object worthy
+of trust. It is blessed to trust one another until, as is too often the
+case, we find that what we thought to be an oak against which we leaned
+is but a broken reed that has no pith in it, and no possibility of
+support. So far as it goes, all trust is blessed, but the most blessed
+is simple reliance upon, and aspiration after, Jesus Christ. Ever to
+yearn for Him, not with the yearning of those who have no possession,
+but with that of those who, having a little, desire to have more, is to
+bring into our lives the one solid and sufficient good without which
+there is no gladness, and with which there can be no unmingled sorrow,
+wrapping the whole man in its ebon folds. For this Christ is enough for
+all my nature and for the satisfaction of every desire. In Him my mind
+finds the truth; my will the law; my love the answering love; my hope
+its object; my fears their dissipation; my sins their forgiveness; my
+weaknesses their strength; and, to all that I am, what He is answers, as
+fulness to emptiness, and as supply to need. So, 'believing towards Him,
+we rejoice.'
+
+But note that the joy is strictly contemporaneous with the faith. Tear
+away electric wire from the source of energy, and the light goes out
+instantly. It is as another Apostle says, '_in believing_' that we have
+'joy and peace.' And that is why so many of us know little of it.
+Yesterday's faith will not contribute to to-day's gladness, any more
+than yesterday's meals will satisfy to-day's hunger. Present joy depends
+upon present faith, and the measure of the one is the measure of the
+other.
+
+Notice again--
+
+II. The Characteristics of the Christian Gladness.
+
+'Unspeakable,' and, as the word ought to be rendered, not 'full of
+glory' but 'glorified.' Unspeakable. Still waters run deep. It is poor
+wealth that can be counted; it is shallow emotion that can be crammed
+into the narrow limits of any human vocabulary. Fathers and mothers,
+parents and children, husbands and wives, know that. And the depths of
+the joy that a believing soul has in Jesus Christ are not to be spoken.
+Perhaps it is better that it should not be attempted to speak them.
+
+                'Not easily forgiven
+    Are those, who, setting wide the doors that bar
+    The secret bridal chambers of the heart,
+    Let in the day.'
+
+It is in shallow streams that the sunlight gleams on the pebbles at the
+bottom. The abysses of ocean are dark, and have never been searched by
+its light. I suspect the depth of the emotion which bubbles over into
+words, and finds no difficulty in expressing itself. The joy which can
+be manifested in all its extent has a very small extent. Christian joy
+is unspeakable, too, because just as you cannot teach a blind man what
+colour is like, and cannot impart to anybody the blessedness of wedded
+love, or parental affection, by ever so much talking--and, therefore,
+the poetry of the world is never exhausted--so there is only one way of
+conveying to a man what is the actual joy of trusting in Christ, and
+that is, that he himself should trust Him. We may talk till Doomsday,
+and then, as the Queen of Sheba said, when she came to Solomon, 'the
+half hath not been told.'
+
+    'He must be loved ere that to you
+     He will seem worthy of your love.'
+
+It is unspeakable gladness springing from the possession of an
+unspeakable gift.
+
+'Glorified.' There is nothing more ignoble than the ordinary joys of
+men. They are too often like the iridescent scum on a stagnant pond,
+fruit and proof of corruption. They are fragile and hollow, for all the
+play of colour on them, like a soap bubble that breaks of its own
+tenuity, and is only a drop of dirty water. Joy is too often ignoble,
+and yet, although it is by no means the highest conception of what
+Christ's Gospel can do for us, it is blessed to think that it can take
+that emotion, so often shameful, so often frivolous, so often lowering
+rather than elevating, and can lift it into loftiness, and transfigure
+it, and glorify it and make it a power, a power for good and for
+righteousness, and for 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report'
+in our lives. And that is what trusting towards Christ will do for our
+gladnesses.
+
+Lastly, in one word, let me lay upon your consciences, as Christian
+people
+
+III. The Obligation of Gladness.
+
+Peter takes it for granted that all these brethren to whom he is writing
+have experience of this deep and ennobled joy. He does not say, 'You
+ought to rejoice,' but he says, 'You do rejoice.' And yet a verse or two
+before he said, 'Ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.' So,
+then, he was not blinking the hard, painful facts of anybody's troubled
+life. He was not away upon the heights serenely contemptuous of the grim
+possibilities that lurk down in the dark valleys. He took in all the
+burdens and the pains and the anxieties and the harassments, and the
+losses, and the bleeding hearts and the cares that can burden any of us.
+And he said, in spite of them all, 'Ye rejoice.'
+
+Do you? I am afraid there is no more irrefragable proof of the unreality
+of an enormous proportion of the Christian profession of this day than
+the joyless lives--in so far as their religion contributes to their
+joy--of hosts of us. We have religion enough to make us miserable, we
+have religion enough to make us uncomfortable about doing things that we
+would like to do. We are always haunted by the feeling that we are
+falling so far below our professions, and we are either miserable when
+we bethink ourselves, or, more frequently, indifferent, accordingly. And
+the whole reason of such experience lies here, we have not an adequately
+strong and continued trust in Jesus Christ working righteousness in our
+lives, nobleness in our characters, and so lifting us above the regions
+where mists and malaria lie. Let us get high enough up, and we shall
+find clear sky.
+
+You call yourselves Christians. Does your religion bring any gladness
+to you? Does it burn brightest in the dark, like the pillar of cloud
+before the Israelites? 'Greek fire' burned below the water, and so was
+in high repute. Our gladness is a poor affair if it is at the mercy of
+temperaments or of circumstances. Jesus Christ comes to cure
+temperaments, and to enable us to resist circumstances. So I venture to
+say that, whatever may be our condition in regard to externals, or
+whatever may be our tendencies of disposition, we are bound, as a piece
+of Christian duty, to try to cultivate this joyful spirit, and to do it
+in the only right way, by cultivating the increase of our faith in Jesus
+Christ. 'Rejoice in the Lord always'; the man who said that was a
+prisoner, with death looking into his eyeballs. As he said it, he felt
+that his friends in Philippi might think the exhortation overstrained,
+and so he repeated it, to show that he recognised the apparent
+impossibility of obeying it, and yet deliberately enjoined it; 'and
+again I say, rejoice.'
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST AND HIS CROSS THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE
+
+     'Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched
+      diligently ... the things which are now reported unto you ... which
+      things the angels desire to look into.'--1 Peter i. 10, 11, 12.
+
+
+I have detached these three clauses from their surroundings, not because
+I desire to treat them fragmentarily, but because we thereby throw into
+stronger relief the writer's purpose to bring out the identity of the
+Old and the New Revelation, the fact that Christ and His sufferings are
+the centre of the world's history, to which all that went before points,
+from which all that follows after flows; and that not only thus does He
+stand in the midst of humanity, but that from Him there ran out
+influences into other orders of beings, and angels learn from Him
+mysteries hitherto unknown to them. The prophets prophesy of the grace
+which comes in the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
+follow, and the same Spirit which taught them teaches the preachers of
+the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They that went before had for their deepest
+message the proclamation, 'He will come'; they that follow after have
+for their deepest message, 'He has come.' And angels listen to, and
+echo, the chorus, from all the files that march in front, and all that
+bring up the rear, 'Hosanna! Blessed be Him that cometh in the name of
+the Lord.'
+
+My purpose, then, is just to try to bring before you the magnificent
+unity into which these texts bind all ages, and all worlds, planting
+Jesus Christ and His Cross in the centre of them all. There are four
+aspects here in which the writer teaches us to regard this unity: Jesus
+and the Cross are the substance of prophecy, the theme of Gospel
+preaching, the study of angels, and presented to each of us for our
+individual acceptance. Now, let us look briefly at these four points.
+
+I. First, then, Christ and His Cross is the substance of prophecy.
+
+Now, of course, we have to remember that general statements have to be
+interpreted widely, and without punctilious adherence to the words; and
+we have also to remember that great mischief has been done, and great
+discredit cast, on the whole conception of ancient revelation by the
+well-meaning, but altogether mistaken, attempts of good people to read
+the fully developed doctrine of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice into
+every corner of the ancient revelation. But whilst I admit all that,
+and would desire to emphasise the fact, I think that in this
+generation, and to-day, there is a great deal more need to insist upon
+the truth that the inmost essence and deepest purpose of the whole Old
+Testament system is to create an attitude of expectance, and to point
+onwards, with ever-growing distinctness, to one colossal and mysterious
+figure in which the longings of generations shall be fulfilled, and the
+promises of God shall be accomplished. The prophet was more than a
+foreteller, as is being continually insisted upon nowadays. There were
+prophets who never uttered a single prediction. Their place in Israel
+was to be the champions of righteousness, and--I was going to say--the
+knights of God, as against law and ceremonial and externalism. But,
+beyond that, there underlie the whole system of prophecy, and there come
+sparkling and flashing up to the surface every now and then, bright
+anticipations, not only of a future kingdom, but of a personal King, and
+not only of a King, but a sufferer. All the sacrifices, almost all the
+institutions, the priesthood and the monarchy included, had this
+onward-looking aspect, and Israel as a whole, in the proportion in which
+it was true to the spirit of its calling, stood a-tiptoe, as it were,
+looking down the ages for the coming of the Hope of the Covenant that
+had been promised to the fathers. The prophets, I might say, were like
+an advance-guard sent before some great monarch in his progress towards
+his capital, who rode through the slumbering villages and called, 'He
+comes! He comes! The King cometh meek and having salvation,' and then
+passed on.
+
+Now, all that is to be held fast to-day. I would give all freedom to
+critical research, and loyally accept the results of it, so far as these
+are established, and are not mere hypotheses, with regard to the date
+and the circumstances of the construction of the various elements of
+that Old Testament. But what I desire especially to mark is that, with
+the widest freedom, there must be these two things conserved which Peter
+here emphasises, the real inspiration of the prophetic order, and its
+function to point onwards to Jesus. And so long as you keep these
+truths, as long as you believe that God spoke through prophets, as long
+as you believe that the very heart of their message was the proclamation
+of Jesus Christ, and that to bear witness to Him was the function, not
+only of prophet, but of priest and king and nation, then you are at
+liberty to deal as you like with mere questions of origin and of date.
+But if, in the eagerness of the chase after the literary facts of the
+origin of the Old Testament, we forget that it is a unity, that it is a
+divine unity, that it is a progressive revelation, and that 'the
+testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy' then I venture to say that
+the most uncritical, old-fashioned reader of the Old Testament that
+found Jesus Christ in the Song of Solomon, and in the details of the
+Tabernacle, and in all the _minutiæ_ of worship and sacrifice, was
+nearer to the living heart of the thing than the most learned scholar
+that has been so absorbed in the inquiries as to how and when this,
+that, and the other bit of the Book was written, that he fails to see
+the one august figure that shines out, now more and now less dimly, and
+gives unity to the whole. 'To Him gave all the prophets witness.' And
+when Peter declared, as he did in my text, that ancient Israel, by its
+spokesmen and its organs, testified beforehand of the sufferings of
+Christ, he is but echoing what he had learned from his Master, who turns
+to some of us with the same rebuke with which He met His disciples
+after the Resurrection: 'O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that
+the prophets have spoken.' The Old and the New are a unity, and Christ
+and His Cross are the substance and the centre of both.
+
+II. Note here Christ and His Cross, the theme of Gospel preaching.
+
+If you will glance at your leisure over the whole context from which I
+have picked these clauses as containing its essence, you will find that
+the Apostle speaks of the things which the prophets foretold as being
+the same as 'those which are now reported unto you by them that have
+preached the Gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from
+heaven.' I must not take for granted that you are all referring to your
+Bibles, but I should like to point out, as the basis of one or two
+things that I wish to say, the remarkable variety of phrase employed in
+the text to describe the one thing. First, Peter speaks of it as
+'salvation,' then he speaks of it in the next clause as 'the grace that
+should come unto you.' Then, in the next phrase, he designates it more
+particularly as 'the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
+follow.' Now, if we put these designations together--salvation, grace,
+Christ's sufferings, the subsequent glory--we come to this, that the
+facts of Christ's life, death, resurrection, and ascension are the great
+vehicle which brings to men God's grace, that that grace has for its
+purpose and its effect man's salvation, and that these facts are the
+Gospel which Christian preachers have to proclaim.
+
+Now notice what follows from such thoughts as these. To begin with, the
+Gospel is not a speculation, is not a theology, still less a morality,
+not a declaration of principles, but a history of fact, things that were
+done on this earth of ours, and that the Apostle's Creed which is
+worked into the service of the Anglican Church is far nearer the
+primitive conception of the Gospel than are any of the more elaborate
+and doctrinal ones which have followed. For we have to begin with the
+facts that Christ lived, died, was buried, rose again from the dead ...
+ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God. Whatever
+else the Gospel is, that is the kernel and the basis of it all. Out of
+these facts will come all manner of doctrines, philosophies of religion,
+theologies, revelations about God and man. Out of them will come all
+ethics, the teaching of duty, the exhibition of a pattern of conduct,
+inspiration to follow the model that is set before us. Out of them will
+come, as I believe, guidance and light for social and economical and
+political questions and difficulties. But what we have to lay hold of,
+and what we preachers have to proclaim, is the story of the life, and
+eminently the story of the death.
+
+Why does Peter put in the very centre here 'the sufferings of Christ'?
+That suggests another thought, that amongst these facts which, taken
+together, make the Gospel, the vital part, the central and the
+indispensable part, is the story of the Cross. Now what Christ said, not
+what Christ did, not what Christ was, beautiful and helpful as all that
+is, but to begin with what Christ bore, is the fact that makes the life
+of the Gospel. And just as He is the centre of humanity, so the Cross is
+the centre of His work. Why is that? Because the deepest need of all of
+us is the need to have our sins dealt with, both as guilt and as power,
+and because nothing else in the whole story of Christ's manifestation
+deals with men's sins as the fact of His death on the Cross does,
+therefore the sacrifice and sufferings are the heart of the Gospel.
+
+And so, brethren, we have to mark that the presentation of Christian
+truth which slurs over that fact of the Sacrifice and Atonement of Jesus
+Christ, has parted with the vital power which makes the story into a
+gospel. It is no gospel to tell a man that Jesus Christ died, unless you
+go on to say He 'died for our sins according to the Scriptures.' And it
+is no gospel to talk about the beauty of His life, and the perfectness
+of His example, and the sweetness of His nature, and the depth, the
+wisdom, and the tenderness of His words, unless you can say this is 'the
+Lamb of God,' 'the Word made flesh,' 'who bare our sins, and carried our
+sicknesses and our sorrows.' Strike out from the gospel that you preach
+'the sufferings of Christ,' and you have struck out the one thing that
+will draw men's hearts, that will satisfy men's needs, that will bind
+men to Him with cords of love. 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men
+unto Me.' So, wherever you get what they call an ethical gospel which
+deals with moralities, and does not impart the power that will vitalise
+moralities, and make them into thankful service and sacrifices, in
+return for the great Sacrifice; wherever you get a gospel that falters
+in its enunciation of the sufferings of Christ, and wherever you get a
+gospel that secularises the Christian service of the Sabbath, and will
+rather discuss the things that the newspapers discuss, and the new books
+that the reviewers are talking about, and odds and ends of that sort
+that are thought to be popular and attractive, you get a gospel _minus_
+the thing that, in the Old Testament and in the New alike, stands forth
+in the centre of all. 'We preach Christ crucified'; it is not enough to
+preach Christ. Many a man does that, and might as well hold his tongue.
+'We preach Christ crucified.' And the same august Figure which loomed
+before the vision of prophets, and shines through many a weary age,
+stands before us of this generation; ay! and will stand till the end of
+the world, as the centre, the pivot of human history, the Christ who has
+died for men. The Christ that will stand in the centre of the
+development of humanity is the Christ that died on the Cross. If your
+gospel is not that, you have yet to learn the deepest secret of His
+power.
+
+III. Once more, here we have Christ and His Cross as the study of
+angels.
+
+'Which things the angels desire to look into.' Now, the word that Peter
+employs there is an unusual one in Scripture. Its force may, perhaps, be
+best conveyed by referring to one of the few instances in which it is
+employed. It is used to describe the attitude of Peter and John when
+they stooped down and looked into the sepulchre. Perhaps there may be a
+reference in Peter's mind to that incident, when he saw the 'two angels
+... sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the
+body of Jesus had lain.' Perhaps, also, there floats in his mind some
+kind of reference to the outspread wings and bended heads of the
+brooding cherubim who sat above the Mercy-seat, gazing down upon the
+miracle of love that was manifested beneath them there. But be that as
+it may, the idea conveyed is that of eager desire and fixed attention.
+
+Now I am not going to enlarge at all upon the thought that is here
+conveyed, except just to make the one remark that people have often
+said, 'Why should a race of insignificant creatures on this little globe
+of ours be so dignified in the divine procedure as that there should be
+the stupendous mystery of the Incarnation, and the Death for their
+sakes?' _Not_ for their sakes only, for the New Testament commits itself
+to the thought that whilst sinful men are the only subjects of the
+redeeming grace of Jesus Christ, other orders of creatures do benefit
+thereby, and do learn from it what else they would not have known, of
+the mystery and the miracle and the majesty of the Divine love. 'To the
+principalities and the powers in heavenly places He hath made known by
+the Church the manifold wisdom of God.' And we can understand how these
+other orders--what we call higher orders, which they may be or they may
+not--of being, learn to know God as we learn to know Him, by the
+manifestation of Himself in His acts, and how the crown of all
+manifestations consists in this, that He visits the sinful sons of men,
+and by His own dear Son brings them back again. The elder brethren in
+the Father's house do not grudge the ring and the robe given to the
+prodigals; rather they learn therein more than they knew before of the
+loving-kindness of God.
+
+Now all that is nowadays ignored, and it is not fashionable to speak
+about the interest of angels in the success of Redemption, and a good
+many 'advanced' Christians do not believe in angels at all, because they
+'cannot verify' the doctrine. I, for my part, accept the teaching, which
+seems to me to be a great deal more reasonable than to suppose that the
+rest of the universe is void of creatures that can praise and love and
+know God. I accept the teaching, and think that Peter was, perhaps, not
+a dreamer when he said, 'The angels desire to look into these things.'
+They do not share in the blessings of redemption, but they can behold
+what they do not themselves experience. The Seer in the Revelation was
+not mistaken, when he believed that he heard redeemed men leading the
+chorus to Him that had redeemed them by His blood out of all nations,
+and then heard the thunderous echo from an innumerable host of angels
+who could not say 'Thou hast redeemed us,' but who could bring praise
+and glory to Him because He had redeemed men.
+
+IV. And now my last point is that Christ and His Cross is, by the
+Gospel, offered to each of us.
+
+Notice how emphatically in this context the Apostle gathers together his
+wider thoughts, and focusses them into a point. 'The prophets have
+inquired and searched diligently ... of the grace that should come to
+_you_.... To them it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but _unto
+us_ they did minister the things, which are now reported _unto you_ by
+them that have preached the Gospel _unto you_.' And so he would take his
+wide thoughts, as it were, and gather all together, to a point, and
+press the point against each man's heart.
+
+Dear brethren, these wide views are of no avail to us unless we realise
+the individual relation which Christ bears to each one of us. He bears a
+relation, as I have been saying, to all humanity. All the ages belong to
+Him. 'He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.' From His
+Cross there flash up rays of light into the heavens above, and out over
+the whole rolling series of the centuries, from the beginning to the
+end. Yes; but from His Cross there comes a beam straight to your heart,
+and the Christ whom angels desire to look into, of whom prophets
+prophesy and Apostles proclaim His advent, who is the Lord of all the
+ages, and the Lover of mankind, comes to thee and says 'I am thy
+Saviour,' and to thee this wide message is brought. Every eye has the
+whole sunshine, and each soul may have the whole Christ. His universal
+relations in time and space matter little to you, unless He has a
+particular relation to yourself.
+
+And He will never have that in its atoning power, unless you do for
+yourself and by yourself the most individual and solitary act that a
+human soul can do, and that is, lay your hand on the head of 'the Lamb
+... that takes away the sin of the world,' and put your sins there. You
+must begin with 'my Christ,' which you can do only by personal faith.
+And then afterwards you can come to 'our Christ,' the Christ of all the
+worlds, the Christ of all the ages. Go to Him by yourself. You must do
+it as if there were not any other beings in the whole universe but you
+two, Jesus and you. And when you have so gone, then you will find that
+you have 'come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of
+angels, to the general assembly, and Church of the first born.' Christ
+and His Cross are the substance of prophecy, the theme of the Gospel,
+the study of the angels. What are they to me?
+
+
+
+
+HOPE PERFECTLY
+
+     'Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to
+      the end, for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the
+      revelation of Jesus Christ.'--1 Peter i. 13.
+
+
+Christianity has transformed hope, and given it a new importance, by
+opening to it a new world to move in, and supplying to it new guarantees
+to rest on. There is something very remarkable in the prominence given
+to hope in the New Testament, and in the power ascribed to it to order a
+noble life. Paul goes so far as to say that we are saved by it. To a
+Christian it is no longer a pleasant dream, which may be all an
+illusion, indulgence in which is pretty sure to sap a man's force, but
+it is a certain anticipation of certainties, the effect of which will be
+increased energy and purity. So our Apostle, having in the preceding
+context in effect summed up the whole Gospel, bases upon that summary a
+series of exhortations, the transition to which is marked by the
+'wherefore' at the beginning of my text. The application of that word is
+to be extended, so as to include all that has preceded in the letter,
+and there follows a series of practical advices, the first of which, the
+grace or virtue which he puts in the forefront of everything, is not
+what you might have expected, but it is 'hope perfectly.'
+
+I may just remark, before going further, in reference to the language of
+my text, that, accurately translated, the two exhortations which precede
+that to hope are subsidiary to it, for we ought to read, 'Wherefore,
+girding up the loins of your mind, and being sober, hope.' That is to
+say, these two are preliminaries, or conditions, or means by which the
+desired perfecting of the Christian hope is to be sought and attained.
+
+Another preliminary remark which I must make is that what is enjoined
+here has not reference to the duration but to the quality of the
+Christian hope. It is not 'to the end,' but, as the Margin of the
+Authorised and the Revised Version concurs in saying, it is 'hope
+perfectly.'
+
+So, then, there are three things here--the object, the duty, and the
+cultivation of Christian hope. Let us take these three things in order.
+
+I. The object of the Christian hope.
+
+Now, that is stated, in somewhat remarkable language, as 'the grace that
+is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.' We
+generally use that word 'grace' with a restricted signification to the
+gifts of God to men here on earth. It is the earnest of the inheritance,
+rather than its fulness. But here it is quite obvious that by the
+expression the Apostle means the very same thing as he has previously
+designated in the preceding context by three different phrases--'an
+inheritance incorruptible and undefiled,' 'praise and honour and glory
+at the revelation of Jesus Christ,' and 'the end of your faith, even the
+salvation of your souls.' The 'grace' is not contrasted with the
+'glory,' but is another name for the glory. It is not the earnest of the
+inheritance, but it is the inheritance itself. It is not the means
+towards attaining the progressive and finally complete 'salvation of
+your souls,' but it is that complete salvation in all its fulness.
+
+Now, that is an unusual use of the word, but that it should be employed
+here, as describing the future great object of the Christian hope,
+suggests two or three thoughts. One is that that ultimate blessedness,
+with all its dim, nebulous glories, which can only be resolved into
+their separate stars, when we are millions of leagues nearer to its
+lustre, is like the faintest glimmer of a new and better life in a soul
+here on earth, purely and solely the result of the undeserved,
+condescending love of God that stoops to sinful men, and instead of
+retribution bestows upon them a heaven. The grace that saved us at
+first, the grace that comes to us, filtered in drops during our earthly
+experience, is poured upon us in a flood at last. And the brightest
+glory of heaven is as much a manifestation of the Divine grace as the
+first rudimentary germs of a better life now and here. The foundation,
+the courses of the building, the glittering pinnacle on the summit,
+with its golden spire reaching still higher into the blue, is all the
+work of the same unmerited, stooping, pardoning love. Glory is grace,
+and Heaven is the result of God's pardoning mercy.
+
+There is another suggestion here to be made, springing from this
+eloquent use of this term, and that is not merely the identity of the
+source of the Christian experience upon earth and in the future, but the
+identity of that Christian experience itself in regard of its essential
+character. If I may so say, it is all of a piece, homogeneous, and of
+one web. The robe is without seam, woven throughout of the same thread.
+The life of the humblest Christian, the most imperfect Christian, the
+most infantile Christian, the most ignorant Christian here on earth, has
+for its essential characteristics the very same things as the lives of
+the strong spirits that move in light around the Throne, and receive
+into their expanding nature the ever-increasing fulness of the glory of
+the Lord. Grace here is glory in the bud; glory yonder is grace in the
+fruit.
+
+But there is still further to be noticed another great thought that
+comes out of this remarkable language. The words of my text, literally
+rendered, are 'the grace that is being brought unto you.' Now, there
+have been many explanations of that remarkable phrase, which I think is
+not altogether exhausted by, nor quite equivalent to, that which
+represents it in our version--viz. 'to be brought unto you.' That
+relegates it all into the future; but in Peter's conception it is, in
+some sense, in the present. It is 'being brought.' What does that mean?
+There are far-off stars in the sky, the beams from which have set out
+from their home of light millenniums since, and have been rushing
+through the waste places of the universe since long before men were,
+and they have not reached our eyes yet. But they are on the road. And so
+in Peter's conception, the apocalypse of glory, which is the crowning
+manifestation of grace, is rushing towards us through the ages, through
+the spheres, and it will be here some day, and the beams will strike
+upon our faces, and make them glow with its light. So certain is the
+arrival of the grace that the Apostle deals with it as already on its
+way. The great thing on which the Christian hope fastens is no
+'peradventure,' but a good which has already begun to journey towards
+us.
+
+Again, there is another thought still to be suggested, and that is, the
+revelation of Jesus Christ is the coming to His children of this grace
+which is glory, of this glory which is grace. For mark how the Apostle
+says, 'the grace which is being brought to you in the revelation of
+Jesus Christ.' And that revelation to which he here refers is not the
+past one, in His incarnate life upon earth, but it is the future one, to
+which the hope of the faithful Church ought ever to be steadfastly
+turned, the correlated truth to that other one on which its faith rests.
+On these two great pillars, rising like columns on either side of the
+gulf of Time, 'He has come,' 'He will come,' the bridge is suspended by
+which we may safely pass over the foaming torrent that else would
+swallow us up. The revelation in the past cries out for the revelation
+in the future. The Cross demands the Throne. That He has come once, a
+sacrifice for sin, stands incomplete, like some building left unfinished
+with rugged stones protruding which prophesy an addition at a future
+day; unless you can add 'unto them that look for Him will He appear the
+second time without sin unto salvation.' In that revelation of Jesus
+Christ His children shall find the glory-grace which is the object of
+their hope.
+
+So say all the New Testament writers. 'When Christ, who is our life,
+shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory' says Paul.
+'The grace that is to be brought unto you in the revelation of Jesus
+Christ,' chimes in Peter. And John completes the trio with his 'We know
+that when He shall appear we shall be like Him.' These three things,
+brethren--with Christ, glory with Him, likeness to Him--are all that we
+know, and blessed be God! all that we need to know, of that dim future.
+And the more we confine ourselves to these triple great certainties, and
+sweep aside all subordinate matters, which are concealed partly because
+they could not be revealed, and partly because they would not help us if
+we knew them, the better for the simplicity and the power and the
+certainty of our hope. The object of Christian hope is Christ, in His
+revelation, in His presence, in His communication to us for glory, in
+His assimilating of us to Himself.
+
+    'It is enough that Christ knows all,
+    And we shall be with Him.'
+
+'The grace that is being brought unto you in the revelation of Jesus
+Christ.'
+
+II. And now notice the duty of the Christian hope.
+
+Hope a duty? That strikes one as somewhat strange. I very much doubt
+whether the ordinary run of good people do recognise it as being as
+imperative a duty for them to cultivate hope as to cultivate any other
+Christian excellence or virtue. For one man that sets himself
+deliberately and consciously to brighten up, and to make more operative
+in his daily life, the hope of future blessedness, you will find a
+hundred that set themselves to other kinds of perfecting of their
+Christian character. And yet, surely, there do not need any words to
+enforce the fact that this hope full of immortality is no mere luxury
+which a Christian man may add to the plain fare of daily duty or leave
+untasted according as he likes, but that it is an indispensable element
+in all vigorous and life-dominating Christian experience.
+
+I do not need to dwell upon that, except just to suggest that such a
+vividness and continuity of calm anticipation of a certain good beyond
+the grave is one of the strongest of all motives to the general
+robustness and efficacy of a Christian life. People used to say a few
+years ago, a great deal more than they do now, that the Christian
+expectation of Heaven was apt to weaken energy upon earth, and they used
+to sneer at us, and talk about our 'other worldliness' as if it were a
+kind of weakness and defect attached to the Christian experience. They
+have pretty well given that up now. Anti-Christian sarcasm, like
+everything else, has its fashions, and other words of reproach and
+contumely have now taken the place of that. The plain fact is that no
+man sees the greatness of the present, unless he regards it as being the
+vestibule of the future, and that this present life is unintelligible
+and insignificant unless beyond it, and led up to by it, and shaped
+through it, there lies the eternal life beyond. The low flat plain is
+dreary and desolate, featureless and melancholy, when the sky above it
+is filled with clouds. But sweep away the cloud-rack, and let the blue
+arch itself above the brown moorland, and all glows into lustre, and
+every undulation is brought out, and tiny shy forms of beauty are found
+in every corner. And so, if you drape Heaven with the clouds and mists
+born of indifference and worldliness, the world becomes mean, but if
+you dissipate the cloud and unveil heaven, earth is greatened. If the
+hope of the grave that is to be brought onto you at the revelation of
+Jesus Christ shines out above all the flatness of earth, then life
+becomes solemn, noble, worthy of, demanding and rewarding, our most
+strenuous efforts. No man can, and no man will, strike such effectual
+blows on things present as the man, the strength of whose arm is derived
+from the conviction that every stroke of the hammer on things present is
+shaping that which will abide with him for ever.
+
+My text not only enjoins this hope as a duty, but also enjoins the
+perfection of it as being a thing to be aimed at by all Christian
+people. What is the perfection of hope? Two qualities, certainty and
+continuity. Certainty; the definition of earthly hope is an anticipation
+of good less than certain, and so, in all the operations of this great
+faculty, which are limited within the range of earth, you get blended as
+an indistinguishable throng, 'hopes and fears that kindle hope,' and
+that too often kill it. But the Christian has a certain anticipation of
+certain good, and to him memory may be no more fixed than hope, and the
+past no more unalterable and uncertain than the future. The motto of our
+hope is not the 'perhaps,' which is the most that it can say when it
+speaks the tongue of earth, but the 'verily! verily!' which comes to its
+enfranchised lips when it speaks the tongue of Heaven. Your hope,
+Christian man, should not be the tremulous thing that it often is, which
+expresses itself in phrases like 'Well! I do not know, but I tremblingly
+hope,' but it should say, 'I know and am sure of the rest that
+remaineth, not because of what I am, but because of what He is.'
+
+Another element in the perfection of hope is its continuity. That hits
+home to us all, does it not? Sometimes in calm weather we catch a sight
+of the gleaming battlements of 'the City which hath foundations,' away
+across the sea, and then mists and driving storms come up and hide it.
+There is a great mountain in Central Africa which if a man wishes to see
+he must seize a fortunate hour in the early morning, and for all the
+rest of the day it is swathed in clouds, invisible. Is that like your
+hope, Christian man and woman, gleaming out now and then, and then again
+swallowed up in the darkness? Brethren! these two things, certainty and
+continuity, are possible for us. Alas! that they are so seldom enjoyed
+by us.
+
+III. And now one last word. My text speaks about the discipline or
+cultivation of this Christian hope.
+
+It prescribes two things as auxiliary thereto. The way to cultivate the
+perfect hope which alone corresponds to the gift of God is 'girding up
+the loins of your mind, and being sober.' Of course, there is here one
+of the very few reminiscences that we have in the Epistles of the
+_ipsissima verba_ of our Lord. Peter is evidently referring to our
+Lord's commandment to have 'the loins girt and the lamps burning, and ye
+yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord.' I do not need to
+remind you of the Eastern dress that makes the metaphor remarkably
+significant, the loose robes that tangle a man's feet when he runs, that
+need to be girded up and belted tight around his waist, as preliminary
+to all travel or toil of any kind. The metaphor is the same as that in
+our colloquial speech when we talk about a man 'pulling himself
+together.' Just as an English workman will draw his belt a hole tighter
+when he has some special task to do, so Peter says to us, make a
+definite effort, with resolute bracing up and concentration of all your
+powers, or you will never see the grace that is hurrying towards you
+through the centuries. There are abundance of loose, slack-braced people
+up and down the world, in all departments, and they never come to any
+good. It is a shame that any man should have his thoughts so loosely
+girt and vagrant as that any briar by the roadside can catch them and
+hinder his advance. But it is a tenfold shame for Christian people, with
+such an object to gaze upon, that they should let their minds be
+dissipated all over the trivialities of Time, and not gather them
+together and project them, as I may say, with all their force towards
+the sovereign realities of Eternity. A sixpence held close to your eye
+will blot out the sun, and the trifles of earth close to us will prevent
+us from realising the things which neither sight, nor experience, nor
+testimony reveal to us, unless with clenched teeth, so to speak, we make
+a dogged effort to keep them in mind.
+
+The other preliminary and condition is 'being sober,' which of course
+you have to extend to its widest possible signification, implying not
+merely abstinence from, or moderate use of, intoxicants, or material
+good for the appetites, but also the withdrawing of one's self sometimes
+wholly from, and always restraining one's self in the use of, the
+present and the material. A man has only a given definite quantity of
+emotion and interest to expend, and if he flings it all away on the
+world he has none left for Heaven. He will be like the miller that
+spoils some fair river, by diverting its waters into his own sluice, in
+order that he may grind some corn. If you have the faintest film of dust
+on the glass of the telescope, or on its mirror, if it is a reflecting
+one, you will not see the constellations in the heavens; and if we have
+drawn over our spirits the film of earthly absorption, all these bright
+glories above will, so far as we are concerned, cease to be.
+
+So, brethren, there is a solemn responsibility laid upon us by the gift
+of that great faculty of looking before and after. What did God make you
+and me capable of anticipating the future for? That we might let our
+hopes run along the low levels, or that we might elevate them and twine
+them round the very pillars of God's Throne; which? I do not find fault
+with you because you hope, but because you hope so meanly, and about
+such trivial and transitory things. I remember I once saw a sea-bird
+kept in a garden, confined within high walls, and with clipped wings,
+set to pick up grubs and insects. It ought to have been away out,
+hovering over the free ocean, or soaring with sunlit wing to a height
+where earth became a speck, and all its noises were hushed. That is what
+some of you are doing with your hope, degrading it to earth instead of
+letting it rise to God; enter within the veil, and gaze upon the glory
+of the 'inheritance incorruptible and undefiled.'
+
+
+
+
+THE FAMILY LIKENESS
+
+     'As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy, in all manner
+      of conversation.'--1 Peter i. 15.
+
+
+That is the sum of religion--an all-comprehensive precept which includes
+a great deal more than the world's morality, and which changes the
+coldness of that into something blessed, by referring all our purity to
+the Lord that called us. One may well wonder where a Galilean fisherman
+got the impulse that lifted him to such a height; one may well wonder
+that he ventured to address such wide, absolute commandments to the
+handful of people just dragged from the very slough and filth of
+heathenism to whom he spoke. But he had dwelt with Christ, and they had
+Christ in their hearts. So for him to command and for them to obey, and
+to aim after even so wide and wonderful an attainment as perfecting like
+God's was the most natural thing in the world. 'Be ye holy as He that
+hath called you is holy, and that in all manner of conversation.' The
+maximum of possible attainment, the minimum of imperative duty!
+
+So, then, there are three things here--the pattern, the field, and the
+inspiration or motive of holiness.
+
+I. The Pattern of Holiness.
+
+'As He that hath called you is holy.' God's holiness is the very
+attribute which seems to separate Him most from the creatures; for its
+deepest meaning is His majestic and Divine elevation above all that is
+creatural. But here, of course, the idea conveyed by the word is not
+that, if I may so say, metaphysical one, but the purely moral one. The
+holiness of God which is capable of imitation by us is His separation
+from all impurity. There is a side of His holiness which separates Him
+from all the creatures, to which we can only look up, or bow with our
+faces in the dust; but there is a side of His holiness which, wonderful
+as it is, and high above all our present attainment as it is, yet is not
+higher than the possibilities which His indwelling Spirit puts within
+our reach, nor beyond the bounds of the duty that presses upon us all.
+'As He which hath called you is holy.' Absolute and utter purity is His
+holiness, and that is the pattern for us.
+
+Religion is imitation. The truest form of worship is to copy. All
+through heathenism you find that principle working. 'They that make them
+are like unto them.' Why are heathen nations so besotted and sunken and
+obstinate in their foulnesses? Because their gods are their examples,
+and they, first of all, make the gods after the pattern of their own
+evil imaginations, and then the evil imaginations, deified, react upon
+the maker and make him tenfold more a child of hell than themselves.
+Worship is imitation, and there is no religion which does not
+necessarily involve the copying of the example or the pattern of that
+Being before whom we bow. For religion is but love and reverence in the
+superlative degree, and the natural operation of love is to copy, and
+the natural operation of reverence is the same. So that the old Mosaic
+law, 'Be ye holy as I am holy,' went to the very heart of religion. And
+the New Testament form of it, as Paul puts it in a very bold word, 'Be
+ye _imitators_ of God, as beloved children,' sets its seal on the same
+thought that we are religious in the proportion in which we are
+consciously copying and aspiring after God.
+
+But then, says somebody or other, 'it is not possible.' Well, if it were
+not possible, try it all the same. For in this world it is aim and not
+attainment that makes the noble life; and it is better to shoot at the
+stars, even though your arrow never reaches them, than to fire it along
+the low levels of ordinary life. I do not see that however the
+unattainableness of the model may be demonstrated, that has anything to
+do with the duty of imitation. Because, though absolute conformity
+running throughout the whole of a life is not possible here on earth, we
+know that in each individual instance in which we came short of
+conformity the fault was ours, and it might have been otherwise. Instead
+of bewildering ourselves with questions about 'unattainable' or
+'attainable,' suppose we asked, at each failure, 'Why did I not copy God
+_then_; was it because I could not, or because I would not?' The answer
+would come plain enough to knock all that sophisticated nonsense out of
+our heads, and to make us feel that the law which puts an unattainable
+ideal before the Christian as his duty is an intensely practical one,
+and may be reduced to practice at each step in his career. Imitation of
+the Father, and to be perfect, 'as our Father in heaven is perfect,' is
+the elementary and the ultimate commandment of all Christian morality.
+'Be ye holy as He that hath called you is holy.'
+
+Then let me remind you that the unattainableness is by no means so
+demonstrable as some people seem to think. A very tiny circle may have
+the same centre as one that reaches beyond the suburbs of the universe,
+and holds all stars and systems within its great round. And the tiniest
+circle will have the same geometrical laws applied to it as the
+greatest. The difference between finite and infinite has nothing to do
+with the possibility of our becoming like God, if we believe that 'in
+the image of God created He him'; and that men who have been not only
+made by original creation in the Divine image, but have been born again
+by the incorruptible seed of the Word into a kindred life with His, and
+derived from Him, can surely grow like what they have got, and unfold
+into actually possessed and achieved resemblance to their Father the
+kindred life that is poured into their veins.
+
+So every way it is better indefinitely to approximate to that great
+likeness, though with many flaws and failures, than to say it cannot be
+reached, and so I will content myself down here, in my sins and my
+meannesses. No! dear brethren, 'we are saved by hope,' and one prime
+condition of growth in nobleness is to believe it possible that, by His
+blessing we may be like Him here on earth in the measure of our
+perception of His beauty and reception of His grace.
+
+II. Again, notice the field of this Godlike holiness.
+
+'In all manner of conversation.' Of course I do not need to remind you
+that the word 'conversation' does not mean _talk_, but _conduct_; that
+it applies to the whole of the outward life. Peter says that every part
+of the Christian man's activity is to be the field on which his
+possession of the holiness derived from and like God's is to be
+exhibited. It is to be seen in all common life. Here is no cloistered
+and ascetic holiness which tabooes large provinces of every man's
+experience, and says 'we must not go in there, for fear of losing our
+purity,' but rather wherever Christ has trod before we can go. That is a
+safe guide, and whatever God has appointed there we can go and that we
+can do. 'On the bells of the horses shall be written _Holiness to the
+Lord_.' The horse-bells that make merry music on their bridles are not
+very sacred things, but they bear the same inscription as flamed on the
+front of the high priest's mitre; and the bowls in every house in
+Jerusalem, as the prophet says, shall bear the same inscription that was
+written on the sacrificial vessels, and all shall belong to Him.
+
+Only, whilst thus we maintain the possibility of exhibiting Godlike
+holiness in all the dusty fields of common life, let us remember the
+other side.
+
+In this day there is very little need to preach against an ascetic
+Christianity. There has been enough said of late years about a Christian
+man being entitled to go into all fields of occupation and interest, and
+there to live his Christianity. I think the time is about come for a
+caution or two to be dropped on the other side, 'Blessed is he that
+condemneth not himself in the thing which he alloweth.' Apply this
+commandment vigorously and honestly to trade, to recreation--especially
+to recreation--to social engagements, to the choice of companions, to
+the exercise of tastes. Ask yourselves 'Can I write _Holiness to the
+Lord_ on them?' If not, do not have anything to do with them. I wonder
+what the managers of theatres and music-halls would say if anybody
+proposed that motto to be put upon the curtain for the spectators to
+read before it is drawn up for the play. Do you think it would fit?
+Don't you, Christian men and women, don't you go into places where it
+would not fit. And remember that 'in all manner of conversation' has two
+sides to it, one declaring the possibility of sanctifying every creature
+of God, and one declaring the impossibility of a Christian man going,
+without dreadful danger and certain damage, into places where he cannot
+carry that consecration and purity with him.
+
+Again the field is all trivial things. 'In all manner of conversation.'
+There is nothing that grows so low but that this scythe will travel near
+enough to the ground to harvest it. There is nothing so minute but it is
+big enough to mirror the holiness of God. The tiniest grain of mica,
+upon the face of the hill, is large enough to flash back a beam; and the
+smallest thing we can do is big enough to hold the bright light of
+holiness. 'All'! Ah! If our likeness to God does not show itself in
+trifles, what in the name of common sense is there left for it to show
+itself in? For our lives are all made up of trifles. The great things
+come three or four of them in the seventy years; the little ones come
+every time the clock ticks. And as they say, 'Take care of the pence,
+and the pounds will take care of themselves.' If we keep the little
+things rigidly under the dominion of this principle, no doubt the big
+things will fall under it too, when they emerge. And if we do not--as
+the old Jewish book says:--'He that despiseth little things shall fall
+by little and little.' Whosoever has not a Christianity that sanctifies
+the trifles has a Christianity that will not sanctify the crises of his
+life. So, dear brother, this motto is to be written over every portal
+through which you and I go; and whatsoever we can put our hands to, in
+it we may magnify and manifest the holiness of God.
+
+III. Now, lastly, note the motive or inspiration of holiness.
+
+The language of my text might read like 'the Holy One who hath called
+you.' Peter would stir his hearers to the emulation of the Divine
+holiness by that thought of the bond that unites Him and them. 'He hath
+called you.' In which word, I suppose, he includes the whole sum of the
+Divine operations which have resulted in the placing of each of his
+auditors within the circle of the Christian community as the subjects of
+Christ's grace, and not only the one definite act to which the
+theologians attach the name of 'calling.' In the briefest possible way
+we may put the motive thus--the inspiration of imitation is to be found
+in the contemplation of the gifts of God. What He has said and done to
+me, calling me out of my darkness and alienation and lavishing the
+tokens of His love, the voice of His beseechings, the monitions of His
+Spirit, the message of His Son, the Incarnate Word, and invitation of
+God--all these things are included in His call. And all of them are the
+reasons why, bound by thankfulness, overcome by his forbearance,
+responding to His entreaties, and glued to Him by the strength of the
+hand that holds us, and the tenacity of His love, we should strive to
+'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called.'
+
+And not only so, but in the thought of the Divine calling there lies a
+fountain of inspiration when we remember the purpose of the calling. As
+Paul puts it in one of his letters: 'God has not called us to
+uncleanness but to holiness.' That to which He summons, or invites (for
+you may use either word), is holiness like His own. That is the crown of
+all His purposes for men, the great goal and blessed home to which He
+would lead us all.
+
+And so, if in addition to the fact of His 'gift and calling' and all
+that is included within it, if in addition to the purpose of that
+calling we further think of the relation between us and Him which
+results from it, so as that we, as the next verse says, call Him who
+hath called us, 'Our Father,' then the motive becomes deeper and more
+blessed still. Shall we not try to be like the Father of our spirits,
+and seek for His grace, to bear the likeness of sons?
+
+My text speaks only of effort, let us not forget that the truest way to
+be partakers of His holiness is to open our hearts for the entrance of
+the Spirit of His Son, and possessing that--having these promises and
+that great fulfilment of them--then to perfect holiness in the fear and
+love of the Lord.
+
+
+
+
+FATHER AND JUDGE
+
+     'If ye call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons
+      judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your
+      sojourning here in fear.'--1 Peter i. 17.
+
+
+'If ye call on Him as Father,' when ye pray, say, 'Our Father which art
+in heaven.' One can scarcely help supposing that the Apostle is here, as
+in several other places in his letter, alluding to words that are
+stamped ineffaceably upon his memory, because they had dropped from
+Christ's lips. At all events, whether there is here a distinct allusion
+to what we call the Lord's Prayer or no, it is here recognised as the
+universal characteristic of Christian people that their prayers are
+addressed to God in the character of Father. So that we may say that
+there is no Christianity which does not recognise and rejoice in
+appealing to the paternal relationship.
+
+But, then, I suppose in Peter's days, as in our days, there were people
+that so fell in love with one aspect of the Divine nature that they had
+no eyes for any other; and who so magnified the thought of the Father
+that they forgot the thought of the Judge. That error has been committed
+over and over again in all ages, so that the Church as a whole, one may
+say, has gone swaying from one extreme to the other, and has rent these
+two conceptions widely apart, and sometimes has been foolish enough to
+pit them against each other instead of doing as Peter does here,
+braiding them together as both conspiring to one result, the production
+in the Christian heart of a wholesome awe. If ye call on Him as Father
+'who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man's
+work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear.'
+
+So then, look at this twofold aspect of God's character.
+
+Both these conceptions ought to be present, flamingly and vividly,
+burning there before him, to every Christian man. 'Ye call Him Father,'
+but the Father is the Judge. True, the Judge is Father, but Peter
+reminds us that whatever blessed truths may be hived in that great Name
+of Father, to be drawn thence by devout meditation and filial love,
+there is not included in it the thought of weak-minded indulgence to His
+children, in any of their sins, nor any unlikelihood of inflicting penal
+consequences on a rebellious child. 'Father' does not exclude 'Judge,'
+'and without respect of persons He judg_eth_.'
+
+'Without respect of persons'--the word is a somewhat unusual New
+Testament one, but it has special appropriateness and emphasis on
+Peter's lips. Do you remember who it was that said, and on what occasion
+he said it: 'Now I perceive that God is no respecter of persons'? It was
+Peter when he had learned the lesson on the housetop at Joppa, looking
+out over the Mediterranean, and had it enforced by Cornelius' message.
+The great thought that had blazed upon him as a new discovery on that
+never-be-forgotten occasion, comes before him again, and this unfamiliar
+word comes with it, and he says, 'without respect of persons He judges.'
+Mountains are elevated, valleys are depressed and sunken, but I fancy
+that the difference between the top of Mount Everest and the gorge
+through which the Jordan runs would scarcely be perceptible if you were
+standing on the sun. Thus, 'without respect of persons,' great men and
+little, rich men and poor, educated men and illiterate, people that
+perch themselves on their little stools and think themselves high above
+their fellows: they are all on one dead level in the eye of the Judge.
+And this question is as to the quality of the work and not as to the
+dignity of the doer. 'Without respect of persons' implies universality
+as well as impartiality. If a Christian man has been ever so near God,
+and then goes away from Him, he is judged notwithstanding his past
+nearness. And if a poor soul, all crusted over with his sins and leprous
+with the foulness of long-standing iniquity, comes to God and asks for
+pardon, he is judged according to his penitence, 'without respect of
+persons.' That great hand holds an even balance. And though the
+strictness of the judicial process may have its solemn and its awful
+aspect, it has also its blessed and its comforting one.
+
+Now, do not run away with the notion that the Apostle is speaking here
+of that great White Throne and the future judgment that for many of us
+lies, inoperative on our creeds, on the other side of the great cleft of
+death. That is a solemn thought, but it is not Peter's thought here. If
+any of you can refer to the original, you will see that even more
+strongly than in our English version, though quite sufficiently strongly
+there, the conception is brought out of a continuous Divine judgment
+running along, all through a man's life, side by side with his work. The
+judgment here meant is not all clotted together, as it were, in that
+final act of judgment, leaving the previous life without it, but it runs
+all through the ages, all through each man's days. I beseech you to
+ponder that thought, that at each moment of each of our lives an
+estimate of the moral character of each of our deeds is present to the
+Divine mind.
+
+'Of course we believe that,' you say. 'That is commonplace; not worth
+talking about.' Ah! but because we believe it, as of course, we slip out
+of thinking about it and letting it affect our lives. And what I desire
+to do for you, dear friends, and for myself, is just to put emphasis on
+the one half of that little word 'judgeth' and ask you to take its three
+last letters and lay them on your minds. Do we feel that, moment by
+moment, these little spurs of bad temper, these little gusts of
+worldliness, that tiny, evanescent sting of pride and devildom which has
+passed across or been fixed in our minds, are all present to God, and
+that He has judged them already, in the double sense that He has
+appraised their value and estimated their bearing upon our characters,
+and that He has set in motion some of the consequences which we shall
+have to reap?
+
+Oh! one sometimes wishes that people did not so much believe in a future
+judgment, in so far as it obscures to them the solemn thought of a
+present and a continuous one. 'Verily, there is a God that _judgeth_ in
+the earth,' and, of course, all these provisional decisions, which are
+like the documents that in Scotch law are said to 'precognosce the
+case,' are all laid away in the archives of heaven, and will be
+produced, docketed and in order, at the last for each of us. Christian
+people sometimes abuse the doctrine of justification by faith as if it
+meant that Christians at the last were not to be judged. But they are,
+and there is such a thing as 'salvation yet so as by fire,' and such a
+thing as salvation in fulness. Do not let filial confidence drive out
+legitimate fear.
+
+He 'judges according to every man's work.' I do not think it is
+extravagant attention to niceties to ask you to notice that the Apostle
+does not say 'works,' but 'work'; as if all the separate actions were
+gathered into a great whole, as indeed they are, because they are all
+the products of one mind and character. The trend and drift, so to
+speak, of our life, rather than its isolated actions and the underlying
+motives, in their solemn totality and unity, these are the materials of
+this Divine judgment.
+
+Now, let me say a word about the disposition which the Apostle enjoins
+upon us in the view of these facts.
+
+The Judge is the Father, the Father is the Judge. The one statement
+proclaims the merciful, compassionate, paternal judgment, the other the
+judicial Fatherhood. And what comes from the combination of these two
+ideas, which thus modify and illuminate one another? 'Pass the time of
+your sojourning here in fear.' What a descent that sounds from the
+earlier verses of the letter: 'In whom, though now ye see Him not, yet
+believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving
+the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.' Down from
+those heights of 'joy unspeakable,' and 'already glorified,' the apostle
+drops plump into _this_ dungeon: 'Pass the time of your sojourning here
+in fear.' Of course, I need not remind you that the 'fear' here is not
+the 'fear which hath torment'; in fact, I do not think that it is a fear
+that refers to God at all. It is not a sentiment or emotion of which God
+is the object. It is not the reverent awe which often appears in
+Scripture as 'the fear of God,' which is a kind of shorthand expression
+for all modes of devout sentiment and emotion; but it is a fear, knowing
+our own weakness and the strong temptations that are round us, of
+falling into sin. That is the one thing to be afraid of in this world.
+If a man rightly understood what he is here for, then the only thing
+that he would be terrified for would be that he should miss the purpose
+of his being here and lose his hold of God thereby. There is nothing
+else worth being afraid of, but that _is_ worth being afraid of. It is
+not slavish dread, nor is it cowardice, but the well-grounded emotion of
+men that know themselves too well to be confident and know the world too
+well to be daring and presumptuous.
+
+Don't you think that Peter had had a pretty rough experience in his life
+that had taught him the wisdom of such an exhortation? And does it not
+strike you as very beautiful that it should come, of all people in the
+world, from his lips? The man that had said, 'Though all should forsake
+Thee, yet will not I.' 'Why cannot I follow Thee now?' 'Bid me come to
+Thee on the water.' 'This be far from Thee, Lord, it shall not be unto
+Thee'--the man that had whipped out his sword in the garden, in a spasm
+of foolish affection, now, in his quiet old age, when he has learnt the
+lesson of failures and follies and sins and repentance, says in effect:
+'Remember me, and do not you be presumptuous.' 'Pass the time of your
+sojourning here in fear.' 'If I had known myself a little better, and
+been a little more afraid of myself, I should not have made such a fool
+of myself or such shipwreck of my faithfulness.'
+
+Dear friends, no mature Christian is so advanced as that he does not
+need this reminder, and no Christian novice is so feeble as that,
+keeping obedient to this precept, he will not be victorious over all his
+evils. The strongest needs to fear; the weakest, fearing, is safe. For
+such fearfulness is indispensable to safety. It is all very well to go
+along with sail extended and a careless look-out. But if, for instance,
+a captain keeps such when he is making the mouth of the Red Sea where
+there are a narrow channel and jagged rocks and a strong current, if he
+has not every man at his quarters and everything ready to let go and
+stop in a moment, he will be sure to be on the reefs before he has tried
+the experiment often. And the only safety for any of us is ever to be on
+the watch, and to dread our own weakness. 'Blessed is the man that
+feareth always.'
+
+Such carefulness over conduct and heart is fully compatible with all the
+blessed emotions to which it seems at first antagonistic. There is no
+discord between the phrase that I have quoted about 'joy unspeakable and
+full of glory,' and this temper, but rather the two help one another.
+And such blended confidence and fear are the parents of courage. The man
+that is afraid that he will do wrong and so hurt himself and grieve his
+Saviour, is the man that will never be afraid of anything else. Martyrs
+have gone to the stake 'fearing not them that kill the body, and after
+that have no more that they can do,' because they were so afraid to sin
+against God that they were not afraid to die rather than to do it. And
+that is the temper that you and I should have. Let that one fear, like
+Moses' rod, swallow up all the other serpents and make our hearts
+impervious to any other dread.
+
+'Pass the time of your _sojourning_.' You do not live in your own
+country, you are in an alien land. You are passing through it. Troops on
+the march in an enemy's country, unless they are led by an idiot, will
+send out clouds of scouts in front and on the wings to give timeous
+warning of any attempted assault. If we cheerily and carelessly go
+through this world as if we were marching in a land where there were no
+foes, there is nothing before us but defeat at the last. Only let us
+remember that sleepless watchfulness is needed only in this time of
+sojourning, and that when we get to our own country there is no need
+for such patrols and advance guards and rearguards and men on the flank
+as were essential when we were on the march. People that grow exotic
+plants here in England keep them in glass houses. But when they are
+taken to their native soil the glass would be an impertinence. As long
+as we are here we have to wear our armour, but when we get yonder the
+armour can safely be put off and the white robes that had to be tucked
+up under it lest they should be soiled by the muddy ways can be let
+down, for they will gather no pollution from the golden streets. The
+gates of that city do not need to be shut, day nor night. For when sin
+has ceased and our liability to yield to temptation has been exchanged
+for fixed adhesion to the Lord Himself, then, and not till then, is it
+safe to put aside the armour of godly fear and to walk, unguarded and
+unarmed, in the land of perpetual peace.
+
+
+
+
+PURIFYING THE SOUL
+
+     '... ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the
+      Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren.'--1 Peter i. 22.
+
+
+Note these three subsidiary clauses introduced respectively by 'in,'
+'through,' 'unto.' They give the means, the Bestower, and the issue of
+the purity of soul. The Revised Version, following good authorities,
+omits the clause, 'through the Spirit.' It may possibly be originally a
+marginal gloss of some scribe who was nervous about Peter's orthodoxy,
+which finally found its way into the text. But I think we shall be
+inclined to retain it if we notice that, throughout this epistle, the
+writer is fond of sentences on the model of the present one, and of
+surrounding a principal clause with subsidiary ones introduced by a
+similar sequence of prepositions. For instance, in this very chapter, to
+pass over other examples, we read, 'Kept by' (or in) 'the power of God
+through faith unto salvation.' So, for my present purpose, I take the
+doubtful words as part of the original text. They unquestionably convey
+a true idea, whether they are genuine here or no.
+
+One more introductory remark--'Ye have purified your souls'--a bold
+statement to make about the vast multitude of the 'dispersed' throughout
+all the provinces of Asia Minor whom the Apostle was addressing. The
+form of the words in the original shows that this purifying is a process
+which began at some definite point in the past and is being continued
+throughout all the time of Christian life. The hall-mark of all
+Christians is a relative purity, not of actions, but of soul. They will
+vary, one from another; the conception of what is purity of soul will
+change and grow, but, if a man is a Christian, there was a moment in his
+past at which he potentially, and in ideal, purified his spirit, and
+that was the moment when he bowed down in obedience to the truth. There
+are suggestions for volumes about the true conception of soul-purity in
+these words of my text. But I deal with them in the simplest possible
+fashion, following the guidance of these significant little words which
+introduce the subordinate clauses.
+
+First of all, then, we have here the great thought that
+
+I. Soul purity is in, or by, obedience.
+
+Now, of course, 'the truth'--truth with the definite article--is the sum
+of the contents of the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ, His life, His
+death, His Glory. For to Peter, as to us He should be, Jesus Christ was
+Truth Incarnate. 'In Him were hid all the treasures of wisdom and
+knowledge.' The first thought that is suggested to me from this
+expression--obedience to the truth--is that the revelation of God in
+Jesus Christ is, as its ultimate intention, meant to be obeyed. There
+are plenty of truths which have no influence on life and conduct, for
+which all is done that they can demand when they are accepted. But _the_
+truth is no inert substance like the element which recent chemical
+discoveries have found, which is named 'argon,' the do-nothing: _the_
+truth is, as physiologists say, a ferment. It is intended to come into
+life, and into character, and into the inmost spirit of a man, and grip
+them, and mould them, and transform them, and animate them, and impel
+them. The truth is to be 'obeyed.'
+
+Now that altogether throws over two card-castles which imperfect
+Christians are very apt to build. One which haunted the thoughts of an
+earlier generation of Christians more than it does the present, is that
+we have done all that 'the truth' asks of us when we have intellectually
+endorsed it. And so you get churches which build their membership upon
+acceptance of a creed and excommunicate heretics, whilst they keep
+do-nothing and uncleansed Christians within their pale. But God does not
+tell us anything that we may know. He tells us in order that, knowing,
+we may be and do. And right actions, or rather a character which
+produces such, is the last aim of all knowledge, and especially of all
+moral and religious truth. So 'the truth' is not 'argon', it is a
+ferment. And if men, steeped to the eyebrows in orthodoxy, think that
+they have done enough when they have set their hands to a confession of
+faith, and that they are Christians because they can say, 'all this I
+steadfastly believe,' they need to remember that religious truth which
+does not mould and transform character and conduct is a king dethroned;
+and for dethroned kings there is a short step between the throne from
+which they have descended and the scaffold on which they die.
+
+But there is another--what I venture to call a card-castle, which more
+of us build in these days of indifference as to creed--and that is that
+a great many of us are too much disposed to believe that 'the truth as
+it is in Jesus' has received from us all which it expects when we trust
+to it for what we call our 'salvation,' meaning thereby forgiveness of
+sins and immunity from punishment. These are elements of salvation
+unquestionably, but they are only part of it. And the very truths on
+which Christian people rest for this initial salvation, which is
+forgiveness and acceptance, are meant to be the guides of our lives and
+the patterns for our imitation. Why, in this very letter, in reference
+to the very parts of Christ's work, on which faith is wont to rest for
+salvation,--the death on the Cross to which we say that we trust, and
+which we are so accustomed to exalt as a unique and inimitable work that
+cannot be reproduced and needs no repetition, world without end--Peter
+has no hesitation in saying that Christ was our 'Pattern,' and that,
+even when He went to the Cross, He died 'leaving us an example that we
+should follow in His steps.' So, brethren, the truth needs to be known
+and believed: the truth needs not only to be believed but to be trusted
+in; the truth needs not only to be believed and to be trusted in, but to
+be obeyed.
+
+Still further, another thought following upon and to some extent
+modifying the preceding one, is suggested here, and that is that the
+faith, which I have just been saying is sometimes mistakenly regarded as
+being all that truth calls for from us, is itself obedience. As I have
+said, the language in the original here implies that there was a given
+definite moment in the past when these dispersed strangers obeyed, and,
+by obeying the truth, purified their souls. What was that moment? Some
+people would say the moment when the rite of baptism was administered. I
+would say the moment when they bowed themselves in joyful acceptance of
+the great Word and put out a firm hand of faith to grasp Jesus Christ.
+That _is_ obedience. For, in the very act of thus trusting, there is
+self-surrender, is there not? Does not a man depart from himself and bow
+himself humbly before his Saviour when he puts his trust in Him? Is not
+the very essence of obedience, not the mere external act, but the
+melting of the will to flow in such directions as His master-impulse may
+guide it? Thus, faith in its depth is obedience; and the moment when a
+man believes, in the deepest sense of the word, that moment, in the
+deepest realities of his spirit, he becomes obedient to the will and to
+the love of his Saviour Lord, Who is the Truth as He is the Way and the
+Life. We find, not only in this Epistle, but throughout the Epistles,
+that the two words 'disobedience' and 'unbelief,' are used as
+equivalents. We read, for instance, of those that 'stumble at the word,
+being disobedient,' and the like. So, then, faith is obedience in its
+depth, and, if our faith has any vitality in it, it carries in it the
+essence of all submission.
+
+But then, further, my text implies that the faith which is, in its
+depth, obedience, in its practical issues will produce the practical
+obedience which the text enjoins. It is no mere piece of theological
+legerdemain which counts that faith is righteousness. But, just as all
+sin comes from selfishness, so, and therefore, all righteousness will
+flow from giving up self, from decentralising, as it were, our souls
+from their old centre, self, and taking a new centre, God in Christ.
+Thus the germ of all practical obedience lies in vital faith. It is, if
+I might so say, the mother-tincture which, variously combined, coloured,
+and perfumed, makes all the precious things, the virtues and graces of
+humanity, which the believing soul pours out as a libation before its
+God. It is the productive energy of all practical goodness. It is the
+bottom heat in the greenhouse which makes all the plants grow and
+flourish. Faith is obedience, and faith produces obedience. Does my
+faith produce obedience? If it does not, it is not faith.
+
+Then, with regard to this first part of my subject, comes the final
+thought that practical obedience works inwards as well as outwards, and
+purifies the soul which renders it. People generally turn that round the
+other way, and, instead of saying that to do right helps to make a man
+right within, they say 'make the tree good, and its fruit good'--first
+the pure soul, and then the practical obedience. Both statements are
+true. For every act that a man does reacts upon the doer, just as,
+whether the shot hits the target or not, the gun kicks back on the
+shoulder of the man that fired it. Conduct comes from character, but
+conduct works back upon character, and character is largely the deposit
+from the vanished seas of actions. So, then, whilst the deepest thought
+is, be good and you will do good, it is not to be forgotten that the
+other side is true--do good, and it will tend to make you good.
+Obedience purifies the soul, while, on the other hand, a man that lives
+ill comes to think as he lives, and to become tenfold more a child of
+evil. 'The dyer's hand is subdued to what it works in.' 'Ye have
+purified your souls,' ideally, in the act of faith, and continuously, in
+the measure in which you practically obey the truth.
+
+We have here
+
+II. Purifying through the Spirit.
+
+I have already said that these words are possibly no part of the
+original text, but that they convey a true Christian idea, whether the
+words are here genuine or no. I need not enlarge upon this part of my
+subject at any length. Let me just remind you how the other verse in
+this chapter, to which I have already referred as cast in the same mould
+as our text, covers, from a different point of view, the same ground
+exactly as our text. Here there is put first the human element: 'Ye have
+purified your souls in obeying the truth,' and secondly the Divine
+element; 'through the Spirit.' The human part is put in the foreground,
+and God's part comes in, I was going to say, subordinately, as a
+condition. The reverse is the case in the other text, which runs: 'Kept
+_in_ the power of God _through_ faith'--where the Divine element is in
+the foreground, as being the true cause, and the human dwindles to being
+merely a condition--'Kept by' (or in) 'the power of God through faith.'
+Both views are true; you may take the vase by either handle. When the
+purpose is to stimulate to action, man's part is put in the foreground
+and God's part secondarily. When the purpose is to stimulate to
+confidence, God's part is put in the foreground and the man's is
+secondary. The two interlock, and neither is sufficient without the
+other.
+
+The true Agent of all purifying is that Divine Spirit. I have said that
+the moment of true trust is the moment of initial obedience, and of the
+beginning of purity. And it is so because, in that moment of initial
+faith, there enters into the heart the communicated Divine life of the
+Spirit, which thenceforward is lodged there, except it be quenched by
+the man's negligence or sin. Thence, from that germ implanted in the
+moment of faith, the germ of a new life, there issue forth to ultimate
+dominion in the spirit, the powers of that Divine Spirit which make for
+righteousness and transform the character. Thus, the true cause and
+origin of all Christian nobility and purity of character and conduct
+lies in that which enters the heart at the moment that the heart is
+opened for the coming of the Lord. But, on the other hand, this Divine
+Spirit, the Source of all purity, will not purify the soul without the
+man's efforts. '_Ye_ have purified your souls.' You need the Spirit
+indeed. But you are not mere passive recipients. You are to be active
+co-operators. In this region, too, we are 'labourers together with God.'
+We cannot of ourselves do the work, for the very powers with which we do
+it, or try to do it, are themselves in need of cleansing. And for a man
+to try to purify the soul by his own effort alone is to play the part of
+the sluttish house-wife who would seek to wipe a dish clean with a dirty
+cloth. You need the Divine Spirit to work in you, and you need to use,
+by your own effort, the Divine Spirit that does work in you. He is as
+'rushing, mighty wind'; but, unless the sails are set and the helm
+gripped, the wind will pass the boat and leave it motionless. He is
+Divine fire that burns up the dross and foulness; but, unless we 'guard
+the holy fire' and feed it, it dies down into grey cold ashes. He is the
+water of life; but, unless we dig and take heed to keep clear the
+channels, no refreshing will permeate to the roots of the wilting
+flowers, and there will be dryness, thirst, and barrenness, even on the
+river's banks.
+
+So, brethren, neither God alone nor man alone can purify the soul. We
+need Him, else we shall labour in vain. He needs us, else He will bestow
+His gift, and we shall receive 'the grace of God in vain.'
+
+Lastly, we have here--
+
+III. Purifying ... unto ... love.
+
+The Apostle was speaking to men of very diverse nationalities who had
+been rent asunder by deep gulfs of mutual suspicion and conflicting
+interests and warring creeds, and a great mysterious, and, as it would
+seem to the world then, utterly inexplicable bond of unity had been
+evolved amongst them, and Greek and barbarian, bond and free, male and
+female, had come together in amity. The 'love of the brethren' was the
+creation of Christianity, and was the outstanding fact which, more than
+any other, amazed the beholders in these early days. God be thanked!
+there are signs in our generation of a closer drawing together of
+Christian people than many past ages, alas, have seen.
+
+But my text suggests solemn and great thoughts with regard to Christian
+love and unity. The road to unity lies through purity, and the road to
+purity lies through obedience. Yes; what keeps Christian people apart is
+their impurities. It is not their creeds. It is not any of the
+differences that appear to separate them. It is because they are not
+better men and women. Globules of quicksilver will run together and make
+one mass; but not if you dust them over. And it is the impurities on the
+quicksilver that keep us from coalescing.
+
+So then we have to school ourselves into greater conformity to the
+likeness of our Master, to conquer selfishness, and to purify our souls,
+or else all this talk about Christian unity is no better than sounding
+brass, and more discordant than tinkling cymbals. Let us learn the
+lesson. 'The unfeigned love of the brethren' is not such an easy thing
+as some people fancy, and it is not to be attained at all on the road by
+which some people would seek it. Cleanse yourselves, and you will flow
+together.
+
+Here, then, we have Peter's conception of a pure soul and a pure life.
+It is a stately building, based deep on the broad foundation of the
+truth as it is in Jesus; its walls rising, but not without our effort,
+being builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit, and
+having as the shining apex of its heaven-pointing spire 'unfeigned love
+to the brethren.' The measure of our obedience is the measure of our
+purity. The measure of our purity is the measure of our brotherly love.
+But that love, though it is the very aim and natural issue of purity,
+still will not be realised without effort on our part. Therefore my
+text, after its exhibition of the process and issues of the purifying
+which began with faith, glides into the exhortation: 'See that ye love
+one another with a pure heart'--a heart purified by obedience--and that
+'fervently.'
+
+
+
+
+LIVING STONES ON THE LIVING FOUNDATION STONE
+
+     'To Whom coming, as unto a living stone ... ye also, as living
+      stones, are built up.'--1 Peter ii. 4, 5.
+
+
+I wonder whether Peter, when he wrote these words, was thinking about
+what Jesus Christ said to him long ago, up there at Cæsarea Philippi. He
+had heard from Christ's lips, 'Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will
+build My Church.' He had understood very little of what it meant then.
+He is an old man now, years of experience and sorrow and work have
+taught him the meaning of the words, and he understands them a great
+deal better than his so-called successors have done. For we may surely
+take the text as the Apostle's own disclaimer of that which the Roman
+Catholic Church has founded on it, and has blazoned it, in gigantic
+letters round the dome of St. Peter's, as meaning. It is surely
+legitimate to hear him saying in these words: 'Make no mistake, it is
+Jesus Himself on whom the Church is built. The confession of Him which
+the Father in heaven revealed to me, not I, the poor sinner who
+confessed it--the Christ whom that confession set forth, He is the
+foundation stone, and all of you are called and honoured to ring out the
+same confession. Jesus is the one Foundation, and we all, apostles and
+humble believers, are but stones builded on Him.' Peter's relation to
+Jesus is fundamentally the same as that of every poor soul that 'comes
+to' Him.
+
+Now, there are two or three thoughts that may very well be suggested
+from these words, and the first of them is this:--
+
+I. Those that are in Christ have perpetually to make the effort to come
+nearer Christ.
+
+Remember that the persons to whom the Apostle is speaking are no
+strangers to the Saviour. They have been professing Christians from of
+old. They have made very considerable progress in the Divine life; they
+are near Jesus Christ; and yet Peter says to them, 'You can get nearer
+if you try,' and it is your one task and one hope, the condition of all
+blessedness, peace, and joy in your religious life that you should
+perpetually be making the effort to come closer, and to keep closer, to
+the Lord, by whom you say that you live.
+
+What is it to come to Him? The context explains the figurative
+expression, in the very next verse or two, by another and simpler word,
+which strips away the figure and gives us the plain fact--'in Whom
+believing.' The act of the soul by which I, with all my weakness and
+sin, cast myself on Jesus Christ, and grapple Him to my heart, and bind
+myself with His strength and righteousness--that is what the Apostle
+means here. Or, to put it into other words, this 'coming,' which is here
+laid as the basis of everything, of all Christian prosperity and
+progress for the individual and for the community, is the movement
+towards Christ of the whole spiritual nature of a man--thoughts, loves,
+wishes, purposes, desires, hopes, will. And we come near to Him when day
+by day we realise His nearness to us, when our thoughts are often
+occupied with Him, bring His peace and Himself to bear as a motive upon
+our conduct, let our love reach out its tendrils towards, and grasp, and
+twine round Him, bow our wills to His commandment, and in everything
+obey Him. The distance between heaven and earth does part us, but the
+distance between a thoughtless mind, an unrenewed heart, a rebellious
+will, and Him, sets between Him and us a greater gulf, and we have to
+bridge that by continual honest efforts to keep our wayward thoughts
+true to Him and near Him, and to regulate our affections that they may
+not, like runaway stars, carry us far from the path, and to bow our
+stubborn and self-regulating wills beneath His supreme commandment, and
+so to make all things a means of coming nearer the Lord with whom is our
+true home.
+
+Christian men, there are none of us so close to Him but that we may be
+nearer, and the secret of our daily Christian life is all wrapped up in
+that one word which is scarcely to be called a figure, 'coming' unto
+Him. That nearness is what we are to make daily efforts after, and that
+nearness is capable of indefinite increase. We know not how close to His
+heart we can lay our aching heads. We know not how near to His fulness
+we may bring our emptiness. We have never yet reached the point beyond
+which no closer union is possible. There has always been a film--and,
+alas! sometimes a gulf--between Him and us, His professing servants. Let
+us see to it that the conscious distance diminishes every day, and that
+we feel ourselves more and more constantly near the Lord and intertwined
+with Him.
+
+II. Those who come near Christ will become like Christ.
+
+'To Whom coming, as unto a living stone, ye also as living stones.' Note
+the verbal identity of the expressions with which Peter describes the
+Master and His servants. Christ is the Stone--that is Peter's
+interpretation of 'on this _rock_ will I build My Church.' There is a
+reference, too, no doubt, to the many Old Testament prophecies which
+are all gathered up in that saying of our Lord's. Probably both Jesus
+and Peter had in mind Isaiah's 'stone of stumbling,' which was also a
+'sure corner-stone, and a tried foundation.' And words in the context
+which I have not taken for consideration, 'disallowed indeed of men, but
+chosen of God and precious,' plainly rest upon the 118th Psalm, which
+speaks of 'the stone which the builders rejected' becoming 'the head of
+the corner.'
+
+But, says Peter, He is not only the foundation Stone, the corner Stone,
+but a _living_ Stone, and he does not only use that word to show us that
+he is indulging in a metaphor, and that we are to think of a person and
+not of a thing, but in the sense that Christ is eminently and
+emphatically the living One, the Source of life.
+
+But, when he turns to the disciples, he speaks to them in exactly the
+same language. They, too, are 'living stones,' because they come to the
+'Stone' that is 'living.' Take away the metaphor, and what does this
+identity of description come to? Just this, that if we draw near to
+Jesus Christ, life from Him will pass into our hearts and minds, which
+life will show itself in kindred fashion to what it wore in Jesus
+Christ, and will shape us into the likeness of Him _from_ whom we draw
+our life, because _to_ Him we have come. I may remind you that there is
+scarcely a single name by which the New Testament calls Jesus Christ
+which Jesus Christ does not share with us His younger brethren. By that
+Son we 'receive the adoption of sons.' Is He the Light of the world? We
+are lights of the world. And if you look at the words of my text, you
+will see that the offices which are attributed to Christ in the New
+Testament are gathered up in those which the Apostle here ascribes to
+Christ's servants. Jesus Christ in His manhood was the Temple of God.
+Jesus Christ in His manhood was the Priest for humanity. Jesus Christ in
+His manhood was the sacrifice for the world's sins. And what does Peter
+say here? 'Ye are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to
+offer up spiritual sacrifices.' You draw life from Jesus Christ if you
+keep close to Him, and that life makes you, in derived and subordinate
+fashion, but in a very real and profound sense, what Jesus Christ was in
+the world. The whole blessedness and secret of the gifts which our Lord
+comes to bestow upon men may be summed up in that one thought, which is
+metaphorically and picturesquely set forth in the language of my text,
+and which I put into plainer and more prosaic English when I say--they
+that come near Christ become as Christ. As 'living stones' they, too,
+share in the life which flows from Him. Touch Him, and His quick Spirit
+passes into our hearts. Rest upon that foundation-stone and up from it,
+if I may so say, there is drawn, by strange capillary attraction, all
+the graces and powers of the Saviour's own life. The building which is
+reared upon the Foundation is cemented to the Foundation by the
+communication of the life itself, and, coming to the living Rock, we,
+too, become alive.
+
+Let us keep ourselves near to Him, for, disconnected, the wire cannot
+carry the current, and is only a bit of copper, with no virtue in it, no
+power. Attach it once more to the battery and the mysterious energy
+flashes through it immediately. 'To Whom coming,' because He lives, 'ye
+shall live also.'
+
+III. Lastly:
+
+They who become like Christ because they are near Him, thereby grow
+together.
+
+'To whom coming, as unto a living stone, ye also, as living stones, are
+built up.' That building up means not only the growth of individual
+graces in the Christian character, the building up in each single soul
+of more and more perfect resemblance to the Saviour, but from the
+context it rather refers to the welding together, into a true and
+blessed unity, of all those that partake of that common life. Now, it is
+very beautiful to remember, in this connection, to whom this letter was
+written. The first words of it are: 'To the strangers _scattered abroad_
+throughout,' etc. etc. All over Asia Minor, hundreds of miles apart,
+here one there another little group, were these isolated believers, the
+scattered stones of a great building. But Peter shows them the way to a
+true unity, notwithstanding their separation. He says to them in effect:
+'You up in Bithynia, and you others away down there on the southern
+coast, though you never saw one another, though you are separated by
+mountain ranges and weary leagues; though you, if you met one another,
+perhaps could not understand what you each were saying, if you "come
+unto the living Stone, ye as living stones are built up" into one.'
+There is a great unity into which all they are gathered who, separated
+by whatever surface distinctions, yet, deep down at the bottom of their
+better lives, are united to Jesus Christ.
+
+But there may be another lesson here for us, and that is, that the true
+and only secret of the prosperity and blessedness and growth of a
+so-called Christian congregation is the individual faithfulness of its
+members, and their personal approximation of Jesus Christ. If we here,
+knit together as we are nominally for Christian worship, and by faith in
+that dear Lord, are true to our profession and our vocation, and keep
+ourselves near our Master, then we shall be built up; and if we do not,
+we shall not.
+
+So, dear friends, all comes to this: _There_ is the Stone laid; it does
+not matter how _close_ we are lying to it, it will be nothing to us
+unless we are _on_ it. And I put it to each of you. Are you built on the
+Foundation, and from the Foundation do you derive a life which is daily
+bringing you nearer to Him, and making you liker Him? All blessedness
+depends, for time and for eternity, on the answer to that question. For
+remember that, since that living Stone is laid, it is _something_ to
+you. Either it is the Rock on which you build, or the Stone against
+which you stumble and are broken. No man, in a country evangelised like
+England--I do not say Christian, but evangelised--can say that Jesus
+Christ has no relation to, or effect upon, him. And certainly no people
+that listen to Christian preaching, and know Christian truth as fully
+and as much as you do, can say it. He is the Foundation on which we can
+rear a noble, stable life, if we build upon Him. If He is not the
+Foundation on which I build, He is the Stone on which I shall be broken.
+
+
+
+
+SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES
+
+     '... Spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus
+      Christ.'--1 Peter ii. 5.
+
+
+In this verse Peter piles up his metaphors in a fine profusion,
+perfectly careless of oratorical elegance or propriety. He gathers
+together three symbols, drawn from ancient sacrificial worship, and
+applies them all to Christian people. In the one breath they are
+'temples,' in the next 'priests,' in the third 'sacrifices.' All the
+three are needed to body out the whole truth of the relationship of the
+perfect universal religion--which is Christianity--to the fragmentary
+and symbolical religion of ancient time.
+
+Christians individually and collectively are temples, inasmuch as they
+are 'the habitation of God through the Spirit.' They are priests by
+virtue of their consecration, their direct access to God, their function
+of representing God to men, and of bringing men to God. They are
+sacrifices, inasmuch as one main part of their priestly function is to
+offer themselves to God.
+
+Now, it is very difficult for us to realise what an extraordinary
+anomaly the Christian faith presented at its origin, surrounded by
+religions which had nothing to do with morality, conduct, or spiritual
+life, but were purely ritualistic. And here, in the midst of them,
+started up a religion bare and bald, and with no appeal to sense, no
+temple, no altar, no sacrifice. But the Apostles with one accord declare
+that they had all these things in far higher form than those faiths
+possessed them, which had only the outward appearance.
+
+Now, this conception of the sacrificial element in the Christian life
+runs through the whole New Testament, and is applied there in a very
+remarkable variety of forms. I have taken the words of my text, not so
+much to discourse upon them especially. My object now is rather to
+gather together the various references to the Christian life as
+essentially sacrificial, and to trace the various applications which
+that idea receives in the New Testament. There are four classes of
+these, to which I desire especially to refer.
+
+I. There is the living sacrifice of the body.
+
+'I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye _present_'--which is a
+technical word for a priest's action--'your bodies a living sacrifice,'
+in contrast with the slaying, which was the presentation of the animal
+victim. Now, that 'body' there is not equivalent to self is distinctly
+seen when we notice that Paul goes on, in the very next clause, to say,
+'and be transformed by the renewing of your _mind_.' So that he is
+speaking, not of the self, but of the corporeal organ and instrument of
+the self, when he says 'present your _bodies_ a living sacrifice.'
+
+Of course, the central idea of sacrifice is surrender to God; and, of
+course, the place where that surrender is made is the inmost self. The
+will is the man, and when the will bows, dethroning self and enthroning
+God, submitting to His appointments, and delighting to execute His
+commandments, then the sacrifice is begun. But, inasmuch as the body is
+the organ of the man's activity, the sacrifice of the will and of self
+must needs come out into visibility and actuality in the aggregate of
+deeds, of which the body is the organ and instrument. But there must
+first of all be the surrender of my inmost self, and only then, and as
+the token and outcome of that, will any external acts, however religious
+they may seem to be, come into the category of sacrifice when they
+express a conscious surrender of myself to God. 'The flesh profiteth
+nothing,' and yet the flesh profiteth much. But here is the order that
+another of the Apostles lays down: 'Yield _yourselves_ to God,' and
+then, 'your members as instruments of righteousness to Him.'
+
+To speak of the sacrifice of the body as a living sacrifice suggests
+that it is not the slaying of any bodily appetite or activity that is
+the true sacrifice and worship, but the hallowing of these. It is a
+great deal easier, and it is sometimes necessary, to cut off the
+offending right hand, to pluck out the offending right eye, or, putting
+away the metaphor, to abstain rigidly from forms of activity which are
+perfectly legitimate in themselves, and may be innocuous to other
+people, if we find that they hurt us. But that is second best, and
+though it is better in the judgment of common sense to go into life
+maimed than complete to be cast into hell-fire, it is better still to go
+into life symmetrical and entire, with no maiming in hand or organ. So
+you do not offer the living sacrifice of the body when you annihilate,
+but when you suppress, and direct, and hallow its needs, its appetites,
+and its activities.
+
+The meaning of this sacrifice is that the whole active life should be
+based upon, and be the outcome of, the inward surrender of self unto
+God. 'On the bells of the horses shall be written, Holiness to the Lord,
+and every pot and vessel in Jerusalem shall be holy as the bowls upon
+the altar'--in such picturesque and yet profound fashion did an ancient
+prophet set forth the same truth that lies in this declaration of our
+Apostle, that the body, the instrument of our activities, should be a
+living sacrifice to God. Link all its actions with Him; let there be
+conscious reference to Him in all that I do. Let foot and hand and eye
+and brain work for Him, and by Him, and in constant consciousness of His
+presence; suppress where necessary, direct always, appetites and
+passions, and make the body the instrument of the surrendered spirit.
+And then, in the measure in which we can do so, the greatest cleft and
+discord in human life will be filled, and body, soul, and spirit will
+harmonise and make one music of praise to God.
+
+Ah! brethren, these bad principles have teeth to bite very close into
+our daily lives. How many of us, young and old, have 'fleshly lusts
+which war against the soul'? How many of you young men have no heart for
+higher, purer, nobler things, because the animal in you is strong! How
+many of you find that the day's activities blunt you to God! How many of
+us are weakened still under that great antagonism of the flesh lusting
+against the spirit, so that we cannot do the things that we would!
+Sensuality, indulgence in animal propensities, yielding to the clamant
+voices of the beast that is within us--these things wreck many a soul;
+and some of those that are listening to me now. Let the man govern and
+coerce the animal, and let God govern the man. 'I beseech you that you
+yield your bodies a living sacrifice.'
+
+II. There is the sacrifice of praise.
+
+Of course, logically and properly, this, and all the others that I am
+going to speak about, are included within that to which I have already
+directed attention. But still they are dealt with separately in
+Scripture, and I follow the guidance. We read in the Epistle to the
+Hebrews: 'By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise unto God
+continually--that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks unto His
+name.' There, then, is another of the regions into which the notion of
+sacrifice as the very essence of Christian life is to be carried.
+
+There is nothing more remarkable in Scripture than the solemn importance
+that it attaches to what so many people think so little about, and that
+is _words_. It even sometimes seems to take them as being more truly the
+outcome and revelation of a man's character than his deeds are. And that
+is true, in some respects. But at all events there is set forth, ever
+running all through the Scripture, that thought, that one of the best
+sacrifices that men can make to God is to render up the tribute of
+their praise. In the great psalm which lays down with clearness never
+surpassed in the New Testament the principles of true Christian worship,
+this is declared: 'Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me.' The true
+offering is not the slaying of animals or the presentation of any
+material things, but the utterance of hearts welling up thankfulness. In
+the ancient ritual there stood within the Holy place, and after the
+altar of burnt-offering had been passed, three symbols of the relation
+of the redeemed soul to God. There was the great candlestick, which
+proclaimed 'Ye are the light of the world.' There was the table on which
+the so-called shewbread was laid, and in the midst there was the altar
+of incense, on which, day by day, morning and evening, there was kindled
+the fragrant offering which curled up in wreaths of blue smoke aspiring
+towards the heavens. It lay smouldering all through the day, and was
+quickened into flame morning and evening. That is a symbol representing
+what the Christian life ought to be--a continual thank-offering of the
+incense of prayer and praise.
+
+Nor that only, brethren, but also there is another shape in which our
+words should be sacrifices, and that is in the way of direct utterances
+to men, as well as of thanksgiving to God. What a shame it is, and what
+a confession of imperfect, partial redemption and regeneration on the
+part of professing Christians it is, that there are thousands of us who
+never, all our lives, have felt the impulse or necessity of giving
+utterance to our Christian convictions! You can talk about anything
+else; you are tongue-tied about your religion. Why is that? You can make
+speeches upon political platforms, or you can discourse on many subjects
+that interest you. You never speak a word to anybody about the Master
+that you say you serve. Why is that? 'What is bred in the bone comes
+out in the flesh.' What is deep in the heart sometimes lies there
+unuttered, but more often demands expression. I venture to think that if
+your Christianity was deeper, it would not be so dumb. You strengthen
+your convictions by speech. A man's belief in anything grows
+incalculably by the very fact of proclaiming it. And there is no surer
+way to lose moral and spiritual convictions than to huddle them up in
+the secret chambers of our hearts. It is like a man carrying a bit of
+ice in his palm. He locks his fingers over it, and when he opens them it
+has all run out and gone. If you want to deepen your Christianity,
+declare it. If you would have your hearts more full of gratitude, speak
+your praise. There used to be in certain religious houses a single
+figure kneeling on the altar-steps, by day and by night, ever uttering
+forth with unremitting voice, the psalm of praise. That perpetual
+adoration in spirit, if not in form, ought to be ours. The fruit of the
+lips should continually be offered. Literally, of course, there cannot
+be that unbroken and exclusive utterance of thanksgiving. There are many
+other things that men have to talk about; but through all the utterances
+there ought to spread the aroma--like some fragrance diffused through
+the else scentless air from some unseen source of sweetness--of that
+name to which the life is one long thanksgiving.
+
+III. There is the sacrifice of help to men.
+
+The same passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to which I have already
+referred, goes on to bracket together the sacrifice of praise and of
+deeds. It continues thus:--'But to do good and to communicate forget
+not.' Again I say, logically this comes under the first division. But
+still it may be treated separately, and it just carries this
+thought--your praying and singing praises are worse than useless unless
+you go out into the world an embodiment and an imitation of the love
+which you hymn. True philanthropy has its roots in true religion. The
+service of man is the service of God.
+
+That principle cuts two ways. It comes as a sharp test of their prayers
+and psalm-singing to emotional Christians, who are always able to gush
+in words of thankfulness, and it confronts them with the question, What
+do you do for your brother? That is a question that comes very close to
+us all. Do not talk about being the priests of the Most High God unless
+you are doing the priestly office of representing God to men, and
+carrying to them the blessings that they need. Your service to God is
+worthless unless it is followed by diligent, fraternal, wise,
+self-sacrificing service for men.
+
+The same principle points in another direction. If, on the one hand, it
+crushes as hypocrisy a religion of talk, on the other hand it declares
+as baseless a philanthropy which has no reference to God. And whilst I
+know that there are many men who, following the dictates of their
+hearts, and apart altogether from any reference to higher religious
+sanctions, do exercise pity and compassion and help, I believe that for
+the basing of a lasting, wide, wise benevolence, there is nothing solid
+and broad except Christ and Him crucified, and the consciousness of
+having been--sinful and needy as we are--received and blessed by Him.
+Let the philanthropists learn that the surrender of self, and the fruit
+of the lips giving thanks to His name, must precede the highest kind of
+beneficence. Let the Christian learn that benevolence is the garb in
+which religion is dressed. 'True worship and undefiled ... is this, to
+visit the widow and the fatherless in their affliction.' Morality is the
+dress of Religion; Religion is the body of Morality.
+
+IV. Lastly, there is the sacrifice of death.
+
+'I am ready to be offered,' says the Apostle--to be _poured out_, as a
+libation. And again, 'If I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of
+your faith, I rejoice with you all.' And so may
+
+    'Death the endless mercies seal,
+     And make the sacrifice complete.'
+
+It may become not a reluctant being dragged out of life whilst we cling
+to it with both our hands. It may be not a reluctant yielding to
+necessity, but a religious act, in which a man resignedly and trustfully
+and gratefully yields himself to God; and says, 'Father! into Thy hands
+I commit my spirit.'
+
+Ah! brethren, is not that a better way to die than to be like some poor
+wretch in a stream, that clutches at some unfixed support on the bank,
+and is whirled away down, fiercely resisting and helpless? We may thus
+make our last act an act of devotion, and go within the veil as priests
+bearing in our hands the last of our sacrifices. The sacrifice of death
+will only be offered when a life of sacrifice has preceded it. And if
+you and I, moved by the mercies of God, yield ourselves living
+sacrifices, using our lips for His praise and our possessions for man's
+help, then we may die as the Apostle expected to do, and feel that by
+Christ Jesus even death becomes 'an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice
+acceptable, well-pleasing unto God.'
+
+
+
+
+MIRRORS OF GOD
+
+     '... That ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called
+      you out of darkness ...'--1 Peter ii. 9.
+
+
+The _Revised Version_, instead of 'praises,' reads _excellencies_--and
+even that is but a feeble translation of the remarkable word here
+employed. For it is that usually rendered 'virtues'; and by the word, of
+course, when applied to God, we mean the radiant excellencies and
+glories of His character, of which our earthly qualities, designated by
+the same name, are but as shadows.
+
+It is, indeed, true that this same expression is employed in the Greek
+version of the Old Testament in Isaiah xliii. in a verse which evidently
+was floating before Peter's mind. 'This people have I formed for Myself;
+they shall show forth My praise.'
+
+But even while that is admitted, it is to be observed that the
+expression here does not merely mean that the audible praise of God
+should be upon the lips of Christian people, but that their whole lives
+should, in a far deeper sense than that, be the manifestation of what
+the Apostle here calls 'excellencies of God.'
+
+I. Here we get a wonderful glimpse into the heart of God.
+
+Note the preceding words, in which the writer describes all God's
+mercies to His people, making them 'a chosen generation, a royal
+priesthood, a holy nation'; a people 'His own possession.' All that is
+done for one specific purpose--'that ye should show forth the praises of
+Him who hath called you out of darkness.' That is to say, the very aim
+of all God's gracious manifestations of Himself is that the men who
+apprehend them should go forth into the world and show Him for what He
+is.
+
+Now that aim may be, and often has been, put so as to present an utterly
+hard and horrible notion. That God's glory is His only motive may be so
+stated as to mean nearly an Almighty Selfishness, which is far liker the
+devil than God. People in old days did not always recognise the danger
+that lay in such a representation of what we call God's motive for
+action. But if you think for a moment about this statement, all that
+appears hard and repellent drops clean away from it, and it turns out to
+be another way of saying, 'God is Love.' Because, what is there more
+characteristic of love than an earnest desire to communicate itself and
+to be manifested and beheld? And what is it that God reveals to the
+world for His own glory but the loftiest and most wondrous compassion,
+that cannot be wearied out, that cannot be provoked, and the most
+forgiving Omnipotence, that, in answer to all men's wanderings and
+rebellions, only seeks to draw them to itself? That is what God wants to
+be known for. Is _that_ hard and repellent? Does that make Him a great
+tyrant, who only wants to be abjectly worshipped? No; it makes Him the
+very embodiment and perfection of the purest love. Why does He desire
+that He should be known? for any good that it does to Him? No; except
+the good that even His creatures can do to Him when they gladden His
+paternal heart by recognising Him for what He is, the Infinite Lover of
+all souls.
+
+But the reason why He desires, most of all, that the light of His
+character may pour into every heart is because He would have every heart
+gladdened and blessed for ever by that received and believed light. So
+the hard saying that God's own glory is His supreme end melts into 'God
+is Love.' The Infinite desires to communicate Himself, that by the
+communication men may be blessed.
+
+II. There is another thing here, and that is, a wonderful glimpse of
+what Christian people are in the world for.
+
+'This people have I formed for Myself,' says the fundamental passage in
+Isaiah already referred to, 'they shall show forth My praise.' It was
+not worth while forming them except for that. It was still less worth
+while redeeming them except for that.
+
+But you may say, 'I am saved in order that I may enjoy all the blessings
+of salvation, immunities from fear and punishment, and the like.' Yes!
+Certainly! But is that all? Or is it the main thing? I think not. There
+is not a creature in God's universe so tiny, even although you cannot
+see it with a microscope, but that it has a claim on Him that made it
+for its well-being. That is very certain. And so my salvation--with all
+the blessedness for me that lies wrapped up and hived in that great
+word--my salvation is an adequate end with God, in all His dealing, and
+especially in His sending of Jesus Christ.
+
+But there is not a creature in the whole universe, though he were
+mightier than the archangels that stand nearest God's throne, who is so
+great and independent that his happiness and well-being is the sole aim
+of God's gifts to him. For every one of us the Apostle means the word,
+'No man liveth to himself'--he could not if he were to try--'and no man
+dieth to himself.' Every man that receives anything from God is thereby
+made a steward to impart it to others. So we may say--and I speak now
+to you who profess to be Christians--'you were not saved for your own
+sakes.' One might almost say that that was a by-end. You were
+saved--shall I say?--for God's sake; and you were saved for man's sake?
+Just as when you put a bit of leaven into a lump of dough, each grain of
+the lump, as it is leavened and transformed, becomes the medium for
+passing on the mysterious transforming influence to the particle beyond,
+so every one of us, if we have been brought out of darkness into
+marvellous light, have been so brought, not only that we may recreate
+and bathe our own eyes in the flooding sunshine, but that we may turn to
+our brothers and ask them to come too out of the doleful night into the
+cheerful, gladsome day. Every man that Jesus Christ conquers on the
+field He sends behind Him, and says, 'Take rank in My army. Be My
+soldier.' Every yard of line in a new railway when laid down is used to
+carry materials to make the next yard; and so the terminus is reached.
+Even so, Christian people were formed for Christ that they might show
+forth His praise.
+
+Look what a notion that gives us of the dignity of the Christian life,
+and of the special manifestation of God which is afforded to the world
+in it. You, if you love as you ought to do, are a witness of something
+far nobler in God than all the stars in the sky. You, if you set forth
+as becomes you His glorious character, have crowned the whole
+manifestation that He makes of Himself in Nature and in Providence. What
+people learn about God from a true Christian is a better revelation than
+has ever been made or can be made elsewhere. So the Bible talks about
+principalities and powers in heavenly places who have had nobody knows
+how many millenniums of intercourse with God, nobody knows how deep and
+intimate, learning from Christian people the manifold wisdom which had
+folds and folds in it that they had never unfolded and never could have
+done. 'Ye are My witnesses,' saith the Lord. Sun and stars tell of
+power, wisdom, and a whole host of majestic attributes. We are witnesses
+that 'He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He
+increaseth strength.' Who was it that said
+
+    ''Twas great to speak a world from naught,
+     'Tis greater to redeem?'
+
+'Ye are saved that ye may show forth the praise of Him who hath called
+you out of darkness into His marvellous light.'
+
+III. Lastly, we have here a piece of stringent practical direction.
+
+All that I have been saying thus far refers to the way in which the very
+fact of a man's being saved from his sin is a revelation of God's mercy,
+love, and restoring power. But there are two sides to the thought of my
+text; and the one is that the very existence of Christian people in the
+world is a standing witness to the highest glory of God's name; and the
+other is that there are characteristics which, as Christian men, we are
+bound to put forth, and which manifest in another fashion the
+excellencies of our redeeming God.
+
+The world takes its notions of God, most of all, from the people who say
+that they belong to God's family. They read us a great deal more than
+they read the Bible. They _see_ us; they only _hear_ about Jesus Christ.
+'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image' nor any likeness of
+the Divine, but thou shalt make _thyself_ an image of Him, that men
+looking at it may learn a little more of what He is. If we have any
+right to say that we are a royal priesthood, a chosen nation, God's
+'possession,' then there will be in us some likeness of Him to whom we
+belong stamped more or less perfectly upon our characters; and just as
+people cannot look at the sun, but may get some notion of its power when
+they gaze upon the rare beauty of the tinted clouds that lie round about
+it, if, in the poor, wet, cold mistiness of our lives there be caught,
+as it were, and tangled some stray beams of the sunshine, there will be
+colour and beauty there. A bit of worthless tallow may be saturated with
+a perfume which will make it worth its weight in gold. So our poor
+natures may be drenched with God and give Him forth fragrant and
+precious, and men may be drawn thereby. The witness of the life which is
+Godlike is the duty of Christian men and women in the world, and it is
+mainly what we are here for.
+
+Nor does that exclude the other kind of showing forth the praises, by
+word and utterance, at fit times and to the right people. We are not all
+capable of that, in any public fashion; we are all capable of it in some
+fashion. There is no Christian that has not somebody to whom their
+words--they may be very simple and very feeble--will come as nobody
+else's words can. Let us use these talents and these opportunities for
+the Master.
+
+But, above all, let us remember that none of these works--either the
+involuntary and unconscious exhibition of light and beauty and
+excellencies caught from Him; or the voluntary and vocal proclamations
+of the name of Him from whom we have caught them--can be done to any
+good purpose if any taint of self mingles with it. 'Let your light so
+shine before men that they may behold your good works and
+glorify'--whom? you?--'your _Father_ which is in heaven.'
+
+The harp-string gives out its note only on condition that, being
+touched, it vibrates, and ceases to be visible. Be you unseen,
+transparent, and the glory of the Lord shall shine through you.
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST THE EXEMPLAR
+
+     'For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for
+      us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His
+      steps.'--1 Peter ii. 21.
+
+
+These words are a very striking illustration of the way in which the
+Gospel brings Christ's principles to bear upon morals and duty. The
+Apostle is doing nothing more than exhorting a handful of slaves to the
+full and complete and patient acceptance of their hard lot, and in order
+to teach a very homely and lowly lesson to the squalid minds of a few
+captives, he brings in the mightiest of all lessons by pointing to the
+most beautiful, most blessed, and most mysterious fact in the world's
+history--the cross of Christ. It is the very spirit of Christianity that
+the biggest thing is to regulate the smallest duties of life. Men's
+lives are made up of two or three big things and a multitude of little
+ones, and the greater rule the lesser; and, my friends, unless we have
+got a religion and a morality that can and will keep the trifles of our
+lives right there will be nothing right; unless we can take those
+deepest truths, make them the ruling principles, and lay them down side
+by side with the most trivial things of our lives, we are something
+short. Is there nothing in your life or mine so small that we cannot
+bring it into captivity and lift it into beauty by bringing it into
+connection with saving grace? Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an
+example. This is the first thing that strikes me, and I intend it also
+by way of introduction. Look how the Apostle has put the points
+together, as though there are two aspects which go together and cannot
+be rendered apart, like the under side and the upper side of a coin.
+'Christ also suffered for us,' and so for us says all the orthodox.
+'Leaving us an example'--there protests all the heretics. Yes, but we
+know that there is a power in both of them, and the last one is only
+true when we begin with the first. He suffered for us. There, there, my
+friends, is the deepest meaning of the cross, and if you want to get
+Christ for an example, begin with taking Him as the sacrifice, for He
+gave His life for you. Don't part the two things. If you believe Him to
+be Christ, then you take Him at the cross: if you want to see the
+meaning of Christ as an example, begin with Him as your Saviour.
+'Because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye
+should follow His steps.' These are the words, and what God hath joined
+together let no man put asunder. With these few remarks I shall deal
+with the words a little more exhaustively, and I see in them three
+things--the sufferings of Christ our gain, the sufferings of Christ our
+pattern, and the suffering of Christ our power to imitate.
+
+And first of all that great proclamation which underlies the whole
+matter--Christ also suffered for us. The sufferings of Christ are
+thereby our gain. I shall not dwell on the larger questions which these
+words naturally open for us, and I shall content myself with some of the
+angles and side views of thought, and one to begin with is this: It is
+very interesting to notice how, as his life went on, and his inspiration
+became more full, this Apostle got to understand, as being the very
+living and heart centre of his religion, the thing which at first was a
+stumbling-block and mystery to him. You remember when Christ was here on
+earth, and was surrounded by all His disciples, the man who actually led
+antagonism to the thought of a saving Messiah, was this very Apostle
+Peter. How he displayed his ignorance in the words, 'This shall not be
+unto Thee, O Lord'; and you remember also how his audacity rose to the
+height of saying, 'Why cannot I follow Thee now, Lord? I will lay down
+my life for Thy sake,' so little did he understand the purposes of
+Christ's suffering and Christ's death. And even after His resurrection
+we don't find that Peter in his early preaching had got as far as he
+seems to have got in this letter from which my text is taken. You will
+notice that in this letter he speaks a great deal about the sufferings
+of Christ, which he puts side by side and in contrast with God's
+glorifying of His Son. Christ's cross, which at first had come to him as
+a rejection, has now come to him in all its reality, and to him there
+was the one grand thing, 'He suffered for us,' as though he realises
+Christ in all His beauty and purity, and not only as a beautiful teacher
+and dear friend. That which at first seemed to him as an astounding
+mystery and perfect impossibility, he now comes to understand. With
+those two little words, 'for us,' where there was before impossibility,
+disappointment, and anomaly, the anomaly vanishes, although the mystery
+becomes deeper. In one sense it was incomprehensible; in another sense
+it was the only explanation of the fact. And, my friends, I want you to
+build one thought on this. Unless you and I lay hold of the grand truth
+that Jesus Christ died for us, it seems to me that the story of the
+Gospel and the story of the cross is the saddest and most depressing
+page of human history. That there should have been a man possessed of
+such a soul, such purity, such goodness, such tenderness, such
+compassion, and such infinite mercy--if there were all this to do
+nothing but touch men's hearts and prick and irritate them into bitter
+enmity--if the cross were the world's wages to the world's best Teacher,
+and nothing more could be said, then, my friends, it seems to me that
+the hopes of humanity have, in the providence of God, suffered great
+disaster, and a terrible indictment stands against both God and man. Oh,
+yes, the death of Jesus Christ, and the whole history of the world's
+treatment of Him, is an altogether incomprehensible and miserable
+thing--a thing to be forgotten, and a thing to be wept over in tears of
+blood, and no use for us unless we do as Peter did, apply all the warmth
+of the heart to this one master key, 'for us,' and then the mystery is
+only an infinitude of love and mercy. What before we could not
+understand we now begin to see, and to understand the love of God which
+passeth all understanding. Oh, my friends, I beseech you never think of
+the cross of Christ without taking those two words. It is a necessary
+explanation to make the picture beautiful: 'for us,' 'for us'; 'for me,
+for me.' And then notice still further that throughout the whole of this
+Epistle the comparative vagueness of the words 'for me' is interpreted
+definitely. So far as the language of my text is concerned there can be
+nothing more expressive, more outspoken, or more intelligible, 'Christ
+also suffered for us,' for our realm. But that is not all that Peter
+would have us learn. If you want to know the nature of the work, and
+what the Saviour suffered on the cross for our behalf, advantage, and
+benefit, here is the definition in the following verse, 'Who His own
+self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we being dead to
+sins should live unto righteousness.' 'For us,' not merely as an
+example; 'for us,' not merely for His purity, His beautiful life and
+calm death; no, better than all that, though a glorious example it is.
+He has taken away our sins, we are sprinkled with the blood of Jesus
+Christ; 'for us' in the sense of the words in another part of the
+Epistle, 'Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with
+corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of
+Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,' and if so, we
+are living examples of what Christ our Saviour has done for the whole
+world.
+
+There is another point I want to speak about in dwelling on the first
+part of the text. If you will read this Epistle of Peter at your
+leisure, you will see that while with Paul both make the cross of Christ
+the centre of their teaching, Paul speaks more about His death, and
+Peter more about His sufferings. Throughout the letters of Peter the
+phrase runs, and the phrase has come almost entirely into modern
+Christian usage from this Apostle. Paul speaks about the death, Peter
+speaks of the sufferings. The eye-witness of a Loving Friend, the man
+who had stood by His side through much of His sufferings (though he fled
+at last), a vivid imagination of His Master's trials, and a warm heart,
+led Peter to dwell not only on the one fact of the death, but also on
+the accompaniments of that awful death, of the mental and physical pain,
+and especially the temper of the Saviour. I shall not dwell on this,
+except to make one passing remark on it, viz., that there is a kind of
+preaching which prevails among the Roman Catholic Church, and is not
+uncommon to many of the Protestant churches, which dwells unduly on the
+physical fact of Christ's death and sufferings. I think, for my part, we
+are going to the other extreme, and a great many of us are losing a very
+great source of blessing to ourselves and to those whom we influence,
+because we don't realise and don't dwell sufficiently on the physical
+and mental sorrows and agony He went through with the death on the
+cross; and one bad effect of all this is that Christ's atonement has
+become to be a kind of theological jungle, and I don't know that the
+popular mind can have in the ordinary way any better means of the
+deliverance of Christ's cross from this theological maze than a little
+more frankness and honesty in dwelling on the sorrows and pain of our
+dear Lord.
+
+Now a word about the second part. The sufferings of Christ as
+represented here in the text are not only for our gain but our pattern,
+leaving us an example that we should follow His steps. We are not
+concerned here about the general principles of Christian ethics, and I
+don't think I need dwell on them at all as being great blessings to us;
+and passing from that I would rather dwell on the one specific thought
+before us--on the beautiful life, the gracious words, the gentle deeds,
+the wisdom, the rectitude, the tenderness, the submission to the Father
+and the oblivion to Himself, which characterises the whole life of Jesus
+Christ, from the very first up to the agony on the cross. We have looked
+to Him as our gain, and as the head and beginning of our salvation, and
+now we have to turn from that mysterious and solemn thought and look to
+Him as an ideal pattern by which our life should be moulded and shaped.
+'Leaving us an example.' Just as Elijah's mantle dropped from him as he
+rose, so Christ in going up to the Father fluttered down on the world a
+pattern which He had in His sufferings. He goes away, but the pattern
+abides with us. 'Leaving us an example.' The word used here is
+translated quite correctly. The word example is a very remarkable and
+unusual one; it means literally a thing to be retained. You put a
+copyhead before a child, and tell him to copy it, and trace it over till
+he retains it; or, to come to modern English, you put the copyhead on
+the top of a page. What blots, pothooks, and angles you and I make as we
+are trying to write on the top of the page of life. See, there is the
+pattern. Lo, another man hath written above, and you are asked to make
+your life exactly the same, the same angles and the same corners--to
+make your life in all respects coincide with that. My friends, we shall
+all have to take our copybooks to the Master's desk some day. There will
+be a headline there which Christ hath written, and one which we have
+written, and how do you think we shall like to put the two side by side?
+My friends, we had better do it to-day than have to do it then. There is
+the pattern life; the copy is plain. I don't think I need say any more
+about the other metaphor contained here. The Divine Exemplar has left us
+the headline that we should follow His footsteps, and it is a blessed
+thought to know that we are to follow in His own steps. 'What, cannot I
+follow Thee now?' said Peter once, and you remember when the Apostle had
+been restored to his office, the words of the Saviour were--'Feed My
+lambs; feed My sheep; feed My lambs, follow thou Me.' This is also our
+privilege. As a guide going across a wet moor with a traveller calls
+out, 'Step where I step, or else you will be bogged,' so we must tread
+in the steps of the Saviour, and then we shall come safe on the other
+side. Tread in His steps, aye, in the steps which are marked with
+bleeding feet, for 'He suffered and left us an example.' I will just add
+one word, dear friends, to deepen the thought in its impressiveness,
+that the cross of Christ it to be the pattern of our lives. It stands
+alone, thank God, for mighty power in its relation to the salvation of
+the world, and it stands alone in awful terror. You and I are, at the
+very worst, but at the edge of the storm which broke in all its dreadful
+fury over His head; we love to go but a little way down the hillside,
+while He descended to the very bottom; we love to drink but very little
+of the cup which He drained the last drop of and held it up empty and
+reversed, showing that nothing trickled from it, and exclaimed, 'The cup
+which My Father hath given Me have I drunk.' But although alone in all
+its mighty power, and though alone in all its awful terror, it may be
+copied by us in two things--perfect submission to our Maker, and
+non-resistance and meekness with regard to man. There is only one way of
+carrying the cross of Christ, which God lays on us all, and that is
+bowing our back. If we resist, it will crush us, and if we yield we have
+something to endure; and there is but one thing which enables a man to
+patiently bear the sorrows and griefs which come to us all, and that is
+the simple secret, 'Father, not as I will, but Thy will be done.' Christ
+suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in His
+footsteps, and when we patiently do this the rod becomes a guiding
+staff, and the crown of thorns a crown of glory.
+
+But my text reminds me that the sufferings of Christ are not only our
+gain and our pattern, but they are also our power to imitate--the power
+to fight the battle for Christ. Example is not all. The world wants more
+than that. The reason for men's badness is not because they have not
+plenty of patterns of good. If a copyhead could save the world it would
+have been saved long ago. Patterns of good are plenty; the mischief is
+we don't copy them. There are footsteps in abundance, but then our legs
+are lame, and we cannot tread in them, and what is the use of copies if
+we have a broken pen, muddy ink, and soiled paper? So we want a great
+deal more than that. No, my friends, the world is not to be saved by
+example. You and I know that the weakness and the foolishness of men
+know a great deal better than the wisest of men ever did, so we want
+something more. Examples don't give the power nor the wish to get it. Is
+not that true about you? Don't you feel that if this is all which
+religion has given you it stops short? The gospel comes and says, 'If
+you love Christ Jesus because you know that He died for you,' then there
+will be something else than the copybook. That copy and pattern will be
+laid to your heart and transferred there. You will not have to go on
+trying to make a bungling imitation; you will get it photographed on
+your spirit, and on your character more distinctly and more clearly down
+to the very minutest shade of resemblance to the Master, and with simple
+loving trust you will go on from strength to strength glorifying God in
+your life. They that begin with the cross of Christ, and make the
+sacrifice their all in all, will advance heavenward joyously; the cross
+and the sacrifice will be the pattern of your pilgrimage here, and the
+perfectness of your characters unto the likeness of the Son. The cross
+is the agency of sanctification as well as the means of
+forgiveness--saving grace to save us from the world, saving grace to
+help us everywhere and in everything for our salvation, and saving grace
+to help us to conquer our self-will, and saving grace to bind us to Him,
+whose abundant goodness and gratitude no man can tell. If we love Him we
+shall keep His commandments; if we love them we shall grow in grace, and
+not else. None else, my brother, my sister, but the Eternal Exemplar
+stands there as our refuge; and if you want to be filled with this
+all-saving grace, deep down to the bottom of His tender heart, if you
+want to be good, and of pure mind, then you have to begin with that
+Saviour who died for you, and trust to the cross for your forgiveness.
+Then listen to Him saying, 'Any man who comes after Me, let him take up
+My cross'--take it up, mark--'and follow Me.'
+
+
+
+
+HALLOWING CHRIST
+
+     'Be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; but sanctify
+      the Lord God in your hearts.'--1 Peter iii. 14, 15.
+
+
+These words are a quotation from the prophet Isaiah, with some very
+significant variations. As originally spoken, they come from a period of
+the prophet's life when he was surrounded by conspirators against him,
+eager to destroy, and when he had been giving utterance to threatening
+prophecies as to the coming up of the King of Assyria, and the voice of
+God encouraged him and his disciples with the ringing words: 'Fear not
+their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of Hosts Himself, and let
+Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread, and He shall be for a
+sanctuary.' Peter was in similar circumstances. The gathering storm of
+persecution of the Christians as Christians seems to have been rising on
+his horizon, and he turns to his brethren, and commends to them the old
+word which long ago had been spoken to and by the prophet. But the
+variations are very remarkable. The Revised Version correctly reads my
+text thus: 'Fear not their fear, neither be troubled, but sanctify in
+your hearts Christ as Lord.'
+
+I. We have first to note the substitution, as a matter of course,
+without any need for explanation or vindication, of Jesus Christ in
+place of the Jehovah of the Old Testament.
+
+There is no doubt that the reading adopted in the Revised Version is the
+true one, as attested by weighty evidence in the manuscripts, and in
+itself more probable by reason of its very difficulty. The other reading
+adopted in Authorised Versions is likely to have arisen from a marginal
+note which crept into the text, and was due to some copyist who was
+struck by Peter's free handling of the passage, and wished to make the
+quotations verbally accurate.
+
+Now, if we think for a moment of the Jew's reverence for the letter of
+Scripture, and then think again of the Jew's intense monotheism and
+dread of putting any creature into the place of God, we shall understand
+how saturated with the belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and how
+convinced that it was the vital centre of all Christian teaching, this
+Apostle must have been when, without a word of explanation, he took his
+pen, and, as it were, drew it through 'Lord God' in Isaiah's words, and
+wrote in capitals over it, 'Christ as Lord.'
+
+What does that mean? Some of us would, perhaps, hesitate to say that it
+means that He who was all through the growing ages of brightening
+revelation of old, named 'Jehovah,' is now named Jesus Christ. I believe
+that from the beginning He whom we call, according to the teaching of
+the great prologue of John's Gospel, the 'Word of God,' was the Agent of
+all Divine revelation. But whether that be so or no, whether we have the
+right to say that the same Person who was revealed as 'Jehovah' is now
+revealed as 'Jesus Christ,' the 'Word made flesh,' or no, we distinctly
+fail to apprehend who and what Jesus Christ was to the writer of this
+epistle, and fail to sanctify Him in our hearts, unless we say: 'To Thee
+belongeth all that belongs to God.' That is the first great truth that
+comes out of these words, and I would commend it to any of you who may
+be hesitating about that Christian fact of the true divinity of Jesus
+Christ. You cannot strike it out of the New Testament, and if you try to
+do so you tear the book to pieces, and reduce it to rags and tatters.
+
+Further, mark here what the Apostle means by the Christian sanctifying
+of Christ.
+
+That is a strange expression. How am I to sanctify Jesus Christ? Well,
+it is the same word that is used in the Lord's Prayer, and perhaps its
+use there may throw light on Peter's meaning here. 'Hallowed be Thy
+name'--explains the meaning of _hallowing_ Christ as Lord in our hearts.
+We sanctify or hallow one who is holy already, when we recognise the
+holiness, and honour what we recognise. So that the plain meaning of the
+commandments here is: set Christ in your hearts on the pedestal and
+pinnacle that belongs to Him, and then bow down before Him with all
+reverence and submission. Be sure that you give Him all that is His
+due, and in the love of your hearts, as well as in the thinkings of your
+minds, recognise Him for what He is, the Lord. Let us take care that our
+thoughts about Jesus Christ are full of devout awe and reverence. I
+venture to think that a great deal of modern and sentimental
+Christianity is very defective in this respect. You cannot love Jesus
+Christ too much, but you can love Him with too little reverence. And if
+you take up some of our luscious modern hymns that people are so fond of
+singing, I think you will find in them a twang of unwholesomeness, just
+because the love is not reverent enough, and the approaching confidence
+has not enough of devout awe in it. This generation looks at the half of
+Christ. When people are suffering from indigestion, they can only see
+half of the thing that they look at, and there are many of us that can
+only see a part of the whole Christ: and so, forgetting that He is
+judge, and forgetting that He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and
+forgetting that whilst He is manifested in the flesh our brother He is
+also _God_ manifest in the flesh, our Creator as well as our Redeemer,
+and our Judge as well as our Saviour, some do not enough hallow Him in
+their hearts as Lord.
+
+Peter had heard Jesus say that 'all men should honour the Son as they
+honoured the Father.' I beseech you, embrace the whole Christ, and see
+to it that you do not dethrone Him from His rightful place, or take from
+Him the glory that is due to His name. For your love will suffer, and
+become a mere sentiment, inoperative and sometimes unwholesome, unless
+you keep in mind Peter's injunction.
+
+But, further, there is included in this commandment, not only what
+Isaiah said, 'Let Him be your fear and your dread,' but also a reverent
+love and trust. For we do not hallow Christ as we ought, unless we
+absolutely confide in every word of His lips. Did you ever think that
+not to trust Jesus Christ is to blaspheme and profane that holy name by
+which we are called; and that to hallow Him means to say to Him, 'I
+believe every word that Thou speakest, and I am ready to risk my life
+upon Thy veracity'? Distrust is dishonouring the Master, and taking from
+Him the glory that is due unto His name.
+
+Then there is another point to be noted: 'Sanctify in your hearts Christ
+as Lord.' That is Peter's addition to Isaiah's words, and it is not a
+mere piece of tautology, but puts great emphasis into the exhortation.
+What is a man's heart, in New Testament and Old Testament language? It
+is the very centre-point of the personal self. And when Peter says,
+'Hallow Him in your hearts,' he means that, deep down in the very midst
+of your personal being, as it were, there should be, fundamental to all,
+and interior to all, this reverential awe and absolute trust in Jesus
+Christ--an habitual thought, a central emotion, an all-dominant impulse.
+'Out of the heart are the issues of life.' Put the healing agent into
+it, the fountain-head, and all the streams that pour out thence will be
+purified and sweetened. Deep in the heart put Christ, and life will be
+pure.
+
+Now, in another part of this letter the Apostle says, 'Ye are a
+spiritual house.' I think some notion of the same sort is running in his
+mind here. He thinks of each man's heart as being a shrine in which the
+god is enthroned, and in which worship is rendered. And if we have
+Christ in our hearts, then our hearts are temples; and if we 'hallow'
+the Christ that dwells within us, we shall take care that there are no
+foul things in that sanctuary. We dishonour the indwelling Deity when
+into that same heart we allow to come lusts, foulnesses, meannesses,
+worldlinesses, passions, sins, and all the crew of reptiles and wild
+beasts that we sometimes admit there. If we hallow Christ in our hearts,
+in any true fashion, He will turn out the money-changers and overturn
+the tables. And if we desire to hallow Him in our hearts, we too, must
+by His Spirit's help, purge the temple that He may enter and abide.
+
+And so I come to the next point, and that is the Christian courage and
+calmness that ensue from hallowing Christ in the heart.
+
+The Apostle first puts his exhortation: 'Be not afraid of their terror,
+neither be troubled,' and then he presents us an opposite injunction,
+obedience to which is the only means of obeying the first exhortation.
+If you do not sanctify Christ in your hearts, you cannot help being
+afraid of their terror, and troubled. If you do, then there is no fear
+that you will fall into that snare. That is to say, the one thing that
+delivers men from the fears that make cowards of us all is to have
+Christ lodged within our hearts. Sunshine puts out culinary fires. They
+who have the awe and the reverent love that knit them to Jesus Christ,
+and who carry Him within their hearts, have no need to be afraid of
+anything besides. Only he who can say, 'The Lord is the strength of my
+life' can go on to say, 'Of whom shall I be afraid?' There is nothing
+more hopeless than to address to men, ringed about with dangers, the
+foolish exhortations: 'Cheer up! do not be frightened,' unless you can
+tell them some reason for not being frightened. And the one reason that
+will carry weight with it, in all circumstances, is the presence of
+Jesus.
+
+    'With Christ in the vessel
+     I smile at the storm.'
+
+The world comes to us and says: 'Do not be afraid, do not be afraid; be
+of good courage; pluck up your heart, man.' The Apostle comes and says:
+'Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts; and then, and only then, will
+you be bold.' The boldness which fronts the certain dangers and
+calamities and the possible dangers and calamities of this life, without
+Christ, is not boldness, but foolhardiness. 'The simple passeth on, and
+is punished,' says the book of Proverbs. It is easy to whistle when
+going through the churchyard, and to say, 'Who's afraid?' But the ghosts
+rise all the same, and there is only one thing that lays them, and that
+is--the present Christ.
+
+In like manner the sanctifying of Jesus Christ in the heart is the
+secret of calmness. 'Fear not their fear, neither be troubled.' I wonder
+if Peter was thinking at all of another saying: 'Let not your heart be
+troubled; neither let it be afraid.' Perhaps he was. At any rate, his
+thought is parallel with our Lord's when He said, 'Let not your heart be
+troubled. Believe in God, and believe in Me.' The two alternatives are
+possible; we shall have either troubled hearts, or hearts calmed by
+faith in Christ. The ships behind the breakwater do not pitch and toss.
+The little town up amongst the hills, with the high cliffs around it,
+lies quiet, and 'hears not the loud winds when they call.' And the heart
+that has Christ for its possession has a secret peace, whatever strife
+may be raging round it.
+
+'Be not troubled; sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.' Peter leaves
+out a clause of Isaiah's, though he conveys the idea without reiterating
+the words. But Isaiah had added a sweet promise which means much the
+same thing as I have now been saying, when he went on to declare that to
+those who sanctify the Lord God in their hearts, He shall be for a
+sanctuary. 'The sanctuary was an asylum where men were safe. And if we
+have made our hearts temples in which Christ is honoured, worshipped,
+and trusted, then we shall dwell in Him as in the secret place of the
+Most High'; and in the inner chamber of the Temple it will be quiet,
+whatever noises are in the camp, and there is light coming from the
+Shekinah, whatever darkness may lie around. If we take Christ into our
+hearts, and reverence and love Him there, He will take us into His
+heart, and we shall dwell in peace, because we dwell in Him.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM
+
+     'Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm
+      yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered
+      in the flesh hath ceased from sin. 2. That he no longer should live
+      the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the
+      will of God. 3. For the time past of our life may suffice us to
+      have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in
+      lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and
+      abominable idolatries: 4. Wherein they think it strange that ye run
+      not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: 5.
+      Who shall give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and
+      the dead. 6. For, for this cause was the gospel preached also to
+      them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in
+      the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. 7. But the end
+      of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto
+      prayer. 8. And, above all things, have fervent charity among
+      yourselves; for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.'--1 Peter
+      iv. 1-8.
+
+
+Christian morality brought two new things into the world--a new type of
+life in sharp contrast with the sensuality rife on every side, and a new
+set of motives powerfully aiding in its realisation. Both these
+novelties are presented in this passage, which insists on a life in
+which the spirit dominates the flesh, and is dominated by the will of
+God, and which puts forward purely Christian ideas as containing the
+motives for such a life. The facts of Christ's life and the prospect of
+Christ's return to judge the world are here urged as the reason for
+living a life of austere repression of 'the flesh' that we may do God's
+will.
+
+I. We have, first, in verses 1 and 2, a general precept, based upon the
+broad view of Christ's earthly history. 'Christ hath suffered in the
+flesh.' That is the great fact which should shape the course of all His
+followers. But what does suffering in the flesh mean here? It does not
+refer only to the death of Jesus, but to His whole life. The phrase 'in
+the flesh' is reiterated in the context, and evidently is equivalent to
+'during the earthly life.' Our Lord's life was, in one aspect, one
+continuous suffering, because He lived the higher life of the spirit.
+That higher life had to Him, and has to us, rich compensations; but it
+sets those who are true to it at necessary variance with the lower types
+of life common among men, and it brings many pains, all of which Jesus
+knew. The last draught from the cup was the bitterest, but the
+bitterness was diffused through all the life of the Man of Sorrows.
+
+That life is here contemplated as the pattern for all Christ's servants.
+Peter says much in this letter of our Lord's sufferings as the atonement
+for sin, but here he looks at them rather as the realised ideal of all
+worthy life. We are to be 'partakers of Christ's sufferings' (v. 13),
+and we shall become so in proportion as His own Spirit becomes the
+spirit which lives in us. If Jesus were only our pattern, Christianity
+would be a poor affair, and a gospel of despair; for how should we
+reach to the pure heights where He stood? But, since He can breathe
+into us a spirit which will hallow and energise our spirits, we can rise
+to walk beside Him on the high places of heroic endurance and of holy
+living. Very beautifully does Peter hint at our sore conflict, our
+personal defencelessness, and our all-sufficient armour, in the
+picturesque metaphor 'arm yourselves.' The 'mind of Christ' is given to
+us if we will. We can gird it on, and if we do, it will be as an
+impenetrable coat-of-mail, which will turn the sharpest arrows and
+resist the fiercest sword-cuts.
+
+The last clause of verse 1 is a parenthesis, and, if it is for the
+moment omitted, the sentence runs smoothly on, especially if the Revised
+Version's reading is adopted. The purpose of arming us with the same
+mind is that, whilst we live on earth, we should live according to the
+will of God, and should renounce 'the lusts of men,' which are in us as
+in all men, and which men who are not clad in the armour which Christ
+gives to us yield to.
+
+But what of the parenthetical statement? Clearly, the words which follow
+it forbid its being taken to mean that dead men do not sin. Rather the
+Apostle's thought seems to be that such suffering in daily life after
+Christ's pattern, and by His help, is at once a sign that the sufferer
+has shaken off the dominion of sin, and is a means of further
+emancipating him from it.
+
+But the two great thoughts in this paragraph are, that the Christian
+life is one in which God's will, and not man's desires, is the
+regulating force, and that the pattern of that life and the power to
+copy the pattern are found in Christ, the sufferer for righteousness'
+sake.
+
+II. More specific injunctions, entering into the details of the higher
+life, follow, interwoven, as in the preceding verses, with a statement
+of the motives which make obedience to them possible to our weakness.
+The sins in view are those most closely connected with 'the flesh' in
+its literal meaning, amongst which are included 'abominable idolatries,'
+because gross acts of sensual immorality were inseparably intertwined
+with much of heathen worship. These sins of flesh were especially
+rampant among the luxurious Asiatic lands, to which this letter was
+addressed, but they flooded the whole Roman empire, as the works of
+poets like Martial and of moralists like Epictetus equally show. But New
+York or London could match the worst scenes in Rome or Ephesus, and
+perhaps would not be far behind the foul animalism of Sodom and
+Gomorrah. Lust and drunkenness are eating out the manhood of our race on
+both sides of the Atlantic, and, if we have 'the same mind' as the
+suffering Christ, we shall put on the armour for war to the knife with
+these in society, and for the rigid self-control of our own animal
+nature.
+
+Observe the strong motives which Peter just touches without expanding. A
+sad irony lies in his saying that the time past may suffice. The flesh
+had had enough of time given to it,--had not God a right to the rest?
+The flesh should have had none; it had had all too much. Surely the
+readers had had enough of the lower life, more than enough. Were they
+not sick of it, 'satisfied' even to disgust? Let us look back on our
+wasted years, and give no more precious moments to serve the corruptible
+flesh. Further, the life of submission to the animal nature is
+characteristic of 'the Gentiles,' and in sharp contrast, therefore, to
+that proper to Christ's followers. That is as true to-day, in America
+and England, as ever it was. Indeed, as wealth has increased, and
+so-called 'civilisation' has diffused material comforts, senseless
+luxury, gluttony, drunkenness, and still baser fleshy sins, have become
+more flagrantly common in society which is not distinctively and
+earnestly Christian; and there was never more need than there is to-day
+for Christians to carry aloft the flag of self-control and temperance in
+all things belonging to 'the flesh.'
+
+If we have the mind of Christ, we shall get the same treatment from the
+world which Peter says that the primitive Christians did from the
+idolaters round them. We shall be wondered at, just as a heathen stared
+with astonishment at this strange, new sect, which would have nothing to
+do with feasts and garlands and wine-cups and lust disguised as worship.
+The spectacle, when repeated to-day, of Christians steadfastly refusing
+to share in that lower life which is the only life of so many, is,
+perhaps, less wondered at now, because it is, thank God! more familiar;
+but it is not less disliked and 'blasphemed.' A total abstainer from
+intoxicants will not get the good word of the distiller or brewer or
+consumer of liquor. He will be called faddist, narrow, sour-visaged, and
+so on and so on. 'You may know a genius because all the dunces make
+common cause against him,' said Swift. You may know a Christian after
+Christ's pattern because all the children of the flesh are in league to
+laugh at him and pelt him with nicknames.
+
+Further, the thought of Christ as the judge should both silence the
+blasphemers and strengthen the blasphemed to endure. That judgment will
+vindicate the wisdom of those who sowed to the spirit and the folly of
+those who sowed to the flesh. The one will reap corruption; the other,
+life everlasting.
+
+The difficult verse 6 cannot be adequately dealt with here, but we may
+note that introductory 'for' shows that it, too, contains a motive
+urging to life, 'to the will of God,' and that no such motive appears in
+it if it is taken to mean, as by some, that the gospel is preached after
+death to the dead. Surely to say that 'the gospel was preached also (or,
+even) to them that are dead' is not to say that it was preached to them
+when dead.
+
+Peter's letter is of late enough date to explain his looking back to a
+generation now passed away, who had heard it in their lifetime. Nor does
+one see how the meaning of 'in the flesh,' which belongs to the phrase
+in the frequent instances of its occurrence in this context, can be
+preserved in the clause 'that they might be judged according to men in
+the flesh,' unless that means a judgment which takes place during the
+earthly life.
+
+We note, too, that the antithesis between being judged 'according to men
+in the flesh,' and living 'according to God in the spirit' recalls that
+in verse 2 between living in the flesh to the lusts of men and to the
+will of God. It would appear, therefore, that the Apostle's meaning is
+that the very aim of the preaching of the gospel to those who are gone
+to meet the Judge was that they might by it be judged while here in the
+flesh, in regard to the lower life 'according to men' (or, as verse 2
+has it, 'to the lusts of men'), and, being so judged, and sin condemned
+in their flesh, might live according to God in their spirits. That is
+but to say in other words that the gospel is meant to search hearts, and
+bring to light and condemn the lusts of the flesh, and to impart the new
+life which is moulded after the will of God.
+
+III. The reference to Christ as the judge suggests a final motive for a
+life of suppression of the lower nature,--the near approach of the end
+of all things. The distinct statement by our Lord in Acts i. 7 excludes
+the knowledge of the time of the end from the revelation granted to the
+Apostles, so that there need be no hesitation in upholding their
+authority, and yet admitting their liability to mistake on that point.
+But the force of the motive is independent of the proximity of the
+judgment. Its certainty and the indefiniteness of the time when we each
+shall have to pass into the other state of being are sufficient to
+preserve for each of us the whole pressure of the solemn thought that
+for us the end is at hand, and to enforce thereby Peter's exhortation,
+'Be ye therefore of sound mind.'
+
+The prospect of that end will sweep away many illusions as to the worth
+of the enjoyments of sense, and be a bridle on many vagrant desires.
+Self-control in all regions of our nature is implied in the word. Our
+various faculties are meant to be governed by a sovereign will, which is
+itself governed by the Divine will; and, if we see plain before us the
+dawning of the day of the Lord, the vision will help to tame the
+subordinate parts of ourselves, and to establish the supremacy of the
+spirit over the flesh. One special form of that general self-control is
+that already enjoined,--the suppression of the animal appetites,
+especially the abstinence from intoxicants. That form of self-control is
+especially meant by the second of these exhortations, 'Be sober.' How
+could a man lift the wine cup to his lips, and drown his higher nature
+in a flood of drunken riot, if the end, with its solemnities of
+judgment, blazed before his inner eye? But this self-command is
+inculcated that we may be fit to pray. These lower appetites will take
+all desire for prayer and all earnestness in it out of us, and only
+when we keep the wings of appetites close clipped will the pinions grow
+by which we can mount up with wings as eagles. A praying drunkard is an
+impossible monster.
+
+But exhortations to self-control are not all. We have to think of
+others, as well as of our own growth in purity and spirituality.
+Therefore Peter casts one swift glance to the wider circle of the
+brethren, which encompasses each of us, and gives the all-embracing
+direction, which carries in itself everything. 'Fervent love' to our
+fellow-Christians is the counterpoise to earnest government of
+ourselves. There is a selfishness possible even in cultivating our
+religion, as many a monk and recluse has shown. Such love as Peter here
+enjoins will save us from the possible evils of self-regard, and it will
+'cover the multitude of sins,'--by which is not meant that, having it,
+we shall be excused if we in other respects sin, but that, having it, we
+shall be more desirous of veiling than of exposing our brother's faults,
+and shall be ready to forgive even when our brother offends against us
+often. Perhaps Peter was remembering the lesson which he had once had
+when he was told that 'seventy times seven' was not too great a
+multitude of sins against brotherly love to be forgiven by it in one
+day.
+
+
+
+
+THE SLAVE'S GIRDLE
+
+     '... Be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and
+      giveth grace to the humble.'--1 Peter v. 5.
+
+
+The Apostle uses here an expression of a remarkable kind, and which
+never occurs again in Scripture. The word rendered in the Authorised
+Version 'be clothed,' or better in the Revised Version, 'gird yourselves
+with,' really implies a little more than either of those renderings
+suggests. It describes a kind of garment as well as the act of putting
+it on, and the sort of garment which it describes was a remarkable one.
+It was a part of a slave's uniform. Some scholars think that it was a
+kind of white apron, or overall, or something of that sort; others think
+that it was simply a scarf or girdle; but, at all events, it was a
+distinguishing mark of a slave, and he put it on when he meant work.
+And, says Peter, 'Do you strap round you the slave's apron, and do it
+for the same reason that He did it, to serve.'
+
+So, then, there are three points in my text, and the first is what we
+have to wear; second, what we have to wear it for; and, third, why we
+should wear it.
+
+I. What we have to wear.
+
+'Gird yourselves with the slave's apron of humility.' Humility does not
+consist in being, or pretending to be, blind to one's strong points.
+There is no humility in a man denying that he can do certain things if
+he can do them, or even refusing to believe he can do them well, if God
+has given him special faculties in any given direction. That is not
+humility at all. But to know whence all my strength comes, and to know
+what a little thing it is, after all; not to estimate myself highly,
+and, still further, not to be always insisting upon other people
+estimating me highly, and to think a great deal more about their claims
+on me than fretfully to insist upon my due modicum of respect and
+attention from others, that is the sort of temper that Peter means here.
+
+Now, that temper which may recognise fully any gift that God has given
+me, its sweep and degree, but that nevertheless takes a true, because a
+lowly, measure of myself, and does not always demand from other people
+their regard and assistance, that temper is a thing that we can
+cultivate. We can increase it, and we are all bound to try specifically
+and directly to do so. Now, I believe that a great part of the feeble
+and unprogressive character of so many Christian people amongst us is
+due to this, that they do not definitely steady their thoughts and focus
+them on the purpose of finding out the weak points to which special
+attention and discipline should be directed. It is a very easy thing to
+say, 'Oh, I am a poor, weak, sinful creature!' It would do you a great
+deal more good to say, 'I am a very passionate one, and my business is
+to control that quick temper of mine,' or, 'I am a great deal too much
+disposed to run after worldly advantage, and my business is to subdue
+that,' or, 'I am afraid I am rather too close-fisted, and I ought to
+crucify myself into liberality.' It would be a great deal better, I say,
+to apply the general confession to specific cases, and to set ourselves
+to cultivate individual types of goodness, as well as to seek to be
+filled with the all-comprehensive root of it all, which lies in union
+with Jesus Christ. We have often to preach, dear brethren, that the way
+of self-improvement is not by hammering at ourselves, but by letting God
+mould us, and to keep the balance right. We have also to insist upon the
+other side of the truth, and to press the complementary thought that
+specific efforts after the cultivation of specific virtues and all the
+more if they are virtues that are not natural to us, for the gospel is
+given to us to mend our natural tempers--is the duty of all Christian
+people that would seek to live as Christ would have them.
+
+And how is this to be done? How am I to gird upon myself and to keep--if
+I may transpose the metaphor into the key of modern English--tightly
+buckled around me this belt which may hold in place a number of fine
+articles of clothing?
+
+Well, there are three things, I think, that we may profitably do. Go
+down deep enough into yourself if you want to cure a lofty estimate of
+yourself. The top storeys may be beautifully furnished, but there are
+some ugly things and rubbish down in the cellar. There is not one of us
+but, if we honestly let the dredge down into the depths, as far down as
+the _Challenger's_ went, miles and miles down, will bring up a pretty
+collection of wriggling monstrosities that never have been in the
+daylight before, and are ugly enough to be always shrouded in their
+native darkness. Down in us all, if we will go deep enough, and take
+with us a light bright enough, we shall discover enough to make anything
+but humility ridiculous, if it were not wicked. And the only right place
+and attitude for a man who knows himself down to the roots of his being
+is the publican's when 'he stood afar off, and would not so much as lift
+up his eyes to heaven, and said, God be merciful to me a sinner.' Ah,
+dear friends, it will put an end to any undue exaltation of ourselves if
+we know ourselves as we are.
+
+Further, let us try to cultivate this temper, by looking at God, and
+having communion with Him. Think of Him as the Giver of anything in us
+that is good, and that annihilates our pride. Think of Jesus as our
+pattern; how that kills our satisfaction in little excellences! If you
+get high enough up the mountainside, the undulating country which when
+you were down amongst the knolls showed all variations of level, and
+where he who lived on the top of one little mound thought himself in a
+fine, airy situation as compared with his neighbour down in the close
+valley, is smoothed down, and brought to one uniform level; and from
+the hilltop the rolling land is a plateau.
+
+I have heard of a child who, when she was told that the sun was
+ninety-five millions of miles off, asked if that was from the top or the
+bottom storey of the house! There is about as much difference between
+the great men and the little, between heroes and the unknown men, as
+measured against the distance to God, as there is difference in the
+distance to the sun from the slates and from the cellar. Let us live
+near God, and so aspiration will come in the place of satisfaction, and
+the unattained will gleam before us, and beckon us not in vain, and the
+man that sees what an infinite stretch there is before him will be
+delivered from the temptations of self-conceit, and will say, 'Not as
+though I had already attained, either were already perfected, but I
+follow after.'
+
+But there is another advice to be given--cultivate the habit of thinking
+about other people, their excellences, their claims on you. To be always
+trying to get a footing in a social grade above our own is a poor
+effort, but there is a sense in which it is good advice--live with your
+_betters_. We can all do that. A man writes a bit of a book, preaches a
+sermon, makes a speech--all the newspapers pat him on the back, and say
+what a clever fellow he is. But let him steep his mind and his heart in
+the great works of the _great_ men, and he finds out what a poor little
+dwarf he is by the side of them. And so all round the circle. Live with
+bigger men, not with little ones. And learn to discount--and you may
+take a very liberal discount off--either the praises or the censures of
+the people round you. Let us rather say, 'With me it is a very small
+matter to be judged of man's judgment. He that judgeth me is the Lord.'
+
+There are plenty of hands, foremost among them a black one that is not
+so much a hand as a claw, ready to snatch the girdle of humility off
+you! Buckle it tight about you, brother; and in an immovable temper of
+lowly estimate of yourself live and work.
+
+II. The second thought here is, What we are to wear the apron or girdle
+for?
+
+The Revised Version makes a little alteration in the reading as well as
+in the translation of our text, the previous words to which, in the
+Authorised Version stand, 'Yea, all of you be subject one to another.'
+There is another reading which strikes out that clause, and adds a
+portion of it to the first part of my text, which then runs thus: 'Yea,
+all of you gird yourselves with humility to serve one another.' That is
+what Christian humility is for. The slave put on his garment, whatever
+it was, when he had work to do.
+
+But perhaps there is a deeper thought here. I wonder if it is fanciful
+to see in the text one of the very numerous allusions in this epistle to
+the events in our Lord's Passion. You remember that Jesus laid aside His
+garments, and took a towel, and girded Himself, and washed the
+disciples' feet, and then said, 'The servant is not above His master. I
+have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.'
+Probably, I think, there floated before the memory of the man who had
+said, 'Lord, Thou shalt never wash my feet,' and then, with the swift
+recoil to the opposite pole which makes us love Him so much, hurried to
+say, 'Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head'--some
+reminiscence of that upper chamber, and of how the Master had girded
+Himself with the slave's apron, or towel, in order that He might serve
+the disciples; and then had told them that that was the pattern for all
+Christian men, and for all Christian living till the very end.
+
+Service coming from humility, and humility manifested in service, are
+the requirements laid down in the text. Humility is the preparation for
+service; and service is the test of humility. If a man does not feel
+himself to be needy and low, he will never be able, and he will never be
+willing, to help those that are. You must go down if you would lift up.
+Laces and velvets and the fine feathers that the peacocks of
+self-conceit in this world strut about in are terribly in the way of
+Christian work. Rough work needs rough dress; and the only garb in which
+we shall be able to do the deeds of self-sacrifice that are needed in
+order to help our brethren is humility, the preparation for all service.
+
+But, further, service is the test of humility. Plenty of people will
+say, 'I know that I have nothing to boast of,' and so forth; but they
+never do any work. And there is a still more spurious kind of humility,
+that of a great many professing Christians (I wonder of how many of us)
+who, when we ask them for any kind of Christian service, say, 'I do not
+feel myself at all competent. I am sure I could not take a class in the
+Sunday School. I do not feel sufficiently master of the subject. I
+cannot talk. I have no facilities for influencing other people,' and so
+on. Too many of us are very humble when there is anything to be done,
+and never at any other time as far as anybody can see; and that sort of
+humility the Apostle does not commend. It is unfortunately very frequent
+amongst professing Christians. Christian humility is not particular
+about the sort of work it does for Jesus. Never mind whether you are on
+the quarter-deck, with gold lace on your coat and epaulettes on your
+shoulders as an officer, or whether you are a cabin-boy doing the
+humblest duties, or a stoker working away down fifty feet below
+daylight. As long as the work is done for the great Admiral, that is
+enough; and whoever does any work for Him will never want for a reward.
+There are some of us who like to be officers, but do not like carrying a
+musket in the ranks. Humility is the preparation for service, and
+service is the test of humility.
+
+III. Lastly, why we should wear this girdle.
+
+There is one reason given in my text, which Peter quotes from the Old
+Testament. 'God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.'
+That is often true even in regard to outward life. Providence and man
+often seem to be in league together to lift up the lowly ones and thwart
+the proud. If a man walks with his head very high, in this low-roofed
+world, he is pretty sure to get it knocked against the rafters before he
+has done. But it is the spiritual region that the Apostle is thinking
+about, in which the one condition of receiving God's grace is a lowly
+sense of my own character and nature, which is conscious of sin and
+weakness, and waits before Him. And the one condition of not receiving
+any of that grace is to keep a stiff upper lip and a high head. If I
+think that I am rich, 'and increased with goods, and have need of
+nothing,' that 'nothing' is exactly what I shall get from God, and if I
+have need of everything, and know that I have, that 'everything' is what
+I shall get from Him. 'He resisteth the proud, and He giveth grace to
+the humble.' On the high barren mountain-tops the dew and the rain slide
+off and find their way down to the lowly valleys, where they run as
+fertilising rivers. And the man that is humble and of a contrite heart,
+'with that man will I dwell, saith the Lord.' If we gird ourselves with
+the slave's dress of humility, then we shall one day have to say, 'My
+soul shall rejoice in the Lord, for He hath clothed me with the garments
+of salvation; and He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness; as
+a bridegroom decketh himself with his ornaments, and as a bride adorneth
+herself with her jewels.'
+
+
+
+
+SYLVANUS
+
+     'By Sylvanus, our faithful brother, as I account him, I have
+      written unto you briefly.'--1 Peter v. 12 (R.V).
+
+
+I adopt the Revised Version because, in one or two small points, it
+brings out more clearly the Apostle's meaning. This Sylvanus is, beyond
+all reasonable doubt, the same man who is known to us in the Acts of the
+Apostles by the name of Silas. A double name was very common amongst
+Jews, whose avocations brought them into close connection with Gentiles.
+You will find other instances of it amongst the Apostles: in _Paul_
+himself, whose Hebrew name was _Saul_; _Simon_ and _Peter_; and probably
+in _Bartholomew_ and _Nathanael_. And there is no reasonable doubt that
+a careful examination of the various places in which Silas and Sylvanus
+are mentioned shows that they were borne by one person.
+
+Now let me put together the little that we know about this man, because
+it will help us to some lessons. He was one of the chief men in the
+church at Jerusalem when the dispute arose about the necessity for
+circumcision for the Gentile Christians. He was despatched to Antioch
+with the message of peace and good feeling which the church at Jerusalem
+wisely sent forth to heal the strife. He remained in Antioch, although
+his co-deputy went back to Jerusalem; and the attraction of Paul--the
+great mass of that star--drew this lesser light into becoming a
+satellite, moving round the greater orb. So, when the unfortunate
+quarrel broke out between Paul and Barnabas, and the latter went sulkily
+away by himself with his dear John Mark, without his brethren's
+blessing, Paul chose Silas and set out upon his first missionary tour.
+He was Paul's companion in the prison and stripes at Philippi, and in
+the troubles at Thessalonica; and, though they were parted for a little
+while, he rejoined the Apostle in the city of Corinth. From thence Paul
+wrote the two letters to the Thessalonians, both of which are sent in
+the name of himself and Silas or Sylvanus. There is one more reference
+to Sylvanus in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, which mentions him
+as having been associated with Paul in the evangelisation of the church
+there.
+
+Then he drops out of the book altogether, and we never hear anything
+more about him, except this one passing reference, which shows us to him
+in an altogether new relation. He is no longer attached to Paul, but to
+Peter. Paul was probably either in prison, or, possibly, martyred. At
+all events, Sylvanus now stood to Peter in a relationship similar to
+that in which he formerly stood to Paul. He was evidently acquainted
+with and known to the churches to whom this letter was addressed, and,
+therefore, is chosen to carry Peter's message to them.
+
+Now I would suggest, in passing, how Sylvanus' relations to the two
+Apostles throws light upon the perfectly cordial alliance between them,
+and how it shatters into fragments the theory which was thought to be
+such a wonderful discovery some years ago, as to the 'great schism' in
+the early church between one section, led by Peter, and the more liberal
+party, headed by Paul. Instead of that, we find the two men working
+together, and the only division between them was not as to the sort of
+gospel they preached, but as to the people to whom they preached. This
+little incident helps us to realise how natural it was for a man steeped
+in Paul's teaching to attach himself, if circumstances suggested it, to
+the person who has been said to have been antagonistic in the whole
+drift of his conceptions of Christianity to that Apostle.
+
+But I do not wish to speak about that now. I take this figure of a man
+who so contentedly and continually took such a subordinate place--played
+second fiddle quite willingly all his days, and who toiled on without
+any notice or record, and ask whether it does not teach one or two
+things.
+
+I. First, then, I think we may see here a hint as to the worth and
+importance of subordinate work.
+
+Not a syllable that Silas ever said is recorded in Scripture. He had
+been a chief man among the brethren when he was in Jerusalem, but, like
+some other chief men in little spheres, he came to be anything but a
+chief man when he got alongside of Paul, and found his proper work. He
+did not say: 'I have always pulled the stroke oar, and I am not going to
+be second. I do not intend to be absorbed in this man's brilliant
+lustre. I would rather have a smaller sphere where my light may not
+suffer by comparison than be overshone by him.' By no means! He could
+not do Paul's work, but he could endure stripes along with him in the
+prison at Philippi, and he took them. He could not write as Peter
+could; it was not his work to do that. But he could carry one of
+Peter's letters. And so, 'by Sylvanus, a faithful brother, I have
+written to you.' Perhaps Sylvanus was amanuensis as well as
+letter-carrier, for I daresay Peter was no great hand with a pen; he was
+better accustomed to haul nets. At all events, subordinate work was what
+God had set him to do, and so he found joy in it.
+
+Well, then, is not that a pattern for us? People in the world or in the
+Church who can do prominent work are counted by units; and those who can
+do valuable subordinate work are counted by thousands--by millions.
+'Those members which seem to be more feeble are the more necessary,'
+says Paul. It is a great truth, which it would do us all good to lay
+more to heart.
+
+It is hard to tell what is superior and what is subordinate work. I
+suppose that in a steam engine the smallest rivet is quite as essential
+as the huge piston, and that if the rivet drops out the piston-rod is
+very likely to stop rising and falling. So it is a very vulgar way of
+talking to speak about A.'s work being large and B.'s work being small,
+or to assume that we have eyes to settle which work is principal and
+which subordinate.
+
+The Athenians, who deemed themselves wisest in the world, thought there
+were few people of less importance than the fanatical Jew who was
+preaching a strange story about what they knew so little of that they
+took Jesus and Resurrection to be the names of a pair of gods, one male
+and one female. But in the eyes that see truly--the eyes of God--the
+relative importance of Apostle and Stoic was otherwise appraised.
+
+We cannot tell, as the book of Ecclesiastes has it, 'which shall
+prosper--this or that.' And if we begin to settle which is important
+work, we shall be sure to make mistakes, both in our judgment about
+other people, and in our sense of the obligations laid upon ourselves.
+Let us remember that when a thing is to be done by the co-operation of a
+great many parts, each part is as important as the other, and each is
+indispensable. Although more glory may come to the soldiers who go to
+the front and do the fighting, the troops miles in the rear, that are
+quietly in camp looking after the stores and keeping open the lines of
+communication, are quite as essential to the success of the campaign.
+Their names will not get into the gazette; there will probably not be
+any honours at the conclusion of the war showered upon them; but, if
+they had not been doing their subordinate work, the men at the front
+would never have been able to do theirs. Therefore, the old wise law in
+Israel was: 'As his part is that goeth down into the battle, so shall
+his part be that tarrieth by the stuff; they shall part alike.'
+
+And so it is good for people that have only one talent, and cannot do
+much, and must be contented to help somebody else that can do more, to
+remember this pretty little picture of Sylvanus, 'the faithful brother,'
+contented all his life to be a satellite of somebody; first of all
+helping Paul, and then helping Paul's brother Peter. Let us not be too
+lazy, or too proud with the pride that apes humility, to do the little
+that we can do because it is little.
+
+II. Another lesson which is own sister to that first one, but which may
+be taken for a moment separately, is, the importance and obligation of
+persistently doing our task, though nobody notices it.
+
+As I remarked, there is not one word of anything that Sylvanus said, or
+of anything that he did apart from Paul or Peter, recorded. And for all
+the long stretch of years--we do not know how many, but a very large
+number--that lie between this text of mine, where we find him in
+conjunction with Peter, and that day at Corinth, where we left him with
+Paul, the Acts of the Apostles does not think it worth while to mention
+his name. Was he sitting with his hands in his pockets all the while, do
+you think, doing no Christian work? Did he say, as some good people are
+apt to say now, 'Well, I went to teach in Sunday School for a while, and
+I took an interest in this, that, or the other thing for a bit, but
+nobody took any notice of me; and I supposed I was not wanted, and so I
+came away!'
+
+Not he. That is what a great many of us do. Though we sometimes are not
+honest enough to say it to ourselves, yet we do let the absence of
+'recognition' (save the mark) influence us in the earnestness of our
+Christian work to far too great an extent. And I dare say there are good
+friends among us who, if they would be quite honest with themselves,
+would take the hint, and, if I may use such a word, the rebuke, to
+themselves.
+
+Dear brethren, all the work that any of us do has to become unnoticed
+after a little while. It will not last. Nobody will know about you or me
+thirty years after we are dead. What does it matter whether they know
+anything about us, or say anything about us, or pat us on the back for
+anything that we do, or recognise our service whilst we live? Surely, if
+we are Christian men and women, we have a better reason for working than
+that. '_I_ will never forget any of their works.' That ought to be
+enough for us, ought it not? Whoever forgets, He remembers; and if He
+remembers, He will not remain in our debt for anything that we have
+done.
+
+So let us keep on, noticed or unnoticed; it matters very little which it
+is. There is a fillip, no doubt--and we should not be men and women if
+we did not feel it--in the recognition of what we have tried to do. And
+sometimes it comes to us; but the absence of it is no reason for
+slackening our work. And this man, so patiently and persistently
+'pegging away' at his obscure task during all these years which have
+been swallowed up in oblivion, may preach a sermon to us all.
+
+Only let us remember that he also shows us that unnoticed work is
+noticed, and that unrecorded services are recorded. Here are you and I,
+nineteen centuries after he is dead, talking about him, and his name
+will live and last as long as the world, because, though written in no
+other history, it has been recorded here. Jesus Christ's record, the
+Book of Life, contains the names of 'fellow-labourers' whose names have
+dropped out of every other record; and that should be enough for us.
+Sylvanus did no work that Christ did not see, and no work that Christ
+did not remember, and no work of which he did not, eighteen hundred
+years since, enter into the enjoyment of the fruit, and which he enjoys
+up there, whilst we are thinking about him down here.
+
+III. The last thing that I would suggest is--here is an example to us of
+a character which we can all earn, and which will be the best that any
+man can get.
+
+A great genius, a wise philosopher, an eloquent preacher, a statesman, a
+warrior, poet, painter? No! 'A faithful brother.' He may have been a
+commonplace one. We do not know anything about his intellectual
+capacity. He may have had very narrow limitations and very few powers,
+or he may have been a man of large faculty and acquirements. But these
+things drop out of sight; and this remains--that he was _faithful_. I
+suppose the eulogium is meant in both senses of the word. The one of
+these is the root of the other; for a man that is full of faith is a man
+who may be trusted, is reliable, and will be sure to fulfil all the
+obligations of his position, and to do all the duties that are laid upon
+him.
+
+You and I, whether we are wise or not, whether we are learned or not,
+whether we have large faculties or not, whether we have great
+opportunities or very small ones, can all equally earn that name if we
+like. If the perfect judgment, the clear eye, of Jesus Christ beholds in
+us qualities which will permit Him to call us by that name, what can we
+want better? 'A faithful brother.' Trust in Christ; let that be the
+animating principle of all that we do, the controlling power that
+restrains and limits and stimulates and impels. And then men will know
+where to have us, and will be sure, and rightly sure, that we shall not
+shirk our obligations, nor scamp our work, nor neglect our duties. And
+being thus full of faith, and counted faithful by Him, we need care
+little what men's judgments of us may be, and need desire no better
+epitaph than this--a faithful brother.
+
+
+
+
+AN APOSTOLIC TESTIMONY AND EXHORTATION
+
+     '... I have written briefly, exhorting, and testifying that this is
+      the true grace of God wherein ye stand.'--1 Peter v. 12.
+
+
+'I have written briefly,' says Peter. But his letter, in comparison with
+the other epistles of the New Testament, is not remarkably short; in
+fact, is longer than many of them. He regards it as short when measured
+by the greatness of its theme. For all words which are devoted to
+witnessing to the glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ, must be narrow
+and insufficient as compared with that, and after every utterance the
+speaker must feel how inadequate his utterance has been. So in that word
+'briefly' we get a glimpse of the Apostle's conception of the
+transcendent greatness of the Gospel which he had to proclaim. This
+verse seems to be a summary of the contents of the Epistle. And if we
+observe the altered translation of the latter portion of my text which
+is given in the Revised Version, we shall see that the verse is itself
+an example of both 'testifying' and exhorting. For the last clause is
+not, as our Authorised Version renders it, 'Wherein ye stand'--a
+statement of a fact, however true that may be--but a commandment, 'In
+which stand fast.' And so we have here the Apostle's all-sufficient
+teaching, and this all-comprehensive exhortation. He 'witnesses' that
+this is the true grace of God, and because it is, he exhorts, 'stand
+fast therein.' Let us look at these two points.
+
+I. Peter's testimony.
+
+Now there is a very beautiful, though not, to superficial readers,
+obvious, significance in this testimony. 'This is the true grace of
+God.' What is meant by '_this_'? Not merely the teaching which he has
+been giving in the preceding part of the letter, but that which somebody
+else had been giving. Now these churches in Asia Minor, to whom this
+letter was sent, were in all probability founded by the Apostle Paul, or
+by men working under his direction: and the type of doctrine preached in
+them was what people nowadays call Pauline. And here Peter puts his seal
+on the teaching that had come from his brother Apostle, and says: 'The
+thing that you have learned, and that I have had no part in
+communicating to you, _this_ is the true grace of God.' If such be the
+primary application of the words (and I think there can be little doubt
+that it is), then we have an interesting evidence, all the stronger
+because unobtrusive, of the cordial understanding between the two great
+leaders of the Church in apostolic times; and the figments that have
+been set forth, with great learning and little common sense, about the
+differences that divided these great teachers of Christianity, melt away
+into thin air. Their division was only a division of the field of
+labour. 'They would that I should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto
+the circumcision.' All the evidence confirms what Paul says, 'Whether it
+were they or I, so we preach, and so' all the converts 'believed.' Thus
+it is not without significance and beauty that we here see dimly through
+the ages Peter stretching out his hands to Paul's convert, and saying,
+'This--which my beloved brother Paul taught you--this is the true grace
+of God.'
+
+But, apart altogether from that thought, note two things; the one, the
+substance of this witness-bearing; and the other, Peter's right to bear
+it. As to the substance of the testimony; 'grace' which has become a
+threadbare word in the minds of many people, used with very little
+conception of its true depth and beauty of meaning, is properly love in
+exercise towards inferior and sinful creatures who deserve something
+else. Condescending, pardoning, and active love, is its proper meaning.
+And, says Peter, the inmost significance of the gospel is that it is the
+revelation of such a love as being in God's heart.
+
+Another meaning springs out of this. That same message is not only a
+revelation of love, but it is a communication of the gifts of love. And
+the 'true grace of God' is shorthand for all the rich abundance and
+variety and exuberant manifoldness and all-sufficiency of the sevenfold
+perfect gifts for spirit and heart which come from faith in Jesus
+Christ. The truths that lie here in the Gospel, the truths which glow
+and throb in this letter of Peter's, are the revelation and the
+communication to men of the rich gifts of the Divine heart, which will
+all flow into that soul which opens itself for the entrance of God's
+word. And what are these truths? The main theme of this letter is Jesus
+Christ, the Lamb of God, that was slain. 'Ye were as sheep going astray,
+but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.' He
+dwells upon Christ's innocence, upon Christ's meekness; but most of all
+upon the Christ that died, 'whom, having not seen, we love, and in whom,
+though unseen, we, believing, receive the end of our faith'--and the end
+of the gospel--'even the salvation of our souls.'
+
+Thus, dear brethren, this gospel, the gospel of the Divine Christ that
+died for our sins, and lives to give His Spirit to all waiting hearts;
+this is the true grace of God. It is very needful for us to keep in view
+always that lofty conception of what this gospel is, that we may not
+bring it down to the level of a mere theory of religion; nor think of it
+as a mere publication of dry doctrines; that we may not lose sight of
+what is the heart of it all, but may recognise this fact, that a gospel
+out of which are struck, or in which are diminished, the truths of the
+sacrifice of Christ and His ever-living intercession for us, is not the
+true grace of God, and is neither a revelation of His love to inferior
+and sinful men, nor a communication of His gifts to our weakness. Let us
+remember Peter's witness. This--the full gospel of incarnation,
+sacrifice, resurrection, ascension, and reign in glory, and return as
+Judge--this, and nothing else, 'is the true grace of God.' And this
+gospel is not exalted to its highest place unless it is regarded as such
+by our waiting and recipient hearts.
+
+Further, what right had this man to take this position and say, 'I
+testify that this is the true grace of God'? He was no great genius; he
+did not know anything about comparative religion, which is nowadays
+supposed to be absolutely essential to understanding any one religion.
+He was not a scholar or a philosopher. What business had he to bring in
+his personality thus, as if he were an authority, and say, '_I_ testify
+that this is the true grace of God'?
+
+Well there are two or three answers: one peculiar to him and others
+common to all Christian people. The one peculiar to him is, as I
+believe, that he was conscious, and rightly conscious, that Jesus Christ
+had bestowed upon him the power to witness, and the authority to impose
+his testimony upon men as a word from God. In the most inartificial and
+matter-of-course way Peter here lets us see the apostolic conception of
+apostolic authority. He had a right--not because of what he was
+himself, but because of the authority which Christ had conferred on
+him--to say to men, 'I do not ask you to give heed to me, Peter. I
+myself also am a man (as he said to Cornelius), but I call on you to
+accept Christ's word, spoken through me, His commissioned messenger,
+when _I_ testify, and through me Christ testifies, that this is the true
+grace of God.'
+
+Now no one but an apostle has the right to say that; but we Christian
+people have a right to say something like it, and if we have not
+apostolic authority, we may have what is very nearly as good, and
+sometimes as powerful in its effect upon other people, and that is
+authority based on personal experience. If we have plunged deep into the
+secrets of God, and lived closely and faithfully in communion with Him,
+and for ourselves have found the grace of God, His love and the gifts of
+His love, coming into our lives, and ennobling, calming, elevating each
+of us; then we, too, have a right to go to men and say, 'Never mind
+about me; never mind about whether I am wise or foolish, I do not argue,
+but I tell you I have tasted the manna, and it is sweet. I have drunk of
+the water, and it comes cool and fresh from the rock. One thing I know,
+that whereas I was blind, now I see. I believed, and therefore have I
+spoken, and on the strength of my own tasting of it, I testify that
+this, which has done so much for me, is the true grace of God.' If we
+testify thus, and back up our witness with lives corresponding, some who
+are wholly untouched by a preacher's eloquence and controversialists'
+arguments, will probably be led by our attestation to make the
+experiment for themselves. 'Ye are My witnesses,' says God. He did not
+say, 'Ye are my advocates.' He did not bid us argue for Him, but He bid
+us witness for Him.
+
+II. Further, notice Peter's exhortation.
+
+According to the right rendering the last clause is, as I have already
+said, 'in which stand fast.' The translation in the Authorised Version,
+'in which ye stand,' gives a true thought, though not the Apostle's
+intention here. For, as a matter of fact, men cannot stand upright and
+firm unless their feet are planted on the rock of that true grace of
+God. If our heels are well fixed on it, then our goings will be
+established. It is no use talking to men about steadfastness of purpose,
+stability of life, erect independence, resistance to antagonistic
+forces, and all the rest, unless you give them something to stand upon.
+If you talk so to a man who has his foot upon shifting sands or slippery
+clay; the more he tries the deeper will he sink into the one, or slide
+the further upon the other. The best way to help men to stand fast is to
+give them something to stand upon. And the only standing ground that
+will never yield, nor collapse, nor, like the quicksand with the tide
+round it, melt away, we do not know how, from beneath our feet, is 'the
+grace of God.' Or, as Dr. Watts says, in one of his now old-fashioned
+hymns:--
+
+    'Lo! on the solid Rock I stand,
+     And all beside is shifting sand.'
+
+However, that is not what the Apostle Peter meant. He says, 'See that
+you keep firmly your position in reference to this true grace of God.'
+Now I am not going to talk to you about intellectual difficulties in the
+way of hearty and whole-souled acceptance of the gospel
+revelation--difficulties which are very real and very widespread in
+these days, but which possibly very slightly affect us; at least I hope
+so.
+
+But whilst these slay their thousands, the difficulties that affect us
+all in the way of keeping a firm hold on, or firm standing in (for the
+two metaphors coalesce) the gospel, which is the true grace of God, are
+those that arise from two causes working in combination. One is our own
+poor weak hearts, wavering wills, strong passions, unbridled desires,
+forgetful minds; and the other is all that army and babel of seductions
+and inducements, in occupations legitimate and necessary, in enjoyments
+which are in themselves pure and innocent, in family delights, in home
+engagements, in pursuits of commerce or of daily business--all that
+crowd of things that tempt us to forget the true grace and to wander
+away in a foolish and vain search after vain and foolish substitutes.
+
+Dear brethren, it is not so much because there are many adversaries in
+the intellectual world as because we are such weak creatures ourselves,
+and the world around us is so strong against us, that we need to say to
+one another and to ourselves, over and over again, 'Stand ye fast
+therein.' You cannot keep hold of a rope even, without the act of
+grasping tending to relax, and there must be a conscious and repeated
+tightening up of the muscles, or the very cord on which we hang for
+safety will slip through our relaxed palms. And however we may be
+convinced that there are no hope and no true blessedness for us except
+in keeping hold of God, we need that grasp to be tightened up by daily
+renewed efforts, or else it will certainly become slack, and we shall
+lose the thing that we should hold fast. So my text exhorts us against
+ourselves, and against the temptations of the world, which are always
+present with us, and are far more operative in bringing down the
+temperature of the Christian Church, and of its individual members,
+than any chilling that arises from intellectual doubts.
+
+And how are we to obey the exhortation? Well, plainly, if 'this' is the
+revelation of God in Jesus Christ, 'the true grace of God' which alone
+will give stability to our feet, then we 'shall not stand fast' in it
+unless we make conscious efforts to apprehend, and comprehend, and keep
+hold of it in our minds as well as in our hearts. May I say one very
+plain word? I am very much afraid that people do not read their Bibles
+very much now (or if they do read them, they do not study them), and
+that anything like an intelligent familiarity with the whole sweep of
+the great system (for it is a system) of Divine truth, evolved 'at
+sundry times and in divers manners' in this Word, is a very rare thing
+amongst even good people. They listen to sermons, with more or less
+attention; they read newspapers, no doubt; they read good little books,
+and magazines, and the like; and volumes that profess to be drawn from
+Scripture. These are all right and good in their place. But sure I am
+that a robust and firm grasp of the gospel, 'which is the grace of God,'
+is not possible with a starvation diet of Scripture. And so I would say,
+try to get hold of the depth and width of meaning in the Word.
+
+Again, try to keep heart and mind in contact with it amidst distractions
+and daily duties. Try to bring the principles of the New Testament
+consciously to bear on the small details of everyday life. Do you look
+at your day's work through these spectacles? Does it ever occur to you,
+as you are going about your business, or your profession, or your
+domestic work, to ask yourselves what bearing the gospel and its truths
+have upon these? If my ordinary, so-called secular, avocations are
+evacuated of reference to, and government by, the Word of God, I want
+to know what of my life is left as the sphere in which it is to work.
+There is no need that religion and daily life should be kept apart as
+they are. There is no reason why the experience of to-day, in shop, and
+counting-house, and kitchen, and study, should not cast light upon, and
+make more real to me, 'the true grace of God.' Be sure that you desire,
+and ask for, and put yourself in the attitude of receiving, the gifts of
+that love, which are the graces of the Christian life. And when you have
+got them, apply them, 'that you may be able to withstand in the evil
+day; and, having done all, to stand.'
+
+
+
+
+THE CHURCH IN BABYLON
+
+     'The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth
+      you ...'--1 Peter v. 13.
+
+
+We have drawn lessons in previous addresses from the former parts of the
+closing salutations of this letter. And now I turn to this one to see
+what it may yield us. The Revised Version omits 'the church,' and
+substitutes 'she'; explaining in a marginal note that there is a
+difference of opinion as to whether the sender of the letter is a
+community or an individual. All the old MSS., with one weighty
+exception, follow the reading 'she that is in Babylon.' But it seems so
+extremely unlikely that a single individual, with no special function,
+should be bracketed along with the communities to whom the letter was
+addressed, as 'elected together with' them, that the conclusion that the
+sender of the letter is a church, symbolically designated as a 'lady,'
+seems the natural one.
+
+Then there is another question--where was Babylon? An equal diversity
+of opinion has arisen about that. I do not venture to trouble you with
+the arguments _pro_ and _con_, but only express my own opinion that
+'Babylon' means Rome.
+
+We have here the same symbolical name as in the Book of Revelation,
+where, whatever further meanings are attached to the designation, it is
+intended primarily as an appellation for the imperial city, which has
+taken the place filled in the Old Testament by Babylon, as the
+concentration of antagonism to the Kingdom of God.
+
+If these views of the significance of the expression are adopted we have
+here the Church in Rome, the proud stronghold of worldly power and
+hostility, sending its greetings to the scattered Christian communities
+in the provinces of what is now called Asia Minor. The fact of such
+cordial communications between communities separated by so many
+contrarieties as well as by race and distance, familiar though it is,
+may suggest several profitable considerations, to which I ask your
+attention.
+
+I. We have here an object lesson as to the uniting power of the gospel.
+
+Just think of the relations which, in the civil world, subsisted between
+Rome and its subject provinces; the latter, with bitter hatred in their
+hearts to everything belonging to the oppressing city, having had their
+freedom crushed down and their aspirations ruthlessly trampled upon; the
+former, with the contempt natural to metropolitans in dealing with
+far-off provincials. The same kind of relationship subsisted between
+Rome and the outlying provinces of its unwieldly empire as between
+England, for instance, and its Indian possessions. And the same uniting
+bond came in which binds the Christian converts of these Eastern lands
+of ours to England by a far firmer bond than any other. There was
+springing up amidst all the alienation and hatred and smothered
+rebellion a still incipient, but increasing, and even then strong bond
+that held together Roman Christians and Cappadocian believers. They were
+both 'one in Christ Jesus.' The separating walls were high, but,
+according to the old saying, you cannot build walls high enough to keep
+out the birds; and spirits, winged by the common faith, soared above all
+earthly-made distinctions and met in the higher regions of Christian
+communion. When the tide rises it fills and unifies the scattered pools
+on the beach. So the uniting power of Christian faith was manifest in
+these early days, when it bound such discordant elements together, and
+made 'the church that was in Babylon' forget that they were to a large
+extent Romans by birth, and stretch out their hands, with their hearts
+in them, to the churches to whom this letter was sent.
+
+Now, brethren, our temptation is not so much to let barriers of race and
+language and distance weaken our sense of Christian community, as it is
+to let even smaller things than these do the same tragical office for
+us. And we, as Christian people, are bound to try and look over the
+fences of our 'denominations' and churches, and recognise the wider
+fellowship and larger company in which all these are merged. God be
+thanked! there are manifest tokens all round us to-day that the age of
+separation and division is about coming to an end. Yearnings for unity,
+which must not be forced into acts too soon, but which will fulfil
+themselves in ways not yet clear to any of us, are beginning to rise in
+Christian hearts. Let us see to it, dear friends, that we do our parts
+to cherish and to increase these, and to yield ourselves to the uniting
+power of the common faith.
+
+II. We note, further, the clear recognition here of what is the strong
+bond uniting all Christians.
+
+Peter would probably have been very much astonished if he had been told
+of the theological controversies that were to be waged round that word
+'elect.' The emphasis here lies, not on 'elect,' but on 'together.' It
+is not the thing so much as the common possession of the thing which
+bulks largely before the Apostle. In effect he says, 'The reason why
+these Roman Christians that have never looked you Bithynians in the face
+do yet feel their hearts going out to you, and send you their loving
+messages, is because they, in common with you, have been recipients of
+precisely the same Divine act of grace.' We do not now need to discuss
+the respective parts of man and God in it, nor any of the interminable
+controversies that have sprung up around the word. God had, as the fact
+of their possession of salvation showed, chosen Romans and Asiatics
+together to be heirs of eternal life. By the side of these transcendent
+blessings which they possessed in common, how pitiably small and
+insignificant all the causes which kept them apart looked and were!
+
+And so here we have a partial parallel to the present state of
+Christendom, in which are seen at work, on one hand, superficial
+separation; on the other, underlying unity. The splintered peaks may
+stand, or seem to stand, apart from their sister summits, or may frown
+at each other across impassable gorges, but they all belong to one
+geological formation, and in their depths their bases blend
+indistinguishably into a continuous whole. Their tops are miles apart,
+but beneath the surface they are one. And so the things that bind
+Christian men together are the great things and the deepest things; and
+the things that part them are the small and superficial ones. Therefore
+it is our wisdom--not only for the sake of the fact of our unity and for
+the sake of our consciousness of unity, but because the truths which
+unite are the most important ones--that they shall bulk largest in our
+hearts and minds. And if they do, we shall know our brother in every man
+that is like-minded with us towards them, whatever shibboleth may
+separate us. I spoke a moment ago about the separate pools on the beach,
+and the tide rising. When the tide goes down, and the spiritual life
+ebbs, the pools are parted again. And so ages of feeble spiritual
+vitality have been ages of theological controversy about secondary
+matters; and ages of profound realisation by the Church of the great
+fundamentals of gospel truth have been those when its members were drawn
+together, they knew not how. Hence they can say of and to each other,
+'Elect together with you.'
+
+Brethren, for the sake of the strength of our own religious life, do not
+let us fix our attention on the peculiarities of our sects, but upon the
+catholic truths believed everywhere, always, by all. Then we shall 'walk
+in a large place,' and feel how many there are that are possessors of
+'like precious faith' with ourselves.
+
+III. Then, lastly, we may find here a hint as to the pressing need for
+such a realisation of unity.
+
+'The church that is in Babylon' was in a very uncongenial place. Thank
+God, no Babylon is so Babylonish but that a Church of God may be found
+planted in it. No circumstances are so unfavourable to the creation and
+development of the religious life but that the religious life may grow
+there. An orchid will find footing upon a bit of stick, because it draws
+nourishment from the atmosphere; and they who are fed by influx of the
+Divine Spirit may be planted anywhere, and yet flourish in the courts of
+our God. So 'the church that is in Babylon' gives encouragement as to
+the possibility of Christian faith being triumphant over adverse
+conditions.
+
+But it also gives a hint as to the obligation springing from the
+circumstances in which Christian people are set, to cultivate the sense
+of belonging to a great brotherhood. Howsoever solitary and surrounded
+by uncongenial associations any Christian man may be, he may feel that
+he is not alone, not only because his Master is with him, but because
+there are many others whose hearts throb with the same love, whose lives
+are surrounded by the same difficulties. It is by no means a mere piece
+of selfish consolation which this same Apostle gives in another part of
+his letter, when he bids the troubled so be of good cheer, as
+remembering that the 'same afflictions were accomplished in the
+brotherhood which is in the world.' He did not mean to say, 'Take
+comfort, for other people are as badly off as you are,' but he meant to
+call to the remembrance of the solitary sufferer the thousands of his
+brethren who were 'dreeing the same weird' in the same uncongenial
+world.
+
+If thus you and I, Christian men, are pressed upon on all sides by such
+worldly associations, the more need that we should let our hearts go out
+to the innumerable multitude of our fellows, companions in the
+tribulation, and patience, and kingdom of Jesus Christ. Precisely
+because the Roman believers were in Babylon, they were glad to think of
+their brethren in Asia. Isolated amidst Rome's splendours and sins, it
+was like a breath of cool air stealing into some banqueting house heavy
+with the fumes of wine, or some slaughter-house reeking with the smell
+of blood, to remember these far-off partakers of a purer life.
+
+But if I might for a moment diverge, I would venture to say that in the
+conditions of thought, and the tendencies of things in our own and other
+lands, it is more than ever needful that Christian people should close
+their ranks, and stand shoulder to shoulder. For men who believe in a
+supernatural revelation, in the Divine Christ, in an atoning Sacrifice,
+in an indwelling Spirit, are guilty of suicidal folly if they let the
+comparative trivialities that part them, separate God's army into
+isolated groups, in the face of the ordered battalions that are
+assaulting these great truths.
+
+Because persecution was beginning to threaten and rumble on the horizon,
+like a rising thundercloud, it was the more needful, in Peter's time,
+that Christians parted by seas, by race, language, and customs, should
+draw together. And for us, fidelity to our testimony and loyalty to our
+Master, to say nothing of common sense and the instinct of
+self-preservation, command Christian men in this day to think more, and
+to speak more, and to make more, of the great verities which they all
+possess in common.
+
+Thus, brethren, living in Babylon, we should open our windows to
+Jerusalem; and though we dwell here as aliens, we may say, 'We are come
+unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; to an
+innumerable company of angels; to the spirits of just men made perfect;
+and to the Church of the first-born whose names are written in Heaven.'
+
+
+
+
+MARCUS, MY SON
+
+     '... So doth Marcus, my son.'--1 Peter v. 13.
+
+
+The outlines of Mark's life, so far as recorded in Scripture, are
+familiar. He was the son of Mary, a woman of some wealth and position,
+as is implied by the fact that her house was large enough to accommodate
+the 'many' who were gathered together to pray for Peter's release. He
+was a relative, probably a cousin (Col. iv. 10, Revised Version), of
+Barnabas, and possibly, like him, a native of Cyprus. The designation of
+him by Peter as 'my son' naturally implies that the Apostle had been the
+instrument of his conversion. An old tradition tells us that he was the
+'young man' mentioned in his Gospel who saw Christ arrested, and fled,
+leaving his only covering in the captor's hands. However that may be, he
+and his relatives were early and prominent disciples, and closely
+connected with Peter, as is evident from the fact that it was to Mary's
+house that he went after his deliverance. Mark's relationship to
+Barnabas made it natural that he should be chosen to accompany him and
+Paul on their first missionary journey, and his connection with Cyprus
+helps to account for his willingness to go thither, and his
+unwillingness to go further into less known ground. We know how he left
+the Apostles, when they crossed from Cyprus to the mainland, and
+retreated to his mother's house at Jerusalem. We have no details of the
+inglorious inactivity in which he spent the time until the proposal of a
+second journey by Paul and Barnabas. In the preparations for it, the
+foolish indulgence of his cousin, far less kind than Paul's wholesome
+severity, led to a rupture between the Apostles, and to Barnabas
+setting off on an evangelistic tour on his own account, which received
+no sympathy from the church at Antioch, and has been deemed unworthy of
+record in the Acts.
+
+Then followed some twelve years or more, during which Mark seems to have
+remained quiescent; or, at all events, he does not appear to have had
+any work in connection with the great Apostle. Then we find him
+reappearing amongst Paul's company when he was in prison for the first
+time in Rome; and in the letters to Colossæ he is mentioned as being a
+comfort to the Apostle then. He sends salutations to the Colossians, and
+is named also in the nearly contemporaneous letter to Philemon.
+According to the reference in Colossians, he was contemplating a journey
+amongst the Asiatic churches, for that in Colossæ is bidden to welcome
+him. Then comes this mention of him in the text. The fact that Mark was
+beside Peter when he wrote seems to confirm the view that Babylon here
+is a mystical name for Rome; and that this letter falls somewhere about
+the same date as the letters to Colossæ and Philemon. Here again he is
+sending salutations to Asiatic churches. We know nothing more about him,
+except that some considerable time after, in Paul's last letter, he asks
+Timothy, who was then at Ephesus, the headquarters of the Asiatic
+churches, to 'take Mark,' who, therefore, was apparently also in Asia,
+'and bring him' with him to Rome; 'for,' says the Apostle, beautifully
+referring to the man's former failure, 'he is profitable to me for'--the
+very office that he had formerly flung up--'the ministry.'
+
+So, possibly, he was with Paul in his last days. And then, after that,
+tradition tells us that he attached himself more closely to the Apostle
+Peter; and, finally, at his direction and dictation, became the
+evangelist who wrote the 'Gospel according to Mark.'
+
+Now that is his story; and from the figure of this 'Marcus, my son,' and
+from his appearance here in this letter, I wish to gather two or three
+very plain and familiar lessons.
+
+I. The first of them is the working of Christian sympathy.
+
+Mark was a full-blooded Jew when he began his career. 'John, whose
+surname was Mark,' like a great many other Jews at that time, bore a
+double name--one Jewish, 'John,' and one Gentile, 'Marcus.' But as time
+goes on we do not hear anything more about 'John,' nor even about 'John
+Mark,' which are the two forms of his name when he is first introduced
+to us in the Acts of the Apostles, but he finally appears to have cast
+aside his Hebrew and to have been only known by his Roman name. And that
+change of appellation coincides with the fact that so many of the
+allusions which we have to him represent him as sending messages of
+Christian greeting across the sea to his Gentile brethren. And it
+further coincides with the fact that his gospel is obviously intended
+for the use of Gentile Christians, and, according to an old and reliable
+tradition, was written in Rome for Roman Christians. All of which facts
+just indicate two things, that the more a man has real operative love to
+Jesus Christ in his heart, the more he will rise above all limitations
+of his interests, his sympathy, and his efforts, and the more surely
+will he let himself out, as far as he can, in affection towards and
+toils for all men.
+
+This change of name, though it is a mere trifle, and may have been
+adopted as a matter of convenience, may also be taken as reminding us
+of a very important truth, and that is, that if we wish to help people,
+the first condition is that we go down and stand on their level, and
+make ourselves one with them, as far as we can. And so Mark may have
+said, 'I have put away the name that parts me from these Gentiles, for
+whom I desire to work, and whom I love; and I take the name that binds
+me to them.' Why, it is the very same principle, in a small
+instance--just as a raindrop that hangs on the thorn of a rose-bush is
+moulded by the same laws that shape the great sphere of the central
+sun--it is a small instance of the great principle which brought Jesus
+Christ down into the world to die for us. You must become like the
+people that you want to help. 'Forasmuch as the children were partakers
+of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same, that
+He might deliver them.' And so, not only the duty of widening our
+sympathies, but one of the supreme conditions of being of use to
+anybody, are set forth in the comparatively trifling incident, which we
+pass by without noticing it, that this man, a Jew to his finger-tips,
+finally found himself--or, rather, finally was carried, for it was no
+case of unconscious drifting--into the position of a messenger of the
+Cross to the Gentiles; and for the sake of efficiency in his work, and
+of getting close by the side of people whom he wanted to influence,
+flung away deliberately that which parted him from them. It is a small
+matter, but a little window may show a very wide prospect.
+
+II. The history of Mark suggests the possibility of overcoming early
+faults.
+
+We do not know why he refused to bear the burden of the work that he had
+so cheerily begun. Probably the reason that I have suggested may have
+had something to do with it. When he started he did not bargain for
+going into unknown lands, in which there were many toils to be
+encountered. He was willing to go where he knew the ground, and where
+there were people that would make things easy for him; but when Paul
+went further afield, Mark's courage ebbed out at his finger ends, and he
+slunk back to the comfort of his mother's house in Jerusalem. At all
+events, whatever his reason, his return was a fault; or Paul would not
+have been so hard upon him as he was. The writer of the Acts puts Paul's
+view of the case strongly by the arrangement of clauses in the sentence
+in which he tells us that the Apostle 'thought not good to take him with
+them who withdrew from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to
+the work.' If he thus threw down his tools whenever he came to a little
+difficulty, and said, 'As long as it is easy work, and close to the base
+of operations, I am your man, but if there is any sacrifice wanted you
+must look out for somebody else,' he was not precisely a worker after
+Paul's own heart. And the best way to treat him was as the Apostle did;
+and to say to Barnabas' indulgent proposal, 'No! he would not do the
+work before, and now he shall not do it.' That is often God's way with
+us. It brings us to our senses, as it brought Mark to his.
+
+We do not know how long it took to cure Mark of his early fault, but he
+was thoroughly cured. The man that was afraid of dangers and
+difficulties and hypothetical risks in Asia Minor became brave enough to
+stand by the Apostle when he was a prisoner, and was not ashamed of his
+chain. And afterwards, so much had he won his way into the Apostle's
+confidence, and made himself needful for him by his services and his
+sweetness, that the lonely prisoner, with the gibbet or headsman's
+sword in prospect, feels that he would like to have Mark with him once
+more, and bids Timothy bring him with himself, for 'he is profitable to
+me for the ministry.' 'He can do a thousand things that a man like me
+cannot do for himself, and he does them all for love and nothing for
+reward.' So he wants Mark once more. And thus not only Paul's
+generosity, but Mark's own patient effort had pasted a clean sheet over
+the one that was inscribed with the black story of his desertion, and he
+became 'profitable for' the task that he had once in so petulant and
+cowardly a way, flung up.
+
+Well, translate that from the particular into the general and it comes
+to this. Let no man set limits to the possibilities of his own
+restoration, and of his curing faults which are most deeply rooted
+within himself. Hope and effort should be boundless. There is nothing
+that a Christian man may not reach, in the way of victory over his worse
+self, and ejection of his most deeply-rooted faults, if only he will be
+true to Jesus, and use the gifts that are given to him. There are many
+of us whose daily life is pitched in a minor key; whose whole landscape
+is grey and monotonous and sunless; who feel as if yesterday must set
+the tune for to-day, and as if, because we have been beaten and baffled
+so often, it is useless to try again. But remember that the field on
+which the Stone of Help was erected, to commemorate the great and
+decisive victory that Israel won, was the very field on which the same
+foes had before contended, and _then_ Israel had been defeated.
+
+So, brethren, we may win victories on the very soil where formerly we
+were shamefully put to the rout; and our Christ with us will make
+anything possible for us, in the way of restoration, of cure of old
+faults, of ceasing to repeat former sins. I suppose that when a spar is
+snapped on board a vessel, and lashed together with spun yarn and
+lanyards, as a sailor knows how to do, it is stronger at the point of
+fracture than it was before. I suppose that it is possible for a man to
+be most impregnable at the point where he is naturally weakest, if he
+chooses to use the defences that Jesus Christ has given.
+
+III. Take another lesson--the greatness of little service.
+
+We do not hear that this John Mark ever tried to do any work in the way
+of preaching the gospel. His business was a very much humbler one. He
+had to attend to Paul's comfort. He had to be his factotum, man of all
+work; looking after material things, the commissariat, the thousand and
+one trifles that some one had to see to if the Apostle's great work was
+to get done. And he did it all his life long. It was enough for him to
+do thoroughly the entirely 'secular' work, as some people would think
+it, which it was in his power to do. That needed some self-suppression.
+It would have been so natural for Mark to have said, 'Paul sends Timothy
+to be bishop in Crete; and Titus to look after other churches;
+Epaphroditus is an official here; and Apollos is a great preacher there.
+And here am I, grinding away at the secularities yet. I think I'll
+"strike," and try and get more conspicuous work.' Or he might perhaps
+deceive himself, and say, 'more directly religious work,' like a great
+many of us that often mask a very carnal desire for prominence under a
+very saintly guise of desire to do spiritual service. Let us take care
+of that. This 'minister,' who was not a minister at all, in our sense of
+the word, but only in the sense of being a servant, a private attendant
+and valet of the Apostle, was glad to do that work all his days.
+
+That was self-suppression. But it was something more. It was a plain
+recognition of what we all ought to have very clearly before us, and
+that is, that all sorts of work which contribute to one end are one sort
+of work; and that at bottom the man who carried Paul's books and
+parchments, and saw that he was not left without clothes, though he was
+so negligent of cloaks and other necessaries, was just as much helping
+on the cause of Christ as the Apostle when he preached.
+
+I wonder if any of you remember the old story about an organist and his
+blower. The blower was asked who it was that played that great sonata of
+Beethoven's, or somebody's. And he answered, 'I do not know who played,
+but I blew it.' There is a great truth there. If it had not been for the
+unknown man at the bellows, the artist at the keys would not have done
+much. So Mark helped Paul. And as Jesus Christ said, 'He that receiveth
+a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward.'
+
+IV. Take as the last lesson the enlarged sphere that follows
+faithfulness in small matters.
+
+What a singular change! The man who began with being a servant of Paul
+and of Barnabas ends by being the evangelist, and it is to him, under
+Peter's direction, that we owe what is possibly the oldest, and, at all
+events, in some aspects, an entirely unique, narrative of our Lord's
+life. Do you think that Peter would ever have said to him: 'Mark! come
+here and sit down and write what I tell you,' if there had not been
+beforehand these long years of faithful service? So is it always, dear
+friends, 'He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also
+in much.' That is not only a declaration that faithfulness is one in
+kind, whatever be the diameter of the circle in which it is exercised,
+but it may also be taken as a promise, though that was not the original
+intention of the saying.
+
+For quite certainly, in God's providence, the tools do come to the hand
+that can wield them, and the best reward that we can get for doing well
+our little work is to have larger work to do. The little tapers are
+tempted, if I may use so incongruous a figure, to wish themselves set up
+on loftier stands. Shine your brightest in your corner, and you will be
+'exalted' in due time. It is so, as a rule, in this world; sometimes too
+much so, for, as they say is the case at the English bar, so it is
+sometimes in God's Church, 'There is no medium between having nothing to
+do and being killed with work.' Still the reward for work is more work.
+And the law will be exemplified most blessedly when Christ shall say,
+'Well done! good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a
+few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.'
+
+So this far-away figure of the minister-evangelist salutes us too, and
+bids us be of good cheer, notwithstanding all faults and failures,
+because it is possible for us, as he has proved, to recover ourselves
+after them all. God will not be less generous in forgiveness than Paul
+was; and even you and I may hear from Christ's lips, 'Thou art
+profitable to Me for the ministry.'
+
+
+
+
+II. PETER
+
+
+
+
+LIKE PRECIOUS FAITH
+
+     '... Them that have obtained like precious faith with us through
+      the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.'--2 Peter
+      i. 1.
+
+
+Peter seems to have had a liking for that word 'precious.' It is not a
+very descriptive one; it does not give much light as to the quality of
+the things to which it is applied; but it is a suggestion of one-idea
+value. It is interesting to notice the objects to which, in his two
+letters--for I take this to be his letter--he applies it. He speaks of
+the trial of faith as being 'precious.' He speaks (with a slight
+modification of the word employed) of Jesus Christ as being 'to them
+that believe, precious.' He speaks of the 'precious' blood of Christ.
+These instances are in the first epistle. In this second epistle we have
+the words of my text, and a moment after, 'exceeding great and precious
+promises.' Now look at Peter's list of valuables; 'Christ, Christ's
+blood, God's promises, our Faith, and the discipline to which that faith
+is subjected.' These are things that the old man had found out to be of
+worth.
+
+But then there is another word in my text that must be noted, 'like
+precious.' It brings into view two classes, to one of which Peter
+himself belongs--'us' and 'they.' Who are these two classes? It may be
+that he is thinking of the immense difference between the intelligent
+and developed faith of himself and the other Apostles, and the
+rudimentary and infantile faith of the recent believers to whom he may
+be speaking. And, if so, that would be beautiful, but I rather take it
+that he is tacitly contrasting in his own mind the difference between
+the Gentile converts as a whole, and the members of the Jewish community
+who had become believers in Jesus Christ, and that he is repeating the
+lesson that he had learned on the housetop at Joppa, and had had further
+confirmed to him by the experience of Cæsarea, and that he is really
+saying exactly what he said when he defended himself before the Council
+in Jerusalem: 'Seeing that God had given unto them the like gift that he
+did unto us, who was I, that I should withstand God?' And so he looks
+out over all the Christian community, and ignores 'the middle wall of
+partition,' and says, 'Them that have obtained like precious faith with
+us.' I wish very simply to try to draw out the thoughts that lie in
+these words, and cluster round that well-worn and threadbare theological
+expression and Christian verity of 'faith' or 'trust.'
+
+I. And the first thing that I would desire to point you to is, what we
+learn here as to the object of faith.
+
+Now those of you who are using the Revised Version will notice that
+there is a very slight, but important, alteration there, from the
+rendering in the old translation. We read in the latter: 'Like precious
+faith with us _through_ the righteousness, ...' and that is a meaning
+that might be defended. But the Revised Version says, and says more
+accurately as far as the words go, and more truly as far as Christian
+thought goes, 'them that have obtained like precious faith with us _in_
+the righteousness.' Now, I daresay, it will occur to us all that that is
+a departure from the usual form in which faith is presented to us in the
+New Testament, because there, thank God! we are clearly taught that the
+one thing which faith grapples is not a thing but a Person. Christian
+faith is only human trust turned in a definite direction. Just as our
+trust lays hold on one another, so the object of faith is, in the
+deepest analysis, no doctrine, no proposition, not even a Divine fact,
+not even a Divine promise, but the Doer of the fact, and the Promiser of
+the promise, and the Person, Jesus Christ. When you say, 'I trust
+so-and-so's word!' what you mean is, 'I trust _him_, and so I put
+credence in his word.' And Christianity would have been delivered from
+mountains of misconception, and many a poor soul would have felt that a
+blaze of light had come in upon it, if this had been clearly proclaimed,
+and firmly apprehended by preachers and by hearers, that the object of
+trust is the living Person, Jesus Christ, and that the trust which
+grapples us to Him is essentially a personal relation entered into by
+our wills and hearts far more than by our heads.
+
+All that is being apprehended by the Christian Church to-day a great
+deal more clearly than it used to be when some of us were young. But we
+have the defects of our qualities. And this generation is accustomed far
+too lightly and superficially to say 'Oh! I do not care about doctrines.
+I cleave to the living Christ!' Amen! say I. But there is another
+question--What Christ is it that you are cleaving to? For our only way
+of knowing a person with whom we have no external acquaintance is by
+what we are told about him, and believe about him. And so, while we
+cannot assert too strongly that faith or trust in the living Christ, and
+not in a dogma, is the basis of real Christian life, we have need to be
+very definite and sure as to what Christ--which Christ--it is that we
+are trusting to? And there my text comes in, and tells us that faith is
+to grasp Christ as our righteousness; and another saying of the Apostle
+Paul's comes in, who for once speaks of faith as being faith not only in
+the Christ, but in 'His blood':--
+
+    'Jesus! Thy blood and righteousness,
+     My beauty are, my glorious dress.'
+
+Brethren! you will not get beyond that. The Christ, trusting in whom we
+have life and salvation, is the Christ whose blood cleanses, whose
+righteousness clothes us poor, sinful men. So, while proclaiming with
+all emphasis, and rejoicing to press it upon all my brethren, that
+salvation comes by personal trust in the Person, I supplement and fill
+out, not contradict, that proclamation, when I further say that the
+Person by trusting in whom we are saved, is the Jesus whose blood
+cleanses and whose righteousness becomes ours. That righteousness is, in
+our text, contemplated as God's, as being embodied in Christ's, that
+from Him it may be imparted to us, if we will fulfil the condition on
+which alone it can be ours, viz., faith. It becomes ours, by no mere
+imputation which has not a reality at the back of it, but because faith
+brings us into such a vital union with Jesus Christ as that His
+righteousness, or at least a spark from the central flame, becomes ours,
+not only in reference to our exemption from the burden of our guilt, but
+in reference to our becoming conformed to the image of His dear Son, and
+created anew in righteousness and holiness. The object of faith is
+Christ, the Christ whose blood and righteousness cleanses and clothes
+sinful souls.
+
+II. Let me ask you to look, in the next place, to what this text
+suggests to us about the worth of Christian faith.
+
+Peter calls it precious. Consider its worth as a channel. There is a
+very remarkable expression used in the Acts of the Apostles, 'The door
+of faith.' A door is of little value in itself, worth a few shillings at
+the most, but if it opens the way into a palace then it is worth
+something. And all the preciousness that there is in faith comes, not
+from its intrinsic value, but from the really precious things which it
+gives into our hands. Just as the dyer's hand may be tinged with royal
+purple, if he has been working in it, or a woman's hand may be scented
+and made fragrant if she has been handling perfumes, so the hand of
+faith takes tint and fragrance from that with which it is conversant. It
+is precious because it is the channel by which all precious things flow
+into our hearts and lives. If Ladysmith is, as I suppose it is,
+dependent for its water supply on one lead pipe, the preciousness of
+that pipe is not measured by what it would fetch if it were put up to
+auction for its lead, but by that which flows through it, and without
+which Death would come. And my faith is the pipe by which all the water
+of life comes sparkling and rejoicing into my thirsty soul. It is the
+opening of the door 'that the King of Glory may come in'; it is the
+taking down of the shutters that the sunshine may blaze into the
+darkened chamber; it is the grasping of the electric wire that the
+circuit may be completed. God puts out His hand, and we lay hold of it.
+It is not the outstretched hand from earth, but the down-stretched hand
+from heaven that makes the tottering man stand. So, dear friends, let us
+understand that salvation does not come as the reward of faith, but that
+the salvation is _in_ the faith, because faith is the channel by which
+all God's salvation pours into us. So there is nothing arbitrary in the
+way of salvation, as some shallow thinkers seem to propose, and there is
+no reason in the question, 'Why does God make salvation depend upon
+faith?' God could not but make salvation depend upon faith, because
+there is no other possible way by which the blessings which are gathered
+together into that one great pregnant word 'salvation' could find their
+way into a man's heart but through the channel of his trust. Have you
+opened that channel? If you have not, you need not wonder it cannot be
+otherwise--that salvation does not come unto you.
+
+Consider its worth as a defence. The Apostle in one place speaks about
+'the shield of faith.' But there is nothing in the belief that I am safe
+to make me safe. It is very often a fatal blunder. All depends upon that
+or Him, to which or whom I am trusting for my safety. Put yourself
+beneath the true Shield--'The Lord God is a sun and shield'--and then
+you will be safe. Your way of running into the strong tower which alone,
+with its massive walls, protects us from all danger and from all sin, is
+by trusting Him.
+
+Just as light things on a ship's deck have to be lashed in order to be
+secured and lie still, you and I have to lash ourselves to Jesus Christ;
+then, not by reason of the lashings, but by reason of Him, we are
+fastened and secured.
+
+Consider the worth of faith as a means of purifying. This very Apostle,
+in his great speech in Jerusalem, when vindicating the reception of the
+Gentiles into the Church, spoke of God as having 'purified their hearts
+by faith.' And here again, I say, there is no cleansing power in the
+act of trust. Cleansing power is in that which, by the act of trust,
+comes into my heart. Faith is not simple receptivity, not mere passive
+absorbing of what is given, but it is the active taking by desire as
+well as by confidence. And when we trust in Jesus Christ, His blood and
+righteousness, there flows into our hearts that Divine life which, like
+a river turned into a dung-heap, will sweep all the filth before it. You
+have to get the purifying power by faith. Ay! and you have to utilise
+the purifying power by effort and by work. 'What God hath joined
+together, let not men put asunder.'
+
+III. Now, lastly, note the identity of faith.
+
+'_Like_ precious,' says Peter, and, as I said, there may be defended a
+double application of the word, and two sets of pairs of classes may be
+supposed to have been in his mind. I do not discuss which of these may
+be the case, only I would suggest to you that from this beautiful
+gathering together of all the diversities of the Christian character,
+conception, and development into one great whole, we are taught that the
+one thing that makes a Christian is this trust. That is the universal
+characteristic; that is uniform, whatever may differ. Ah! how much and
+how little it takes to make a Christian. 'Only faith?' you say. Yes,
+thank God! not this, or that, not rites, not anything that a priest can
+do to you. Not orthodoxy; not morality; these will come, but trust in
+Christ and His blood and righteousness. England is a Christian country;
+is it? This is a Christian congregation; is it? You are a Christian; are
+you? Are you trusting in that Christ? If you are not; no! though you be
+orthodox up to the eyebrows, and though seven or seven hundred
+sacraments may have been given to you, and though you be a clean living
+man--all that does not make a Christian, but _this_ does--'Like precious
+faith with us in the righteousness of God and our Saviour.'
+
+Again, this great thought of the identity or uniformity of the one
+characteristic may suggest to us how Christian faith is one, under all
+varieties of form. There never has been in the Christian Church again,
+notwithstanding all our deplorable divisions and schisms, such a
+tremendous cleft as there was in the primitive Church between the Jewish
+and Gentile components thereof. But Peter flings this flying bridge
+across that abyss, and knits the two sides together, because he knows
+that away out yonder, amongst the Gentiles, and here in the little
+circle of the Jewish believers, there was the one faith that unifies
+all.
+
+So, dear friends, there should be the widest charity, but no vagueness;
+for the Christian faith in Him which unifies and bridges over all
+differences, mental and theological, is the Christ by whose blood we are
+cleansed, with whose righteousness we are made righteous.
+
+Again, from the same thought flows the other, of the identity of the
+uniform characteristic, at all stages of development or maturity. The
+mustard-seed and the tree, 'which is greater than all herbs,' have the
+same life in them. And the feeblest, tremulous little spark in some
+heart, just kindled, and scarcely capable of sustaining itself, is one
+with the flame leaping heaven-high, which lights up and cleanses the
+whole soul. So for those in advance, humility, and for those in the
+rear, hope. And something more than hope, for if you have the feeblest
+beginning of tremulous trust, you have that which only needs to be
+fostered to make you like Jesus Christ. Look at what follows our text:
+'Add to your faith, virtue, and to virtue, knowledge,' and so on,
+through the whole linked series of Christian graces. They all come out
+of that trust which knits us to Him who is the source of them all. So
+you and I are responsible for bringing our faith to the highest
+development of which it is capable.
+
+Alas! alas! are we not all like this very Apostle, who, in an ecstasy of
+trust and longing, ventured himself on the wave, and as soon as he felt
+the cold water creeping above his knees lost his trust, and so lost his
+buoyancy, and was ready to go down like a stone? He had so little faith,
+that he was beginning to sink; he had so much that he put out his
+hand--a desperate hand it was--and cried, 'Lord, save me!' And the hand
+came, and that steadied him, and bore him up till the water was beneath
+the soles of his feet again. 'Lord! I believe; help Thou my unbelief!'
+
+
+
+
+MAN SUMMONED BY GOD'S GLORY AND ENERGY
+
+     '... His Divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain
+      unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath
+      called us to glory and virtue.'--2 Peter i. 3.
+
+
+'I knew thee,' said the idle servant in our Lord's parable, 'that thou
+wert an austere man, reaping where thou didst not sow, and gathering
+where thou hadst not strewed. I was afraid, and went and hid my talent
+in the earth.' Our Lord would teach us all with that pregnant word the
+great truth that if once a man gets it into his head that God's
+principal relation to him is to demand, and to command, you will get no
+work out of that man; that such a notion will paralyse all activity and
+cut the nerve of all service. And the converse is as true, namely, that
+the one thought about God, which is fruitful of all blessing, joy,
+spontaneous, glad activity, is the thought of Him as giving, and not of
+demanding, of bestowing, and not of commanding. Teach a man that he is,
+as the book of James has it,'the giving God,' and let that thought soak
+into the man's heart and mind, and you will get any work out of him. And
+only when that thought is deep in the spirit will there be true service.
+
+Now that is the connection in which the words of my text come; for they
+are laid as the broad foundation of the great commandment that follows:
+'Beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to
+your virtue knowledge,' and so on, all the round of the ladder by which
+the Apostle represents us as climbing up to God. The foundation of this
+injunction is--God has given you everything. You have got it to begin
+with, and so do you set yourselves to work, and see that you make the
+thing that is yours your own, and incorporate into your being and into
+the very substance of your soul, and work out in all the blessed
+activities of a Christian life, the gifts that His royal and kingly hand
+has bestowed upon you. Take for granted that God loves you and gives you
+His whole self, and work on in the fulness of His possessed gift.
+
+That is the connection of the words before us. I take them just as they
+lie in our passage, dealing first of all with this question--God's call
+to you and me; how it is done. Now I do not know if I can venture to
+indulge any remarks about Biblical criticism, but you will perhaps bear
+with me just for a moment whilst I say that the people who know a great
+deal more about such subjects than either you or I, agree with one
+consent that the proper way of reading this verse of my text is not as
+our Bible has it; 'Him that has called us _to_ glory and virtue,' but
+'Him that hath called us _by_--by his own glory and virtue.' Do you see
+the difference? In one case the language expresses the things in
+imitation of the Divine nature to which God summons you and me when He
+calls us. That is how our Bible has taken it; but the deeper thought
+still is the things in that Divine nature and activity itself which
+constitute His great summons and invitation of men to His side; and
+these are the two, whatever they might be, which the Apostle here
+describes in that rather peculiar and unusual language for Scripture,
+'Who has called us by His own glory and His own virtue.' I venture to
+dwell on these two points for a moment or two.
+
+Now, first of all, God's glory. Threadbare and consequently vague as the
+expression is in the minds of a great many people who have heard it with
+their ears ever since they were little children, God's glory has a very
+distinct and definite meaning in Scripture, and all starts, as I think,
+from the Old Testament use of the expression, which was the distinct
+specific name for the supernatural light that lay between the cherubim,
+and brooded over the ark on the mercy-seat. The word signifies
+specifically and originally the glory of God, and irradiation of a
+material, though supernatural, symbol of His Divine and spiritual
+presence. Very well, lay hold of that material picture, for God teaches
+us as we do our children, with pictures. Take the symbol and lift it up
+into the spiritual region, and it is just this: the glory of God in its
+deepest meaning is the irradiation and the perpetual pouring out and out
+and out from Himself, as the rays of the sun stream out from its great
+orb, pouring out from Himself the light and the perfectness and the
+beauty of His own self revelation. And I think we may fairly translate
+and paraphrase the first words of my text into this: God's great way of
+summoning men to Himself is by laying out His love upon them and letting
+the fulness of that ineffable and uncreated light, in which is no
+darkness at all, stream into the else blinded and hopeless lives and
+hearts of men. Then the other side of the Apostle's thought seems to
+me--if we will only strip it of the threadbare technicalities associated
+with it--as great and wonderful, God's glory and God's virtue. A
+heathenish kind of smack lingers about that word, both as applied to men
+and as applied to God, and so seldom found in the New Testament; but
+meaning here, as I venture to say, without stopping to show it--meaning
+here substantially the same thing that we mean by that word energy or
+power. You know old women in country places talk about the virtues of
+plants. They do not mean by this the goodness of plants, but they mean
+the occult powers which they suppose them able to put forth. We read in
+one of the gospels that our Lord Himself said at one singular period of
+His life that virtue had gone out of Him, meaning thereby not goodness
+but energy. So I think we get a sufficient equivalent to the Apostle's
+meaning if for the second two words of my text we read, 'He hath called
+us by the glory, the raying out of his love, and He hath called us by
+the activity and the energy, the power in action of His great and
+illustrious Spirit.' So you see these two things, the light that streams
+out of an energy which is born of the streaming light. These two things
+are really at bottom but one, various aspects of one idea. Modern
+physicists tell us that all the activity in the system comes from the
+sun, and in the higher region all the activity comes from the sun, and
+there is no mightier force in the physical universe than the sunlight.
+Lightnings are vulgar, noisy, and limited in contrast. The
+all-conquering force is the light that streams out, and so says Peter in
+his vivid picturesque way--not meaning the mere talk of philosophy or
+theology--the manifestation of the glory of God is the mightiest force
+in the whole universe. It is not like the play of the moonbeam upon an
+iceberg, ineffectual, cold, merely touching the death without melting or
+warming it, but it rays out like the sun in the heavens, and the work
+done by the light is mightier than all our work. By His glory, and by
+the transcendent energies which reside in that illustrious manifestation
+of the uncreated light, God summons men to Himself. Well, if that is
+anything like fair exposition of the words before us, let me just ask
+you before I go further to stop on them for one moment. If I may venture
+to say so, put off your theological spectacles for a minute, and do not
+let us harden this thought down with any mere dogma that can be selected
+in the language of the creeds. Let us try and put it into words a little
+less hackneyed. Suppose, instead of talking about calling, you were to
+talk about inviting, summoning, beckoning; or I might use tenderer words
+still--beseeching, wooing, entreating; for all that lies in the thought.
+God summoning and calling, in that sense, men to Himself, by the raying
+out of His own perfect beauty, and the might with which the beams go
+forth into the darkness. Ah! is not that beautiful, dear brethren; that
+there is nothing more, indeed, for God to do to draw us to Himself than
+to let us see what He is? So perfectly fair, so sweet, so tender, so
+strong, so absolutely corresponding to all the necessities of our
+beings and the hunger of our hearts, that when we see Him we cannot
+choose but love Him, and that He can do nothing more to call wandering
+hearts back to the light and sweetness of His own heart than to show
+them Himself. And so from all corners of His universe, and in every
+activity of His hand and heart and spirit, we can hear a voice saying,
+'Son, give me thine heart.' 'Oh! taste and see that God is good.'
+'Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace; thereby good shall come
+unto thee.'
+
+But great and wonderful as such a thought seems to be when we look at it
+in the freshness which belongs to it, do you suppose that that was all
+that Peter was thinking about? Do you think that a wide, general, and if
+you leave it by itself, vague utterance like that which I have been
+indulging in, would give all the specific precision and fulness of the
+meaning of the word before us? I think not. I fancy that when this
+Apostle wrote these words he remembered a time long, long ago, when
+somebody stood by the little fishing-cobble there, and as the men were
+up to their knees in slush and dirt, washing their nets, said to them,
+'Follow Me.' I think that was in Peter's estimate God's call to him by
+God's glory and by God's virtue. And so I pause there for a moment to
+say that all the lustrous pouring out of light, all that transcendent
+energy of active love, is not diffused nebulous through a universe; it
+is not even spread in that sense over all the deeds of His hand; but
+whilst it is everywhere, it has a focus and a centre and a fire. The
+fire is gathered into the Son, Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ in His manhood
+and in His Deity; Jesus Christ in His life, passion, death,
+resurrection, ascension, and kingly reign. The whole creation, as this
+New Testament proclaims Him to us, is God's glory and God's virtue,
+whereby He draws men to Himself. I cannot stay to dwell on that thought
+as I should be glad to do. Let me just remind you of the two parts into
+which it splits itself up; and I commend it, dogmatically as I have to
+state it in such an audience as this--I commend it to the multitudes of
+young men here present. The highest form of the Divine glory is Jesus
+Christ, not the attributes with which men clothe the Divinity, not those
+abstractions which you find in books of theology. All that is but the
+fringe of the glory. And I tell you, dear friends, the living white
+light at the centre and heart of all the radiance of the flame is the
+light of life which is conveyed into the gentle Christ. As the Apostle
+John has it, 'We beheld His glory.' Yes, and taking and binding together
+the two words which people have so often treated against each other, 'We
+beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full
+of grace and truth,' the highest light in Him that says, 'I am the light
+of the world'--very light of very light. As a much maligned document has
+it,'very light of very light,' the brightness of His glory, the
+irradiation of His splendour, and the express image of His person. And
+as the light so the power. Christ the power; power in its highest,
+noblest form, the power of patient gentleness and Divine suffering;
+power in its widest sweep, 'unto every one that believeth'; power in its
+most wondrous operation, 'the power of God unto salvation.' So I come to
+you, I hope, with one message on my lips and in my heart. If you want
+light, look to Christ. If you want to behold that unveiled face, the
+glory of the Lord, turn to Him, and let His sunshine smite you on the
+face as the light smote Stephen, and then you can say, 'He that hath
+seen Him hath seen the Father.' My brother, the highest, noblest,
+perfect, and, as I believe, final form in which all God's glory, all
+God's energy, are gathered together, and make their appeal to you and
+me, was when a Galilean peasant stood up in a little knot of forgotten
+Jews and said to them, and through them to you and me, 'Come unto Me all
+ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' He calls
+by His glory and by His virtue.
+
+Now still further. Confining myself as before to the words as they lie
+here in this text, let me ask you to think, and that for a moment or two
+only, on the great and wondrous purpose which this Divine energy and
+light had in view in summoning us to itself. His Divine power hath given
+unto us all things that pertain to life and all things that pertain to
+godliness. Look at that! One of the old Psalms says: 'Gather my saints
+together unto me, those who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice;
+assemble them all before my throne, and I will judge my people.' Is that
+the last and final revelation of God's purpose of drawing men to Him? Is
+that why He sends out His heralds and summons through the whole
+intelligent creation? Nay, something better. Not to judge, not to
+scourge, not to chastise, not to avenge. To give. This is the meaning of
+that summons that comes out through the whole earth, 'Come up hither,'
+that when we get there we may be flooded with the richness of His mercy,
+and that He may pour His whole soul out over us in the greatness of His
+gifts. This is God, and the perpetual activity summoning men to Himself
+that there He may bless them. He makes our hearts empty that He may fill
+them. He shapes us as we are that we may need Him and may recreate
+ourselves in Him. He says, 'Bring all your vessels and I will fill them
+full.' Now look in this part of my subject at what I may venture to call
+the magnificent confidence that this Peter has in the--what shall I
+say?--the encyclopædical--if I may use a long word--and universal
+character of God. All things that pertain to life, all things that
+pertain to godliness. And somebody says, 'Yes, that is tautology, that
+is saying the same thing twice over in different language.' Never mind,
+says Peter, so much the better, it will help to express the exuberant
+abundance and fulness. He takes a leaf out of his brother Paul's book.
+He is often guilty when he speaks of God's gifts of that same sin of
+tautology, as for instance, 'Now unto Him who is able to do exceeding,
+abundantly, above all'--there are four of them--'all that we can ask or
+think.' Yes, in all forms language is but faint and feeble, weak and
+poor in the presence of that great miracle of a love that passeth
+knowledge and that we may know the heights and depths. And so says our
+Apostle, 'All things that pertain to life, all things that pertain to
+godliness.' The whole circle all round, all the 360 degrees of it, God's
+love will come down and lie on the top of it as it were, superimposed,
+so that there should not be a single gift where there is a flaw or a
+defect. Everything you want of life, everything you want for godliness.
+Yes, of course, the gift must bear some kind of proportion to the giver.
+You do not expect a millionaire to put down half a crown to a
+subscription list if he gives anything at all. And God says to you and
+me, 'Come and look at My storehouses, count if you can those golden
+vases filled with treasure, look at those massive ingots of bullion,
+gaze into the vanishing distances of the infiniteness of My nature and
+of My possessions, and then listen to Me. I give thee Myself--Myself,
+that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God. All things that
+pertain to life, all things that pertain to godliness. But I cannot pass
+on from this part of my subject without venturing one more remark. It is
+this: I do not suppose it is too minute, verbal criticism. This great
+encyclopædiacal gift is represented in my text, not as a thing that you
+are going to get, Christian men and women, but as a thing that you have
+gotten. And any of you that are able to test the correctness of my
+assertion will see I have thought the form of language used in the
+original is such as to point still more specifically than in our
+translation, to some one definite act in the past in which all that
+fulness of glory and virtue of life and godliness was given to us men.
+Is there any doubt as to what that is? We talk sometimes as if we had to
+ask God to give us more. God cannot give you any more than He gave you
+nineteen hundred years ago. It was all in Christ. Get a very vulgar
+illustration which is altogether inadequate for a great many purposes,
+but may serve for one. Suppose some man told you that there was a
+thousand pounds paid to your credit at a London bank, and that you were
+to get the use of it as you drew cheques against it. Well, the money is
+there, is it not? The gift is given, and yet for all that you may be
+dying, and half-dead, a pauper. I was reading a book only the other day
+which contained a story that comes in here. An Arctic expedition, some
+years ago, found an ammunition chest that Commander Parry had left fifty
+years ago, safe under a pile of stones. The wood of the chest had not
+rotted yet; the provisions inside of it were perfectly sweet, and good,
+and eatable. There it had lain all those years. Men had died of
+starvation within arm's length of it. It was there all the same. And
+so, if I might venture to vulgarise the great theme that I try to speak
+about, God has given us His Son, and in Him, all that pertains to life
+and all that pertains to godliness. My brother, take the things that are
+freely given to you of God.
+
+And so that leads me to one last word, and it shall only be a word, in
+regard to what our text tells us of the way by which on our side we can
+yield to this Divine call, and receive this Divine fulness of gifts,
+through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory. Through the
+knowledge! Yes, well there are two kinds of knowledge, are there not?
+There is the knowledge by which you know a book, for instance, on the
+subject of study, and there is the knowledge by which you know one
+another; and the kind of thing I mean when I say, 'I know mathematics,'
+is entirely different to what I mean when I say, 'I know John, Thomas,'
+or whoever he may be. And I venture to say that the knowledge, which is
+the condition of receiving the whole fulness of the glory and the whole
+fulness of the light, is a great deal more like the thing we mean when
+we talk of knowing one another than when we talk of knowing a book. That
+is to say, a man may have all the creeds and confessions of faith clear
+in his head, and yet none of the life, none of the light, none of the
+power, and none of the godliness. But if we know Him as our brother,
+know Him as our friend, our sacrifice, our Redeemer, Lord, all in all;
+know Him as our heaven, our righteousness, and our strength; if we know
+Him with the knowledge which is possession; if we know Him with the
+knowledge which, as the profoundest of the Apostles says, 'hath the
+truth in life'; if we know Him, see then, 'This is life eternal, to
+know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.'
+
+Now, friends, my words are done. God is calling you. No, let us put it a
+little more definitely than that--God is calling _thee_. There is no
+speech nor language where His voice is not heard. His words are gone out
+to the end of the world, and have reached even thyself. He calls thee,
+oh! brother, sister, friend, that you and I may turn round to Him and
+say, 'When Thou saidst, Seek ye my face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy
+face, Lord, will I seek.' Amen.
+
+
+
+
+PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE
+
+     'He hath given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that
+      by these ye might be partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped
+      the corruption that is in the world through lust.'--2 Peter i. 4.
+
+
+'Partakers of the Divine nature.' These are bold words, and may be so
+understood as to excite the wildest and most presumptuous dreams. But
+bold as they are, and startling as they may sound to some of us, they
+are only putting into other language the teaching of which the whole New
+Testament is full, that men may, and do, by their faith, receive into
+their spirits a real communication of the life of God. What else does
+the language about being 'the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty'
+mean? What else does the teaching of regeneration mean? What else mean
+Christ's frequent declarations that He dwells in us and we in Him, as
+the branch in the vine, as the members in the body? What else does 'he
+that is joined to the Lord in one spirit' mean? Do not all teach that in
+some most real sense the very purpose of Christianity, for which God
+has sent His Son, and His Son has come, is that we, poor, sinful, weak,
+limited, ignorant creatures as we are, may be lifted up into that solemn
+and awful elevation, and receive in our trembling and yet strengthened
+souls a spark of God? 'That ye may be partakers of the Divine nature'
+means more than 'that you may share in the blessings which that nature
+bestows.' It means that into us may come the very God Himself.
+
+I. So I want you to look with me, first, at this lofty purpose which is
+here presented as being the very aim and end of God's gift in the
+gospel.
+
+The human nature and the Divine are both kindred and contrary. And the
+whole Bible is remarkable for the emphasis with which it insists upon
+both these elements of the comparison, declaring, on the one hand, as no
+other religion has ever declared, the supreme sovereign, unapproachable
+elevation of the infinite Being above all creatures, and on the other
+hand, holding forth the hope, as no other religion has ever ventured to
+do, of the possible union of the loftiest and the lowest, and the
+lifting of the creature into union with God Himself. There are no gods
+of the heathen so far away from their worshippers, and there are none so
+near them, as our God. There is no god that men have bowed before, so
+unlike the devotee; and there is no system which recognises that, as is
+the Maker so are the made, in such thorough-going fashion as the Bible
+does. The arched heaven, though high above us, it is not inaccessible in
+its serene and cloudless beauty, but it touches earth all round the
+horizon, and man is made in the image of God.
+
+True, that divine nature of which the ideal man is the possessor has
+faded away from humanity. But still the human is kindred with the
+divine. The drop of water is of one nature with the boundless ocean that
+rolls shoreless beyond the horizon, and stretches plumbless into the
+abysses. The tiniest spark of flame is of the same nature as those
+leaping, hydrogen spears of illuminated gas that spring hundreds of
+thousands of miles high in a second or two in the great central sun.
+
+And though on the one hand there be finiteness and on the other
+infinitude: though we have to talk, in big words, of which we have very
+little grasp, about 'Omniscience,' and 'Omnipresence,' and 'Eternity,'
+and such like, these things may be deducted and yet the Divine nature
+may be retained; and the poor, ignorant, finite, dying creature, that
+perishes before the moth, may say, 'I am kindred with Him whose years
+know no end; whose wisdom knows no uncertainty nor growth; whose power
+is Omnipotence; and whose presence is everywhere.' He that can say, 'I
+am,' is of the same nature as His whose mighty proclamation of Himself
+is 'I AM THAT I AM.' He who can say 'I will' is of the same nature as He
+who willeth and it is done.
+
+But that kindred, belonging to every soul of man, abject as well as
+loftiest, is not the 'partaking' of which my text speaks; though it is
+the basis and possibility of it; for my text speaks of men as
+'_becoming_ partakers,' and of that participation as the result, not of
+humanity, but of God's gift of 'exceeding great and precious promises.'
+That creation in the image and likeness of God, which is represented as
+crowned by the very breath of God breathed into man's nostrils implies
+not only kindred with God in personality and self-conscious will, but
+also in purity and holiness. The moral kindred has darkened into
+unlikeness, but the other remains. It is not the gift here spoken of,
+but it supplies the basis which makes that gift possible. A dog could
+not become possessor of the Divine nature, in the sense in which my text
+speaks of it. Any man, however bad, however foolish, however degraded,
+abject and savage, can become a partaker of it, and yet no man has it
+without something else than the fact of his humanity.
+
+What, then, is it? No mere absorption, as extravagant mystics have
+dreamed, into that Divine nature, as a drop goes back into the ocean and
+is lost. There will always be 'I' and 'thou,' or else there were no
+blessedness, nor worship, nor joy. We must so partake of the Divine
+nature as that the bounds between the bestowing God and the partaking
+man shall never be broken down. But that being presupposed, union as
+close as is possible, the individuality of the giver and the receiver
+being untampered with is the great hope that all Christian men and women
+ought consciously to cherish.
+
+Only mark, the beginning of the whole is the communication of a Divine
+life which is manifested mainly in what we call moral likeness. Or to
+put it into plain words, the teaching of my text is no dreamy teaching,
+such as an eastern mystic might proclaim, of absorption into an
+impersonal Divine. There is no notion here of any partaking of these
+great though secondary attributes of the Divine mind which to many men
+are the most Godlike parts of His nature. But what my text mainly means
+is, you may, if you like, become 'holy as God is holy.' You may become
+loving as God is loving, and with a breath of His own life breathed into
+your hearts. The central Divinity in the Divine, if I may so say, is the
+amalgam of holiness and love. That is God; the rest is what belongs to
+God. God _has_ power; God _is_ love. That is the regnant attribute, the
+spring that sets everything agoing. And so, when my text talks about
+making us all, if we will, partakers of a Divine nature, what it means,
+mainly, is this--that into every human spirit there may pass a seed of
+Divine life which will unfold itself there in all purity of holiness, in
+all tenderness and gentleness of love. 'God is love; and he that
+dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' Partakers we shall be
+in the measure in which by our faith we have drawn from Him the pure and
+the hearty love of whatever things are fair and noble; the measure in
+which we love righteousness and hate iniquity.
+
+And then remember also that this lofty purpose which is here set forth
+is a purpose growingly realised in man. The Apostle puts great stress
+upon that word in my text, which, unfortunately, is not rendered
+adequately in our Bible, 'that by these ye might _become_ partakers of
+the Divine nature.' He is not talking about a _being_, but about a
+_becoming_. That is to say, God must ever be passing, moment by moment,
+into our hearts if there is to be anything godly there. No more
+certainly must this building, if we are to see, be continually filled
+with light-beams that are urged from the central sun by its impelling
+force than the spirit must be receiving, by momentary communication, the
+gift of life from God if it is to live. Cut off the sunbeam from the sun
+and it dies, and the house is dark; cut off the life from the root and
+it withers, and the creature shrivels. The Christian man lives only by
+continual derivation of life from God; and for ever and ever the secret
+of his being and of his blessedness is not that he has become a
+possessor, but that he has become a partaker, of the Divine nature.
+
+And that participation ought to, and will, be a growing thing. By daily
+increase we shall be made capable of daily increase. Life is growth; the
+Divine life in Him is not growth, but in us it does grow, and our
+infancy will be turned into youth; and our youth into maturity; and,
+blessed be His name, the maturity will be a growing one, to which grey
+hairs and feebleness will never come, nor a term ever be set. More and
+more of God we may receive every day we live, and through the endless
+ages of eternity; and if we have Him in our hearts, we shall live as
+long as there is anything more to pass from God to us. Until the
+fountain has poured its whole fulness into the cistern, the cistern will
+never be broken. He who becomes partaker of the Divine nature can never
+die. So as Christ taught us the great argument for immortality is the
+present relation between God and us, and the fact that He is the God of
+Abraham points to the resurrection life.
+
+II. Look, in the second place, at the costly and sufficient means
+employed for the realisation of this great purpose. 'He hath given to us
+exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might become
+partakers,' etc.
+
+Of course the mere words of a promise will not communicate this Divine
+life to men's souls. 'Promises' here must necessarily, I think, be
+employed in the sense of fulfilment of the promises. And so we might
+think of all the great and wondrous words which God has spoken in the
+past, promises of deliverance, of forgiveness, and the like; but I am
+rather disposed to believe that the extreme emphasis of the epithets
+which the Apostle selects to describe these promised things now
+fulfilled suggests another interpretation.
+
+I believe that by these 'exceeding great and precious promises' is
+meant the unspeakable gift of God's own Son, and the gift therein and
+thereafter of God's life-giving Spirit. For is not this the meaning of
+the central fact of Christianity, the incarnation--that the Divine
+becomes partaker of the human in order that the human may partake of the
+Divine? Is not Christ's coming the great proof that however high the
+heavens may stretch above the flat, sad earth, still the Divine nature
+and the human are so kindred that God can enter into humanity and be
+manifest in the flesh? Contrariety vanishes; the difference between the
+creature and the Creator disappears. These mere distinctions of power
+and weakness, of infinitude and finiteness, of wisdom and of ignorance,
+of undying being and decaying life, vanish, as of secondary consequence,
+when we can say, 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.' There can
+be no insuperable obstacle to man's being lifted up into a union with
+the Divine, since the Divine found no insuperable obstacle in descending
+to enter into union with the human.
+
+So then, because God has given us His Son it is clear that we may become
+partakers of the Divine nature; inasmuch as He, the Divine, has become
+partaker of the children's flesh and blood, and in that coming of the
+Divine into the human there was brought the seed and the germ of a life
+which can be granted to us all. Brethren! there is one way, and one way
+only, by which any of us can partake of this great and wondrous gift of
+a share in God, and it is through Jesus Christ. 'No man hath ascended up
+into Heaven,' nor ever will either climb or fly there, 'save He that
+came down from Heaven; even the Son of man which is in Heaven.' And in
+Him we may ascend, and in Him we may receive God.
+
+Christ is the true Prometheus, if I may so speak, who brings to earth in
+the fragile reed of his humanity the sacred and immortal fire which may
+be kindled in every heart. Open your hearts to Him by faith and He will
+come in, and with Him the rejoicing life which will triumph over the
+death of self and sin, and give to you a share in the nature of God.
+
+III. Let me say, lastly, that this great text adds a human accompaniment
+of that Divine gift: 'Having escaped the corruption that is in the world
+through lust.'
+
+The only condition of receiving this Divine nature is the opening of the
+heart by faith to Him, the Divine human Christ, who is the bond between
+men and God, and gives it to us. But that condition being presupposed,
+this important clause supplies the conduct which attends and attests the
+possession of the Divine nature.
+
+Notice, here is human nature without God, described as 'the corruption
+that is in the world in lust.' It is like a fungus, foul-smelling,
+slimy, poisonous; whose growth looks rather the working of decay than of
+vitality. And, says my text, that is the kind of thing that human nature
+is if God is _not_ in it. There is an 'either' and 'or' here. On the one
+hand we must have a share in the Divine nature, or, on the other, we
+have a share in the putrescence 'that is in the world through lust.'
+
+Corruption is initial destruction, though of course other forms of life
+may come from it; destruction is complete corruption. The word means
+both. A man either escapes from lust and evil, or he is destroyed by
+it.
+
+And the root of this rotting fungus is 'in lust,' which word, of course,
+is used in a much wider meaning than the fleshly sense in which we
+employ it in modern times. It means 'desire' of all sorts. The root of
+the world's corruption is my own and my brothers' unbridled and godless
+desires.
+
+So there are two states--a life plunged in putridity, or a heart touched
+with the Divine nature. Which is it to be? It cannot be both. It must be
+one or the other. Which?
+
+A man that has got the life of God, in however feeble measure, in him,
+will flee away from this corruption like Lot out of Sodom. And how will
+he flee out of it? By subduing his own desires; not by changing
+position, not by shirking duty, not by withdrawing himself into
+unwholesome isolation from men and men's ways. The corruption is not
+only 'in the world,' so that you could get rid of it by getting out of
+the world, but it is 'in the world in lust,' so that you carry the
+fountain of it within yourself. The only way to escape is by no outward
+flight, but by casting out the unclean thing from our own souls.
+
+Depend upon it, the measure in which a man has the love of God in him
+can be very fairly estimated by the extent to which he is doing this.
+There is a test for you Christian people. There have been plenty of men
+and women in all ages of the Church, and they abound in this generation,
+who will make no scruple of declaring that they possess a portion of
+this Divine Spirit and a spark of God in their souls. Well then, I say,
+here is the test, bring it all to this--does that life within you cast
+out your own evil desires? If it does, well; if it does not, the less
+you say about Christ in your hearts the less likely you will be to
+become either a hypocrite, or a self-deceiver.
+
+And so, brethren, remember, one last word, viz., that whilst on the one
+hand whoever has the life of God in his heart will be fleeing from this
+corruption, on the other hand you can weaken--ay! and you can kill the
+Divine life by not so fleeing. You have got it, if you have it, to
+nourish, to cherish, and to do that most of all by obeying it. If you do
+not obey, and if habitually you keep the plant with all its buds picked
+off one after another as they begin to form, you will kill it sooner or
+later. You Christian men and women take warning. God has given you Jesus
+Christ. It was worth while for Christ to live; it was worth while for
+Christ to die, in order that into the souls of all sinful,
+God-forgetting, devil-following men there might pass this Promethean
+spark of the true fire.
+
+You get it, if you will, by simple faith. You will not keep it unless
+you obey it. Mind you do not quench the Holy Spirit, and extinguish the
+very life of God in your souls.
+
+
+
+
+THE POWER OF DILIGENCE
+
+     'Giving all diligence, add to your faith ...'--2 Peter i. 5.
+
+
+It seems to me very like Peter that there should be so much in this
+letter about the very commonplace and familiar excellence of diligence.
+He over and over again exhorts to it as the one means to the attainment
+of all Christian graces, and of all the blessedness of the Christian
+life. We do not expect fine-spun counsels from a teacher whose natural
+bent is, like his, but plain, sturdy, common sense, directed to the
+highest matter, and set aglow by fervent love to his Lord. The Apostle
+paints himself, and his own way of Christian living, when he thus
+frequently exhorts his brethren to 'give all diligence.' He says in this
+same chapter that he himself will 'give diligence [_endeavour_, in
+Authorised Version] that they may be able after his decease to have
+these things always in remembrance.' We seem to see Peter, not much
+accustomed to wield a pen, sitting down to what he felt a somewhat
+difficult task, and pointing the readers to his own example as an
+instance of the temper which they must cherish if they are to make
+anything of their Christian life. 'Just as I labour for your sakes at
+this unfamiliar work of writing, so do you toil at perfecting your
+Christian graces.'
+
+Now it strikes me that we may gain some instruction if we throw together
+the various objects to which in Scripture, and especially in this
+letter, we are exhorted to direct this virtue of diligence, and mark how
+comprehensive its range, and how, for all beauty of character and
+progress in the Divine life, it is regarded as an indispensable
+condition. Let us then look, first, at the homely excellence that is the
+master-key to all Christian maturity and grace, and then at the various
+fields in which we are to apply it.
+
+I. Now as to the homely virtue itself, 'giving all diligence.'
+
+We all know what 'diligence' means, but it is worth while to point out
+that the original meaning of the word is not so much _diligence_ as
+_haste_. It is employed, for instance, to describe the eager swiftness
+with which the Virgin went to Elizabeth after the angel's salutation and
+annunciation. It is the word employed to describe the murderous hurry
+with which Herodias came rushing in to the king to demand John the
+Baptist's head. It is the word with which the Apostle, left solitary in
+his prison, besought his sole trusty companion Timothy to 'make haste so
+as to come to him before winter.' Thus, the first notion in the word is
+haste, which crowds every moment with continuous effort, and lets no
+hindrances entangle the feet of the runner. Wise haste has sometimes to
+be content to go slowly. 'Raw haste' is 'half sister to delay.' When
+haste degenerates into hurry, and becomes agitation, it is weakness, not
+strength; it turns out superficial work, which has usually to be pulled
+to pieces and done over again, and it is sure to be followed by reaction
+of languid idleness. But the less we hurry the more should we hasten in
+running the race set before us.
+
+But with this caution against spurious haste, we cannot too seriously
+lay to heart the solemn motives to wise and well-directed haste. The
+moments granted to any of us are too few and precious to let slip
+unused. The field to be cultivated is too wide and the possible harvest
+for the toiler too abundant, and the certain crop of weeds in the
+sluggard's garden too poisonous, to allow dawdling to be considered a
+venial fault. Little progress will be made if we do not work as feeling
+that 'the night is far spent, the day is at hand,' or as feeling the
+apparently opposite but really identical conviction, 'I must work the
+works of Him that sent me while it is day. The night cometh when no man
+can work.' The day of full salvation, repose, and blessedness is near
+dawning. The night of weeping, the night of toil, is nearly past. By
+both aspects of this brief life we should be spurred to haste.
+
+The first element, then, in Christian diligence is economy of time as of
+most precious treasure, and the avoidance, as of a pestilence, of all
+procrastination. 'To-morrow and to-morrow' is the opiate with which
+sluggards and cowards set conscience asleep, and as each to-morrow
+becomes to-day it proves as empty of effort as its predecessors, and,
+when it has become yesterday, it adds one more to the solemn company of
+wasted opportunities which wait for a man at the bar of God. 'All their
+yesterdays have lighted' such idlers 'to dusty death,' because in each
+they were saying, 'to-morrow we will begin the better course,' instead
+of beginning it to-day. 'Now is the accepted time.' 'Wherefore, giving
+all haste, add to your faith.'
+
+Another of the phases of the virtue, which Peter here regards as
+sovereign, is represented in our translation of the word by
+'earnestness,' which is the parent of diligence. Earnestness is the
+sentiment, of which diligence is the expression. So the word is
+frequently translated. Hence we gather that no Christian growth is
+possible unless a man gives his mind to it. Dawdlers will do nothing.
+There must be fervour if there is to be growth. The heated bar of iron
+will go through the obstacle which the cold one will never penetrate. We
+must gather ourselves together under the impulse of an all-pervading and
+noble earnestness, too deep to be demonstrative, and which does not
+waste itself in noise, but settles down steadily to work. The engine
+that is giving off its steam in white puffs is not working at its full
+power. When we are most intent we are most silent. Earnestness is dumb,
+and therefore it is terrible.
+
+Again we come to the more familiar translation of the word as in the
+text. 'Diligence' is the panacea for all diseases of the Christian
+life. It is the homely virtue that leads to all success. It is a great
+thing to be convinced of this, that there are no mysteries about the
+conditions of healthy Christian living, but that precisely the same
+qualities which lead to victory in any career to which a man sets
+himself do so in this; that, on the one hand, we shall never fail if in
+earnest and saving the crumbs of moments, we give ourselves to the work
+of Christian growth; and that on the other hand, no fine emotions, no
+select moments of rapture and communion will ever avail to take the
+place of the dogged perseverance and prosaic hard work which wins in all
+other fields; and wins, and is the only thing that does win, in this one
+too. If you want to be a strong Christian--that is to say, a happy
+man--you must bend your back to the work and 'give all diligence.'
+Nobody goes to heaven in his sleep. No man becomes a vigorous Christian
+by any other course than 'giving all diligence.' It is a very lowly
+virtue. It is like some of the old wives' recipes for curing diseases
+with some familiar herb that grows at every cottage door. People will
+not have that, but if you bring them some medicine from far away, very
+rare and costly, and suggest to them some course out of the beaten rut
+of ordinary, honest living, they will jump at that. Quackery always
+deals in mysteries and rare things. The great physician cures diseases
+with simples that grow everywhere. A pennyworth of some familiar root
+will cure an illness that nothing else will touch. It is a homely
+virtue, but if in its homeliness we practised it, this Church and our
+own souls would wear a different face from what it and they do to-day.
+
+II. Note the wide field of action for this homely grace.
+
+I can do nothing more--nor is it necessary that I should--than put
+before your mind, in a sentence or two, the various applications of it
+which our letter gives.
+
+First, note that in our text, 'giving all diligence, add to your faith.'
+That is to say, unless you work with haste, with earnestness, and
+therefore with much putting forth of strength, your faith will not
+evolve the graces of character which is in it to bring forth. If, on the
+other hand, we set ourselves to our tasks, then out of faith will come,
+as the blossoms mysteriously and miraculously do out of an apparently
+dead stump, virtue, manliness, and knowledge, and temperance, and
+patience, and godliness, and brotherly mindedness, and charity. All that
+galaxy of light and beauty will shine forth on the one condition of
+diligence, and it will not appear without that. Without it, the faith,
+though it may be genuine, which lies in a man who is idle in cultivating
+Christian character, will bear but few and shrivelled fruits. The
+Apostle uses a very remarkable expression here, which is rendered in our
+Bible imperfectly 'giving all diligence.' He has just been saying that
+God has 'given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, and
+exceeding great and precious promises.' The Divine gift, then, is
+everything that will help a man to live a high and godly life. And, says
+Peter, on this very account, because you have all these requisites for
+such a life already given you, see that you 'bring besides into' the
+heap of gifts, as it were, that which you and only you can bring,
+namely, 'all diligence.' The phrase implies that diligence is our
+contribution. And the very reason for exercising it is the completeness
+of God's gift. 'On this very account'--because He has given so much--we
+are to lay 'all diligence' by the side of His gifts, which are useless
+to the sluggard.
+
+On the one hand there are all great gifts and boundless possibilities as
+to life and godliness, and on the other diligence as the condition on
+which all these shall actually become ours, and, passing into our lives,
+will there produce all these graces which the Apostle goes on to
+enumerate. The condition is nothing recondite, nothing hard either to
+understand or to practise, but it is simply that commonplace, humdrum
+virtue of diligence. If we will put it forth, then the gifts that God
+has given, and which are not really ours unless we put it forth, will
+pass into the very substance of our being, and unfold themselves
+according to the life that is in them; even the life that is in Jesus
+Christ Himself, in all forms of beauty and sweetness and power and
+blessedness. 'Diligence' makes faith fruitful. Diligence makes God's
+gifts ours.
+
+Then, again, the Apostle gives an even more remarkable view of the
+possible field for this all-powerful diligence when he bids his readers
+exercise it in order to 'make their calling and election sure.' Peter's
+first letter shows that he believed that Christians were 'chosen
+according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.' But for all that he
+is not a bit afraid of putting the other side of the truth, and saying
+to us in effect. 'We cannot read the eternal decrees of God nor know the
+names written in the Book of Life. These are mysteries above us. But if
+you want to be sure that you are one of the called and chosen, work and
+you will get the assurance.' The confirmation of the 'call,' of the
+'election,' both in fact and in my consciousness depends upon my action.
+The 'diligence,' of which the Apostle thinks such great things, reaches,
+as it were, a hand up into heaven and binds a man to that great
+unrevealed, electing purpose of God. If we desire that upon our
+Christian lives there shall shine the perpetual sunshine of an
+unclouded confidence that we have the love and the favour of God, and
+that for us there is no condemnation, but only 'acceptance in the
+beloved,' the short road to it is the well-known and trite path of toil
+in the Christian life.
+
+Still further, one of the other writers of the New Testament gives us
+another field in which this virtue may expatiate, when the author of the
+Epistle to the Hebrews exhorts to diligence, in order to attain 'the
+full assurance of hope.' If we desire that our path should be brightened
+by the clear vision of our blessed future beyond the grave, and above
+the stars, and within the bosom of God, the road to that happy assurance
+and sunny, cloudless confidence in a future of rest and fellowship with
+God lies simply here--work! as Christian men should, whilst it is called
+to-day.
+
+The last of the fields in which this virtue finds exercise is expressed
+by our letter, when Peter says, 'Seeing that we look for such things,
+let us _be diligent_, that we may be found of Him in peace without spot,
+and blameless.' If we are to be 'found in peace,' we must be 'found
+spotless,' and if we are to be 'found spotless' we must be 'diligent.'
+'If that servant begin to say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;
+and to be slothful, and to eat and drink with the drunken, the lord of
+that servant will come in an hour when he is not aware.' On the other
+hand, 'who is that faithful servant whom his lord hath set ruler over
+his household? Blessed is that servant whom his lord when he cometh
+shall find so doing?' Doing so, and diligently doing it, 'he shall be
+found in peace.'
+
+What a beautiful ideal of Christian life results from putting together
+all these items. A fruitful faith, a sure calling, a cloudless hope, a
+peaceful welcome at last! The Old Testament says, 'The hand of the
+diligent maketh rich'; the New Testament promises unchangeable riches to
+the same hand. The Old Testament says, 'Seest thou a man diligent in his
+business, he shall stand before kings.' The New Testament assures us
+that the noblest form of that promise shall be fulfilled in the
+Christian man's communion with his Lord here, and perfected when the
+diligent disciple shall 'be found of Him in peace,' and stand before the
+King in that day, accepted and himself a king.
+
+
+
+
+GOING OUT AND GOING IN
+
+     'An entrance ... my decease.'--2 Peter i. 11, 15.
+
+
+I do not like, and do not often indulge in, the practice of taking
+fragments of Scripture for a text, but I venture to isolate these two
+words, because they correspond to one another, and when thus isolated
+and connected, bring out very prominently two aspects of one thing. In
+the original the correspondence is even closer, for the words, literally
+rendered, are 'a going in' and 'a going out.' The same event is looked
+at from two sides. On the one it is a departure; on the other it is an
+arrival. That event, I need not say, is Death.
+
+I note, further, that the expression rendered, 'my decease,' employs the
+word which is always used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament
+to express the departure of the Children of Israel from bondage, and
+which gives its name, in our language, to the Second Book of the
+Pentateuch. 'My exodus'--associations suggested by the word can scarcely
+fail to have been in the writer's mind.
+
+Further, I note that this expression for Death is only employed once
+again in the New Testament--viz., in St. Luke's account of the
+Transfiguration, where Moses and Elias spake with Jesus 'concerning His
+decease--the exodus--which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.' If you
+look on to the verses which follow the second of my texts, you will see
+that the Apostle immediately passes on to speak about that
+Transfiguration, and about the voice which He heard then in the holy
+mount. So that I think we must suppose that in the words of our second
+text he was already beginning to think about the Transfiguration, and
+was feeling that, somehow or other, his 'exodus' was to be conformed to
+his Master's.
+
+Now bearing all these points in mind, let us just turn to these words
+and try to gather the lessons which they suggest.
+
+I. The first of them is this, the double Christian aspect of death.
+
+It is well worth noting that the New Testament very seldom condescends
+to use that name for the mere physical fact of dissolution. It reserves
+it for the most part for something a great deal more dreadful than the
+separation of body and soul, and uses all manner of periphrases, or what
+rhetoricians call euphemising, that is, gentle expressions which put the
+best face upon a thing instead of the ugly word itself. It speaks, for
+instance, as you may remember, in the context here about the 'putting
+off' of a tent or 'a tabernacle,' blending the notions of stripping off
+a garment and pulling down a transitory abode. It speaks about death as
+a sleep, and in that and other ways sets it forth in gracious and gentle
+aspects, and veils the deformity, and loves and hopes away the
+dreadfulness of it.
+
+Now other languages and other religions besides Christianity have done
+the same things, and Roman and Greek poets and monuments have in like
+manner avoided the grim, plain word--death, but they have done it for
+exactly the opposite reason from that for which the Christian does it.
+They did it because the thing was so dark and dismal, and because they
+knew so little and feared so much about it. And Christianity does it for
+exactly the opposite reason, because it fears it not at all, and knows
+it quite enough. So it toys with leviathan, and 'lays its hand on the
+cockatrice den,' and my text is an instance of this.
+
+'My decease ... an entrance.' So the terribleness and mystery dwindled
+down into this--a change of position; or if locality is scarcely the
+right class of ideas to apply to spirits detached from the body--a
+change of condition. That is all.
+
+We do not need to insist upon the notion of change of place. For, as I
+say, we get into a fog when we try to associate place with pure
+spiritual existence. But the root of the conviction which is expressed
+in both these phrases, and most vividly by their juxtaposition, is this,
+that what happens at death is not the extinction, but the withdrawal, of
+a person, and that the man _is_, as fully, as truly as he was, though
+all the relations in which he stands may be altered.
+
+Now no materialistic teaching has any right to come in and bar that
+clear faith and firm conclusion. For by its very saying that it knows
+nothing about life except in connection with organisation, it
+acknowledges that there is a difference between them. And until science
+can tell me how it is that the throb of a brain or the quiver of a
+nerve, becomes transformed into morality, into emotion, I maintain that
+it knows far too little of personality and of life to be a valid
+authority when it asserts that the destruction of the organisation is
+the end of the man. I feel myself perfectly free--in the darkness in
+which, after all investigation, that mysterious transformation of the
+physical into the moral and the spiritual lies--I feel perfectly free to
+listen to another voice, the voice which tells me that life can subsist,
+and that personal being can be as full--ay, fuller--apart altogether
+from the material frame which here, and by our present experience, is
+its necessary instrument. And though accepting all that physical
+investigation can teach us, we can still maintain that its light does
+not illumine the central obscurity; and that, after all, it still
+remains true that round about the being of each man, as round about the
+being of God, clouds and darkness roll,
+
+    'Life and thought have gone away,
+                      Side by side,
+     Leaving door and window wide.'
+
+That, and nothing more, is death--'My decease ... an entrance.'
+
+Then, again, the combination of these two words suggests to us that the
+one act, in the same moment, is both departure and arrival. There is not
+a pin-point of space, not the millionth part of a second of time,
+intervening between the two. There is no long journey to be taken. A man
+in straits, and all but desperation, is recorded in the old Book to have
+said: 'There is but a step between me and death.' Ah, there is but a
+step between death and the Kingdom; and he that passes out at the same
+moment passes in.
+
+I need not say a word about theories which seem to me to have no basis
+at all in our only source of information, which is Revelation; theories
+which would interpose a long period of unconsciousness--though to the
+man unconscious it be no period at all--between the act of departure and
+that of entrance. Not so do I read the teaching of Scripture: 'This day
+thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.' We pass out, and as those in the
+vestibule of a presence-chamber have but to lift the curtain and find
+themselves face to face with the king, so we, at one and the same
+moment, depart and arrive.
+
+Friends stand round the bed, and before they can tell by the undimmed
+mirror that the last breath has been drawn, the saint is 'with Christ,
+which is far better.' To depart _is_ to be with Him. There is a moment
+in the life of every believing soul in which there strangely mingle the
+lights of earth and the lights of heaven. As you see in dissolving
+views, the one fades and the other consolidates. Like the mighty angel
+in the Apocalypse, the dying man stands for a moment with one foot on
+the earth and the other already laved and cleansed by the waters of that
+'sea of glass mingled with fire which is before the Throne,' 'Absent
+from the body; present with the Lord.'
+
+Further, these two words suggest that the same act is emancipation from
+bondage and entrance into royalty.
+
+'My exodus.' Israel came out of Egyptian servitude and dropped chains
+from wrists and left taskmasters cracking their useless whips behind
+them, and the brick kilns and the weary work were all done when they
+went forth. Ah, brethren, whatever beauty and good and power and
+blessedness there may be in this mortal life, there are deep and sad
+senses in which, for all of us, it is a prison-house and a state of
+captivity. There is a bondage of flesh; there is a dominion of the
+animal nature; there are limitations, like high walls, cribbing,
+cabining, confining us--the limitations of circumstance. There is the
+slavery of dependence upon this poor, external, and material world.
+There are the tyranny of sin and the subjugation of the nobler nature to
+base and low and transient needs. All these fetters, and the scars of
+them, drop away. Joseph comes out of prison to a throne. The kingdom is
+not merely one in which the redeemed man is a subject, but one in which
+he himself is a prince. 'Have thou authority over ten cities.' These are
+the Christian aspects of death.
+
+II. Now note, secondly, the great fact on which this view of death
+builds itself.
+
+I have already remarked that in one of my texts the Apostle seems to be
+thinking about Jesus Christ and His decease. The context also refers to
+another incident in his own life, when our Lord foretold to him that the
+putting off his tabernacle was to be 'sudden,' and added: 'Follow thou
+Me.'
+
+Taking these allusions into account, they suggest that it is the death
+of Jesus Christ--and that which is inseparable from it, His
+Resurrection--that changes for a soul believing on Him the whole aspect
+of that last experience that awaits us all. It is His exodus that makes
+'my exodus' a deliverance from captivity and an entrance upon royalty.
+
+I need not remind you, how, after all is said and done, we are sure of
+life eternal, because Jesus Christ died and rose again. I do not need to
+depreciate other imperfect arguments which seem to point in that
+direction, such as the instincts of men's natures, the craving for some
+retribution beyond, the impossibility of believing that life is
+extinguished by the fact of physical death. But whilst I admit that a
+good deal may be said, and strong probabilities may be alleged, it seems
+to me that however much you may argue, no words, no considerations,
+moral or intellectual, can suffice to establish more than that it would
+be a very good thing if there were a future life and that it is probable
+that there is. But Jesus Christ comes to us and says, 'Touch Me, handle
+Me; a spirit hath not flesh and bones as I have. Here I am. I _was_
+dead; I _am_ alive for evermore.' So then _one_ life, that we know
+about, _has_ persisted undiminished, apart from the physical frame, and
+that one Man has gone down into the dark abyss, and has come up the same
+as when He descended. So it is His exodus--and, as I believe, His death
+and Resurrection alone--on which the faith in immortality impregnably
+rests.
+
+But that is not the main point which the text suggests. Let me remind
+you how utterly the whole aspect of any difficulty, trial, or sorrow,
+and especially of that culmination of all men's fears--death itself--is
+altered when we think that in the darkest bend of the dark road we may
+trace footsteps, not without marks of blood in them, of Him that has
+trodden it all before us. 'Follow thou Me,' He said to Peter; and it
+should be no hard thing for us, if we love Him, to tread where He trod.
+It should be no lonely road for us to walk, however the closest clinging
+hands may be untwined from our grasp, and the most utter solitude of
+which a human soul is capable may be realised, when we remember that
+Jesus Christ has walked it before us.
+
+The entrance, too, is made possible because He has preceded us. 'I go to
+prepare a place for you.' So we may be sure that when we go through
+those dark gates and across the wild, the other side of which no man
+knows, it is not to step out of 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day'
+into some dim, cold, sad land, but it is to enter into His presence.
+
+Israel's exodus was headed by a mummy case, in which the dead bones of
+their whilom leader were contained. Our exodus is headed by the Prince
+of Life, who was dead and is alive for evermore.
+
+So, brethren, I beseech you, treasure these thoughts more than you do.
+Turn to Jesus Christ and His resurrection from the dead more than you
+do. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that the Christianity of this
+day is largely losing the habitual contemplation of immortality which
+gave so much of its strength to the religion of past generations. We are
+all so busy in setting forth and enforcing the blessings of Christianity
+in its effects in the present life that, I fear me, we are largely
+forgetting what it does for us at the end, and beyond the end. And I
+would that we all thought more of our exodus and of our entrance in the
+light of Christ's death and resurrection. Such contemplation will not
+unfit us for any duty or any enjoyment. It will lift us above the
+absorbed occupation with present trivialities, which is the bane of all
+that is good and noble. It will teach us 'a solemn scorn of ills.' It
+will set on the furthest horizon a great light instead of a doleful
+darkness, and it will deliver us from the dread of that 'shadow feared
+of man,' but not by those who, listening to Jesus Christ, have been
+taught that to depart is to be with Him.
+
+III. Now I meant to have said a word, in the close of my sermon, about a
+third point--viz., the way of securing that this aspect of death shall
+be our experience, but your time will not allow of my dwelling upon
+that as I should have wished. I would only point out that, as I have
+already suggested, this context teaches us that it is His death that
+must make our deaths what they may become; and would ask you to notice,
+further, that the context carries us back to the preceding verses. 'An
+entrance shall be _ministered_ unto you _abundantly_.' We have just
+before read, 'If these things be in you and _abound_, they make you that
+ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
+Jesus Christ'; and just before is the exhortation, 'giving all
+diligence, minister to your faith virtue.'
+
+So the Apostle, by reiterating the two words which he had previously
+been using, teaches us that if death is to be to us that departure from
+bondage and entrance into the Kingdom, we must here and now bring forth
+the fruits of faith. There is no entrance hereafter, unless there has
+been a habitual entering into the Holy Place by the blood of Jesus
+Christ even whilst we are on earth. There is no entrance by reason of
+the fact of death, unless all through life there has been an entrance
+into rest by reason of the fact of faith.
+
+And so, dear brethren, I beseech you to remember that it depends on
+yourself whether departing shall be arrival, and exodus shall be
+entrance. One thing or other that last moment must be to us all--either
+a dragging us reluctant away from what we would fain cleave to, or a
+glad departure from a foreign land and entrance to our home. It may be
+as when Peter was let out of prison, the angel touched him, and the
+chains fell from his hands, and the iron gate opened of its own accord,
+and he found himself in the city. It is for you to settle which of the
+two it shall be. And if you will take Him for your King, Companion,
+Saviour, Enlightener, Life here, 'the Lord shall bless your going out
+and coming in from this time forth and even for evermore.'
+
+
+
+
+THE OWNER AND HIS SLAVES
+
+     'Denying the Lord that bought them.'--2 Peter ii. 1.
+
+
+The institution of slavery was one of the greatest blots on ancient
+civilisation. It was twice cursed, cursing both parties, degrading each,
+turning the slave into a chattel, and the master, in many cases, into a
+brute. Christianity, as represented in the New Testament, never says a
+word to condemn it, but Christianity has killed it. 'Make the tree good
+and its fruit good.' Do not aim at institutions, change the people that
+live under them and you change _them_. Girdle the tree and it will die,
+and save you the trouble of felling it. But not only does Christianity
+never condemn slavery, though it was in dead antagonism to all its
+principles, and could not possibly survive where its principles were
+accepted, but it also takes this essentially immoral relation and finds
+a soul of goodness in the evil thing, which serves to illustrate the
+relation between God and man, between Christ and us. It does with
+slavery as it does with war, uses what is good in it as illustrating
+higher truths, and trusts to the operation, the slow operation of its
+deepest principles for its destruction.
+
+So, then, we have one Apostle, in his letters, binding on his forehead
+as a crown the designation, 'Paul,' a _slave_ of 'Jesus Christ,' and we
+have in my text an expanded allusion to slavery. The word that is here
+rendered rightly enough, 'Lord,' is the word which has been transferred
+into English as 'despot,' and it carries with it some suggestion of the
+roughness and absoluteness of authority which that word suggests to us.
+It does not mean merely 'master,' it means 'owner,' and it suggests an
+unconditional authority, to which the only thing in us that corresponds
+is abject and unconditional submission. That is what Christ is to you
+and me; the Lord, the Despot, the Owner.
+
+But we have not only owner and slave here; we have one of the ugliest
+features of the institution referred to. You have the slave-market, 'the
+Lord that _bought_ them,' and because He purchased them, owns them.
+Think of the hell of miseries that are connected with that practice of
+buying and selling human flesh, and then estimate the magnificent
+boldness of the metaphor which Peter does not scruple to take from it
+here, speaking of the owner who acquired them by a price. And not only
+that, but slaves will run away, and when they are stopped, and asked who
+they belong to, will say they know nothing about him. And so here is the
+runaway's denial, 'denying the Lord that bought them.' Now I ask you to
+think of these three points.
+
+I. Here we have the Owner of us all.
+
+I do not need, I suppose, to spend a moment in showing you that this
+relationship, which is laid down in our text, subsists between Jesus
+Christ and men, and it subsists between Jesus Christ and all men. For
+the people about whom the Apostle is saying that they have 'denied the
+Lord that bought them' can, by no construction, be supposed to be true
+Christians, but were enemies that had crept into the Church without any
+real allegiance to Jesus Christ, and were trying to wreck it, and to
+destroy His work. So there is no reference here to a little elected
+group out of the midst of humanity, who especially belonged to Jesus
+Christ, and for whom the price has been paid; but the outlook of my text
+in its latter portion is as wide as humanity. The Lord--that is, Jesus
+Christ--owns all men.
+
+Let me expand that thought in one or two illustrations which may help to
+make it perhaps more vivid. The slave's owner has absolute authority
+over him. You remember the occasion when a Roman officer, by reflecting
+upon the military discipline of the legion, and the mystical power that
+the commander's word had to set all his men in obedient activity, had
+come to the conclusion that, somehow or other, this Jesus whom he
+desired to heal his servant had a similar power in the material
+universe, and that just as he, subordinate officer though he was, had
+yet--by reason of the fact that he was 'under authority,' and an organ
+of a higher authority--the power to say to his servant, 'Go,' and he
+would go; and to another one, 'Come,' and he would come; so this Christ
+had power to say to disease, 'Depart,' and it would depart; and to
+health, 'Come,' and it would come; and to all the material forces of the
+universe, 'Do this,' and obediently they would do it. That is the
+picture, in another region, of the relation which Jesus Christ bears to
+men, though, alas, it is not the picture of the relation which men bear
+to Christ. But to all of us He has the right to say, wherever we are,
+'Come,' the right to say, 'Go,' the right to say, 'Do,' the right to
+say, 'Be this, that, and the other thing.'
+
+Absolute authority is His; what should be yours? Unconditional
+submission. My friend, it is no use your calling yourself a Christian
+unless that is your attitude. My sermon to-night has something else to
+do than simply to present truths to you. It has to press truths on you,
+and to appeal not only to your feelings, not only to your
+understandings, but to your wills. And so I come with this question: Do
+you, dear friend, day by day, yield to the absolute Master the absolute
+submission? And is that rebellious will--which is in you, as it is in us
+all--tamed and submitted so as that you can say, 'Speak, Lord! Thy
+servant heareth'? Is it?
+
+Further, the owner has the right, as part of that absolute authority of
+which I have been speaking, to settle without appeal each man's work. In
+those Eastern monarchies where the king was surrounded, not by
+constitutional ministers, but by his personal slaves, he made one man a
+shoeblack or a pipe-bearer, and the man standing next to him his prime
+minister. And neither the one nor the other had the right to say a word.
+Jesus Christ has the right to regulate your life in all its details, to
+set you your tasks. Some of us will get what the world vulgarly calls
+'more important duties'; some will get what the world ignorantly calls
+more 'insignificant' ones. What does that matter? It was our Owner that
+set us to our work, and if He tells us to black shoes, let us black them
+with all the pith of our elbows, and with the best blacking and brushes
+we can find; and if He sets us to work, which people think is more
+important and more conspicuous, let us do that too, in the same spirit,
+and for the same end.
+
+Again, the owner has the absolute right of possession of all the slave's
+possessions. He gets a little bit of land in the corner of his master's
+plantation, and grows his vegetables, yams, pumpkins, a leaf of tobacco
+or two, or what not, there. And if his master comes along and says,
+'These are mine,' the slave has no recourse, and is obliged to accept
+the conditions and to give them up. So Jesus Christ claims ours as well
+as us--ours because He claims us--and whilst, on the other hand, the
+surrender of external good is incomplete without the surrender of the
+inward will, on the other hand the abandonment and surrender of the
+inward life is incomplete, if it be not hypocritical, without the
+surrender of external possessions. All the slave's goods belonged to the
+owner.
+
+And the owner has another right. He can say, 'Take that man's child and
+sell him in the market!' and he can break up the family ties and
+separate husband and wife, and parent and child, and not a word can be
+said. Our Master comes, not with rough authority, but with loving,
+though absolute authority, and He sometimes untwines the hands that are
+most closely clasped, and says to the one of the two that have grown
+together in love and blessedness, 'Come!' and he cometh, and to the
+other 'Go!' and she goeth. Blessed they who can say, 'It is the Lord!
+Let Him do what seemeth Him good.'
+
+Now, dear friends, this absolute authority cannot be exercised by any
+man upon another man, and this unconditional submission, which Jesus
+Christ asks from us all, ought not to be rendered by any man to a man.
+It is a degradation when a human creature is put even in the external
+relation of slavery and servitude to another human creature, but it is
+an honour when Jesus Christ says to me, 'Thou art Mine,' and I say to
+Him, 'I am Thine, O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; Thou hast loosed my
+bonds.' In the old Saxon monarchies, some antiquarians tell us, the
+foundation of our modern nobility or aristocracy is found in that the
+king's servants became nobles. Jesus Christ's slave is everybody else's
+master. And it is the highest honour that a man can have to bow himself
+before that Lord, and to take His yoke upon him and learn of Him. So
+much, then, for my first point; now a word with regard to the second.
+
+II. The sale, and the price.
+
+'The Lord that bought them.' You perhaps remember other words which say,
+'Ye are bought with a price; be not the servants of men'; also other
+words of this Apostle himself, in which he speaks, in his other letter,
+of being 'bought with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without
+blemish and without spot.' Now notice, Christ's ownership of us does not
+depend on Christ's Divinity, which I suppose most of us believe, but on
+Christ's sacrifice for us. It is perfectly true that creation gives
+rights to the Creator. It is perfectly true that if we believe, as I
+think the New Testament teaches, that He, who before His name was Jesus
+was the Eternal Word of God, was the Agent of all Creation, and
+therefore has rights. But Christ's heart does not care for rights of
+that sort. It wants something far deeper, far tenderer, far closer than
+any such. And He comes to us with the language that is the language of
+love over all the universe, as between man and woman, as between man and
+man, as between man and God, as between God and man, upon His lips, and
+says, 'Thou must love Me, for I have died for thee.' Yes, brother; the
+only ground upon which absolute possession of a man can be rested is the
+ground of prior absolute surrender to Him. Christ must give Himself to
+me before He can ask me to give myself to Him. So all that was
+apparently harsh in the relationship, as I have been trying to set it
+forth to you, melts away and disappears. No owner ever owned a slave as
+truly as a loving woman owns her husband, or a loving husband his wife,
+because the ownership is the expression of perfect love on both sides.
+And that is the golden bond that binds men's souls to Christ in a
+submission which, the more abject it is, the more elevating it is, just
+because 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me.'
+
+I do not dwell upon any cold theological doctrine of an Atonement, but I
+wish you to feel that deep in this great metaphor of our text there lie
+the two things; first, the price that was paid, and, second, the bondage
+from which the slave was delivered. He belonged to another master before
+Christ bought him for Himself. 'He that committeth sin is the slave of
+sin.' Some of you are your own despots, your own tyrants. The worse half
+of you has got the upper hand. The mutineers that ought to have been
+down under hatches, and shackled, have taken possession of the deck and
+clapped the captain and the officers, and all the sextants and
+log-books, away into a corner, and they are driving the ship--that is,
+you--on to the rocks, as hard as they can. A man that is not Christ's
+slave has a far worse slavery in submitting to these tyrant sins that
+have tempted him with the notion of how fine it is to break through
+these old-womanly restraints and conventional fads of a narrow morality,
+and to have his fling, and do as he likes and follow nature. Ay, some of
+you have been doing that, and could write a far better commentary than
+any preacher ever wrote, out of your own experience, on the great words,
+'Whilst they promised them liberty, they themselves are the slaves of
+corruption!' Young men, is that true about any of you--that you came
+here into Manchester to a situation, and lonely lodgings, comparatively
+innocent, and that somebody said, 'Oh, do not be a milksop! come along
+and see life,' and you thought it was fine to shake off the shackles
+that your poor old mother used to try to put upon your limbs? And what
+have you made of it? I will tell you what a great many young men have
+made of it--I have seen scores of them in the forty years that I have
+been preaching here: 'His bones are full of the iniquity of his youth,
+which shall lie down with him in the dust.'
+
+There is a slavery which is blessedness, and there is a slavery which at
+first is delightsome to the worst part of us, and afterwards becomes
+bitter and deadly. And it is the bondage of sin, the bondage to my worst
+self, the bondage to my indulged passions, the bondage to other men, the
+bondage to the material world. Jesus Christ speaks to each of us in His
+great sacrifice, by which He says to us, 'The Son will make you free,
+and you shall be free indeed.' The Lord has bought us. Have you let Him
+emancipate you from all your bondage? Dear friends, bear with me if I
+press again upon you, I pray God that it may ring in your ears till you
+can answer that question, Jesus Christ having bought me, do I belong to
+Him?
+
+III. And now, lastly, notice the runaways.
+
+Did it ever occur to you what a pathetic force there is in Peter's
+picking out that word 'denying' as the shorthand expression for all
+sorts of sins? Who was it that thrice denied that he knew Him? That
+experience went very deep into the Apostle; and here, as I take it, is a
+most significant illustration of his penitent remembrance of his past
+life, all the more significant because of its reticence. The allusion is
+one that nobody could catch that did not know his past, but which to
+those who did know it was full of meaning and of pathos:--'Denying the
+Lord, as _I_ did on that dismal morning, in the High Priest's palace. I
+am speaking about it, for I know what it comes to, and the tears that
+will follow after.'
+
+But what I desire to press upon you, dear friends, is just this: That in
+that view of the lives of people who are not Christians there is
+suggested to us the essential sinfulness, the black ingratitude, and the
+absolute folly of refusing to acknowledge the claims of Him to whom we
+belong, and who has bought us at such a price. You can do it by word,
+and perhaps some of us are not guiltless in that respect. You can do it
+by paring down the character and office of Jesus Christ, and minimising
+the importance of His sacrifice from the world's sins, and thinking of
+Him, not as the Owner that bought us, but as the Master that teaches us.
+You can do it by cowardly hiding of your colours and being too
+shamefaced, too sensitive to the curled lip of the man that works at the
+next bench, or sits at the next desk, or the student that is beside you,
+or somebody else whose opinion you esteem, which prevents you from
+saying like a man, 'I belong to Jesus Christ, and whomsoever other
+people serve, as for me, I am going to serve Him.' And you can do it,
+and many of you are doing it, by simply ignoring His claims, refusing to
+turn to Him, not yielding up your will to Him, not turning your heart to
+Him, not setting your dependence upon Him. Is it not a shame that men,
+whose hearts will glow with thankfulness when another man, especially if
+he is a superior, comes to them with some gift, valuable, but nothing as
+compared with the transcendent gift that Christ brings, will yet let Him
+die for them and not care anything about Him? I can understand the
+vehement antagonism that some people have to Christ and Christianity,
+but what I cannot understand is the attitude of the immense mass of
+people that come to services like this, who profess to believe that
+Jesus Christ's love for them brought Him to the cross, and yet will not
+even pay the poor tribute of a little interest and a momentary
+inclination of heart towards Him. 'Is it nothing to you, all ye that
+pass by,' that Jesus Christ died for you? He bought you for His own. Let
+me beseech you to 'yield yourselves' servants, slaves of Christ, and
+then you will be free, and you will hear Him say in the very depth of
+your hearts, 'Henceforth I call you not slaves, but friends.'
+
+
+
+
+BE DILIGENT
+
+     'Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be
+      diligent that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and
+      blameless.'--2 Peter iii. 14.
+
+
+As we pass the conventional boundary of another year, most of us, I
+suppose, cast glances into the darkness ahead. To those of us who have
+the greater part of our lives probably before us, the onward look will
+disclose glad possibilities. To some of us, who have life mostly behind
+us, the prospect will take 'a sober colouring from an eye that hath kept
+watch over man's mortality,' and there will be little on the lower
+levels to attract. My text falls in with the mood which the season
+fosters. It directs our onward look to a blessed certainty instead of a
+peradventure, and it deduces important practical consequences from the
+hope. These three things are in the words of our text: a clear vision
+that should fill the future; a definite aim for life, drawn from the
+vision; and an earnest diligence in the pursuit of that aim, animated
+by that hope.
+
+Now these three--a bright hope, a sovereign purpose, and a diligent
+earnestness--are the three conditions of all noble life. They themselves
+are strength, and they will bring us buoyancy and freshness which will
+prolong youth into old age, and forbid anything to appear uninteresting
+or small.
+
+So I ask you to look at these three points, as suggested by my text.
+
+I. First, then, the clear hope which should fill our future.
+
+'Seeing that ye look for such things.' What things? Peter has been
+drawing a very vivid and solemn picture of the end, in two parts, one
+destructive, the other constructive. Anticipating the predictions of
+modern science, which confirm his prophecy, he speaks of the dissolution
+of all things by fervent heat, and draws therefrom the lesson: 'What
+manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and
+godliness?'
+
+But that dissolution by fire is not, as people often call it, the 'final
+conflagration.' Rather is it a regenerating baptism of fire, from which
+'the heavens and the earth that now are'--like the old man in the fable,
+made young in the flame--shall emerge renewed and purified. The lesson
+from that prospect is the words of our text.
+
+Now I am not going to dwell upon that thought of a new heaven and a new
+earth renewed by means of the fiery change that shall pass upon them,
+but simply to remark that there is a great deal in the teaching of both
+Old and New Testaments which seems to look in that direction. It is, at
+least, a perfectly tenable belief, and in my humble judgment is
+something more, that this earth, the scene of man's tragedy and crime,
+the theatre of the display of the miracle of redeeming love, emancipated
+from the bondage of corruption, shall be renewed and become the seat of
+the blessed. They who dwell in it, and it on which they dwell pass
+through analogous changes, and as for the individuals, the 'new
+creation' is the old self purified by the fire of the Divine Spirit into
+incorruption and righteousness, so the world in which they live shall,
+in like manner, be 'that new world which is the old,' only having
+suffered the fiery transformation and been glorified thereby.
+
+But passing from that thought, which, however interesting it may be as a
+matter of speculation, is of very small practical importance, notice,
+still further, the essential part of the hope which the Apostle here
+sets forth--viz., that that order of things towards which we may look is
+one permeable only for feet that have been washed and made clean.
+'Therein dwelleth righteousness.' _Righteousness_ there, of course, is
+the abstract for the concrete; the quality is put for the persons that
+exhibit it. And just as the condition of being at home in this present
+material world is the possession of flesh and blood, which puts
+creatures into relationships therewith, and just as it is impossible for
+a finite, bodyless spirit to move amongst, and influence, and be
+influenced by, the gross materialities of the heavens and the earth that
+now are, so is it impossible for anything but purity to be at rest in,
+or even to enter into that future world. 'The gates' of the New
+Jerusalem 'shall not be closed day nor night'; but through the ever-open
+gates none can pass except they who have washed their robes and made
+them white in the blood of the Lamb. There stand at the gates of that
+Paradise unseen, the repulsions of the angel with the flaming sword,
+and none can enter except the righteous. Light kills the creatures of
+the darkness.
+
+      'How pure that soul must be
+     Which, placed within Thy piercing sight,
+     Shall shrink not, but with calm delight
+       Can live, and look on Thee!'
+
+Thus, then, brethren, an order of things free from all corruption, and
+into which none can pass but the pure, should be the vision that ever
+flames before us. Peter takes it for granted that the anticipation of
+that future is an inseparable part of the Christian character. The word
+which he employs, by its very form, expresses that that expectance is
+habitual and continuous. I am afraid that a great many so-called
+Christians very seldom send their thoughts, and still less frequently
+their desires, onwards to that end. In all your dreams of the future,
+how much space has been filled by this future which is no dream? Have
+you, in these past days, and do you, as a matter of habitual and
+familiar occupation of your mind, let your eyes travel on beyond and
+above the low levels of earth and peradventures, to fix them on that
+certainty?
+
+Opticians make glasses with three ranges, and write upon a little bar
+which shifts their eyepieces, 'Theatre,' 'Field,' 'Marine.' Which of the
+three is your glass set to? The turn of a button determines its range.
+You can either look at the things close at hand, or, if you set the
+eyepiece right and use the strongest, you can see the stars. Which is it
+to be? The shorter range shows you possibilities; the longer will show
+you certainties. The shorter range shows you trifles; the longer, all
+that you can desire. The shorter range shows you hopes that are destined
+to be outgrown and left behind; the longer, the far-off glories, a
+pillar of light which will move before you for ever. Oh, how many of the
+hopes that guided our course, and made our objective points in the past,
+are away down below the backward horizon! How many hopes we have
+outgrown, whether they were fulfilled or disappointed. But we may have
+one which will ever move before us, and ever draw our desires. The
+greater vision, if we were only wise enough to bring our lives
+habitually under its influence, would at once dim and ennoble all the
+near future.
+
+Let us then, dear friends, not desecrate that wondrous faculty of
+looking before as well as after which God has given to us, by wasting it
+upon the nothings of this world, but heave it higher, and anchor it more
+firmly in the very Throne of God Himself. And for us let one solemn,
+blessed thought more and more fill with its substance and its light the
+else dim and questionable and insufficient future, and walk evermore as
+seeing Him who is invisible, and as hasting unto the coming of the day
+of the Lord.
+
+II. Then, secondly, note the definite aim which this clear hope should
+impress upon life.
+
+If you knew that you were going to emigrate soon, and spend all your
+life on the other side of the world, in circumstances the outlines of
+which you knew, you would be a fool if you did not set yourself to get
+ready for them. The more clearly we see and the more deeply we feel that
+future hope, which is disclosed for us in the words of my text, the more
+it will prescribe a dominant purpose which will give unity, strength,
+buoyancy, and blessedness to any life. 'Seeing that ye look for such
+things, be diligent.' For what? 'That ye may be found of Him in peace,
+without spot, and blameless.'
+
+Now mark the details of the aim which this great hope impresses upon
+life, as they are stated in the words of my text. Every word is weighty
+here. 'That ye may be _found_.' That implies, if not search, at least
+investigation. It suggests the idea of the discovery of the true
+condition, character, or standing of a man which may have been hidden or
+partially obscured before--and now, at last, is brought out clearly.
+With the same suggestion of investigation and discovery, the same phrase
+is employed in other places; as, for instance, when the Apostle Paul
+speaks about being 'found naked,' or as when he speaks about being
+'found in Him, not having mine own righteousness.' So, then, there is
+some process of examination or investigation, resulting in the
+discovery, possibly for the first time, of what a man really is.
+
+Then note, 'Found _in Him_,' or as the Revised Version reads it, 'in His
+sight.' Then Christ is the Investigator, and it is before 'those pure
+eyes and perfect judgment' that they have to pass, who shall be admitted
+into the new heavens and the new earth, 'wherein dwelleth
+righteousness.'
+
+Then mark what is the character which, discovered on investigation by
+Jesus Christ, admits there: 'without spot and blameless.' There must be
+the entire absence of every blemish, stain, or speck of impurity. The
+purer the white the more conspicuous the black. Soot is never so foul as
+when it lies on driven snow. They who enter there must have nothing in
+them akin to evil. 'Blameless' is the consequence of 'spotless.' That
+which in itself is pure attracts no censure, whether from the Judge or
+from the assessors and onlookers in His court.
+
+But, further, these two words, in almost the same identical form--one of
+them absolutely the same, and the other almost so--are found in Peter's
+other letter as a description of Jesus Christ Himself. He was a Lamb
+'without blemish and without spot.' And thus the character that
+qualifies for the new heavens is the copy of us in Jesus Christ.
+
+Still further, only those who thus have attained to the condition of
+absolute, speckless purity and conformity to Jesus Christ will meet His
+searching eye in calm tranquillity and be 'found of Him _in peace_.'
+
+The steward brings his books to his master. If he knows that there has
+been trickery with the figures and embezzlement, how the wretch shakes
+in his shoes, though he may stand apparently calm, as the master's keen
+eye goes down the columns! If he knows that it is all right, how calmly
+he waits the master's signature at the end, to pass the account! The
+soldiers come back with victory on their helmets, and are glad to look
+their captain in the face. But if they come back beaten, they shrink
+aside and hide their shame. If we are to meet Jesus Christ with quiet
+hearts, and we certainly shall meet Him, we must meet Him 'without spot
+and blameless.' The discovery, then, of what men truly are will be like
+the draining of the bed of a lake. Ah, what ugly, slimy things there are
+down in the bottom! What squalor and filth flung in from the houses, and
+covered over many a day by the waters! All that surface work will be
+drained off from the hearts of men. Shall we show slime and filth, or
+shall we show lovely corals and silver sands without a taint or a speck?
+
+These are the details of the life's aim of a Christian man. And they may
+all be gathered up into one. The end which we should seek as sovereign
+and high above all others is the conformity of our character to Jesus
+Christ our Lord. Never mind about anything else; let us leave all in
+God's hands. He will do better for us than we can do for ourselves. Let
+us trust Him for the contingent future; and let us set ourselves to
+secure this, that, whether joy or sorrow, whether wealth or poverty,
+whether success or failure, whether sweet companionship or solitary
+tears be our lot for the rest of our lives, we may grow in grace, and in
+the knowledge and likeness of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Make
+that your aim, and freshness, buoyancy, enthusiasm, the ennobling of
+everything in this world, and the bending of all to be contributory of
+it, will gladden your days. Make anything else your aim, and you fail of
+your highest purpose, and your life, however successful, will be dreary
+and disappointed, and its end will be shame.
+
+III. Lastly, notice the earnest diligence with which that aim should be
+pursued, in the light of that hope.
+
+Peter is fond of using the word which is here translated 'be diligent.'
+Hard work, honest effort, continuous and persevering, is His simple
+recipe for all nobleness. You will find He employs it, for instance, at
+least three times in this letter, in such connections as, 'Besides this,
+giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue,' and so on through the
+whole glorious series; and again, 'Wherefore the rather, brethren, give
+diligence to make your calling and election sure.' So, then, there is no
+mystery about the way of securing the aim; work towards it, and you will
+get it.
+
+Now, of course, there are a great many other considerations to be
+brought in in reference to the Christian man's means of becoming
+Christlike. We should have to speak of the gifts of a Divine Spirit, of
+the dependence upon God for it, and the like; but for the present
+purpose we may confine ourselves to Peter's own prescription, 'be
+diligent,' and that will secure it. But then the word itself opens out
+into further meanings than that. It not only implies diligence: there
+may be diligence of a very mechanical and ineffective sort. The word
+also includes in its meaning earnestness, and it very frequently
+includes that which is the ordinary consequence of earnestness--viz.,
+haste and economy of time.
+
+So I venture, in closing, just to throw my remarks into three simple
+exhortations. Be in earnest in cultivating a Christlike character.
+Half-and-half Christians, like a great many of us, are of no use either
+to God or to men or to themselves. Dawdling and languid, braced up and
+informed by no earnestness of purpose, and never having had enthusiasm
+enough to set themselves fairly alight, they do no good and they come to
+nothing. 'I would thou wert cold or hot.' One thing sorely wanted in the
+average Christianity of this day is that professing Christians should
+give the motives which their faith supplies for earnest consecration due
+weight and power. Nothing else will succeed. You will never grow like
+Christ unless you are in earnest about it any more than you could pierce
+a tunnel through the Alps with a straw. It needs an iron bar tipped with
+diamond to do it. Unless your whole being is engaged in the task, and
+you gather your whole self together into a point, and drive the point
+with all your force, you will never get through the rock barrier that
+rises between you and the fair lands beyond. Be in earnest, or give it
+up altogether.
+
+Then another thing I would venture to say is, Make it your _business_ to
+cultivate a character like that of Jesus Christ. If you would go to the
+work of growing a Christ-like spirit one-hundredth part as
+systematically as you will go to your business to-morrow, and stick at
+it, there would be a very different condition of things in most of our
+hearts. No man becomes noble and good and like the dear Lord 'by a
+jump,' without making a systematic and conscious effort towards it.
+
+I would say, lastly, Make haste about cultivating a Christlike
+character. The harvest is great, the toil is heavy, the sun is drawing
+to the west, the evening shadows are very long with some of us, the
+reckoning is at hand, and the Master waits to count your sheaves. There
+is no time to lose, brother; set about it as you have never done before,
+and say, 'This one thing I do.'
+
+And so let us not fill our minds with vain hopes which, whether they be
+fulfilled or not, will not satisfy us, but lift our eyes to and stay our
+anticipations on those glories beyond, as real as God is real, and as
+certain as His word is true. Let these hopes concentrate and define for
+us the aims of our life; and let the aims, clearly accepted and
+recognised, be pursued with earnestness, with 'diligence,' with haste,
+with the enthusiasm of which they, and they only, are worthy. Let us
+listen to our Master, 'I must work the works of Him that sent Me while
+it is day; the night cometh.' And let us listen to the words of the
+servant, which reverse the metaphor, and teach the same lesson in a
+trumpet call which anticipates the dawn and rouses the sleeping
+soldiers: 'The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us cast off
+the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.'
+
+
+
+
+GROWTH
+
+     'But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour
+      Jesus Christ....'--2 Peter iii. 18.
+
+
+These are the last words of an old man, written down as his legacy to
+us. He was himself a striking example of his own precept. It would be an
+interesting study to examine these two letters of the Apostle Peter, in
+order to construct from them a picture of what he became, and to
+contrast it with his own earlier self when full of self-confidence,
+rashness, and instability. It took a lifetime for Simon, the son of
+Jonas, to grow into Peter; but it was done. And the very faults of the
+character became strength. What he had proved possible in his own case
+he commands and commends to us, and from the height to which he has
+reached, he looks upwards to the infinite ascent which he knows he will
+attain when he puts off this tabernacle; and then downwards to his
+brethren, bidding them, too, climb and aspire. His last word is like
+that of the great Roman Catholic apostle to the East Indies: 'Forward!'
+He is like some trumpeter on the battlefield who spends his last breath
+in sounding an advance. Immortal hope animates his dying injunction:
+'Grow! grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.'
+
+So I think we may take these words, dear friends, as the starting-point
+for some very plain remarks about what I am afraid is a neglected duty,
+the duty of growth in Christian character.
+
+I. I begin, first, with a word or two about the direction which
+Christian growth ought to take.
+
+Now those of you who use the Revised Version will see in it a very
+slight, but very valuable alteration. It reads there: 'Grow in the grace
+and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.' The effect of that alteration
+being to bring out more clearly that whilst the direction of the growth
+is twofold, the process is one. And to bring out more clearly, also,
+that both the grace and the knowledge have connection with Jesus Christ.
+
+He is the Giver and the Author of the grace. He is the Object of the
+knowledge. The one is more moral and spiritual; the other, if we may so
+say, more intellectual; but both are realised by one act of progress,
+and both inhere in, and refer to, and are occupied with, and are derived
+from, Jesus Christ Himself.
+
+Let us look a little more closely at this double direction, this
+bifurcation, as it were, of Christian growth. The tree, like some of our
+forest trees, in its normal progress, diverges into two main branches at
+a short distance upwards from the root.
+
+First, we have growth in the 'grace' of Christ. Grace, of course, means,
+first, the undeserved love and favour which God in Jesus Christ bears to
+us sinful and inferior creatures; and then it means the consequence of
+that love and favour in the manifold spiritual endowments which in us
+become 'graces,' beauties, and excellences of Christian character. So
+then, if you are a Christian, you ought to be continually realising a
+deeper and more blessed consciousness of Christ's love and favour as
+yours. You ought to be, if I may so say, nestling every day nearer and
+nearer to His heart, and getting more and more sure, and more and more
+happily sure, of more and more of His mercy and love to you.
+
+And if you are a Christian you ought not only thus to be realising
+daily, with increasing certitude and power, the fact of His love, but
+you ought to be drinking in and deriving more and more every day of the
+consequences of that love, of the spiritual gifts of which His hands are
+full. There is open for each of us in Him an inexhaustible store of
+abundance. And if our Christian life is real and vigorous there ought to
+be in us a daily increasing capacity, and therefore a daily increasing
+possession of the gifts of His grace. There ought to be, in other words,
+also a daily progressive transformation into His likeness. It is 'the
+grace of our Lord Jesus,' not only in the sense that He is the Author
+and the Bestower of it to each of us, but also in the sense that He
+Himself possesses and exemplifies it. So that there is nothing mystical
+and remote from the experience of daily life in this exhortation: 'Grow
+in grace'; and it is not growth in some occult theological virtue, or
+transcendent experience, but a very plain, practical thing, a daily
+transformation, with growing completeness and precision of resemblance,
+into the likeness of Jesus Christ; the grace that was in Him being
+transferred to me, and my character being growingly irradiated and
+refined, softened and ennobled by the reflection of the lustre of His.
+
+This it is to 'grow into the grace of our Lord and Saviour'; a deeper
+consciousness of His love creeping round the roots of my heart every
+day, and fuller possession of His gifts placed in my opening hand every
+day; and a continual approximation to the beauty of His likeness, which
+never halts nor ceases.
+
+'Grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.' The knowledge of a
+person is not the same as the knowledge of a creed or of a thought or of
+a book. We are to grow in the knowledge of Christ, which includes but
+is more than the intellectual apprehension of the truths concerning Him.
+He might turn the injunction into--'Increase your acquaintance with your
+Saviour.' Many Christians never get to be any more intimate with Him
+than they were when they were first introduced to Him. They are on a
+kind of bowing acquaintance with their Master, and have little more than
+that. We sometimes begin an acquaintance which we think promises to
+ripen into a friendship, but are disappointed. Circumstances or some
+want of congeniality which is discovered prevent its growth. So with not
+a few professing Christians. They have got no nearer Jesus Christ than
+when they first knew Him. Their friendship has not grown. It has never
+reached the stage where all restraints are laid aside and there is
+perfect confidence. 'Grow in the knowledge of your Lord and Saviour
+Jesus Christ.' Get more and more intimate with Him, nearer to Him, and
+franker and more cordial with Him day by day.
+
+But there is another side to the injunction besides that. We are to grow
+in the grasp, the intellectual grasp and realisation of the truths which
+lie wrapped up and enfolded in Him. The first truths that a man learns
+when he becomes a Christian are the most important. The lesson that the
+little child learns contains the Omega as well as the Alpha of all
+truth. There is no word in all the gospel that is an advance on that
+initial word, the faith of which saves the most ignorant who trusts to
+it. We begin with the end, if I may say so, and the highest truth is the
+first truth that we learn. But the aspect which that truth bears to the
+man when, first of all, it dawns upon him, and he sees in it the end of
+his fears, the cleansing of his heart, the pardoning of his sins, his
+acceptance with God, is a very different thing from the aspect that it
+ought to wear to him, after, say forty years of pondering, of growing up
+to it, after years of experience have taught him. Life is the best
+commentary upon the truths of the gospel, and the experience teaches
+their depths and their power, their far-reaching applications and
+harmonies. So our growth in the knowledge of Jesus Christ is not a
+growing away from the earliest lessons, or a leaving them behind, but a
+growing up to and into them. So as to learn more fully and clearly all
+their infinite contents of grace and truth. The treasure put into our
+hands at first is discovered in its true preciousness as life and trial
+test its metal and its inexhaustibleness. The child's lesson is the
+man's lesson. All our Christian progress in knowledge consists in
+bringing to light the deep meaning, the far-reaching consequences of the
+fact of Christ's incarnation, death, and glory. 'God so loved the world
+that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him
+should not perish, but have everlasting life.' The same truth which
+shone at first a star in a far-off sky, through a sinful man's night of
+fear and agony, grows in brilliance as we draw nearer to it, until at
+last it blazes, the central Sun of the Universe, the hearth for all
+vital warmth, the fountain of all guiding light, the centre of all
+energy. Christ in His manhood, in His divinity, Christ in His cross,
+resurrection, and glory, is the object of all knowledge, and we grow in
+the knowledge of Him by penetrating more deeply into the truths which we
+have long ago learned, as well as by following them as they lead us into
+new fields, and disclose unsuspected issues in creed and practice.
+
+That growth will not be one-sided; for grace and knowledge will advance
+side by side--the moral and spiritual keeping step with the
+intellectual, the practical with the theoretical. And that growth will
+have no term. It is growth towards an infinite object of our aspiration,
+imitation, and affection. So we shall ever approach and never surpass
+Jesus Christ. Such endless progress is the very salt of life. It keeps
+us young when physical strength decays. It flames, an immortal hope, to
+light the darkness of the grave when all other hopes are quenched in
+night.
+
+II. Now, for a moment, look at another thought, viz., the obligation.
+
+It is a command, that is to say, the will is involved. Growth is to be
+done by effort, and the fact that it is a command teaches us this, that
+we are not to take this one metaphor as if it exhausted the whole of the
+facts of the case in reference to Christian progress.
+
+You would never think of telling a child to grow any more than you would
+think of telling a plant to grow, but Peter does tell Christian men and
+women to grow. Why? Because they are not plants, but men with wills,
+which can resist, and can either further or hinder their progress.
+
+    'Lo! in the middle of the wood,
+     The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud,
+                                ... and there
+     Grows green and broad, and takes no care.'
+
+But that is not how we grow. 'In the sweat of thy brow,' with pain and
+peril, with effort and toil, and not otherwise, do men grow in
+everything but stature. And especially is it so in the Christian
+character. There are other metaphors that need to be taken into
+consideration as well as this of growth, with all its sweet suggestions
+of continuous, effortless, spontaneous advance.
+
+The Christian progress is not only growth, it is warfare. The Christian
+progress is not only growth, it is a race. The Christian progress is not
+only growth, it is mortifying the old man. The Christian progress is not
+only growth, it is putting off the old man with his deeds and putting on
+the new! 'First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the
+ear,' was never meant for a complete account of how the Christian life
+is perfected.
+
+We are bidden to grow, and that command points to hindrances and
+resistance, to the need for effort and the governing action of our own
+wills.
+
+The command is one sorely needed in the present state of our average
+Christianity. Our churches are full of monsters, specimens of arrested
+growth, dwarfs, who have scarcely grown since they were babes, infants
+all their lives. I come to you with a very plain question: Have you any
+more of Christ's beauty in your characters, any more of His grace in
+your hearts, any more of His truth in your minds than you had a year
+ago, ten years ago, or at that far-off period when some of you
+greyheaded men first professed to be Christians? Have you experienced so
+many things in vain? Have the years taught you nothing? Ah, brethren!
+for how many of us is it true: 'When for the time ye ought to be
+teachers ye have need that one teach you which be the first principles
+of the oracles of God'? 'Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord
+and Saviour.'
+
+And we need the command because all about us there are hindrances. There
+is the hindrance of an abuse of the evangelical doctrine of conversion,
+and the idea that springs up in many hearts that if once a man has
+'passed from death unto life,' and has managed to get inside the door
+of the banqueting-hall, that is enough. And there are numbers of people
+in our Nonconformist communities especially, where that doctrine of
+conversion is most distinctly preached, whose growth is stopped by the
+abuse that they make of it in fancying if they have once exercised faith
+in Jesus Christ they may safely and sinlessly stand still. 'Conversion'
+is turning round. What do we turn round for? Surely, in order that we
+may travel on in the new direction, not that we may stay where we are.
+There is also the hindrance of mere indolence, and there is the
+hindrance arising from absorption in the world and its concerns.
+
+If all your strength is going thither, there is none left to grow with.
+Many professing Christians take such deep draughts of the intoxicating
+cup of this world's pleasures that it stunts their growth. People
+sometimes give children gin in order to keep them from growing. Some of
+you do that for your Christian character by the deep draughts that you
+take of the Circean cup of this world's pleasures and cares.
+
+And not unfrequently, some one favourite evil, some lust or passion, or
+weakness, or desire, which you have not the strength to cast out, will
+kill all aspirations and destroy all possibilities of growth; and will
+be like an iron band round a little sapling, which will confine it and
+utterly prevent all expansion. Is that the case with any of us? We all
+need--and I pray you suffer--the word of exhortation.
+
+III. Now, again, consider the method of growth.
+
+There are two things essential to the growth of animal life. One is
+food, the other is exercise; and your Christian character will grow by
+no other means.
+
+Now as to the first. The true means by which we shall grow in Christian
+grace is by holding continual intercourse and communion with Jesus
+Christ. It is from Him that all come. He is the Fountain of Life; He
+gives the life, He nourishes the life, He increases the life. And whilst
+I have been saying, in an earlier part of this discourse, that we are
+not to expect an effortless growth, I must here say that we shall very
+much mistake what Christian progress requires if we suppose that the
+effort is most profitably directed to the cultivation of specific and
+single acts of goodness and purity. Our efforts are best when directed
+to keeping ourselves in union with our Lord. The heart united to Him
+will certainly be advancing in all things fair and lovely and of good
+report. Keep yourselves in touch with Christ; and Christ will make you
+grow. That is to say, occupy heart and mind with Him, let your thoughts
+go to Him. Do you ever, from morning to night, on a week-day, think
+about your Master, about His truth, about the principles of His Gospel,
+about His great love to you? Keep your heart in union with Him, in the
+midst of the rush and hurry of your daily life. Are your desires turning
+to Him? Do they go out towards Him and feel after Him? It will take an
+effort to keep up the union with Him, but without the effort there will
+be no contact, and without the contact there will be no growth. As soon
+may you expect a plant, wrenched from the soil and shut out from the
+sunshine to grow, as expect any Christian progress in the hearts which
+are disjoined from Jesus Christ. But rooted in that soil, smiled upon by
+that sun, watered by the perpetual dew from His Heaven, we shall 'grow
+like the lily, and cast forth our roots like Lebanon. The secret of real
+Christian progress and the direction in which the effort of Christian
+progress can most profitably and effectually be made, is simply in
+keeping close to our Lord and Master. He is the food of the Spirit. 'I
+am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more
+abundantly.'
+
+Communion with Christ includes prayer. Desire to grow will help our
+growth. We tend to become what we long to be. Desire which impels to
+effort will not be in vain if it likewise impels to prayer. We may have
+the answer to our petition for growth in set ways; we may be but
+partially conscious of the answer, nor know that our faces shine when we
+go among men. But certainly if we pray for what is in such accordance
+with His will as 'growth in grace' is, we shall have the petition that
+we desire. That longing to know Him better and to possess more of His
+grace, like the tendrils of some climbing plant, will always find the
+support round which it may twine, and by which it may ascend.
+
+The other condition of growth is exercise. Use the grace which you have,
+and it increases. Practice the truth which you know, and many things
+will become clearer. The blacksmith's muscles are strengthened by
+wielding the forge-hammer, but unused they waste. The child grows by
+exercise. To him that hath--truly possesses with that possession which
+only use secures--shall be given.
+
+Communion with Christ, including prayer, and exercise are the means of
+growth.
+
+IV. Lastly, observe the solemn alternative to growth.
+
+It is not a question of either growing or not growing, and there an end;
+but if you will look at the context you will see that the exhortation of
+my text comes in in a very significant connection. 'Behold! beware, lest
+being led away ... ye fall from your own steadfastness.' 'But grow in
+grace.' That is to say, the only preventive of falling away from
+steadfastness is continual progress. The alternative of advance is
+retrogression. There is no standing still upon the inclined plane. If
+you are not going up, gravity begins to act, and down you go. There must
+either be continual advance or there will be certain decay and
+corruption. As soon as growth ceases in this physiology _disintegration_
+commences. Just as the graces exercised are strengthened, so the graces
+unexercised decay. The slothful servant wraps his talent in a napkin,
+and buries it in the ground. He may try to persuade his Master and
+himself with 'There Thou hast that is Thine'; but He will not take up
+what you buried. Rust and verdigris will have done their work upon the
+coin; the inscription will be obliterated and the image will be marred.
+You cannot bury your Christian grace in indolence without diminishing
+it. It will be like a bit of ice wrapped in a cloth and left in the sun,
+it will all have gone into water when you come to take it out. And the
+truth that you do _not_ live by, whose relations and large harmonies and
+controlling power are not being increasingly realised in your lives;
+that truth is becoming less and less real, more and more shadowy, and
+ghostlike to you. Truth which is not growing is becoming fossilised.
+'The things most surely believed' are often the things which have least
+power. Unquestioned truth too often lies 'bedridden in the dormitory of
+the soul side by side with exploded error.' The sure way to reduce your
+knowledge of Jesus Christ to that inert condition is to neglect
+increasing it and applying it to your daily life. There are men, in all
+churches, and there are some whole communions whose creeds are the most
+orthodox, and also utterly useless, and as near as possible
+nonentities, simply because the creed is accepted and shelved. If your
+belief is to be of any use to you, or to be held by you in the face of
+temptations to abandon it, you must keep it fresh, and oxygenated, so to
+say, by continual fresh apprehension of it and closer application of it
+to conduct. As soon as the stream stands, it stagnates; and the very
+manna from God will breed worms and stink. And Christian truth
+unpractised by those who hold it, corrupts itself and corrupts them.
+
+So Peter tells us that the alternative is growth or apostasy. This decay
+may be most real and unsuspected. There are many, many professing
+Christians all ignorant that, like the Jewish giant of old, their
+strength is gone from them, and the Spirit of God departed. My brother,
+I beseech you, rouse yourself from your contented slothfulness. Do not
+be satisfied with merely having come within the Temple. Count nothing as
+won whilst anything remains to be won. There is a whole ocean of
+boundless grace and truth rolling shoreless there before you. Do not
+content yourselves with picking up a few shells on the beach, but launch
+out into the deep, and learn to know more and more of the grace and
+truth and beauty of your Saviour and your God.
+
+But remember dead things do not grow. You cannot grow unless you are
+alive, and you are not alive unless you have Jesus Christ.
+
+Have you given yourselves to Him? have you taken Him as yours? given
+yourselves to Him as His servants, subjects, soldiers? taken Him for
+yours as your Saviour, Sacrifice, Pattern, Inspirer, Friend? If you
+have, then you have life which will grow if you keep it in union with
+Him. Joined to Him, men are like a 'tree that is planted by the rivers
+of water,' which spreads its foliage and bears its fruit, and year after
+year flings a wider shadow upon the grass, and lifts a sturdier bole to
+the heavens. Separated from Him they are like the chaff, which has
+neither root nor life, and which cannot grow.
+
+Which, my friend, are you?
+
+
+
+
+I. JOHN
+
+
+
+
+THE MESSAGE AND ITS PRACTICAL RESULTS
+
+     'This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare
+      unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. 6.
+      If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we
+      lie, and do not the truth: 7. But if we walk in the light, as He is
+      in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of
+      Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. 8. If we say that
+      we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
+      9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us
+      our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10. If we say
+      that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in
+      us.'
+
+     'My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin
+      not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
+      Christ the righteous: 2. And He is the propitiation for our sins:
+      and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 3.
+      And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His
+      commandments. 4. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His
+      commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5. But whoso
+      keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected:
+      hereby know we that we are in Him. 6. He that saith he abideth in
+      Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.'--1 John
+      i. 5-ii. 6.
+
+
+John is the mystic among the New Testament writers. He dwells much on
+the immediate union of the soul with God, and he has little to say about
+institutions and rites. His method is not to argue, but to utter deep,
+simple propositions which convince by their own light. But he is also
+intensely eager for plain, practical morality, and in that respect sets
+the example which, unfortunately, too many of the more mystical types of
+Christian teaching have failed to follow. To him the outcome and test of
+all deep hidden union with God is righteousness in life.
+
+The blending of these two elements, which is the very keynote of this
+letter, is wonderfully set forth in this passage. They would require
+much more space than we command for their treatment, for every clause is
+weighty as gold. We can but skim the surface, and try to bring out the
+salient points.
+
+I. We have, first, a wonderful gathering up of the whole gospel message
+into one utterance as to the essential nature of God. Light is in all
+languages the symbol of knowledge, of joy, of purity. It is the source
+of life. Its very nature is to ray itself out into and conquer darkness.
+Its splendor dazzles every eye; all things rejoice in its beams.
+Darkness is the type of ignorance, of sorrow, of sin. But, whilst the
+symbol is thus rich in manifold revelations, probably purity and
+self-communication are the predominating ideas here.
+
+John has been honoured to give the world the three great revelations
+that God is spirit, is light, is love. And this profound saying in some
+sense includes both the others, inasmuch as light, which to the popular
+mind is most widely apart from matter, may well stand for the emblem of
+spirit, and, since to radiate is its inseparable quality, does represent
+in symbol the delight in imparting Himself, which is the very heart of
+the declaration that God is love. If, then, we grasp these two thoughts
+of absolute purity and of self-impartation as the very nature and
+property of God, John tells us that we grasp the kernel of the Gospel.
+
+And he thinks that men never will grasp them certainly unless a
+'message' from God, a definite revelation in historical fact, certifies
+them. We may hope or doubt, or desire, but we cannot be sure that God is
+light unless he tells us so by unmistakable act. John knew what act that
+was--the sending of His only-begotten Son. To the positive statement
+John, in his usual manner, appends an emphatic negative one: 'Darkness
+is not in him, no, not in any way.' He is light, all light, only light.
+
+II. With characteristic moral earnestness, John passes at once to the
+practical effects which the message is meant to have. We are not told
+what God is simply that we may know, but that, knowing, we may do and
+be. If He is light, two things will follow in those who are in union
+with Him--they will walk in light, and they will in His light see their
+own evil. John deals with these two consequences in verses 6-10--the
+former in verses 6 and 7; the latter in verses 8-10. The parallelism in
+the construction of these two sets of verses is striking:
+
+    VERSES 6, 7.                           VERSES 8, 9.
+
+      If we say                              If we say
+
+    that we have fellowship with           that we have no sin
+    Him, and walk in darkness,
+    we lie, and do not the truth.          we deceive ourselves, and the
+                                           truth is not in us.
+
+      But if we walk in the light,           If we confess our sins,
+    as He is in the light,
+
+    we have fellowship one with            He is faithful and righteous to
+    another.                               forgive us our sins,
+
+    and the blood of Jesus His Son         and to cleanse us from all
+    cleanseth us from all sin.             unrighteousness.
+
+As to the former of these two paragraphs, the underlying thought is that
+fellowship with God necessarily involves moral likeness to Him. Worship
+is always aspiration after, and conformity to, the character of the god
+worshipped, and there can be no true communion with a God who is light
+unless the worshipper walks in light. In plain language, all high-flying
+pretensions to communion with God must verify themselves by practical
+righteousness. That cuts deep into an emotional religion, which has much
+to say about raptures and the like, but produces little purifying effect
+on the humble details of daily life.
+
+There are always professing Christians who talk of their blessed
+experiences, and woefully fail in prosaic virtues. It is a pity that a
+man should hold his head so high that he does not look to keep his feet
+out of the mud. Such a profession is for the most part tainted with more
+or less conscious falsehood, and is always a proof that the truth--the
+sum of God's revelation--is not operative in the man; that he is not
+turning his belief into act, as all belief should be. On the other hand,
+the true relation resulting from the message is that we should walk in
+the light, as He is in it.
+
+Verse 10 seems to be simply a reiteration of the preceding idea, with
+some intensifying, and that chiefly in the description of the true
+character of the denial of sin. To make God a liar is worse than to lie
+or to deceive ourselves; and all ignoring of sin does that, because not
+only has God declared its universality by the words of revelation, but
+all His dealings with men are based upon the fact that they are all
+sinners, and we fly in the face of all His words and works if we deny
+that which we ourselves are. Therefore the Apostle further varies his
+expression, and says 'His word' instead of 'the truth,' thus bringing
+into prominence the thought that 'the truth' is made accessible to us
+because God has spoken.
+
+III. Chapter ii. 1-6 is in structure analogous to the preceding section.
+As there, so here, the 'message' is summed up in one great
+fact,--Christ's work as advocate for believers and as propitiation for
+the world. As there, so here, two practical consequences follow, which
+are drawn out on corresponding lines. Observe the repetition in verses 3
+and 5 _b_, of 'hereby know we,' and in verses 4 and 6 of 'He that
+saith.'
+
+Note, too, the reappearance of 'is a liar' and of 'the truth is not in
+him' in verse 4. The drift of the section may be briefly put as follows.
+John's heart melts as he thinks of the possibilities of holiness open to
+believers, and of the sad actualities of their imperfect lives, and he
+addresses them by the tender name, 'my little children.' The impelling
+and guiding motive of his letter is that they may not sin. Practical
+righteousness is the end of revelation, and its complete attainment
+should be the aim of every believer.
+
+But the sad experience of 'saints' is that they are not yet wholly
+delivered from its power. Therefore 'the message' is not only 'God is
+light without blending of darkness,' but, 'we Christians have an
+Advocate with the Father.' Jesus is to-day carrying on His mighty work
+of prevalent intercession for all His servants, and that intercession
+secures forgiveness for their inconsistencies and lapses, because it
+rests upon Christ's finished work of 'propitiation,' which is for the
+whole world, even though it actually avails only for believers.
+
+Such being the power of Christ's work in its twofold aspect of
+propitiation and of intercession, the same practical issues as in the
+preceding section were shown to flow from the revealed nature of God are
+here, in somewhat different form, linked with that work. First, keeping
+his commandments (which is equivalent to 'walking in the light') is the
+test to ourselves, as well as to others, of our really knowing Him with
+a knowledge which is not mere head work, but the acquaintance of
+sympathy and friendship, or, in the words of the previous paragraph,
+having fellowship with Him.
+
+Clearly, the scope of this section requires that 'His commandments'
+should here mean Christ's, not the Father's. All professions of knowing
+Jesus which are not verified by obedience to Him are false. If we do
+keep His word--not merely the individual 'commandments,' but the word as
+one great whole--our love to God reaches its perfection, for it is no
+mere emotion of the heart, but the force which is to mould and actuate
+all our acts.
+
+Verse 5 _b_ should be separated from the preceding words, for it is
+really the beginning of the second issue from the work of Christ, and is
+parallel with 'hereby know we,' etc., in verse 3. Observe the progress
+in thought from the assurance that we _know_ (ver. 3) to the assurance
+that we _are in_ Him. The Christian's relation to Jesus is not only that
+of acquaintance, however intimate, loving, and transforming, but that of
+actual dwelling in Him. That great truth shines on every page of the New
+Testament, and is not to be weakened down into metaphor or rhetoric. It
+is the very heart of the Christian life, and the test that we have
+attained to it, and that not merely as an occasional, but as a
+permanent, condition (note that '_are_ in Him' is strengthened to
+'_abideth_ in Him') is that our outward life, in its manifold
+activities, shall be conformed to the pattern of all holiness in the
+life of Jesus. To walk as He walked is to walk in the light. Profession
+is nothing, conduct is everything, and we shall only be clear of sin in
+the measure in which we have Him who is the light of men for the very
+life of our lives.
+
+
+
+
+WALKING IN THE LIGHT
+
+     'If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship
+      one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth
+      us from all sin.'--1 John i. 7.
+
+
+John was the Apostle of love, but he was also a 'son of thunder.' His
+intense moral earnestness and his very love made him hate evil, and
+sternly condemn it; and his words flash and roll as no other words in
+Scripture, except the words of the Lord of love. In the immediate
+context he has been laying down what is to him the very heart of his
+message, that 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' There
+are spots in the sun, great tracts of blackness on its radiant disc; but
+in God is unmingled, perfect purity. That being so, it is clear that no
+man can be in sympathy or hold communion with Him, unless he, too, in
+his measure, is light.
+
+So, with fiery indignation, John turns to the people, of whom there were
+some, even in the primitive Church, who made claims to a lofty
+spirituality and communion with God, and all the while were manifestly
+living in the darkness of sin. He will not mince matters with them. He
+roundly says that they are lying, and the worst sort of lie--an acted
+lie: 'They do not the truth.' Then, with a quick turn, he opposes to
+these pretenders the men who really are in fellowship with God, and in
+my text lays down the principle that walking in the light is essential
+to fellowship with God. Only, in his usual fashion, he turns the
+antithesis into a somewhat different form, so as to suggest another
+aspect of the truth, and instead of saying, as we might expect for the
+verbal accuracy of the contrast, 'If we walk in the light, as He is in
+the light, we have fellowship with God,' he says, 'we have fellowship
+one with another.' Then he adds a still further result of that walk,
+'the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin.'
+
+Now there are three things: walking in the light, which is the only
+Christian walk; the companions of those who walk in the light; and the
+progressive cleansing which is given.
+
+I. Note this 'Walking in the light,' which is the only Christian walk.
+
+In all languages, light is the natural symbol for three things:
+knowledge, joy, purity. The one ray is broken into its three constituent
+parts. But just as there are some surfaces which are sensitive to the
+violet rays, say, of the spectrum, and not to the others, so John's
+intense moral earnestness makes him mainly sensitive to the symbolism
+which makes light the expression, not so much of knowledge or of joy, as
+of moral purity. And although that is not exclusively his use of the
+emblem, it is predominately so, and it is so here. To 'walk in the
+light' then, is, speaking generally, to have purity, righteousness,
+goodness, as the very element and atmosphere in which our progressive
+and changeful life is carried on.
+
+Note, too, before I go further, that very significant antithesis: we
+'walk'; He _is_--God _is_ in the light essentially, changelessly,
+undisturbedly, eternally; and the light in which He is, His 'own calm
+home, His habitation from eternity,' is light which has flowed out from
+Himself as a halo round the midnight moon. It is all one in substance to
+say God is in light, or, as the Psalmist has it, 'He covered Himself
+with light as with a garment,' and to say, 'God is light.'
+
+But, side by side with that changeless abiding in the perfect purity,
+which is inaccessible, the Apostle ventures to put, not in contrast
+only, but in parallel (_as_ He is), our changing, effortful, active,
+progressive life in the light (God is); we walk.
+
+So, then, the essential of a Christian character is that the light of
+purity and moral goodness shall be as the very orb, in the midst of
+which it stands and advances. That implies effort, and it implies
+activity, and it implies progress. And we are only Christians in the
+measure in which the conscious activities of our daily lives, and the
+deepest energies of our inward being, are bathed and saturated with this
+love of, and effort after, righteousness. It is vain, says John, to talk
+about fellowship with God, unless the fellowship is rooted in sympathy
+with Him in that which is the very heart of his Being, the perfect light
+of perfect holiness. Test your Christianity by that.
+
+Then, still further, there is implied in this great requirement of
+walking in the light, not only activity and effort, and progress and
+purity, but also that the whole of the life shall be brought into
+relation with, and shall be moulded after, the pattern of the God in
+whom we profess to believe. Religion, in its deepest meaning, is the
+aspiration after likeness to the god. You see it in heathenism. Men make
+their gods after their own image, and then the god makes the worshippers
+after his image. Mars is the god of the soldier, and Venus goddess of
+the profligate, and Apollo god of the musical and the wise, etc., and in
+Christianity the deepest thing in it is aspiration and effort after
+likeness to God. Love is imitation; admiration, especially when it is
+raised to the highest degree and becomes adoration, is imitation. And
+the man that lies before God, like a mirror in the sunshine, receives
+on the still surface of his soul--but not, like the mirror, on the
+surface only, but down into its deepest depths--the reflected image of
+Him on Whom he gazes. 'We all with unveiled face, mirroring glory, are
+changed into the same image.' So to walk in the light is only possible
+when we are drawn into it, and our feeble feet made fit to tread upon
+the radiant glory, by the thought that He is in the light. To imitate
+Him is to be righteous. So do not let us forget that a correct creed,
+and devout emotions, ay! and a morality which has no connection with
+Him, are all imperfect, and that the end of all our religion, our
+orthodox creed and our sweet emotions and inward feelings of acceptance
+and favour and fellowship, are meant to converge on, and to produce
+this--a life and a character which lives and moves and has its being in
+a great orb of light and purity.
+
+But another thing is included in this grand metaphor of my text. Not
+only does it enjoin upon us effort and activity and progress in the
+light and the linking of all our purity with God, but also, it bids us
+shroud no part of our conduct or our character either from ourselves or
+from Him. Bring it all out into the light. And although with a penitent
+heart, and a face suffused with blushes, we have sometimes to say, 'See,
+Father, what I have done!' it is far better that the revealing light
+should shine down upon us, and like the sunshine on wet linen, melt away
+the foulness which it touches, than that we should huddle the ugly thing
+up in a corner, to be one day revealed and transfixed by the flash of
+the light turned into lightning. 'He that doeth the truth cometh to the
+light, that his deeds may be made manifest.'
+
+II. So much, then, for my first point; the second is: The companions of
+the men that walk in the light.
+
+I have already pointed out that the accurate, perhaps pedantically
+accurate, form of the antithesis would have been: 'If we walk in the
+light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with God.' But John
+says, first, 'we have fellowship one with another.' Underlying that, as
+I shall have to say in a moment, there is the other thought: 'We have
+fellowship with God.' But he deals with the other side of the truth
+first. That just comes to this, that the only cement that perfectly
+knits men to each other is their common possession of that light, and
+the consequent fellowship with God. There are plenty of other bonds that
+draw us to one another; but these, if they are not strengthened by this
+deepest of all bonds, the affinity of souls, that are moving together in
+the realm of light and purity, are precarious, and apt to snap. Sin
+separates men quite as much as it separates each man from God. It is the
+wedge driven into the tree that rends it apart. Human society with its
+various bonds is like the iron hoop that may be put around the barrel
+staves, giving them a quasi-unity. The one thing that builds men
+together into a whole is that each shall be, as it were, embedded in the
+rock which is the foundation, and the building will rise into a holy
+temple in the Lord. Sin separates; as the prophet confessed, 'All we
+like sheep have gone astray, every one to _his own way_,' and the flock
+is broken up into a multitude of scattered sheep. Social enthusiasts may
+learn the lesson that the only way by which brotherhood among men can
+become anything else than a name, and probably end, as it did in the
+great French Revolution, in 'brothers' making hecatombs of their
+brethren under the guillotine, is that it shall be the corollary from
+the Fatherhood of God. If we walk in the light, not otherwise, we have
+'fellowship one with another.'
+
+Then, still further, in this fellowship one with another, John
+presupposes the fellowship with God for each, which makes the
+possibility and the certainty of all being drawn into one family. He
+does not think it necessary to state, what is so plain and obvious,
+viz., that unless we are in sympathy with God, in our aspiration and
+effort after the light which is His home and ours, we have no real
+communion with Him. I said that sin separated man from man, and
+disrupted all the sweet bonds of amity, so that if men come into
+contact, being themselves in the darkness, they come into collision
+rather than into communion. A company of travellers in the night are
+isolated individuals. When the sun rises on their paths they are a
+company again. And in like manner, sin separates us from God, and if our
+hearts are turned towards, and denizens of, the darkness of impurity,
+then we have no communion with Him. He cannot come to us if we love the
+darkness. He
+
+    'Can but listen at the gate,
+     And hear the household jar within.'
+
+The tide of the Atlantic feels along the base of iron-bound cliffs on
+our western shores, and there is not a crevice into which it can come.
+So God moves about us, but is without us, so long as we walk in
+darkness. So let us remember that no union with Him is possible, except
+there be this common dwelling in the light. Two grains of quicksilver
+laid upon a polished surface will never unite if their surfaces be
+dusted over with minute impurities, or if the surface of one of them be.
+Clean away the motes, and they will coalesce and be one. A film of sin
+separates men from God. And if the film be removed the man dwells in
+God, and God in him.
+
+III. That brings me to my last point: The progressive cleansing of those
+who dwell in the light.
+
+'The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.' Now if you will
+notice the whole context, and eminently the words a couple of verses
+after my text, you will see that the cleansing here meant is not the
+cleansing of forgiveness, but the cleansing of purifying. For the two
+things are articulately distinguished in the ninth verse: 'He is
+faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
+unrighteousness.' So, to use theological terms, it is not justification,
+but sanctification that is meant here.
+
+Then there is another thing to be noticed, and that is that when the
+Apostle speaks here about the blood of Christ, he is not thinking of
+that blood as shed on the Cross, the atoning sacrifice, but of that
+blood as transfused into the veins, the source there of our new life.
+The Old Testament says that 'the blood is the life.' Never mind about
+the statement being scientifically correct; it conveys the idea of the
+time, which underlies a great deal of Old and New Testament teaching.
+And when John says the blood of Jesus cleanses from 'all sin,' he says
+just the same thing as his brother Paul said, 'the law of the spirit of
+life in Jesus Christ makes me free from the law of sin and death.' That
+is to say, a growing cleansing from the dominion and the power of sin is
+granted to us, if we have the life of Jesus Christ breathed into our
+lives. The metaphor is a very strong one. They tell us--I know nothing
+about the truth of it--that sometimes it has been possible to revive a
+moribund man by transfusing into his veins blood from another. That is
+a picture of the only way by which you and I can become free from the
+tyranny that dominates us. We must have the life of Christ as the
+animating principle of our lives, the spirit of Jesus emancipating us
+from the power of sin and death.
+
+So you see, there are two aspects of Christ's great work set before us
+under that one metaphor of the blood in its two-fold form, first, as
+shed for us sinners on the Cross; second, as poured into our veins day
+by day. That works progressive cleansing. It covers the whole ground of
+all possible iniquity. Pardon is much, purifying is more. The sacrifice
+on the Cross is the basis of everything, but that sacrifice does not
+exhaust what Christ does for us. He died for our sins, and lives for our
+sanctifying. He died for us, He lives in us. Because He died, we are
+forgiven; because He lives, we are made pure. Only remember John's 'if.'
+The 'blood of Jesus will progressively cleanse us until it has cleansed
+us from _all_ sin,' on condition that we 'walk in the light,' not
+otherwise. If the main direction of our lives is towards the light; if
+we seek, by aspiration and by effort, and by deliberate choice, to live
+in holiness, then, and not else, will the power of the life of Jesus
+Christ deliver us from the power of sin and death.
+
+Now, my text presupposes that the people to whom it is addressed, and
+whom it concerns, have already passed from darkness into light, if not
+wholly, yet in germ. But for those who have not so passed, there is
+something to be said before my text. And John says it immediately; here
+it is, 'If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
+the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for our
+sins only, but for the whole world.' So we have to begin with the blood
+shed for us, the means of our pardon, and then we have the advance of
+the blood sprinkled on us, the means of our cleansing. If by humble
+faith we take the dying Lord for our Saviour, and the channel of our
+forgiveness, we shall have the pardon of our sins. If we listen to the
+voice that says, 'Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the
+Lord. Walk as children of the light,' we shall have fellowship with the
+living Lord, and daily know more and more of the power of His cleansing
+blood, making us 'meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints
+in light.'
+
+
+
+
+THE COMMANDMENT, OLD YET NEW
+
+     'I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which
+      ye had from the beginning.... Again, a new commandment I write unto
+      you, which thing is true in him and in you.'--1 John ii. 7, 8.
+
+
+The simplest words may carry the deepest thoughts. Perhaps angels and
+little children speak very much alike. This letter, like all of John's
+writing, is pellucid in speech, profound in thought, clear and deep,
+like the abysses of mid-ocean. His terms are such as a child can
+understand; his sentences short and inartificial: he does not reason, he
+declares; he has neither argument nor rhetoric, but he teaches us the
+deepest truths, and shows us that we get nearer the centre by insight
+than by logic.
+
+Now the words that I have taken for my text are very characteristic of
+this Apostle's manner. He has a great, wide-reaching truth to proclaim,
+and he puts it in the simplest, most inartificial manner, laying side by
+side two artless sentences, and stimulates us by the juxtaposition,
+leading us to feel after, and so to make our own, the large lessons that
+are in them. Let me, then, try to bring these out.
+
+I. And the first one that strikes me is--'the word' is 'a commandment.'
+
+Now, by 'the word' here the Apostle obviously means, since he speaks
+about it as that which these Asiatic Christians 'heard from the
+beginning,' the initial truth which was presented for their acceptance
+in the story of the life and death of Jesus Christ. That was 'the word'
+and, says he, just because it was a history it is a commandment; just
+because it was the Revelation of God it is a law. God never tells us
+anything merely that we may be wise. The purpose of all divine speech,
+whether in His great works in nature, or in the voices of our own
+consciences, or in the syllables that we have to piece together from out
+of the complicated noises of the world's history, or in this book, or in
+the Incarnate Word, where all the wandering syllables are gathered
+together into one word--the purpose of all that God says to men is
+primarily that they may know, but in order that, knowing, they may do;
+and still more that they may be. And so, inasmuch as every piece of
+religious knowledge has in it the capacity of directing conduct, all
+God's word is a commandment.
+
+And, if that is true in regard to other revelations and manifestations
+that he has made of Himself, it is especially true in regard to the
+summing-up of all in the Incarnate Word, and in His words, and in the
+words that tell us of His life and of His death. So whatever truths
+there may be, and there are many, which, of course, have only the
+remotest, if any, bearing upon life and conduct, every bit of Christian
+truth has a direct grip upon a man's life, and brings with it a
+stringent obligation.
+
+Now, the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ, 'the Word which ye heard
+from the beginning,' which, I suppose, would roughly correspond with
+what is told us in our four Gospels; the word which these Asiatic
+Christians heard at first, the good news that was brought to them in the
+midst of their gropings and peradventures, commanded, in the first
+place, absolute trust, the submission of the will as well as the assent
+of the understanding. But also it commanded imitation, for Jesus Christ
+was revealed to them, as He is revealed to us, as being the Incarnate
+realisation of the ideal of humanity; and what He is, the knowledge that
+He is that, binds us to try to be in our turn.
+
+And more than that, brethren, the Cross of Christ is a commandment. For
+we miserably mutilate it, and sinfully as well as foolishly limit its
+application and its power, if we recognise it only--I was going to say
+mainly--as being the ground of our hope and of what we call our
+salvation, and do not recognise it as being the obligatory example of
+our lives, which we are bound to translate into our daily practice.
+Jesus Christ Himself has told us that in many a fashion, never more
+touchingly and wondrously than when in response to the request of a
+handful of Greeks to see Him, He answered with the word which not only
+declared what was obligatory upon Him, but what was obligatory upon us
+all, and for the want of which all the great endowments of the Greek
+mind at last rotted down into sensuousness, when He said, 'Except a corn
+of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die
+it bringeth forth much fruit' and then went on to say, 'he that loveth
+his life shall lose it.'
+
+So, then, brethren, 'the word which ye heard at the beginning,' the
+story of Christ, His life and His death, is a stringent commandment.
+Now, this is one of the blessings of Christianity, that all which was
+hard and hopeless, ministering to despair sometimes, as well as stirring
+to fierce effort at others, in the conception of law or duty as it
+stands outside us, is changed into the tender word, 'if ye love Me, keep
+My commandments.' If any man serve Me, let him ... 'follow Me.' It is a
+law; it is 'the law of liberty.' So you have not done all that is
+needful when you have accepted the teaching of Christ in the Scriptures
+and the teaching of the Scriptures concerning Christ. Nor have you done
+all that is needful when clasping Him, and clinging simply to His Cross,
+you recognise in it the means and the pledge of your acceptance with
+God, and the ground and anchor of all your hope. There is something more
+to be done. The Gospel is a commandment, and commandments require not
+only assent, not only trust, but practical obedience. The 'old
+commandment' is the 'word which ye heard from the beginning.'
+
+II. The old Christ is perpetually new.
+
+The Apostle goes on, in the last words of my text, to say, 'Which thing'
+(viz., this combination of the old and the new) 'is true in Him and in
+you.' 'True in Him'--that is to say, Christ, the old Christ that was
+declared to these Asiatic Christians as they were groping amidst the
+illusions of their heathenism, is perpetually becoming new as new
+circumstances emerge, and new duties are called for, and new days come
+with new burdens, hopes, possibilities, or dangers. The perpetual
+newness of the old Christ is what is taught here.
+
+Suppose one of these men in Ephesus heard for the first time the story
+that away in Judea there had lived the manifestation of God in the
+flesh, and that He, in His wonderful love, had died for men, that they
+might be saved from the grip of their sins. And suppose that man barely
+able to see, had yet seen that much, and clutched at it. He was a
+Christian, but the Christ that he discerned when he first discerned Him
+through the mists, and the Christ that he had in his life and in his
+heart, after, say, twenty years of Christian living, are very different.
+The old Christ remained, but the old Christ was becoming new day by day,
+according to the new necessities and positions. And that is what will be
+our experience if we have any real Christianity in us. The old Christ
+that we trusted at first was able to do for us all that we asked Him to
+do, but we did not ask Him at first for half enough, and we did not
+learn at first a tithe of what was in Him. Suppose, for instance, some
+great ship comes alongside a raft with ship-wrecked sailors upon it, and
+in the darkness of the night transfers them to the security of its deck.
+They know how safe they are, they know what has saved them, but what do
+they know compared with what they will know before the voyage ends of
+all the reservoirs of power and stores of supplies that are in her?
+Christ comes to us in the darkness, and delivers us. We know Him for our
+Deliverer from the first moment, if we truly have grasped Him. But it
+will take summering and wintering with Him, through many a long day and
+year, before we can ever have a partially adequate apprehension of all
+that lies in Him.
+
+And what will teach us the depths of Christ, and how does He become new
+to us? Well, by trusting Him, by following Him, and by the ministry of
+life. Some of us, I have no doubt, can look back upon past days when
+sorrow fell upon us, blighting and all but crushing; and then things
+that we had read a thousand times in the Bible, and thought we had
+believed, blazed up into a new meaning, and we felt as if we had never
+understood anything about them before. The Christ that is with us in the
+darkness, and whom we find able to turn even it, if not into light, at
+least into a solemn twilight not unvisited by hopes, that Christ is more
+to us than the Christ that we first of all learnt so little to know. And
+life's new circumstances, its emerging duties, are like the strokes of
+the spade which clears away the soil, and discloses the treasure in all
+its extent which we purchased when we bought that field. We buy the
+treasure at once, but it takes a long time to count it. The old Christ
+is perpetually the new Christ.
+
+So, brethren, Christian progress consists not in getting away from the
+original facts, the elements of the Gospel, but it consists in
+penetrating more deeply into these, and feeling more of their power and
+their grasp. All Euclid is in the definitions and axioms and postulates
+at the beginning. All our books are the letters of the alphabet. And
+progress consists, not in advancing beyond, but in sinking into, that
+initial truth, 'God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.'
+
+I might say a word here as to another phase of this perpetual newness of
+the old Christ--viz., in His adaptation to deal with all the
+complications and perplexities and problems of each successive age. It
+has taken the Church a long, long time to find out and to formulate,
+rightly or wrongly, what it has discovered in Jesus. The conclusions to
+be drawn from the simple Gospel truth, the presuppositions on which it
+rests, require all the efforts of all the Church through all the ages,
+and transcend them all. And I venture to say, though it may sound like
+unsupported dogma, that for this generation's questionings, social,
+moral, and political, the answer is to be found in Him. He, and He only,
+will interpret each generation to itself, and will meet its clamant
+needs. There is none other for the world to-day but the old Christ with
+the new aspect which the new conditions require.
+
+Did it ever strike you how remarkable it is, and, as it seems to me, of
+how great worth as an argument for the truth of Christianity it is, that
+Jesus Christ comes to this, as to every generation, with the air of
+belonging to it? Think of the difference between the aspect which a
+Plato or a Socrates presents to the world to-day, and the aspect which
+that Lord presents. You do not need to strip anything off Him. He
+committed Himself to no statements which the progress of thought or
+knowledge has exploded. He stands before the world to-day fitting its
+needs as closely as He did those of the men of His own generation. The
+old Christ is the new Christ.
+
+III. Lastly, in the Christian life the old commandment is perpetually
+new.
+
+'Which thing is true ... in you.' That is to say, 'the commandment which
+ye received at the beginning,' when ye received Christ as Saviour, has
+in itself a power of adapting itself to all new conditions as they may
+emerge, and will be felt increasingly to grow stringent, and
+increasingly to demand more entire conformity, and increasingly to sweep
+its circle round the whole of human life. For this is the result of all
+obedience, that the conception of duty becomes more clear and more
+stringent. 'If any man will do His will' the reward shall be that he
+will see more and more the altitude of that will, the length and breadth
+and depth and height of the possible conformity of the human spirit to
+the will of God. And so as we advance in obedience we shall see
+unreached advances before us, and each new step of progress will declare
+more fully how much still remains to be accomplished. In us the 'old
+commandment' will become ever new.
+
+And not only so, but perpetually with the increasing sweep and
+stringency of the obligation will be felt an increasing sense of our
+failure to fulfil it. Character is built up, for good or for evil, by
+slow degrees. Conscience is quickened by being listened to, and stifled
+by being neglected. A little speck of mud on a vestal virgin's robe, or
+on a swan's plumage, will be conspicuous, while a splash twenty times
+the size will pass unnoticed on the rags of some travel-stained
+wayfarer. The purer we become, the more we shall know ourselves to be
+impure.
+
+Thus, my brother, there opens out before us an endless course in which
+all the blessedness that belongs to the entertaining and preservation of
+ancient convictions, lifelong friends, and familiar truths, and all the
+antithetical blessedness that belongs to the joy of seeing, rising upon
+our horizon as some new planet with lustrous light, will be united in
+our experience. We shall at once be conservative and progressive;
+holding by the old Christ and the old commandment, and finding that both
+have in them endless novelty. The trunk is old; every summer brings
+fresh leaves. And at last we may hope to come to the new Jerusalem, and
+drink the new wine of the Kingdom, and yet find that the old love
+remains, and that the new Christ, whose presence makes the new heavens
+and the new earth, is 'the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,' the
+old Christ whom, amid the shadows of earth, we tried to love and copy.
+
+
+
+
+YOUTHFUL STRENGTH
+
+     'I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the
+      word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked
+      one.'--1 John ii. 14.
+
+
+'What am I going to be?' is the question that presses upon young people
+stepping out of the irresponsibilities of childhood into youth. But,
+unfortunately, the question is generally supposed to be answered when
+they have fixed upon a trade or profession. It means, rightly taken, a
+great deal more than that. 'What am I going to make of myself?' 'What
+ideal have I before me, towards which I constantly press?' is a question
+that I would fain lay upon the hearts of all that now hear me. For the
+misery and the reason of the failure of so many lives is simply that
+people have never fairly looked that question in the face and tried to
+answer it, but drift and drift, and let circumstances determine them.
+And, of course, in a world like this, such people are sure to turn out
+what such an immense number of people do turn out, failures as far as
+all God's purposes with humanity are concerned. The absence of a clear
+ideal is the misery and the loss of all young people who do not possess
+it.
+
+So here in my text is an old man's notion of what young men ought to be
+and may be. 'Ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye
+have overcome the wicked one.'
+
+So said the aged John to some amongst his hearers in these corrupt
+Asiatic cities. It was not merely a fair ideal painted upon vacancy, but
+it was a portrait of actual young Christians in these little Asiatic
+churches. And I would fain have some of you take this realised ideal for
+yours and see to it that your lives be conformed to it.
+
+There are three points here. The Apostle, first of all, lays his finger
+upon the strength, which is something more than mere physical strength,
+proper to youth. Then he lets us see the secret source of that strength:
+'Ye have the word of God abiding in you.' And then he shows the field on
+which it should be exercised, and the victory which it secures: 'And ye
+have overcome the wicked one.' Now let me touch upon these three points
+briefly in succession.
+
+I. First, then, note here the strength which you young people ought to
+covet and to aim at.
+
+It is not merely the physical strength proper to their age, nor the mere
+unworn buoyancy and vigour which sorrows and care and responsibilities
+have not thinned and weakened. These are great and precious gifts. We
+never know how precious they are until they have slipped away from us.
+These are great and precious gifts, to be preserved as long as may be,
+by purity and by moderation, and to be used for high and great purposes.
+But the strength that is in thews and muscles is not the strength that
+the Apostle is speaking about here, nor anything that belongs simply to
+the natural stage of your development, whether it be purely physical or
+purely mental. Samson was a far weaker man than the poor little Jew
+'whose bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible,' and who
+all his days carried about with him that 'thorn in the flesh.' It is not
+your body that is to be strong, but yourselves.
+
+Now the foundation of all true strength lies here, in a good, strong
+will. In this world, unless a man has learned to say 'No!' and to say it
+very decidedly, and to stick to it, he will never come to any good. Two
+words contain the secret of noble life: '_Resist!_' and '_Persist!_' And
+the true strength of manhood lies in this mainly, that, in spite of all
+antagonisms, hindrances, voices, and things that array themselves
+against you, having greatly resolved, you do greatly do what you have
+resolved, and having said 'I will!' let neither men nor devils lead you
+to say, 'I will not.' Depend upon it, that to be weak in this direction
+is to be weak all through. Strong passions make weak men. And a strong
+will is the foundation, in this wicked and antagonistic world in which
+we live, of all real strength.
+
+But then the strength that I would have you seek, and strive to
+cultivate, must be a strength of will founded upon strong reason.
+Determination unenlightened is obstinacy, and obstinacy is weakness. A
+mule can beat you at that: 'Be ye not as the mule, which have no
+understanding.' A determination which does not take into its view all
+the facts of the case, nor is influenced by these, has no right to call
+itself strength. It is only, to quote a modern saying--I know not
+whether true of the person to whom it was originally applied or no--is
+'only a lath painted to look like iron.' Unintelligent obstinacy is
+folly, like the conduct of some man who sticks to his pick and his task
+in a quarry after the bugle has warned him of an impending explosion,
+which will blow him to atoms.
+
+But that is not all. A strong will, illuminated by a strong beam of
+light from the understanding, must be guided and governed by a strong
+hand put forth by Conscience. 'I should like' is the weakling's motto.
+'I will' may be an obstinate fool's motto. 'I ought, therefore, God
+helping me, and though the devil hinders me, I will,' is a man's.
+Conscience is king. To obey it is to be free; to neglect it is to be a
+slave.
+
+Is not this a better ideal for life than gathering any outward
+possessions, however you may succeed therein? A thousand things will
+have to be taken into account, and may help or may hinder outward
+prosperity and success. But nobody can hinder you working at your
+character and succeeding in making it what it ought to be; and to form
+character is the end of life. 'To be weak is miserable, doing or
+suffering.' Ay! that is true, though Milton put it into the devil's
+mouth. And there is only one strength that will last, 'for even the
+youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail.'
+But the strength of a fixed and illuminated and conscience-guided will,
+which governs the man and is governed by God, shall never faint or grow
+weak. This is the strength which we should seek, and which I ask you to
+make the conscious aim of your lives.
+
+II. Now note, secondly, how to get it.
+
+'Ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you.' Those young Asiatic
+Christians, that John had in his eye, had learned the secret and the
+conditions of this strength; and not only in limb and sinew, or in
+springy and elastic buoyancy of youthful, mental, and spiritual vigour
+were they strong, but they were so because 'the Word of God abode in
+them.' Now, there are two significations of that great expression, both
+of them frequent in John's Gospel, and both of them, I think,
+transferred to this Epistle, each of which may yield us a word of
+counsel. By 'the Word of God,' as I take it, is meant--perhaps I ought
+to say _both_, but, at all events, _either_--the revelation of God's
+truth in Holy Scripture, or the personal revelation of the will and
+nature of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Whichever of these two
+meanings--and at bottom they come to be one--we attach to this
+expression, we draw from them an exhortation. Let me put this very
+briefly.
+
+Let me say to you, then, if you want to be strong, let Scripture truth
+occupy and fill and be always present to your mind. There are powers to
+rule and to direct all conduct, motive powers of the strongest character
+in these great truths of God's revelation. They are meant to influence a
+man in all his doings, and it is for us to bring the greatest and
+solemnest of them to bear on the smallest things of our daily life.
+Suppose, now, that you go to your work, and some little difficulty
+starts up in your path, or some trivial annoyance ruffles your temper,
+or some lurking temptation is suddenly sprung upon you. Suppose your
+mind and heart were saturated with God's truth, with the great thoughts
+of His being, of His love, of His righteousness, of Christ's death for
+you, of Christ's presence with you, of Christ's guardianship over you,
+of Christ's present will that you should walk in His ways, of the bright
+hopes of the future, and the solemn vision of that great White Throne
+and the retribution that streams thence, do you think it would be
+possible for you to fall into sin, to yield to temptation, to be annoyed
+by any irritation or bother, or overweighted by any duty? No! Whosoever
+lives with the thoughts that God has given us in His Word familiar to
+His mind and within easy reach of His hand, has therein an armlet
+against all possible temptation, a test that will unveil the hidden
+corruption in the sweetest seductions, and a calming power that will
+keep his heart still and collected in the midst of agitations. If the
+Word of God in that lower sense of the principles involved in the gospel
+of Jesus Christ, dwell in your hearts, the fangs are taken out of the
+serpent. If you drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt you, and you
+will 'be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.'
+
+Bring the greatest truths you can find to bear on the smallest duties,
+and the small duties will grow great to match the principles by which
+they are done. Bring the laws of Jesus Christ down to the little things,
+for, in the name of common sense, if our religion is not meant to
+regulate trifles, what is it meant to regulate? Life is made up of
+trifles. There are half a dozen crises in the course of your life, but
+there are a thousand trivial things in the course of every day. It would
+be a poor kind of regulating principle that controlled the crises, and
+left us alone to manage with the trifles the best way we could.
+
+But in order that there shall be this continual operation of the motives
+and principles involved in the gospel upon our daily lives, we must have
+them very near our hand, ready to be laid hold of. The soldier that
+would march through an enemy's country, having left his gun in the hands
+of some camp follower, would be very likely to be shot before he got his
+gun. I remember going through the Red Sea; at the mouth of it where the
+entrance is narrow, and the currents run strong, when the ship
+approaches the dangerous place, the men take their stations at appointed
+places, and the ponderous anchors are loosened and ready to be dropped
+in an instant if the swirl of the current sweeps the ship into dangerous
+proximity to the reef. It is no time to cut the lashings of the anchors
+when the keel is grating on the coral rocks. And it is no time to have
+to look about for our weapons when the sudden temptation leaps upon us
+like a strong man armed. You must have them familiar to you by devout
+meditation, by frequent reflection, prayer, study of God's Word, if they
+are to be of any use to you at all. And I am afraid that about the last
+book in the world that loads of young men and women think of sitting
+down to read, systematically and connectedly, is the Bible. You will
+read sermons and other religious books; you will read newspapers,
+pamphlets, novels; but the Scripture, in its entirety, is a strange book
+to myriads of men who call themselves Christians. And so they are weak.
+If you want to be strong, 'let the Word of God abide in your hearts.'
+
+And then if we take the other view, which at bottom is not another, of
+the meaning of this phrase, and apply it rather to the personal word,
+Jesus Christ Himself, that will yield us another exhortation, and that
+is, let Jesus Christ into your hearts and keep Him there, and He will
+make you strong. I believe that it is no piece of metaphor or an
+exaggerated way of putting the continuance of the influence of Christ's
+example and Christ's teaching upon men's hearts and minds, when He tells
+us that 'if any man open the door He will come in and sup with him.' I
+want to urge the one thought on you that it is possible, in simple
+literal fact, for that Divine Saviour, who was 'in Heaven' whilst He
+walked on earth, and walks on earth to-day when He has returned to His
+native Heaven, to enter into my spirit and yours, and really to abide
+within us, the life of our lives, 'the strength of our hearts, and our
+portion for ever.' The rest of us can render help to one another by
+strength ministered from without; Jesus Christ will come into your
+hearts, if you let Him, in His very sweetness and omnipotence of power,
+and will breathe His own grace into your weakness, strengthening you as
+from within. Others can help you from without, as you put an iron band
+round some over-weighted, crumbling brick pillar in order to prevent it
+from collapsing, but He will pass into us as you may drive an iron rod
+up through the centre of the column, and make it strong inside, and we
+shall be strong if Jesus Christ dwells within us. Open the door, dear
+young friends; let Christ come into your hearts, which He will do if you
+do not hinder Him, and if you ask Him. Trust Him with simple reliance
+upon Him for everything. Faith is 'the door'; the door is nothing of
+itself, but when it is opened it admits the guest. So do you let that
+Master come and abide, and you will hear Him say to you, as He said of
+old, 'Child! My grace is sufficient.' How modest He is. Sufficient!--an
+ocean _enough_ to fill a thimble! 'My grace is sufficient for thee; and
+My strength is made perfect in weakness.'
+
+III. Now, lastly, notice the field on which the strength is to be
+exercised, and the victory which it secures. 'Ye have overcome the
+wicked one.'
+
+There is a battle for us all, on which I need not dwell, the conflict
+with evil around and with evil within, and with the prince of the
+embattled legions of the darkness, whom the New Testament has more
+clearly revealed to us. You young people have many advantages in the
+conflict; you have some special disadvantages as well. You have strong
+passions, you have not much experience, you do not know how bitter the
+dregs are of the cup whose foaming bubbles look so attractive, and whose
+upper inch tastes so sweet. But on the other hand you have not yet
+contracted habits that it is misery to indulge in, and, as it would
+seem, impossible to break, and the world is yet before you.
+
+You cannot begin too soon to choose your side. And here is the side on
+which alone victory is possible for a man--the side of Jesus Christ, who
+will teach your hands to war and your fingers to fight.
+
+Notice that remarkable phrase, 'Ye have overcome the wicked one.' He is
+talking to young Christians before whom the battle may seem to lie, and
+yet He speaks of their conquest as an accomplished fact, and as a thing
+behind them. What does that mean? It means this, that if you will take
+service in Christ's army, and by His grace resolve to be His faithful
+soldier till your life's end, that act of faith, which enrols you as
+His, is itself the victory which guarantees, if it be continued, the
+whole conquest in time.
+
+There used to be an old superstition that--
+
+    'Who sheds the foremost foeman's life
+     His party conquers in the strife';
+
+and whosoever has exercised, however imperfectly and feebly, the faith
+in Jesus Christ the Lord has therein conquered the devil and all his
+works, and Satan is henceforth a beaten Satan, and the battle, in
+essence, is completed even in the act of its being begun.
+
+'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith'; not
+only because our confidence in Jesus Christ is the blowing of the bugle
+that summons to warfare and shakes off the tyrant's yoke, but it is
+also the means by which we join ourselves to Him who has overcome, and
+make His victory ours. He has fought our antagonist in the wilderness
+once, in Gethsemane twice, on the Cross thrice; and the perfect conquest
+in which Jesus bound the strong man and spoiled his goods may become,
+and will become, your conquest, if you wed yourselves to that dear Lord
+by simple faith in Him.
+
+What a priceless thing it is that you may begin your independent manhood
+with a conquest that will draw after it ultimate and supreme victory.
+You will still have to fight, but you will have only to fight
+detachments. If you trust yourselves to Jesus Christ you have conquered
+the main body of the army, and it is only the stragglers that you will
+have to contend with hereafter. He that loves Jesus, and has given
+himself to Him, has pinned the dragon to the ground by its head, and
+though it may 'swinge the scaly horror of its folded tail,' and twine
+its loathly coils around him, yet he has conquered, and he is
+conquering, and he will conquer. Only let him hold fast by the hand
+which brings strength into him by its touch.
+
+Will you, dear young friends, take service in this army? Do you want to
+be weak or strong? Do you want your lives to be victorious whatever may
+happen to them in the way of outward prosperity or failure? Then give
+yourselves to this Lord. His voice calls you to be His soldiers. He will
+cover your heads in the day of battle. He will strengthen you 'with
+might by His Spirit in the inner man.' He will hide His Word in your
+heart that you offend not against Him. He will dwell Himself within you
+to make you strong in your extremest weakness and victorious over your
+mightiest foe; and in that sign you will conquer and 'be more than
+conquerors through Him that loved you.'
+
+Oh, I pray that you may ask yourselves the question, 'What am I going to
+be?' and may answer it, 'I am going to be strong in the Lord and in the
+power of His might'; and to overcome, as He also hath overcome, the
+world and the flesh and the devil.
+
+
+
+
+RIVER AND ROCK
+
+     'The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth
+      the will of God abideth for ever.'--1 John ii. 17.
+
+
+John has been solemnly giving a charge not to love the world, nor the
+things that are in it. That charge was addressed to 'children,' 'young
+men,' 'fathers.' Whether these designations be taken as referring to
+growth and maturity of Christian experience, or of natural age, they
+equally carry the lesson that no age and no stage is beyond the danger
+of being drawn away by the world's love, or beyond the need of the
+solemn dehortation therefrom.
+
+My text is the second of the reasons which the Apostle gives for his
+earnest charge. We all, therefore, need it, and we always need it;
+though on the last Sunday of another year, it may be more than usually
+appropriate to turn our thoughts in its direction. 'The world passeth
+away, and the lust thereof.' Let us lay the handful of snow on our
+fevered foreheads and cool our desires.
+
+Now there are but two things set forth in this text, which is a great
+and wonderful antithesis between something which is in perpetual flux
+and passage and something which is permanent. If I might venture to
+cast the two thoughts into metaphorical form, I should say that here are
+a river and a rock. The one, the sad truth of sense, universally
+believed and as universally forgotten; the other, the glad truth of
+faith, so little regarded or operative in men's lives.
+
+I ask you, then, to look with me for a few moments at each of these
+thoughts.
+
+I. First, then, the river, or the sad truth of sense.
+
+Now you observe that there are two things in my text of which this
+transiency is predicated, the one 'the world,' the other 'the lust
+thereof'; the one outside us, the other within us. As to the former, I
+need only, I suppose, remind you in a sentence that what John means by
+'the world' is not the material globe on which we dwell, but the whole
+aggregate of things visible and material, together with the lives of the
+men whose lives are directed to, and bounded by, that visible and
+material, and all considered as wrenched apart from God. That, and not
+the mere external physical creation, is what he means by 'the world,'
+and therefore the passing away of which he speaks is not only (although,
+of course, it includes) the decay and dissolution of material things,
+but the transiency of things which are or have to do with the visible,
+and are separated by us from God. Over all these, he says, there is
+written the sentence, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.'
+There is a continual flowing on of the stream. As the original implies
+even more strongly than in our translation, 'the world' is in the act of
+'passing away.' Like the slow travelling of the scenes of some moveable
+panorama which glide along, even as the eye looks upon them, and are
+concealed behind the side flats before the gazer has taken in the whole
+picture, so equably, constantly, silently, and therefore unnoticed by
+us, all is in a state of continual motion. There is no _present_ time.
+Even whilst we name the moment it dies. The drop hangs for an instant on
+the verge, gleaming in the sunlight, and then falls into the gloomy
+abyss that silently sucks up years and centuries. There is no present,
+but all is movement.
+
+Brethren, that has been the commonplace of moralists and poets and
+preachers from the beginning of time; and it would be folly for me to
+suppose that I can add anything to the impressiveness of the thought.
+All that I want to do is to wake you up to preach it to yourselves, for
+that is the only thing that is of any use.
+
+    'So passeth, in the passing of an hour
+     Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower.'
+
+But besides this transiency external to us, John finds a corresponding
+transiency within us. 'The world passeth, and the lust thereof.' Of
+course the word 'lust' is employed by him in a much wider sense than in
+our use of it. With us it means one specific and very ugly form of
+earthly desire. With him it includes the whole genus--all desires of
+every sort, more or less noble or ignoble, which have this for their
+characteristic, that they are directed to, stimulated by, and fed or
+starved on, the fleeting things of this outward life. If thus a man has
+anchored himself to that which has no perpetual stay, so long as the
+cable holds he follows the fate of the thing to which he has pinned
+himself. And if it perish he perishes, in a very profound sense, with
+it. If you trust yourselves in the leaky vessel, when the water rises in
+_it_ it will drown _you_, and you will go to the bottom with the craft
+to which you have trusted yourselves. If you embark in the little ship
+that carries Christ and His fortunes, you will come with Him to the
+haven.
+
+But these fleeting desires, of which my text speaks, point to that sad
+feature of human experience, that we all outgrow and leave behind us,
+and think of very little value, the things that once to us were all but
+heaven. There was a time when toys and sweetmeats were our treasures,
+and since that day how many burnt-out hopes we all have had! How little
+we should know ourselves if we could go back to the fears and wishes and
+desires that used to agitate us ten, twenty, thirty years ago! They lie
+behind us, no longer part of ourselves; they have slipped away from us,
+and
+
+    'We all are changed, by still degrees,
+     All but the basis of the soul.'
+
+The self-conscious same man abides, and yet how different the same man
+is! Our lives, then will zig-zag instead of keeping a straight course,
+if we let desires that are limited by anything that we can see guide and
+regulate us.
+
+But, brethren, though it be a digression from my text, I cannot help
+touching for a moment upon a yet sadder thought than that. There are
+desires that _remain_, when the gratification of them has become
+impossible. Sometimes the lust outlasts the world, sometimes the world
+outlasts the lust; and one knows not whether is the sadder. There is a
+hell upon earth for many of us who, having set our affections upon some
+creatural object, and having had that withdrawn from us, are ready to
+say, 'They have taken away my gods! And what shall I do?' And there is a
+hell of the same sort waiting beyond those dark gates through which we
+have all to pass, where men who never desired anything, except what the
+world that has slipped out of their reluctant fingers could give them,
+are shut up with impossible longings after a for-ever-vanished good.
+'Father Abraham! a drop of water; for I am tormented in this flame.'
+That is what men come to, if the fire of their lust burn after its
+objects are withdrawn.
+
+But let me remind you that this transiency of which I have been speaking
+receives very strange treatment from most of us. I do not know that it
+is altogether to be regretted that it so seldom comes to men's
+consciousness. Perhaps it is right that it should not be uppermost in
+our thoughts always; but yet there is no vindication for the entire
+oblivion to which we condemn it. The march of these fleeting things is
+like that of cavalry with their horses' feet wrapped in straw, in the
+night, across the snow, silent and unnoticed. We cannot realise the
+revolution of the earth, because everything partakes in it. We talk
+about standing still, and we are whirling through space with
+inconceivable rapidity. By a like illusion we deceive ourselves with the
+notion of stability, when everything about us is hastening away. Some of
+you do not like to be reminded of it, and think it a killjoy. You try to
+get rid of the thought, and hide your head in the sand, and fancy that
+the rest of your body presents no mark to the archer's arrow. Now surely
+common sense says to all, that if there be some fact certain and plain
+and applying to you, which, if accepted, would profoundly modify your
+life, you ought to take it into account. And what I want you to do, dear
+friends, now, is to look in the face this fact, which you all
+acknowledge so utterly that some of you are ready to say, 'What was the
+use of coming to a chapel to hear that threadbare old thing dinned into
+my ears again?' and to take it into account in shaping your lives. Have
+you done so? Have you? Suppose a man that lived in a land habitually
+shaken by earthquakes were to say, 'I mean to ignore the fact; and I am
+going to build a house just as if there was not such a thing as an
+earthquake expected'; he would have it toppling about his ears very
+soon. Suppose a man upon the ice-slopes of the Alps was to say, 'I am
+going to ignore slipperiness and gravitation,' he would before long find
+himself, if there was any consciousness left in him, at the bottom of a
+precipice, bruised and bleeding. And suppose a man says, 'I am not going
+to take the fleetingness of the things of earth into account at all, but
+intend to live as if all things were to remain as they are'; what would
+become of him do you think? Is he a wise man or a fool? And is he _you_?
+He _is_ some of you! 'So teach us to number our days that we may apply
+our hearts unto wisdom.'
+
+Then let me say to you, see that you take noble lessons out of these
+undeniable and all-important facts. There is one kind of lesson that I
+do not want you to take out of it. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
+we die,' or, to put it into a more vulgar formula, 'A short life and a
+merry one.' The mere contemplation of the transiency of earthly things
+may, and often does, lend itself to very ignoble conclusions, and men
+draw from it the thought that, as life is short, they had better crowd
+into it as much of sensual enjoyment as they can.
+
+'Gather ye roses while ye may' is a very common keynote, struck by poets
+of the baser sort. And it is a thought that influences some of us, I
+have little doubt. Or there may be another consideration. 'Make hay
+whilst the sun shines.' 'Hurry on your getting rich, because you have
+not very long to do it in'; or the like.
+
+Now all that is supremely unworthy. The true lesson to be drawn is the
+plain, old one which it is never superfluous to shout into men's ears,
+until they have obeyed it--viz., 'Set not thine heart on that which is
+not; and which flieth away as an eagle towards heaven.' Do you, dear
+brother, see to it, that your roots go down through the gravel on the
+surface. Do you see to it that you dig deeper than that; and thrusting
+your hand, as it were, through the thin, silk-paper screen that stands
+between you and the Eternal, grasp the hand that you will find on the
+other side, waiting and ready to clasp you, and to hold you up.
+
+When they build a new house in Rome they have to dig down through
+sometimes sixty or a hundred feet of rubbish that runs like water, the
+ruins of old temples and palaces, once occupied by men in the same flush
+of life in which we are now. We too have to dig down through ruins,
+until we get to the Rock and build there, and build secure. Withdraw
+your affections and your thoughts and your desires from the fleeting,
+and fix them on the permanent. If a captain takes anything but the
+pole-star for his fixed point he will lose his reckoning, and his ship
+will be on the reefs. If we take anything but God for our supreme
+delight and desire we shall perish.
+
+Then let me say, too, let this thought stimulate us to crowd every
+moment, as full as it can be packed, with noble work and heavenly
+thoughts. These fleeting things are elastic, and you may put all but
+infinite treasure into them. Think of what the possibilities, for each
+of us, of this dying year were on the 1st of January; and of what the
+realisation has been by the 28th of December. So much that we could have
+done! so little that we have done! So many ripples of the river have
+passed, bearing no golden sand to pile upon the shore! 'We have been' is
+a sad word; but oh, the one sad word is, 'We might have been!' And, so,
+do you see to it that you fill time with that which is kindred to
+eternity, and make 'one day as a thousand years' in the elastic
+possibilities and realities of consecration and of service.
+
+Further, let the thought help us to the conviction of the relative
+insignificance of all that can change. That will not spoil nor shade any
+real joy; rather it will add to it poignancy that prevents it from
+cloying or from becoming the enemy of our souls. But the thought will
+wondrously lighten the burden that we have to carry, and the tasks which
+we have to perform. 'But for a moment,' makes all light. There was an
+old rabbi, long ago, whose real name was all but lost, because everybody
+nick-named him 'Rabbi Thisalso.' The reason was because he had
+perpetually on his lips the saying about everything as it came, 'This
+also will pass.' He was a wise man. Let us go to his school and learn
+his wisdom.
+
+II. Now let me say a word, and it can only be a word, about the second
+of the thoughts here, which I designated as the Rock, or the glad truth
+of Faith.
+
+We might have expected that John's antithesis to the world that passeth
+would have been the God that abides. But he does not so word his
+sentence, although the thought of the divine permanence underlies it.
+Rather over against the fleeting world he puts the abiding man who does
+the will of God.
+
+Of course there is a very solemn sense in which all men, even they who
+have most exclusively lived for what they call the present, do last for
+ever, and in which their deeds do so too. After death is the judgment,
+and the issues of eternity depend upon the actions of time; and every
+fleeting thought comes back to the hand that projected it, like the
+Australian savage's boomerang that, flung out, returns and falls at the
+feet of the thrower. But that is not what John means by 'abiding for
+ever.' He means something very much more blessed and lofty than that;
+and the following is the course of his thought. There is only one
+permanent Reality in the universe, and that is God. All else is shadow
+and He is the substance. All else was, is, and is not. He is the One who
+was, is, and is to come, the timeless and only permanent Being. The will
+of God is the permanent element in all changeful material things. And
+consequently he who does the will of God links himself with the Divine
+Eternity, and becomes partaker of that solemn and blessed Being which
+lives above mutation.
+
+Obedience to God's will is the permanent element in human life.
+Whosoever humbly and trustfully seeks to mould his will after the divine
+will, and to bring God's will into practice in his doings, that man has
+pierced through the shadows and grasped the substance, and partakes of
+the Immortality which he adores and serves. Himself shall live for ever
+in the true life which is blessedness. His deeds shall live for ever
+when all that lifted itself in opposition to the Divine will shall be
+crushed and annihilated. They shall live in His own peaceful
+consciousness; they shall live in the blessed rewards which they shall
+bring to the doers. His habits will need no change.
+
+What will you do when you are dead? You have to go into a world where
+there are no gossip and no housekeeping; no mills and no offices; no
+shops, no books; no colleges and no sciences to learn. What will you do
+there? 'He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.' If you have
+done your housekeeping, and your weaving and spinning, and your
+book-keeping, and your buying and selling, and your studying, and your
+experimenting with a conscious reference to God, it is all right. That
+has made the act capable of eternity, and there will be no need for such
+a man to change. The material on which he works will change, but the
+inner substance of his life will be unaffected by the trivial change
+from earth to heaven. Whilst the endless ages roll he will be doing just
+what he was doing down here; only here he was playing with counters, and
+yonder he will be trusted with gold, and dominion over ten cities. To
+all other men the change that comes when earth passes from them, or they
+from it, is as when a trench is dug across a railway, into which the
+express goes with a smash, and there is an end. To the man who, in the
+trifles of time, has been obeying the will of God, and therefore
+subserving eternity and his interests there, the trench is bridged, and
+he will go on after he crosses it just as he did before, with the same
+purpose, the same desires, the same submission, and the same drinking
+into himself of the fulness of immortal life.
+
+Brother, John tells us that obedience to the will of God brings
+permanence into our fleeting years. But how are we to obey the will of
+God? John tells us that the only way is by love. But how are we to love
+God? John tells us that the only way to love--which love is the only way
+to obedience--is by knowing and believing the love that God hath to us.
+But how are we to know that God hath love to us? John tells us that the
+only way to know the love of God, which is the only way of our loving
+Him, which in its turn is the only way to obedience, which again is the
+only way to permanence of life, is to believe in Jesus Christ and His
+propitiation for our sins. The river flows on for ever, but it sweeps
+round the base of the Rock of Ages. And in Him, by faith in His blood,
+we may find our sure refuge and eternal home.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVE THAT CALLS US SONS
+
+     'Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that
+      we should be called the sons of God....'--1 John iii. 1.
+
+
+One or two points of an expository character will serve to introduce
+what else I have to say on these words.
+
+The text is, I suppose, generally understood as if it pointed to the
+fact that we are called the sons of God as the great exemplification of
+the wonderfulness of His love. That is a perfectly possible view of the
+connection and meaning of the text. But if we are to translate with
+perfect accuracy we must render, not 'that we should be called,' but
+'_in order that_ we should be called the sons of God.' The meaning then
+is that the love bestowed is the means by which the design that we
+should be called His sons is accomplished. What John calls us to
+contemplate with wonder and gratitude is not only the fact of this
+marvellous love, but also the glorious end to which it has been given to
+us and works. There seems no reason for slurring over this meaning in
+favour of the more vague 'that' of our version. God gives His great and
+wonderful love in Jesus Christ, and all the gifts and powers which live
+in Him like fragrance in the rose. All this lavish bestowal of love,
+unspeakable as it is, may be regarded as having one great end, which God
+deems worthy of even such expenditure, namely, that men should become,
+in the deepest sense, His children. It is not so much to the
+contemplation of our blessedness in being sons, as to the devout gaze on
+the love which, by its wonderful process, has made it possible for us to
+be sons, that we are summoned here.
+
+Again, you will find a remarkable addition to our text in the Revised
+Version--namely, 'and such we are.' Now these words come with a very
+great weight of manuscript authority, and of internal evidence. They are
+parenthetical, a kind of rapid 'aside' of the writer's, expressing his
+joyful confidence that he and his brethren are sons of God, not only in
+name, but in reality. They are the voice of personal assurance, the
+voice of the spirit 'by which we cry Abba, Father,' breaking in for a
+moment on the flow of the sentence, like an irrepressible, glad answer
+to the Father's call. With these explanations let us look at the words.
+
+I. The love that is given.
+
+We are called upon to come with our little vessels to measure the
+contents of the great ocean, to plumb with our short lines the infinite
+abyss, and not only to estimate the quantity but the quality of that
+love, which, in both respects, surpasses all our means of comparison and
+conception.
+
+Properly speaking, we can do neither the one nor the other, for we have
+no line long enough to sound its depths, and no experience which will
+give us a standard with which to compare its quality. But all that we
+can do, John would have us do--that is, look and ever look at the
+working of that love till we form some not wholly inadequate idea of it.
+
+We can no more 'behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on
+us' than we can look with undimmed eyes right into the middle of the
+sun. But we can in some measure imagine the tremendous and beneficent
+forces that ride forth horsed on his beams to distances which the
+imagination faints in trying to grasp, and reach their journey's end
+unwearied and ready for their task as when it began. Here are we, ninety
+odd millions of miles from the centre of the system, yet warmed by its
+heat, lighted by its beams, and touched for good by its power in a
+thousand ways. All that has been going on for no one knows how many
+æons. How mighty the Power which produces these effects! In like manner,
+who can gaze into the fiery depths of that infinite Godhead, into the
+ardours of that immeasurable, incomparable, inconceivable love? But we
+can look at and measure its activities. We can see what it does, and so
+can, in some degree, understand it, and feel that after all we have a
+measure for the Immeasurable, a comparison for the Incomparable, and can
+_thus_ 'behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us.'
+
+So we have to turn to the work of Christ, and especially to His death,
+if we would estimate the love of God. According to John's constant
+teaching, that is the great proof that God loves us. The most wonderful
+revelation to every heart of man of the depths of that Divine heart lies
+in the gift of Jesus Christ. The Apostle bids me 'behold what manner of
+love.' I turn to the Cross, and I see there a love which shrinks from no
+sacrifice, but gives 'Him up to death for us all.' I turn to the Cross,
+and I see there a love which is evoked by no lovableness on my part,
+but comes from the depth of His own Infinite Being, who loves because He
+must, and who must because He is God. I turn to the Cross, and I see
+there manifested a love which sighs for recognition, which desires
+nothing of me but the repayment of my poor affection, and longs to see
+its own likeness in me. And I see there a love that will not be put away
+by sinfulness, and shortcomings, and evil, but pours its treasures on
+the unworthy, like sunshine on a dunghill. So, streaming through the
+darkness of eclipse, and speaking to me even in the awful silence in
+which the Son of Man died there for sin, I 'behold,' and I hear, the
+'manner of love that the Father hath bestowed upon us,' stronger than
+death and sin, armed with all power, gentler than the fall of the dew,
+boundless and endless, in its measure measureless, in its quality
+transcendent--the love of God to me in Jesus Christ my Saviour.
+
+In like manner we have to think, if we would estimate the 'manner of
+this love,' that through and in the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ
+there comes to us the gift of a divine life like His own. Perhaps it may
+be too great a refinement of interpretation; but it certainly does seem
+to me that that expression 'to bestow His love upon' us, is not
+altogether the same as 'to love us,' but that there is a greater depth
+in it. There may be some idea of that love itself being as it were
+infused into us, and not merely of its consequences or tokens being
+given to us; as Paul speaks of 'the love of God shed abroad in our
+hearts' by the spirit which is given to us. At all events this
+communication of divine life, which is at bottom divine love--for God's
+life is God's love--is His great gift to men.
+
+Be that as it may, these two are the great tokens, consequences, and
+measures of God's love to us--the gift of Christ, and that which is the
+sequel and outcome thereof, the gift of the Spirit which is breathed
+into Christian spirits. These two gifts, which are one gift, embrace all
+that the world needs. Christ for us and Christ in us must both be taken
+into account if you would estimate the manner of the love that God has
+bestowed upon us.
+
+We may gain another measure of the greatness of this love if we put an
+emphasis--which I dare say the writer did not intend--on one word of
+this text, and think of the love given to '_us_,' such creatures as we
+are. Out of the depths we cry to Him. Not only by the voice of our
+supplications, but even when we raise no call of entreaty, our misery
+pleads with His merciful heart, and from the heights there comes upon
+our wretchedness and sin the rush of this great love, like a cataract,
+which sweeps away all our sins, and floods us with its own blessedness
+and joy. The more we know ourselves, the more wonderingly and thankfully
+shall we bow down our hearts before Him, as we measure His mercy by our
+unworthiness.
+
+From all His works the same summons echoes. They all call us to see
+mirrored in them His loving care. But the Cross of Christ and the gift
+of a Divine Spirit cry aloud to every ear in tones of more beseeching
+entreaty and of more imperative command to 'behold what manner of love
+the Father hath bestowed upon us.'
+
+II. Look next at the sonship which is the purpose of His given Love.
+
+It has often been noticed that the Apostle John uses for that expression
+'the sons of God,' another word from that which his brother Paul uses.
+John's phrase would perhaps be a little more accurately translated
+'children of God,' whilst Paul, on the other hand, very seldom says
+'children,' but almost always says 'sons.' Of course the children are
+sons and the sons are children, but still, the slight distinction of
+phrase is characteristic of the men, and of the different points of view
+from which they speak about the same thing. John's word lays stress on
+the children's kindred nature with their father and on their immature
+condition.
+
+But without dwelling on that, let us consider this great gift and
+dignity of being children of God, which is the object that God has in
+view in all the lavish bestowment of His goodness upon us.
+
+That end is not reached by God's making us men. Over and above that He
+has to send this great gift of His love, in order that the men whom He
+has made may become His sons. If you take the context here you will see
+very clearly that the writer draws a broad distinction between 'the sons
+of God' and 'the world' of men who do not comprehend them, and so far
+from being themselves sons, do not even know God's sons when they see
+them. And there is a deeper and solemner word still in the context. John
+thinks that men (within the range of light and revelation, at all
+events) are divided into two families--'the children of God and the
+children of the devil.' There _are_ two families amongst men.
+
+Thank God, the prodigal son in his rags amongst the swine, and lying by
+the swine-troughs in his filth and his husks, and his fever, _is_ a son!
+No doubt about that! He has these three elements and marks of sonship
+that no man ever gets rid of: he is of a divine origin, he has a divine
+likeness in that he has got mind and will and spirit, and he is the
+object of a divine love.
+
+The doctrine of the New Testament about the Fatherhood of God and the
+sonship of man does not in the slightest degree interfere with these
+three great truths, that all men, though the features of the common
+humanity may be almost battered out of recognition in them, are all
+children of God because He made them; that they are children of God
+because still there lives in them something of the likeness of the
+creative Father; and, blessed be His name! that they are all children of
+God because He loves and provides and cares for every one of them.
+
+All that is blessedly and eternally true; but it is also true that there
+is a higher relation than that to which the name 'children of God' is
+more accurately given, and to which in the New Testament that name is
+confined. If you ask what that relation is, let me quote to you three
+passages in this Epistle which will answer the question. 'Whoever
+believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God,' that is the first;
+'Every one that doeth righteousness is born of God,' that is the second;
+'Every one that loveth is born of God,' that is the third. Or to put
+them all into one expression which holds them all, in the great words of
+his prologue in the first chapter of John's Gospel you find this: 'To as
+many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God.'
+Believing in Christ with loving trust produces, and doing righteousness
+and loving the brethren, as the result of that belief, prove the fact of
+sonship in its highest and its truest sense.
+
+What is implied in that great word by which the Almighty gives us a name
+and a place as of sons and daughters? Clearly, first, a communicated
+life, therefore, second, a kindred nature which shall be 'pure as He is
+pure,' and, third, growth to full maturity.
+
+This sonship, which is no mere empty name, is the aim and purpose of
+God's dealings, of all the revelation of His love, and most especially
+of the great gift of His love in Christ. Has that purpose been
+accomplished in you? Have you ever looked at that great gift of love
+that God has given you on purpose to make you His child? If you have,
+has it made you one? Are you trusting to Jesus Christ, whom God has sent
+forth that we might receive the standing of sons in Him? Are you a child
+of God because a brother of that Saviour? Have you received the gift of
+a divine life through Him? My friend, remember the grim alternative! A
+child of God or a child of the devil! Bitter words, narrow words,
+uncharitable words--as people call them! And I believe, and therefore I
+am bound to say it, _true_ words, which it concerns _you_ to lay to
+heart.
+
+III. Now, still further, let me ask you to look at the glad recognition
+of this sonship by the child's heart.
+
+I have already referred to the clause added in the Revised Version, 'and
+such we are.' As I said, it is a kind of 'aside,' in which John adds the
+Amen for himself and for his poor brothers and sisters toiling and
+moiling obscure among the crowds of Ephesus, to the great truth. He
+asserts his and their glad consciousness of the reality of the fact of
+their sonship, which they know to be no empty title. He asserts, too,
+the present possession of that sonship, realising it as a fact, amid all
+the commonplace vulgarities and carking cares and petty aims of life's
+little day. 'Such we are' is the 'Here am I, Father,' of the child
+answering the Father's call, 'My Son.'
+
+He turns doctrine into experience. He is not content with merely having
+the thought in his creed, but his heart clasps it, and his whole nature
+responds to the great truth. I ask you, do you do that? Do not be
+content with hearing the truth, or even with assenting to it, and
+believing it in your understandings. The truth is nothing to you, unless
+you have made it your very own by faith. Do not be satisfied with the
+orthodox confession. Unless it has touched your heart and made your
+whole soul thrill with thankful gladness and quiet triumph, it is
+nothing to you. The mere belief of thirty-nine or thirty-nine thousand
+Articles is nothing; but when a man has a true heart-faith in Him, whom
+all articles are meant to make us know and love, then dogma becomes
+life, and the doctrine feeds the soul. Does it do so with you, my
+brother? Can _you_ say, 'And such we are?'
+
+Take another lesson. The Apostle was not afraid to say 'I know that I am
+a child of God.' There are many very good people, whose tremulous,
+timorous lips have never ventured to say 'I know.' They will say, 'Well,
+I hope,' or sometimes, as if that was not uncertain enough, they will
+put in an adverb or two, and say, 'I humbly hope that I am.' It is a far
+robuster kind of Christianity, a far truer one, ay, and a humbler one
+too, that throws all considerations of my own character and merits, and
+all the rest of that rubbish, clean behind me, and when God says, 'My
+son!' says 'My Father;' and when God calls us His children, leaps up and
+gladly answers, 'And we are!' Do not be afraid of being too confident,
+if your confidence is built on God, and not on yourselves; but be afraid
+of being too diffident, and be afraid of having a great deal of
+self-righteousness masquerading under the guise of such a profound
+consciousness of your own unworthiness that you dare not call yourself a
+child of God. It is not a question of worthiness or unworthiness. It is
+a question, in the first place, and mainly, of the truth of Christ's
+promise and the sufficiency of Christ's Cross; and in a very subordinate
+degree of anything belonging to you.
+
+IV. We have here, finally, the loving and devout gaze upon this
+wonderful love. 'Behold,' at the beginning of my text, is not the mere
+exclamation which you often find both in the Old and in the New
+Testaments, which is simply intended to emphasise the importance of what
+follows, but it is a distinct command to do the thing, to look, and ever
+to look, and to look again, and live in the habitual and devout
+contemplation of that infinite and wondrous love of God.
+
+I have but two remarks to make about that, and the one is this, that
+such a habit of devout and thankful meditation upon the love of God, as
+manifested in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the consequent gift of
+the Divine Spirit, joined with the humble, thankful conviction that I am
+a child of God thereby, lies at the foundation of all vigorous and happy
+Christian life. How can a thing which you do not touch with your hands
+and see with your eyes produce any effect upon you, unless you think
+about it? How can a religion which can only influence through thought
+and emotion do anything in you, or for you, unless you occupy your
+thoughts and your feelings with it? It is sheer nonsense to suppose it
+possible. Things which do not appeal to sense are real to us, and indeed
+we may say, _are_ at all for us, only as we think about them. If you had
+a dear friend in Australia, and never thought about him, he would even
+cease to be dear, and it would be all one to you as if he were dead. If
+he were really dear to you, you _would_ think about him. We may say
+(though, of course, there are other ways of looking at the matter) that,
+in a very intelligible sense, the degree in which we think about Christ,
+and in Him behold the love of God, is a fairly accurate measure of our
+Christianity.
+
+Now will you apply that sharp test to yesterday, and the day before, and
+the day before that, and decide how much of your life was pagan, and how
+much of it was Christian? You will never make anything of your professed
+Christianity, you will never get a drop of happiness or any kind of good
+out of it; it will neither be a strength nor a joy nor a defence to you
+unless you make it your habitual occupation to 'behold the manner of
+love'; and look and look and look until it warms and fills your heart.
+
+The second remark is that we cannot keep that great sight before the eye
+of our minds without effort. You will have very resolutely to look away
+from something else if, amid all the dazzling gauds of earth, you are to
+see the far-off lustre of that heavenly love. Just as timorous people in
+a thunder-storm will light a candle that they may not see the lightning,
+so many Christians have their hearts filled with the twinkling light of
+some miserable tapers of earthly care and pursuits, which, though they
+be dim and smoky, are bright enough to make it hard to see the silent
+depths of Heaven, though it blaze with a myriad stars. If you hold a
+sixpence close enough up to the pupil of your eye, it will keep you from
+seeing the sun. And if you hold the world close to mind and heart, as
+many of you do, you will only see, round the rim of it, the least tiny
+ring of the overlapping love of God. What the world lets you see you
+will see, and the world will take care that it will let you see very
+little--not enough to do you any good, not enough to deliver you from
+its chains. Wrench yourselves away, my brethren, from the absorbing
+contemplation of Birmingham jewellery and paste, and look at the true
+riches. If you have ever had some glimpses of that wondrous love, and
+have ever been drawn by it to cry, 'Abba, Father,' do not let the
+trifles which belong not to your true inheritance fill your thoughts,
+but renew the vision, and by determined turning away of your eyes from
+beholding vanity, look off from the things that are seen, that you may
+gaze upon the things that are not seen, and chiefest among them, upon
+the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
+
+If you have never looked on that love, I beseech you now to turn aside
+and see this great sight. Do not let that brightness burn unnoticed
+while your eyes are fixed on the ground, like the gaze of men absorbed
+in gold digging, while a glorious sunshine is flushing the eastern sky.
+Look to the unspeakable, incomparable, immeasurable love of God, in
+giving up His Son to death for us all. Look and be saved. Look and live.
+'Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on you,' and,
+beholding, you will become the sons and daughters of the Lord God
+Almighty.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNREVEALED FUTURE OF THE SONS OF GOD
+
+     'Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear
+      what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall
+      be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.'--1 John iii. 2.
+
+
+I have hesitated, as you may well believe, whether I should take these
+words for a text. They seem so far to surpass anything that can be said
+concerning them, and they cover such immense fields of dim thought, that
+one may well be afraid lest one should spoil them by even attempting to
+dilate on them. And yet they are so closely connected with the words of
+the previous verse, which formed the subject of my last sermon, that I
+felt as if my work were only half done unless I followed that sermon
+with this.
+
+The present is the prophet of the future, says my text: 'Now we are the
+sons of God, _and_' (not 'but') 'it doth not yet appear what we shall
+be.' Some men say, 'Ah! _now are_ we, but we shall be--nothing!' John
+does not think so. John thinks that if a man is a son of God he will
+always be so. There are three things in this verse, how, if we are God's
+children, our sonship makes us quite sure of the future; how our sonship
+leaves us largely in ignorance of the future, but how our sonship flings
+one bright, all-penetrating beam of light on the only important thing
+about the future, the clear vision of and the perfect likeness to Him
+who is our life. 'Now are we the sons of God,' therefore we shall be. We
+are the sons; we do not know what we shall be. We are the sons, and
+therefore, though there be a great circumference of blank ignorance as
+to our future, yet, blessed be His name, there is a great light burning
+in the middle of it! 'We know that when He shall appear we shall be like
+Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
+
+I. The fact of sonship makes us quite sure of the future.
+
+I am not concerned to appraise the relative value of the various
+arguments and proofs, or, it may be, presumptions, which may recommend
+the doctrine of a future life to men, but it seems to me that the
+strongest reasons for believing in another world are these two:--first,
+that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and has gone up there; and,
+second, that a man here can pray, and trust, and love God, and feel that
+he is His child. As was noticed in the preceding sermon, the word
+rendered 'sons' might more accurately be translated 'children.' If so,
+we may fairly say, 'We are the _children_ of God now--and if we are
+children now, we shall be grown up some time.' Childhood leads to
+maturity. The infant becomes a man.
+
+That is to say, he that here, in an infantile way, is stammering with
+his poor, unskilled lips the name 'Abba! Father!' will one day come to
+speak it fully. He that dimly trusts, he that partially loves, he that
+can lift up his heart in some more or less unworthy prayer and
+aspiration after God, in all these emotions and exercises, has the great
+proof in himself that such emotions, such relationship, can never be put
+an end to. The roots have gone down through the temporal, and have laid
+hold of the Eternal. Anything seems to me to be more credible than that
+a man who can look up and say, 'My Father,' shall be crushed by what
+befalls the mere outside of him; anything seems to me to be more
+believable than to suppose that the nature which is capable of these
+elevating emotions and aspirations of confidence and hope, which can
+know God and yearn after Him, and can love Him, is to be wiped out like
+a gnat by the finger of Death. The material has nothing to do with these
+feelings, and if I know myself, in however feeble and imperfect a
+degree, to be the son of God, I carry in the conviction the very pledge
+and seal of eternal life. That is a thought 'whose very sweetness
+yieldeth proof that it was born for immortality.' 'We are the sons of
+God,' therefore we shall always be so, in all worlds, and whatsoever may
+become of this poor wrappage in which the soul is shrouded.
+
+We may notice, also, that not only the fact of our sonship avails to
+assure us of immortal life, but that also the very form which our
+religious experience takes points in the same direction.
+
+As I said, infancy is the prophecy of maturity. 'The child is father of
+the man'; the bud foretells the flower. In the same way, the very
+imperfections of the Christian life, as it is seen here, argue the
+existence of another state, where all that is here in the germ shall be
+fully matured, and all that is here incomplete shall attain the
+perfection which alone will correspond to the power that works in us.
+Think of the ordinary Christian character. The beginning is there, and
+evidently no more than the beginning. As one looks at the crudity, the
+inconsistencies, the failings, the feebleness of the Christian life of
+others, or of oneself, and then thinks that such a poor, imperfect
+exhibition is all that so divine a principle has been able to achieve in
+this world, one feels that there must be a region and a time where we
+shall be all which the transforming power of God's spirit can make us.
+The very inconsistencies of Christians are as strong reasons for
+believing in the perfect life of Heaven as their purities and virtues
+are. We have a right to say mighty principles are at work upon Christian
+souls--the power of the Cross, the power of love issuing in obedience,
+the power of an indwelling Spirit; and is this all that these great
+forces are going to effect on human character? Surely a seed so precious
+and divine is somewhere, and at some time, to bring forth something
+better than these few poor, half-developed flowers, something with more
+lustrous petals and richer fragrance. The plant is clearly an exotic;
+does not its obviously struggling growth here tell of warmer suns and
+richer soil, where it will be at home?
+
+There is a great deal in every man, and most of all in Christian men and
+women, which does not fit this present. All other creatures correspond
+in their capacities to the place where they are set down; and the world
+in which the plant or the animal lives, the world of their surroundings,
+stimulates to activity all their powers. But that is not so with a man.
+'Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests.' They fit exactly, and
+correspond to their 'environment.' But a man!--there is an enormous
+amount of waste faculty about him if he is only to live in this world.
+There are large capacities in every nature, and most of all in a
+Christian nature, which are like the packages that emigrants take with
+them, marked 'Not wanted on the voyage.' These go down into the hold,
+and they are only of use after landing in the new world. If I am a son
+of God I have much in me that is 'not wanted on the voyage,' and the
+more I grow into His likeness, the more I am thrown out of harmony with
+the things round about me, in proportion as I am brought into harmony
+with the things beyond.
+
+That consciousness of belonging to another order of things, because I am
+God's child, will make me sure that when I have done with earth, the tie
+that binds me to my Father will not be broken, but that I shall go home,
+where I shall be fully and for ever all that I so imperfectly began to
+be here, where all gaps in my character shall be filled up, and the
+half-completed circle of my heavenly perfectness shall grow like the
+crescent moon, into full-orbed beauty. 'Neither life, nor death, nor
+things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
+creature' shall be able to break that tie, and banish the child from the
+conscious grasp of a Father's hand. Dear brother and sister, can you
+say, 'Now am I a child of God!' Then you may patiently and peacefully
+front that dim future.
+
+II. Now I come to the second point, namely, that we remain ignorant of
+much in that future.
+
+That happy assurance of the love of God resting upon me, and making me
+His child through Jesus Christ, does not dissipate all the darkness
+which lies on that beyond. 'We are the sons of God, _and_,' just because
+we are, 'it does not yet appear what we shall be.' Or, as the words are
+rendered in the Revised Version, 'it is not yet made manifest what we
+shall be.'
+
+The meaning of that expression, 'It doth not yet appear,' or, 'It is not
+made manifest,' may be put into very plain words. John would simply say
+to us, 'There has never been set forth before men's eyes in this earthly
+life of ours an example, or an instance, of what the sons of God are to
+be in another state of being.' And so, because men have never had the
+instance before them, they do not know much about that state.
+
+In some sense there has been a manifestation through the life of Jesus
+Christ. Christ has died; Christ is risen again. Christ has gone about
+amongst men upon earth after Resurrection. Christ has been raised to the
+right hand of God, and sits there in the glory of the Father. So far it
+has been manifested what we shall be. But the risen Christ is not the
+glorified Christ, and although He has set forth before man's senses
+irrefragably the fact of another life, and to some extent given glimpses
+and gleams of knowledge with regard to certain portions of it, I suppose
+that the 'glorious body' of Jesus Christ was not assumed by Him till the
+cloud 'received Him out of their sight,' nor, indeed, could it be
+assumed while He moved among the material realities of this world, and
+did eat and drink before them. So that, while we thankfully recognise
+that Christ's Resurrection and Ascension have 'brought life and
+immortality to light,' we must remember that it is the fact, and not the
+manner of the fact, which they make plain; and that, even after His
+example, it has not been manifested what is the body of glory which He
+now wears, and therefore it has not yet been manifested what we shall be
+when we are fashioned after its likeness.
+
+There has been no manifestation, then, to sense, or to human experience,
+of that future, and, therefore, there is next to no knowledge about it.
+You can only know facts when the facts are communicated. You may
+speculate and argue and guess as much as you like, but that does not
+thin the darkness one bit. The unborn child has no more faculty or
+opportunity for knowing what the life upon earth is like than man here,
+in the world, has for knowing that life beyond. The chrysalis' dreams
+about what it would be when it was a butterfly would be as reliable as a
+man's imagination of what a future life will be.
+
+So let us feel two things:--Let us be thankful that we do not know, for
+the ignorance is the sign of the greatness; and then, let us be sure
+that just the very mixture of knowledge and ignorance which we have
+about another world is precisely the food which is most fitted to
+nourish imagination and hope. If we had more knowledge, supposing it
+could be given, of the conditions of that future life, it would lose
+some of its power to attract. Ignorance does not always prevent the
+occupation of the mind with a subject. Blank ignorance does; but
+ignorance, shot with knowledge like a tissue which, when you hold it one
+way seems all black, and when you tilt it another, seems golden,
+stimulates desire, hope, and imagination. So let us thankfully acquiesce
+in the limited knowledge.
+
+Fools can ask questions which wise men cannot answer, and will not ask.
+There are questions which, sometimes, when we are thinking about our own
+future, and sometimes when we see dear ones go away into the mist,
+become to us almost torture. It is easy to put them; it is not so easy
+to say: 'Thank God, we cannot answer them yet!' If we could it would
+only be because the experience of earth was adequate to measure the
+experience of Heaven; and that would be to bring the future down to the
+low levels of this present. Let us be thankful then that so long as we
+can only speak in language derived from the experiences of earth, we
+have yet to learn the vocabulary of Heaven. Let us be thankful that our
+best help to know what we shall be is to reverse much of what we are,
+and that the loftiest and most positive declarations concerning the
+future lie in negatives like these:--'I saw no temple therein.' 'There
+shall be no night there.' 'There shall be no curse there.' 'There shall
+be no more sighing nor weeping, for the former things are passed away.'
+
+The white mountains keep their secret well; not until we have passed
+through the black rocks that make the throat of the pass on the summit,
+shall we see the broad and shining plains beyond the hills. Let us be
+thankful for, and own the attractions of, the knowledge that is wrapt in
+ignorance, and thankfully say, 'Now are we the sons of God, and it doth
+not appear what we shall be!'
+
+III. Now I must be very brief with the last thought that is here, and I
+am the less unwilling to be so because we cannot travel one inch beyond
+the revelations of the Book in reference to the matter. The thought is
+this, that our sonship flings one all-penetrating beam of light on that
+future, in the knowledge of our perfect vision and perfect likeness. 'We
+know that when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for we
+shall see Him as He is.'
+
+'When He shall be manifested'--to what period does that refer? It seems
+most natural to take the manifestation here as being the same as that
+spoken of only a verse or two before. 'And now, little children, abide
+in Him, and when He shall _be manifested_, we may have confidence, and
+not be ashamed before Him at His coming' (ii. 28). That 'coming' then,
+is the 'manifestation' of Christ; and it is at the period of His coming
+in His glory that His servants 'shall be like Him, and see Him as He
+is.' Clearly then it is Christ whom we shall see and become like, and
+not the Father invisible.
+
+To behold Christ will be the condition and the means of growing like
+Him. That way of transformation by beholding, or of assimilation by the
+power of loving contemplation, is the blessed way of ennobling
+character, which even here, and in human relationships, has often made
+it easy to put off old vices and to clothe the soul with unwonted grace.
+Men have learned to love and gaze upon some fair character, till some
+image of its beauty has passed into their ruder natures. To love such
+and to look on them has been an education. The same process is
+exemplified in more sacred regions, when men here learn to love and look
+upon Christ by faith, and so become like Him, as the sun stamps a tiny
+copy of its blazing sphere on the eye that looks at it. But all these
+are but poor, far-off hints and low preludes of the energy with which
+that blessed vision of the glorified Christ shall work on the happy
+hearts that behold Him, and of the completeness of the likeness to Him
+which will be printed in light upon their faces.
+
+It matters not, though it doth not yet appear what we shall be, if to
+all the questionings of our own hearts we have this for our
+all-sufficient answer, 'We shall be like Him.' As good old Richard
+Baxter has it:--
+
+    'My knowledge of that life is small,
+       The eye of faith is dim;
+     But, 'tis enough that Christ knows all,
+       And I shall be like Him!'
+
+'It is enough for the servant that he be as his Lord.'
+
+There is no need to go into the dark and difficult questions about the
+manner of that vision. He Himself prayed, in that great intercessory
+prayer, 'Father, I will that these whom Thou hast given Me be with Me
+where I am, that they may behold My glory.' That vision of the glorified
+manhood of Jesus Christ--certain, direct, clear, and worthy, whether it
+comes through sense or through thought--to behold that vision is all
+the sight of God that men in Heaven ever will have. And through the
+millenniums of a growing glory, Christ as He is will be the manifested
+Deity. Likeness will clear sight, and clearer sight will increase
+likeness. So in blessed interchange these two will be cause and effect,
+and secure the endless progress of the redeemed spirit towards the
+vision of Christ which never can behold all His Infinite Fulness, and
+the likeness to Christ which can never reproduce all his Infinite
+Beauty.
+
+As a bit of glass when the light strikes it flashes into sunny glory, or
+as every poor little muddy pool on the pavement, when the sunbeams fall
+upon it, has the sun mirrored even in its shallow mud, so into your poor
+heart and mine the vision of Christ's glory will come, moulding and
+transforming us to its own beauty. With unveiled face reflecting as a
+mirror does, the glory of the Lord, we 'shall be changed into the same
+image.' 'We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
+
+Dear brethren, all begins with this, love Christ and trust Him and you
+are a child of God! 'And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and
+joint heirs with Christ.'
+
+
+
+
+THE PURIFYING INFLUENCE OF HOPE
+
+     'And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even
+      as He is pure.'--1 John iii. 3.
+
+
+That is a very remarkable 'and' with which this verse begins. The
+Apostle has just been touching the very heights of devout contemplation,
+soaring away up into dim regions where it is very hard to follow,--'We
+shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
+
+And now, without a pause, and linking his thoughts together by a simple
+'and,' he passes from the unimaginable splendours of the Beatific Vision
+to the plainest practical talk. Mysticism has often soared so high above
+the earth that it has forgotten to preach righteousness, and therein has
+been its weak point. But here is the most mystical teacher of the New
+Testament insisting on plain morality as vehemently as his friend James
+could have done.
+
+The combination is very remarkable. Like the eagle he rises, and like
+the eagle, with the impetus gained from his height, he drops right down
+on the earth beneath!
+
+And that is not only a characteristic of St. John's teaching, but it is
+a characteristic of all the New Testament morality--its highest
+revelations are intensely practical. Its light is at once set to work,
+like the sunshine that comes ninety millions of miles in order to make
+the little daisies open their crimson-tipped petals; so the profoundest
+things that the Bible has to say are said to you and me, not that we may
+know only, but that knowing we may _do_, and _do_ because we _are_.
+
+So John, here: 'We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
+'And'--a simple coupling-iron for two such thoughts--'every man that
+hath this hope in Him'--that is, in Christ, not in himself, as we
+sometimes read it--'every man that hath this hope,' founded on Christ,
+'purifies himself even as He is pure.'
+
+The thought is a very simple one, though sometimes it is somewhat
+mistakenly apprehended. Put into its general form it is just this:--If
+you expect, and expecting, hope to be like Jesus Christ yonder, you will
+be trying your best to be like Him here. It is not the mere purifying
+influence of hope that is talked about, but it is the specific influence
+of this one hope, the hope of ultimate assimilation to Christ leading to
+strenuous efforts, each a partial resemblance of Him, here and now. And
+that is the subject I want to say a word or two about now.
+
+I. First, then, notice the principle that is here, which is the main
+thing to be insisted upon, namely, If we are to be pure, we must purify
+_ourselves_.
+
+There are two ways of getting like Christ, spoken about in the context.
+One is the blessed way, that is more appropriate for the higher Heaven,
+the way of assimilation and transformation by beholding--'If we see Him'
+we shall be 'like Him.' That is the blessed method of the Heavens. Yes,
+but even here on earth it may to some extent be realised! Love always
+breeds likeness. And there is such a thing, here on earth and now, as
+gazing upon Christ with an intensity of affection, and simplicity of
+trust, and rapture of aspiration, and ardour of desire which shall
+transform us in some measure into His own likeness. John is an example
+of that for us. It was a true instinct that made the old painters always
+represent him as like the Master that he sat beside, even in face. Where
+did John get his style from? He got it by much meditating upon Christ's
+words. The disciple caught the method of the Master's speech, and to
+some extent the manner of the Master's vision.
+
+And so he himself stands before us as an instance of the possibility,
+even on earth, of this calm, almost passive process, and most blessed
+and holiest method of getting like the Master, by simple gazing, which
+is the gaze of love and longing.
+
+But, dear brethren, the law of our lives forbids that that should be the
+only way in which we grow like Christ. 'First the blade, then the ear,
+then the full corn in the ear,' was never meant to be the exhaustive,
+all-comprehensive statement of the method of Christian progress. You and
+I are not vegetables; and the Parable of the Seed is only one side of
+the truth about the method of Christian growth. The very word 'purify'
+speaks to us of another condition; it implies impurity, it implies a
+process which is more than contemplation, it implies the reversal of
+existing conditions, and not merely the growth upwards to unattained
+conditions.
+
+And so growth is not all that Christian men need; they need excision,
+they need casting out of what is in them; they need change as well as
+growth. 'Purifying' they need because they are impure, and growth is
+only half the secret of Christian progress.
+
+Then there is the other consideration, viz., if there is to be this
+purifying it must be done by myself. 'Ah!' you say, 'done by yourself?
+That is not evangelical teaching.' Well, let us see. Take two or three
+verses out of this Epistle which at first sight seem to be contradictory
+of this. Take the very first that bears on the subject:--'The blood of
+Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin' (i. 7). 'If we confess
+our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse
+us from all unrighteousness' (i. 9). 'He that abideth in Him sinneth
+not' (iii. 6). 'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our
+faith' (v. 4).
+
+Now if you put all these passages together, and think about the general
+effect of them, it comes to this: that our best way of cleansing
+ourselves is by keeping firm hold of Jesus Christ and of the cleansing
+powers that lie in Him. To take a very homely illustration--soap and
+water wash your hands clean, and what you have to do is simply to rub
+the soap and water on to the hand, and bring them into contact with the
+foulness. You cleanse yourselves. Yes! because without the friction
+there would not be the cleansing. But is it you, or is it the soap, that
+does the work? Is it you or the water that makes your hands clean? And
+so when God comes and says, 'Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil
+of your doings, your hands are full of blood,' He says in effect, 'Take
+the cleansing that I give you and rub it in, and apply it: and your
+flesh will become as the flesh of a little child, and you shall be
+clean.'
+
+That is to say, the very deepest word about Christian effort of
+self-purifying is this--keep close to Jesus Christ. You cannot sin as
+long as you hold His hand. To have Him with you;--I mean by that to have
+the thoughts directed to Him, the love turning to Him, the will
+submitted to Him, Him consciously with us in the day's work. To have
+communion with Jesus Christ is like bringing an atmosphere round about
+us in which all evil will die. If you take a fish out of water and bring
+it up into the upper air, it writhes and gasps, and is dead presently;
+and our evil tendencies and sins, drawn up out of the muddy depths in
+which they live, and brought up into that pure atmosphere of communion
+with Jesus Christ, are sure to shrivel and to die, and to disappear. We
+kill all evil by fellowship with the Master. His presence in our lives,
+by our communion with Him, is like the watchfire that the traveller
+lights at night--it keeps all the wild beasts of prey away from the
+fold.
+
+Christ's fellowship is our cleansing, and the first and main thing that
+we have to do in order to make ourselves pure is to keep ourselves in
+union with Him, in whom inhere and abide all the energies that cleanse
+men's souls. Take the unbleached calico and spread it out on the green
+grass, and let the blessed sunshine come down upon it, and sprinkle it
+with fair water; and the grass and the moisture and the sunshine will do
+all the cleansing, and it will glitter in the light, 'so as no fuller on
+earth can white it.'
+
+So cleansing is keeping near Jesus Christ. But it is no use getting the
+mill-race from the stream into your works unless you put wheels in its
+way to drive. And our holding ourselves in fellowship with the Master in
+that fashion is not all that we have to do. There have to be distinct
+and specific efforts, constantly repeated, to subdue and suppress
+individual acts of transgression. We have to fight against evil, sin by
+sin. We have not the thing to do all at once; we have to do it in
+detail. It is a war of outposts, like the last agonies of that
+Franco-Prussian war, when the Emperor had abdicated, and the country was
+really conquered, and Paris had yielded, but yet all over the face of
+the land combats had to be carried on.
+
+So it is with us. Holiness is not feeling; it is character. You do not
+get rid of your sins by the act of divine amnesty only. You are not
+perfect because you say you are, and feel as if you were, and think you
+are. God does not make any man pure in his sleep. His cleansing does not
+dispense with fighting, but makes victory possible.
+
+Then, dear brethren, lay to heart this, as the upshot of the whole
+matter: First of all, let us turn to Him from whom all the cleansing
+comes; and then, moment by moment, remember that it is our work to
+purify ourselves by the strength and the power that is given to us by
+the Master.
+
+II. The second thought here is this: This purifying of ourselves is the
+link or bridge between the present and the future.--'Now are we the sons
+of God,' says John in the context. That is the pier upon the one side of
+the gulf. 'It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but when He is made
+manifest we shall be like Him.' That is the pier on the other. How are
+the two to be connected? There is only one way by which the present
+sonship will blossom and fruit into the future perfect likeness, and
+that is,--if we throw across the gulf, by God's help day by day here,
+that bridge of our effort after growing likeness to Himself, and purity
+therefrom.
+
+That is plain enough, I suppose. To speak in somewhat technical terms,
+the 'law of continuity' that we hear so much about, runs on between
+earth and Heaven; which, being translated into plain English, is but
+this--that the act of passing from the limitations and conditions of
+this transitory life into the solemnities and grandeurs of that future
+does not alter a man's character, though it may intensify it. It does
+not make him different from what he was, though it may make him more of
+what he was, whether its direction be good or bad.
+
+You take a stick and thrust it into water; and because the rays of light
+pass from one medium to another of a different density, they are
+refracted and the stick seems bent; but take the human life out of the
+thick, coarse medium of earth and lift it up into the pure rarefied air
+of Heaven, and there is no refraction; it runs straight on. Straight on!
+The given direction continues; and in whatever direction my face is
+turned when I die, thither my face will be turned when I live again.
+
+Do not you fancy that there is any magic in coffins and graves and
+shrouds to make men different from their former selves. The continuity
+runs clean on, the rail goes without a break, though it goes through the
+Mont Cenis tunnel; and on the one side is the cold of the North, and on
+the other the sunny South. The man is the same man through death and
+beyond.
+
+So the one link between sonship here and likeness to Christ hereafter is
+this link of present, strenuous effort to become like Him day by day in
+personal purity. For there is another reason, on which I need not dwell,
+viz., unless there be this daily effort on our part to become like Jesus
+Christ by personal purity, we shall not be able to 'see Him as He is.'
+Death will take a great many veils off men's hearts. It will reveal to
+them a great deal that they do not know, but it will not give the
+faculty of beholding the glorified Christ in such fashion as that the
+beholding will mean transformation. 'Every eye shall see Him,' but it is
+conceivable that a spirit shall be so immersed in self-love and in
+godlessness that the vision of Christ shall be repellent and not
+attractive; shall have no transforming and no gladdening power. And I
+beseech you to remember that about that vision, as about the vision of
+God Himself, the principle stands true; it is 'the pure in heart that
+shall see God' in Christ. And the change from life to the life beyond
+will not necessarily transform into the image of His dear Son. You make
+a link between the present and the future by cleansing your hands and
+your hearts, through faith in the cleansing power of Christ, and direct
+effort at holiness.
+
+III. Now I must briefly add finally: that this self-cleansing of which I
+have been speaking is the offspring and outcome of that 'hope' in my
+text. It is the child of hope. Hope is by no means an active faculty
+generally. As the poets have it, she may 'smile and wave her golden
+hair'; but she is not in the way of doing much work in the world. And it
+is not the mere fact of hope that generates this effort; it is, as I
+have been trying to show you, a certain kind of hope--the hope of being
+like Jesus Christ when 'we see Him as He is.'
+
+I have only two things to say about this matter, and one of them is
+this: of course, such strenuous effort of purity will only be the result
+of such a hope as that, because such a hope will fight against one of
+the greatest of all the enemies of our efforts after purity. There is
+nothing that makes a man so down-hearted in his work of self-improvement
+as the constant and bitter experience that it seems to be all of no use;
+that he is making so little progress; that with immense pains, like a
+snail creeping up a wall, he gets up, perhaps, an inch or two, and then
+all at once he drops down, and further down than he was before he
+started.
+
+Slowly we manage some little, patient self-improvement; gradually, inch
+by inch and bit by bit, we may be growing better, and then there comes
+some gust and outburst of temptation; and the whole painfully reclaimed
+soil gets covered up by an avalanche of mud and stones, that we have to
+remove slowly, barrow-load by barrow-load. And then we feel that it is
+all of no use to strive, and we let circumstances shape us, and give up
+all thoughts of reformation.
+
+To such moods then there comes, like an angel from Heaven, that holy,
+blessed message, 'Cheer up, man! "We shall be like Him, for we shall see
+Him as He is."' Every inch that you make now will tell then, and it is
+not all of no use. Set your heart to the work, it is a work that will be
+blessed and will prosper.
+
+Again, here is a test for all you Christian people, who say that you
+look to Heaven with hope as to your home and rest.
+
+A great deal of the religious contemplation of a future state is pure
+sentimentality, and like all pure sentimentality is either immoral or
+non-moral. But here the two things are brought into clear juxtaposition,
+the bright hope of Heaven and the hard work done here below. Now is that
+what the gleam and expectation of a future life does for you?
+
+This is the only time in John's Epistle that he speaks about hope. The
+good man, living so near Christ, finds that the present, with its
+'abiding in Him' is enough for his heart. And though he was the Seer of
+the Apocalypse, he has scarcely a word to say about the future in this
+letter of his, and when he does it is for a simple and intensely
+practical purpose, in order that he may enforce on us the teaching of
+labouring earnestly in purifying ourselves.
+
+My brother, is that your type of Christianity? Is that the kind of
+inspiration that comes to you from the hope that steals in upon you in
+your weary hours, when sorrows, and cares, and changes, and loss, and
+disappointments, and hard work weigh you down, and you say, 'It would be
+blessed to pass hence'? Does it set you harder at work than anything
+else can do? Is it all utilised? Or if I might use such an illustration,
+is it like the electricity of the Aurora Borealis, that paints your
+winter sky with vanishing, useless splendours of crimson and blue? or
+have you got it harnessed to your tramcars, lighting your houses,
+driving sewing-machines, doing practical work in your daily life? Is the
+hope of Heaven, and of being like Christ, a thing that stimulates and
+stirs us every moment to heroisms of self-surrender and to strenuous
+martyrdom of self-cleansing?
+
+All is gathered up into the one lesson. First, let us go to that dear
+Lord whose blood cleanseth from all sin, and let us say to Him, 'Purge
+me and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.' And
+then, receiving into our hearts the powers that purify, in His love and
+His sacrifice and His life, 'having these promises' and these
+possessions, 'Dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all
+filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the
+Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+PRACTICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
+
+     'Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth
+      righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.'--1 John
+      iii. 7.
+
+
+The popular idea of the Apostle John is strangely unlike the real man.
+He is supposed to be the gentle Apostle of Love, the mystic amongst the
+Twelve. He _is_ that, but he was the 'son of thunder' before he was the
+Apostle of Love, and he did not drop the first character when he
+attained the second. No doubt his central thought was, 'God is Love'; no
+doubt that thought had refined and assimilated his character, but the
+love which he believed and the love which he exercised were neither of
+them facile feebleness, but strong and radiant with an awful purity.
+None of the New Testament writers proclaims a more austere morality than
+does John. And just because he loved the Love and the Light, he hated
+and loathed the darkness. He can thunder and lighten when needful, and
+he shows us that the true divine love in a man recoils from its
+opposite as passionately as it cleaves to God and good.
+
+Again, John is, _par excellence_, the mystic of the New Testament,
+always insisting on the direct communion which every soul may have with
+God, which is the essence of wholesome mysticism. Now that type of
+thinking has often in its raptures forgotten plain, pedestrian morality;
+but John never commits that error. He never soars so high as to lose
+sight of the flat earth below; and whilst he is always inviting us and
+enjoining us to dwell in God and abide in Christ, with equal persistence
+and force he is preaching to us the plainest duties of elementary
+morality.
+
+He illustrates this moral earnestness in my text. The 'little children'
+for whom he was so affectionately solicitous were in danger, either from
+teachers or from the tendencies native in us all, to substitute
+something else for plain, righteous conduct; and the Apostle lovingly
+appeals to them with his urgent declaration, that the only thing which
+shows a man to be righteous--that is to say, a disciple of Christ--is
+his daily life, in conformity with Christ's commands. The errors of
+these ancient Asiatics live to-day in new forms, but still substantially
+the same. And they are as hard to kill amongst English Nonconformists
+like us as they were amongst Asiatic Christians nineteen centuries ago.
+
+I. So let me try just to insist, first of all, on that thought that
+doing righteousness is the one test of being a Christian.
+
+Now that word 'righteousness' is a theological word, and by much usage
+the lettering has got to be all but obliterated upon it; and it is worn
+smooth like sixpences that go from pocket to pocket. Therefore I want,
+before I go further, to make this one distinct point, that the New
+Testament righteousness is no theological, cloistered, peculiar kind of
+excellence, but embraces within its scope, 'whatsoever things are
+lovely, whatsoever things are fair, whatsoever things are of good
+report'; all that the world calls virtue, all which the world has
+combined to praise. There are countries on the earth which are known by
+different names to their inhabitants and to foreigners. The
+'righteousness' of the New Testament, though it embraces a great deal
+more, includes within its map all the territories which belong to
+morality or to virtue. The three words cover the same ground, though one
+of them covers more than the other two. The New Testament
+'righteousness' differs from the moralist's morality, or the world's
+virtue, in its scope, inasmuch as it includes our relations to God as
+well as to men; it differs in its perspective, inasmuch as it exalts
+some types of excellence that the world pooh-poohs, and pulls down some
+that the world hallelujahs and adulates; it strips the fine feathers of
+approving words off some vices which masquerade as virtues. It casts
+round the notion of duty, of morality, of virtue, a halo, and it touches
+it with emotion. Christianity does with the dictates of the natural
+conscience what we might figure as being the leading out of some captive
+virgin in white, from the darkness into the sunshine, and the turning of
+her face up to heaven, which illuminates it with a new splendour, and
+invests her with a new attractiveness. But all that any man rightly
+includes in his notion of the things that are 'of good report' is
+included in this theological word, righteousness, which to some of you
+seems so wrapped in mists, and so far away from daily life.
+
+I freely confess that in very many instances the morality of the
+moralist has outshone the righteousness of the Christian. Yes! and I
+have seen canoe-paddles carved by South Sea Islanders with no better
+tools than an oyster-shell and a sharp fish-bone, which in the
+minuteness and delicacy of their work, as well as in the truth and taste
+of their pattern, might put to shame the work of carvers with better
+tools. But that is not the fault of the tools; it is the fault of the
+carvers. And so, whilst we acknowledge that Christian people have but
+poorly represented to the world what Christ and Christ's apostles meant
+by righteousness, I reiterate that the righteousness of the gospel is
+the morality of the world _plus_ a great deal more.
+
+That being understood, let me remind you of two or three ways in which
+this great truth of the text is obscured to us, and in some respects
+contradicted, in the practice of many professing Christians. First, let
+me say my text insists upon this, that the conduct, not the creed, makes
+the Christian. There is a continual tendency on our part, as there was
+with these believers in Asia Minor long ago, to substitute the mere
+acceptance, especially the orthodox acceptance, of certain great
+fundamental Christian truths for Christianity. A man may believe
+thirty-nine or thirty-nine thousand Articles without the smallest
+intellectual drawback, and not be one whit nearer being a Christian than
+if he did not believe one of them. For faith, which is the thing that
+makes a man a Christian to begin with, is not assent, but trust. And
+there is a whole gulf, wide enough to drown a world in, between the two
+attitudes of mind. On the one side of the gulf is salvation, on the
+other side of the gulf there may be loss. Of course, I know that it is
+hard, though I do not believe it is impossible, to erect the structure
+of a saving faith on a very, very imperfect intellectual apprehension
+of Scripture truth. That has nothing to do with my present point. What I
+am saying is that, unless you erect that structure of a faith which is
+an act of your will and of your whole nature, and not the mere assent of
+your understanding, upon your belief, your belief is impotent, and is of
+no use at all, and you might as well not have it.
+
+What is the office of our creed in regard to our conduct? To give us
+principles, to give us motives, to give us guidance, to give us weapons.
+If it does these things then it does its work. If it lies in our heads a
+mere acceptance of certain propositions, it is just as useless and as
+dead as the withered seeds that rattle inside a dried poppy-head in the
+autumn winds. You are meant to begin with accepting truth, and then you
+are meant to take that truth as being a power in your lives that shall
+shape your conduct. To know, and there an end, is enough in matters of
+mere science, but in matters of religion and in matters of morality or
+righteousness knowing is only the first step in the process, and we are
+made to know in order that, knowing, we may do.
+
+But some professing Christians seem to have their natures built, like
+ocean-going steamers, with water-tight compartments, on the one side of
+which they keep their creed, and there is no kind of communication
+between that and the other side where their conduct is originated.
+'Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth righteousness is
+righteous.'
+
+Again, my text suggests conduct and not emotion.
+
+Now there is a type of Christian life which is more attractive in
+appearance than that of the hard, fossilised, orthodox believer--viz.,
+the warmly emotional and fervent Christian. But that type, all
+experience shows, has a pit dug close beside it into which it is apt to
+fall. For there is a strange connection between emotional Christianity
+and a want of straightforwardness in daily business life, and of
+self-control and government of the appetites and the senses. That has
+been sadly shown, over and again, and if we had time one could easily
+point to the reasons in human nature, and its strange contexture, why it
+should be so. Now I am not disparaging emotion--God forbid--for I
+believe that to a very large extent the peculiarity of Christian
+teaching is just this, that it does bring emotion to bear upon the hard
+grind of daily duty. But for all that, I am bound to say that this is a
+danger which, in this day, by reason of certain tendencies in our
+popular Christianity, is a very real one, and that you will find people
+gushing in religious enthusiasm, and then going away to live very
+questionable, and sometimes very mean, and sometimes even very gross and
+sensual lives. The emotion is meant to spring from the creed, and it is
+meant to be the middle term between the creed and the conduct. Why, we
+have learnt to harness electricity to our tramcars, and to make it run
+our messages, and light our homes, and that is like what we have to do
+with the emotion without which a man's Christianity will be a poor,
+scraggy thing. It is a good servant; it is a bad master. You do not show
+yourselves to be Christians because you gush. You do not show yourselves
+to be Christians because you can talk fervidly and feel deeply. Raptures
+are all very well, but what we want is the grind of daily righteousness,
+and doing little things because of the fear and the love of the Lord.
+
+May I say again, my text suggests conduct, and not verbal worship. You
+and I, in our adherence to a simpler, less ornate and æsthetic form of
+devotion than prevails in the great Episcopal churches, are by no means
+free from the danger which, in a more acute form, besets them, of
+substituting participation in external acts of worship for daily
+righteousness of life _Laborare est orare_--to work is to pray. That is
+true with explanations, commentaries, and limitations. But I wonder how
+many people there are who sing hymns which breathe aspirations and
+wishes that their whole daily life contradicts. And I wonder how many of
+us there are who seem to be joining in prayers that we never expect to
+have answered, and would be very much astonished if the answers came,
+and should not know what to do with if they did come. We live in one
+line, and worship in exactly the opposite. Brethren, creed is necessary;
+emotion is necessary; worship is necessary! But that on which these
+three all converge, and for which they are, is daily life, plain,
+practical righteousness.
+
+II. Now let me say, secondly, that being righteous is the way to do
+righteousness.
+
+One of the great characteristics of New Testament teaching of morality,
+or rather let me say of Christ's teaching of morality, is that it
+shifts, if I may so put it, the centre of gravity from acts to being,
+that instead of repeating the parrot-cry, 'Do, do, do' or 'Do not, do
+not, do not,' it says, 'Be, and the doing will take care of itself. Be;
+do not trouble so much about outward acts, look after the inward
+nature.' Character makes conduct, though, of course, conduct reacts upon
+character. 'As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,' and the way to set
+actions right is to set the heart right.
+
+Some of us are trying to purify the stream by putting in disinfectants
+half-way down, instead of going up to the source and dealing with the
+fountain. And the weakness of all the ordinary, commonplace morality of
+the world is that it puts its stress upon the deeds, and leaves
+comparatively uncared for the condition of the person, the inward self,
+from whom the deeds come. And so it is all superficial, and of small
+account.
+
+If that be so, then we are met by this experience: that when we honestly
+try to make the tree good that its fruit may be good we come full front
+up to this, that there is a streak in us, a stain, a twist--call it
+anything you like--like a black vein through a piece of Parian marble,
+or a scratch upon a mirror, which streak or twist baffles our effort to
+make ourselves righteous. I am not going, if I can help it, to
+exaggerate the facts of the case. The Christian teaching of what is
+unfortunately called total depravity is not that there is no good in
+anybody, but that there is a diffused evil in everybody which affects in
+different degrees and in different ways all a man's nature. And that is
+no mere doctrine of the New Testament, but it is a transcript from the
+experience of every one of us.
+
+What then? If I must be righteous in order that I may do righteousness,
+and if, as I have found out by experience (for the only way to know
+myself is to reflect upon what I have done)--if I have found out that I
+am not righteous, what then? You may say to me, 'Have you led me into a
+blind alley, out of which I cannot get? Here you are, insisting on an
+imperative necessity, and in the same breath saying that it is
+impossible. What is left for me?' I go on to tell you what is left.
+
+III. Union with Jesus Christ by faith makes us 'righteous even as He is
+righteous.'
+
+There is the pledge, there is the prophecy, there is the pattern; and
+there is the power to redeem the pledge, to fulfil the prophecy, to make
+the pattern copyable and copied by every one of us. Brethren, this is
+the very heart of John's teaching, that if we will, not by the mere
+assent of our intellect, but by the casting of ourselves on Jesus
+Christ, trust in Him, there comes about a union between us and Him so
+real, so deep, so vital, so energetic, that by the touch of His life we
+live, and by His righteousness breathed into us, we, too, may become
+righteous. The great vessel and the tiny pot by its side may have a
+connecting pipe, and from the great one there shall flow over into the
+little one as much as will fill it brim full. In Him we too may be
+righteous.
+
+My friend, there are men and women who are ready to set to their seals
+that that is true, and who can say, 'I have found it so. By union with
+Jesus Christ in faith, I have received new tastes, new inclinations, a
+new set to my whole life, and I have been able to overcome
+unrighteousnesses which were too many and too mighty for myself.' It is
+so; and some of us to our own consciences and consciousness are
+witnesses to it, however imperfectly. God forgive us! We may have
+manifested the renewing power of union with Christ in our daily lives.
+
+'Even as He is righteous'--the water in the great vessel and the little
+one are the same, but the vase is not the cistern. The beam comes from
+the sun, but the beam is not the sun. 'Even as' does not mean equality,
+but it does mean similarity. Christ is righteous, eternally,
+essentially, completely; we may be 'even as He is' derivatively,
+partially, and if we put our trust in Him we shall be so, and that
+growingly through our daily lives. And then, after earth is done with,
+'we know that, when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for
+we shall see Him as He is.'
+
+May we each, dear brethren, 'be found in Him, not having our own
+righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through faith in
+Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.'
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST'S MISSION THE REVELATION OF GOD'S LOVE
+
+     'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and
+      sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.'--1 John iv. 10.
+
+
+This is the second of a pair of twin verses which deal with
+substantially the same subject under two slightly different aspects. The
+thought common to both is that Christ's mission is the great revelation
+of God's love. But in the preceding verse the point on which stress is
+laid is the manifestation of that love, and in our text the point mainly
+brought out is its essential nature. In the former we read, 'In this was
+_manifested_ the love of God,' and in the present verse we read, 'Herein
+_is_ love.' In the former verse John fixes on three things as setting
+forth the greatness of that manifestation--viz., that the Christ is the
+only begotten Son, that the manifestation is for the world, and that its
+end is the bestowment of everlasting love. In my text the points which
+are fixed on are that that Love in its nature is self-kindled--'not that
+we loved God, but that He loved us'--and that it lays hold of, and casts
+out of the way that which, unremoved, would be a barrier between God and
+us--viz., our sin: 'He hath sent His Son to be the propitiation for our
+sins.'
+
+Now it is interesting to notice that these twin verses, like a double
+star which reflects the light of a central sun, draw their brightness
+from the great word of the Master, 'God so loved the world, that He gave
+His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
+perish, but have everlasting life.' Do you not hear the echo of His
+voice in the three expressions in the verse before the text--'only
+begotten' 'world' 'live'? Here is one more of the innumerable links
+which bind together in indissoluble union the Gospel and the Epistle.
+So, then, the great thought suggested by the words before us is just
+this, that in the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ we have the
+great revelation of the love of God.
+
+I. Now there are three questions that suggest themselves to me, and the
+first is this, What, then, does Christ's mission say about God's love?
+
+I do not need to dwell on the previous question whether, apart from that
+mission, there is any solid revelation of the fact that there is love in
+Heaven, or whether we are left, apart from it, to gropings and
+probabilities. I need not refer you to the ambiguous oracles of nature
+or to the equally ambiguous oracles of life. I need not, I suppose, do
+more than just remind you that even the men whose faith grasps the
+thought of the love of God most intensely, know what it is to be brought
+to a stand before some of the dreadful problems which the facts of
+humanity and the facts of nature press upon us, nor need I remind you
+how, as we see around us to-day, in the drift of our English literature
+and that of other nations, when men turn their backs upon the Cross,
+they look upon a landscape all swathed in mists, and on which darkness
+is steadily settling. The reason why the men of this generation, some
+of them very superficially, and for the sake of being 'in the swim' and
+some of them despairingly and with bleeding hearts, are turning
+themselves to a reasoned pessimism, is because they will not see what
+shines out from the Cross, that God is love.
+
+Nor need I do more than remind you, in a word, of the fact that, go
+where we will through this world, and consult all the conceptions that
+men have made to themselves of gods many and lords many, whilst we find
+the deification of power, and of vice, and of fragmentary goodnesses, of
+hopes and fears, of longings, of regrets, we find nowhere a god of whom
+the characteristic is love. And amidst that Pantheon of deities, some of
+them savage, some of them lustful, some of them embodiments of all
+vices, some of them indifferent and neutral, some of them radiant and
+fair, none reveals this secret, that the centre of the universe is a
+heart. So we have to turn away from hopes, from probability dashed with
+many a doubt, and find something that has more solid substance in it, if
+it is to be enough to bear up the man that grasps it and to yield before
+no tempests. For all that Bishop Butler says, probabilities are _not_
+the guide of life, in its deepest and noblest aspects. They may be the
+guide of practice, but for the anchorage of the soul we want no shifting
+sand-bank, but that to which we may make fast and be sure that, whatever
+shifts, it remains immovable. You can no more clothe the soul in
+'perhapses' than a man can make garments out of a spider's web. Religion
+consists of the things of which we are sure, and not of the things which
+are probable. 'Peradventure' is not the word on which a man can rest the
+weight of a crushed, or an agonising, or a sinking soul; he must have
+'Verily! verily!' and then he is at rest.
+
+How do we know what a man is? By seeing what a man does. How do we know
+what God is? By knowing what God does. So John does not argue with
+logic, either frosty or fiery, but he simply opens his mouth, and in
+calm, pellucid utterances sets forth the truths and leaves them to work.
+He says to us, 'I do not relegate you to your intuitions; I do not argue
+with you; I simply say, Look at Him; look, and see that God is love.'
+
+What, then, does the mission of Christ say to us about the love of God?
+It says, first, that it is a love independent of, and earlier than,
+ours. We love, as a rule, because we recognise in the object to which
+our heart goes out something that draws it, something that is loveable.
+But He whose name is 'I am that I am' has all the reasons of His actions
+within Himself, and just as He
+
+    'Sits on no precarious throne,
+       Nor borrows leave to be,'
+
+nor is dependent on any creature for existence, so He is His own motive,
+He is His own reason. Within that sacred circle of the Infinite Nature
+lie all the energies which bring that Infinite Nature into action; and
+like some clear fountain, more sparkling than crystal, there wells up
+for ever, from the depths of the Divine Nature, the love which is
+Himself. He loves, not because we love Him, but because He is God. The
+very sun itself, as some astronomers believe, owes its radiant
+brightness and ever-communicated warmth to the impact on, and reception
+into, it of myriads of meteors and of matter drawn from the surrounding
+system. So when the fuel fails, that fire will go out, and the sun will
+shrivel into a black ball. But this central Sun of the universe has all
+His light within Himself, and the rays that pour out from Him owe their
+being and their motion to nothing but the force of that central fire,
+from which they rush with healing on their wings.
+
+If, then, God's love is not evoked by anything in His creatures, then it
+is universal, and we do not need anxiously to question ourselves whether
+we deserve that it shall fall upon us, and no conscious unworthiness
+need ever make us falter in the least in the firmness with which we
+grasp that great central thought. The sun, inferior emblem as it is of
+that Light of all that is, pours down its beams indiscriminately on
+dunghill and on jewel, though it be true that in the one its rays breed
+corruption and in the other draw out beauty. That great love wraps us
+all, is older than our sins, and is not deflected by them. So that is
+the first thing that Christ's mission tells us about God's love.
+
+The second is--it speaks to us of a love which gives its best. John
+says, 'God _sent_ His Son,' and that word reposes, like the rest of the
+passage, on many words of Christ's--such as, for instance, when He
+speaks of Himself as 'sanctified and sent into the world,' and many
+another saying. But remember how, in the foundation passage to which I
+have already referred, and of which we have some reflection in the words
+before us, there is a tenderer expression--not merely 'sent,' but
+'gave.' Paul strengthens the word when he says, 'gave _up_ for us all.'
+It is not for us to speculate about these deep things, but I would
+remind you of what I dare say I have had occasion often to point out,
+that Paul seems to intend to suggest to us a mysterious parallel, when
+he further says, 'He that _spared_ not His own Son, but freely gave Him
+up to death for us all.' For that emphatic word 'spared' is a distinct
+allusion to, and quotation of, the story of Abraham's sacrifice of
+Isaac: 'Seeing thou hast not _withheld_ from Me thine only son.' And so,
+mysterious as it is, we may venture to say that He not only sent, but He
+gave, and not only gave, but gave up. His love, like ours, delights to
+lavish its most precious gifts on its objects.
+
+Now there arises from this consideration a thought which I only mention,
+and it is this. Christian teaching about Christ's work has often, both
+by its friends and its foes, been so presented as to lead to the
+conception that it was the work of Christ which made God love men. The
+enemies of evangelical truth are never tired of talking in that sense;
+and some of its unwise friends have given reason for the caricature. But
+the true Christian teaching is, 'God so loved ... that He gave.' The
+love is the cause of the mission, and not the mission that which evokes
+the love. So let us be sure that, not because Christ died does God love
+us sinful creatures, but that, because God loves us, Christ died for us.
+
+The third thing which the mission of Christ teaches us about the love of
+God is that it is a love which takes note of and overcomes man's sin. I
+have said, as plainly as I can, that I reject the travesty of
+Christianity which implies that it was Christ's mission which originated
+God's love to men. But a love that does not in the slightest degree care
+whether its object is good or bad--what sort of a love do you call that?
+What do you name it when a father shows it to his children? Moral
+indifference; culpable and weak and fatal. And is it anything nobler, if
+you transfer it to God, and say that it is all the same to Him whether a
+man is living the life of a hog, and forgetting all that is high and
+noble, or whether he is pressing with all his strength towards light
+and truth and goodness? Surely, surely they who, in the name of their
+reverence for the supreme love of God, cover over the fact of His
+righteousness, are mutilating and killing the very attribute that they
+are trying to exalt. A love that cares nothing for the moral character
+of its object is not love, but hate; it is not kindness, but cruelty.
+Take away the background because it is so black, and you lower the
+brilliancy of whiteness of that which stands in front of it. There is
+such a property in God as is fittingly described by that tremendous word
+'wrath.' God cannot, being what He is, treat sin as if it were no sin;
+and therefore we read, 'He sent His son to be the _propitiation_ for our
+sins.' The black dam, which we build up between ourselves and the river
+of the water of life, is to be swept away; and it is the death of Jesus
+Christ which makes it possible for the highest gift of God's love to
+pour over the ruined and partially removed barrier and to flood a man's
+soul. Brethren, no God that is worthy the name can give Himself to a
+sinful soul. No sinful soul that has not the habit, the guilt, the
+penalty of its sins swept away, is capable of receiving the life, which
+is the highest gift of the love. So our twin texts divide what I may
+call the process of redemption between them; and whilst the one says,
+'He sent His Son that we should have life through Him,' the other tells
+us of how the sins which bar the entrance of that life into our hearts,
+as our own consciences tell us they do, can be removed. There must first
+be the propitiation for our sins, and then that mighty love reaches its
+purpose and attains its end, and can give us the life of God to be the
+life of our souls. So much for my first and principle question.
+
+II. Now I have to ask, secondly, how comes it that Christ's mission says
+anything about God's love?
+
+That question is a very plain one, and I should like to press the answer
+to it very emphatically. Take any other of the great names of the
+world's history of poet, thinker, philosopher, moralist, practical
+benefactor; is it possible to apply such a thought as this to
+them--except with a hundred explanations and limitations--that they,
+however radiant, however wise, however beneficent, however fruitful
+their influence, make men sure that God loves them? The thing is
+ridiculous, unless you are using language in a very fantastic and
+artificial fashion.
+
+Christ's mission reveals God's love, because Christ is the Son of God.
+If it is true, as Jesus said, that 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
+Father,' then I can say, 'In Thy tenderness, in Thy patience, in Thy
+attracting of the publican and the harlot, in Thy sympathy with all the
+erring and the sorrowful, and, most of all, in Thy agony and passion, in
+Thy cross and death, I see the glory of God which is the love of God.'
+Brother, if you break that link, which binds the man Christ Jesus with
+the ever-living and the ever-loving God, I know not how you can draw
+from the record of His life and death a confidence, which nothing can
+shake, in the love of the Father.
+
+Then there is another point. Christ's mission speaks to us about God's
+love, if--and I was going to say _only_ if--we regard it as His mission
+to be the propitiation for our sins. Strike out the death as the
+sacrifice for the world's sin, and what you have left is a maimed
+something, which may be, and I thankfully recognise often is, very
+strengthening, very helpful, very calming, very ennobling, even to men
+who do not sympathise with the view of that work which I am now setting
+forth, but which is all that to them, very largely, because of the
+unconscious influence of the truths which they have cast away. It seems
+to me that those who, in the name of the highest paternal love of God,
+reject the thought of Christ's sacrificial death, are kicking away the
+ladder by which they have climbed, and are better than their creeds, and
+happily illogical. It is the Cross that reveals the love, and it is the
+Cross as the means of propitiation that pours the light of that blessed
+conviction into men's hearts.
+
+III. My last question is this: what does Christ's mission say about
+God's love to me?
+
+We know what it ought to say. It ought to carry, as on the crest of a
+great wave, the conviction of that divine love into our hearts, to be
+fruitful there. It ought to sweep out, as on the crest of a great wave,
+our sins and evils. It ought to do this; does it? On some of us I fear
+it produces no effect at all. Some of you, dear friends, look at that
+light with lack-lustre eyes, or, rather, with blind eyes, that are dark
+as midnight in the blaze of noonday. The voice comes from the Cross,
+sweet as that of harpers harping with their harps, and mighty as the
+voice of many waters, and you hear nothing. Some of us it slightly moves
+now and then, and there an end.
+
+Brethren, you have to turn the world-wide generality into a personal
+possession. You have to say, 'He loved _me_, and gave Himself for _me_.'
+It is of no use to believe in a universal Saviour; do you trust in your
+particular Saviour? It is of no use to have the most orthodox and clear
+conceptions of the relation between the Cross of Christ and the
+revelation to men of the love of God; have you made that revelation the
+means of bringing into your own personal life the conviction that Jesus
+Christ is _your_ Saviour, the propitiation for _your_ sins, the Giver to
+_you_ of life eternal? It is faith that does that. Note that, in the
+great foundation passage to which I have made frequent reference, there
+are two conditions put in between the beginning and the end. Some of us
+are disposed to say, 'God so loved the world that every man might have
+eternal life.' That is not what Christ said, 'God so loved the world
+that'--and here follows the first condition--'He _gave His Son_
+that'--and here follows the second--'he that _believeth on Him_ should
+not perish, but have everlasting life.' God has done what it is needful
+for Him to do. His part of the conditions has been fulfilled. Fulfil
+yours--'He that believeth on Him.' And if you can say, not He is the
+propitiation for our sin, but for _my_ sin, then you will live and move
+and have your being in a heaven of love, and will love Him back again
+with an echo and reflection of His own, and nothing shall be able to
+separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
+
+
+
+
+THE SERVANT AS HIS LORD
+
+     '... As He is, so are we in this world.'--1 John iv. 17.
+
+
+Large truths may be spoken in little words. Profundity is often supposed
+to be obscurity, but the deepest depth is clear. John, in his gospel and
+epistles, deals with the deepest realities, and with all things in their
+eternal aspects, but his vocabulary is the simplest in the New
+Testament. God and the world, life and death, love and hate, light and
+darkness, these are the favourite words round which his thoughts
+gather. Here are nine little monosyllables. What can be simpler than,
+'As He is, so are we in this world?' And what can go beyond the thought
+that lies in it, that a Christian is a living likeness of Christ?
+
+But the connection of my text is quite as striking as its substance.
+John has been dwelling upon his favourite thought that to abide in love
+is to abide in God, and God in us. And then he goes on to say that
+'Herein'--that is, in such mutual abiding in love--'is love made perfect
+with us'; and the perfection of that love, which is thus communion, is
+in order that, at the great solemn day of future trial, men may lift up
+their faces and meet His glance--which is _not_ strange to them, nor met
+for the first time--with open-hearted and open-countenanced 'boldness.'
+But 'love' and 'abiding' are the source of confidence in the Day of
+Judgment, because love and abiding are the source of assimilation to
+Christ's life. We have boldness, 'because as He is, so are we in this
+world'; and we are as He is, because we love and abide in Him. So here
+are three thoughts, the assimilation of the Christian man to Christ; the
+frank confidence which it begets; and the process by which it is
+secured.
+
+I. A Christian is Christ's living likeness.
+
+That is a startling thing to say, and all the more startling if you
+notice that John does not say 'As He _was_,' in this earthly life of
+humiliation and filial obedience, but 'as He _is_,' in His heavenly life
+and reign and glory. That might well repel us from all thought of
+possible resemblance, but the light, however brilliant it may be, is not
+blinding, and it is the Christ as He _is_, and not only--true as that
+is--the Christ as He _was_, who is the original of which Christian men
+are copies.
+
+Now _there_ is the difference between the teaching of such classes of
+religionists as represent Christ's humanity as all in all, and preach to
+us that He, in His earthly life is the pattern to whom we are to seek to
+conform our lives, and the true evangelical teaching. That dead Man is
+living, and His present life has in it elements which we can grasp, and
+to which every Christian life is to be conformed.
+
+Is there anything, then, within the glory to which I, in my poor,
+struggling, hampered, imperfect life here on earth, can feel that my
+character is being shaped? Yes, surely there is. I have no doubt that,
+in the words of my text, the Apostle is remembering the solemn ones of
+our Lord's high-priestly prayer as recorded in the seventeenth chapter
+of his gospel, where the same antithesis of our being in the world, and
+His not being there, recurs; and where the analogy and resemblance are
+distinctly stated--'I in Thee, and Thou in Me, that they also may be in
+us.'
+
+So, then, when we stand with our letter-writer in his Patmos island, and
+see the countenance 'as the sun shining in his strength, and the eyes as
+a flame of fire,' and the many crowns upon the head, and the many stars
+in the hand, though we may feel as if all resemblance was at an end, and
+aspiration after likeness could only fall at His feet and cover its
+face, yet there is within the glory something which may be repeated and
+reproduced in our lives, and that is, the indissoluble union of a Son
+with a Father, in all loving obedience, in all perfect harmony, in all
+mutual affection and outgoing of heart and thoughts. This is the centre
+of the life, alike of the Christ when He is glorified, and of the Christ
+when He was upon earth. So the very secret heart of the mysterious
+being of the Son is to be, and necessarily is, repeated in all those who
+in Him have received the adoption of sons.
+
+Or to put the whole thing into plainer words, it is the religious and
+the moral aspects of Christ's being, and not any one particular detail
+thereof; and these, as they live and reign on the Throne, just as truly
+as these, as they suffered and wept upon earth--it is these to which it
+is our destiny to be conformed. We are like Him, if we are His, in
+this,--that we are joined to God, that we hold fellowship with Him, that
+our lives are all permeated with the divine, that we are saturated with
+the presence of God, that we have submitted ourselves to Him and to His
+will, that 'not my will, but Thine, be done' is the very inmost meaning
+of our hearts and our lives. And thus 'we,' even here, 'bear the image
+of the heavenly, as we have borne the images of the earthly.' Now I am
+not going to dwell upon details; all these can be filled in by each of
+us for himself. The centre-point which I insist upon is this--the filial
+union with God, the filial submission to Him, and the consequent purity
+as Christ is pure, righteousness as Christ is righteous, and walking
+even as Christ walked, for ever in the light.
+
+But then there is another point that I desire to refer to. I have put an
+emphasis upon the 'is' instead of the 'was,' as it applies to Jesus
+Christ. I would further put an emphasis upon the 'are,' as it applies to
+us--'So _are_ we.'
+
+John is not exhorting, he is affirming. He is not saying what Christian
+men ought to strive to be, but he is saying what all Christian men, by
+virtue of their Christian character, _are_. Or, to put it into other
+words, likeness to the Master is certain. It is inevitably involved in
+the relation which a Christian man bears to the Lord. There may be
+degrees in the likeness, there may be differences of skill and
+earnestness in the artist. We have to labour like a portrait painter,
+slowly and tentatively approaching to the complete resemblance. It is 'a
+life-long task ere the lump be leavened.' This likeness does not reach
+its completeness by a leap. It is not struck, as the image of a king is,
+upon the blank metal disc, by one stroke, but it is wrought out by long,
+laborious, and, as I said, approximating and tentative touches. My text
+suggests that to us by its addition, 'So are we, _in this world_.' The
+'world'--or, to use modern phraseology, 'the environment'--conditions
+the resemblance. As far as it is possible for a thing encompassed with
+dust and ashes to resemble the radiant sun in the heavens, so far is the
+resemblance carried here. Some measure of it, and a growing measure, is
+inseparable from the reality of a Christian life.
+
+Now, you Christian people, does that plain statement touch you anywhere?
+'So _are_ we.' Well! you would be quite easy if John had said: 'So _may_
+we be; so _should_ we be; so _shall_ we be.' But what about the 'so
+_are_ we'? What a ghastly contradiction the lives of multitudes of
+professing Christians are to that plain statement! 'Like Jesus
+Christ'--would anybody say that about anything in me? 'So are we'--no
+words of mine, dear brethren, can make the statement more searching,
+more impressive; but, I pray you, lay this to heart: 'If any man have
+not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.' You may take sacraments
+and profess Christianity, or, as we Nonconformists have it, 'join
+churches,' and do all manner of outward work for ever and a day; but if
+you have not the likeness of Christ, at least in germ, and growing to
+something more than a germ, in your characters, you had better revise
+your position, and ask whether, after all, you have not been walking in
+a vain show, and fancied yourselves the servants of Christ, while you
+bear the image of Christ's enemy.
+
+A very tiny gully on a hillside, made by showers of rain, may fall into
+the same slopes, and has been created by the very same forces, working
+according to the same laws, as have scooped out valleys miles broad,
+bordered by mountains thousands of feet high. And in my little life,
+poor as it is, limited as it is, environed as it is by the world, and
+therefore often hampered and stained, as well as helped and brightened,
+by its environment, there may be, and there will be, in some degree, if
+I am a Christian man, the very same power at work by which Jesus Christ,
+the Son of the Father shines as the sun on the throne of the universe.
+
+But then, notice further, how that limitation to which I have referred
+in this world carries with it another message. _There_ is Christ in the
+heavens, veiled and unseen. Here are you on earth, his representative.
+There is a rage at present for putting pictures into all books, and folk
+will scarcely read unless they get illustrated literature. The world has
+for its illustrations of the gospel the lives of us Christian people. In
+the book there are principles and facts, and readers should be able to
+turn the page and see all pictured in us.
+
+That is what you are set to do in this world. 'As the Father sent Me,
+even so send I you.' 'As He is, so are we in this world.' It may be our
+antagonist, but it is our sphere, and its presence is necessary to evoke
+our characters. Christ has entrusted His reputation, His honour, to us,
+and many a man that never cares to look at _Him_ as He is revealed in
+Scripture, would be wooed and won to look at Him and love Him, if we
+Christian people were more true to our vocation, and bore more
+conspicuously on our faces and in our characters the image of the
+heavenly.
+
+II. Look for a moment at the second thought that is here: such a
+likeness to Jesus Christ is the only thing that will enable a man to
+lift up his head in the Day of Judgment.
+
+'We have boldness,' says John, _because_ 'as He is, so are we.' Now that
+is a very strong statement of a truth that popular, evangelical theology
+has far too much obscured. People talk about being, at the last,
+'accepted in the beloved.' God be thanked, it is true. A sweet old hymn
+that a great many of us learned when we were children, though it is not
+so well known in these days, says:--
+
+    'Bold shall I stand in that great day,
+     For who aught to my charge shall lay,
+     While through Thy blood absolved I am
+     From sin's tremendous curse and shame?'
+
+I believe that, and I try to preach it. But do not let us forget the
+other side. My text is in full accordance with the principles of our
+Lord's own teaching; and who knows the principles of His own words so
+well as the judge, who tells us, in His pictures of that great day, that
+the question put to every man will be, not what you _believe_, but what
+did you _do_, and what _are_ you?
+
+But this truth of my text has been not only wounded in the house of the
+friends of Christianity, but it has been overlooked by one of the very
+frequent objections that we hear made to evangelical teaching, that,
+according to it, a man is judged according to his belief and not
+according to his deeds. A man is judged according to his--not
+_belief_--but according to his _faith_. But he is judged according also
+to--not his _work_--but according to his _character_.
+
+And I wish, dear friends, to lay this upon your hearts, because many of
+us are too apt to forget it, that whilst unquestionably the beginning of
+salvation, and the condition of forgiveness here, and of acceptance
+hereafter, are laid in trust in Jesus Christ, that trust is sure to work
+out a character which is in conformity with His requirements and moulded
+after the likeness of Himself. 'The judgment of God is according to
+truth,' and what a man is determines where a man shall be, and what he
+shall receive through all eternity. Remember Christ's own teaching.
+Remember the teaching of that other apostle than John, according to
+which the 'wood, hay, stubble,' built by a man upon the foundation shall
+be burned up, and the builder himself be saved, yet so as by fire. And
+lay this to heart, that it is only when faith works in us, through love
+and communion, characters like Jesus Christ's, that we shall be able to
+stand--though even then we shall have to trust to divine and infinite
+mercy, and to the sprinkling of His blood--before the Throne of God. Lay
+up in store for yourselves a good foundation unto eternal life. And take
+this as the preaching of my text; character, and character alone, will
+stand the judgment of that great day.
+
+There is no real antagonism between such truths and the widest preaching
+of salvation by faith. It is the same man who, in his gospel, says, as
+from the lips of the Lord Himself, 'He that believeth is not judged,'
+and in his letter says, 'We may have boldness in that day, because, as
+He is, so are we in this world.'
+
+III. One word about the last point; the process by which this likeness
+is secured.
+
+That is contained, as I tried to show in my introductory remarks, in the
+earlier part of the verse. Our love is made perfect by dwelling in God,
+and God in us; in order that we may be thus conformed to Christ's
+likeness, and so have boldness in that great day. To be like Jesus
+Christ, what is needed is that we love Him, and that we keep in touch
+with Him. What is it to 'abide' in Him?--to direct the continual flow of
+mind and love and will and practical obedience to Him, to bear Him ever
+in the secret place of my heart whilst my hands are occupied with daily
+business, and my feet are running the sometimes rough race that is set
+before me. Think of Him ever, love Him ever. Let His name be like a
+perfume breathed through the whole atmosphere of your lives. Keep your
+wills in the attitude of submission, of acceptance, of indecision when
+necessary, and of absolute dependence upon Him. Let your outward acts be
+such as shall not bring a film of separation between Him and you. When
+thus our whole being is steeped and drenched with Christ, then it cannot
+but be that we shall be like Him. Even 'clouds themselves as suns
+appear, when the sun pierces them with light.' 'Abide in Me, and I in
+you.' You cannot make yourselves like Christ, but you can fasten
+yourselves to Christ, and He will give you power which shall make you
+like Him.
+
+But, remember, such abiding is no idle waiting, no passive confidence.
+It is full of energy, full of suppression, when necessary, of what is
+contrary to your truest self, and full of strenuous cultivation of that
+which is in accord with the will of the Father, and with the likeness of
+the 'first-born among many brethren.'
+
+Dear friends, lie in the light and you will become light. Abide in
+Christ, and you will get like Christ; and, being like Him, you will be
+able to lift up your heads, and rejoice when you front Him on the
+Throne, and you are at the bar. Then, when you are no more in the world,
+the likeness will be perfected, because the communion is complete. 'We
+shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
+
+
+
+
+LOVE AND FEAR
+
+     'There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear:
+      because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in
+      love.'--1 John iv. 18.
+
+
+John has been speaking of boldness, and that naturally suggests its
+opposite--fear. He has been saying that perfect love produces courage in
+the day of judgment, because it produces likeness to Christ, who is the
+Judge. In my text he explains and enlarges that statement. For there is
+another way in which love produces boldness, and that is by its casting
+out fear. These two are mutually exclusive. The entrance of the one is
+for the other a notice to quit. We cannot both love and fear the same
+person or thing, and where love comes in, the darker form slips out at
+the door; and where Love comes in, it brings hand in hand with itself
+Courage with her radiant face. But boldness is the companion of love,
+only when love is perfect. For, inconsistent as the two emotions are,
+love, in its earlier stages and lower degrees, is often perturbed and
+dashed by apprehension and dread.
+
+Now John is speaking about the two emotions in themselves, irrespective,
+so far as his language goes, of the objects to which they are directed.
+What he is saying is true about love and fear, whatever or whosoever
+may be loved or dreaded. But the context suggests the application in his
+mind, for it is 'boldness before him' about which he has been speaking;
+and so it is love and fear directed towards God which are meant in my
+text. The experience of hosts of professing Christians is only too
+forcible a comment upon the possibility of a partial Love lodging in the
+heart side by side with a fellow-lodger, Fear, whom it ought to have
+expelled. So there are three things here that I wish to notice--the
+empire of fear, the mission of fear, and the expulsion of fear.
+
+I. The empire of fear.
+
+Fear is a shrinking apprehension of evil as befalling us, from the
+person or thing which we dread. My text brings us face to face with that
+solemn thought that there are conditions of human nature, in which the
+God who ought to be our dearest joy and most ardent desire becomes our
+ghastliest dread. The root of such an unnatural perversion of all that a
+creature ought to feel towards its loving Creator lies in the simple
+consciousness of discordance between God and man, which is the shadow
+cast over the heart by the fact of sin. God is righteous; God
+righteously administers His universe. God enters into relations of
+approval or disapproval with His responsible creature. Therefore there
+lies, dormant for the most part, but present in every heart, and active
+in the measure in which that heart is informed as to itself, the
+slumbering, cold dread that between it and God things are _not_ as they
+ought to be.
+
+I believe, for my part, that such a dumb, dim consciousness of discord
+attaches to all men, though it is often smothered, often ignored, and
+often denied. But there it is; the snake hibernates, but it is coiled in
+the heart all the same; and warmth will awake it. Then it lifts its
+crested head, and shoots out its forked tongue, and venom passes into
+the veins. A dread of God is the ghastliest thing in the world, the most
+unnatural, but universal, unless expelled by perfect love.
+
+Arising from that discomforting consciousness of discord there come,
+likewise, other forms and objects of dread. For if I am out of harmony
+with Him, what will be my fate in the midst of a universe administered
+by Him, and in which all are His servants? Oh! I sometimes wonder how it
+is that godless men front the facts of human life and do not go mad. For
+here are we, naked, feeble, alone, plunged into a whirlpool, from the
+awful vortices of which we cannot extricate ourselves. There foam and
+swirl all manner of evils, some of them certain, some of them probable,
+any of them possible, since we are at discord with Him who wields all
+the forces of the universe, and wields them all with a righteous hand.
+'The stars in their courses fight against' the man that does not fight
+for God. Whilst all things serve the soul that serve Him, all are
+embattled against the man that is against, or not for, God and His will.
+
+Then there arises up another object of dread, which, in like manner,
+derives all its power to terrify and to hurt from the fact of our
+discordance with God; and that is 'the shadow feared of man,' that
+stands shrouded by the path, and waits for each of us.
+
+God; God's universe; God's messenger, Death--these are facts with which
+we stand in relation, and if our relations with Him are out of gear,
+then He and all of these are legitimate objects of dread to us.
+
+But now there is something else that casts out fear than perfect love,
+and that is--perfect levity. For it is the explanation of the fact that
+so many of us know nothing of this fear of which I speak, and fancy that
+I am exaggerating, or putting forward false views. There is a type of
+man, and I have no doubt there are some of its representatives among my
+hearers, who are below both fear and love as directed towards God; for
+they never think about Him, or trouble their heads concerning either Him
+or their relations to Him or anything that flows therefrom. It is a
+strange faculty that we all have, of forgetting unwelcome thoughts and
+shutting our eyes to the things that we do not want to see, like Nelson
+when he puts the telescope to his blind eye at Copenhagen, because he
+would not obey the signal of recall. But surely it is an ignoble thing
+that men should ignore or shuffle out of sight with inconsiderateness
+the real facts of their condition, like boys whistling in a churchyard
+to keep their spirits up, and saying, 'Who's afraid?' just because they
+are so very much afraid. Ah, dear friends, do not rest until you face
+the facts, and having faced them, have found the way to reverse them!
+Surely, surely it is not worthy of men to turn away from anything so
+certain as that between a sin-loving man and God there must exist such a
+relation as will bring evil and sorrow to that man, as surely as God is
+and he is. I beseech you, take to heart these things, and do not turn
+away from them with a shake of your shoulders, and say, 'He is preaching
+the narrow, old-fashioned doctrine of a religion of fear.' No! I am not.
+But I am preaching this plain fact, that a man who is in discord with
+God has reason to be afraid, and I come to you with the old exhortation
+of the prophet, 'Be troubled, ye careless ones.' For there is nothing
+more ignoble or irrational than security which is only made possible by
+covering over unwelcome facts. 'Be troubled'; and let the trouble lead
+you to the Refuge.
+
+II. That brings me to the second point--viz., the mission of fear.
+
+John uses a rare word in my text when he says 'fear hath torment.'
+'Torment' does not convey the whole idea of the word. It means
+suffering, but suffering for a purpose; suffering which is correction;
+suffering which is disciplinary; suffering which is intended to lead to
+something beyond itself. Fear, the apprehension of personal evil, has
+the same function in the moral world as pain has in the physical. It is
+a symptom of disease, and is intended to bid us look for the remedy and
+the Physician. What is an alarm bell for but to rouse the sleepers, and
+to hurry them to the refuge? And so this wholesome, manly dread of the
+certain issue of discord with God is meant to do for us what the angels
+did for Lot--to lay a mercifully violent hand on the shoulder of the
+sleeper, and shake him into aroused wakefulness, and hasten him out of
+Sodom, before the fire bursts through the ground, and is met by the fire
+from above. The intention of fear is to lead to that which shall
+annihilate it by taking away its cause.
+
+There is nothing more ridiculous, nothing more likely to destroy a man,
+than the indulgence in an idle fear which does nothing to prevent its
+own fulfilment. Horses in a burning stable are so paralysed by dread
+that they cannot stir, and get burnt to death. And for a man to be
+afraid--as every one ought to be who is conscious of unforgiven sin--for
+a man to be afraid and there an end, is absolute insanity. I fear; then
+what do I do? Nothing. That is true about hosts of us.
+
+What ought I to do? Let the dread direct me to its source, my own
+sinfulness. Let the discovery of my own sinfulness direct me to its
+remedy, the righteousness and the Cross of Jesus Christ. He, and He
+alone, can deal with the disturbing element in my relation to God. He
+can 'deliver me from my enemies, for they are too strong for me.' It is
+Christ and His work, Christ and His sacrifice, Christ and His indwelling
+Spirit that will grapple with and overcome sin and all its consequences,
+in any man and in every man; taking away its penalty, lightening the
+heart of the burden of its guilt, delivering from its love and
+dominion--all three of which things are the barbs of the arrows with
+which fear riddles heart and conscience. So my fear should proclaim to
+me the merciful 'Name that is above every name,' and drive me as well as
+draw me to Christ, the Conqueror of sin, and the Antagonist of all
+dread.
+
+Brethren, I said I was not preaching the religion of Fear. But I think
+we shall scarcely understand the religion of Love unless we recognise
+that dread is a legitimate part of an unforgiven man's attitude towards
+God. My fear should be to me like the misshapen guide that may lead me
+to the fortress where I shall be safe. Oh, do not tamper with the
+wholesome sense of dread! Do not let it lie, generally sleeping, and now
+and then waking in your hearts, and bringing about nothing. Sailors that
+crash on with all sails set--stunsails and all--whilst the barometer is
+rapidly falling, and boding clouds are on the horizon, and the line of
+the approaching gale is ruffling the sea yonder, have themselves to
+blame if they founder. Look to the falling barometer, and make ready for
+the coming storm, and remember that the mission of fear is to lead you
+to the Christ who will take it away.
+
+III. Lastly, the expulsion of fear.
+
+My text points out the natural antagonism, and mutual exclusiveness, of
+these two emotions. If I go to Jesus Christ as a sinful man, and get His
+love bestowed upon me, then, as the next verse to my text says, my love
+springs in response to His to me, and in the measure in which that love
+rises in my heart will it frustrate its antagonistic dread.
+
+As I said, you cannot love and fear the same person, unless the love is
+of a very rudimentary and imperfect character. But just as when you pour
+pure water into a bladder, the poisonous gases that it may have
+contained will be driven out before it, so when love comes in, dread
+goes out. The river, turned into the foul Augean stables of the heart,
+will sweep out all the filth and leave everything clean. The black,
+greasy smoke-wreath, touched by the fire of Christ's love, will flash
+out into ruddy flames, like that which has kindled them; and Christ's
+love will kindle in your hearts, if you accept it and apprehend it
+aright, a love which shall burn up and turn into fuel for itself the now
+useless dread.
+
+But, brethren, remember that it is '_perfect_ love' which 'casts out
+fear.'
+
+Inconsistent as the two emotions are in themselves, in practice, they
+may be united, by reason of the imperfection of the nobler. And in the
+Christian life they are united with terrible frequency. There are many
+professing Christian people who live all their days with a burden of
+shivering dread upon their shoulders, and an icy cold fear in their
+hearts, just because they have not got close enough to Jesus Christ, nor
+kept their hearts with sufficient steadfastness under the quickening
+influences of His love, to have shaken off their dread as a sick man's
+distempered fancies. A little love has not mass enough in it to drive
+out thick, clustering fears. There are hundreds of professing Christians
+who know very little indeed of that joyous love of God which swallows up
+and makes impossible all dread, who, because they have not a loving
+present consciousness of a loving Father's loving will, tremble when
+they front in imagination, and still more when they meet in reality, the
+evils that must come, and who cannot face the thought of death with
+anything but shrinking apprehension. There is far too much of the old
+leaven of selfish dread left in the experiences of many Christians. 'I
+feared thee, because thou wert an austere man, and so, because I was
+afraid, I went and hid my talent, and did nothing for thee' is a
+transcript of the experience of far too many of us. The one way to get
+deliverance is to go to Jesus Christ and keep close by Him.
+
+And my last word to you is, see that you resort only to the sane, sound
+way of getting rid of the wholesome, rational dread of which I have been
+speaking. You can ignore it; and buy immunity at the price of leaving in
+full operation the _causes_ of your dread--and that is stupid. There is
+only one wise thing to do, and that is, to make sure work of getting rid
+of the occasion of dread, which is the fact of sin. Take all your sin to
+Jesus Christ; He will--and He only can--deal with it. He will lay His
+hand on you, as He did of old, with the characteristic word that was so
+often upon His lips, and which He alone is competent to speak in its
+deepest meaning. 'Fear not, it is I,' and He will give you the courage
+that He commands.
+
+'God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love,
+and of a sound mind.' 'Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again
+to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry
+Abba, Father,' and cling to Him, as a child who knows his father's heart
+too well to be afraid of anything in his father, or of anything that his
+father's hand can send.
+
+
+
+
+THE RAY AND THE REFLECTION
+
+     'We love Him, because He first loved us.'--1 John iv. 19.
+
+
+Very simple words! but they go down into the depths of God, lifting
+burdens off the heart of humanity, turning duty into delight, and
+changing the aspect of all things. He who knows that God loves him needs
+little more for blessedness; he who loves God back again offers more
+than all burnt offering and sacrifices. But it is to be observed that
+the correct reading of my text, as you will find in the Revised Version,
+omits 'Him' in the first clause, and simply says 'we love,' without
+specifying the object. That is to say, for the moment John's thought is
+fixed rather on the inward transformation effected, from self-regard to
+love--than on considering the object on which the love is expended. When
+the heart is melted, the streams flow wherever there is a channel. The
+river, as he goes on to show us, parts into two heads, and love to God
+and love to man are, in their essence and root-principle, one thing.
+
+So my text is the summary of all revelation about God, the ultimate word
+about all our relations to Him, and the all-inclusive directory as to
+our conduct to one another. To know that God loves, and to love
+again--there is a little pocket encyclopædia in two volumes, which
+contains the smelted-down essence of all theology and of all morality.
+Let us look at these three points.
+
+I. The ultimate word about God.
+
+'He first loved us.' Properly and strictly speaking, that 'first' only
+declares the priority of the divine love towards us over ours towards
+Him. But we may fairly give it a wider meaning, and say--first of all,
+ere Creation and Time, away back in the abysmal depths of an everlasting
+and changeless heart, changeless in the sense that its love was eternal,
+but not changeless in the sense that love could have no place within
+it--first of all things was God's love; last to be discovered because
+most ancient of all. The foundation is disclosed last when you come to
+dig, and the essence is grasped last in the process of analysis.
+
+So one of the old psalms, with wondrous depth of truth, traces up
+everything to this, 'For His mercy endureth for ever.' Therefore, there
+was time; therefore, there were creatures--'He made great lights, for
+His mercy endureth for ever.' Therefore, there were judgments--'He slew
+famous kings ... for His mercy endureth for ever.' And so we may pass
+through all the works of the divine energy, and say, 'He first loved
+us.'
+
+It is no accident that there are but foregleams of this great thought
+brightening the words and the thoughts of psalmist and prophet, saint
+and sage, from the beginning onwards, while the articulate utterance of
+the simple sentence was first heard from the lips of Him who declared
+the Father, and stands in that part of the Book which, both in its
+position there, and in its date of composition is the last of the
+Apostolic utterances. 'God is love';--that is in one aspect the
+foundation of His being, and in another aspect the shining ruby set on
+the very sky-piercing summit of the completed process of the revelation
+of that Being to man. 'He first loved us'; and thence, from that centre
+and germinal point, streams out the whole train of consequences in the
+divine activity, and in the divine self-revelation.
+
+I need not ask you to contrast with this infinitely simple and
+infinitely deep utterance all other thoughts of a divine Being--the cold
+abstractions of Theism, the dim dreads of popular apprehension, the
+vague utterances of any mythology, the clouds that men's thoughts have
+covered over the face of this great truth--and then, to set by the side
+of all these groping, these peradventures, these fears, these narrow,
+unworthy ideas, the clear simplicity, the infinite depth of 'He first
+loved us.'
+
+But I may ask you to consider, but for a moment, the relation which all
+the other perfection of the divine nature have to this central and
+foundation one. There are all those pompous names, 'Omnipresence' and
+'Omniscience' and the like, which are but the negations of the
+limitations of humanity or of finite creatures. There are the more
+spiritual and moral thoughts of Wisdom and Righteousness and the like.
+These are but the fringes of the glory: I was going to venture to say
+that the divinest thing in God is love. There is the central blaze; the
+rest is but the brilliant periphery that encloses it. And that infinite
+love stands to all these other attributes in the relation of being their
+master and motive spring. They are Love's instrument, and in the divine
+nature Love is Lord of all. They give it majesty; it gives them
+tenderness. We may reverently say, in regard to the divine nature, what
+the Apostle says about our humanity, that love is the 'bond of
+perfectness'--the girdle which, braced round all the garments, keeps
+them in their place. For round these infinite, innumerable, unnameable,
+and named divine perfections, is that which brings them all into
+symmetry and keeps them all in harmonious action--Love. He has wisdom,
+and power, and eternal being, but He is Love.
+
+But do not let us forget that whilst thus my text proclaims the ultimate
+truth, these other attributes, as they are called, are all smelted down,
+as it were, into, and present in, the love which is their crown. The
+same Apostle, who has thus the honour of ringing out to the world the
+good news that God is Love, declares that 'this is the message' which he
+has to tell, that 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' So
+the light of righteousness, as well as the lambent flame of love, burn
+together on that central fire of the universe. We must not so conceive
+of the love of God, as to darken the radiance of His righteousness, or
+to obscure the brilliancy of that pure light which tolerates no
+admixture of darkness.
+
+May I venture a step further, and ask whether we are not warranted in
+believing that in that which we call the love of God there do abide the
+same elements as characterise the thing that bears the same name in our
+human experience? The spectrum has told us that the constituents of the
+mighty sun in the heavens are the same as the constituents of this
+little darkened earth. And there are the same lines in the divine
+spectrum that there are in ours. So if we can venture to say of Him, He
+is Love, do not let us shrink from saying that then, like us, He
+delights in the companionship of His beloved; that, like us, He rejoices
+in giving Himself to His beloved; that, like us, but infinitely, He
+desires the good of His beloved; and that, like us, He seeks only for
+the requital of an answering love. All these things, the joy of the Lord
+in man, the yielding of the Lord to man, the beneficent desire of the
+Lord for the good of man, and the hunger of the Lord for the response of
+love from man--all these things are affirmed when we affirm that God is
+Love.
+
+Our Apostle would concur heartily in the great text which was the theme
+of a recent sermon. Paul said, 'God establishes His love towards us, in
+that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' John says, 'Herein
+is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son
+to be the propitiation for our sins.'
+
+So the Cross of Christ is the one demonstration that God loved us.
+Looking to it we can say, with a great modern teacher:--
+
+    'So the All-great were the All-loving too,
+     So through the thunder comes a human voice,
+     Saying "Oh! heart I made; a heart beats here,
+     Face, My hands fashioned, see it in Myself;
+     Thou hast no power, nor mayest conceive of Mine;
+     But love I gave thee, with Myself to love,
+     And thou must love Me, who have died for thee."'
+
+II. Here we have the ultimate word as to our religion.
+
+'We love Him, because He first loved us.' There is a bridge wanted
+between these two, and the bridge is supplied abundantly in this letter,
+in entire harmony with the teaching of the rest of the New Testament.
+Much has been said, and profitably said, with reference to the
+modification of the general type of Christian teaching in the writings
+respectively of Paul, Peter, James, and John. I thankfully recognise the
+diversities. They are not divergencies; they are perfectly
+complementary, and may all be made to harmonise. This Apostle of love
+has also declared to us how it comes that the love which burns at the
+centre of things, where there is a heart, kindles a responding love away
+out on the circumference of things, where there are men with hearts; and
+the bridge is--'We have known and believed the love that God hath to
+us.' So says John. And Paul, the Apostle of faith, who sometimes seems
+as if his only conception of the link of union between God and man was,
+on the part of man, faith, responds when he speaks of a faith which
+worketh, comes to energetic operation, through the love which it has
+kindled.
+
+So we come to this, that a simple trust in the love of God, as
+manifested in Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the only thing which will so
+deal with man's natural self-regard and desire to make himself his own
+object and centre, as to substitute for that the victorious love to God.
+You cannot love God, unless you believe that He loves you. You will
+never be absolutely sure of that, unless you have learned it from the
+Cross of Christ. You will not respond with the love that He desires, but
+there will be a film between your ice and the fire that could melt it,
+until that is swept away by the simple act of confidence in God
+manifested to you in Jesus Christ. This is Christianity; this, nothing
+less, is religion--to love God, because I believe that in Jesus Christ
+God has loved me.
+
+And that is the only thing that He desires or accepts. The Religion of
+Fear; what is it? 'Thou wert an austere man ... and I was afraid.' Yes!
+and what did you do when you were afraid? 'I hid my talent in the
+ground,' and was utterly idle. Here rise, on either side of the valley,
+two mountains--Ebal and Gerazim. From the one were thundered the curses,
+from the other broke the benediction of the blessings; the one is
+barren, the other is verdant--'which thing is an allegory.' The Religion
+of Fear does nothing, the Religion of Love does all. The Religion of
+Self-interest is narrow, poor, mostly inoperative of any lofty
+enthusiasm or high nobleness of character. The Religion of Duty; 'I
+ought to worship, I am bidden to do this, that, or the other thing,
+which I do not a bit like to do. I am forbidden to do this, that, and
+the other thing which I should very much like to do, if I durst'--that
+religion is the religion of a slave; and there are hosts of us that know
+nothing better. And so our Christianity is a feeble and an uncomfortable
+thing; and there are little joy, and little subjugation of the will, and
+little leaping up of the heart in glad obedience in it. I was talking to
+a good, aged man, not long ago, whose religion was of a very gloomy
+type. He said to me, 'As to love, I know next to nothing about it.' Ah!
+brethren, I am afraid that is true about a good many of us who call
+ourselves Christians.
+
+Then let me say, too, that if we love Him, it will be the motive power
+and spring of all manner of obediences and glad services. Love is the
+mother-tincture, so to speak, which you can colour, and to which you can
+add in various ways, and produce variously tinted and tasted and
+perfumed commixtures. Love lies at the foundation of all Christian
+goodness. It will lead to the subjugation of the will; and that is the
+thing that is most of all needed to make a man righteous and pure. So
+St. Augustine's paradox, rightly understood, is a magnificent truth,
+'Love! and do what you will.' For then you will be sure to will what God
+wills, and you ought.
+
+If this be the summing-up of all religion, a practical conclusion
+follows. When we feel ourselves defective in the glow and operative
+driving power of love to God, what is the right thing to do? When a man
+is cold, he will not warm himself by putting a clinical thermometer
+into his mouth, and taking his temperature, will he? Let him go into the
+sunshine and he will be warmed up. You can pound ice in a mortar, and
+except for the little heat generated by the impact of the pestle, it
+will keep ice still. But float the iceberg south into the tropics, and
+what has become of it? It has all run down into sweet, warm water, and
+mingled with the warm ocean that has dissolved it. So do not think about
+yourselves and your own loveless hearts so much, but think about God,
+and the infinite welling up of love in His heart to you, a great deal
+more. 'We love Him, because He first loved us'; therefore, to love Him
+more, we must feel more that He does love us.
+
+III. Lastly, here is the ultimate word about our conduct to men.
+
+I said that John, by leaving out any specification of the object of
+love, as well as by the verses that immediately follow, shows that he
+regards the emotion as one, though its direction is two-fold. That just
+comes to the plain truth, that the only victorious antagonist to the
+self-regarding temperament of average men, and the only power which will
+change philanthropy from a sentiment into a self-denying and active
+principle of conduct, is to be found in the belief of the love of God in
+Jesus Christ, and in answering love to Him.
+
+That is a lesson for many sorts of people to-day. What they call
+altruism is no discovery of Christianity, but its practice is. I freely
+admit that there is much honest and self-sacrificing beneficence and
+benevolence which are not connected, in the men who practice them, with
+faith in Jesus Christ. But I question very much whether these would have
+existed if the story of the Cross had been unknown. And sure I am that
+the history of non-Christian attempts to promote the brotherhood of man,
+and to diffuse a wide and operative love of mankind, teaches us, on the
+one side, that the emotion is not strong enough to last, and to work,
+unless it is based on God's love in Jesus Christ. And the history of
+Christianity, on the other side, though with many defects and things to
+be ashamed of, teaches us, conversely, that wherever there is a genuine
+love of God, its exterior form, so to say, the outside of it which is
+presented to the world, will be true love to man.
+
+Christian people, lay this to heart; you are to be mirrors of the love
+to which you turn for all blessedness and peace. It is of no use to say,
+'My religion is the love of God' unless the love of God is manifested in
+the love of man. If you love God, you will love those that God loves,
+those for whom Christ died, those who are just like what _you_ were when
+you learned that God loved you. The service of God is the service of
+man.
+
+One last word, 'We love Him, because He first loved us.' Do you? Or is
+it rather true of you: 'I do not love God, though He has loved me'? I
+saw not long since, up on the flank of a mountain, an obstinate patch of
+snow, that had fronted, in unmelted cold, months of the summer sun.
+There are some of us who lift a broad shield of thick-ribbed ice between
+ourselves and the radiance of the warm heart of God. Oh! brother; do not
+shut that love out of your heart; for if you do, you shut out peace and
+goodness, and shut in all manner of poisonous creatures and doleful
+shapes, whose companionship will be misery and death.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+List of corrections and amendments made:
+
+Ephesians:
+
+   Page
+    36: added closing quote after "the event of our inheritance"
+        (line 3)
+   102: "gentle words _ot_" to "_to_"
+   154: "it" added in "what it is to hear"
+   263: [Preached on Whitsunday] was a footnote.
+   286: (R.V.) to (R.V.). for consistency with other references.
+   286: "please _to_ understand" to "_do"
+   287: "we _shoud_ be entitled" to "should"
+   391: added -- and changed Ephes. to Eph. for consistency with
+        other headings
+   391: added colon after "Mark its simplicity" (for grammar, and
+        there was a large space in the book)
+
+Peter and John:
+
+     8: "_ordisaster_" to "_or disaster_"
+    28: added close quote after "that which is another's"
+    34: added close quote after "My heavenly Father's Kingdom."
+    39: "to _y_" -> "to you" in poetry
+    66: added -- after "especially to recreation" (for sense, and
+        there was a large space in the book)
+    86: "_Caesarae_ Philippi" to "_Cæsarea_ Philippi"
+    88: "bow _or_ stubborn" to "bow _our_ stubborn"
+    99: "dicattes" to "dictates"
+   107: "ever" to "even" in quotation from 1 Peter ii. 21
+   116: added opening quote before "Any man who"
+   146: "inadeqate" to "inadequate"
+   170: "It may be that he he". Duplicate word deleted
+   173: "_Whose_ righteousness clothes" to "_whose_"
+   210: added open quote before sea of glass (by reference to
+        Rev 15:2)
+   219: "slave has no _resource_" -> "_recourse_"
+   219: added opening quote before "Take that man's child"
+   242: added closing quote after "like Lebanon."
+   260: added closing quote after "all sin."
+   297: added closing quote after "My Father;"
+   308: added closing quote after "at His coming"
+   313: corrected 1 John iv. 9 to 1 John i. 9 (the verse being
+        quoted)
+
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Expositions of Holy Scripture, by Alexander
+Maclaren</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture</p>
+<p>       Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John</p>
+<p>Author: Alexander Maclaren</p>
+<p>Release Date: February 23, 2008  [eBook #24674]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Colin Bell,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1><i>EXPOSITIONS OF<br />
+HOLY SCRIPTURE</i></h1>
+
+<h2>ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.</h2>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2>
+EPHESIANS<br />
+EPISTLES OF ST. PETER<br />
+AND ST. JOHN</h2>
+
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+NEW YORK<br />
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br />
+</div>
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+
+<h2><i>EXPOSITIONS OF<br />
+HOLY SCRIPTURE</i><br /></h2>
+
+<h3>ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.<br /></h3>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2>EPHESIANS<br /></h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS_1"></a>CONTENTS</h2><p style="font-size: smaller; text-align: right;">[<a href='#CONTENTS_2'>St Peter/St John contents</a>]</p>
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents: Part 1">
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Saints and Faithful</span> (Eph i. 1)</td><td align='right'><a href='#SAINTS_AND_FAITHFUL'>1</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">All Spiritual Blessings</span>' (Eph. i. 3)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#ALL_SPIRITUAL_BLESSINGS'>                      8</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">According To</span>'&mdash;I. (Eph. i. 5, 7) </td><td align='right'><a href='#ACCORDING_TO_I'>                          18</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">According To</span>'&mdash;II. (Eph. i. 7)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#ACCORDING_TO_II'>                           26</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">God's Inheritance and Ours</span> (Eph. i. 11, 14) </td><td align='right'><a href='#GODS_INHERITANCE_AND_OURS'>                35</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Earnest and the Inheritance</span> (Eph. i. 14)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_EARNEST_AND_THE_INHERITANCE'>                43</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Hope of the Calling</span> (Eph. i. 18)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_HOPE_OF_THE_CALLING'>                      52</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">God's Inheritance in the Saints</span> (Eph. i. 18)</td><td align='right'><a href='#GODS_INHERITANCE_IN_THE_SAINTS'>                62</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Measure of Immeasurable Power</span> (Eph. i. 19, 20) </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_MEASURE_OF_IMMEASURABLE_POWER'>         72</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Resurrection of Dead Souls</span> (Eph. ii. 4, 5) </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_RESURRECTION_OF_DEAD_SOULS'>             81</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">The Riches of Grace</span>' (Eph. ii. 7) </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_RICHES_OF_GRACE'>                         91</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Salvation: Grace: Faith</span> (Eph. ii. 8, R.V.) </td><td align='right'><a href='#SALVATION_GRACE_FAITH'>                 98</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">God's Workmanship and our Works</span> (Eph. ii. 10)</td><td align='right'><a href='#GODS_WORKMANSHIP_AND_OUR_WORKS'>              108</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Chief Corner-Stone</span> (Eph. ii. 20, R.V.) </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_CHIEF_CORNER-STONE'>                118</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">The Whole Family</span>' (Eph. iii. 15)    </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_WHOLE_FAMILY'>                      128</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Strengthened with Might</span> (Eph. iii. 10)</td><td align='right'><a href='#STRENGTHENED_WITH_MIGHT'>                     132</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Indwelling Christ</span> (Eph. iii. 17)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_INDWELLING_CHRIST'>                       142</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Love Unknowable and Known</span> (Eph. iii. 18, 19) </td><td align='right'><a href='#LOVE_UNKNOWABLE_AND_KNOWN'>              151</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Paradox of Love's Measure</span> (Eph. iii. 18)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_PARADOX_OF_LOVES_MEASURE'>               162</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Climax of all Prayer</span> (Eph. iii. 19) </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_CLIMAX_OF_ALL_PRAYER'>                   171</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Measureless Power and Endless Glory</span> (Eph. iii. 20, 21)</td><td align='right'><a href='#MEASURELESS_POWER_AND_ENDLESS_GLORY'>     180</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Calling and the Kingdom</span> (Eph. iv. 1; Rev. iii. 4)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_CALLING_AND_THE_KINGDOM'>      194</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">The Threefold Unity</span>' (Eph. iv. 5)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_THREEFOLD_UNITY'>                         203</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">The Measure of Grace</span>' (Eph. iv. 7, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_MEASURE_OF_GRACE'>                  207</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Goal of Progress</span> (Eph. iv. 13, R.V.)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_GOAL_OF_PROGRESS'>                 216</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Christ our Lesson and our Teacher</span> (Eph. iv. 20, 21) </td><td align='right'><a href='#CHRIST_OUR_LESSON_AND_OUR_TEACHER'>       224</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Dark Picture and a Bright Hope</span> (Eph. iv. 22)</td><td align='right'><a href='#A_DARK_PICTURE_AND_A_BRIGHT_HOPE'>             233</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The New Man</span> (Eph. iv. 24)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_NEW_MAN'>                                  247</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Grieving the Spirit</span> (Eph. iv. 30) </td><td align='right'><a href='#GRIEVING_THE_SPIRIT'>                         262</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">God's Imitators</span> (Eph. v. 1)</td><td align='right'><a href='#GODS_IMITATORS'>                                270</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">What Children of Light should be</span> (Eph. v. 8) </td><td align='right'><a href='#WHAT_CHILDREN_OF_LIGHT_SHOULD_BE'>              277</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Fruit of the Light</span> (Eph. v. 9, R.V.)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_FRUIT_OF_THE_LIGHT'>                   286</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Pleasing Christ</span> (Eph. v. 10)   </td><td align='right'><a href='#PLEASING_CHRIST'>                            295</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Unfruitful Works of Darkness</span> (Eph. v. 11)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#UNFRUITFUL_WORKS_OF_DARKNESS'>                303</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Paul's Reasons for Temperance</span> (Eph. v. 11-21) </td><td align='right'><a href='#PAULS_REASONS_FOR_TEMPERANCE'>             313</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Sleepers at Noonday</span> (Eph. v. 14) </td><td align='right'><a href='#SLEEPERS_AT_NOONDAY'>                          318</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Redeeming the Time</span> (Eph. v. 15, 16)</td><td align='right'><a href='#REDEEMING_THE_TIME'>                        327</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">The Panoply of God</span>' (Eph. vi. 13)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_PANOPLY_OF_GOD'>                         337</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">The Girdle of Truth</span>' (Eph. vi. 14, R.V.)   </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_GIRDLE_OF_TRUTH'>               343</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">The Breastplate of Righteousness</span>' (Eph. vi. 14)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_BREASTPLATE_OF_RIGHTEOUSNESS'>           350</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Soldier's Shoes</span> (Eph. vi. 15)</td><td align='right'><a href='#A_SOLDIERS_SHOES'>                            353</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Shield of Faith</span> (Eph. vi. 16)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_SHIELD_OF_FAITH'>                          361</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">The Helmet of Salvation</span>' (Eph. vi. 17)   </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_HELMET_OF_SALVATION'>                 367</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>'<span class="smcap">The Sword of the Spirit</span>' (Eph. vi. 17) </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_SWORD_OF_THE_SPIRIT'>                   373</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Peace, Love, and Faith</span> (Eph. vi. 23) </td><td align='right'><a href='#PEACE_LOVE_AND_FAITH'>                      381</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Wide Range of God's Grace</span> (Eph. vi. 24) </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_WIDE_RANGE_OF_GODS_GRACE'>               391</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_1" id="Page_1_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="SAINTS_AND_FAITHFUL" id="SAINTS_AND_FAITHFUL"></a>SAINTS AND FAITHFUL</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The saints which are at Ephesus and the faithful in Christ
+Jesus.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 1.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>That is Paul's way of describing a church. There were
+plenty of very imperfect Christians in the community
+at Ephesus and in the other Asiatic churches to which
+this letter went. As we know, there were heretics
+amongst them, and many others to whom the designation
+of 'holy' seemed inapplicable. But Paul classes
+them all under one category, and describes the whole
+body of believing people by these two words, which
+must always go together if either of them is truly
+applied, 'saints' and 'faithful.'</p>
+
+<p>Now I think that from this simple designation we
+may gather two or three very obvious indeed, and very
+familiar and old-fashioned, but also very important,
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>I. A Christian is a saint.</p>
+
+<p>We are accustomed to confine the word to persons
+who tower above their brethren in holiness and manifest
+godliness and devoutness. The New Testament
+never does anything like that. Some people fancy that
+nobody can be a saint unless he wears a special uniform
+of certain conventional sanctities. The New Testament
+does not take that point of view at all, but regards all
+true believers in Jesus Christ as being, therein and
+thereby, saints.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what does it mean by that? The word at
+bottom simply signifies separation. Whatever is told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_2" id="Page_1_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+off from a mass for a specific purpose would be called,
+if it were a thing, 'holy.' But there is one special kind
+of separation which makes a person a saint, and that
+is separation to God, for His uses, in obedience to His
+commandment, that He may employ the man as He
+will. So in the Old Testament the designation 'holy'
+was applied quite as much to the high priest's mitre or
+to the sacrificial vessels of the Temple as it was to the
+people who used them. It did not imply originally,
+and in the first place, moral qualities at all, but simply
+that this person or that thing belonged to God. But
+then you cannot belong to God unless you are like
+Him. There can be no consecration to God except the
+heart is being purified. So the ordinary meaning of
+holiness, as moral purity and cleanness from sin,
+necessarily comes from the original meaning, separation
+and devotion to the service of God.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we get the whole significance of Christian
+holiness. We are to belong to God, and to know that
+we do belong to Him. We are to be separated from
+the mass of people and things that have no consciousness
+of ownership and do not yield themselves up to
+Him for His use. But we cannot belong to Him, and
+be devoted to His service, unless we are being made day
+by day pure in heart, and like Him to whom we say that
+we belong. A human being can only be God's by the
+surrender of heart and will, and through the continual
+appropriation into his own character and life, of
+righteousness and purity like that which belongs to
+God. Holiness is God's stamp upon a man, His 'mark,'
+by which He says&mdash;This man belongs to Me. As you
+write your name in a book, so God writes His name on
+His property, and the name that He writes is the
+likeness of His own character.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_3" id="Page_1_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Note, again, that in God's church there is no aristocracy
+of sanctity, nor does the name of saint belong
+only to those who live high above the ordinary tumults
+of life and the secularities of daily duty. You may be
+as true a saint in a factory&mdash;ay! and a far truer one&mdash;than
+in a hermitage. You do not need to cultivate a
+medi&aelig;val or Roman Catholic type of ascetic piety in
+order to be called saints. You do not need to be
+amongst the select few to whom it is given here upon
+earth, but not given without their own effort, to rise
+to the highest summits of holy conformity with the
+divine will. But down amongst all the troubles and
+difficulties and engrossing occupations of our secular
+work, you may be living saintly lives; for the one
+condition of being holy is that we should know whose
+we are and whom we serve, and we can carry the consciousness
+of belonging to Him into every corner of the
+poorest, most crowded, and most distracted life, recognising
+His presence and seeking to do His will. The
+saint is the man who says, 'O Lord, truly I am Thy
+servant; Thou hast loosed my bonds.' Because He has
+loosed my bonds, the bonds that held me to my sins,
+He has therein fastened me with far more stringent
+bonds of love to the sweet and free service of His
+redeeming love. All His children are His saints.</p>
+
+<p>The Old Testament ritual had one sacrifice which
+carried this truth in it. It is the first prescribed in
+the Book of Leviticus, the ceremonial book&mdash;namely,
+the burnt offering. Its especial meaning was this, that
+the whole man is to be laid upon God's altar and there
+consumed in the fire of a divine love. It began with
+expiation, as all sacrifices must, and on the footing of
+expiation there followed the transformation, by the
+fire of God, from gross earthliness into vapour and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_4" id="Page_1_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+odour which went up in wreaths of fragrance acceptable
+to God. So <i>we</i> are to be laid upon the divine
+altar. So, because we have been accepted in the
+Beloved, and have received the atonement for our
+sins through His great sacrifice, we are to be consecrated
+to His service and, touched by the fire which
+He sends down, we are to be changed into a sweet
+odour acceptable to Him as were 'the saints which are
+in Ephesus.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Further, Christian men are saints because they
+are believers.</p>
+
+<p>'The saints' and 'the faithful' are not two sets of
+people, but one. The Apostle starts, as it were, on the
+surface, and goes down; takes off the uppermost layer
+and lets us see what is below it; begins with the
+flowers or the fruit, and then carries us to the root.
+The saints are saints because they are first of all
+faithful. 'Faithful' here, of course, does not mean, as
+it usually does in our ordinary language, 'true' and
+'trusty,' 'reliable' and 'keeping our word,' but it means
+simply 'believing'; having faith, not in the sense of
+<i>fidelity</i>, but in the sense of <i>trust</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, here is Paul's notion&mdash;and it is not only Paul's
+notion, it is God's truth&mdash;that the only way by which
+a man ever comes to realise that he belongs to God,
+and to yield himself in glad surrender to His uses, and
+so to become pure and holy like Him whom He loves
+and aspires to, is by humble faith in Jesus Christ. If
+you want to talk in theological terminology, sanctification
+follows upon faith. It is when we believe and
+trust in Jesus Christ that all the great motives begin
+to tell upon life and heart, which deliver us from our
+selfishness, which bind us to God, which make it a joy
+to do anything for His service, which kindle in our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_5" id="Page_1_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+hearts the flame of fructifying and consecrating and
+transforming love. Faith, the simple reliance of a
+desperate and therefore trusting heart upon Jesus
+Christ for all that it needs, is the foundation of the
+loftiest elevation and attainment of the Christian
+character. We begin down there that we may set the
+shining topstone of 'Holiness to the Lord' upon the
+heaven-pointing summit of our lives.</p>
+
+<p>Note how here Paul sets forth the object of our faith
+and the blessedness of it. I do not think I am forcing
+too much meaning into his words when I ask you to
+notice with what distinct emphasis and intentional
+fulness he employs the double name of our Lord here
+to describe the object upon which our faith fixes,
+'Faithful in <i>Christ Jesus</i>.' We must lay hold of the
+Manhood, and we must lay hold of the office. We
+must rest our soul's salvation on Him as our brother,
+Jesus who was incarnate in sinful flesh for us; and we
+must also rest it on Him as God's anointed, who came
+in human flesh to fulfil the divine loving-kindness and
+purposes, and in that flesh to die. A faith in a Jesus
+who was not a Christ would not sanctify; a faith in a
+Christ who is not Jesus would be impalpable and
+impotent. We must take the two together, believing
+and feeling that we lay hold upon a loving Man, 'bone
+of our bone and flesh of our flesh'; and also upon Him
+who in His very humanity is the Messenger and Angel
+of God's covenant; the Christ for whom the way has
+been being prepared from the beginning, and who has
+come to fulfil all the purposes of the divine heart.</p>
+
+<p>And notice, too, how there is suggested here also, the
+blessedness of that faith, inasmuch as it is a faith <i>in</i>
+Christ. The New Testament speaks in diverse ways
+about the relation between the believing soul and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_6" id="Page_1_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+Jesus Christ. It sometimes speaks of faith as being
+<i>towards</i> Him, and that suggests the going out of a
+hand that, as it were, stretches towards what it would
+lay hold of. It sometimes speaks of faith as being <i>on</i>
+Him, which suggests the idea of a building on its
+foundation, or a hand leaning on a support. And
+it sometimes speaks, as here, of faith being '<i>in</i> Him,'
+which suggests the folded wings of the dove that has
+found its nest, the repose of faith, the quiet rest in the
+Lord, and 'waiting patiently for Him.' Such trust so
+directed is the one condition of such tranquillity. Then,
+again, note a Christian is all that he is because he is
+'in Christ.' That phrase 'in Him' is in some sense
+the keynote of this Epistle to the Ephesians. If you
+will look over the letter, and pick out all the connections
+in which the expression 'in Him' occurs, I think
+you will be astonished to see how rich and full are its
+uses, and how manifold the blessings of which it is the
+condition. But the use which Paul makes of it here is
+just this&mdash;everything in our Christian life depends
+upon our being rooted and grafted in Jesus. Dear
+brethren, the main weakness, I believe, of what is
+called Evangelical Christianity has been that it has not
+always kept true to the proportionate prominence
+which the New Testament gives to the two thoughts,
+'Christ for us,' and 'Christ in us.' For one sermon
+that you have heard which has dwelt earnestly and
+believingly on the thought of the indwelling Christ
+and the Christian indwelling in Him, you have heard
+a hundred about the Sacrifice on the Cross for sins,
+and the great atonement that was made by it. Those
+of you, who have listened to me from Sunday to Sunday,
+know that I am not to be charged with minimising or
+neglecting that truth, but I want to lay upon all your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_7" id="Page_1_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+hearts this earnest conviction, that a gospel which
+throws into enormous prominence 'Christ for us,' and
+into very small prominence 'Christ in us,' is lame of
+one foot, is lopsided, untrue to the symmetry and
+proportion of the Gospel as it is revealed in the New
+Testament, and will never avail for the nourishment
+and maturity of Christian souls. 'Christ for us' by all
+means, and for evermore, but 'Christ <i>in</i> us,' or else He
+will not be '<i>for</i> us.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, a Christian may be a saint, and a believer,
+and in Christ Jesus, though he is in Ephesus.</p>
+
+<p>Many of you know that probably the words 'in
+Ephesus' are no part of the original text of this epistle,
+which was apparently a circular letter, in which the
+designation of the various churches to which it was
+sent was left blank, to be filled in with the name of
+each little community to which Paul's messenger from
+Rome carried it. The copy from which our text was
+taken had probably been delivered at Ephesus; and, at
+any rate, one of the copies would go there. What was
+Ephesus? Satan's very headquarters and seat in Asia
+Minor, a focus of idolatry, superstition, wealth, luxury
+springing from commerce, and moral corruption.
+'Great is Diana of the Ephesians.' The books of
+Ephesus were a synonym for magical books. Many
+of us know how rotten to the core the society of that
+great city was. And there, on the dunghill, was this
+little garden of fragrant and flowering plants. They
+were 'saints in Christ Jesus,' though they were 'saints
+in Ephesus.'</p>
+
+<p>Never mind about surroundings. It is possible for us
+to keep ourselves in the love of God, and in the fellowship
+of His Son wherever we are, and whatever may
+lie around us. You and I have too to live in a big,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_8" id="Page_1_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+wicked city, and to work out our religion in a society
+honeycombed with corruption, because of commerce
+and other influences. Do not let us forget that these
+people whom Paul called 'saints' and 'faithful' had a
+harder fight to wage than we have, with less to hearten
+and strengthen them in it. Only remember if the
+'saints in Ephesus' are to be 'in Christ,' they need to
+keep themselves very straight up. The carbonic acid
+gas is heavy and goes down to the bottom of the cave,
+and if a man will walk bolt upright, he will keep his
+nostrils above it; but if he stoops, he will get down
+into it. Walk straight up, with your head erect, looking
+to the Master, and your respiratory organs will be
+above the poison. If we are to <i>be</i> in Christ when we
+are in Ephesus, we need to keep ourselves separate and
+faithful, and to <i>keep ourselves</i> in Christ. If the diver
+comes out of the diving-bell he is drowned. If he
+keeps inside its crystal walls he may be on the bottom
+of the ocean, but he is dry and safe. Keep in the
+fortress by loyal faith, by humble realisation of His
+presence, by continual effort, and 'nothing shall by
+any means harm you,' but 'your lives shall be holy,
+being hid with Christ in God.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ALL_SPIRITUAL_BLESSINGS" id="ALL_SPIRITUAL_BLESSINGS"></a>'ALL SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS'</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Blessed be God ... who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
+places in Christ.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 3.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It is very characteristic of Paul's impetuous fervour
+and exuberant faith that he begins this letter with
+a doxology, and plunges at once into the very heart of
+his theme. Colder natures reach such heights by slow
+degrees. He gains them at a bound, or rather, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_9" id="Page_1_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+dwells there always. Put a pen into his hand, and it
+is like tapping a blast furnace; and out rushes a fiery
+stream at white heat. But there is a great deal more
+than fervour in the words. In the rush of his thoughts
+there is depth and method. We come slowly after, and
+try by analysing and meditation to recover some of
+the fervour and the fire of such utterances as this.</p>
+
+<p>Notice that buoyant, joyous, emphatic reiteration:
+'Blessed,' 'blest,' 'blessings.' That is more than the
+fascination exercised over a man's mind by a word; it
+covers very deep thoughts and goes very far into the
+centre of the Christian life. God blesses us by gifts; we
+bless Him by words. The aim of His act of blessing is to
+evoke in our hearts the love that praises. We receive
+first, and then, moved by His mercies, we give. Our
+highest response to His most precious gifts is that we
+shall 'take the cup of salvation, and call upon the
+name of the Lord,' and in the depth of thankful and
+recipient hearts shall say, 'Blessed be God who hath
+blessed us.'</p>
+
+<p>Now I think that I shall best bring out the deep
+meaning of these words if I simply follow them as they
+lie before us. I do not wish to say anything about
+our echo in blessing God. I wish to speak about the
+original sweet sound, His blessing to us.</p>
+
+<p>I. And I note, first of all, the character and the extent
+of these blessings which are the constituents of
+the Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>'All spiritual blessings,' says the Apostle. Now, I
+am not going to weary you with mere exegetical remarks,
+but I do want to lay stress upon this, that,
+when the Apostle speaks about 'spiritual blessings,' he
+does not merely use that word 'spiritual' as defining
+the region in us in which the blessings are given,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_10" id="Page_1_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+though that is also implied; but rather as pointing
+to the medium by which they are conferred. That is
+to say, he calls them 'spiritual,' not because they are,
+unlike material and outward blessings, gifts for the
+inner man, the true self, but because they are imparted
+to the waiting spirit by that Divine Spirit who communicates
+to men all the most precious things of God.
+They are 'spiritual' because the Holy Spirit is the
+medium of communication by which they reach men's
+spirits.</p>
+
+<p>And I may just pause for one moment&mdash;and it shall
+only be for a moment&mdash;to point out to you how in-woven
+into the very texture of the writer's thoughts,
+and all the more emphatic because quite incidental,
+and needing to be looked for to be found, is here the
+evidence of his believing that the name of God was
+God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For it is the
+Father who is the Giver, the Son who is the Reservoir,
+the Spirit who is the Communicator, of these spiritual
+gifts. And I do not think that any man could have
+written these words of my text, the main purpose of
+which is altogether different to setting forth the mystery
+of the divine nature, unless he had believed in
+God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.</p>
+
+<p>But, apart altogether from that, let me remind you
+in one sentence of how the gifts which thus come to
+men by that Divine Spirit derive their characteristic
+quality from their very medium of communication.
+There are many other blessings for which we have to
+say, 'Blessed be God'; for all the gifts that come
+from 'the Father of Lights' are light, and everything
+that the Fountain of sweetness bestows upon mankind
+is sweet, but earthly blessings are but the shadow of
+blessing. They remain without us, and they pass. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_11" id="Page_1_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+if they were all for which we had to praise God, our
+praises had need to be often checked by sobs and tears,
+and often very doubtful and questioning. If there
+were none other but such, and if this poor life were all,
+then I do not think it would be true that it is</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'better to have loved and lost,</span><br/>
+<span class="i0">Than never to have loved at all.'</span><br/>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is but a quavering voice of praise, with many a sob between, that
+goes up to bless God for anything but spiritual blessings. Though it is
+true that all which comes from the Father of Lights is light, the
+sorrows and troubles that He sends have the light terribly muffled in
+darkness, and it needs strong faith and insight to pierce through the
+cloud to see the gleam of anything bright beneath. But when we turn to
+this other region, and think of what comes to every poor, tremulous,
+human heart, that likes to take it through that Divine Spirit&mdash;the
+forgiveness of sins, the rectification of errors, the purification of
+lusts and passions, the gleams of hope on the future, and the access
+with confidence into the standing and place of children; oh, then surely
+we can say, 'Blessed be God for spiritual blessings.'</p>
+
+<p>But if the word which defines may thus seem to limit, the other word
+which accompanies it sweeps away every limit; for it calls upon us to
+bless God for <i>all</i> spiritual blessings. That is to say, there is no gap
+in His gift. It is rounded and complete and perfect. Whatever a man's
+needs may require, whatever his hopes can dream, whatever his wishes can
+stretch out towards, it is all here, compacted and complete. The
+spiritual gifts are encyclop&aelig;diacal and all-sufficient.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_12" id="Page_1_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> They are not
+segments, but completed circles. When God gives He gives amply.</p>
+
+<p>II. So much, then, for the first point; now, in the second place, note
+the one divine act by which all these blessings have been bestowed.</p>
+
+<p>'Blessed be God who <i>has</i> given'; or, still more definitely, pointing to
+some one specific moment and deed in which the benefaction was
+completed, 'Blessed be God who gave.'</p>
+
+<p>When? Well, ideally in the depths of His own eternal mind the gift was
+complete or ever the recipients were created to receive it, and
+historically the gift was complete in the act of redemption when He
+spared not His Own Son, but gave Him up unto the death for us all. A man
+may destine an estate for the benefit of some community which for
+generations long may continue to enjoy its benefits, but the gift is
+complete when he signs the deed that makes it over. Humphrey Chetham
+gave the boys in his school to-day their education when, centuries ago,
+he assigned his property to that beneficent purpose. So, away back in
+the mists of Eternity the gift was completed, and the signature was put
+to the deed when Jesus Christ was born, and the seal was added when
+Jesus Christ died. 'Blessed be God who <i>hath</i> given.'</p>
+
+<p>So, then, we may not only draw the conclusion which the Apostle drew,
+'how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' but we can
+draw an even grander one, 'Has He not with Him also freely given us all
+things?' And we possess them all to-day if our hearts are resting on
+Jesus Christ. The limit of the gift is only in ourselves. All has been
+given, but the question remains how much has been taken.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, Christian men and women, there is nothing that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_13" id="Page_1_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> we require more than
+to have what we have, to possess what is ours, to make our own what has
+been bestowed. You sometimes hear of some beggar, or private soldier, or
+farm labourer, who has come all at once into an estate that was his,
+years before he knew anything about it. There is such a boundless wealth
+belonging by right, and by the Giver's gift, to every Christian soul;
+and yet, here are we, many of us, like the paupers who sometimes turn up
+in workhouses, all in rags, and with deposit-receipts for &pound;200 or &pound;300
+stitched into the rags, that they get no good out of. Here are we, with
+all that wealth, paupers still. Be sure that you have what you have. Do
+you remember the exhortation to a valiant effort in one of the stories
+in the Old Testament&mdash;'Know ye that Ramoth-gilead is <i>ours</i>, and we take
+it not?' And that is exactly what is true about hosts of professing
+Christians who have not, in any real sense, the possession of what God
+has given them. It is well to ask, for our desires are the measures of
+our capacities. It is well to ask, but we very often ask when what is
+wanted is not that we should get more, but that we should utilise what
+we have. And we make mistakes therein, as if God needed to be besought
+to give, when all the while it is we who need to be stirred up to grasp
+and keep the things that are freely given to us of God.</p>
+
+<p>III. In the next place, notice the one place where all these blessings
+are kept.</p>
+
+<p>'Blessed be God who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in
+heavenly places.' 'In heavenly places.' Now that does not merely define
+the region of origin, the locality where they originated or whence they
+come. It does do that, but it does a great deal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_14" id="Page_1_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> more. It does not
+merely tell us, as we often are disposed to think that it does, that
+'every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh
+down'&mdash;though that is perfectly true, but it means much rather that in
+order to get the gift we must go up. They are in the heavenly places,
+and they cannot live anywhere else. They have been sticking shrubs in
+tubs outside our public buildings this last week. How long will they
+keep their leaves and their freshness? How soon will they need to be
+shifted and taken back again to the sweeter air, where they can
+flourish? God's spiritual gifts cannot grow in smoke and dirt and a
+polluted atmosphere. And if a professing Christian man lives his life on
+the low levels he will have very few of the heavenly gifts coming down
+to him there. And that is the reason&mdash;<i>the</i> reason above all
+others&mdash;why, with such a large provision made for all possible
+necessities and longings of all sorts, people who call themselves
+Christians go up and down the world feeble and poor, and with little
+enjoyment of their religion, and having verified scarcely anything of
+the great promises which God has given them.</p>
+
+<p>Brother, according to the old word with which the Mass used to begin,
+'<i>Sursum corda</i>'&mdash;up with your hearts! The blessings are in the heavens,
+and if we want them we must go where they are. It is not enough to drink
+sparing draughts from the stream as it flows through the plain. Travel
+up to the headwaters, where the great pure fountain is, that gushes out
+abundant and inexhaustible. The gifts are heavenly, and there they
+abide, and thither we must mount if we would possess them.</p>
+
+<p>Now that this understanding of the words is correct I think is clearly
+shown by a verse in the next chapter,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_15" id="Page_1_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> where we find the very same
+phrase employed. In this connection the Apostle says that 'God hath
+raised us up together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' That is to
+say, the true ideal of the Christian life is that, even here and now, it
+is a life of such intimate union and incorporation with Jesus Christ as
+that where He is we are, and that even whilst we tabernacle upon earth
+and move about amongst its illusions and changing scenes, in the depth
+of our true being we may be fixed, and sit at rest with Christ where He
+is.</p>
+
+<p>Do not dismiss that as mere pulpit rhetoric. Do not say that it is
+mystical and incomprehensible, and cannot be reduced into practice
+amidst the distractions of daily life. Brethren, it is not so! Jesus
+Christ Himself said about Himself that He came down from heaven, and
+that though He did, even whilst He wore the likeness of the flesh, and
+was one of us, He was 'the Son of Man which <i>is</i> in Heaven,' when He lay
+in the manger, when He worked at the carpenter's bench in Nazareth, when
+He walked with weary feet those blessed acres, when He hung, for our
+advantage, on the bitter Cross. And that was no incommunicable property
+of His mysterious nature, but it was the typical example of what it is
+possible for manhood to be. And you and I, if we are to possess in any
+measure corresponding with the gift of Christ the spiritual blessing
+which God bestows, must have our lives 'hid with Christ in God,' and sit
+together with Him in the heavenly places.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Lastly, note the one Person in whom all spiritual blessings are
+enshrined.</p>
+
+<p>'In the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' You cannot separate between
+Him and His gifts, neither in the way of getting Him without them, nor
+in the way of getting them without Him. They are Himself, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_16" id="Page_1_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> the
+deepest analysis all spiritual blessings are reducible to one&mdash;viz. that
+the Spirit of Jesus Christ Himself shall dwell with us.</p>
+
+<p>Now, that union by which it is possible for poor, empty, sinful
+creatures to be filled with His fulness, animated with His life,
+strengthened with His omnipotence, and sanctified by His
+indwelling&mdash;that union is the very kernel of this Epistle to the
+Ephesians.</p>
+
+<p>I dare say I have often drawn your attention to the singular emphasis
+and repetition with which that phrase 'in Christ' occurs throughout the
+letter. Just take the two or three instances of it that I gather as I
+speak. In this first chapter we read, 'the faithful in Jesus Christ.'
+Then comes our text, 'blessings in heavenly places in Christ.' Then, in
+the very next verse, we read, 'chosen us in Him.' Then, a verse or two
+after, we have 'accepted in the Beloved,' which is immediately followed
+by, 'in whom we have redemption through His blood.' Then, again, 'that
+He might gather together in one all things in Christ, in whom also we
+have obtained the inheritance.' I need not make other quotations, but
+throughout the letter every blessing that can gladden or sanctify the
+human spirit is regarded by the Apostle as being stored and shrined in
+Jesus Christ: inseparable from Him, and therefore to be found by us only
+in union with Him.</p>
+
+<p>And that is the point of all which I want to say&mdash;viz. that, inasmuch as
+all spiritual blessings that a soul can need are hived in Him in whom is
+all sweetness, the way, and the only way, to get them is that we, too,
+should pass into Him and dwell in Jesus Christ. It is His own teaching:
+'I am the Vine, ye are the branches. Abide in Me. Separate from Me ye
+can do nothing,' and get nothing, and are nothing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_17" id="Page_1_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Oh, brethren! it is well that all our treasures should be in one place.
+It is better that they should all be in One Person. And if only we will
+lay our poor emptiness by the side of His fulness there will pass over
+from that infinite abundance and sufficiency everything that we can
+require.</p>
+
+<p>We abide in Him by faith, by meditation, by love, by submission, by
+practical obedience, and, if we are wise, the effort of our lives will
+be to keep close to that Lord. As long as we keep touch with Him we have
+all and abound. Break the connection by wandering away, in thought and
+desire, by indulgence in sin, by letting earthly passions surge in and
+separate us from Him&mdash;break the connection by rebellion, by making
+ourselves our own ends and lords, and it is like switching off the
+electricity. Everything falls dead. You cannot have Christ's blessing
+unless you take Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And so, dear brethren, 'abide in Me and I in you.' There is nothing else
+that will make us blessed; there is nothing else that will meet all the
+circumference of our necessities; there is nothing else that will quiet
+our hearts, will sanctify our understandings. Christ is yours if 'ye are
+Christ's.' 'Of His fulness <i>have</i> all we received,' for it all became
+ours when we became His, and Christian growth on earth and heaven is but
+the unfolding of the folded graces that are contained in Him. We possess
+the whole Christ, but eternity is needed to disclose all the
+unsearchable riches of our inheritance in Him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_18" id="Page_1_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="ACCORDING_TO_I" id="ACCORDING_TO_I"></a>'ACCORDING TO'&mdash;I.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'According to the good pleasure of His will, ... According to the
+riches of His grace.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 5, 7.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>That phrase, 'according to,' is one of the key-words of this profound
+epistle, which occurs over and over again, like a refrain. I reckon
+twelve instances of it in three chapters of the letter, and they all
+introduce one or other of the two thoughts which appear in the two
+fragments that I have taken for my text. They either point out how the
+great blessings of Christ's mission have underlying them the divine
+purpose, or they point out how the process of the Christian life in the
+individual has for its source and measure the abundances, the wealth of
+the grace and the power of God. So in both aspects the facts of earth
+are traced up to, and declared to be, the outcome of the heavenly
+depths, and that gives solemnity, grandeur, elevation, to this epistle
+all its own. We are carried, as it were, away up into the recesses of
+the mountains of God, and we look down upon the unruffled, mysterious,
+deep lake, from which come the rivers that water all the plains beneath.</p>
+
+<p>Now of these two types of reference to the divine will and the divine
+wealth, I should like to gather together the instances, as they occur in
+this letter, in so far as I can, in the course of a sermon, touching
+them, it must be, very imperfectly. But I fear that it is impossible to
+deal with both the phases of this 'according to,' in one discourse. So I
+confine myself to that which is suggested by the first of our two texts,
+in the hope that some other day we may be able to overtake the other. So
+then, we have set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_19" id="Page_1_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> before us here the Christian thought of the divine
+will which underlies, and therefore is manifest by, the work of Jesus
+Christ, in its whole sweep and breadth. And I just take up the various
+instances in which this expression occurs in a great variety of forms,
+but all retaining substantially the same meaning.</p>
+
+<p>I. Note that that divine will which underlies and is operative in, and
+therefore is certified to us by the whole work of Jesus Christ, in its
+facts and its consequences, is a 'good pleasure.'</p>
+
+<p>Now there are few thoughts which the history of the world has shown to
+be more productive of iron and steel in the human character than that of
+the sovereign will of God. That made Islam, and is the secret of its
+power to-day, amidst its many corruptions. Because these wild desert
+tribes were all stiffened, or I might say inflamed, by that profound
+conviction, the sovereign will of God, they came down like a hammer upon
+that corrupt so-called Christian Church, and swept it off the face of
+the earth, as it deserved to be swept. And the same thought of the
+sovereign will, of which we are but instruments&mdash;pawns on its
+chessboard&mdash;made the grand seventeenth century Puritanism in England,
+and its sister type of men and of religion in Holland. For this is a
+historically proved thesis, that there is nothing which so contributes
+to the formation, and valuation of, and the readiness to die for, civil
+liberty, as the firm grasp of that thought of the divine sovereignty.
+Just because a man realises that the will of God is supreme over all the
+earth, he rebels against all forms of human despotism.</p>
+
+<p>But with all the good that is in that great thought&mdash;and the
+Christianity of this day sorely wants the strength that might be given
+it by the exhibition of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_20" id="Page_1_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> that steel medicine&mdash;it wants another, 'the
+good pleasure of His will.' And that word, 'good pleasure,' does not
+express, as I think, in Paul's usage of it, the simple notion of
+sovereignty, but always the notion of a benevolent sovereignty. It is
+'the good pleasure'&mdash;as it is put in another place by the same
+Apostle&mdash;'of His goodness.' And that thought, let in upon the solemnity
+and severity of the other one, is all that it needs in order to make the
+man who grasps it not only a hero in conflict, and a patient martyr in
+endurance, but a child in his Father's house, rejoicing in the love of
+his Father everywhere and always.</p>
+
+<p>Paul would have us believe that if we will take the work of Jesus Christ
+in the facts of His life, and its results upon humanity, as our
+horn-book and lesson, we shall draw from that some conceptions of the
+great thing that underlies it, 'the good pleasure of His will.' We stand
+in front of this complex universe, and some of us say: 'Law'; and some
+of us say: 'A Lawgiver behind the law; a Person at the heart of all
+things'; but unless we can say: 'And in the heart of the Person a will,
+which is the expression of a steadfast, omnipotent love,' then the world
+seems to me to be a place of unsolvable riddles and a torture-house.
+There goes the great steam-roller along the road. Everybody can see that
+it crushes down, and makes its own path. Who drives it? The steam in the
+boiler, or is there a hand on the lever? And what drives the hand?
+Christianity answers, and answers with unfaltering lip, rising clear
+above contradictions apparent and difficulties real, 'The good pleasure
+of His will,' and there men can rest.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another step. Another form in which this 'according to'
+appears in this letter is, if we adopt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_21" id="Page_1_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> the rendering, which I am
+disposed to do in the present case, of the Authorised Version rather
+than of the Revised, 'according to His good pleasure ... which He hath
+purposed in Himself.' The Revised Version says, 'Which He hath purposed
+in Him,' and that is a perfectly possible rendering. But to me the old
+one is not only more eloquent, but more in accordance with the
+connection. So I venture to accept it without further ado&mdash;'His good
+pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.'</p>
+
+<p>That brings us into the presence of that same great thought, which in
+another aspect is expressed in saying 'His name is Jehovah,' and in yet
+another aspect is expressed in saying 'God is love,' viz. the thought
+which sounds familiar, but which has in it depths of strength and
+illumination and joy, if we rightly ponder it, that, to use human words,
+the motive of the divine action is all found within the divine nature.</p>
+
+<p>We love one another because we discern, or think we discern, lovable
+qualities in the being on whom our love falls. God loves because He is
+God. That great artesian fountain wells up from the depths, by its own
+sweet impulse, and pours itself out; and 'the good pleasure of His
+goodness' has no other explanation than that it is His nature and
+property to be merciful. And so, dear brethren, we get clean past what
+has sometimes been the misapprehension of good people, and has oftener
+been the caricatured representation of Evangelical truth which its
+enemies have put forth&mdash;that God was made to love and pity by reason of
+the sacrifice of the Son, whereas the very opposite is the case. God
+loves, therefore He sent His Son, 'that whosoever believeth in Him
+should not perish but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_22" id="Page_1_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> have everlasting life,' and the notion of the
+Cross of Christ as changing the divine heart is as far away from
+Evangelical truth as it is from the natural conceptions that men form of
+the divine nature. We shake hands with our so-called antagonists and
+say, 'Yes! we believe as much as you do that God does not love us
+because Christ died, but we believe what perhaps you do not, that Christ
+died because God loves us, and would save us.' 'The good pleasure which
+He hath purposed in Himself.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, still further, there is another aspect of this same divine will
+brought out in other parts of this letter, of which this is a specimen,
+'Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His
+good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself, that in the
+dispensation of the fulness of the times He might gather together in one
+all things in Christ,' which, being turned into more modern phraseology,
+is just this&mdash;that the great aim of that divine sovereign will,
+self-originated, full of loving-kindness to the world, is to manifest to
+all men what God is, that all men may know Him for what He is, and
+thereby be drawn back again, and grouped in peaceful unity round His
+Son, Jesus Christ. That is the intention which is deepest in the divine
+heart, the desire which God has most for every one of us. And when the
+Old Testament tells us that the great motive of the divine action is for
+'My own Name's sake,' that expression might be so regarded as to
+disclose an ugly despot, who only wants to be reverenced by abject and
+submissive subjects. But what it really means is this, that the divine
+love which hovers over its poor, prodigal children because it <i>is</i> love,
+and, therefore, lovingly delights in a loving recognition and response,
+desires<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_23" id="Page_1_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> most of all that all the wanderers should see the light, and
+that every soul of man should be able to whisper, with loving heart, the
+name, 'Abba! Father!' Is not that an uplifting thought as being the
+dominant motive which puts in action the whole of the divine activity?
+God created in order that He might fling His light upon creatures, who
+should thereby be glad. And God has redeemed in order that in Jesus
+Christ we might see Him, and, seeing Him, be at rest, and begin to grow
+like Him. This is the aim, 'That they might know Thee, the only true God
+... whom to know is eternal life.' And so self-communication and
+self-revelation is the very central mystery of the will.</p>
+
+<p>But that is not all. Another of the forms in which this phrase occurs
+tells us that that great purpose, the eternal purpose which He purposed
+in Christ Jesus our Lord, was that, 'Now unto the principalities and
+powers in heavenly places might be known' by the Church 'the manifold
+wisdom of God.' And so we get another thought, that that whole work of
+redemption, operated by the Incarnation, and culminating in the
+Crucifixion and Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ, stands as
+being the means by which other orders of creatures, besides ourselves,
+learn to know 'the manifold wisdom of God.' According to the grand old
+saying, at Creation the 'morning stars sang together for joy.' All
+spiritual creatures, be they 'higher' or 'lower,' can only know God by
+the observation of His acts.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">''Twas great to speak a world from nought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis greater to redeem,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the same angelic lips that sang these praises on the morning of
+Creation have learnt a new song<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_24" id="Page_1_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> that they sing; 'Glory and honour and
+dominion and power be unto the Lamb that was slain.'</p>
+
+<p>Thus to principalities and powers, a diviner height in the loftiness,
+and a diviner depth in the condescension, and a diviner tenderness in
+the love, and a diviner energy in the power, of the redeeming God have
+been made known, and this is the thought of His eternal purpose. And
+that brings me to another point which is involved in the words that I
+have just quoted, which stand in connection with those that I have
+previously referred to. The phrase 'eternal purpose' literally rendered
+is, 'the purpose of the ages,' and that, no doubt, may mean 'eternal' in
+the sense of running on through all the ages; or it may mean, perhaps,
+that which we usually attach to the word 'eternal,' viz. unbeginning and
+unending. I take the former meaning as the more probable one, that the
+Apostle contemplates that great will of God which culminates in Jesus
+Christ, as coming solemnly sweeping through all the epochs of time from
+the beginning. In a deeper sense than the poet meant it, 'Through the
+ages an increasing purpose runs,' and that binds the epochs of humanity
+together&mdash;'the purpose of God in Christ Jesus.' The philosophy of
+history lies there, and it is a true instinct that makes the cradle at
+Bethlehem the pivot around which the world's chronology revolves. For
+the deepest thing about all the ages on the further side of it is that
+they are 'Before Christ,' and the formative fact for all the ages after
+it is that they are <i>Anno Domini</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And now the last thing that is suggested by yet another of these
+eloquent expressions is deduced from another part of the same phrase.
+The purpose of the ages is described as that which 'He purposed in
+Christ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_25" id="Page_1_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> Jesus our Lord.' Now the word 'purposed' literally is 'made.'
+And it may be a question whether 'purposed' or 'accomplished' is the
+special meaning to be attached to the general word 'made.' Either is
+legitimate. I take it that what the Apostle means here is that the
+purpose of God, which we have thus seen as sovereign, self-originated,
+having for its great aim the communication to all His creatures of the
+knowledge of Himself, and running through the ages, and binding them
+into a unity, reaches its entire accomplishment in the Cradle, and the
+Cross, and the Throne of Jesus Christ our Lord.</p>
+
+<p>He fulfils the divine intention. There is that one life, and in that
+life alone of humanity you have a character which is in entire sympathy
+with the divine mind, which is in full possession of the divine truth,
+which never diverges or deviates by a hair's-breadth from the divine
+will, which is the complete and perfect exponent to man of the divine
+heart and character; and that Christ is the fulfilment of all that God
+desired in the depths of eternity, and the abysses of His being. Did He
+will that men should know Him? Christ has declared Him. Did He will that
+men should be drawn back to Him? Christ lifted on the Cross draws all
+men unto Him. Was it 'according to the good pleasure of His goodness'
+that we men should attain to the adoption of sons? By that Son we too
+became sons. Was it the purpose of His will that we should obtain an
+'inheritance'? We obtain it in Jesus Christ, 'being heirs of God, and
+joint-heirs with Christ.' All that God willed to do is done. And when we
+look, on the one hand, up to that infinite purpose, and on the other, to
+the Cross, we hear from the dying lips, 'It is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_26" id="Page_1_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> finished!' The purpose
+of the ages is accomplished in Christ Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>Is it accomplished with you? I have been speaking about the divine
+counsel which is a 'good pleasure,' which runs through the whole history
+of mankind. But it is a divine purpose that you can thwart as far as you
+are concerned. 'How often would I have gathered ... and ye would not,'
+and your 'would not' neutralises His 'would.' Do not stand in the way of
+the steam-roller. You cannot stop it, but it can crush you. Do not have
+Him say about you, 'In vain have I smitten, in vain have I loved.' Bow,
+accept, recognise that all God's armoury is brought to bear upon each of
+us in that great Cross and Passion, in that great Incarnation and human
+life. And I beseech you, in your hearts, let the will of God be done
+even as for a world it has been done by the sacrifice of Calvary.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ACCORDING_TO_II" id="ACCORDING_TO_II"></a>'ACCORDING TO'&mdash;II.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'According to the riches of His grace.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 7.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We have seen, in a previous sermon, that a characteristic note of this
+letter is the frequent occurrence of that phrase 'according to.' I also
+then pointed out that it was employed in two different directions. One
+class of passages, with which I then tried to deal, used it to compare
+the divine purpose in our salvation with the historical process of the
+salvation. The type of that class of reference is found in a verse just
+before my text, 'according to the good pleasure of His will.' There is a
+second class of passages to which our text belongs, where the comparison
+is not between the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_27" id="Page_1_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> purpose and its realisation, but between the stores
+of the divine riches and the experiences of the Christian life. The one
+set of passages suggests the ground of our salvation in the deep purpose
+of God; the other suggests the measure of the power which is working out
+that salvation.</p>
+
+<p>The instances of this second use of the phrase, besides the one in my
+text, 'according to the riches of His grace,' are such as these:
+'According to the riches of His glory'; 'According to the power that
+worketh in us'; 'According to the measure of the gift of Christ';
+'According to the energy of the might of His power, which He wrought in
+Christ when He raised Him from the dead.'</p>
+
+<p>Now it is clear that all these are varying forms of the same thing. They
+vary in form, they are identical in substance. What a Jew calls a
+'cubit' an Englishman calls a 'foot,' but the result is pretty nearly
+the same. Shillings, marks, francs, are various standards; they all come
+to substantially the same result. These varying measures of the divine
+gift which is at work in man's salvation, have this in common, that they
+all run out into God's immeasurable, unlimited power, boundless wealth.
+And so, if we gather them together, and try to focus them in a few
+words, they may help to widen our conceptions of what we ought to expect
+from God, to bow us in contrition as to the small use that we have made
+of it, and to open our desires wide, that they may be filled.</p>
+
+<p>I only aspire, then, to deal with these four forms which I have already
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>I. The measure of our possible attainments is the whole wealth of God.</p>
+
+<p>'According to the riches of His grace.' Another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_28" id="Page_1_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> angle at which the same
+thought is viewed appears in another part of the letter, where we have
+this variation in the expression, 'According to the riches of His
+glory.' 'Grace' and 'Glory' are generally opposed antithetically; in
+this epistle they are united, for in the verse before my text I read:
+'To the praise of the glory of His grace.' So the first thought is, the
+whole wealth of God is available for every Christian soul.</p>
+
+<p>Now it seems to me that there are very few things that the popular
+Christianity of this day needs more than a furnishing up of the familiar
+old Christian terminology, which has largely lost the freshness and the
+power that it once had. They tell us that these incandescent burners,
+that we are using nowadays, are very much more bright when they are
+first fixed than after the mantle gets a little worn. So it is with the
+terminology of Christianity. It needs to be re-stated, not in such a way
+as to take the pith out of it, which is what a great deal of the modern
+craze for re-statement means, but in such a way as to brighten it up
+again, and to invest it with something of the 'celestial light' with
+which it was 'apparelled' when it first came. Now that word 'grace,' I
+have no doubt, sounds to you hard, theological, remote. But what does it
+mean? It gathers into one burning point the whole of the rays of that
+conception of God, with which it is the glory of Christianity to have
+flooded and drenched the world. It tells us that at the heart of the
+universe there is a heart; that God is Love, that that love is the
+motive-spring of His activity, that it comes and bends over the lowliest
+with a smile of amity on its lips, with healing and help in its hands,
+with forgiveness for all sins against itself, with boundless wealth for
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_29" id="Page_1_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> poorest, and that the wealth of His self-communicating love is the
+measure of the wealth that each of us may possess.</p>
+
+<p>God gives 'according to the riches of His grace.' You do not expect a
+millionaire to give half-a-crown to a subscription fund; and God gives
+royally, divinely, measuring His bestowments by the abundance of His
+treasures, and handing over with an open palm large gifts of coined
+money, because there are infinite chests of uncirculated bullion in the
+deep storehouses. 'How great is Thy goodness which Thou hast manifested
+before the sons of men for them that fear Thee. How much greater is Thy
+goodness which Thou hast laid up in store.' But whilst He gives all, the
+question comes to be: What do I receive? The measure of His gift is His
+measureless grace; the measure of my reception is my&mdash;alas!
+easily-measured faith. What about the unearned increment? What about the
+unrealised wealth? Too many of us are like some man who has a great
+estate in another land. He knows nothing about it, and is living in
+grimy poverty in a back street. For you have all God's riches waiting
+for you, and 'the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice'
+at your beck and call, and yet you are but poorly realising your
+possible riches. Alas, that when we might have so much we do have so
+little. 'According to the riches of His grace' He gives. But another
+'according to' comes in. 'According to thy faith be it unto thee.' So we
+have to take these two measures together, and the working limit of our
+possession of God's riches comes out of the combination of them both.</p>
+
+<p>Let me remind you, before I pass on, of what I have already suggested is
+but another phase of this same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_30" id="Page_1_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> thought, Paul says in this epistle that
+God gives not only 'according to the riches of His grace,' but
+'according to the riches of His glory,' and that the latter expression
+is substantially identical with the former, is plain from the
+combination of the two in an earlier verse of this chapter: 'To the
+praise of the glory of His grace.' Thus we come to the blessed thought
+that the glory of God is essentially the revelation of that stooping,
+pitying, pardoning, enriching love. Not in the physical attributes, not
+in the characteristics of the divine nature which part Him off from men,
+and make Him remote, both from their conceptions and their affections,
+but in the love that bends to them is the true glory of God. All these
+other things are but the fringes; the centre of glory is the Love, which
+is the mightiest and the divinest thing in the Might Divine. The
+sunshine is far stronger than the lightning, and there is more force
+developed in the rain than in an earthquake. That truth is what
+Christianity has made the common possession of the world. It has thereby
+broken the chains of dread; it has bridged over the infinite distance.
+It has given us a God that can love and be loved, can stoop and can
+lift, can pardon and can purify. 'According to the good pleasure of His
+goodness,'&mdash;there is the foundation of our salvation. 'According to the
+riches of His grace,'&mdash;there is the measure of our salvation.</p>
+
+<p>II. We have another form of the same measure in another set of verses
+which speak of the present working of God's power.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle speaks in regard to his own apostolic commission of its
+being given 'according to the working of His power'; and he speaks of
+all Christian men as receiving gifts 'according to the power that
+worketh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_31" id="Page_1_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> in us.' So there we have a standard that comes, as it were, a
+little closer to ourselves. We do not need to travel up into the dim
+abysses above, or think of the sanctities and the secrecies of that
+divine heart in the light which is inaccessible, but we have the measure
+in ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The standards of length are kept at Greenwich, the standards of capacity
+are kept in the Tower; but there are local standards distributed
+throughout the land to which men may go and have their measures
+corrected. And so besides all these lofty thoughts about the grace and
+the glory which measures His gift, we can turn within, if we are
+Christian people, and say, 'According to the power that worketh in us.'</p>
+
+<p>Ah, brethren! there are few things that we want more than to revive and
+deepen the conviction that in every Christian man, by virtue of his
+faith, and in proportion to his faith, there is in operation an actual,
+superhuman, divine power moulding his nature, guiding, quickening,
+ennobling, lifting, confirming, and hallowing and shaping him into
+conformity with Jesus Christ. I would that we all believed not as a
+dogma, but realised as a personal experience, that irrefragable truth,
+'Know ye not that the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in you, except ye be
+reprobate?' The life of self is evil; the life of Christ in self is
+good, and only good. And if you are Christian men, and in the
+proportion, as I have said, in which you are living by faith, you have
+working in your spirits the very Spirit of Christ Himself.</p>
+
+<p>And that power is the measure of your possibilities. Obviously 'the
+power that worketh in us' is able to do a great deal more than it is
+doing in any of us. And so with deep significance the Apostle, side by
+side with his adducing of this power as being the measure of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_32" id="Page_1_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+possible attainments, speaks about God as being 'able to do for us,
+exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.' 'The power
+that works in us' transcends in its possibilities our present
+experience, it transcends our conceptions, it transcends our desires. It
+is able to do everything; it actually does&mdash;well, you know what it does
+in you. And the responsibility of hampering and hindering that power
+from working out its only adequately corresponding results lies at our
+own doors. 'A rushing, mighty wind'&mdash;yes; and in myself a scarcely
+perceptible breathing, and often a dead calm, stagnant as in the
+latitudes on either side of the Equator, where, for long, dreary days,
+no freshening motion in the atmosphere is perceptible. 'A fire?'&mdash;yes;
+then why is my grate full of grey, cold ashes, and one little spark in
+the corner? 'A fountain springing into everlasting life?'&mdash;yes; then why
+in my basin is there so much scum and ooze, mud and defilement, and so
+little of the flashing and brilliant water? 'The power that works in us'
+is sorely hindered by the weakness in which it works.</p>
+
+<p>III. In the third place another form of this measure is stated by the
+Apostle, 'According to the measure of the gift of Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>That means, of course, the gift which Christ bestows. It is
+substantially the same idea as I have just been dealing with, only
+looked at from rather a different point of view. Therefore, I need not
+dwell upon its parallelism with what has just been occupying our
+attention, but rather ask you simply to consider one point in reference
+to it, and that is that, side by side with the reference to the gift of
+Christ as being the measure of our possible attainments, the Apostle
+enlarges on the Infinite variety of the shapes which that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_33" id="Page_1_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> one gift
+takes in different people. 'He gave some apostles, some prophets,' etc.;
+one man receiving according to this fashion, and another according to
+that, and to each of us the distribution is made 'according to the
+measure of the gift of Christ.' That is to say, it takes us all, the
+collective goodness and beauty of the whole community of saints, to
+approximate to the fulness of that gift, and all are needed in their
+different types and forms of excellence, sanctity and beauty, in order
+to set forth, even imperfectly, the richness and the manifoldness of His
+great gift. And so 'we all come'&mdash;there is a multiplicity&mdash;'unto the
+perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ'&mdash;there
+is a unity in which the multiplicity inheres.</p>
+
+<p>So try to get a little more of some different type of excellence than
+that to which you are naturally inclined. Seek, and consciously
+endeavour, to appropriate into your character uncongenial excellences,
+and be very charitable in your judgments of the different types of
+Christian conformity to Christ our Lord. The crystals that are set round
+a light do not quarrel with each other as to whether green, or yellow,
+or blue, or red, or violet is the true colour to reflect. We need all
+the seven prismatic tints to make the perfect white light. The gift of
+Christ is many-sided; try not to be one-sided in your reception of it.</p>
+
+<p>IV. And now the last form of this measure is 'according to the energy of
+the might of His power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him
+from the dead.'</p>
+
+<p>When we gazed upon the riches of God's grace, they were high above us,
+when we looked upon 'the power that worketh in us,' we saw it working
+amidst many hindrances and hamperings, but here there is presented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_34" id="Page_1_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> to
+us in a concrete example, close beside us, of what God can make of a man
+when the man is wholly pliable to His will, and the recipient of His
+influences. And so there stands before us the guarantee and the pattern
+of immortal life, the Christ whose Manhood died and lives, who is
+clothed with a spiritual body, who wields royal authority in the Kingdom
+of the Most High. And that is the measure of what God can do with me,
+and wishes to do with me, if I will let Him. Christ is my pattern, and
+the measure of my own possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>To be with Him, where and what He is, is the only adequate result of the
+power that works in us, and of the process that is already begun in us,
+if we are Christian people. You are sometimes&mdash;there is one eminent
+example of it in that great Medicean Chapel at Florence&mdash;a statue
+exquisitely finished in all its limbs, but one part left in the rough.
+That is the best that Christian people come to here. Shall it always be
+so? Do not the very imperfections prophesy completion, and is it not
+certain that the half-finished torso will be carried to the upper
+workshop, and be there disengaged from the dead marble and made to stand
+out in perfect beauty and fullest completeness? Christ is the object of
+our hopes, and no hopes of the Christian life are adequate to the power
+that works in us, or to the progress already made, which do not see in
+the 'energy of the might of the power' which wrought in Christ, the
+example and the guarantee of the exceeding greatness of 'His power which
+is to usward.'</p>
+
+<p>And now, one last word. Besides all these passages which have been
+occupying us, there is another use of this same phrase in this letter
+which presents a very solemn and grim contrast. I can do no better with
+it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_35" id="Page_1_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> than simply read it: 'Ye were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein
+in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according
+to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now
+worketh'&mdash;mark the allusion to the other words that we have been
+referring to&mdash;'in the children of disobedience.' So there you have the
+alternative, either 'dead in trespasses and sins,' whilst living the
+physical and the intellectual life, or partaking of the life of Him 'who
+was dead, and is alive for ever more'; either 'walking according to the
+course of this world,' which is 'disobedience' and 'wrath,' or walking
+'according to the power that worketh in us'; either 'putting on,' or
+rather continuing to wear, 'the old man which is corrupt according to
+the lusts which deceive,' or 'putting on the new man, which according to
+God is created in righteousness and holiness and truth.' The choice is
+before us. May God help us to choose aright!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="GODS_INHERITANCE_AND_OURS" id="GODS_INHERITANCE_AND_OURS"></a>GOD'S INHERITANCE AND OURS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, ... the earnest of
+our inheritance.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 11, 14.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>A dewdrop twinkles into green and gold as the sunlight falls on it. A
+diamond flashes many colours as its facets catch the light. So, in this
+context, the Apostle seems to be haunted with that thought of
+'inheriting' and 'inheritance,' and he recurs to it several times, but
+sets it at different angles, and it flashes back different beauties of
+radiance. For the words, which I have wrenched from their context in the
+first of these two verses, are more accurately rendered, as in the
+Revised Version, in 'whom also we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_36" id="Page_1_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> were made,' <i>not</i> 'have
+obtained'&mdash;'an inheritance.' Whose inheritance? God's! The Christian
+community is God's possession. Then, in my second text, we have the
+converse thought&mdash;'the earnest of <i>our</i> inheritance.' What is the
+Christian's possession? The same God whose possession is the Christian.
+So, then, there is a deep and a wonderful relation between the believing
+soul and God, and however different must be the two sides of that
+relation, the resemblance is greater than the difference. Surely that is
+the deepest, most blessed, and most strength-giving conception of the
+Christian life. Other notions of it lay stress, and that rightly, upon
+certain correspondence between us and God. My faith corresponds to His
+faithfulness and veracity. My obedience corresponds to His authority. My
+weakness lays hold on His strength. My emptiness is replenished by His
+fulness. But here we rise above the region of correspondences into that
+of similarity. In these other aspects the convexity fits the concavity;
+in this aspect the two hemispheres go together and make the complete
+globe. We possess God, and God possesses us, and it is the same set of
+facts which are set forth in the two thoughts, 'We were made an
+inheritance, ... the earnest of our inheritance.'</p>
+
+<p>I. Now, then, let me ask you to look first at this mutual possession.</p>
+
+<p>We possess God; God possesses us. What does that mean? Well, it means
+plainly and chiefly this, a mutual love. For we all know&mdash;and many of us
+thankfully can bear witness to the truth of it in our earthly
+relationships,&mdash;that the one way by which a human spirit can possess a
+spirit is by the sweet mutual love which abolishes 'mine' and 'thine,'
+and all but abolishes 'me' and 'thee.' And so God sets little store by
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_37" id="Page_1_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> ownership which depends on divinity and creation, though, of
+course, that relation brings with it a duty. As the old psalm has it,
+'It is He that hath made us, and we are His'; still, such a relationship
+as this, based upon the connection that subsists between the Maker and
+the work of His hands, is so purely external, and harsh, and
+superficial, that God does not reckon it to be a possession at all.</p>
+
+<p>You perhaps remember how, in the great word which underlies all these
+New Testament conceptions of God's ownership of His people, viz. the
+charter that constituted Israel into a nation, He said, 'Ye shall be
+unto Me a people for a possession above all nations, for all the earth
+is Mine.' And yet, though that ownership and mastership extended over
+everything that His hands had made, He&mdash;if I might so say&mdash;contemned it,
+and relegated it to a secondary position, and told the people that His
+heart hungered for something deeper, more real, more vital than such a
+possession, and that therefore, just because all the earth was His, and
+that was not enough to satisfy His heart, He took them and made them a
+peculiar treasure above all nations. We have, then, to think of that
+great Divine Love which possesses us when He loves us, and when we love
+Him.</p>
+
+<p>But remember that of this sweet commerce and reverberation of love which
+constitutes possession, the origination must be in His heart. 'We love
+Him because He first loved us.' The mirrors are set all round the great
+hall, but their surfaces are cold and lifeless until the great
+candelabrum in the centre is lit, and then, from every polished sheet
+there flashes back an echoing, answering light, and they repeat and
+repeat, until you scarce can tell which is the original<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_38" id="Page_1_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> and which is
+the reflection. But quench the centre-light, and the daughter-radiances
+vanish into darkness. The love on either side is on one side spontaneous
+and underived, and on the other side is secondary and evoked, but it
+<i>is</i> love on both sides. His possession of us is, as it were, the upper
+side, and our possession of Him is, as it were, the underside of the one
+golden bond. It matters not whether you look at the stream with your
+face to its source or with your face to its mouth, the silvery plain is
+the same; and the deepest tie that knits men to God is the same as the
+tie that knits God to men. There is mutual possession because there is
+mutual love.</p>
+
+<p>Then again, in this same thought of mutual possession there lies a
+mutual surrender. For to give is the life-breath of all true love, and
+there is nothing which the loving heart more desires than to be able to
+pour <i>itself</i> out&mdash;much rather than any subordinate gifts&mdash;on its
+object. But that, if it is one-sided, is misery, and only when it is
+reciprocal, is it blessed. God gives Himself to us, as we know, most
+chiefly in that unspeakable gift of His Son, and we possess Him by
+virtue of His self-communication which depends upon His love. And then
+we possess Him, and He possesses us, not less by the answering surrender
+of ourselves, which is the expression of our love. No love subsists if
+it is only recipient; no love subsists if it is only communicated.
+Exports and imports must both be realised in this sweet commerce, and we
+enrich ourselves far more by what we give to the Beloved than by what we
+keep for ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The last, the hardest thing to surrender, is our own wills. To give them
+up by constraint is slavery that degrades. To give them up because we
+love is a sacri<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_39" id="Page_1_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>fice which sanctifies, even in the lowest reaches of
+daily life. And the love that knits us to God is not invested with all
+its blessed possession of Him, until it has surrendered its will, and
+said, 'Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.' The traveller in the old fable
+gathered his cloak around him all the more closely, and held it the more
+tightly, because of the tempest that blew, but when the warm sunbeams
+fell he dropped it. He that would coerce my will, stiffens it into
+rebellion; but when a beloved one says, 'Though I might be much bold to
+enjoin thee, yet for love's sake I rather beseech,' then yielding is
+blessedness, and the giving ourselves away is the finding of God and
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>I need not touch, in more than a word, upon another aspect of this
+mutual possession, brought into view lovingly in many parts of
+Scripture, and that is that there is in it not only mutual love and
+mutual surrender, but mutual indwelling, 'He that dwelleth in love
+dwelleth in God, and God in him.' Jesus Christ has said the same thing
+to us, 'I am the Vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in Me
+bringeth forth much fruit.' We dwell in God, possessing Him; He dwells
+in us, possessing us. We dwell in God, being possessed by Him. He dwells
+in us, being possessed by us. And He moves in the heart that loves, as
+the Master walking through His house, as the divinity is present in the
+temple, and as the soul permeates the body, and is sight in the eye and
+colour in the cheek, and force in the arm, and deftness in the finger,
+and swiftness in the foot. So the indwelling God breathes through all
+the capacities, and all the desires, and all the needs of the soul which
+He inhabits, and makes them all blessed. The very same set of facts&mdash;the
+presence of a divine life in the life of the believing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_40" id="Page_1_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> spirit&mdash;may
+either be looked at from the lower end, and then they are that I possess
+God, and find in Him the nutriment and the stimulus for all my being, or
+may be looked at from the upper end, that He possesses me and finds in
+me capacities and a nature the emptiness of which He fills, and organs
+which He uses. In both cases mutual love, mutual surrender, mutual
+inhabitation, make up God's possession of me and my possession of God.</p>
+
+<p>II. And now let me point you in a very few words to some of the plain,
+practical issues of this mutual possession. God's possession of us
+demands our consecration. 'Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a
+price,' therefore, to live for self is to fly in the face of the very
+purpose of Christ's mission and of God's communication of Himself to us.
+There are slaves who run away from their masters and 'deny the Lord that
+bought them.' <i>We</i> do that whenever, being God's slaves, we set up
+anything else than His will as our law, or anything else than His glory
+as the aim of our lives. To live for self is to die, to die to self is
+to live. And the solemn obligations of that most blessed possession by
+God of us are as solemn as the possession is blessed, and can only be
+discharged when we turn to Him, and yield the whole control of our
+nature to His merciful hand, believing that He has not only the right to
+dispose of us, but that His disposition of us will always coincide with
+our sanest conceptions of good, and our wisest desires for happiness.
+Yield yourselves to God, for He has yielded Himself to you, and in the
+yielding we realise our largest and most blessed possession. It is a
+good bargain to give myself and to get God.</p>
+
+<p>God's possession of us not only demands consecration,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_41" id="Page_1_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> but it ensures
+safety. Remember that great word, 'No man is able to pluck them out of
+My Father's hand.' God is not a careless owner who leaves His treasures
+to be blown by every wind, or filched by every petty robber. He is not
+like the king of some decrepit monarchy, slices of whose territory his
+neighbours are for ever paring off and annexing. What God has God
+preserves. 'He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him
+against that day.' 'They are Mine, saith the Lord, My jewels in the day
+which I make.' But our security depends on our consecration. 'No man is
+able to pluck them out of My Father's hand.' No! But you can wriggle
+yourself out of your Father's hand, if you will. And the security avails
+only so long as you realise that you belong to God, and are living not
+for yourself.</p>
+
+<p>Possessing God we are rich. There is nothing that is truly our wealth
+which remains outside of us, and can be separated from us. 'Shrouds have
+no pockets,' says the Spanish proverb. 'His glory shall not descend
+after him,' says the grim psalm. But if God possesses me He is not going
+to let His treasures be lost in the grave. And if I possess Him then I
+shall pass through death as a beam of light does through some denser
+medium&mdash;a little refracted indeed, but not broken up; and I shall carry
+with me all my wealth to begin another world with. And that is more than
+you can do with the money that you make here. If you have God, you have
+the capital to commence a new condition of things beyond the grave.</p>
+
+<p>And so that mutual possession is the real pledge of immortal life, for
+nothing can be more incredible than that a soul which has risen to have
+God for its very own, and has bowed itself to accept God's ownership<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_42" id="Page_1_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> of
+it, can be affected by such a transient and physical incident as what we
+call death. We rise to the assurance of immortality because we have an
+inheritance which is God Himself. And in that inexhaustible Inheritance
+there lies the guarantee that we shall live while He lives, because He
+lives, and until we have incorporated into our lives all the majesty and
+the purity and the wisdom and the power that belong to us because they
+are God's.</p>
+
+<p>But we have to notice the two words that lie at the beginning of our
+first text&mdash;'<i>In whom</i> we were made an inheritance.' That opens up the
+whole question of the means by which this mutual possession becomes
+possible for us men. Jesus Christ has died. That breaks the bondage
+under which the whole world is held. For the true slavery which
+interferes with the free service and the full possession of God is the
+slavery of self and sin. Jesus Christ has died. 'If the Son make you
+free ye shall be free indeed.' That great sacrifice not only 'breaks the
+power of cancelled sin,' but it also moves the heart, in the measure in
+which we truly accept it, to the love and the surrender which make the
+mutual possession of which we have been speaking. And so it is in Him
+that we become an Inheritance, that God comes to His rights in regard to
+each of us. And it is in Him that we, trusting the Son, have the
+inheritance for ours, and 'are heirs with God, and joint heirs with
+Christ.' So, dear friends, if we would 'be meet for the inheritance of
+the saints in light,' we must unite ourselves to that Lord by faith, and
+through Him and faith in Him, we shall receive 'the remission of sins
+and inheritance among all them that are sanctified.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_43" id="Page_1_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_EARNEST_AND_THE_INHERITANCE" id="THE_EARNEST_AND_THE_INHERITANCE"></a>THE EARNEST AND THE INHERITANCE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the
+purchased possession.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 14.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I have dealt with a portion of this verse in conjunction with the
+fragment of another in this chapter. I tried to show you how much the
+idea of the mutual possession of God by the believing soul, and of the
+believing soul by God, was present to the Apostle's thoughts in this
+context. These two ideas are brought into close juxtaposition in the
+verse before us, for, as you will see if you use the Revised Version,
+the latter clause is there rightly paraphrased by the addition of a
+supplement, and reads 'until the redemption of God's own possession.' So
+that in the first clause we have 'our inheritance,' and in the second we
+have 'God's possession.' This double idea, however, has appended to it
+in this verse some very striking and important thoughts. The possession
+of both sides is regarded as incomplete, for what <i>we</i> have is the
+'earnest' of the 'inheritance,' and '<i>God's</i> own possession' has yet to
+be 'redeemed,' in the fullest sense of that word, at some point in the
+future. An 'earnest' is a fraction of an inheritance, or of a sum
+hereafter to be paid, and is the guarantee and pledge that the whole
+shall one day be handed over to the man who has received the foretaste
+of it in the 'earnest.' The soldier's shilling, the ploughman's 'arles,'
+the clod of earth and tuft of grass which, in some forms of transfer,
+were handed over to the purchaser, were all the guarantee that the rest
+was going to come. So the great future is sealed to us by the small
+present and the experiences of the Christian life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_44" id="Page_1_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> to-day, imperfect,
+fragmentary, defective as they are, are the best prophecy and the most
+glorious pledge of that great to-morrow. The same law of continuity
+which, in application to our characters, and our work, and our daily
+life, makes 'to-morrow as this day, and much more abundant,' in its
+application to the future life makes the life here its parent, and the
+life yonder the prolongation and the raising to its highest power, of
+what is the main though often impeded tendency and direction of the
+present. The earnest of the 'inheritance' is the pledge until the full
+redemption of 'God's own possession.' I wish, then, to draw attention to
+these additional thoughts which are here attached to the main idea with
+which we were dealing in the last sermon.</p>
+
+<p>I. And I ask you to look with me, first, at the incompleteness of the
+present possession.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to show in my last sermon how those great thoughts of God's
+having us, and our having God, rested upon the three ideas of mutual
+love, mutual communication, and mutual indwelling. On His side the love,
+the impartation, the indwelling, are all perfect. On our side they are
+incomplete, broken, defective; and, therefore, the incompleteness on our
+side hinders both God's possession of us, and our possession of Him; so
+that we have but the 'earnest' and not the 'inheritance.' That is to
+say, the ownership may be perfect in idea, but in realisation it is
+imperfect.</p>
+
+<p>And then, if we turn to the word in the other clause, 'the redemption of
+the purchased possession,' that suggests the incompleteness with which
+God as yet owns us. For though the initial act of redeeming is complete,
+yet redemption is a process, and not an act. And we 'are having' it, as
+the Apostle says in another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_45" id="Page_1_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> place very emphatically, in continual and
+growing experience. The estate has been acquired, but has not yet been
+fully subdued. For there are tribes in the jungles and in the hills who
+still hold out against the reign of Him who has won it for Himself. And
+so seeing that the redemption in its fulness is relegated to some point
+in the future, towards which we are progressively approximating, and
+seeing that the best that can be said about the Christian experience
+here is that we have an 'earnest of the inheritance,' we must recognise
+the incompleteness to-day of our possession of God, and of God's
+possession of us.</p>
+
+<p>That is a matter of experience. We know that only too well. 'I have
+God'&mdash;have I? I have a drop at the bottom of a too often unsteadily held
+and spilling cup, and the great ocean rolls unfathomable and boundless
+at my feet. How partial, how fragmentary, how clouded with doubts and
+blank ignorance, how intermittent, and, alas! rare, is our knowledge of
+Him. We sometimes go down our streets between tall houses, walking in
+their shadow, and now and then there is a cross street down which a
+blaze of sunshine comes, and when we reach it, and the houses fall back,
+we see the blue beyond. But we go on, and we are in the shadow again.
+And so our earthly lives are passed, to a large extent, beneath the
+shade of the grimy buildings that we ourselves have put up, and which
+shut out heaven from us, and only now and then a slanting beam comes
+through some opening, and carries wistful thoughts and longings into the
+Empyrean beyond. And how feeble our faith, and how little of His power
+comes into our hearts, and how little of the joy of the Lord is realised
+in our daily experience we all know, and it is sometimes good for us to
+force ourselves to feel it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_46" id="Page_1_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> but an 'earnest' of the 'inheritance'
+that the best of us has.</p>
+
+<p>'God has us.' Has He? Has He my will, which submits itself, and finds
+joy in submitting itself, to Him? How many competitors are there for my
+love which come in in front of Him, and we 'cannot get at Him for the
+press'! How many other motives are dominant in our lives, and how often
+we wrench ourselves away from our submission to Him, and try to set up a
+little dominion of our own, and say, 'Our lives are ours; who is lord
+over us?' Oh, brethren! we have God if we are Christians at all, and God
+has us. But alas! surely all honest experience tells us that there are
+awful gaps in the circle, and that our possession of Him, and His
+possession of us, are wofully incomplete.</p>
+
+<p>Now, let me remind you that this incompleteness is mainly our own fault.
+Of course, I know that for the absolute completeness, either of my
+possession of God or of His of me, I must pass from out this world, and
+enter upon another stage and manner of being. But it is not being in the
+flesh, but it is being dominated by the flesh, that is the reason for
+the incompleteness of our mutual possession. And it is not being in the
+world, but it is being seduced and tyrannised over by the influx of
+worldly desires and thoughts, surging into our hearts, that drives God
+from out of our hearts, and draws us away from the sweet security of
+being possessed by, and living close to, Him. Death does a great deal
+for a man in advancing him in the scale of being, and in changing the
+centre of gravity, as it were, of this life. But there is no reason to
+believe that anything in death, or beyond it, will so alter the set and
+direction of his soul as that it will lead him into that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_47" id="Page_1_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> possession of
+God, and being possessed by Him, which he has not here. There are many
+of us who, if we were to die this instant, would no more have God for
+ours, or belong to God, than we do now. It is our fault if the circle is
+broken into so many segments, if the moments of mutual love, communion,
+and indwelling are so rare and interrupted in our lives. The
+incompleteness which is due to our earthly condition is nothing as
+compared with the incompleteness which is due to our own sin.</p>
+
+<p>But this incompleteness is one which may be progressively diminished,
+and we may be tending moment by moment, and year by year, nearer and
+nearer, and ever nearer, to the unreachable ideal of the entire
+possession of, and being possessed by, our God. There is a continual
+process of redemption of 'God's own possession' going on if a Christian
+man is true to himself and to that Divine Spirit which is the 'earnest'
+of the 'inheritance.' Mark that in my text, as it stands in our Bibles,
+and reads 'until the redemption,' there seems to be merely a pointing
+onwards to a future epoch, but that, in the more accurate rendering
+which you will find in the Revised Version, instead of 'until' we have
+'<i>unto</i>,' and that teaches us that the Divine Spirit, which in one
+aspect is the 'earnest of the inheritance,' is also operating upon men's
+hearts and minds so as to bring about the gradual completion of the
+process of redemption.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear brethren, seeing that by our own faults the possession is
+incomplete, and seeing that in the incompleteness there is given to each
+of us, if we rightly use it, a mighty power which is working ever
+towards the completion, it becomes us day by day to draw into our
+spirits more and more of that divine influence, and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_48" id="Page_1_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> let it work more
+fully upon the sins and faults which, far more than the body of flesh,
+or the connection with the world which it brings about, are the reasons
+for the incompleteness of the possession. We have, if we are wise, the
+task to discharge of daily enclosing, so to speak, more and more of the
+broad land which is all given over to us for our inheritance, but of
+which only so much as we fence in and cultivate, and make our own, is
+our own.</p>
+
+<p>The incompleteness is progressively completed, and it is our work as
+much as God's work to complete it. For though in our text that
+redemption is conceived of as a divine act, it is not an act in which we
+are but passive. The air goes into the lungs, and that oxygenates the
+blood, but the lung has to inflate if the air is to penetrate all its
+vesicles. And so the Spirit which seals us unto the redemption of the
+possession has to be received, held, diffused throughout, and utilised
+by our own effort.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now, secondly, notice the certainty of the completion of the
+incompleteness.</p>
+
+<p>As I have already said, the clod of earth and the handful of grass, the
+servant's wages, the soldier's shilling, are all guarantees that the
+whole of the inheritance or of the pay will be forthcoming in due time.
+And so there emerges from this consideration of the Divine Spirit as the
+'earnest,' the thought that the present experiences of a Christian soul
+are the surest proofs, and the irrefragable guarantees, of that perfect
+future. We ask for proofs of a future life. They may be very useful in
+certain states of mind, and to certain phases of opinion, but as it
+seems to me, far deeper than the region of logical understanding, and
+far more conclusive than anything that can be cast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_49" id="Page_1_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> into the form of a
+syllogism, is the experience of a soul which knows that God is its, and
+that it is God's. 'I think, therefore, I am,' said the philosopher. 'I
+have God; therefore I shall always be,' says the Christian. Whilst that
+evidence is available only for himself, it is absolutely conclusive for
+himself. And the fact that it does spring in the hearts which are
+purest, because nearest God, is no small matter to be considered by men
+who may be groping for proofs of a life to come. If the selected moments
+of the purest devotion here on earth bring with them inevitably the
+confidence of the unending continuance of that communion, then those who
+do not believe in that future have to account for the fact as best they
+may. As for us who do know, though brokenly, and by reason of our own
+faults very imperfectly, what it is to have God, and be had by Him, we
+do not need to travel out to dim and doubtful analogies, nor do we even
+depend entirely upon the fact of a risen Christ ascended to the heavens,
+and living evermore, but we can say, 'I am God's; God is mine, and death
+has no power over such a mutual possession.'</p>
+
+<p>The very incompleteness adds strength to the assurance, for the facts of
+the Christian life are such as to demand, both by its greatness and by
+its littleness, by its loftiness and by its lapses into lowliness, by
+the floodtide of devotion that sometimes sweeps rejoicingly over the
+mud-shoals and by the ebb that sometimes leaves them all black and
+festering, a future life wherein what was manifestly meant to be, and
+capable of being, dominant, supreme, but was hampered and hindered here,
+shall reach its full development, and where the plant that was dwarfed
+in this alien soil, transplanted into that higher house, shall blossom
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_50" id="Page_1_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> bear immortal fruits. The new moon has a ragged edge, and each of
+the protrusions and concavities are the prophecy of the perfect orb
+which shall ere long fill the night with calm light from its silvery
+shield. The incompleteness prophesies completion.</p>
+
+<p>And if the incompleteness is so blessed, what will the completeness be?
+A shilling to a million pounds, Knowledge which is partial and
+intermittent, like the twilight, as contrasted with the blaze of
+noonday, Joy like winter sunshine as compared with the warmth and heat
+of the midday sun at the zenith on the Equator. The 'earnest' of the
+'inheritance' is wealth; the inheritance itself shall be unaccountable
+treasure.</p>
+
+<p>III. And so, lastly, a word about the completion of the possession.</p>
+
+<p>The 'earnest' is always of the same nature as, and a part of the
+'inheritance.' Therefore, since the Holy Spirit is the earnest, the
+conclusion is plain, that the inheritance is nothing less than God
+Himself. Heaven is to possess God, and to be possessed by Him. That is
+the highest conception that we can form of that future life. And it is
+sorely to be lamented that subsidiary conceptions, which are all useful
+in their subordinate places, have, by popular Christianity, been far too
+much elevated into being the central blessedness of that future heaven.
+It is all right that we should cast the things which it is 'impossible
+for men to utter' into the shape of symbols which may a little relieve
+the necessary inarticulateness; but golden streets, and crystal
+pavements, and white robes, and golden palms, and all such
+representations, are but the dimmest shadows of that which they intend
+to express, and do often, as is the vice of all symbols, obscure. We can
+only conceive of a condition of which we have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_51" id="Page_1_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> had no experience, by the
+two ways of symbolism and of negation. We can say, 'There shall be no
+night there; there shall be no curse there; they need no candle, neither
+light of the sun; they rest not day nor night; there shall be no more
+death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain,
+for the former things are passed away.' But all these negations, like
+their sister symbols, are but surface work, and we have to go deeper
+than all of them.</p>
+
+<p>But to possess God, and to be possessed by Him, and in either case
+fully, perfectly in degree, progressively in measure, eternal in
+duration, is the Heaven of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>If that is the true conception of the inheritance, then it follows
+indubitably that such a Heaven is not for everybody. God would fain have
+us all for His there, as He would fain have each of us here and now, but
+it may not be. There are creatures which live beneath stones, and if you
+turn their coverings up, and let light fall on them, it kills them. And
+there are men who have refused to belong to God here, and refused to
+claim their portion in Him, and such cannot possess that true Heaven
+which is God Himself. Then, if its possession is not a mere matter of
+divine volition, giving a man what he is not capable of receiving, it
+plainly follows that the preparation must begin now and here by the
+incomplete possession of which my text is discoursing. And the way of
+such preparation is plain. The context says: 'In whom, after that ye
+believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.' Faith in
+Jesus Christ, and trust in Him and His work as my forgiveness, my
+acceptance, my changed nature and heart&mdash;is the condition of being
+'sealed' with that Spirit whose sealing of us is the condition of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_52" id="Page_1_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> our
+love, our surrender, and mutual indwelling, which are our possession of
+God and being possessed by Him, and are the condition of our future
+complete possession of the 'inheritance.' We must begin with faith in
+Christ. Then comes the sealing, then comes the earnest, then comes the
+growing redemption, and in due time shall come the fulness of the
+possession. 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ' if thou wouldst have the
+earnest, whilst thou dost tabernacle in tents in the wilderness of Time,
+and if thou wouldst have the inheritance when thou crossest the flood
+into the goodly land.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_HOPE_OF_THE_CALLING" id="THE_HOPE_OF_THE_CALLING"></a>THE HOPE OF THE CALLING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That ye may know what is the hope of His calling.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 18.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>A man's prayers for others are a very fair thermometer of his own
+religious condition. What he asks for them will largely indicate what he
+thinks best for himself; and how he asks it will show the firmness of
+his own faith and the fervour of his own feeling. There is nothing
+colder than the intercession of a cold Christian; and, on the other
+hand, in no part of the fervid Apostle Paul's writings do his words come
+more winged and fast, or his spirit glow with greater fervour of
+affection and holy desire than in his petitions for his friends.</p>
+
+<p>In that great prayer, of which my text forms a part, we have his
+response to the good news that had reached him of the steadfastness in
+faith and abundance in love of these Ephesian Christians. As the best
+expression of his glad love he asks for them the knowledge of three
+things, of which my text is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_53" id="Page_1_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> first, and the other two are the
+'riches of the glory of the inheritance' and 'the exceeding greatness of
+God's power.'</p>
+
+<p>Now if we take the 'hope' in my text, as is often done, as meaning the
+thing hoped for, there seems to be but a shadowy difference between the
+first and the second of these subjects of the apostolic petition.
+Whereas, if we take it as meaning, not the object on which the emotion
+is fixed, but the emotion itself, then all the three stand in a natural
+gradation and connection. We have, first, the Christian emotion; then
+the object upon which it is fixed; 'the glory of the inheritance'; then
+the power by which the latter is brought and the former is realised. We
+shall consider the second and third of these petitions in following
+sermons. For the present I confine myself to this first, the Apostle's
+great desire for Christians who had already made considerable progress
+in the Christian life, 'that they may know,' by experiencing it, 'what
+is the hope of His calling.'</p>
+
+<p>I. Now the first thought that these words suggest to me is this, that
+the Christian hope is based upon the facts of Christian experience.</p>
+
+<p>What does the Apostle mean by naming it 'the hope of his calling'? He
+means this, that the great act of the divine mercy revealed to us in the
+Gospel, by which God summons and invites men to Himself, will naturally
+produce in those who have yielded to it a hope of immortal and perfect
+life. Because God has called men, therefore the man who has yielded to
+the call may legitimately, and must, if he is to do his duty, cherish
+such a hope. It is clear enough that this is so, inasmuch as, unless
+there be a heaven of completeness for us who have yielded to the summons
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_54" id="Page_1_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> obeyed the invitation of God in His Gospel, His whole procedure is
+enigmatical and bewildering. The fact of the call is inexplicable; the
+cost of it is no less so. It was not worth while for God to make the
+world unless with respect to another which was to follow. It is still
+less worth His while to redeem the world if the results of that
+redemption, as they are exhibited here and now, and as they are capable
+of being exhibited in this present condition of things, are all that are
+to flow from it. It was not worth Christ's while to die, it was not
+worth God's while to send His Son, there was no sense or consistency in
+that great voice that echoes from heaven, calling us to love and serve
+Him, unless, beyond the jangling contradictions, and imperfect
+attainments, and foiled aspirations, and fragmentary faith, and broken
+services of earth, there be a region of completeness where all that was
+tendency here shall have become effect; and all that was but in germ
+here, and sorely frostbitten by the ungenial climate, and shrivelled by
+the foul vapours in the atmosphere, shall blossom and burgeon into
+eternal life. The Christian life, as it is to-day, in its attainments
+and imperfections, is at once the witness of the reality of the power
+that has produced it, and clamantly calls for a sphere and environment
+in which that power shall be able to produce the effects which it is
+capable of producing.</p>
+
+<p>God is 'not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should
+repent.' Men begin grand designs which never get further than the paper
+that they are drawn on; or they build a porch, and then they are
+bankrupt, or change their minds, or die, and the palace remains
+unrealised, and all that pass by mock and say, 'This man began to build
+and was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_55" id="Page_1_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> not able to finish.' But God's designs are certain of
+accomplishment. Unless we are to be reduced to a state of utter
+intellectual bewilderment and confusion, and forgo our belief in His
+veracity and resources to execute His designs, the design that lies in
+the calling must needs lead on to the realm of perfectness. If we
+consider the agent by which it is effected, even the risen Christ; if we
+consider the cost at which it was accomplished, even the death on the
+Cross, the mission of His Son, and His assumption of the limitations of
+an incarnate life; if we consider the manifest potencies of the power
+that He has brought into operation in the present Christian life; and if
+we consider, side by side with these, the stark, staring contradictions
+and as manifest inevitable limitations of the effects of that power, His
+calling carries in its depths the assurance that what He means shall be
+done, that Jesus Christ has not died in vain, that He has not ascended
+to fill a solitary throne, but is the Firstfruits of a great harvest;
+and that we shall one day be all that it is in the gospel of our
+salvation to make us, unhindered by the limitations and unthwarted by
+the antagonisms of this poor human life of ours. Unless there be a
+heaven in which all desires shall be satisfied, all evils removed, all
+good perfected, all ragged trees made symmetrical and full-grown, and
+all souls that love Him radiant with His own perfect image, then the
+light that seemed a light from heaven is the most delusive of all the
+marsh-fires of earth, and nothing in the illusions of sense or of men's
+cunning is so cruel or so tragic as the calling that seemed to be the
+voice of God, and summoned us to a heaven which was only a dream.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_56" id="Page_1_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II. And so, secondly, notice how this hope of our text is in some sense
+the very topstone of the Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>Paul has heard, concerning these people in Ephesus, of their faith and
+love. And because he has heard of these, therefore he brings this
+prayer. These two&mdash;the faith which apprehends the manifestation of God
+in Jesus Christ, and the love which that faith produces in the heart
+that accepts the revelation of the infinite love&mdash;are crowned by, and
+are imperfect without, and naturally lead on to the brightness of this
+great hope, Faith&mdash;the reliance of the spirit upon the veracity of the
+revealing God&mdash;gives hope its contents; for the Christian hope is not
+spun out of your own imaginations, nor is it the mere making objective
+in a future life of the unfulfilled desires of this disappointing
+present, but it is the recognition by the trusting spirit of the great
+and starry truths that are flashed upon it by the Word of God. Faith
+draws back the curtain, and Hope gazes into the supernal abysses. My
+hope, if it be anything else than the veriest will-o'-the-wisp and
+delusion, is the answer of my heart to the revealed truth of God.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly the love which flows from faith not only necessarily leads on
+to the expectation of union being perfected with the object of its warm
+affection, but also so works upon the heart and character as that the
+false and seducing loves which draw away, like some sluice upon a river,
+the current of life from its true channel, are all sanctified and no
+more hinder hope. Loving, we hope for that which, unless we loved, would
+not draw desires nor yield foretastes of sweetness which, like perfumed
+oil, feed the pure flame of hope.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_57" id="Page_1_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The triad of Christian graces is completed by Hope. Without her fair
+presence something is wanting to the completeness of her elder sisters.
+The great Campanile at Florence, though it be inlaid with glowing
+marbles, and fair sculptures, and perfect in its beauty, wants the
+gilded, skyward-pointing pinnacle of its topmost pyramid; and so it
+stands incomplete. And thus faith and love need for their crowning and
+completion the topmost grace that looks up to the sky, and is sure of a
+mansion there.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, our Christianity is wofully imperfect unless faith and love
+find their acme, their outstretching completion, in this Christian hope.
+Do you seek to complete your faith and love by a living hope full of
+immortality?</p>
+
+<p>III. Thirdly, notice how this hope is an all-important element in the
+Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle asks for it as the best thing that can befall these Ephesian
+Christians, as the one thing that they need to make them strong and good
+and blessed. There are many other aspects of desire for them which
+appear in other parts of this letter. But here all Christian progress is
+regarded as being held in solution and included in vigorous hope.</p>
+
+<p>Why is the activity of hope thus important for Christian life? Because
+it stimulates effort, calms sorrows, takes the fascination out of
+temptations, supplies a new aim for life and a new measure for the
+things of time and sense.</p>
+
+<p>If we lived, as we ought to live, in the habitual apprehension of the
+great future awaiting all real Christians, would it not change the whole
+aspect of life? The world is very big when it is looked at from any
+point upon its surface; but suppose it could be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_58" id="Page_1_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> looked at from the
+central sun, how large would it appear then? We can shift our station in
+like fashion, and then we get the true measure at once of the
+insignificance and of the greatness of life. This world means nothing
+worthy, except as an introduction to another. Not that thereby there
+will follow in any wise man contempt for the present, for the very same
+reference to the future which dwarfs the greatnesses and dwindles the
+sorrows, and almost extinguishes the dazzling lights of this present,
+does also lift it to its true significance and importance. It is the
+vestibule of that future, and that future is conditioned throughout by
+the results of the few years that we live here. An apprenticeship may be
+a very poor matter, looked at in itself; and the boy may say What is the
+use of my working at all these trivial things? but, since it is
+apprenticeship, it is worth while to attend to every trifle in its
+course, for attention to them will affect the standing of the man all
+his days.</p>
+
+<p>Here and now we are getting ready for the great workshop yonder;
+learning the trick of the tools, and how to use our fingers and our
+powers, and, when the schooling is done, we shall be set to nobler work,
+and receive ample wages for the years here. Because that great
+'to-morrow will be as this day' of earthly life, 'and much more
+abundant,' therefore it is no trifle to work amongst the trifles; and
+nothing is small which may tell on our condition yonder. The least
+deflection from the straight line, however acute may be the angle which
+the divergent lines enclose at the starting, and however small may seem
+to be the deviation from parallelism, will, if prolonged to infinity,
+have room between the two for all the stars,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_59" id="Page_1_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> and the distance between
+them will be that the one is in heaven and the other is in hell. And so
+it is a great thing to live amongst the little things, and life gains
+its true significance when we dwarf and magnify it by linking it with
+the world to come.</p>
+
+<p>If we only kept that hope bright before us, how little discomforts and
+sorrows and troubles would matter! Life would become 'a solemn scorn of
+ills.' It does not matter much what kind of cabin accommodation we have
+if we are only going a short voyage; the main thing is to make the port.
+If we, as Christian people, cherish, as we ought to do, this great hope,
+then we shall be able to control, and not to despise but to exalt this
+fleeting and transient scene, because it is linked inseparably with the
+life that is to come.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Lastly, this hope needs enlightened eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle prays that God may give to these Ephesians 'the spirit of
+wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,' and then he adds, as the
+result of that gift, the desire that the Ephesian believers may have
+'the eyes of their hearts enlightened.' That is a remarkable expression.
+It does not mean, as an English reader might suppose it to mean, that
+the affections are the agents by which this knowledge reaches us; but
+'heart' is here used, as it often is in Scripture, as a general
+expression for the whole inward life, and all that the Apostle means is
+that, by the gift of the Divine Spirit of wisdom, a man's inner nature
+may be so touched as to be capable of perceiving and grasping the 'hope
+of the calling.'</p>
+
+<p>Observe, too, the language, 'that ye may know the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_60" id="Page_1_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> hope.' How can you
+<i>know</i> a hope? How do you know any kind of feeling? By having it. The
+only way of knowing what is the hope is to hope, and this is only
+possible by dint of these eyes of the understanding being enlightened.
+For our inward nature, as we have it, and as we use it, without the
+touch of that Divine Spirit, is so engrossed with this present that the
+far-off blessedness to which my text refers has no chance of entering
+there. No man can look at something beside him with one eye, and at
+something half a mile off with the other. You have to focus the eye
+according to the object; and he who is gazing upon the near is thereby
+made blind to that which is afar off. If we go crawling along the low
+levels with our eyes upon the dust, then of course we cannot see the
+crown above.</p>
+
+<p>We need more than the historical revelation of the light in order to
+enlighten the inward nature. There is many a man here now who knows all
+about the immortality that is brought to light by Jesus Christ just as
+well as the Christian man whose soul is full of the hope of it, and who
+yet, for all his knowledge, does not know the hope, because he has not
+felt it. You have to get further than to the acceptance intellectually
+of the historical facts of a risen and ascended Saviour before there can
+be, in your heart, any vital hope of immortality. The inward eye must be
+cleared and strengthened, cross lights must be shut out so that we may
+direct the single eye of our hearts towards the great objects which
+alone are worthy of its fixed contemplation. And we cannot do that
+without a divine help, that Spirit of wisdom which will fill our hearts
+if we ask for it, which will fix our affections, which will clear our
+eyesight, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_61" id="Page_1_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> will withdraw it from seeing vanity as well as give it
+reality to see.</p>
+
+<p>But we must observe the conditions. Since this clearness of hope comes
+not merely from the acceptance as a truth of the fact of Christ's
+Resurrection and Ascension, but comes through the gift of that Divine
+Spirit, then to have it you must ask for it. Christian people, do you
+ask for it? Do you ever pray&mdash;I do not mean in words, but in real
+desire&mdash;that God would help you to keep steadily before you that great
+future to which we are all going so fast? If you do you will get the
+answer. Seek for that Spirit; use it, and do not resist its touches. Do
+not fix your gaze on the world when God is trying to draw you to fix it
+upon Himself. Think more about Jesus Christ, more about God's high
+calling, live nearer to Him, and try more honestly, more earnestly, more
+prayerfully, more habitually, even amidst all the troubles and
+difficulties and trivialities of each day, to cultivate that great
+faculty of joyful and assured hope.</p>
+
+<p>Surely God did not endue us with the power of hoping that we might fling
+it all away on trivial, transient things. We are all far too
+short-sighted; our fault is not that we do not hope, but that we hope
+for such near things, for such small things, like the old mariners who
+had no compass nor sextant, and were obliged to creep timidly along the
+coasts, and steer from headland to headland. But we ought to launch
+boldly out into mid-ocean, knowing that we have before us that star that
+cannot guide us amiss. Do not set your hopes on the things that perish,
+for if you do, hopes fulfilled and hopes disappointed will be equally
+bitter in your mouths. And you older<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_62" id="Page_1_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> people who, like myself, are
+drawing near the end of your days, and have little else left to hope for
+in this world, do you see to it that your anticipations extend 'above
+the ruinable skies.' <i>There</i> is an object beyond experience, above
+imagination, without example, for which the creation wants a comparison,
+we an apprehension, and the Word of God itself a sufficient revelation.
+'It doth not yet appear what we shall be.' God hath called us to His
+eternal kingdom and glory; let us seek to walk in the light of the 'hope
+of His calling.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="GODS_INHERITANCE_IN_THE_SAINTS" id="GODS_INHERITANCE_IN_THE_SAINTS"></a>GOD'S INHERITANCE IN THE SAINTS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That ye may know what is the riches of the glory of His
+inheritance in the saints.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 18.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The misery of Hope is that it so often owes its materials to the
+strength of our desires or to the activity of our imagination. But when
+mere wishes or fancies spin the thread, Hope cannot weave a lasting
+fabric. And so one of the old prophets, in speaking of the delusive
+hopes of man, says that they are like 'spiders' webs,' and 'shall not
+become garments.' Paul, then, having been asking for these Ephesian
+Christians that they might have hopes lofty and worthy, and such as
+God's summons to them would inspire, passes on to ask that they might
+have the material out of which they could weave such hope, namely, a
+sure and clear knowledge of the future blessings. The language in which
+he describes that future is remarkable&mdash;'the riches of the glory of His
+inheritance in the saints.' He calls it God's inheritance, not as
+meaning that God is the Inheritor, but the Giver. He speaks of it as
+'in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_63" id="Page_1_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> the saints,' meaning that, just as the land of Canaan was
+distributed amongst tribes and families, and each man got his own little
+plot, so that broad land is parted out amongst those who are 'partakers
+of the inheritance of the saints in light.'</p>
+
+<p>And so my text suggests to me three points to which I seek to call your
+attention. First, the inheritance; second, the heirs; and third, the
+heirs' present knowledge of their future possession.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, note the inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>Now we must discharge from the word some of its ordinary associations.
+There is no reference to the thought of succession in it, as the mere
+English reader is accustomed to think&mdash;to whom inheritance means
+possession by the death of another. The idea is simply that of
+possession. The figure which underlies the word is, of course, that of
+the ancient partition of the land of Canaan amongst the tribes, but we
+must go a great deal deeper than that in order to understand its whole
+sweep and fulness of meaning.</p>
+
+<p>What is the portion for a soul? God. God is Heaven, and Heaven is God.
+No interpretation of 'the inheritance,' however it may run into cheap
+and vulgar sensuous descriptions of a future glory, has come within
+sight of the meaning of the word, unless it has grasped this as the
+central thought: 'Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon
+earth that I desire beside Thee.' Only God can be the portion of a human
+spirit. And none else can fill the narrowest and the smallest of man's
+needs.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, if there were realised all the accumulated changes of progress
+in blessedness, and the withdrawal of all external causes of disquiet
+and weariness and weeping, still the heart would hunger and be empty of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_64" id="Page_1_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+its true possession unless God Himself had flowed into it. It were but a
+poor advancement and the gain of a loss, if yearnings were made
+immortal, and the aching vacuity, which haunts every soul that is parted
+from God, were cursed with immortality. It would be so, if it be not
+true that the inheritance is nothing less than the fuller possession of
+God Himself.</p>
+
+<p>And how do men possess God? How do we possess one another, here and now?
+By precisely the same way, only indefinitely expanded and exalted, do we
+possess Him here, and shall we possess Him hereafter. Heart to heart is
+joined by love which is mutual and interpenetrating possession; where
+'mine' and 'thine' become blended, like the several portions of the one
+ray of white light, in the blessed word 'ours.' Contemplation makes us
+possessors of God. Assimilation to His character makes us own and have
+Him. They who love and gaze, and are being changed by still degrees into
+His likeness, possess Him. This is the central idea of man's future
+destiny and highest blessedness, a union with God closer and more
+intimate in degree, but yet essentially the same in kind, as is here
+possible amidst the shows and vanities and wearinesses of this mortal
+life. 'His servants shall serve Him, and see His face, and His name
+shall be on their foreheads.' Obedience, contemplation, transformation,
+these are the hands by which we here lay hold on God; and they in the
+heavens grasp Him just as we here on earth may do. The 'inheritance' is
+God Himself.</p>
+
+<p>Surely that is in accordance with the whole teaching of Scripture, and
+is but the expansion of plain words which tell us that we 'are heirs of
+God.' If that be so, then all the other subsidiary blessings which have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_65" id="Page_1_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+been, to the sore detriment of Christian anticipation and of Christian
+life in a hundred ways, elevated into disproportionate importance, fall
+into their right places, and are more when they are looked upon as
+secondary than when they are looked upon as primary.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, brethren! neither the sensuous metaphors which, in accommodation to
+our weakness, Scripture has used to paint that future so that we may, in
+some measure, comprehend it, nor the translation of these, in so far as
+they refer to circumstances and externals, are enough for us. It is
+blessed to know that 'there shall be no night there'&mdash;blessed to grasp
+all those sweet negatives which contradict the miseries of the world,
+and to think of no sin, no curse, no tears, no sighing nor sorrow,
+neither any more pain, 'because the former things have passed away.' It
+is sweet and ennobling to think that, when we are discharged of the load
+of this cumbrous flesh, we shall be much more ourselves, and able to see
+where now is but darkness, and to feel where now is but vacancy. It is
+blessed to think of the recognising of lost and loved ones. But all
+these blessednesses, heaped together, as it seems to me, would become
+sickeningly the same if prolonged through eternity, unless we had God
+for our very own. <i>Eternal</i> is an awful word, even when the noun that
+goes with it is <i>blessedness</i>. And I know not how even the redeemed
+could be saved, as the long ages rolled on, from the oppression of
+monotony, and the feeling, 'I would not live always,' unless God was
+'the strength of their hearts, and their portion for ever.' We must rise
+above everything that merely applies to changes in our own natures and
+in our relations to the external universe, and to other orders of
+creatures; and grasp, as the hidden sweetness that lies in the calyx of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_66" id="Page_1_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> gorgeous flower, the possession of God Himself as the rapture of
+our joy and the heaven of our heaven.</p>
+
+<p>And if that be so, then these accumulated words with which the Apostle,
+in his fiery, impetuous way, tries to set forth the greatness of what he
+is speaking about, receive a loftier meaning than they otherwise would
+have.</p>
+
+<p>'The riches of the glory of His inheritance'&mdash;now that word 'riches,' or
+'wealth,' is a favourite of Paul's; and in this single letter occurs, if
+I count rightly, five times. In addition to our text, it is used twice
+in connection with God's grace, 'the riches of His grace' once in
+connection with Jesus, 'the unsearchable riches of Christ'; and once in
+a similar connection to, though with a different application from, our
+text, 'the riches of His glory.' Always, you see, it is applied to
+something that is special and properly divine. And here, therefore, it
+applies, not to the abundance of any creatural good, however exuberant
+and inexhaustible the store of it may be, but simply and solely to that
+unwearying energy, that self-feeding and ever-burning and never-decaying
+light, which is God. Of Him alone it can be said that work does not
+exhaust, nor Being tend to its own extinction, nor expenditure of
+resources to their diminution. The guarantee for eternal blessedness is
+the 'riches' of the eternal God, and so we may be sure that no time can
+exhaust, nor any expenditure empty, either His storehouse or our wealth.</p>
+
+<p>And again, the 'glory' is not the lustrous light, however dazzling to
+our feeble eyes that may be, of any creature that reflects the light of
+God, but it is the far-flashing and never-dying radiance of His own
+manifestation of Himself to the hearts and souls of them that love Him.
+And so the 'inheritance is incorruptible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_67" id="Page_1_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> and undefiled, and fadeth not
+away'; not merely by reason of the communicated will of God operating
+upon creatures whom He preserves untarnished by corruption, and ungnawed
+by decay, but because He Himself is the 'inheritance,' and on Him time
+hath no power. On His wealth all His creatures may hang for ever; and it
+shall be as it was in the sweet parable of the miracle of old, the
+fragments that remain will be more than when the meal began. 'The riches
+of the glory of His inheritance.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Now notice, secondly, the heirs.</p>
+
+<p>The words of my text receive, perhaps, their best commentary and
+explanation in those words which the writer of them heard, on the
+Damascus road, when the voice from heaven spoke to him about men
+'obtaining an inheritance among them that are sanctified.' It almost
+sounds like an echo of that long past, but never-to-be-forgotten voice,
+when our Apostle writes as he does in our text.</p>
+
+<p>Now what does he mean by 'saints'? Who are these amongst whom the broad
+acres of that infinite prairie are to be parted out? The word has
+attracted to itself contemptuous meanings and ascetical meanings, and
+meanings which really deny the true democracy of Christianity and the
+equality of all believers in the sight of God. But its scriptural use
+has none of these narrowing and confusing associations adhering to it,
+nor does it even directly and at first mean, as we generally take it to
+mean, pure men, holy in the sense of clean and righteous. But something
+goes before that phase of meaning, and it is this&mdash;a saint is a man
+separated and set apart for God, as His property. That is the true
+meaning of the word. It is its meaning as it is applied to the vessels
+of the Temple, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_68" id="Page_1_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> priests, the services, and the altar. It is its
+meaning, only with the necessary substitution of spirit for body, as it
+is applied in the New Testament as a designation co-extensive with that
+of believers.</p>
+
+<p>How does a man belong to God?</p>
+
+<p>We asked a minute or two ago how God belonged to men. The answer to the
+converse question is almost identical. A man belongs to God by the
+affection of his heart, by the submission of his will, by the reference
+of his actions to Him; and he who thus belongs to God, in the same act
+in which he gives himself to God, receives God as his possession. The
+thing must be reciprocal. 'All mine is Thine'; and God answers, 'And all
+Mine is thine.' He ever meets our 'O Lord, I yield myself to Thee,' with
+His 'And My child, I give Myself to thee.' It is so in regard of our
+earthly loves. It is so in regard of our relations to Him. And that
+being the case, purity, which is generally taken by careless readers as
+being the main idea of sanctity, will follow this self-surrender, which
+is the basis of all goodness, everywhere and always.</p>
+
+<p>If that be true, and I do not think it can be effectively denied, then
+the next step is a very plain one, and that is that for the perfect
+possession of God, which is heaven, the same thing is needed in its
+perfection which is required for the partial possession of Him that
+makes the Christian life of earth. And just as here we get Him for ours
+in proportion as we give up ourselves to be His, so yonder the
+inheritance belongs, and can only belong to, 'the saints.' So, then, one
+can see that there is nothing arbitrary in this limitation of a
+possession, which in its very nature cannot go beyond the bounds which
+are thus marked out for it. If heaven were the vulgar thing that some of
+you think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_69" id="Page_1_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> it, if that future life were desirable simply because you
+escaped from some external punishment and got all sorts of outward
+blessings and joys, felicities and advantages, hung round the neck, or
+pinned upon the breast, as they do to successful fighters, why then, of
+course, there might be partiality in the distribution of the
+decorations. But if that possession hinges upon our yielding ourselves
+to Him, then there is not an arbitrary link in the whole chain. Faith is
+set forth as the condition of heaven, because faith is the means of
+union with Christ, by and from whom alone we draw the motives for
+self-surrender and the power for sanctity. You cannot have heaven unless
+you have God. That is step number one. You cannot have God unless you
+have 'holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.' That is step
+number two. You cannot have holiness without faith. That is step number
+three. 'An inheritance among them that are sanctified'; and then there
+is added, 'by faith which is in Me.'</p>
+
+<p>It is clear, too, what a fatal delusion some of us are under who think
+that we shall, and fancy that we should like to, as we say, 'go to
+heaven when we die.' Why, heaven is here, round about you, a present
+heaven in the imitation of God, in the practice of righteousness, in the
+cultivation of dependence upon Him, in the yielding of yourselves up to
+Him. Heaven is here, and by your own choice you stop outside of it.
+There must be a correspondence between environment and nature for
+blessedness. 'The mind is its own place,' as the great Puritan poet
+taught us, 'and makes a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' Fishes die on
+the shore, and the man that drew them out dies in the water. Gills
+cannot breathe where lungs are useful, and lungs cannot, where gills
+come into play. If you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_70" id="Page_1_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> have not here and now the holiness which knits
+you to God, and gives you possession of Him, you would not like
+'heaven,' if it were possible to carry you to that place, in so far as
+it is a place. It is rather strange, if you hope to go to heaven when
+you die, that you should be very unwilling to spend a little time in it
+whilst you are alive, and that you should expect blessedness then from
+that presence of God which brings you no blessedness now.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, we have here the heirs' present knowledge of their future
+blessedness.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle asks that these men may know a thing that clearly seems
+unknowable. It is an impossible petition, we might be ready to say,
+because it is clear enough that there can be no true knowledge of the
+conditions and details of that future life. The dark mountains that lie
+between us and it hide their secret well, and few or no stray beams have
+reached us. An unborn babe, or a chrysalis in a hole in the ground or in
+a chink of a tree, might think as wisely about its future condition as
+we can do about that life beyond. There can be no knowledge until there
+is experience.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, does Paul mean by framing such a petition as this? The
+answer is found in noticing that the knowledge which he is imploring
+here is a consequence of a previous knowledge. For, in a former verse,
+he prays that these men may have 'the spirit of wisdom in the knowledge
+of God'; and when they have got the knowledge of God he thinks that they
+will have got the knowledge of 'the riches of the glory of His
+inheritance in the saints.' Now, turn that into other words, and it is
+just this, that the knowledge of God, which comes by faith and love
+here, is in kind so identical with the fullest and loftiest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_71" id="Page_1_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> riches of
+the knowledge of Him hereafter, that, if we have the one, we are not
+without the other. The one is in germ, the other, no doubt, full blown;
+the one is the twinkling of the rushlight, as it were, the other is the
+blaze of the sunshine. The two states of being are so correspondent that
+from the one we draw our clearest knowledge of the other. There are
+telescopes, in using which you do not look up when you want to see the
+stars, but down on to a reflecting mirror, and there you see them. Such
+a reflecting mirror, though it be sometimes muddied and dimmed and
+always very small, are the experiences of the Christian soul here.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear friends, if we want to know as much as may be known of the
+blessedness of heaven, let us seek to possess as much as may be
+possessed of the knowledge and love of God on earth. Then we shall know
+the centre, at any rate; and that is light, though the circumference may
+be very dark. Much will remain obscure. That is of very small
+consequence to Hope, which does not need information half so much as it
+needs assurance. Like some flower in the cranny of the rock, it can
+spread a broad bright blossom on little soil, if only it be firmly
+rooted.</p>
+
+<p>The path for us all is plain. Come to Jesus Christ as sinful men, and
+take what He has given, who has given Himself for us. Touched by His
+love, let us love Him back again, and yield ourselves to Him, and He
+will give Himself to us. They who can say, 'O Lord! I am Thine,' are
+sure to hear from heaven, 'I am thine.' And they who possess, in being
+possessed by, God Himself, do not need to die in order to go to heaven,
+but are at least doorkeepers in the house of the Lord now, and stand
+where they can see into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_72" id="Page_1_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> inner sanctuary which they will one day
+tread. A life of faith brings Heaven to us, and thereby gives us the
+surest and the clearest knowledge of what we shall be, and have, when we
+are brought to heaven.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_MEASURE_OF_IMMEASURABLE_POWER" id="THE_MEASURE_OF_IMMEASURABLE_POWER"></a>THE MEASURE OF IMMEASURABLE POWER</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That ye may know ... what is the exceeding greatness of His power
+to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty
+power, which He wrought in Christ.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 19, 20.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'The riches of the glory of the inheritance' will sometimes quench
+rather than stimulate hope. He can have little depth of religion who has
+not often felt that the transcendent glory of that promised future
+sharpens the doubt&mdash;'and can <i>I</i> ever hope to reach it?' Our paths are
+strewn with battlefields where we were defeated; how should we expect
+the victor's wreath? And so Paul does not think that he has asked all
+which his friends in Ephesus need when he has asked that they may know
+the hope and the inheritance. There is something more wanted, something
+more even for our knowledge of these, and that is the knowledge of the
+power which alone can fulfil the hope and bring the inheritance. His
+language swells and peals and becomes exuberant and noble with his
+theme. He catches fire, as it were, as he thinks about this power that
+worketh in us. It is 'exceeding.' Exceeding what? He does not tell us,
+but other words in this letter, in the other great prayer which it
+contains, may help us to supply the missing words. He speaks of the
+'love of Christ which passeth knowledge,' and of God being 'able to do
+exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.' The power
+which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_73" id="Page_1_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> really at work in Christian men to-day is in its nature
+properly transcendent and immeasurable, and passes thought and desire
+and knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>And yet it has a measure. 'According to the working of the strength of
+the might which He wrought in Christ.' Is that heaping together of
+synonyms or all but synonyms, mere tautology? Surely not. Commentators
+tell us that they can distinguish differences of meaning between the
+words, in that the first of them is the more active and outward, and the
+last of them is the more inward. And so they liken them to fruit and
+branch and root; but we need simply say that the gathering together of
+words so nearly co-extensive in their meaning is witness to the effort
+to condense the infinite within the bounds of human tongue, to speak the
+unspeakable; and that these reiterated expressions, like the blows of
+the billows that succeed one another on the beach, are hints of the
+force of the infinite ocean that lies behind.</p>
+
+<p>And then the Apostle, when he has once come in sight of his risen Lord,
+as is his wont, is swept away by the ardour of his faith and the
+clearness of his vision, and breaks from his purpose in order to dilate
+on the glories of his King. We do not need to follow him into that. I
+limit myself now to the words which I have read as my text, with only
+such reference to the magnificent passage which succeeds as may be
+necessary for the exposition of this.</p>
+
+<p>I. So, then, I ask you to look, first, at the measure and example of the
+immeasurable power that works in Christian men.</p>
+
+<p>'According to the working of the strength of the might which He wrought
+in Christ'&mdash;the Resurrection, the Ascension, the session at the right
+hand of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_74" id="Page_1_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> God, the rule over all creatures, and the exaltation above all
+things on earth or in the heavens&mdash;these are the facts which the Apostle
+brings before us as the pattern-works, the <i>chefs-d'&oelig;uvre</i> of the
+power that is operating in all Christians. The present glories of the
+ascended Christ are glories possessed by a Man, and, that being so, they
+are available as evidences and measures of the power which works in
+believing souls. In them we see the possibilities of humanity, the ideal
+for man which God had when He created and breathed His blessing upon
+him. It is one of ourselves who has strength enough to bear the burden
+of the glory, one of ourselves who can stand within the blaze of
+encircling and indwelling Divinity and be unconsumed. The possibilities
+of human nature are manifest there. If we want to know what the Divine
+Power can make of us, let us turn to look with the eye of faith upon
+what it has made of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>But such a thought, glorious as it is, still leaves room for doubt as to
+my personal attainment of such an ideal. Possibility is much, but we
+need solid certainty. And we find it in the truth that the bond between
+Christ and those who truly love and trust Him is such as that the
+possibility must become a reality and be consolidated into a certainty.
+The Vine and its branches, their Head and the members, the Christ and
+His Church, are knit together by such closeness of union as that
+wheresoever and whatsoever the one is, there and that must the others
+also be. Therefore, when doubts and fears, and consciousness of our own
+weakness, creep across us, and all our hopes are dimmed, as some star in
+the heavens is, when a light mist floats between us and it, let us turn
+away to Him our brother, bone of our bone and flesh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_75" id="Page_1_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> of our flesh, and
+think that He, in His calm exaltation and regal authority and infinite
+blessedness, is not only the pattern of what humanity may be, but the
+pledge of what His Church must be. 'Where I am, there shall also My
+servant be.' 'The glory that Thou gavest Me I have given them.'</p>
+
+<p>Nor is that all. Not only a possibility and a certainty for the future
+are for us the measure of the power that worketh in us, but as this same
+letter teaches us, we have, as Christians, a present scale by which we
+may estimate the greatness of the power. For in the next chapter, after
+that glorious burst as to the dignity of his Lord, which we have not the
+heart to call a digression, the Apostle, recurring to the theme of my
+text, goes on to say, 'And you hath He quickened,' and then, catching it
+up again a verse or two afterwards, he reiterates, clause by clause,
+what had been done on Jesus as having been done on us Christians. If
+that Divine Spirit raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own
+right hand in the heavenly places, it is as true that the same power
+hath 'raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places
+in Christ Jesus.' And so not only the far-off, though real and
+brilliant, and eye and heart-filling glories of the ascended Christ give
+us the measure of the power, but also the limited experience of the
+present Christian life, the fact of the resurrection from the true
+death, the death of sin, the fact of union with Jesus Christ so real and
+close as that they who truly experience it do live, as far as the roots
+of their lives and the scope and the aim of them are concerned, 'in the
+heavens,' and 'sit with Him in heavenly places'&mdash;these things afford us
+the measure of the power that worketh in us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_76" id="Page_1_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, because a Man is King of kings and Lord of lords; and because He
+who is our Life 'is exalted high above all principalities and powers';
+and because from His throne He has quickened us from the death of sin,
+and has drawn us so near to Himself that if we are His we truly live
+beside Him, even whilst we stumble here in the darkness, we may know the
+exceeding greatness of His power, according to the working of the
+strength of the might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from
+the dead.</p>
+
+<p>II. Secondly, notice the knowledge of the unknowable power.</p>
+
+<p>We have already come across the same apparent paradox, covering a deep
+truth, in the former sections of this series of petitions. I need only
+remind you, in reference to this matter, that the knowledge which is
+here in question is not the intellectual perception of a fact as
+revealed in Scripture, but is that knowledge to which alone the New
+Testament gives the noble name, being knowledge verified by inward
+experience, and the result of one's own personal acquaintance with its
+object.</p>
+
+<p>How do we know a power? By thrilling beneath its force. How are we to
+know the greatness of the power but because it comes surging and
+rejoicing into our aching emptiness, and lifts us buoyant above our
+temptations and weakness? Paul was not asking for these people
+theological conceptions. He was asking that their spirits might be so
+saturated with and immersed in that great ocean of force that pours from
+God as that they should never, henceforth, be able to doubt the
+greatness of that power which wrought in them. The knowledge that comes
+from experience is the knowledge that we all ought to seek. It is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_77" id="Page_1_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+merely to be desired that we should have right and just conceptions, but
+that we should have the vital knowledge which is, and which comes from,
+life eternal.</p>
+
+<p>And that power, which thus we may all know by feeling it working upon
+ourselves, though it be immeasurable, has its measure; though it be, in
+its depth and fulness, unknowable and inexhaustible, may yet be really
+and truly known. You do not need a thunderstorm to experience the
+electric shock; a battery that you can carry in your pocket will do that
+for you. You do not need to have traversed all the length and breadth
+and depth and height of some newly-discovered country to be sure of its
+existence, and to have a real, though it may be a vague, conception of
+the magnitude of its shores. And so, really, though boundedly, we have
+the knowledge of God, and can rely upon it as valid, though partial; and
+similarly, by experience we have such a certified acquaintance with Him
+and His power as needs no enlargement to be trusted, and to become the
+source of blessings untold. We may see but a strip of the sky through
+the narrow chinks of our prison windows, and many a grating may further
+intercept the view, and much dust that might be cleared away may dim the
+glass but yet it <i>is</i> the sky that we see, and we can think of the great
+horizon circling round and round, and of the infinite depths above
+there, which neither eye nor thought can travel unwearied. Though all
+that we see be but an inch in breadth and a foot or two in height, yet
+we do see. We know the unknowable power that passeth knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>And let me remind you of how large importance this knowledge of and
+constant reference to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_78" id="Page_1_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> measureless power manifested in Christ is for
+us. I believe there can be no vigorous, happy Christian life without it.
+It is our only refuge from pessimism and despair for the world. The old
+psalm said, 'Thou hast crowned Him with glory and honour, and hast given
+Him dominion over the works of Thy hands,' and hundreds of years
+afterwards the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews commented on it
+thus, 'We see not yet all things put under Him.' Was the old vision a
+dream, was it never intended to be fulfilled? Apparently so, if we take
+the history of the past into account, and the centuries that have passed
+since have done nothing to make it more probable, apart from Jesus
+Christ, that man will rise to the height which the Psalmist dreamed of.
+When we look at the exploded Utopias that fill the past; when we think
+of the strange and apparently fatal necessity by which evil is developed
+from every stage of what men call progress, and how improvement is
+perverted, almost as soon as effected, into another fortress of weakness
+and misery; when we look on the world as it is to-day, I know not whence
+a man is to draw bright hopes, or what is to deliver him from pessimism
+as his last word about himself and his fellows, except the 'working of
+the strength of the might which He wrought in Christ.' 'We see not yet
+all things put under Him'&mdash;be it so, 'but we see Jesus,' and, looking to
+Him, hope is possible, reasonable, and imperative.</p>
+
+<p>The same knowledge is our refuge from our own consciousness of weakness.
+We look up, as a climber may do in some Alpine ravine, upon the smooth
+gleaming walls of the cliff that rises above us. It is marble, it is
+fair, there are lovely lands on the summit, but nothing that has not
+wings can get there.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_79" id="Page_1_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> We try, but slip backwards almost as much as we
+rise. What is to be done? Are we to sit down at the foot of the cliff,
+and say, 'We cannot climb, let us be content with the luscious herbage
+and sheltered ease below?' Yes! That is what we are tempted to say. But
+look! a mighty hand reaches over, an arm is stretched down, the hand
+grasps us, and lifts us, and sets us there.</p>
+
+<p>'No man hath ascended up into heaven save He that came down from
+heaven,' and having returned thither stoops thence, and will lift us to
+Himself. I am a poor, weak creature. Yes! I am all full of sin and
+corruption. Yes! I am ashamed of myself every day. Yes! I am too heavy
+to climb, and have no wings to fly, and am bound here by chains
+manifold. Yes! But we know the exceeding greatness of the power, and we
+triumph in Him.</p>
+
+<p>That knowledge should shame us into contrition, when we think of such
+force at our disposal, and such poor results. That knowledge should
+widen our conceptions, enlarge our desires, breathe a brave confidence
+into our hopes, should teach us to expect great things of God, and to be
+intolerant of present attainments whilst anything remains unattained.
+And it should stimulate our vigorous effort, for no man will long seek
+to be better, if he is convinced that the effort is hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>Learn to realise the exceeding greatness of the power that will clothe
+your weakness. 'Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created
+these things, for that He is strong in might, not one faileth.' That is
+wonderful, but here is a far nobler operation of the divine power. It is
+great to 'preserve the ancient heavens' fresh and strong by His might,
+but it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_80" id="Page_1_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> greater to come down to my weakness, to 'give power to the
+faint,' and 'increase strength to them that have no might.' And that is
+what He will do with us.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, notice the conditions for the operations of the power.</p>
+
+<p>'To usward who believe,' says Paul. He has been talking to these
+Ephesians, and saying 'ye,' but now, by that 'us,' he places himself
+beside them, identifies himself with them, and declares that all his
+gifts and strength come to him on precisely the same conditions on which
+theirs do to them; and that he, like them, is a waiter upon that grace
+which God bestows on them that trust Him.</p>
+
+<p>'To usward who believe.' Once more we are back at the old truth which we
+can never make too emphatic and plain, that the one condition of the
+weakest among us being strong with the strength of the Lord is simple
+trust in Him, verified, of course, by continuance and by effort.</p>
+
+<p>How did the water go into the Ship Canal at Eastham last week? First of
+all they cut a trench, and then they severed the little strip of land
+between the hole and the sea, and the sea did the rest. The wider and
+deeper the opening that we make in our natures by our simple trust in
+God, the fuller will be the rejoicing flood that pours into us. There is
+an old story about a Christian father, who, having been torturing
+himself with theological speculations about the nature of the Trinity,
+fell asleep and dreamed that he was emptying the ocean with a thimble!
+Well, you cannot empty it with a thimble, but you can go to it with one,
+and, if you have only a thimble in your hand, you will only bring away a
+thimbleful. The measure of your faith is the measure of God's power
+given to you.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_81" id="Page_1_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are two measures of the immeasurable power&mdash;the one is that
+infinite limit, of 'the power which He wrought in Christ,' and the other
+the practical limit. The working measure of our spiritual life is our
+faith. In plain English, we can have as much of God as we want. We do
+have as much as we want. And if, in touch with the power that can
+shatter a universe, we only get a little thrill that is scarcely
+perceptible to ourselves, and all unnoticed by others, whose fault is
+that? If, coming to the fountain that laughs at drought, and can fill a
+universe with its waters, we scarcely bear away a straitened drop or
+two, that barely refreshes our parched lips, and does nothing to
+stimulate the growth of the plants of holiness in our gardens, whose
+fault is that? The practical measure of the power is for us the measure
+of our belief and desire. And if we only go to Him, as I pray we all
+may, and continue there, and ask from Him strength, according to the
+riches that are treasured in Jesus Christ, we shall get the old answer,
+'According to your faith be it unto you.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_RESURRECTION_OF_DEAD_SOULS" id="THE_RESURRECTION_OF_DEAD_SOULS"></a>THE RESURRECTION OF DEAD SOULS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved
+us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with
+Christ.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> ii. 4, 5.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Scripture paints man as he is, in darker tints, and man as he may
+become, in brighter ones, than are elsewhere found. The range of this
+portrait painter's palette is from pitchiest black to most dazzling
+white, as of snow smitten by sunlight. Nowhere else are there such sad,
+stern words about the actualities of human nature; nowhere else such
+glowing and won<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_82" id="Page_1_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>derful ones about its possibilities. This Physician
+knows that He can cure the worst cases, if they will take His medicine,
+and is under no temptation to minimise the severity of the symptoms or
+the fatality of the disease. We have got both sides in my text; man's
+actual condition, 'dead in trespasses'; man's possible condition, and
+the actual condition of thousands of men&mdash;made to live again in Jesus
+Christ, and with Him raised from the dead, and with Him gone up on high,
+and with Him sitting at God's right hand. That is what you and I may be
+if we will; if we will not, then we must be the other.</p>
+
+<p>So there are three things here to look at for a few moments&mdash;the dead
+souls; the pitying love that looks down upon them; and the resurrection
+of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, here is a picture, a dogmatic statement if you like, about the
+actual condition of human nature apart from Jesus Christ&mdash;'Dead in
+trespasses.'</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle looks upon the world&mdash;many-coloured, full of activity, full
+of intellectual stir, full of human emotions, affections, joys, sorrows,
+fluctuations&mdash;as if it were one great cemetery, and on every gravestone
+there were written the same inscription. They all died of the same
+disease&mdash;'dead <i>through</i> sin,' as the original more properly means.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I dare say many who are listening to me are saying in their hearts,
+'Oh! Exaggeration! The old gloomy, narrow view of human nature cropping
+up again.' Well, I am not at all unwilling to acknowledge that truths
+like this have very often been preached both with a tone and in a manner
+that repels, and which is rightly chargeable with exaggeration and undue
+gloom and narrowness. But let me remind you that it is not the
+Evangelical preacher nor the Apostle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_83" id="Page_1_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> only who have to bear the
+condemnation of exaggeration, if this representation of my text be not
+true to facts, but it is Jesus Christ too; for He says, 'Except ye eat
+the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have no life in
+you.' And I think that be He divine or not divine, His words about the
+religious condition of men go so surely to the mark that a man must be
+tolerably impregnable in his self-conceit who charges <i>Him</i> with
+narrowness and exaggeration. At all events, I am content to say after
+Him, and I pray that you and I, when we accept Him as our Teacher, may
+take not only His gracious, but His stern, words, assured that a deep
+graciousness lies in these, too, if we rightly understand them.</p>
+
+<p>Let me remind you that the phrase of my text is by no means confined to
+Christian teachers, but that, in common speech, we hear from all high
+thinkers about the lower type of humanity being dead to the loftier
+thoughts in which they live and move and have their being. It has passed
+into a commonplace of language to speak of men being 'dead to honour,'
+'dead to shame,' 'dead' to this, that, and the other good and noble and
+gracious thing. And the same metaphor, if you like, lies here in my
+text&mdash;that men who have given their wills and inmost natures over to the
+dominion of self&mdash;and that is the definition of sin&mdash;that such men are,
+<i>ipso facto</i>, by reason of that very surrender of themselves to their
+worst selves, dead on what I may call the top side of their nature, and
+that all that is there is atrophied and dwindling away.</p>
+
+<p>Unconsciousness is one characteristic of death. And oh! as I look round
+I know that there are tens, and perhaps hundreds, of men and women who
+are all but utterly unconscious of a whole universe in which are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_84" id="Page_1_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> the
+only realities, and to which it becomes them to have access. You live,
+in the physical sense, and move and have your being in God, and yet your
+inmost life would not be altered one hair's-breadth if there were no God
+at all. You pass the most resplendent instances and illustrations of His
+presence, His work, and you see nothing. You are blind on that side of
+your natures; or, as my text says, dead to the whole spiritual realm.
+Just as if there were a brick wall run against some man's windows so
+that he could see nothing out of them; so you, by your persistent
+adherence to the paltry present, the material, the visible, the selfish,
+have reared up a wall against the windows of your souls that look
+heavenwards; and of God, and all the lofty starry realities that cluster
+round Him, you are as unconscious as the corpse upon its bier is of the
+sunshine that plays upon its pallid features, or of the dew that falls
+on its stiffened limbs. Dead, because of sin&mdash;is that exaggeration? Is
+it exaggeration which charges all but absolute unconsciousness of
+spiritual realities upon worldly men like some of you?</p>
+
+<p>And, then, take another illustration. Another of the signatures of death
+is inactivity. And oh! what faculties in some of my friends listening to
+me now are shrivelled and all but extinct! They are dormant, at any
+rate, to use another word, for the death of my text is not so absolute a
+death but that a resurrection is possible, and so <i>dormant</i> comes to
+express pretty nearly the same thing. Faculties of service, of
+enthusiasm, of life for God, of noble obedience to Him&mdash;what have you
+done with them? Left them there until they have stiffened like an unused
+lock, or rusted like the hinges of an unopened door; and you are as
+little active in all the noblest activities of spirit, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_85" id="Page_1_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> are
+activities in submission to and dependence upon Him, as if you were laid
+in your coffin with your idle hands crossed for evermore upon an
+unheaving breast.</p>
+
+<p>There is another illustration that I may suggest for a moment. Decay is
+another characteristic and signature of death. And your best self, in
+some of you, is rotting to corruption by sin.</p>
+
+<p>Ay! Dear brethren, when we think of these tragedies of suicide that are
+going on in thousands of men round about us to-day, it seems to me as if
+the metaphor and the reality were reversed; and instead of saying that
+my text is a violent metaphor, transferring the facts of material death
+and corruption to the spiritual realm, I am almost disposed to say it is
+the other way about, and the real death is the death of the spirit; and
+the outer dissolution and unconsciousness and inactivity of the material
+body is only a kind of parable to preach to men what are the awful
+invisible facts ever associated with the fact of transgression.</p>
+
+<p>There are three lives possible for each of us; two of them involuntary,
+the third requiring our consent and effort, but all of them sustained by
+the same cause. The first of them is that which we call life, the
+activity and the consciousness of the bodily frame; and that continues
+as long as the power of God keeps the body in life. When He withdraws
+His hand there comes what the senses call death. Then there is the
+natural life of thinking, loving, willing, enjoying, sorrowing, and the
+like, and that continues as long as He who is the life and light of men
+breathes into them the breath of that life. And these two are lived or
+died largely without the man's own consent or choice.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a third life, when all that lower is lifted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_86" id="Page_1_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> to God, and
+thinking and willing and loving and enjoying and aspiring and trusting
+and obeying, and all these natural faculties find their home and their
+consecration and their immortality in Him. That life is only lived by
+our own will and it is the true life, and the others are, as I said, but
+parables, and envelopes, and vehicles, as it were, in which this life is
+carried, that is more precious than they. In the physical realm,
+separate the body from God, and it dies. In the natural conscious life,
+separate the soul, as we call it, from God, and it dies. And in the
+higher region, separate the spirit, which is the man grasping God, from
+God, and he dies; and that is the real death. Both the others are
+nothing in comparison with it.</p>
+
+<p>It may co-exist with a large amount of intellectual and other forms of
+activity, as we see all round about us, and that makes it only the more
+ghastly and the sadder. You are full of energy in regard to all other
+subjects, but smitten into torpor about the highest; ready to live, to
+work, to enjoy, to think, to will, in all other directions, and utterly
+unconscious and unconcerned, or all but utterly unconscious and
+unconcerned, in regard to God.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! a death which is co-existent with such feverish intensity of life as
+the most of you are expending all the week at your business and your
+daily pursuits is among the saddest of all the tragedies that angels are
+called upon to weep over, and that men are fools enough to enact.
+Brother! If the representation is a gloomy one, do not you think that it
+is better to ask the question&mdash;Is it a true one? than, Is it a cheerful
+one? I lay it upon your hearts that he that lives to God and with God is
+alive to the centre as well as out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_87" id="Page_1_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> to the finger tips and circumference
+of his visible being. He that is dead to God is dead indeed whilst he
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now, notice, in the second place, the pitying love that looks down
+on the cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>'God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us.'
+Thus the great truth that is taught us here, first of all, is that that
+divine love of the Divine Father bends down over His dead children and
+cherishes them still. Oh! you can do much in separating yourselves from
+God through selfishness, selfwill, sensuality, or other forms of sin,
+but there is one thing you cannot do, you cannot prevent His loving you.
+If I might venture without seeming irreverent, I would point to that
+pathetic page in the Old Testament history where the king hears of the
+death, red-handed in treason, of his darling son, and careless of
+victory and forgetful of everything else, and oblivious that Absalom was
+a rebel, and only remembering that he was his boy, burst into that
+monotonous wail that has come down over all the centuries as the deepest
+expression of undying fatherly love. 'Oh! my son Absalom, my son, my son
+Absalom! Oh! Absalom, my son, my son!' The name and the relationship
+will well up out of the Father's heart, whatever the child's crime. We
+are all His Absaloms, and though we are dead in trespasses and in sins,
+God, who is rich in mercy, bends over us and loves us with His great
+love.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle might well expatiate in these two varying forms of speech,
+both of them intended to express the same thing&mdash;'rich in mercy' and
+'great in love.' For surely a love which takes account of the sin that
+cannot repel it, and so shapes itself into mercy, sparing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_88" id="Page_1_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> and
+departing from the strict line of retribution and justice, is great. And
+surely a mercy which refuses to be provoked by seventy times seven
+transgressions in an hour, not to say a day, is rich. That mercy is
+wider than all humanity, deeper than all sin, was before all rebellion,
+and will last for ever. And it is open for every soul of man to receive
+if he will.</p>
+
+<p>But there is another point to be noticed in reference to this wonderful
+manifestation of the divine love looking down upon the myriads of men
+dead in sin, and that is that this love shapes the divine action. Mark
+the language of our text, in which the Apostle attributes a certain line
+of conduct in the divine dealings with us to the fact of His great love.
+Because 'He loved us' therefore He did so and so. Now about that I have
+only two remarks to make, and I will make them very briefly. The one is,
+here is a demonstration, for some of you people who do not believe in
+the Evangelical doctrine of an Atonement by the sacrifice of Jesus
+Christ, that the true scriptural representation of that doctrine is not
+that which caricaturists have represented it&mdash;viz. that the sacrifice of
+Jesus Christ changed in any manner the divine heart and disposition. It
+is not as unfriendly critics (who, perhaps, are not to be so much blamed
+for their unfriendliness as for their superficiality) would have us to
+believe, that the doctrine of Atonement says that God loves because
+Christ died. But the Apostle who preached that doctrine and looked upon
+it as the very heart and centre of his message to the world here puts as
+the true sequence&mdash;Christ died because God loves. Jesus Christ said the
+same thing, 'God so loved the world that He sent His Son, that whosoever
+believeth on Him should be saved.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_89" id="Page_1_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And that brings me to the second of the remarks which I wish briefly to
+make&mdash;viz. this, that the Divine Love, great, patient, wonderful,
+unrepelled by men's sin, as it is, has to adopt a process to reach its
+end. God by His love does not, because He cannot, raise these dead souls
+into a life of righteousness without Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ
+comes to be the channel and the medium through which the love of God may
+attain its end. God's pitying love, because 'He is rich in mercy,' is
+not turned away by man's sin; and God's pitying love, because 'He is
+rich in mercy,' quickens men not by a bare will, but by the mission and
+work of His dear Son.</p>
+
+<p>III. And so that is the last thing on which I speak a word&mdash;viz. the
+resurrection of the dead souls.</p>
+
+<p>They died of sin. That was the disease that killed them. They cannot be
+quickened unless the disease be conquered. Dear brethren, I have to
+preach&mdash;not to argue, but to preach&mdash;and to press upon each soul the
+individual acceptance of the Death of Jesus Christ as being for each of
+us, if we will trust Him, the death of our death, and the death of our
+sin. By His great sacrifice and sufficient oblation He has borne the
+sins of the world and has taken away their guilt. And in Him the inmost
+reality of the spiritual death, and its outermost parable of corporeal
+dissolution, are equally and simultaneously overcome. If you will take
+Him for your Lord you will rise from the death of guilt, condemnation,
+selfishness, and sin into a new life of liberty, sonship, consecration,
+and righteousness, and will never see death.</p>
+
+<p>And, on the other hand, the life of Jesus Christ is available for all of
+us. If we will put our trust in Him, His life will pass into our
+deadness; He Himself will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_90" id="Page_1_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> vitalise our being, dormant capacities will
+be quickened and brought into blessed activity, a new direction will be
+given to the old faculties, desires, aspirations, emotions of our
+nature. The will will tower into new power because it obeys. The heart
+will throb with a better life because it has grasped a love that cannot
+change and will never die. And the thinking power will be brought into
+living, personal contact with the personal Truth, so that whatsoever
+darknesses and problems may still be left, at the centre there will be
+light and satisfaction and peace. You will live if you trust Christ and
+let Him be your Life.</p>
+
+<p>And if thus, by simple faith in Him, knowing that the power of His
+atoning death has destroyed the burden of our guilt and condemnation,
+and knowing the quickening influences of His constraining love as
+drawing us to love new things and make us new creatures, we receive into
+our inmost spirits 'the law of the spirit of life' which was in Christ
+Jesus, and are thereby made 'free from the law of sin and death,' then
+it is only a question of time, when the vitalising force shall flow into
+all the cracks and crannies of our being and deliver us wholly from the
+bondage of corruption in the outer as well as in the inner life; for
+they who have learned that Christ is the life of their lives upon earth
+can never cease their appropriation of the fulness of His quickening
+power until He has 'changed the body of their humiliation into the
+likeness of the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He
+is able to subdue even all things unto Himself.'</p>
+
+<p>Brethren! He Himself has said, and His words I beseech you to remember
+though you forget all mine, 'He that believeth in Me, though he were
+dead, yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_91" id="Page_1_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> shall he live, and he that liveth and believeth in Me shall
+never die.' 'Believest thou this?'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_RICHES_OF_GRACE" id="THE_RICHES_OF_GRACE"></a>'THE RICHES OF GRACE'</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His
+grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> ii. 7.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>One very striking characteristic of this epistle is its frequent
+reference to God's purposes, and what, for want of a better word, we
+must call His motives, in giving us Jesus Christ. The Apostle seems to
+rise even higher than his ordinary height, while he gazes up to the
+inaccessible light, and with calm certainty proclaims not only what God
+has done, but why He has done it. Through all the earlier portions of
+this letter, the things on earth are contemplated in the light of the
+things in heaven. The great work of redemption is illuminated by the
+thought of the will and meaning of God therein; for example, we read in
+Chapter i. that He 'hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in
+Christ, according as He hath chosen us in Him,' and immediately after we
+read that He 'has predestinated us unto the adoption of children by
+Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will.' Soon after, we
+hear that 'He hath revealed to us the mystery of His will, according to
+His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself'; and that our
+predestination to an inheritance in Christ is 'according to the purpose
+of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.'</p>
+
+<p>Not only so, but the motive or reason for the divine action in the gift
+of Christ is brought out in a rich variety of expression as being 'the
+praise of the glory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_92" id="Page_1_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> of His grace' (1-6), or 'that He might gather
+together in one all things in Christ' (1-10), or that 'we should be to
+the praise of His glory' (1-12), or that 'unto the principalities and
+powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold
+wisdom of God.'</p>
+
+<p>In like manner our text follows a sublime statement of what has been
+bestowed upon men in Jesus, with an equally sublime insight into the
+divine purpose of thereby showing 'the exceeding riches of His grace.'
+Such heights are not for our unaided traversing; it is neither reverent
+nor safe to speculate, and still less to dogmatise, concerning the
+meaning of the divine acts, but here, at all events, we have, as I
+believe, not a man making unwarranted assertions about God's purposes,
+but God Himself by a man, letting us see so far into the depths of Deity
+as to know the very deepest meaning of His very greatest acts, and when
+God speaks, it is neither reverent nor safe to refuse to listen.</p>
+
+<p>I. The purpose of God in Christ is the display of His grace.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we cannot speak of motives in the divine mind as in ours; they
+imply a previous state of indecision and an act of choice, from which
+comes the slow emerging of a resolve like that of the moon from the sea.
+A given end being considered by us desirable, we then cast about for
+means to secure it, which again implies limitation of power. Still we
+can speak of God's motives, if only we understand, as this epistle puts
+it so profoundly, that His 'is an eternal purpose which He purposed in
+Himself,' which never began to be formed, and was not formed by reason
+of anything external.</p>
+
+<p>With that caution Paul would have us think that God's chiefest purpose
+in all the wondrous facts which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_93" id="Page_1_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> make up the Gospel is the setting forth
+of Himself, and that the chiefest part of Himself, which He desires that
+all men should come to know, is the glory of His grace. Of course very
+many and various reasons for these acts may be alleged, but this is the
+deepest of them all. It has often been misunderstood and made into a
+very hard and horrible doctrine, which really means little else than
+all-mighty selfishness, but it is really a most blessed one; it is the
+proclamation in tenderest, most heart-melting fashion of the truth that
+God is Love, and therefore delights in imparting that which is His
+creatures' life and blessedness; it bids us think that He, too, amidst
+the blessedness of His infinite Being, knows the joy of communicating
+which makes so large a part of the blessedness of our finite selves, and
+that He, too, is capable of being touched and gladdened by the joy of
+expression. As an artist in his noblest work paints or chisels simply
+for love of pouring out his soul, so, but in infinitely loftier fashion,
+the great Artist delights to manifest Himself, and in manifesting to
+communicate somewhat of Himself. Creation is divine self-revelation, and
+we might say, with all reverence, that God acts as birds sing, and
+fountains leap, and stars shine.</p>
+
+<p>But our text leads us still farther into mysteries of glory, when it
+defines what it is in God that he most desires to set forth. It is the
+'exceeding riches of Grace,' in which wonderful expression we note the
+Apostle's passionate accumulation of epithets which he yet feels to be
+altogether inadequate to his theme. It would carry us too far to attempt
+to bring out the whole wealth contained in these words which glide so
+easily over unthinking lips, but we may lovingly dwell for a few moments
+upon them. Grace, in Paul's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_94" id="Page_1_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> language, means love lavished upon the
+undeserving and sinful, a love which is not drawn forth by the
+perception of any excellence in its objects, but wells up and out like a
+fountain, by reason of the impulse in its subject, and which in itself
+contains and bestows all good and blessing. There may be, as this very
+letter shows, other aspects of the divine nature which God is glad that
+man should know. His power and His wisdom have their noblest
+illustration in the work of Jesus, and are less conspicuously manifested
+in all His work; but His grace is shrined in Christ alone, and from Him
+flows forth into a thirsty world. That love, 'unmerited and free,' holds
+in solution power, wisdom and all the other physical or metaphysical
+perfections belonging to God with all their energies. It is the elixir
+in which they are all contained, the molten splendour into which have
+been dissolved gold and jewels and all precious things. When we look at
+Christ, we see the divinest thing in God, and that is His grace. The
+Christ who shows us and certifies to us the grace of God must surely be
+more than man. Men look at Him and see it; He shows us that grace
+because He was full of grace and truth.</p>
+
+<p>But Paul is here not propounding theological dogmas, but pouring out a
+heart full of personal experience, and so adds yet other words to
+express what he himself has found in the Divine Grace, and speaks of its
+riches. He has learned fully to trust its fulness, and in his own daily
+life has had the witness of its inexhaustible abundance, which remains
+the same after all its gifts. It 'operates unspent.' That continually
+self-communicating love pours out in no narrower stream to its last
+recipient than to its first. All 'eat and are filled,' and after they
+are satisfied,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_95" id="Page_1_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> twelve baskets full of fragments are taken up. These
+riches are exceeding; they surpass all human conception, all parallel,
+all human needs; they are properly transcendent.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, is what God would have us know of Himself. So His love is at
+once the motive of His great message to us in Jesus Christ, and is the
+whole contents of the message, like some fountain, the force of whose
+pellucid waters cleanses the earth, and rushes into the sunshine, being
+at once the reason for the flow and that which flows. God reveals
+because He loves, and His love is that which He reveals.</p>
+
+<p>II. The great manifestation of grace is God's kindness to us in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>All the revelation of God in Creation and Providence carries the same
+message, but it is often there hard to decipher, like some
+half-obliterated inscription in a strange tongue. In Jesus the writing
+is legible, continuous, and needs no elaborate commentary to make its
+meaning intelligible. But we may note that what the Apostle founds on
+here is not so much Christ in Himself, as that which men receive in
+Christ. As he puts it in another part of this epistle, it is 'through
+the Church' that 'principalities and powers in heavenly places' are made
+to 'know the manifold wisdom of God.' It is 'His kindness towards us' by
+which 'to the ages to come,' is made known the exceeding riches of
+grace, and that kindness can be best estimated by thinking what we were,
+namely, dead in trespasses and sins; what we are, namely, quickened
+together in Christ; raised up with Him, and with Him made to sit in
+heavenly places, as the immediately preceding clauses express it. All
+this marvellous transformation of conditions and of self is realised 'in
+Christ Jesus.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_96" id="Page_1_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> These three words recur over and over again in this
+profound epistle, and may be taken as its very keynote. It would carry
+us beyond all limits to deal with the various uses and profound meanings
+of this phrase in this letter, but we may at least point out how
+intimately and inseparably it is intertwined with the other aspect of
+our relations to Christ in which He is mainly regarded as dying for us,
+and may press upon you that these two are not, as they have sometimes
+been taken to be, antagonistic but complementary. We shall never
+understand the depths of the one Apostolic conception unless we bring it
+into closest connection with the other. Christ is for us only if we are
+in Christ; we are in Christ only because He died for us.</p>
+
+<p>God's kindness is all 'in Christ Jesus'; in Him is the great channel
+through which His love comes to men, the river of God which is full of
+water. And that kindness is realised by us when we are 'in Christ.'
+Separated from Him we do not possess it; joined to Him as we may be by
+true faith in Him, it is ours, and with it all the blessings which it
+brings into our else empty and thirsting hearts. Now all this sets in
+strong light the dignity and work of Christian men; the profundity and
+clearness of their religious character is the great sign to the world of
+the love of God. The message of Christ to man lacks one chief evidence
+of its worth if they who profess to have received it do not, in their
+lives, show its value. The characters of Christian people are in every
+age the clearest and most effectual witnesses of the power of the
+Gospel. God's honour is in their hands. The starry heavens are best seen
+by reflecting telescopes, which, in their field, mirror the brightness
+above.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_97" id="Page_1_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>III. The manifestation of God through men 'in Christ' is for all ages.</p>
+
+<p>In our text the ages to come open up into a vista of undefined duration,
+and, just as in another place in this epistle, Paul regards the Church
+as witnessing to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, so
+here he regards it as the perennial evidence to all generations of the
+ever-flowing riches of God's grace. Whatever may have been the Apostle's
+earlier expectations of the speedy coming of the day of the Lord, here
+he obviously expects the world to last through a long stretch of
+undefined time, and for all its changing epochs to have an unchanging
+light. That standing witness, borne by men in Christ, of the grace which
+has been so kind to them, is not to be antiquated nor superseded, but is
+as valid to-day as when these words gushed from the heart of Paul. Eyes
+which cannot look upon the sun can see it as a golden glory, tinging the
+clouds which lie cradled around it. And as long as the world lasts, so
+long will Christian men be God's witnesses to it.</p>
+
+<p>There are then two questions of infinite importance to us&mdash;do we show in
+character and conduct the grace which we have received by reverently
+submitting ourselves to its transforming energy? We need to be very
+close to Him for ourselves if we would worthily witness to others of
+what we have found Him to be. We have but too sadly marred our witness,
+and have been like dim reflectors round a lamp which have received but
+little light from it, and have communicated even less than we have
+received. Do we see the grace that shines so brightly in Jesus Christ?
+God longs that we should so see; He calls us by all endearments and by
+loving threats to look to that Incarnation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_98" id="Page_1_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> of Himself. And when we lift
+our eyes to behold, what is it that meets our gaze? Intolerable light?
+The blaze of the white throne? Power that crushes our puny might? No!
+the 'exceeding riches of grace.' The voice cries, 'Behold your God!' and
+what we see is, 'In the midst of the throne a lamb as it had been
+slain.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SALVATION_GRACE_FAITH" id="SALVATION_GRACE_FAITH"></a>SALVATION: GRACE: FAITH</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'By grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of
+yourselves: it is the gift of God.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> ii. 8 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Here are three of the key-words of the New Testament&mdash;'grace,' 'saved,'
+'faith.' Once these terms were strange and new; now they are old and
+threadbare. Once they were like lava, glowing and cast up from the
+central depths; but it is a long while since the eruption, and the
+blocks have got cold, and the corners have been rubbed off them. I am
+afraid that some people, when they read such a text, will shrug the
+shoulder of weariness, and think that they are in for a dreary sermon.</p>
+
+<p>But the more familiar a word is, the more likely are common ideas about
+it to be hazy. We substitute acquaintance with the sound for penetration
+into the sense. A frond of sea-weed, as long as it is in the ocean,
+unfolds its delicate films and glows with its subdued colours. Take it
+out, and it is hard and brown and ugly, and you have to plunge it into
+the water again before you see its beauty. So with these well-worn
+Christian terms; you have to put them back, by meditation and thought,
+especially as to their bearing on yourself, in order to understand their
+significance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_99" id="Page_1_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> and to feel their power. And, although it is very hard, I
+want to try and do that for a few moments with this grand thought that
+lies in my text.</p>
+
+<p>I. Here we have the Christian view of man's deepest need, and God's
+greatest gift.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye have been saved.' Now, as I have said, 'saved,' and 'salvation,' and
+'Saviour,' are all threadbare words. Let us try to grasp the whole
+throbbing meaning that is in them. Well, to begin with, and in its
+original and lowest application, this whole set of expressions is
+applied to physical danger from which it delivers, and physical disease
+which it heals. So, in the Gospels, for instance, you find 'Thy faith
+hath made thee whole'&mdash;literally, '<i>saved thee</i>' And you hear one of the
+Apostles crying, in an excess of terror and collapse of faith, 'Save!
+Master! we perish!' The two notions that are conveyed in our familiar
+expression 'safe and sound,' both lie in the word&mdash;deliverance from
+danger, and healing of disease.</p>
+
+<p>Then, when you lift it up into the loftier region, into which
+Christianity buoyed it up, the same double meaning attaches to it. The
+Christian salvation is, on its negative side, a deliverance from
+something impending&mdash;peril&mdash;and a healing of something infecting us&mdash;the
+sickness of sin.</p>
+
+<p>It is a deliverance; what from? Take, in the briefest possible language,
+three sayings of Scripture to answer that question&mdash;what am I to be
+saved <i>from</i>? 'His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His
+people from their sins.' He 'delivers'&mdash;or saves&mdash;'us from the wrath to
+come.' He 'saves a soul from death.' Sin, wrath death, death spiritual
+as well as physical, these are the dangers which lie in wait; and the
+enemies which have laid their grip upon us. And from these, as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_100" id="Page_1_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+shepherd drags the kid from the claws of the lion or the bear's hug, the
+salvation of the Gospel wrenches and rescues men.</p>
+
+<p>The same general conceptions emerge, if we notice, on the other
+side&mdash;what are the things which the New Testament sets forth as the
+opposites of its salvation? Take, again, a brief reference to Scripture
+words: 'The Son of Man came <i>not to condemn</i> the world, but that the
+world through Him might be saved.' So the antithesis is between judgment
+or condemnation on the one hand, and salvation on the other. That
+suggests thoughts substantially identical with the preceding but still
+more solemn, as bringing in the prospect a tribunal and a judge. The
+Gospel then reveals the Mighty Power that lifts itself between us and
+judgment, the Mighty Power that intervenes to prevent absolute
+destruction, the Power which saves from sin, from wrath, from death.</p>
+
+<p>Along with them we may take the other thought, that salvation, as the
+New Testament understands it, is not only the rescue and deliverance of
+a man from evils conceived to lie round about him, and to threaten his
+being from without, but that it is his healing from evils which have so
+wrought themselves into his very being, and infected his whole nature,
+as that the emblem for them is a sickness unto death for the healing
+from which this mighty Physician comes. These are the negative sides of
+this great Christian thought.</p>
+
+<p>But the New Testament salvation is more than a shelter, more than an
+escape. It not only trammels up evil possibilities, and prevents them
+from falling upon men's heads, but it introduces all good. It not only
+strips off the poisoned robe, but it invests with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_101" id="Page_1_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> royal garb. It is
+not only negatively the withdrawal from the power, and the setting above
+the reach, of all evil, in the widest sense of that word, physical and
+moral, but it is the endowment with every good, in the widest sense of
+that word, physical and moral, which man is capable of receiving, or God
+has wealth to bestow. And this positive significance of the Christian
+salvation, which includes not only pardon, and favour, and purity, and
+blessedness here in germ, and sure and certain hope of an overwhelming
+glory hereafter&mdash;this is all suggested to us by the fact that in
+Scripture, more than once, to 'have everlasting life,' and to 'enter
+into the Kingdom of God,' are employed as equivalent and alternative
+expressions for being saved with the salvation of God.</p>
+
+<p>And that leads me to another point&mdash;my text, as those of you who have
+used the Revised Version will observe, is there slightly modified in
+translation, and reads 'Ye <i>have been saved</i>,'&mdash;a past act, done once,
+and with abiding present consequences, which are realised progressively
+in the Christian life, and reach forward into infinitude. So the
+Scripture sometimes speaks of salvation as past, 'He saved us by His
+mercy': sometimes of it as present and progressive, 'The Lord added to
+the Church daily those that were (in process of) being saved': sometimes
+of it as future, 'now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.' In
+that future all that is involved in the word will be evolved from it in
+blessed experience onwards through eternity.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that we should try to make an effort to fathom the depth of
+meaning in this and other familiar commonplace terms of Scripture. But
+no effort prior to experience will ever fathom it. There was in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_102" id="Page_1_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+papers some time ago an account of some extraordinary deep-sea soundings
+that have been made away down in the South Pacific, 29,400 feet and no
+bottom, and the wire broke. The highest peak of the Himalayas might be
+put into that abyss, and there would be hundreds of feet between it and
+the surface. He 'casts all our sins,' mountainous as they are, behind
+His back 'into the depths of the sea'; and no plummet that man can drop
+will ever reach its profound abyss. 'Thy judgments are a great deep,'
+and deeper than the judgments is the depth of Thy salvation.</p>
+
+<p>And now, brethren, before I go further, notice the&mdash;I was going to say
+theory, but that is a cold word&mdash;the facts of man's condition and need
+that underlie this great Christian term of salvation&mdash;viz. we are all in
+deadly peril; we are all sick of a fatal disease. 'Ah!' you say, 'that
+is Paul.' Yes! it is Paul. But it is not Paul only; it is Paul's Master,
+and, I hope, your Master; for He not only spoke loving, gentle words to
+and about men, and not only was grace poured into His lips, but there is
+another side to His utterances. No one ever spoke sadder, sterner words
+about the real condition of men than Jesus Christ did. Lost sheep, lost
+coins, prodigal sons, builders of houses on the sand that are destined
+to be blown down and flooded away, men in danger of an undying worm and
+unquenchable fire&mdash;these are parts of Christ's representations of the
+condition of humanity, and these are the conceptions that underlie this
+great thought of salvation as being man's deepest need.</p>
+
+<p>It goes far deeper down than any of the superficial constructions of
+what humanity requires, which are found among non-Christian, social and
+economical, and intellectual and political reformers. It includes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_103" id="Page_1_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> all
+that is true in the estimate of any of these people, and it supplies all
+that they aim at. But it goes far beyond them. And as they stand
+pottering round the patient, and administering&mdash;what shall I say? 'pills
+for the earthquake,' as we once heard&mdash;it comes and brushes them aside
+and says, 'Physicians of no value! here is <i>the</i> thing that is
+wanted&mdash;salvation that comes from God.'</p>
+
+<p>Brother! it is what you need. Do not be led away by the notion that
+wealth, or culture, or anything less than Christ's gift to men will meet
+your necessities. If once we catch a glimpse of what we really are,
+there will be no words wanted to enforce the priceless value of the
+salvation that the Gospel offers. It is sure to be an uninteresting word
+and thing to a man who does not feel himself to be a sinner. It is sure
+to be of perennial worth to a man who does. Life-belts lie unnoticed on
+the cabin-shelf above the berth as long as the sun is bright, and the
+sea calm, and everything goes well; but when the ship gets on the rocks
+the passengers fight to get them. If you know yourself, you will know
+that salvation is what you need.</p>
+
+<p>II. Here we have the Christian unfolding of the source of salvation.</p>
+
+<p>'By grace ye have been saved.' There is another threadbare word. It is
+employed in the New Testament with a very considerable width of
+signification, which we do not need to attend to here. But, in regard of
+the present context, let me just point out that the main idea conveyed
+by the word is that of favour, or lovingkindness, or goodwill,
+especially when directed to inferiors, and most eminently when given to
+those who do not deserve it, but deserve its opposite. 'Grace' is love
+that stoops and that requites, not according to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_104" id="Page_1_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> desert, but bestows
+upon those who deserve nothing of the kind; so when the Apostle declares
+that the source of salvation is 'grace.' he declares two things. One is
+that the fountain of all our deliverance from sin, and of our healing of
+our sicknesses, lies in the deep heart of God, from which it wells up
+undrawn, unmotived, uncaused by anything except His own infinite
+lovingkindness. People have often presented the New Testament teaching
+about salvation as if it implied that God's love was brought to man
+because Jesus Christ died, and turned the divine affections. That is not
+New Testament teaching. Christ's death is not the cause of God's love,
+but God's love is the cause of Christ's death. 'God so loved the world
+that He gave His only begotten Son.'</p>
+
+<p>When we hear in the Old Testament, 'I am that I am,' we may apply it to
+this great subject. For that declaration of the very inmost essence of
+the divine nature is not merely the declaration, in half metaphysical
+terms, of a self-substituting, self-determining Being, high above
+limitation and time and change, but it is a declaration that when He
+loves He loves freely and unmodified save by the constraint of His own
+Being. Just as the light, because it is light and must radiate, falls
+upon dunghills and diamonds, upon black rocks and white snow, upon
+ice-peaks and fertile fields, so the great fountain of the Divine Grace
+pours out upon men by reason only of its own continual tendency to
+communicate its own fulness and blessedness.</p>
+
+<p>There follows from that the other thought, on which the Apostle mainly
+dwells in our context, that the salvation which we need, and may have,
+is not won by desert, but is given as a gift. Mark the last words of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_105" id="Page_1_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> my
+text&mdash;'that not of yourselves it is the gift of God.' They have often
+been misunderstood, as if they referred to the faith which is mentioned
+just before. But that is a plain misconception of the Apostle's meaning,
+and is contradicted by the whole context. It is not faith that is the
+gift of God, but it is salvation by grace. That is plain if you will
+read on to the next verse. 'By grace are ye saved through faith, and
+that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works lest any man
+should boast.' What is it that is 'not of works'? Faith? certainly not.
+Nobody would ever have thought it worth while to say, 'faith is <i>not</i> of
+works,' because nobody would have said that it <i>was</i>. The two clauses
+necessarily refer to the same thing, and if the latter of them must
+refer to salvation by grace, so must the former. Thus, the Apostle's
+meaning is that we get salvation, not because we work for it but because
+God gives it as a free gift, for which we have nothing to render, and
+which we can never deserve.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I am sure that there are some of you who are saying to yourselves,
+'This is that old, threadbare, commonplace preaching again!' Well! shame
+on us preachers if we have made a living Gospel into a dead theology.
+And shame no less on you hearers if by you the words that should be good
+news that would make the tongue of the dumb sing, and the lame man leap
+as a hart, have been petrified and fossilised into a mere dogma.</p>
+
+<p>I know far better than you do how absolutely inadequate all my words
+are, but I want to bring it to you and to lay it not on your heads only
+but on your hearts, as the good news that we all need, that we have not
+to buy, that we have not to work to get salvation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_106" id="Page_1_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> but that having got
+it we have to work thereafter. 'What shall we do that we might work the
+works of God?' A whole series of diverse, long, protracted, painful
+toils? Christ swept away the question by striking out the 's' at the end
+of the word, and answered, 'This is the <i>work</i>' (not 'works') 'of God,'
+the one thing which will open out into all heroism and practical
+obedience, 'that ye believe on Him to whom He hath sent.'</p>
+
+<p>III. That leads me to the last point&mdash;viz. the Christian requirement of
+the condition of salvation.</p>
+
+<p>Note the precision of the Apostle's prepositions: 'Ye have been saved
+<i>by</i> grace'; there is the source&mdash;'Ye have been saved by grace,
+<i>through</i> faith'&mdash;there is the medium, the instrument, or, if I may so
+say, the channel; or, to put it into other words, the condition by which
+the salvation which has its source in the deep heart of God pours its
+waters into my empty heart. 'Through faith,' another threadbare word,
+which, withal, has been dreadfully darkened by many comments, and has
+unfortunately been so represented as that people fancy it is some kind
+of special attitude of mind and heart, which is only brought to bear in
+reference to Christ's Gospel. It is a thousand pities, one sometimes
+thinks, that the word was not translated 'trust' instead of 'faith,' and
+then we should have understood that it was not a theological virtue at
+all, but just the common thing that we all know so well, which is the
+cement of human society and the blessedness of human affection, and
+which only needs to be lifted, as a plant that had been running along
+the ground, and had its tendrils bruised and its fruit marred might be
+lifted, and twined round the pillar of God's throne, in order to grow up
+and bear fruit that shall be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_107" id="Page_1_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> found after many days unto praise, and
+honour, and glory.</p>
+
+<p>Trust; that is the condition. The salvation rises from the heart of God.
+You cannot touch the stream at its source, but you can tap it away down
+in its flow. What do you want machinery and pumps for? Put a yard of
+wooden pipe into the river, and your house will have all the water it
+needs.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear brethren, here is the condition&mdash;it is a condition only, for
+there is no virtue in the act of trust, but only in that with which we
+are brought into living union when we do trust. When salvation comes,
+into my heart by faith it is not my faith but God's grace that puts
+salvation there.</p>
+
+<p>Faith is only the condition, ay! but it is the indispensable condition.
+How many ways are there of getting possession of a gift? One only, I
+should suppose, and that is, to put out a hand and take it. If salvation
+is <i>by</i> grace it must be '<i>through</i> faith.' If you will not accept you
+cannot have. That is the plain meaning of what theologians call
+justification by faith; that pardon is given on condition of taking it.
+If you do not take it you cannot have it. And so this is the upshot of
+the whole&mdash;trust, and you have.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, dear friends! open your eyes to see your dangers. Let your
+conscience tell you of your sickness. Do not try to deliver, or to heal
+yourselves. Self-reliance and self-help are very good things, but they
+leave their limitations, and they have no place here. 'Every man his own
+Redeemer' will not work. You can no more extricate yourself from the
+toils of sin than a man can release himself from the folds of a python.
+You can no more climb to heaven by your own effort than you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_108" id="Page_1_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> can build a
+railway to the moon. You must sue <i>in forma pauperis</i>, and be content to
+accept as a boon an unmerited place in your Father's heart, an
+undeserved seat at His bountiful table, an unearned share in His wealth,
+from the hands of your Elder Brother, in whom is all His grace, and who
+gives salvation to every sinner if he will trust Him. 'By grace have ye
+been saved through faith.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="GODS_WORKMANSHIP_AND_OUR_WORKS" id="GODS_WORKMANSHIP_AND_OUR_WORKS"></a>GOD'S WORKMANSHIP AND OUR WORKS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
+which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.'-<span class="smcap">Eph.</span>
+ii. 10.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The metal is molten as it runs out of the blast furnace, but it soon
+cools and hardens. Paul's teaching about salvation by grace and by faith
+came in a hot stream from his heart, but to this generation his words
+are apt to sound coldly, and hardly theological. But they only need to
+be reflected upon in connection with our own experience, to become vivid
+and vital again. The belief that a man may work towards salvation is a
+universal heresy. And the Apostle, in the context, summons all his force
+to destroy that error, and to substitute the great truth that we have to
+begin with an act of God's, and only after that can think about our
+acts. To work up towards salvation is, in the strict sense of the words,
+<i>preposterous</i>; it is inverting the order of things. It is beginning at
+the wrong end. It is saying X Y Z before you have learnt to say A B C.
+We are to work downwards from salvation because we have it, not that we
+may get it. And whatever 'good works' may mean, they are the
+con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_109" id="Page_1_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>sequences, not the causes, of 'salvation,' whatever that may mean.
+But they are consequences, and they are the very purpose of it. So says
+Paul in the archaic language of my text&mdash;which only wants a little
+steadfast looking at to be turned into up-to-date gospel&mdash;'We are His
+workmanship, created unto good works'; and the fact that we are is one
+great reason for the assertion which he brings it in to buttress, that
+we are saved by grace, not by works. Now, I wish, in the simplest
+possible way, to deal with these great words, and take them as they lie
+before us.</p>
+
+<p>I. We have, first, then, this as the root of everything, the divine
+creation.</p>
+
+<p>Now, you will find that in this profound letter of the Apostle there are
+two ideas cropping up over and over again, both of them representing the
+facts of the Christian life and of the transition from the unchristian
+to the Christian; and the one is Resurrection and the other is Creation.
+They have this in common, that they suggest the idea that the great gift
+which Christianity brings to men&mdash;no, do not let me use the abstract
+word 'Christianity'&mdash;the great gift which <i>Christ</i> brings to men&mdash;is a
+new life. The low popular notion that salvation means mainly and
+primarily immunity from the ultimate, most lasting future consequences
+of transgression, a change of place or of condition, infects us all, and
+is far too dominant in our popular notions of Christianity and of
+salvation. And it is because people have such an unworthy, narrow,
+selfish idea of what 'salvation' is that they fall into the bog of
+misconception as to how it is to be attained. The ordinary man's way of
+looking at the whole matter is summed up in a sentence which I heard not
+long since about a recently deceased friend of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_110" id="Page_1_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> speaker's, and the
+like of which you have no doubt often heard and perhaps said, 'He is
+sure to be saved because he has lived so straight.' And at the
+foundation of that confident epitaph lay a tragical, profound
+misapprehension of what salvation was.</p>
+
+<p>For it is something done in you; it is <i>not</i> something that you get, but
+it is something that you become. The teaching of this letter, and of the
+whole New Testament, is that the profoundest and most precious of all
+the gifts which come to us in Jesus Christ, and which in their totality
+are summed up in the one word that has so little power over us, because
+we understand it so little, and know it so well&mdash;'salvation'&mdash;is a
+change in a man's nature so deep, radical, vital, as that it may fairly
+be paralleled with a resurrection from the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I venture to believe that it is something more than a strong
+rhetorical figure when that change is described as being the creation of
+a new man within us. The resurrection symbol for the same fact may be
+treated as but a symbol. You cannot treat the teaching of a new life in
+Christ as being a mere figure. It is something a great deal more than
+that, and when once a man's eye is opened to look for it in the New
+Testament it is wonderful how it flashes out from every page and
+underlies the whole teaching. The Gospel of John, for example, is but
+one long symphony which has for its dominant theme 'I am come that they
+might have life.' And that great teaching&mdash;which has been so vulgarised,
+narrowed, and mishandled by sacerdotal pretensions and sacramentarian
+superstitions&mdash;that great teaching of Regeneration, or the new birth,
+rests upon this as its very basis, that what takes place when a man
+turns<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_111" id="Page_1_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> to Jesus Christ, and is saved by Him, is that there is
+communicated to him not in symbol but in spiritual fact (and spiritual
+facts are far more true than external ones which are called real) a
+spark of Christ's own life, something of 'that spirit of life which was
+in Christ Jesus,' and by which, and by which alone, being transfused
+into us, we become 'free from the law of sin and death.' I beseech you,
+brethren, see that, in your perspective of Christian truth, the thought
+of a new life imparted to us has as prominent and as dominant a place as
+it obviously has in the teaching of the New Testament. It is not so
+dominant in the current notions of Christianity that prevail amongst
+average people, but it is so in all men who let themselves be guided by
+the plain teaching of Christ Himself and of all His servants. Salvation?
+Yes! And the very essence of the salvation is the breathing into me of a
+divine life, so that I become partaker of 'the divine nature.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, there is another step to be taken, and that is that this new life
+is realised in Christ Jesus. Now, this letter of the Apostle is
+distinguished even amongst his letters by the extraordinary frequency
+and emphasis with which he uses that expression 'in Christ Jesus.' If
+you will take up the epistle, and run your eye over it at your leisure,
+I think you will be surprised to find how, in all connections, and
+linked with every sort of blessing and good as its condition, there
+recurs that phrase. It is 'in Christ' that we obtain the inheritance; it
+is 'in Christ' that we receive 'redemption, even the forgiveness of
+sins'; it is in Him that we are 'builded together for a habitation of
+God'; it is in Him that all fulness of divine gifts, and all blessedness
+of spiritual capacities, is communicated to us; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_112" id="Page_1_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> unless, in our
+perspective of the Christian life, that expression has the same
+prominence as it has in this letter, we have yet to learn the sweetest
+sweetness, and have yet to receive the most mighty power, of the Gospel
+that we profess. 'In Christ'&mdash;a union which leaves the individuality of
+the Saviour and of the saint unimpaired, because without such
+individuality sweet love were slain, and there were no communion
+possible, but which is so close, so real, so vital, as that only the
+separating wall of personality and individual consciousness comes in
+between&mdash;that is the New Testament teaching of the relation of the
+Christian to Christ. Is it your experience, dear brother? Do not be
+frightened by talking about mysticism. If a Christianity has no
+mysticism it has no life. There is a wholesome mysticism and there is a
+morbid one, and the wholesome one is the very nerve of the Gospel as it
+is presented by Jesus Himself: 'I am the Vine, ye are the branches.
+Abide in Me, and I in you.' If our nineteenth century busy Christianity
+could only get hold of that truth as firmly as it grasps the
+representative and sacrificial character of Christ's work, I believe it
+would come like a breath of spring over 'the winter of our discontent,'
+and would change profoundly and blessedly the whole contexture of modern
+Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>And now there is another step to take, and that is that this union with
+Christ, which results in the communication of a new life, or, as my text
+puts it, a new creation, depends upon our faith. We are not passive in
+the matter. There is the condition on which the entrance of the life
+into our spirits is made possible. You must open the door, you must
+fling wide the casement, and the blessed warm morning air of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_113" id="Page_1_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> sun of
+righteousness, with healing in its beams, will rush in, scatter the
+darkness and raise the temperature. 'Faith' by which we simply mean the
+act of the mind in accepting and of the will and heart in casting one's
+self upon Christ as the Saviour&mdash;that act is the condition of this new
+life. And so each Christian is 'God's workmanship, created in Christ
+Jesus.'</p>
+
+<p>And now, says Paul&mdash;and here some of us will hesitate to follow
+him&mdash;that new creation has to go before what you call 'good works.' Now,
+do not let us exaggerate. There has seldom been a more disastrous and
+untrue thing said than what one of the Fathers dared to say, that the
+virtues of godless men were 'splendid vices.' That is not so, and that
+is not the New Testament teaching. Good is good, whoever does it. But,
+then, no man will say that actions, however they may meet the human
+conception of excellence, however bright, pure, lofty in motive and in
+aim they may be, reach their highest possible radiance and are as good
+as they ought to be, if they are done without any reference to God and
+His love. Dear brethren, we surely do not need to have the alphabet of
+morality repeated to us, that the worth of an action depends upon its
+motive, that no motive is correspondent to our capacities and our
+relation to God and our consequent responsibilities, except the motive
+of loving obedience to Him. Unless that be present, the brightest of
+human acts must be convicted of having dark shadows in it, and all the
+darker because of the brightness that may stream from it. And so I
+venture to assert that since the noblest systems of morality, apart from
+religion, will all coincide in saying that to be is more than to do, and
+that the worth of an action<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_114" id="Page_1_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> depends upon its motive, we are brought
+straight up to the 'narrow, bigoted' teaching of the New Testament, that
+unless a man is swayed by the love of God in what he does, you cannot,
+in the most searching analysis, say that his deed is as good as it ought
+to be, and as it might be. To be good is the first thing, to do good is
+the second. Make the tree good and its fruit good. And since, as we have
+made ourselves we are evil, there must come a re-creation before we can
+do the good deeds which our relation to God requires at our hands.</p>
+
+<p>II. I ask you to look at the purpose of this new creation brought out in
+our text.</p>
+
+<p>'Created in Christ Jesus unto good works.' That is what life is given to
+you for. That is why you are saved, says Paul. Instead of working
+upwards from works to salvation, take your stand at the received
+salvation, and understand what it is for, and work downwards from it.</p>
+
+<p>Now, do not let us take that phrase, 'good works,' which I have already
+said came hot from the Apostle's heart, and is now cold as a bar of
+iron, in the limited sense which it has come to bear in modern religious
+phraseology. It means something a great deal more than that. It covers
+the whole ground of what the Apostle, in another of his letters, speaks
+of when he says, 'Whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, if
+there be any virtue'&mdash;to use for a moment the world's word, which has
+such power to conjure in Greek ethics&mdash;'or if there be any praise'&mdash;to
+use for a moment the world's low motive, which has such power to sway
+men&mdash;'think of these things,' and these things do. That is the width of
+the conception of 'good works'; everything that is 'lovely and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_115" id="Page_1_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> good
+report.' That is what you receive the new life for.</p>
+
+<p>Contrast that with other notions of the purpose of revelation and
+redemption. Contrast it with what I have already referred to, and so
+need not enlarge upon now, the miserably inadequate and low notions of
+the essentials of salvation which one hears perpetually, and which many
+of us cherish. It is no mere immunity from a future hell. It is no mere
+entrance into a vague heaven. It is not escaping the penalty of the
+inexorable law, 'Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap,' that
+is meant by 'salvation,' any more than it is putting away the rod, which
+the child would be all the better for having administered to him, that
+is meant by 'forgiveness.' But just as forgiveness, in its essence,
+means not suspension nor abolition of penalty, but the uninterrupted
+flow of the Father's love, so salvation in its essence means, not the
+deliverance from any external evil or the alteration of anything in the
+external position, but the revolution and the re-creation of the man's
+nature. And the purpose of it is that the saved man may live in
+conformity with the will of God, and that on his character there may be
+embroidered all the fair things which God desires to see on His child's
+vesture.</p>
+
+<p>Contrast it with the notion that an orthodox belief is the purpose of
+revelation. I remember hearing once of a man that 'he was a very shady
+character, but sound on the Atonement.' What is the use of being 'sound
+on the Atonement' if the Atonement does not make you live the Christ
+life? And what is the good of all your orthodoxy unless the orthodoxy of
+creed issues in orthopraxy of conduct? There are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_116" id="Page_1_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> far too many of us who
+half-consciously do still hold by the notion that if a man believes
+rightly then that makes him a Christian. My text shatters to pieces any
+such conception. You are saved that you may be good, and do good
+continually; and unless you are so doing you may be steeped to the
+eyebrows in the correctest of creeds, and it will only drown you.</p>
+
+<p>Contrast this conception of the purpose of Christianity with the far too
+common notion that we are saved, mainly in order that we may indulge in
+devout emotions, and in the outgoing of affection and confidence to
+Jesus Christ. Emotional Christianity is necessary, but Christianity,
+which is mainly or exclusively emotional, lives next door to hypocrisy,
+and there is a door of communication between them. For there is nothing
+more certain and more often illustrated in experience than that there is
+a strange underground connection between a Christianity which is mainly
+fervid and a very shady life. One sees it over and over again. And the
+cure of that is to apprehend the great truth of my text, that we are
+saved, not in order that we may know aright, nor in order that we may
+feel aright, but in order that we may be good and do 'good works.' In
+the order of things, right thought touches the springs of right feeling,
+and right feeling sets going the wheels of right action. Do not let the
+steam all go roaring out of the waste-pipe in however sacred and blessed
+emotions. See that it is guided so as to drive the spindles and the
+shuttles and make the web.</p>
+
+<p>III. And now, lastly, and only a word&mdash;here we have the field provided
+for the exercise of the 'good works.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_117" id="Page_1_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Created unto good works which God has before prepared'&mdash;before the
+re-creation&mdash;'that we should walk in them.' That is to say, the true way
+to look at the life is to regard it as the exercising-ground which God
+has prepared for the development of the life that, through Christ, is
+implanted in us. He cuts the channels that the stream may flow. That is
+the way to look at tasks, at difficulties. Difficulty is the parent of
+power, and God arranges our circumstances in order that, by wrestling
+with obstacles, we may gain the 'thews that throw the world,' and in
+order that in sorrows and in joys, in the rough places and the smooth,
+we may find occasions for the exercise of the goodness which is lodged
+potentially in us, when He creates us in Christ Jesus. So be sure that
+the path and the power will always correspond. God does not lead us on
+roads that are too steep for our weakness, and too long for our
+strength. What He bids us do He fits us for; what He fits us for He
+thereby bids us do.</p>
+
+<p>And so, dear brother, take heed that you are fulfilling the purpose for
+which you receive this new life. And let us all remember the order in
+which being and doing come. We must <i>be</i> good first, and then, and only
+then, shall we <i>do</i> good. We must have Christ for us first, our
+sacrifice and our means of receiving that new life, and then, Christ in
+us, the soul of our souls, the Life of our lives, the source of all our
+goodness.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If any power we have, it is to ill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;And all the power is Thine to do and eke to will.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_118" id="Page_1_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_CHIEF_CORNER-STONE" id="THE_CHIEF_CORNER-STONE"></a>'THE CHIEF CORNER-STONE'</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ
+Jesus Himself being the chief corner-stone.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> ii. 20 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Roman Empire had in Paul's time gathered into a great unity the
+Asiatics of Ephesus, the Greeks of Corinth, the Jews of Palestine, and
+men of many another race, but grand and imposing as that great unity
+was, it was to Paul a poor thing compared with the oneness of the
+Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Asiatics of Ephesus, Greeks of Corinth, Jews of
+Palestine and members of many another race could say, 'Our citizenship
+is in heaven.' The Roman Eagle swept over wide regions in her flight,
+but the Dove of Peace, sent forth from Christ's hand, travelled further
+than she. As Paul says in the context, the Ephesians had been strangers,
+'aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,' wandering like the remnants of
+some 'broken clans,' but now they are gathered in. That narrow community
+of the Jewish nation has expanded its bounds and become the
+mother-country of believing souls, the true 'island of saints.' It was
+not Rome which really made all peoples one, but it was the weakest and
+most despised of her subject races. 'Of Zion it shall be said,' 'Lo!
+this and that man was born in her.'</p>
+
+<p>To emphasise the thought of the great unity of the Church, the Apostle
+uses here his often-repeated metaphor of a temple, of which the Ephesian
+Christians are the stones, apostles and prophets the builders, and
+Christ Himself the chief corner-stone. Of course the representation of
+the foundation, as being laid by apostles and prophets, refers to them
+as proclaiming the Gospel. The real laying of the foundation is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_119" id="Page_1_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+work of the divine power and love which gave us Christ, and it is the
+Divine Voice which proclaims, 'Behold <i>I</i> lay in Zion a foundation!' But
+that divine work has to be made known among men, and it is by the making
+of it known that the building rises course by course. There is no
+contradiction between the two statements, 'I have laid the foundation'
+and Paul's 'As a wise master-builder I have laid the foundation.'</p>
+
+<p>A question may here rise as to the meaning of 'prophets.' Unquestionably
+the expression in other places of the Epistle does mean New Testament
+prophets, but seeing that here Jesus is designated as the foundation
+stone which, standing beneath two walls, has a face into each, and binds
+them strongly together, it is more natural to see in the prophets the
+representatives of the great teachers of the old dispensation as the
+apostles were of the new. The remarkable order in which these two
+classes are named, the apostles being first, and the prophets who were
+first in time being last in order of mention, confirms this explanation,
+for the two co-operating classes are named in the order in which they
+lie in the foundation. Digging down you come to the more recent first,
+to the earlier second, and deep and massive, beneath all, to the
+corner-stone on whom all rests, in whom all are united together.
+Following the Apostle's order we may note the process of building;
+beneath that, the foundation on which the building rests; and beneath
+it, the corner-stone which underlies and unites the whole.</p>
+
+<p>I. The process of building.</p>
+
+<p>In the previous clauses the Apostle has represented the condition of the
+Ephesian Christians before their Christianity as being that of strangers
+and foreigners,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_120" id="Page_1_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> lacking the rights of citizenship anywhere, a mob
+rather than in any sense a society. They had been like a confused heap
+of stones flung fortuitously together; they had become fellow-citizens
+with the saints. The stones had been piled up into an orderly building.
+He is not ignoring the facts of national, political, or civic
+relationships which existed independent of the new unity realised in a
+common faith. These relationships could not be ignored by one who had
+had Paul's experience of their formidable character as antagonists of
+him and of his message, but they seemed to him, in contrast with the
+still deeper and far more perfect union, which was being brought about
+in Christ, of men of all nationalities and belonging to mutually hostile
+races, to be little better than the fortuitous union of a pile of stones
+huddled together on the roadside. Measured against the architecture of
+the Church, as Paul saw it in his lofty idealism, the aggregations of
+men in the world do not deserve the name of buildings. His point of view
+is the exact opposite of that which is common around us, and which,
+alas! finds but too much support in the present aspects of the so-called
+churches of this day.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be observed that in our text these stones are, in accordance
+with the propriety of the metaphor, regarded as <i>being</i> built, that is,
+as in some sense the subjects of a force brought to bear upon them,
+which results in their being laid together in orderly fashion and
+according to a plan, but it is not to be forgotten that, according to
+the teaching, not of this epistle alone, but of all Paul's letters, the
+living stones are active in the work of building, as well as beings
+subject to an influence. In another place of the New Testament we read
+the exhortation to 'build up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_121" id="Page_1_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> yourselves on your most holy faith,' and
+the means of discharging that duty are set forth in the words which
+follow it; as being 'Praying in the Holy Spirit, keeping yourselves in
+the love of God, and looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the Pauline letters we have frequent references to
+<i>edifying</i>, a phrase which has been so vulgarised by much handling that
+its great meaning has been all but lost, but which still, rightly
+understood, presents the Christian life as one continuous effort after
+developing Christian character. Taking into view the whole of the
+apostolic references to this continuous process of building, we cannot
+but recognise that it all begins with the act of faith which brings men
+into immediate contact and vital union with Jesus Christ, and which is,
+if anything that a man does is, the act of his very inmost self passing
+out of its own isolation and resting itself on Jesus. It is by the vital
+and individual act of faith that any soul escapes from the dreary
+isolation of being a stranger and a foreigner, wandering, homeless and
+solitary, and finds through Jesus fellowship, an elder Brother, a
+Father, and a home populous with many brethren. But whilst faith is the
+condition of beginning the Christian life, which is the only real life,
+that life has to be continued and developed towards perfection by
+continuous effort. 'Tis a life-long toil till the lump be leavened.'</p>
+
+<p>One of the passages already referred to varies the metaphor of building,
+in so far as it seems to represent 'your most holy faith' as the
+foundation, and may be an instance of the doubtful New Testament usage
+of 'faith,' as meaning the believed Gospel, rather than the personal act
+of believing. But however that may be,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_122" id="Page_1_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> context of the words clearly
+suggests the practical duties by which the Christian life is preserved
+and strengthened. They who build up themselves do so, mainly, by keeping
+themselves in the love of God with watchful oversight and continual
+preparedness for struggle against all foes who would drag them from that
+safe fortress, and subsidiarily, by like continuity in prayer, and in
+fixing their meek hope on the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto
+eternal life. If Christian character is ever to be made more Christian,
+it must be by a firmer grasp and a more vivid realisation of Christ and
+His truth. The more we feel ourselves to be lapped in the love of God,
+the more shall we be builded up on our most holy faith. There is no
+mystery about the means of Christian progress. That which, at the
+beginning, made a man a Christian shapes his whole future course; the
+measure of our faith is the measure of our advance.</p>
+
+<p>But the Apostle, in the immediately following words, goes on to pass
+beyond the bounds of his metaphor, and with complete indifference to the
+charge of mixing figures, speaks of the building as growing. That
+thought leads us into a higher region than that of effort. The process
+by which a great forest tree thickens its boles, expands the sweep of
+its branches and lifts them nearer the heavens, is very different from
+that by which a building rises slowly and toilsomely and with manifest
+incompleteness all the time, until the flag flies on the roof-tree. And
+if we had not this nobler thought of a possible advance by the
+increasing circulation within us of a mysterious life, there would be
+little gospel in a word which only enjoined effort as the condition of
+moral progress, and there would be little to choose between Paul and
+Plato. He goes on immediately to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_123" id="Page_1_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> bring out more fully what he means by
+the growth of the building, when he says that if Christians are in
+Christ, they are 'built up for an habitation of God in the Spirit.'
+Union with Christ, and a consequent life in the Spirit, are sure to
+result in the growth of the individual soul and of the collective
+community. That divine Spirit dwells in and works through every
+believing soul, and while it is possible to grieve and to quench It, to
+resist and even to neutralise Its workings, these are the true sources
+of all our growth in grace and knowledge. The process of building may be
+and will be slow. Sometimes lurking enemies will pull down in a night
+what we have laboured at for many days. Often our hands will be slack
+and our hearts will droop. We shall often be tempted to think that our
+progress is so slow that it is doubtful if we have ever been on the
+foundation at all or have been building at all. But 'the Spirit helpeth
+our infirmities,' and the task is not ours alone but His in us. We have
+to recognise that effort is inseparable from building, but we have also
+to remember that growth depends on the free circulation of life, and
+that if we are, and abide in, Jesus, we cannot but be built 'for an
+habitation of God in the Spirit.' We may be sure that whatever may be
+the gaps and shortcomings in the structures that we rear here, none will
+be able to say of us at the last, 'This man began to build and was not
+able to finish.'</p>
+
+<p>II. The foundation on which the building rests.</p>
+
+<p>In the Greek, as in our version, there is no definite article before
+'prophets,' and its absence indicates that both sets of persons here
+mentioned come under the common <i>vinculum</i> of the one definite article
+preceding the first named. So that apostles and prophets belong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_124" id="Page_1_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> to one
+class. It may be a question whether the foundation is theirs in the
+sense that they constitute it, an explanation in favour of which can be
+quoted the vision in the Apocalypse of the new Jerusalem, in the twelve
+foundations of which were written the names of the twelve apostles of
+the Lamb, or whether, as is more probable, the foundation is conceived
+of as laid by them. In like manner the Apostle speaks to the Corinthians
+of having 'as a wise master-builder laid the foundation,' and to the
+Romans of making it his aim to preach especially where Christ was not
+already named, that he might 'not build upon another man's foundation.'
+Following these indications, it seems best to understand the preaching
+of the Gospel as being the laying of the foundation.</p>
+
+<p>Further, the question may be raised whether the prophets here mentioned
+belong to the Old Testament or to the New. The latter alternative has
+been preferred on the ground that the apostles are named first, but, as
+we have already noticed, the order here begins at the top and goes
+downwards, what was last in order of time being first in order of
+mention. We need only recall Peter's bold words that 'all the prophets,
+as many as have spoken, have told of the days' of Christ, or Paul's
+sermon in the synagogue of Antioch in which he passionately insisted on
+the Jewish crime of condemning Christ as being the fulfilment of the
+voices of the prophets, and of the Resurrection of Jesus as being God's
+fulfilment of the promise made unto the fathers to understand how here,
+as it were, beneath the foundation laid by the present preaching of the
+apostles, Paul rejoices to discern the ancient stones firmly laid by
+long dead hands.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle's strongest conviction was that he him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_125" id="Page_1_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>self had become more
+and not less of a Jew by becoming a Christian, and that the Gospel which
+he preached was nothing more than the perfecting of that Gospel before
+the Gospel, which had come from the lips of the prophets. We know a
+great deal more than he did as to the ways in which the progressive
+divine revelation was presented to Israel through the ages, and some of
+us are tempted to think that we know more than we do, but the true
+bearing of modern criticism, as applied to the Old Testament, is to
+confirm, even whilst it may to some extent modify, the conviction common
+to all the New Testament writers, and formulated by the last of the New
+Testament prophets, that 'the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of
+prophecy.' Whatever new light may shine on the questions of the origin
+and composition of the books of the Old Testament, it will never obscure
+the radiance of the majestic figure of the Messiah which shines from the
+prophetic page. The inner relation between the foundation of the
+apostles and that of the prophets is best set forth in the solemn
+colloquy on the Mount of Transfiguration between Moses and Elias and
+Jesus. They 'were with Him' as witnessing to Him to whom law and ritual
+and prophecy had pointed, and they 'spake of His decease which He should
+accomplish at Jerusalem' as being the vital centre of all His work which
+the lambs slain according to ritual had foreshadowed, and the prophetic
+figure of the Servant of the Lord 'wounded for our transgressions and
+bruised for our iniquities' had more distinctly foretold.</p>
+
+<p>III. The corner-stone which underlies and unites the whole.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the corner-stone here is the foundation-stone and not 'the
+head-stone of the corner.' Jesus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_126" id="Page_1_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> Christ is both. He is the first and
+the last; the Alpha and Omega. In accordance with the whole context, in
+which the prevailing idea is that which always fired Paul's imagination,
+viz. that of reconciling Jew and Gentile in one new man, it is best to
+suppose a reference here to the union of Jew and Gentile. The stone laid
+beneath the two walls which diverge at right angles from each other
+binds both together and gives strength and cohesion to the whole. In the
+previous context the same idea is set forth that Christ 'preached peace
+to them that were afar off (Gentiles) and to them that were nigh
+(Jews).' By His death He broke down another wall, the middle wall of
+partition between them, and did so by abolishing 'the law of
+commandments contained in ordinances.' The old distinction between Jew
+and Gentile, which was accentuated by the Jew's rigid observance of
+ordinances and which often led to bitter hatred on both sides, was swept
+away in that strange new thing, a community of believers drawn together
+in Jesus Christ. The former antagonistic 'twain' had become one in a
+third order of man, the Christian man. The Jew Christian and the Gentile
+Christian became brethren because they had received one new life, and
+they who had common feelings of faith and love to the same Saviour, a
+common character drawn from Him, and a common destiny open to them by
+their common relation to Jesus, could never cherish the old emotions of
+racial hate.</p>
+
+<p>When we, in this day, try to picture to ourselves that strange new
+thing, the love which bound the early Christians together and buried as
+beneath a rushing flood the formidable walls of separation between them,
+we may well penitently ask ourselves how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_127" id="Page_1_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> it comes that Jesus seems to
+have so much less power to triumph over the divisive forces that part us
+from those who should be our hearts' brothers. In our modern life there
+are no such gulfs of separation from one another as were filled up
+unconsciously in the experience of the first believers, but the narrower
+chinks seem to remain in their ugliness between those who profess a
+common faith in one Lord, and who are all ready to assert that they are
+built on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, and that Jesus
+Christ is from them the chief corner-stone.</p>
+
+<p>If in reality He is so to us, and He is so if we have been builded upon
+Him through our faith, the metaphor of corner-stone and building will
+fail to express the reality of our relation to Him, for our corner-stone
+has in it an infinite vitality which rises up through all the courses of
+the living stones, and moulds each 'into an immortal feature of
+loveliness and perfection.' So it shall be for each individual, though
+here the appropriation of the perfect gift is imperfect. So it shall be
+in reference to the history of the world. Christ is its centre and
+foundation-stone, and as His coming makes the date from which the
+nations reckon, and all before it was in the deepest sense preparatory
+to His incarnation, all which is after it is in the deepest sense the
+appropriating of Him and the developing of His work. The multitudes
+which went before and that followed cried, saying, 'Blessed is He that
+cometh in the name of the Lord.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_128" id="Page_1_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_WHOLE_FAMILY" id="THE_WHOLE_FAMILY"></a>'THE WHOLE FAMILY'</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The whole family in heaven and earth.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iii. 15.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Grammatically, we are driven to recognise that the Revised Version is
+more correct than the Authorised, when it reads 'every family,' instead
+of 'the whole family.' There is in the expression no reference to the
+thought, however true it is in itself, that the redeemed in heaven and
+the believers on earth make up but one family. The thought rather is,
+that, as has been said, 'the father makes the family,' and if any
+community of intelligent beings, human, or angelic, bears the great name
+of family, the great reason for that lies 'in God's paternal
+relationship.'</p>
+
+<p>But my present purpose in selecting this text is not so much to speak of
+<i>it</i> as to lay hold of the probably incorrect rendering in the
+Authorised Version, as suggesting, though here inaccurately, the thought
+that believers struggling here and saints and angels glorious above 'but
+one communion make,' and in the light of that thought, to consider the
+meaning of the Lord's Supper. I am, of course, fully conscious that in
+thus using the words, I am diverting them from their original purpose;
+but possibly in this case, open confession, <i>my</i> open confession, may
+merit your forgiveness and at all events, it, in some degree, brings me
+my own.</p>
+
+<p>I. Consider the Lord's Supper as a sign that the Church on earth is a
+family.</p>
+
+<p>The Passover was essentially a family feast, and the Lord's Supper,
+which was grafted on it, was plainly meant to be the same. The domestic
+character of the rite shines clearly out in the precious simplicity of
+the arrangements in the upper room. When Christ and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_129" id="Page_1_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> the twelve sat down
+there, it was a family meal at which they sat. He was the head of the
+household; they were members of His family. The early examples of the
+rite, when the disciples 'gathered together to break bread,' obviously
+preserved the same familiar character, and stand in extraordinary
+contrast to the splendours of high mass in a Roman Catholic Cathedral.
+The Church, as a whole, is a household, and the very form of the rite
+proclaims that 'we, being many, are one bread.' The conception of a
+family brings clearly into view the deepest ground of Christian unity.
+It is the possession of a common life, just as men are born into an
+earthly family, not of their own will, nor of their own working, and
+come without any action of their own into bonds of blood relationship
+with brothers and sisters. When we become sons of God and are born
+again, we become brethren of all His children. That which gives us life
+in Him makes us kindred with all through whose veins flows that same
+life. It is the common partaking in the one bread which makes us one.
+The same blood flows in the veins of all the children.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, the only ground on which the Church rests is this common
+possession of the life of Christ, and that ground makes, and ought to be
+felt to make, Christian union a far deeper, more blessed, and more
+imperative bond than can be found in any shallow similarities of aim&mdash;or
+identities of opinion or feeling. The deepest fact of Christian
+consciousness is the foundation fact of Christian brotherhood; each is
+nearer to every Christian than to any besides. A very solemn view of
+Christian duty arises from these thoughts, familiar as they are:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'No distance breaks the tie of blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Brothers are brothers ever more.'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_130" id="Page_1_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>and every tongue is loud in condemnation of any man who is ashamed or
+afraid to recognise his brother and stand by him, whatever may be the
+difference in their worldly positions. 'Every one who loveth Him that
+begat, loveth Him also that is begotten of Him.'</p>
+
+<p>II. The Lord's Supper as a prophecy of the family at home above.</p>
+
+<p>The prophetic character was stamped on the first institution of the
+Lord's Supper by Christ's own words 'until it be fulfilled in the
+kingdom of God,' and by His declaration that He appointed unto them a
+kingdom, that they might eat and drink at His table in His kingdom. We
+may also recall the mysterious feast spread on the shore of the lake,
+where, with obvious allusion both to his earlier miracles and to the sad
+hour in the upper room, he came 'and taketh the bread and gave it to
+them.' Blending these two together we get most blessed, though dim,
+thoughts of that future; they speak to us of an eternal home, an eternal
+feast, and an eternal society. We have to reverse not a few of the
+characteristics of the upper room in order to reach those of the table
+in the kingdom. The Lord's Supper was followed for Him by Gethsemane and
+Calvary, and for them by going out to betray and to deny and to forsake
+Him. From that better table there is no more going out. The servant
+comes in from the field, spent with toil and stained with many a splash,
+but the Master Himself comes forth and serves His servant.</p>
+
+<p>In the eternal feast, which is spread above, the bread as well as the
+wine is new, even whilst it is old, for there will be disclosed new
+depths of blessing and power in the old Christ, and new draughts of joy
+and strength in the old wine which will make the feasters say, in
+rapture and astonishment, to the Master of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_131" id="Page_1_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> feast, 'Thou hast kept
+the good wine until now.' There and then all broken ties will be
+re-knit, all losses supplied, and no shadow of change, nor fear of
+exhaustion, pass across the calm hearts.</p>
+
+<p>III. The Lord's Supper is a token of the present union of the two.</p>
+
+<p>If it thus prophesies the perfectness of heaven, it also shows us how
+the two communities of earth and heaven are united. They, as we, live by
+derivation of the one life; they, as we, are fed and blessed by the one
+Lord. The occupations and thoughts of Christian life on earth and of the
+perfect life of Saints above are one. They look to Christ as we do, when
+we live as Christians, though the sun which is the light of both regions
+shows there a broader disc, and pours forth more fervid rays, and is
+never obscured by clouds, nor ever sets in night. Whether conscious of
+us or not, they are doing there, in perfect fashion, what we imperfectly
+attempt, and partially accomplish.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The Saints on earth and all the Dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;But one communion make.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Heaven and earth are equally mansions in the Father's house.</p>
+
+<p>To the faith which realises this great truth, death dwindles to a small
+matter. The Lord's table has an upper and a lower level. Sitting at the
+lower, we may feel that those who have gone from our sides, and have
+left empty places which never can be filled, are gathered round Him in
+the upper half, and though a screen hangs between the two, yet the feast
+is one and the family is one. Singly our dear ones go, and singly we all
+shall go. The table spread in the presence of enemies will be left
+vacant to its last place, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_132" id="Page_1_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> one spread above will be filled to
+its last place, and so shall we ever be with the Lord, and the unity
+which was always real be perfectly and permanently manifested at the
+last.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="STRENGTHENED_WITH_MIGHT" id="STRENGTHENED_WITH_MIGHT"></a>STRENGTHENED WITH MIGHT</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory; to
+be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span>
+iii. 16.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>In no part of Paul's letters does he rise to a higher level than in his
+prayers, and none of his prayers are fuller of fervour than this
+wonderful series of petitions. They open out one into the other like
+some majestic suite of apartments in a great palace-temple, each leading
+into a loftier and more spacious hall, each drawing nearer the
+presence-chamber, until at last we stand there.</p>
+
+<p>Roughly speaking, the prayer is divided into four petitions, of which
+each is the cause of the following and the result of the
+preceding&mdash;'That He would grant you, according to the riches of His
+glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner
+man'&mdash;that is the first. 'In order that Christ may dwell in your hearts
+by faith,' 'ye being rooted and grounded in love'&mdash;such is the second,
+the result of the first, and the preparation for the third. 'That ye may
+be able to comprehend with all saints ... and to know the love of Christ
+which passeth knowledge,' such is the third, and all lead up at last to
+that wonderful desire beyond which nothing is possible&mdash;'that ye might
+be filled with all the fulness of God.'</p>
+
+<p>I venture to contemplate dealing with these four petitions in successive
+sermons, in order, God helping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_133" id="Page_1_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> me, that I may bring before you a fairer
+vision of the possibilities of your Christian life than you ordinarily
+entertain. For Paul's prayer is God's purpose, and what He means with
+all who profess His name is that these exuberant desires may be
+fulfilled in them. So let us now listen to that petition which is the
+foundation of all, and consider that great thought of the divine
+strength-giving power which may be bestowed upon every Christian soul.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, I remark that God means, and wishes, that all Christians
+should be strong by the possession of the Spirit of might.</p>
+
+<p>It is a miserably inadequate conception of Christianity, and of the
+gifts which it bestows, and the blessings which it intends for men, when
+it is limited, as it practically is, by a large number&mdash;I might almost
+say the majority&mdash;of professing Christians to a simple means of altering
+their relation to the past, and to the broken law of God and of
+righteousness. Thanks be to His name! His great gift to the world begins
+in each individual case with the assurance that all the past is
+cancelled. He gives that blessed sense of forgiveness, which can never
+be too highly estimated unless it is forced out of its true place as the
+introduction, and made to be the climax and the end, of His gifts. I do
+not know what Christianity means, unless it means that you and I are
+forgiven for a purpose; that the purpose, if I may so say, is something
+in advance of the means towards the purpose, the purpose being that we
+should be filled with all the strength and righteousness and
+supernatural life granted to us by the Spirit of God.</p>
+
+<p>It is well that we should enter into the vestibule. There is no other
+path to the throne but through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_134" id="Page_1_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> vestibule. But do not let us forget
+that the good news of forgiveness, though we need it day by day, and
+need it perpetually repeated, is but the introduction to and porch of
+the Temple, and that beyond it there towers, if I cannot say a loftier,
+yet I may say a further gift, even the gift of a divine life like His,
+from whom it comes, and of which it is in reality an effluence and a
+spark. The true characteristic blessing of the Gospel is the gift of a
+new power to a sinful weak world; a power which makes the feeble strong,
+and the strongest as an angel of God.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, brethren! we who know how, 'if any power we have, it is to ill'; we
+who understand the weakness, the unaptness of our spirits to any good,
+and our strength for every vagrant evil that comes upon them to tempt
+them, should surely recognise as a Gospel in very deed that which
+proclaims to us that the 'everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the
+ends of the earth,' who Himself 'fainteth not, neither is weary.' hath
+yet a loftier display of His strength-giving power than that which is
+visible in the heavens above, where, 'because He is strong in might not
+one faileth.' That heaven, the region of calm completeness, of law
+unbroken and therefore of power undiminished, affords a lesser and
+dimmer manifestation of His strength than the work that is done in the
+hell of a human heart that has wandered and is brought back, that is
+stricken with the weakness of the fever of sin, and is healed into the
+strength of obedience and the omnipotence of dependence. It is much to
+say 'for that He is strong in might, not one of these faileth;' it is
+more to say 'He giveth power to them that have failed; and to them that
+have no might He increaseth strength.' The Gospel is the gift of pardon
+for holiness, and its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_135" id="Page_1_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> inmost and most characteristic bestowment is the
+bestowment of a new power for obedience and service.</p>
+
+<p>And that power, as I need not remind you, is given to us through the
+gift of the Divine Spirit. The very name of that Spirit is the 'Spirit
+of Might.' Christ spoke to us about being 'endued with power from on
+high.' The last of His promises that dropped from His lips upon earth
+was the promise that His followers should receive the power of the
+Spirit coming upon them. Wheresoever in the early histories we read of a
+man who was full of the Holy Ghost, we read that he was 'full of power.'
+According to the teaching of this Apostle, God hath given us the 'Spirit
+of power,' which is also the Spirit 'of love and of a sound mind.' So
+the strength that we must have, if we have strength at all, is the
+strength of a Divine Spirit, not our own, that dwells in us, and works
+through us.</p>
+
+<p>And there is nothing in that which need startle or surprise any man who
+believes in a living God at all, and in the possibility, therefore, of a
+connection between the Great Spirit and all the human spirits which are
+His children. I would maintain, in opposition to many modern
+conceptions, the actual supernatural character of the gift that is
+bestowed upon every Christian soul. My reading of the New Testament is
+that as distinctly above the order of material nature as is any miracle,
+is the gift that flows into a believing heart. There is a direct passage
+between God and my spirit. It lies open to His touch; all the paths of
+its deep things can be trodden by Him. You and I act upon one another
+from without, He acts upon us within. We wish one another blessings; He
+gives the blessings. We try to train, to educate, to incline, and
+dispose, by the presentation of motives and the urging of reasons; He
+can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_136" id="Page_1_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> plant in a heart by His own divine husbandry the seed that shall
+blossom into immortal life. And so the Christian Church is a great,
+continuous, supernatural community in the midst of the material world;
+and every believing soul, because it possesses something of the life of
+Jesus Christ, has been the seat of a miracle as real and true as when He
+said 'Lazarus, come forth!' Precisely this teaching does our Lord
+Himself present for our acceptance when He sets side by side, as
+mutually illustrative, as belonging to the same order of supernatural
+phenomena, 'the hour is coming when the dead shall hear the voice of the
+Son of God and they that hear shall live,' which is the supernatural
+resurrection of souls dead in sin,&mdash;and 'the hour is coming in the which
+all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth,'
+which is the future resurrection of the body, in obedience to His will.</p>
+
+<p>So, Christian men and women, do you set clearly before you this: that
+God's purpose with you is but begun when He has forgiven you, that He
+forgives you for a design, that it is a means to an end, and that you
+have not reached the conception of the large things which He intends for
+you unless you have risen to this great thought&mdash;He means and wishes
+that you should be strong with the strength of His own Divine Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now notice, next, that this Divine Power has its seat in, and is
+intended to influence the whole of, the inner life.</p>
+
+<p>As my text puts it, we may be 'strengthened with might by His Spirit <i>in
+the inner man</i>.' By the 'inner man' I suppose, is not meant the new
+creation through faith in Jesus Christ which this Apostle calls 'the
+new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_137" id="Page_1_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> man,' but simply what Peter calls the 'hidden man of the heart' the
+'soul,' or unseen self as distinguished from the visible material body
+which it animates and informs. It is this inner self, then, in which the
+Spirit of God is to dwell, and into which it is to breathe strength. The
+leaven is hid deep in three measures of meal until the whole be
+leavened. And the point to mark is that the whole inward region which
+makes up the true man is the field upon which this Divine Spirit is to
+work. It is not a bit of your inward life that is to be hallowed. It is
+not any one aspect of it that is to be strengthened, but it is the whole
+intellect, affections, desires, tastes, powers of attention, conscience,
+imagination, memory, will. The whole inner man in all its corners is to
+be filled, and to come under the influence of this power, 'until there
+be no part dark, as when the bright shining of a candle giveth thee
+light.'</p>
+
+<p>There is no part of my being that is not patent to the tread of this
+Divine Guest. There are no rooms of the house of my spirit into which He
+may not go. Let Him come with the master key in His hand into all the
+dim chambers of your feeble nature; and as the one life is light in the
+eye, and colour in the cheek, and deftness in the fingers, and strength
+in the arm, and pulsation in the heart, so He will come with the
+manifold results of the one gift to you. He will strengthen your
+understandings, and make you able for loftier tasks of intellect and of
+reason than you can face in your unaided power; He will dwell in your
+affections and make them vigorous to lay hold upon the holy things that
+are above their natural inclination, and will make it certain that their
+reach shall not be beyond their grasp, as, alas! it so often is in the
+sad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_138" id="Page_1_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>ness and disappointments of human love. He will come into that
+feeble, vacillating, wayward will of yours, that is only obstinate in
+its adherence to the low and the evil, as some foul creature, that one
+may try to wrench away, digs its claws into corruption and holds on by
+that. He will lift your will and make it fix upon the good and abominate
+the evil, and through the whole being He will pour a great tide of
+strength which shall cover all the weakness. He will be like some subtle
+elixir which, taken into the lips, steals through a pallid and wasted
+frame, and brings back a glow to the cheek and a lustre to the eye, and
+swiftness to the brain, and power to the whole nature. Or as some plant,
+drooping and flagging beneath the hot rays of the sun, when it has the
+scent of water given to it, will, in all its parts, stiffen and erect
+itself, so, when the Spirit is poured out on men, their whole nature is
+invigorated and helped.</p>
+
+<p>That indwelling Spirit will be a power for suffering. The parallel
+passage to this in the twin epistle to the Colossians is&mdash;'strengthened
+with all might unto all patience and long-suffering with gentleness.'
+Ah, brethren! unless this Divine Spirit were a power for patience and
+endurance it were no power suited to us poor men. So dark at times is
+every life; so full at times of discouragements, of dreariness, of
+sadness, of loneliness, of bitter memories, and of fading hopes does the
+human heart become, that if we are to be strong we must have a strength
+that will manifest itself most chiefly in this, that it teaches us how
+to bear, how to weep, how to submit.</p>
+
+<p>And it will be a power for conflict. We have all of us, in the discharge
+of duty and in the meeting of temptation, to face such tremendous
+antagonisms that unless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_139" id="Page_1_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> we have grace given to us which will enable us
+to resist, we shall be overcome and swept away. God's power given by the
+Divine Spirit does not absolve us from the fight, but it fits us for the
+fight. It is not given in order that, holiness may be won without a
+struggle, as some people seem to think, but it is given to us in order
+that in the struggle for holiness we may never lose 'one jot of heart or
+hope,' but may be 'able to withstand in the evil day, and having done
+all to stand.'</p>
+
+<p>It is a power for service. 'Tarry ye in Jerusalem till ye be endued with
+power from on high.' There is no such force for the spreading of
+Christ's Kingdom, and the witness-bearing work of His Church, as the
+possession of this Divine Spirit. Plunged into that fiery baptism, the
+selfishness and the sloth, which stand in the way of so many of us, are
+all consumed and annihilated, and we are set free for service because
+the bonds that bound us are burnt up in the merciful furnace of His
+fiery power.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye shall be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man'&mdash;a
+power that will fill and flood all your nature if you will let it, and
+will make you strong to suffer, strong to combat, strong to serve, and
+to witness for your Lord.</p>
+
+<p>III. And now, lastly, let me point you still further to the measure of
+this power. It is limitless with the boundlessness of God Himself. 'That
+he would grant you' is the daring petition of the Apostle, 'according to
+the riches of His glory to be strengthened.'</p>
+
+<p>There is the measure. There is no limit except the uncounted wealth of
+His own self-manifestation, the flashing light of revealed divinity.
+Whatsoever there is of splendour in that, whatsoever there is of power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_140" id="Page_1_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+there, in these and in nothing on this side of them, lies the limit of
+the possibilities of a Christian life. Of course there is a working
+limit at each moment, and that is our capacity to receive; but that
+capacity varies, may vary indefinitely, may become greater and greater
+beyond our count or measurement. Our hearts may be more and more capable
+of God; and in the measure in which they are capable of Him they shall
+be filled by Him. A limit which is always shifting is no limit at all. A
+kingdom, the boundaries of which are not the same from one year to
+another, by reason of its own inherent expansive power, may be said to
+have no fixed limit. And so we appropriate and enclose, as it were,
+within our own little fence, a tiny portion of the great prairie that
+rolls boundlessly to the horizon. But to-morrow we may enclose more, if
+we will, and more and more; and so ever onwards, for all that is God's
+is ours, and He has given us His whole self to use and to possess
+through our faith in His Son. A thimble can only take up a thimbleful of
+the ocean, but what if the thimble be endowed with a power of expansion
+which has no term known to men? May it not, then, be that some time or
+other it shall be able to hold so much of the infinite depth as now
+seems a dream too audacious to be realised?</p>
+
+<p>So it is with us and God. He lets us come into the vaults, as it were,
+where in piles and masses the ingots of uncoined and uncounted gold are
+stored and stacked; and He says, 'Take as much as you like to carry.'
+There is no limit except the riches of His glory.</p>
+
+<p>And now, dear friends, remember that this great gift, offered to each of
+us, is offered on conditions. To you professing Christians especially I
+speak. You will never get it unless you want it, and some of you do not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_141" id="Page_1_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+want it. There are plenty of people who call themselves Christian men
+that would not for the life of them know what to do with this great gift
+if they had it. You will get it if you desire it. 'Ye have not because
+ye ask not.'</p>
+
+<p>Oh! when one contrasts the largeness of God's promises and the miserable
+contradiction to them which the average Christian life of this
+generation presents, what can we say? 'Hath His mercy clean gone for
+ever? Doth His promise fail for evermore?' Ye weak Christian people,
+born weakling and weak ever since, as so many of you are, open your
+mouths wide. Rise to the height of the expectations and the desires
+which it is our sin not to cherish; and be sure of this, as we ask so
+shall we receive. 'Ye are not straitened in God.' Alas! alas! 'ye are
+straitened in yourselves.'</p>
+
+<p>And mind, there must be self-suppression if there is to be the triumph
+of a divine power in you. You cannot fight with both classes of weapons.
+The human must die if the divine is to live. The life of nature,
+dependence on self, must be weakened and subdued if the life of God is
+to overcome and to fill you. You must be able to say 'Not I!' or you
+will never be able to say 'Christ liveth in me.' The patriarch who
+overcame halted on his thigh; and all the life of nature was lamed and
+made impotent that the life of grace might prevail. So crush self by the
+power and for the sake of the Christ, if you would that the Spirit
+should bear rule over you.</p>
+
+<p>See to it, too, that you use what you have of that Divine Spirit. 'To
+him that hath shall be given.' What is the use of more water being sent
+down the mill lade, if the water that does come in it all runs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_142" id="Page_1_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> away at
+the bottom, and none of it goes over the wheel? Use the power you have,
+and power will come to the faithful steward of what he possesses. He
+that is faithful in a little shall get much to be faithful over. Ask and
+use, and the ancient thanksgiving may still come from your lips. 'In the
+day when I cried, Thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with
+strength in my soul.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_INDWELLING_CHRIST" id="THE_INDWELLING_CHRIST"></a>THE INDWELLING CHRIST</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; ye being rooted and
+grounded in love.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iii. 17.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We have here the second step of the great staircase by which Paul's
+fervent desires for his Ephesian friends climbed towards that wonderful
+summit of his prayers&mdash;which is ever approached, never reached,&mdash;'that
+ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.'</p>
+
+<p>Two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for the
+lessons of these verses. The first is as to the relation of this clause
+to the preceding. It might appear at first sight to be simply parallel
+with the former, expressing substantially the same ideas under a
+somewhat different aspect. The operation of the strength-giving Spirit
+in the inner man might very naturally be supposed to be equivalent to
+the dwelling of Christ in our hearts by faith. So many commentators do,
+in fact, take it; but I think that the two ideas may be distinguished,
+and that we are to see in the words of our text, as I have said, the
+second step in this prayer, which is in some sense a result of the
+'strengthening with might by the Spirit in the inner man.' I need not
+enter in detail into the reasons for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_143" id="Page_1_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> taking this view of the connection
+of the clause, which is obviously in accordance with the climbing-up
+structure of the whole verse. It is enough to point it out as the basis
+of my further remarks.</p>
+
+<p>And now the second observation with which I will trouble you, before I
+come to deal with the thoughts of the verse, is as to the connection of
+the last words of it. You may observe that in reading the words of my
+text I omitted the 'that' which stands in the centre of the verse. I did
+so because the words, 'Ye being rooted and grounded in love,' in the
+original, do stand before the '<i>that</i>,' and are distinctly separated by
+it from the subsequent clause. They ought not, therefore, to be shifted
+forward into it, as our translators and the Revised Version have, I
+think, unfortunately done, unless there were some absolute necessity
+either from meaning or from construction. I do not think that this is
+the case; but on the contrary, if they are carried forward into the next
+clause, which describes the result of Christ's dwelling in our hearts by
+faith, they break the logical flow of the sentence by mixing together
+result and occasion. And so I attach them to the first part of this
+verse, and take them to express at once the consequence of Christ's
+dwelling in the heart by faith, and the preparation or occasion for our
+being able to comprehend and know the love of Christ which passeth
+knowledge. Now that is all with which I need trouble you in the way of
+explanation of the meaning of the words. Let us come now to deal with
+their substance.</p>
+
+<p>I. Consider the Indwelling of Christ, as desired by the Apostle for all
+Christians.</p>
+
+<p>To begin with, let me say in the plainest, simplest, strongest way that
+I can, that that dwelling of Christ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_144" id="Page_1_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> in the believing heart is to be
+regarded as being a plain literal fact.</p>
+
+<p>To a man who does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, of course
+that is nonsense, but to those of us who do see in Him the manifested
+incarnate God, there ought to be no difficulty in accepting this as the
+simple literal force of the words before us, that in every soul where
+faith, howsoever feeble, has been exercised, there Jesus Christ does
+verily abide.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be weakened down into any notion of participation in His
+likeness, sympathy with His character, submission to His influence,
+following His example, listening to His instruction, or the like. A dead
+Plato may so influence his followers, but that is not how a living
+Christ influences His disciples. What is meant is no mere influence
+derived but separable from Him, however blessed and gracious that
+influence might be, but it is the presence of His own self, exercising
+influences which are inseparable from His presence, and only to be
+realised when He dwells in us.</p>
+
+<p>I think that Christian people as a rule do far too little turn their
+attention to this aspect of the Gospel teaching, and concentrate their
+thoughts far too much upon that which is unspeakably precious in itself,
+but does not exhaust all that Christ is to us, viz. the work that He
+wrought for us upon Calvary; or to take a step further, the work that He
+is now carrying on for us as our Intercessor and Advocate in the
+heavens. You who listen to me Sunday after Sunday will not suspect me of
+seeking to minimise either of these two aspects of our Lord's mission
+and operation, but I do believe that very largely the glad thought of an
+indwelling Christ, who actually abides and works in our hearts, and is
+not only for us in the heavens, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_145" id="Page_1_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> with us by some kind of impalpable
+and metaphorical presence, but in simple, that is to say, in spiritual
+reality is in our spirits, has faded away from the consciousness of the
+Christian Church.</p>
+
+<p>And so we are called 'mystics' when we preach Christ in the heart. Ah,
+brother! unless your Christianity be in the good deep sense of the word
+'mystical,' it is mechanical, which is worse. I preach, and rejoice that
+I have to preach, a 'Christ that died, yea! rather that is risen again;
+who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for
+us.' Nor do I stop there, but I preach a Christ that is in us, dwelling
+in our hearts if we be His at all.</p>
+
+<p>Well, then, further observe that the special emphasis of the prayer here
+is that this 'indwelling' may be an unbroken and permanent one. Any of
+you who can consult the original for yourselves will see that the
+Apostle here uses a compound word which conveys the idea of intensity
+and continuity. What he desires, then, is not merely that these Ephesian
+Christians may have occasional visits of the indwelling Lord, or that at
+some lofty moments of spiritual enthusiasm they may be conscious that He
+is with them, but that always, in an unbroken line of deep, calm
+receptiveness, they may possess, and know that they possess, an
+indwelling Saviour.</p>
+
+<p>And this, I think, is one of the reasons why we may and must distinguish
+between the apparently very similar petition in the previous verse,
+about which we spoke in the last sermon, and the petition which is now
+occupying us; for, as I shall have to show you, it is only as
+'strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man' that we are
+capable of the continuous abiding of that Lord within us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_146" id="Page_1_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Oh! what a contrast to that idea of a perpetual unbroken inhabitation of
+Jesus in our spirits and to our consciousness is presented by our
+ordinary life! 'Why shouldst Thou be as a wayfaring man that turneth
+aside to tarry for a night?' may well be the utterance of the average
+Christian. We might, with unbroken blessedness, possess Him in our
+hearts, and instead, we have only 'visits short and far between' Alas,
+alas, how often do we drive away that indwelling Christ, because our
+hearts are 'foul with sin,' so that He</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Can but listen at the gate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;And hear the household jar within.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Christian men and women! here is the ideal of our lives, capable of
+being approximated to (if not absolutely in its entirety reached) with
+far more perfection than it ever has yet been by us. There might be a
+line of light never interrupted running all through our religious
+experience. Instead of that there is a light point here, and a great gap
+of darkness there, like the straggling lamps by the wayside in the
+half-lighted squalid suburbs of some great city. Is that your Christian
+life, broken by many interruptions, and having often sounding through it
+the solemn words of the retreating divinity which the old profound
+legend tells us were heard the night before the Temple on Zion was
+burnt:&mdash;'Let us depart?' 'I will arise and return unto My place till
+they acknowledge their offences.' God means and wishes that Christ may
+continuously dwell in our hearts. Does He to your own consciousness
+dwell in yours?</p>
+
+<p>And then the last thought connected with this first part of my subject
+is that the heart, strengthened by the Spirit, is fitted to be the
+Temple of the indwelling Christ. How shall we prepare the chamber for
+such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_147" id="Page_1_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> a guest? How shall some poor occupant of some wretched hut by the
+wayside fit it up for the abode of a prince? The answer lies in these
+words that precede my text. You cannot strengthen the rafters and lift
+the roof and adorn the halls and furnish the floor in a manner befitting
+the coming of the King; but you can turn to that Divine Spirit who will
+expand and embellish and invigorate your whole spirit, and make it
+capable of receiving the indwelling Christ.</p>
+
+<p>That these two things which are here considered as cause and effect may,
+in another aspects be considered as but varying phases of the same
+truth, is only part of the depth and felicity of the teaching that is
+here; for if you come to look more deeply into it, the Spirit that
+strengtheneth with might is the Spirit of Christ; and He dwells in men's
+hearts by His own Spirit. So that the apparent confusion, arising from
+what in other places are regarded as identical being here conceived as
+cause and effect, is no confusion at all, but is explained and
+vindicated by the deep truth that nothing but the indwelling of the
+Christ can fit for the indwelling of the Christ. The lesser gift of His
+presence prepares for the greater measure of it; the transitory
+inhabitation for the more permanent. Where He comes in smaller measure
+He opens the door and makes the heart capable of His own more entire
+indwelling. 'Unto him that hath shall be given.' It is Christ in the
+heart that makes the heart fit for Christ to dwell in the heart. You
+cannot do it by your own power; turn to Him and let Him make you temples
+meet for Himself.</p>
+
+<p>II. So now, in the second place, notice the open door through which the
+Christ comes in to dwell&mdash;'that He may dwell in your hearts by faith.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_148" id="Page_1_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>More accurately we may render 'through faith' and might even venture to
+suppose that the thought of faith as an open door through which Christ
+passes into the heart, floated half distinctly before the Apostle's
+mind. Be that as it may, at all events faith is here represented as the
+means or condition through which this dwelling takes effect. You have
+but to believe in Him and He comes, drawn from heaven, floating down on
+a sunbeam, as it were, and enters into the heart and abides there.</p>
+
+<p>Trust, which is faith, is self-distrust. 'I dwell in the high and holy
+place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.' Rivers do
+not run on the mountain tops, but down in the valleys. So the heart that
+is lifted up and self-complacent has no dew of His blessing resting upon
+it, but has the curse of Gilboa adhering to its barrenness; but the low
+lands, the humble and the lowly hearts, are they in which the waters
+that go softly scoop their course and diffuse their blessings. Faith is
+self-distrust. Self-distrust brings the Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Faith is desire. Never, never in the history of the world has it been or
+can it be that a longing towards Him shall be a longing thrown back
+unsatisfied upon itself. You have but to trust, and you possess. We open
+the door for the entrance of Christ by the simple act of faith, and
+blessed be His name! He can squeeze Himself through a very little chink,
+and He does not require that the gates should be flung wide open in
+order that, with some of His blessings, He may come in.</p>
+
+<p>Mystical Christianity of the false sort has much to say about the
+indwelling of God in the soul, but it spoils all its teaching by
+insisting upon it that the condition on which God dwells in the soul is
+the soul's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_149" id="Page_1_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> purifying itself to receive Him. But you cannot cleanse your
+hearts so as to bring Christ into them, you must let Him come and
+cleanse them by the process of His coming, and fit them thereby for His
+own indwelling. And, assuredly, He will so come, purging us from our
+evil and abiding in our hearts.</p>
+
+<p>But do not forget that the faith which brings Christ into the spirit
+must be a faith which works by love, if it is to keep Christ in the
+spirit. You cannot bring that Lord into your hearts by anything that you
+do. The man who cleanses his own soul by his own strength, and so
+expects to draw God into it, has made the mistake which Christ pointed
+out when He told us that when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man he
+leaves his house empty, though it be swept and garnished. Moral
+reformation may turn out the devils, it will never bring in God, and in
+the emptiness of the swept and garnished heart there is an invitation to
+the seven to come back again and fill it.</p>
+
+<p>And whilst that is true, remember, on the other hand, that a Christian
+man can drive away his Master by evil works. The sweet song-birds and
+the honey-making bees are said always to desert a neighbourhood before a
+pestilence breaks out in it. And if I may so say, similarly quick to
+feel the first breath of the pestilence is the presence of the Christ
+which cannot dwell with evil. You bring Christ into your heart by faith,
+without any work at all; you keep Him there by a faith which produces
+holiness.</p>
+
+<p>III. And the last point is the gifts of this indwelling Christ,&mdash;'ye
+being,' or as the words might more accurately be translated, 'Ye having
+been rooted and grounded in love.'</p>
+
+<p>Where He comes He comes not empty-handed. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_150" id="Page_1_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> brings His own love, and
+that, consciously received, produces a corresponding and answering love
+in our hearts to Him. So there is no need to ask the question here
+whether 'love' means Christ's love to me, or my love to Christ. From the
+nature of the case both are included&mdash;the recognition of His love and
+the response by mine are the result of His entering into the heart. This
+love, the recognition of His and the response by mine, is represented in
+a lovely double metaphor in these words as being at once the soil in
+which our lives are rooted and grow, and the foundation on which our
+lives are built and are steadfast.</p>
+
+<p>There is no need to enlarge upon these two things, but let me just touch
+them for a moment. Where Christ abides in a man's heart, love will be
+the very soil in which his life will be rooted and grow. That love will
+be the motive of all service, it will underlie, as its productive cause,
+all fruitfulness. All goodness and all beauty will be its fruit. The
+whole life will be as a tree planted in this rich soil. And so the life
+will grow not by effort only, but as by an inherent power drawing its
+nourishment from the soil. This is blessedness. It is heaven upon earth
+that love should be the soil in which our obedience is rooted, and from
+which we draw all the nutriment that turns to flowers and fruit.</p>
+
+<p>Where Christ dwells in the heart, love will be the foundation upon which
+our lives are builded steadfast and sure. The blessed consciousness of
+His love, and the joyful answer of my heart to it, may become the basis
+upon which my whole being shall repose, the underlying thought that
+gives security, serenity, steadfastness to my else fluctuating life. I
+may so plant myself upon Him, as that in Him I shall be strong,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_151" id="Page_1_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> and
+then my life will not only grow like a tree and have its leaf green and
+broad, and its fruit the natural outcome of its vitality, but it will
+rise like some stately building, course by course, pillar by pillar,
+until at last the shining topstone is set there. He that buildeth on
+that foundation shall never be confounded.</p>
+
+<p>For, remember that, deepest of all, the words of my text may mean that
+the Incarnate Personal Love becomes the very soil in which my life is
+set and blossoms, on which my life is founded.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Thou, my Life, O let me be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Rooted, grafted, built in Thee.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Christ is Love, and Love is Christ. He that is rooted and grounded in
+love has the roots of his being, and the foundation of his life fixed
+and fastened in that Lord.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear brethren, go to Christ like those two on the road to Emmaus;
+and as Fra Angelico has painted them on his convent wall, put out your
+hands and lay them on His, and say, 'Abide with us. Abide with us!' And
+the answer will come:&mdash;'This is my rest for ever; here'&mdash;mystery of
+love!&mdash;'will I dwell, for I have desired it,' even the narrow room of
+your poor heart.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LOVE_UNKNOWABLE_AND_KNOWN" id="LOVE_UNKNOWABLE_AND_KNOWN"></a>LOVE UNKNOWABLE AND KNOWN</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That ye ... may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the
+breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of
+Christ, which passeth knowledge.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iii. 18, 19.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This constitutes the third of the petitions in this great prayer of
+Paul's, each of which, as we have had occasion to see in former sermons,
+rises above, and is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_152" id="Page_1_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> consequence of the preceding, and leads on to,
+and is a cause or occasion of the subsequent one.</p>
+
+<p>The two former petitions have been for inward strength communicated by a
+Divine Spirit, in order that Christ may dwell in our hearts, and so we
+may be rooted and grounded in love. The result of these desires being
+realised in our hearts is here set forth in two clauses which are
+substantially equivalent in meaning. 'To comprehend' may be taken as
+meaning nearly the same as 'to know,' only that perhaps the former
+expresses an act more purely intellectual. And, as we shall see in our
+next sermon, 'the breadth and length and depth and height' are the
+unmeasurable dimensions of the love which in the second clause is
+described as 'passing knowledge.' I purpose to deal with these measures
+in a separate discourse, and, therefore, omit them from consideration
+now.</p>
+
+<p>We have, then, mainly two thoughts here, the one, that only the loving
+heart in which Christ dwells can know the love of Christ; and the other
+that even that heart can <i>not</i> know the love of Christ. The paradox is
+intentional, but it is intelligible. Let me deal then, as well as I can,
+with these two great thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, we have this thought that only the loving heart can know
+Christ's love.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Bible uses that word <i>know</i> to express two different things; one
+which we call mere intellectual perception; or to put it into plainer
+words, mere head knowledge such as a man may have about any subject of
+study, and the other a deep and living experience which is possession
+before it is knowledge, and knowledge because it is possession.</p>
+
+<p>Now the former of these two, the knowledge which is merely the work of
+the understanding, is, of course,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_153" id="Page_1_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> independent of love. A man may know
+all about Christ and His love without one spark of love in his heart.
+And there are thousands of people who, as far as the mere intellectual
+understanding is concerned, know as much about Jesus Christ and His love
+as the saint who is closest to the Throne, and yet have not one trace of
+love to Christ in them. That is the kind of people that a widely
+diffused Christianity and a habit of hearing sermons produce. There are
+plenty of them, and some of us among them, who, as far as their heads
+are concerned, know quite as much of Jesus Christ and His love as any of
+us do, and could talk about it and argue about it, and draw inferences
+from it, and have the whole system of evangelical Christianity at their
+fingers' ends. Ay! It is at their fingers' <i>ends</i>, it never gets any
+nearer them than that.</p>
+
+<p>There is a knowledge with which love has nothing to do, and it is a
+knowledge that for many people is quite sufficient. 'Knowledge puffeth
+up,' says the Apostle; into an unwholesome bubble of self-complacency
+that will one day be pricked and disappear, but 'love buildeth up'&mdash;a
+steadfast, slowly-rising, solid fabric. There be two kinds of knowledge:
+the mere rattle of notions in a man's brain, like the seeds of a
+withered poppy-head; very many, very dry, very hard; that will make a
+noise when you shake them. And there is another kind of knowledge which
+goes deep down into the heart, and is the only knowledge worth calling
+by the name; and that knowledge is the child, as my text has it, of
+love.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us think about that for a moment. Love, says Paul, is the parent
+of all knowledge. Well, now, can we find any illustrations from similar
+facts in other regions? Yes! I think so. How do we know, really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_154" id="Page_1_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> know,
+any emotions of any sort whatever? Only by experience. You may talk for
+ever about feelings, and you teach nothing about them to those who have
+not experienced them. The poets of the world have been singing about
+love ever since the world began. But no heart has learned what love is
+from even the sweetest and deepest songs. Who that is not a father can
+be taught paternal love by words, or can come to a perception of it by
+an effort of mind? And so with all other emotions. Only the lips that
+have drunk the cup of sweetness or of bitterness can tell how sweet or
+how bitter it is, and even when they, made wise by experience, speak out
+their deepest hearts, the listeners are but little the wiser, unless
+they too have been scholars in the same school. Experience is our only
+teacher in matters of feeling and emotion, as in the lower regions of
+taste and appetite. A man must be hungry to know what hunger is; he must
+taste honey or wormwood in order to know the taste of honey or wormwood,
+and in like manner he cannot know sorrow but by feeling its ache, and
+must love if he would know love. Experience is our only teacher, and her
+school-fees are heavy.</p>
+
+<p>Just as a blind man can never be made to understand the glories of
+sunrise, or the light upon the far-off mountains; just as a deaf man may
+read books about acoustics, but they will not give him a notion of what
+it is to hear Beethoven, so we must have love to Christ before we know
+what love to Christ is, and we must consciously experience the love of
+Christ ere we know what the love of Christ is. We must have love to
+Christ in order to have a deep and living possession of love of Christ,
+though reciprocally it is also true that we must have the love of Christ
+known and felt by our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_155" id="Page_1_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> answering hearts, if we are ever to love Him back
+again.</p>
+
+<p>So in all the play and counterplay of love between Christ and us, and in
+all the reaction of knowledge and love this remains true, that we must
+be rooted and grounded in love ere we can know love, and must have
+Christ dwelling in our hearts, in order to that deep and living
+possession which, when it is conscious of itself, is knowledge, and is
+for ever alien to the loveless heart.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He must be loved, ere that to you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;He will seem worthy of your love.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If you want to know the blessedness of the love of Christ, love Him, and
+open your hearts for the entrance of His love to you. Love is the parent
+of deep, true knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, before we can love an unseen person and believe in his love,
+we must know about him by the ordinary means by which we learn about all
+persons outside the circle of our sight. So before the love which is
+thus the parent of deep, true knowledge, there must be the knowledge by
+study and credence of the record concerning Christ, which supplies the
+facts on which alone love can be nourished. The understanding has its
+part to play in leading the heart to love, and then the heart becomes
+the true teacher. He that loveth, knoweth God, for God is love. He that
+is rooted and grounded in love because Christ dwells in his heart, will
+be strengthened to know the love in which he is rooted. The Christ
+within us will know the love of Christ. We must first 'taste,' and then
+we shall 'see' that the Lord is good, as the Psalmist puts it with deep
+truth. First, the appropriation and feeding upon God, then the clear
+perception by the mind of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_156" id="Page_1_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> sweetness in the taste. First the
+enjoyment; then the reflection on the enjoyment. First the love; and
+then the consciousness of the love of Christ possessed and the love to
+Christ experienced. The heart must be grounded in love that the man may
+know the love which passeth knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Then notice that there is also here another condition for this deep and
+blessed knowledge laid down in these words, 'That ye may be able to
+comprehend <i>with all saints</i>.' That is to say, our knowledge of the love
+of Jesus Christ depends largely on our sanctity. If we are pure we shall
+know. If we were wholly devoted to Him we should wholly know His love to
+us, and in the measure in which we are pure and holy we shall know it.
+This heart of ours is like a reflecting telescope, the least breath upon
+the mirror of which will cause all the starry sublimities that it should
+shadow forth to fade and become dim. The slightest moisture in the
+atmosphere, though it be quite imperceptible where we stand, will be
+dense enough to shut out the fair, shining, snowy summits that girdle
+the horizon and to leave nothing visible but the lowliness and
+commonplaceness of the prosaic plain.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to know the love of Christ, first of all, that love must
+purify your souls. But then you must keep your souls pure, assured of
+this, that only the single eye is full of light, and that they who are
+not 'saints' grope in the dark even at midday, and whilst drenched by
+the sunshine of His love, are unconscious of it altogether. And so we
+get that miserable and mysterious tragedy of men and women walking
+through life, as many of you are doing, in the very blaze and focus of
+Christ's love, and never beholding it nor knowing anything about it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_157" id="Page_1_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Observe again the beginning of this path of knowledge, which we have
+thus traced. There must be, says my text, an indwelling Christ, and so
+an experience, deep and stable, of His love, and then we shall know the
+love which we thus experience. But how comes that indwelling? That is
+the question for us. The knowledge of His love is blessedness, is peace,
+is love, is everything; as we shall see in considering the last stage of
+this prayer. That knowledge arises from our fellowship with and our
+possession of the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ. How does that
+fellowship with, and possession of the love of God in Jesus Christ,
+come? That is the all-important question. What is the beginning of
+everything? 'That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.' There is
+the gate through which you and I may come, and by which we must come if
+we are to come at all into the possession and perception of Christ's
+great love. Here is the path of knowledge. First of all, there must be
+the simple historical knowledge of the facts of Christ's life and death
+for us, with the Scripture teaching of their meaning and power. And then
+we must turn these truths from mere notions into life. It is not enough
+to know the love that God has to us, in that lower sense of the word
+'knowledge.' Many of you know that, who never got any blessing out of it
+all your days, and never will, unless you change. Besides the 'knowing'
+there must be the 'believing' of the love. You must translate the notion
+into a living fact in your experience. You must pass from the simple
+work of understanding the Gospel to the higher act of faith. You must
+not be contented with knowing, you must trust. And if you have done that
+all the rest will follow, and the little, narrow, low doorway of humble
+self-distrust<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_158" id="Page_1_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>ing faith, through which a man creeps on his knees,
+leaving outside all his sin and his burden, opens out into the temple
+palace&mdash;the large place in which Christ's love is imparted to the soul.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, this doctrine of my text ought to be for every one of us a joy
+and a gospel. There is no royal road into the sweetness and the depth of
+Christ's love, for the wise or the prudent. The understanding is no more
+the organ for apprehending the love of Christ than the ear is the organ
+for perceiving light, or the heart the organ for learning mathematics.
+Blessed be God! the highest gifts are not bestowed upon the clever
+people, on the men of genius and the gifted ones, the cultivated and the
+refined, but they are open for all men; and when we say that love is the
+parent of knowledge, and that the condition of knowing the depths of
+Christ's heart is simple love which is the child of faith, we are only
+saying in other words what the Master embodied in His thanksgiving
+prayer, 'I thank Thee, Father! Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou
+hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them
+unto babes.'</p>
+
+<p>And that is so, not because Christianity, being a foolish system, can
+only address itself to fools; not because Christianity, contradicting
+wisdom, cannot expect to be received by the wise and the cultured, but
+because a man's brains have as little to do with his trustful acceptance
+of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a man's eyes have to do with his
+capacity of hearing a voice. Therefore, seeing that the wise and
+prudent, and the cultured, and the clever, and the men of genius are
+always the minority of the race, let us vulgar folk that are neither
+wise, nor clever, nor cultured, nor geniuses, be thankful that all that
+has nothing to do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_159" id="Page_1_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> with our power of knowing and possessing the best
+wisdom and the highest treasures, but that upon this path the wayfaring
+man though a fool shall not err, and all narrow foreheads and limited
+understandings, and poor, simple uneducated people as well as
+philosophers and geniuses have to learn love by their hearts and not by
+their heads, and by a sense of need and a humble trust and a daily
+experience have to appropriate and suck out the blessing that lies in
+the love of Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name! The end of all
+aristocracies of culture and superciliousness of intellect lies in that
+great truth that we possess the deepest knowledge and highest wisdom
+when we love and by our love.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now a word in the next place as to the other thought here, that not
+even the loving heart can know the love of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>'It passeth knowledge,' says my text. Now I do not suppose that the
+paradox here of knowing the love of Christ which 'passeth knowledge' is
+to be explained by taking 'know' and 'knowledge' in the two different
+senses which I have already referred to, so as that we may experience,
+and know by conscious experience, that love which the mere understanding
+is incapable of grasping. That of course is an explanation which might
+be defended, but I take it that it is much truer to the Apostle's
+meaning to suppose that he uses the words 'know' and 'knowledge' both
+times in the same sense. And so we get familiar thoughts which I touch
+upon very briefly.</p>
+
+<p>Our knowledge of Christ's love, though real, is incomplete, and must
+always be so. You and I believe, I hope, that Christ's love is not a
+man's love, or at least that it is more than a man's love. We believe
+that it is the flowing out to us of the love of God,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_160" id="Page_1_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> that all the
+fulness of the divine heart pours itself through that narrow channel of
+the human nature of our Lord, and therefore that the flow is endless and
+the Fountain infinite.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I do not need to show you that it is possible for people to
+have, and that in fact we do possess a real, a valid, a reliable
+knowledge of that which is infinite; although we possess, as a matter of
+course, no adequate and complete knowledge of it. But I only remind you
+that we have before us in Christ's love something which, though the
+understanding is not by itself able to grasp it, yet the understanding
+led by the heart can lay hold of, and can find in it infinite treasures.
+We can lay our poor hands on His love as a child might lay its tiny palm
+upon the base of some great cliff, and hold that love in a real grasp of
+a real knowledge and certitude, but we cannot put our hands round it and
+feel that we <i>com</i>prehend as well as <i>ap</i>prehend. Let us be thankful
+that we cannot.</p>
+
+<p>His love can only become to us a subject of knowledge as it reveals
+itself in its manifestations. Yet after even these manifestations it
+remains unuttered and unutterable even by the Cross and grave, even by
+the glory and the throne. 'It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do?
+deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer
+than the earth, and broader than the sea.'</p>
+
+<p>We have no measure by which we can translate into the terms of our
+experience, and so bring within the grasp of our minds, what was the
+depth of the step, which Christ took at the impulse of His love, from
+the Throne to the Cross. We know not what He forewent; we know not, nor
+ever shall know, what depths of darkness and soul-agony He passed
+through at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_161" id="Page_1_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> bidding of His all-enduring love to us. Nor do we know
+the consequences of that great work of emptying Himself of His glory. We
+have no means by which we can estimate the darkness and the depth of the
+misery from which we have been delivered, nor the height and the
+radiance of the glory to which we are to be lifted. And until we can
+tell and measure by our compasses both of these two extremes of possible
+human fate, till we have gone down into the deepest abyss of a
+bottomless pit of growing alienation and misery, and up above the
+highest reach of all unending progress into light and glory and
+God-likeness, we have not stretched our compasses wide enough to touch
+the two poles of this great sphere, the infinite love of Jesus Christ.
+So we bow before it, we know that we possess it with a knowledge more
+sure and certain, more deep and valid, than our knowledge of ought but
+ourselves; but yet it is beyond our grasp, and towers above us
+inaccessible in the altitude of its glory, and stretches deep beneath us
+in the profundity of its condescension.</p>
+
+<p>And, in like manner, we may say that this known love passes knowledge,
+inasmuch as our experience of it can never exhaust it. We are like the
+settlers on some great island continent&mdash;as, for instance, on the
+Australian continent for many years after its first discovery&mdash;a thin
+fringe of population round the seaboard here and there, and all the
+bosom of the land untraversed and unknown. So after all experiences of
+and all blessed participation in the love of Jesus Christ which come to
+each of us by our faith, we have but skimmed the surface, but touched
+the edges, but received a drop of what, if it should come upon us in
+fulness of flood like a Niagara of love, would overwhelm our spirits.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_162" id="Page_1_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So we have within our reach not only the treasure of creatural
+affections which bring gladness into life when they come, and darkness
+over it when they depart; we have not only human love which, if I may so
+say, is always lifting its finger to its lips in the act of bidding us
+adieu; but we may possess a love which will abide with us for ever. Men
+die, Christ lives. We can exhaust men, we cannot exhaust Christ. We can
+follow other objects of pursuit, all of which have limitation to their
+power of satisfying and pall upon the jaded sense sooner or later, or
+sooner or later are wrenched away from the aching heart. But here is a
+love into which we can penetrate very deep and fear no exhaustion; a sea
+into which we can cast ourselves, nor dread that like some rash diver
+flinging himself into shallow water where he thought there was depth, we
+may be bruised and wounded. We may find in Christ the endless love that
+an immortal heart requires. Enter by the low door of faith, and your
+finite heart will have the joy of an infinite love for its possession,
+and your mortal life will rise transfigured into an immortal and growing
+participation in the immortal Love of the indwelling and inexhaustible
+Christ.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_PARADOX_OF_LOVES_MEASURE" id="THE_PARADOX_OF_LOVES_MEASURE"></a>THE PARADOX OF LOVE'S MEASURE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The breadth, and length, and depth, and height.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iii. 18.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Of what? There can, I think, be no doubt as to the answer. The next
+clause is evidently the continuation of the idea begun in that of our
+text, and it runs: 'And to know the <i>love of Christ</i> which passeth
+knowledge.' It is the immeasurable measure, then; the boundless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_163" id="Page_1_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> bounds
+and dimensions of the love of Christ which fire the Apostle's thoughts
+here. Of course, he had no separate idea in his mind attaching to each
+of these measures of magnitude, but he gathered them together simply to
+express the one thought of the greatness of Christ's love. Depth and
+height are the same dimension measured from opposite ends. The one
+begins at the top and goes down, the other begins at the bottom and goes
+up, but the distance is the same in either case. So we have the three
+dimensions of a solid here&mdash;breadth, length, and depth.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose that I may venture to use these expressions with a somewhat
+different purpose from that for which the Apostle employs them; and to
+see in each of them a separate and blessed aspect of the love of God in
+Jesus Christ our Lord.</p>
+
+<p>I. What, then, is the breadth of that love?</p>
+
+<p>It is as broad as humanity. As all the stars lie in the firmament, so
+all creatures rest in the heaven of His love. Mankind has many common
+characteristics. We all suffer, we all sin, we all hunger, we all
+aspire, hope, and die; and, blessed be God! we all occupy precisely the
+same relation to the divine love which lies in Jesus Christ. There are
+no step-children in God's great family, and none of them receives a more
+grudging or a less ample share of His love and goodness than every
+other. Far-stretching as the race, and curtaining it over as some great
+tent may enclose on a festal day a whole tribe, the breadth of Christ's
+love is the breadth of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>And it is universal because it is divine. No human mind can be stretched
+so as to comprehend the whole of the members of mankind, and no human
+heart can be so emptied of self as to be capable of this absolute<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_164" id="Page_1_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+universality and impartiality of affection. But the intellectual
+difficulties which stand in the way of the width of our affections, and
+the moral difficulties which stand still more frowningly and
+forbiddingly in the way, have no power over that love of Christ's which
+is close and tender, and clinging with all the tenderness and closeness
+and clingingness of a human affection and lofty and universal and
+passionless and perpetual, with all the height and breadth and calmness
+and eternity of a divine heart.</p>
+
+<p>And this broad love, broad as humanity, is not shallow because it is
+broad. Our love is too often like the estuary of some great stream which
+runs deep and mighty as long as it is held within narrow banks, but as
+soon as it widens becomes slow and powerless and shallow. The intensity
+of human affection varies inversely as its extension. A universal
+philanthropy is a passionless sentiment. But Christ's love is deep
+though it is wide, and suffers no diminution because it is shared
+amongst a multitude. It is like the great feast that He Himself spread
+for five thousand men, women, and children, all seated on the grass,
+'and they did all eat and were filled.'</p>
+
+<p>The whole love is the property of each recipient of it. He does not love
+as we do, who give a part of our heart to this one and a part to that
+one, and share the treasure of our affections amongst a multitude. All
+this gift belongs to every one, just as all the sunshine comes to every
+eye, and as every beholder sees the moon's path across the dark waters,
+stretching from the place where He stands to the centre of light.</p>
+
+<p>This broad love, universal as humanity, and deep as it is broad, is
+universal because it is individual. You and I have to generalise, as we
+say, when we try to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_165" id="Page_1_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> extend our affections beyond the limits of
+household and family and personal friends, and the generalising is a
+sign of weakness and limitation. Nobody can love an abstraction, but
+God's love and Christ's love do not proceed in that fashion. He
+individualises, loving each and therefore loving all. It is because
+every man has a space in His heart singly and separately and
+conspicuously, that all men have a place there. So our task is to
+individualise this broad, universal love, and to say, in the simplicity
+of a glad faith, 'He loved me and gave Himself for me.' The breadth is
+world-wide, and the whole breadth is condensed into, if I may so say, a
+shaft of light which may find its way through the narrowest chink of a
+single soul. There are two ways of arguing about the love of Christ,
+both of them valid, and both of them needing to be employed by us. We
+have a right to say, 'He loves all, therefore He loves me.' And we have
+a right to say, 'He loves me, therefore He loves all.' For surely the
+love that has stooped to me can never pass by any human soul.</p>
+
+<p>What is the breadth of the love of Christ? It is broad as mankind, it is
+narrow as myself.</p>
+
+<p>II. Then, in the next place, what is the length of the love of Christ?</p>
+
+<p>If we are to think of Him only as a man, however exalted and however
+perfect, you and I have nothing in the world to do with His love. When
+He was here on earth it may have been sent down through the ages in some
+vague way, as the shadowy ghost of love may rise in the heart of a great
+statesman or philanthropist for generations yet unborn, which He dimly
+sees will be affected by His sacrifice and service. But we do not call
+that love. Such a poor, pale, shadowy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_166" id="Page_1_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> thing has no right to the warm
+throbbing name; has no right to demand from us any answering thrill of
+affection. Unless you think of Jesus Christ as something more and other
+than the purest and the loftiest benevolence that ever dwelt in human
+form, I know of no intelligible sense in which the length of His love
+can be stretched to touch you.</p>
+
+<p>If we content ourselves with that altogether inadequate and lame
+conception of Him and of His nature, of course there is no present bond
+between any man upon earth and Him, and it is absurd to talk about His
+present love as extending in any way to me. But we have to believe,
+rising to the full height of the Christian conception of the nature and
+person of Christ, that when He was here on earth the divine that dwelt
+in Him so informed and inspired the human as that the love of His man's
+heart was able to grasp the whole, and to separate the individuals who
+should make up the race till the end of time; so as that you and I,
+looking back over all the centuries, and asking ourselves what is the
+length of the love of Christ, can say, 'It stretches over all the years,
+and it reached then, as it reaches now, to touch me, upon whom the ends
+of the earth have come.' Its length is conterminous with the duration of
+humanity here or yonder.</p>
+
+<p>That thought of eternal being, when we refer it to God, towers above us
+and repels us; and when we turn it to ourselves and think of our own
+life as unending, there come a strangeness and an awe that is almost
+shrinking, over the thoughtful spirit. But when we transmute it into the
+thought of a love whose length is unending, then over all the shoreless,
+misty, melancholy sea of eternity, there gleams a light, and every
+wavelet flashes up into glory. It is a dreadful thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_167" id="Page_1_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> to think, 'For
+ever, Thou art God.' It is a solemn thing to think, 'For ever I am to
+be'; but it is life to say: 'O Christ! Thy love endureth from
+everlasting to everlasting; and because it lives, I shall live
+also'&mdash;'Oh! give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy
+endureth for ever.'</p>
+
+<p>There is another measure of the length of the love of Christ. 'Master!
+How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?&mdash;I say not
+unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.' So said the
+Christ, multiplying perfection into itself twice&mdash;two sevens and a
+ten&mdash;in order to express the idea of boundlessness. And the law that He
+laid down for His servant is the law that binds Himself. What is the
+length of the love of Christ? Here is one measure of it&mdash;howsoever long
+drawn out my sin may be, this is longer; and the white line of His love
+runs out into infinity, far beyond the point where the black line of my
+sin stops. Anything short of eternal patience would have been long ago
+exhausted by your sins and mine, and our brethren's. But the pitying
+Christ, the eternal Lover of all wandering souls, looks down from heaven
+upon every one of us; goes with us in all our wanderings, bears with us
+in all our sins, in all our transgressions still is gracious. His
+pleadings sound on, like some stop in an organ continuously persistent
+through all the other notes. And round His throne are written the divine
+words which have been spoken about our human love modelled after His:
+'Charity suffereth long and is kind; is not easily provoked, is not soon
+angry, beareth all things.' The length of the love of Christ is the
+length of eternity, and outmeasures all human sin.</p>
+
+<p>III. Then again, what is the depth of that love?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_168" id="Page_1_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Depth and height, as I said at the beginning of these remarks, are but
+two ways of expressing the same dimension. For the one we begin at the
+top and measure down, for the other we begin at the bottom and measure
+up. The top is the Throne; and the downward measure, how is it to be
+stated? In what terms of distance are we to express it? How far is it
+from the Throne of the Universe to the manger of Bethlehem, and the
+Cross of Calvary, and the sepulchre in the garden? That is the depth of
+the love of Christ. Howsoever far may be the distance from that
+loftiness of co-equal divinity in the bosom of the Father, and radiant
+with glory, to the lowliness of the form of a servant, and the sorrows,
+limitations, rejections, pains and death&mdash;that is the measure of the
+depth of Christ's love. We can estimate the depth of the love of Christ
+by saying, 'He came from above, He tabernacled with us,' as if some
+planet were to burst from its track and plunge downwards in amongst the
+mist and the narrowness of our earthly atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>A well-known modern scientist has hazarded the speculation that the
+origin of life on this planet has been the falling upon it of the
+fragments of a meteor, or an aerolite from some other system, with a
+speck of organic life upon it, from which all has developed. Whatever
+may be the case in regard to physical life, that is absolutely true in
+the case of spiritual life. It all originates because this
+heaven-descended Christ has come down the long staircase of Incarnation,
+and has brought with Him into the clouds and oppressions of our
+terrestrial atmosphere a germ of life which He has planted in the heart
+of the race, there to spread for ever. That is the measure of the depth
+of the love of Christ.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_169" id="Page_1_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And there is another way to measure it. My sins are deep, my helpless
+miseries are deep, but they are shallow as compared with the love that
+goes down beneath all sin, that is deeper than all sorrow, that is
+deeper than all necessity, that shrinks from no degradation, that turns
+away from no squalor, that abhors no wickedness so as to avert its face
+from it. The purest passion of human benevolence cannot but sometimes be
+aware of disgust mingling with its pity and its efforts, but Christ's
+love comes down to the most sunken. However far in the abyss of
+degradation any human soul has descended, beneath it are the everlasting
+arms, and beneath it is Christ's love. When a coalpit gets blocked up by
+some explosion, no brave rescuing party will venture to descend into the
+lowest depths of the poisonous darkness until some ventilation has been
+restored. But this loving Christ goes down, down, down into the
+thickest, most pestilential atmosphere, reeking with sin and corruption,
+and stretches out a rescuing hand to the most abject and undermost of
+all the victims. How deep is the love of Christ! The deep mines of sin
+and of alienation are all undermined and countermined by His love. Sin
+is an abyss, a mystery, how deep only they know who have fought against
+it; but</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O love! thou bottomless abyss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;My sins are swallowed up in thee.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'I will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.' The depths of
+Christ's love go down beneath all human necessity, sorrow, suffering,
+and sin.</p>
+
+<p>IV. And lastly, what is the height of the love of Christ?</p>
+
+<p>We found that the way to measure the depth was to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_170" id="Page_1_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> begin at the Throne,
+and go down to the Cross, and to the foul abysses of evil. The way to
+measure the height is to begin at the Cross and the foul abysses of
+evil, and to go up to the Throne. That is to say, the topmost thing in
+the Universe, the shining apex and pinnacle, glittering away up there in
+the radiant unsetting light, is the love of God in Jesus Christ. Other
+conceptions of that divine nature spring high above us and tower beyond
+our thoughts, but the summit of them all, the very topmost as it is the
+very bottommost, outside of everything, and therefore high above
+everything, is the love of God which has been revealed to us all, and
+brought close to us sinful men in the manhood and passion of our dear
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And that love which thus towers above us, and gleams like the shining
+cross on the top of some lofty cathedral spire, does not flash up there
+inaccessible, nor lie before us like some pathless precipice, up which
+nothing that has not wings can ever hope to rise, but the height of the
+love of Christ is an hospitable height, which can be scaled by us. Nay,
+rather, that heaven of love which is 'higher than our thoughts,' bends
+down, as by a kind of optical delusion the physical heaven seems to do
+towards each of us, only with this blessed difference, that in the
+natural world the place where heaven touches earth is always the
+furthest point of distance from us: and in the spiritual world the place
+where heaven stoops to me is always right over my head, and the nearest
+possible point to me. He has come to lift us to Himself, and this is the
+height of His love, that it bears us, if we will, up and up to sit upon
+that throne where He Himself is enthroned.</p>
+
+<p>So, brethren, Christ's love is round about us all, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_171" id="Page_1_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> some sunny
+tropical sea may embosom in its violet waves a multitude of luxuriant
+and happy islets. So all of us, islanded on our little individual lives,
+lie in that great ocean of love, all the dimensions of which are
+immeasurable, and which stretches above, beneath, around, shoreless,
+tideless, bottomless, endless.</p>
+
+<p>But, remember, this ocean of love you can shut out of your lives. It is
+possible to plunge a jar into mid-Atlantic, further than soundings have
+ever descended, and to bring it up on deck as dry inside as if it had
+been lying on an oven. It is possible for men and women&mdash;and I have them
+listening to me at this moment&mdash;to live and move and have their being in
+that sea of love, and never to have let one drop of its richest gifts
+into their hearts or their lives. Open your hearts for Him to come in,
+by humble faith in His great sacrifice for you. For if Christ dwell in
+your heart by faith, then and only then will experience be your guide;
+and you will be able to comprehend the boundless greatness, the endless
+duration, and absolute perfection, and to know the love of Christ which
+passeth knowledge.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_CLIMAX_OF_ALL_PRAYER" id="THE_CLIMAX_OF_ALL_PRAYER"></a>THE CLIMAX OF ALL PRAYER</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iii.
+19.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Apostle's many-linked prayer, which we have been considering in
+successive sermons, has reached its height. It soars to the very Throne
+of God. There can be nothing above or beyond this wonderful petition.
+Rather, it might seem as if it were too much to ask, and as if, in the
+ecstasy of prayer, Paul had forgotten the limits that separate the
+creature from the Creator, as well as the experience of sinful and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_172" id="Page_1_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+imperfect men, and had sought to 'wind himself too high for mortal life
+beneath the sky.' And yet Paul's prayers are God's promises; and we are
+justified in taking these rapturous petitions as being distinct
+declarations of God's desire and purpose for each of us; as being the
+end which He had in view in the unspeakable gift of His Son; and as
+being the certain outcome of His gracious working on all believing
+hearts.</p>
+
+<p>It seems at first a paradoxical impossibility; looked at more deeply and
+carefully it becomes a possibility for each of us, and therefore a duty;
+a certainty for all the redeemed in fullest measure hereafter; and,
+alas! a rebuke to our low lives and feeble expectations. Let us look,
+then, at the petition, with the desire of sounding, as we may, its
+depths and realising its preciousness.</p>
+
+<p>I. First of all, think with me of the significance of this prayer.</p>
+
+<p>'The fulness of God' is another expression for the whole sum and
+aggregate of all the energies, powers, and attributes of the divine
+nature, the total Godhead in its plenitude and abundance.</p>
+
+<p>'God is love,' we say. What does that mean, but that God desires to
+impart His whole self to the creatures whom He loves? What is love in
+its lofty and purest forms, even as we see them here on earth; what is
+love except the infinite longing to bestow one's self? And when we
+proclaim that which is the summit and climax of the revelation of our
+Father in the person of His Son, and say with the last utterances of
+Scripture that 'God is love,' we do in other words proclaim that the
+very nature and deepest desire and purpose of the divine heart is to
+pour itself on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_173" id="Page_1_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> emptiness and need of His lowly creatures in floods
+that keep back nothing. Lofty, wonderful, incomprehensible to the mere
+understanding as this thought may be, clearly it is the inmost meaning
+of all that Scripture tells us about God as being the 'portion of His
+people,' and about us, as being by Christ and in Christ 'heirs of God,'
+and possessors of Himself.</p>
+
+<p>We have, then, as the promise that gleams from these great words, this
+wonderful prospect, that the divine love, truth, holiness, joy, in all
+their rich plenitude of all-sufficient abundance, may be showered upon
+us. The whole Godhead is our possession; for the fulness of God is no
+far-off remote treasure that lies beyond human grasp and outside of
+human experience. Do not we believe that, to use the words of this
+Apostle in another letter, 'it pleased the Father that in Him should all
+the fulness dwell'? Do we not believe that, to use the words of the same
+epistle, 'In Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily'? Is
+not that abundance of the resources of the whole Deity insphered and
+incarnated in Jesus Christ our Lord, that it may be near us, and that we
+may put out our hand and touch it? This may be a paradox for the
+understanding, full of metaphysical puzzles and cobwebs, but for the
+heart that knows Christ, most true and precious. God is gathered into
+Jesus Christ, and all the fulness of God, whatever that may mean, is
+embodied in the Man Christ Jesus, that from Him it may be communicated
+to every soul that will.</p>
+
+<p>For, to quote other words of another of the New Testament teachers, 'Of
+His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace,' and to quote
+words in another part of the same epistle, we may 'all come to a perfect
+man, to the measure of the stature of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_174" id="Page_1_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> fulness of Christ.' High
+above us, then, and inaccessible though that awful thought, 'the fulness
+of God,' may seem, as the zenith of the unscaleable heavens seems to us
+poor creatures creeping here upon the flat earth, it comes near, near,
+near, ever nearer, and at last tabernacles among us, when we think that
+in Him all the fulness dwells, and it comes nearer yet and enters into
+our hearts when we think that 'of His fulness have we all received.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, still further, observe another of the words in this
+petition:&mdash;'That ye may be filled.' That is to say, Paul's prayer and
+God's purpose and desire concerning us is, that our whole being may be
+so saturated and charged with an indwelling divinity as that there shall
+be no room in our present stature and capacity for more, and no sense of
+want or aching emptiness.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, brethren! when we think of how eagerly we have drunk at the stinking
+puddles of earth, and how after every draught there has yet been left a
+thirst that was pain, it is something for us to hear Him say:&mdash;'The
+water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up
+into everlasting life,'&mdash;and 'he that drinketh of this water shall never
+thirst.' Our empty hearts, with their experiences of the insufficiency
+and the vanity of all earthly satisfaction, stand there like the
+water-pots at the rustic marriage, and the Master says, 'Fill them to
+the brim.' And then, by His touch, the water of our poor savourless,
+earthly enjoyments is transmuted and elevated into the new wine of His
+Kingdom. We may be filled, satisfied with the fulness of God.</p>
+
+<p>There is another point as to the significance of this prayer, on which I
+must briefly touch. As our Revised Version will tell you, the literal
+rendering of my text<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_175" id="Page_1_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> is, 'filled <i>unto</i>' (not exactly <i>with</i>) 'all the
+fulness of God'; which suggests the idea not of a completed work but of
+a process, and of a growing process, as if more and more of that great
+fulness might pass into a man. Suppose a number of vessels, according to
+the old illustration about degrees of glory in heaven; they are each
+full, but the quantity that one contains is much less than that which
+the other may hold. Add to the illustration that the vessels can grow,
+and that filling makes them grow; as a shrunken bladder when you pass
+gas into it will expand and round itself out, and all the creases will
+be smoothed away. Such is the Apostle's idea here, that a process of
+filling goes on which may satisfy the then desires, because it fills us
+up to the then capacities of our spirits; but in the very process of so
+filling and satisfying makes those spirits capable of containing larger
+measures of His fulness, which therefore flow into it. Such, as I take
+it, in rude and faint outline, is the significance of this great prayer.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now turn, in the next place, to consider briefly the possibility of
+the accomplishments of this petition.</p>
+
+<p>As I said, it sounds as if it were too much to desire. Certainly no wish
+can go beyond this wish. The question is, can a sane and humble wish go
+as far as this; and can a man pray such a prayer with any real belief
+that he will get it answered here and now? I say yes!</p>
+
+<p>There are two difficulties that at once start up.</p>
+
+<p>People will say, does such a prayer as this upon man's lips not forget
+the limits that bound the creature's capacity? Can the finite contain
+the Infinite?</p>
+
+<p>Well, that is a verbal puzzle, and I answer, yes! The finite can contain
+the Infinite, if you are talking about two hearts that love, one of them
+God's and one of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_176" id="Page_1_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> mine. We have got to keep very clear and distinct
+before our minds the broad, firm line of demarcation between the
+creature and the Creator, or else we get into a pantheistic region where
+both creature and Creator expire. But there is a Christian as well as an
+atheistic pantheism, and as long as we retain clearly in our minds the
+consciousness of the personal distinction between God and His child, so
+as that the child can turn round and say, 'I love Thee' and God can look
+down and say, 'I bless thee'; then all identification and mutual
+indwelling and impartation from Him of Himself are possible, and are
+held forth as the aim and end of Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>Of course in a mere abstract and philosophical sense the Infinite cannot
+be contained by the finite; and attributes which express infinity, like
+omnipresence and omniscience and omnipotence and so on, indicate things
+in God that we can know but little about, and that cannot be
+communicated. But those are not the divinest things in God. 'God is
+love.' Do you believe that that saying unveils the deepest things in
+Him? God is light, 'and in Him is no darkness at all.' Do you believe
+that His light and His love are nearer the centre than these attributes
+of power and infinitude? If we believe that, then we can come back to my
+text and say, 'The love, which is Thee, can come into me; the light,
+which is Thee, can pour itself into my darkness; the holiness, which is
+Thee, can enter into my impurity. The heaven of heavens cannot contain
+Thee. Thou dwellest in the humble and in the contrite heart.'</p>
+
+<p>So, dear brethren, the old legends about mighty forms that contracted
+their stature and bowed their divine heads to enter into some poor man's
+hut, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_177" id="Page_1_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> sit there, are simple Christian realities. And instead of
+puzzling ourselves with metaphysical difficulties which are mere
+shadows, and the work of the understanding or the spawn of words, let us
+listen to the Christ when He says, 'We will come unto him and make our
+abode with him' and believe that it was no impossibility which fired the
+Apostle's hope when he prayed, and in praying prophesied, that we might
+be filled with all the fulness of God.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another difficulty that rises before our minds; and
+Christian men say, 'How is it possible, in this region of imperfection,
+compassed with infirmity and sin as we are, that such hopes should be
+realised for us here?' Well, I would rather answer that question by
+retorting and saying: 'How is it possible that such a prayer should have
+come from inspired lips unless the thing that Paul was asking might be?'
+Did he waste his breath when he thus prayed? Are we not as Christian men
+bound, instead of measuring our expectations by our attainments, to try
+to stretch our attainments to what are our legitimate expectations, and
+to hear in these words the answer to the faithless and unbelieving doubt
+whether such a thing is possible, and the assurance that it is possible.</p>
+
+<p>An impossibility can never be a duty, and yet we are commanded: 'Be ye
+perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.' An impossibility can
+never be a duty, and yet we are commanded to let Christ abide in our
+hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! if we believed less in the power of our sin it would have less power
+upon us. If we believed more in the power of an indwelling Christ He
+would have more power within us. If we said to ourselves, 'It is
+possible,' we should make it possible. The impossibility arises only
+from our own weakness, from our own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_178" id="Page_1_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> sinful weakness; and though it may
+be true, and is true, that none of us will live without sin as long as
+we abide here, it is also true that each moment of interruption of our
+communion with Christ and therefore each moment of interruption of that
+being 'filled with the fulness of God,' might have been avoided. We know
+about every such time that we could have helped it if we had liked, and
+it is no use bringing any general principles about sin cleaving to men
+in order to break the force of that conviction. But if that conviction
+be a real one, and if whenever a Christian man loses the consciousness
+of God in his heart, making him blessed, he is obliged to say: 'It was
+my own fault and Thou wouldst have stayed if I had chosen,' then there
+follows from this, that it is possible, notwithstanding all the
+imperfection and sin of earth, that we may be 'filled with all the
+fulness of God.'</p>
+
+<p>So, dear brethren, take you this prayer as the standard of your
+expectations; and oh! take it as we must all take it, as the sharpest of
+rebukes to our actual attainments in holiness and in likeness to our
+Master. Set by the side of these wondrous and solemn words&mdash;'filled with
+the fulness of God,' the facts of the lives of the average professing
+Christians of this generation, and of this congregation; their
+emptiness, their ignorance of the divine indwelling, their want of
+anything in their experience that corresponds in the least degree to
+such words as these. Judge whether a man is not more likely to be bowed
+down in wholesome sense of his own sinfulness and unworthiness, if he
+has before him such an ideal as this of my text, than if it, too, has
+faded out of his life. I believe, for my part, that one great cause of
+the worldliness and the sinfulness and mechanical formalities that are
+eat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_179" id="Page_1_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>ing the life out of the Christianity of this generation is the fact
+of the Church having largely lost any real belief in the possibility
+that Christian men may possess the fulness of God as their present
+experience. And so, when they do not find it in themselves they say:
+'Oh! it is all right; it is the necessary result of our imperfect
+fleshly condition.' No! It is all wrong; and His purpose is that we
+should possess Him in the fulness of His gladdening and hallowing power,
+at every moment in our happy lives.</p>
+
+<p>III. One word to close with, as to the means by which this prayer may be
+fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>Remember, it comes as the last link in a chain. I shall have wasted my
+breath for a month, as far as you are concerned, if you do not feel that
+the preceding links are needful before this can be attained.</p>
+
+<p>But I only touch upon the nearest of them and remind you that it must be
+Christ dwelling in our hearts, that fills them with the fulness of God.
+Where He comes God comes. And where does He come? He comes where faith
+opens the door for Him. If you will trust Jesus Christ, if you will
+distrust yourselves, if you will turn your thoughts and your hearts to
+Him, if you will let Him come into your souls, and not shut Him out
+because your souls are so full that there is no room for Him there, then
+when He comes He will not come empty-handed, but will bring the full
+Godhead with Him.</p>
+
+<p>There must be the emptying of self, if there is to be the filling with
+God. And the emptying of self is realised in that faith which forsakes
+self-confidence, self-righteousness, self-dependence, self-control,
+self-pleasing, and yields itself wholly to the dear Lord.</p>
+
+<p>There is another condition that is required, and that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_180" id="Page_1_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> is the previous
+link in this braided chain. The conscious experience of the love which
+is in Christ will bring to us 'the fulness of God.' Love is power; love
+is God; and when we live in the sense and experience of God's love to us
+then we have the power and we have the God. It is as in some of these
+petrifying streams, the water is charged with particles which it
+deposits upon everything that is laid in its course. So, if we plunge
+our hearts into that fountain of the love of Christ, as it flows it will
+clothe us with all the divine energies which are held in solution in the
+divinest thing in God&mdash;His own love. Plunged into the love we are filled
+with the fulness.</p>
+
+<p>Then keep near your Master. It all comes to that. Meditate upon Him; do
+not let days pass, as they do pass, without a thought being turned to
+Him. Do not go about your daily work without a remembrance of Him. Keep
+yourselves in Christ. Seek to experience His love, that love which
+passeth knowledge, and is only known by them who possess it. And then,
+as the old painters with deep truth used to paint the Apostle of Love
+with a face like his Master, living near Christ and looking upon Him you
+will receive of His fulness, and 'we all, with open face, beholding the
+glory, shall be changed into the glory.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="MEASURELESS_POWER_AND_ENDLESS_GLORY" id="MEASURELESS_POWER_AND_ENDLESS_GLORY"></a>MEASURELESS POWER AND ENDLESS GLORY</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all
+that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
+21. Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all
+ages, world without end. Amen.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iii. 20, 21.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>One purpose and blessing of faithful prayer is to enlarge the desires
+which it expresses, and to make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_181" id="Page_1_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> us think more loftily of the grace to
+which we appeal. So the Apostle, in the wonderful series of
+supplications which precedes the text, has found his thought of what he
+may hope for his brethren at Ephesus grow greater with every clause. His
+prayer rises like some songbird, in ever-widening sweeps, each higher in
+the blue, and nearer the throne; and at each a sweeter, fuller note.</p>
+
+<p>'Strengthened with might by His Spirit'; 'that Christ may dwell in your
+hearts by faith'; 'that ye may be able to know the love of Christ';
+'that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.' Here he touches
+the very throne. Beyond that nothing can be conceived. But though that
+sublime petition may be the end of thought, it is not the end of faith.
+Though God can give us nothing more than it is, He can give us more than
+we think it to be, and more than we ask, when we ask this. Therefore the
+grand doxology of our text crowns and surpasses even this great prayer.
+The higher true prayer climbs, the wider is its view; and the wider is
+its view, the more conscious is it that the horizon of its vision is far
+within the borders of the goodly land. And as we gaze into what we can
+discern of the fulness of God, prayer will melt into thanksgiving and
+the doxology for the swift answer will follow close upon the last words
+of supplication. So is it here; so it may be always.</p>
+
+<p>The form of our text then marks the confidence of Paul's prayer. The
+exuberant fervour of his faith, as well as his natural impetuosity and
+ardour, comes out in the heaped-up words expressive of immensity and
+duration. He is like some archer watching, with parted lips, the flight
+of his arrow to the mark. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_182" id="Page_1_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> is gazing on God confident that he has not
+asked in vain. Let us look with him, that we, too, may be heartened to
+expect great things of God. Notice then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. The measure of the power to which we trust.</p>
+
+<p>This epistle is remarkable for its frequent references to the divine
+rule, or standard, or measure, in accordance with which the great facts
+of redemption take place. The 'things on the earth'&mdash;the historical
+processes by which salvation is brought to men and works in men&mdash;are
+ever traced up to the 'things in heaven'; the divine counsels from which
+they have come forth. That phrase, 'according to,' is perpetually
+occurring in this connection in the epistle. It is applied mainly in two
+directions. It serves sometimes to bring into view the ground, or
+reason, of the redemptive facts, as, for instance, in the expression
+that these take place 'according to His good pleasure which He hath
+purposed in Himself' It serves sometimes to bring into view the measure
+by which the working of these redemptive facts is determined; as in our
+text, and in many other places.</p>
+
+<p>Now there are three main forms under which this standard, or measure, of
+the Redeeming Power is set forth in this epistle, and it will help us to
+grasp the greatness of the Apostle's thought if we consider these.</p>
+
+<p>Take, then, first, that clause in the earlier portion of the preceding
+prayer, 'that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory.'
+The measure, then, of the gift that we may hope to receive is the
+measure of God's own fulness. The 'riches of His glory' can be nothing
+less than the whole uncounted abundance of that majestic and far-shining
+Nature, as it pours itself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_183" id="Page_1_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> forth in the dazzling perfectness of its own
+Self-manifestation. And nothing less than this great treasure is to be
+the limit and standard of His gift to us. We are the sons of the King,
+and the allowance which He makes us even before we come to our
+inheritance is proportionate to our Father's wealth. The same stupendous
+thought is given us in that prayer, heavy with the blessed weight of
+unspeakable gifts, 'that ye might be filled with all the fulness of
+God.' This, then, is the measure of the grace that we may possess. This
+limitless limit alone bounds the possibilities for every man, the
+certainties for every Christian.</p>
+
+<p>The effect must be proportioned to the cause. And what effect will be
+adequate as the outcome of such a cause as 'the riches of His glory'?
+Nothing short of absolute perfectness, the full transmutation of our
+dark, cold being into the reflected image of His own burning brightness,
+the ceaseless replenishing of our own spirits with all graces and
+gladnesses akin to His, the eternal growth of the soul upward and
+Godward. Perfection is the sign manual of God in all His works, just as
+imperfection and the falling below our thought and wish is our 'token in
+every epistle' and deed of ours. Take the finest needle, and put it
+below a microscope, and it will be all ragged and irregular, the fine,
+tapering lines will be broken by many a bulge and bend, and the point
+blunt and clumsy. Put the blade of grass to the same test, and see how
+regular its outline, how delicate and true the spear-head of its point.
+God's work is perfect, man's is clumsy and incomplete. God does not
+leave off till He has finished. When He rests, it is because, looking on
+His work, He sees it all 'very good.' His Sabbath is the Sabbath of an
+achieved purpose, of a fulfilled counsel. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_184" id="Page_1_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> palaces which we build
+are ever like that one in the story, where one window remains dark and
+unjewelled, while the rest blaze in beauty. But when God builds, none
+can say, 'He was not able to finish.' In His great palace He makes her
+'windows of agates' and <i>all</i> her 'borders of pleasant stones.'</p>
+
+<p>So we have a right to enlarge our desires and stretch our confidence of
+what we may possess and become to this, His boundless bound&mdash;'The riches
+of glory.'</p>
+
+<p>But another form in which the standard, or measure, is stated in this
+letter is: 'The working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ,
+when He raised Him from the dead' (i. 19, 20); or, as it is put with a
+modification, 'grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ'
+(iv. 7). That is to say, we have not only the whole riches of the divine
+glory as the measure to which we may lift our hopes, but lest that
+celestial brightness should seem too high above us, and too far from us,
+we have Christ in His human-divine manifestation, and especially in the
+great fact of the Resurrection, set before us, that by Him we may learn
+what God wills we should become. The former phase of the standard may
+sound abstract, cloudy, hard to connect with any definite anticipations;
+and so this form of it is concrete, historical, and gives human features
+to the fair ideal. His Resurrection is the high-water mark of the divine
+power, and to the same level it will rise again in regard to every
+Christian. The Lord, in the glory of His risen life, and in the riches
+of the gifts which He received when He ascended up on high, is the
+pattern for us, and the power which fulfils its own pattern. In Him we
+see what man may become, and what His followers must become. The limits
+of that power will not be reached until every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_185" id="Page_1_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> Christian soul is
+perfectly assimilated to that likeness, and bears all its beauty in its
+face, nor till every Christian soul is raised to participation in
+Christ's dignity and sits on His throne. Then, and not till then, shall
+the purpose of God be fulfilled and the gift which is measured by the
+riches of the Father's glory, and the fulness of the Son's grace, be
+possessed or conceived in its measureless measure.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a third form in which this same standard is represented.
+That is the form which is found in our text, and in other places of the
+epistle: 'According to the power that worketh in us.'</p>
+
+<p>What power is that but the power of the Spirit of God dwelling in us?
+And thus we have the measure, or standard, set forth in terms
+respectively applying to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. For
+the first, the riches of His glory; for the second, His Resurrection and
+Ascension; for the third, His energy working in Christian souls. The
+first carries us up into the mysteries of God, where the air is almost
+too subtle for our gross lungs; the second draws nearer to earth and
+points us to an historical fact that happened in this everyday world;
+the third comes still nearer to us, and bids us look within, and see
+whether what we are conscious of there, if we interpret it by the light
+of these other measures, will not yield results as great as theirs, and
+open before us the same fair prospect of perfect holiness and conformity
+to the divine nature.</p>
+
+<p>There is already a Power at work within us, if we be Christians, of
+whose workings we may be aware, and from them forecast the measure of
+the gifts which it can bestow upon us. We may estimate what will be by
+what we know has been, and by what we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_186" id="Page_1_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> feel is. That is to say, in other
+words, the effects already produced, and the experiences we have already
+had, carry in them the pledge of completeness.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose that if the medi&aelig;val dream had ever come true, and an
+alchemist had ever turned a grain of lead into gold, he could have
+turned all the lead in the world in time, and with crucibles and
+furnaces enough. The first step is all the difficulty, and if you and I
+have been changed from enemies into sons, and had one spark of love to
+God kindled in our hearts, that is a mightier change than any that
+remains to be effected in order to make us perfect. One grain has been
+changed, the whole mass will be so in due time.</p>
+
+<p>The present operations of that power carry in them the pledge of their
+own completion. The strange mingling of good and evil in our present
+nature, our aspirations so crossed and contradicted, our resolution so
+broken and falsified, the gleams of light, and the eclipses that
+follow&mdash;all these in their opposition to each other, are plainly
+transitory, and the workings of that Power within us, though they be
+often overborne, are as plainly the stronger in their nature, and meant
+to conquer and to endure. Like some half-hewn block, such as travellers
+find in long abandoned quarries, whence Egyptian temples, that were
+destined never to be completed, were built, our spirits are but partly
+'polished after the similitude of a palace,' while much remains in the
+rough. The builders of these temples have mouldered away and their
+unfinished handiwork will lie as it was when the last chisel touched it
+centuries ago, till the crack of doom; but stones for God's temple will
+be wrought to completeness and set in their places. The whole threefold
+divine cause of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_187" id="Page_1_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> our salvation supplies the measure, and lays the
+foundation for our hopes, in the glory of the Father, the grace of the
+Son, the power of the Holy Ghost. Let us lift up our cry: 'Perfect that
+which concerneth me, forsake not the works of thine own hands,' and we
+shall have for answer the ancient word, fresh as when it sounded long
+ago from among the stars to the sleeper at the ladder's foot, 'I will
+not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Notice the relation of the divine working to our thoughts and
+desires.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle in his fervid way strains language to express how far the
+possibility of the divine working extends. He is able, not only to do
+all things, but 'beyond all things'&mdash;a vehement way of putting the
+boundless reach of that gracious power. And what he means by this
+'beyond all things' is more fully expressed in the next words, in which
+he labours by accumulating synonyms to convey his sense of the
+transcendent energy which waits to bless: 'exceeding abundantly above
+what we ask.' And as, alas! our desires are but shrunken and narrow
+beside our thoughts, he sweeps a wider orbit when he adds 'above what we
+<i>think</i>.' He has been asking wonderful things, and yet even his
+farthest-reaching petitions fall far on this side of the greatness of
+God's power. One might think that even it could go no further than
+filling us 'with all the fulness of God.' Nor can it; but it may far
+transcend our conceptions of what that is, and astonish us by its
+surpassing our thoughts, no less than it shames us by exceeding our
+prayers.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, all this is true, and is meant to apply, only about the
+inward gifts of God's grace. I need not remind you that, in the outer
+world of Providence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_188" id="Page_1_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> and earthly gifts, prayers and wishes often surpass
+the answers; that there a deeper wisdom often contradicts our thoughts
+and a truer kindness refuses our petitions, and that so the rapturous
+words of our text are only true in a very modified and partial sense
+about God's working <i>for</i> us in the world. It is His work <i>in</i> us
+concerning which they are absolutely true.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we know that in all regions of His working He is <i>able</i> to
+surpass our poor human conceptions, and that, properly speaking, the
+most familiar, and, as we insolently call them, 'smallest' of His works
+holds in it a mystery&mdash;were it none other than the mystery of
+Being&mdash;against which Thought has been breaking its teeth ever since men
+began to think at all.</p>
+
+<p>But as regards the working of God on our spiritual lives, this passing
+beyond the bounds of thought and desire is but the necessary result of
+the fact already dealt with, that the only measure of the power is God
+Himself, in that Threefold Being. That being so, no plummet of our
+making can reach to the bottom of the abyss; no strong-winged thought
+can fly to the outermost bound of the encircling heaven. Widely as we
+stretch our reverent conceptions, there is ever something beyond. After
+we have resolved many a dim nebula in the starry sky, and found it all
+ablaze with suns and worlds, there will still hang, faint and far before
+us, hazy magnificences which we have not apprehended. Confidently and
+boldly as we may offer our prayers, and largely as we may expect, the
+answer is ever more than the petition. For indeed, in every act of His
+quickening grace, in every God-given increase of our knowledge of God,
+in every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_189" id="Page_1_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> bestowment of His fulness, there is always more bestowed than
+we receive, more than we know even while we possess it. Like some gift
+given in the dark, its true preciousness is not discerned when it is
+first received. The gleam of the gold does not strike our eye all at
+once. There is ever an unknown margin felt by us to be over after our
+capacity of receiving is exhausted. 'And they took up of the fragments
+that remained, twelve baskets full.'</p>
+
+<p>So, then, let us remember that while our thoughts and prayers can never
+reach to the full perception, or reception either, of the gift, the
+exuberant amplitude with which it reaches far beyond both is meant to
+draw both after it. And let us not forget either that, while the grace
+which we receive has no limit or measure but the fulness of God, the
+working limit, which determines what we receive of the grace, is these
+very thoughts and wishes which it surpasses. We may have as much of God
+as we can hold, as much as we wish. All Niagara may roar past a man's
+door, but only as much as he diverts through his own sluice will drive
+his mill, or quench his thirst. God's grace is like the figures in the
+Eastern tales, that will creep into a narrow room no bigger than a
+nutshell, or will tower heaven high. Our spirits are like the magic tent
+whose walls expanded or contracted at the owner's wish&mdash;we may enlarge
+them to enclose far more of the grace than we have ever possessed. We
+are not straitened in God, but in ourselves. He is 'able to do exceeding
+abundantly above what we ask or think.' Therefore let us stretch desires
+and thoughts to their utmost, remembering that, while they can never
+reach the measure of His grace in itself, they make the practical
+measure of our possession of it. 'According<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_190" id="Page_1_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> to thy faith' is the real
+measure of the gift received, even though 'according to the riches of
+His glory' be the measure of the gift bestowed. Note, again,</p>
+
+<p>III. The glory that springs from the divine work.</p>
+
+<p>'The glory of God' is the lustre of His own perfect character, the
+bright sum total of all the blended brilliances that compose His name.
+When that light is welcomed and adored by men, they are said to 'give
+glory to God,' and this doxology is at once a prophecy that the working
+of God's power on His redeemed children will issue in setting forth the
+radiance of His Name yet more, and a prayer that it may. So we have here
+the great thought expressed in many places of Scripture, that the
+highest exhibition of the divine character for the reverence and
+love&mdash;of the whole universe, shall we say?&mdash;lies in His work on
+Christian souls, and the effect produced thereby on them. God takes His
+stand, so to speak, on this great fact in His dealings, and will have
+His creatures estimate Him by it. He reckons it His highest praise that
+He has redeemed men, and by His dwelling in them fills them with His own
+fulness. And this chiefest praise and brightest glory accrues to Him 'in
+the Church in Christ Jesus.' The weakening of the latter word into <i>by</i>
+Christ Jesus,' as in the English version, is to be regretted, as
+substituting another thought, Scriptural no doubt and precious, for the
+precise shade of meaning in the Apostle's mind here. As has been well
+said, 'the first words denote the outward province; the second, the
+inward and spiritual sphere in which God was to be praised.' His glory
+is to shine in the Church, the theatre of His power, the standing
+demonstration of the might of redeeming love. By this He will be judged,
+and this He will point to if any ask what is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_191" id="Page_1_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> His divinest work, which
+bears the clearest imprint of His divinest self. His glory is to be set
+forth by men on condition that they are 'in Christ,' living and moving
+in Him, in that mysterious but most real union without which no fruit
+grows on the dead branches, nor any music of praise breaks from the dead
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, think of that wonder that God sets His glory in His dealings
+with us. Amid all the majesty of His works and all the blaze of His
+creation, this is what He presents as the highest specimen of His
+power&mdash;the Church of Jesus Christ, the company of poor men, wearied and
+conscious of many evils, who follow afar off the footsteps of their
+Lord. How dusty and toil-worn the little group of Christians that landed
+at Puteoli must have looked as they toiled along the Appian Way and
+entered Rome! How contemptuously emperor and philosopher and priest and
+patrician would have curled their lips, if they had been told that in
+that little knot of Jewish prisoners lay a power before which theirs
+would cower and finally fade! Even so is it still. Among all the
+splendours of this great universe, and the mere obtrusive tawdrinesses
+of earth, men look upon us Christians as poor enough; and yet it is to
+His redeemed children that God has entrusted His praise, and in their
+hands that He has lodged the sacred deposit of His own glory.</p>
+
+<p>Think loftily of that office and honour, lowly of yourselves who have it
+laid upon you as a crown. His honour is in our hands. We are the
+'secretaries of His praise.' This is the highest function that any
+creature can discharge. The Rabbis have a beautiful bit of teaching
+buried among their rubbish about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_192" id="Page_1_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> angels. They say that there are two
+kinds of angels&mdash;the angels of service and the angels of praise, of
+which two orders the latter is the higher, and that no angel in it
+praises God twice, but having once lifted up his voice in the psalm of
+heaven, then perishes and ceases to be. He has perfected his being, he
+has reached the height of his greatness, he has done what he was made
+for, let him fade away. The garb of legend is mean enough, but the
+thought it embodies is that ever true and solemn one, without which life
+is nought&mdash;'Man's chief end is to glorify God.'</p>
+
+<p>And we can only fulfil that high purpose in the measure of our union
+with Christ. 'In Him' abiding, we manifest God's glory, for in Him
+abiding we receive God's grace. So long as we are joined to Him, we
+partake of His life, and our lives become music and praise. The electric
+current flows from Him through all souls that are 'in Him' and they glow
+with fair colours which they owe to their contact with Jesus. Interrupt
+the communication, and all is darkness. So, brethren, let us seek to
+abide in Him, severed from whom we are nothing. Then shall we fulfil the
+purpose of His love, who 'hath shined in our hearts' that we might give
+to others 'the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
+Jesus Christ' Notice, lastly,</p>
+
+<p>IV. The eternity of the work and of the praise.</p>
+
+<p>As in the former clauses the idea of the transcendent greatness of the
+power of God was expressed by accumulated synonyms, so here the kindred
+thought of its eternity, and consequently of the ceaseless duration of
+the resulting glory, is sought to be set forth by a similar aggregation.
+The language creaks and labours, as it were, under the weight of the
+great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_193" id="Page_1_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> conception. Literally rendered, the words are&mdash;'to all
+generations of the age of the ages'&mdash;a remarkable fusing together of two
+expressions for unbounded duration, which are scarcely congruous. We can
+understand 'to all generations' as expressive of duration as long as
+birth and death shall last. We can understand 'the age of the ages' as
+pointing to that endless epoch whose moments are 'ages'; but the
+blending of the two is but an unconscious acknowledgment that the speech
+of earth, saturated, as it is, with the colouring of time, breaks down
+in the attempt to express the thought of eternity. Undoubtedly that
+solemn conception is the one intended by this strange phrase.</p>
+
+<p>The work is to go on for ever and ever, and with it the praise. As the
+ages which are the beats of the pendulum of eternity come and go, more
+and more of God's power will flow out to us, and more and more of God's
+glory will be manifested in us. It must be so; for God's gift is
+infinite, and man's capacity of reception is indefinitely capable of
+increase. Therefore eternity will be needful in order that redeemed
+souls may absorb all of God which He can give or they can take. The
+process has no limits, for there is no bound to be set to the possible
+approaches of the human spirit to the divine, and none to the exuberant
+abundance of the beauty and glory which God will give to His child.
+Therefore we shall live for ever: and for ever show forth His praise and
+blaze out like the sun with the irradiation of His glory. We cannot die
+till we have exhausted God. Till we comprehend all His nature in our
+thoughts, and reflect all His beauty in our character; till we have
+attained all the bliss that we can think, and received all the good that
+we can ask;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_194" id="Page_1_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> till Hope has nothing before her to reach towards, and God
+is left behind: we 'shall not die, but live, and declare the works of
+the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>Let His grace work on you, and yield yourselves to Him, that His fulness
+may fill your emptiness. So on earth we shall be delivered from hopes
+which mock and wishes that are never fulfilled. So in heaven, after
+'ages of ages' of growing glory, we shall have to say, as each new wave
+of the shoreless, sunlit sea bears us onward, 'It doth not yet appear
+what we shall be.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_CALLING_AND_THE_KINGDOM" id="THE_CALLING_AND_THE_KINGDOM"></a>THE CALLING AND THE KINGDOM</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I beseech you, that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye
+are called.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 1.</p>
+
+<p>'They shall walk with Me in white; for they are worthy.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Rev.</span> iii.
+4.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The estimate formed of a centurion by the elders of the Jews was, 'He is
+worthy for whom Thou shouldst do this' and in contrast therewith the
+estimate formed by himself was, 'I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come
+under my roof.' From these two statements we deduce the thought that
+merit has no place in the Christian's salvation, but all is to be traced
+to undeserved, gracious love. But that principle, true and all-important
+as it is, like every other great truth, may be exaggerated, and may be
+so isolated as to become untrue and a source of much evil. And so I
+desire to turn to the other side of the shield, and to emphasise the
+place that worthiness has in the Christian life, and its personal
+results both here and hereafter. To say that character has nothing to do
+with blessedness is untrue, both to conscience and to the Christian
+revelation; and however we trace all things to grace,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_195" id="Page_1_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> we must also
+remember that we get what we have fitted ourselves for.</p>
+
+<p>Now, my two texts bring out two aspects which have to be taken in
+conjunction. The one of them speaks about the present life, and lays it
+as an imperative obligation on all Christian people to be worthy of
+their Christianity, and the other carries us into the future and shows
+us that there it is they who are 'worthy' who attain to the Kingdom. So
+I think I shall best bring out what I desire to emphasise if I just take
+these two points&mdash;the Christian calling and the life that is worthy of
+it, and the Christian heaven and the life that is worthy of it.</p>
+
+<p>I. The Christian calling and the life that is worthy of it.</p>
+
+<p>'I beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are
+called.' Now, that thought recurs in other places in the Apostle's
+writings, somewhat modified in expression. For instance, in one passage
+he speaks of 'walking worthily of the God who has called us to His
+kingdom and glory,' and in another of the Christian man's duty to 'walk
+worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing.' There is a certain vocation to
+which a Christian man is bound to make his life correspond, and his
+conduct should be in some measure worthy of the ideal that is set before
+it. Now, we shall best understand what is involved in such worthiness if
+we make clear to ourselves what the Apostle means by this 'calling' to
+which he appeals as containing in itself a standard to which our lives
+are to be conformed.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose we try to put away the technical word 'calling' and instead of
+'calling' say 'summons,' which is nearer the idea, because it conveys
+the notions more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_196" id="Page_1_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> fully of the urgency of the voice, and of the
+authority of the voice, which speaks to us. And what is that summons?
+How do we hear it? One of the other Apostles speaks of God as calling us
+'by His own glory and virtue,' that is to say, wherever God reveals
+Himself in any fashion, and by any medium, to a man, the man fails to
+understand the deepest meaning of the revelation unless his purged ear
+hears in it the great voice saying, 'Come up hither.' For all God's
+self-manifestation, in the creatures around us, in the deep voice of our
+own souls, in the mysteries of our own personal lives, and in the slow
+evolution of His purpose through the history of the world, all these
+revelations of God bear in them the summons to us that hear and see them
+to draw near to Him, and to mould ourselves into His likeness. And thus,
+just as the sun by the effluence of its beams gathers all the
+ministering planets, as it were, round its feet, and draws them to
+itself, so God, raying Himself out into the waste, fills the waste with
+magnetic influences which are meant to draw men to nobleness, goodness,
+God-pleasingness, and God-likeness.</p>
+
+<p>But in another place in this Apostle's writings we read of 'the high
+calling of God in Christ Jesus.' Yes, there, as focussed into one strong
+voice, all the summonses are concentrated and gathered. For in Jesus
+Christ we see the possibilities of humanity realised, and we have the
+pattern of what we ought to be, and are called thereby to be. And in
+Christ we get the great motives which make this summons, as it comes
+mended from His lips, no longer the mere harsh voice of an authoritative
+legislator, but the gentle invitation, 'Come unto Me, ... and ye shall
+find rest unto your souls.' The summons is honeyed, sweetened, and made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_197" id="Page_1_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+infinitely mightier when we hear it from His gracious lips. It is the
+blessed peculiarity of the Christian ideal, that the manifestation of
+the ideal carries with it the power to realise it. And just as the
+increasing strength of the spring sunshine summons the buds from out of
+their folds, and the snowdrops hear the call and force themselves
+through the frozen soil, so when Christ summons He inclines the ears
+that hear, and enables the men that own them to obey the summons, and to
+be what they are commanded. And thus we have 'the high calling of God in
+Christ Jesus.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, if that is the call, if the life of Christ is that to which we are
+summoned, and the death of Christ is that by which we are inclined to
+obey the summons, and the Spirit of Christ is that by which we are
+enabled to do so, what sort of a life will be worthy of these? Well, the
+context supplies part of the answer. 'I beseech you that ye walk worthy
+of the vocation ... with all meekness and lowliness, with
+long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.' That is one side of the
+vocation, and the life that is worthy of it will be a life emancipated
+from the meanness of selfishness, and delivered from the tumidities of
+pride and arrogance, and changed into the sweetness of gentleness and
+the royalties of love.</p>
+
+<p>And then, on the other side, in one of the other texts where the same
+general set of ideas is involved, we get a yet more wondrous exhibition
+of the life which the Apostle considered to be worthy. I simply
+signalise its points of detail without venturing to dwell upon them.
+'Unto all pleasing'; the first characteristic of life that is 'worthy of
+our calling' and to which, therefore, every one of us Christian people
+is imperatively bound, is that it shall, in all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_198" id="Page_1_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> its parts, please God,
+and that is a large demand. Then follow details: 'Fruitful in every good
+work'&mdash;a many-sided fruitfulness, an encyclop&aelig;diacal beneficent
+activity, covering all the ground of possible excellence; and that is
+not all; 'increasing in the knowledge of God,'&mdash;a life of progressive
+acquaintance with Him; and that is not all:&mdash;'strengthened with all
+might unto all patience and long-suffering'; nor is that all, for the
+crown of the whole is 'giving thanks unto the Father.' So, then, 'ye see
+your calling, brethren.' A life that is 'worthy of the vocation
+wherewith ye are called' is a life that conforms to the divine will,
+that is 'fruitful in all good,' that is progressive in its acquaintance
+with God, that is strengthened for all patience and long-suffering, and
+that in everything is thankful to Him. That is what we are summoned to
+be, and unless we are in some measure obeying the summons, and bringing
+out such a life in our conduct, then, notwithstanding all that we have
+to say about unmerited mercy, and free grace, and undeserved love, and
+salvation being not by works but by faith, we have no right to claim the
+mercy to which we say we trust.</p>
+
+<p>Now, this necessity of a worthy life is perfectly harmonious with the
+great truth that, after all, every man owes all to the undeserved mercy
+of God. The more nearly we come to realise the purpose of our calling,
+the more 'worthy' of it we are, the deeper will be our consciousness of
+our unworthiness. The more we approximate to the ideal, and come closer
+up to it, and so see its features the better, the more we shall feel how
+unlike we are to it. The law for Christian progress is that the sense of
+unworthiness increases in the precise degree in which the worthiness
+increases. The same man that said, 'Of whom (sinners) I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_199" id="Page_1_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> chief,' said
+to the same reader, 'I have kept the faith, henceforth there is laid up
+for me a crown of righteousness.' And so the two things are not
+contradictory but complementary. On the one side 'worthy' has nothing to
+do with the outflow of Christ's love to us; on the other side we are to
+'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called.'</p>
+
+<p>II. And now, let us turn to the other thought, the Christian heaven and
+the life that is worthy of it.</p>
+
+<p>Some of you, I have no doubt, would think that that was a tremendous
+heresy if there were not Scriptural words to buttress it. Let us see
+what it means. My text out of the Revelation says, 'They shall walk with
+Me in white, for they are worthy.' And the same voice that spake these,
+to some of us, astounding, words, said, when He was here on earth, 'They
+which shall be counted worthy to attain to the life of the resurrection
+from the dead,' etc. The text brings out very clearly the continuity and
+congruity between the life on earth and the life in heaven. Who is it of
+whom it is said that 'they are worthy' to 'walk in white'? It is the
+'few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments.' You
+see the connection; clean robes here and shining robes hereafter; the
+two go together, and you cannot separate them. And no belief that
+salvation, in its incipient germ here, and salvation in its fulness
+hereafter, are the results 'not of works of righteousness which we have
+done, but of His mercy,' is to be allowed to interfere with that other
+truth that they who are worthy attain to the Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>I must not be diverted from my main purpose, tempting as the theme would
+be, to say more than just a sentence about what is included in that
+great promise,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_200" id="Page_1_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> 'They shall walk with Me in white' And if I do touch
+upon it at all, it is only in order to bring out more clearly that the
+very nature of the heavenly reward demands this worthiness which the
+text lays down as the condition of possessing it. 'They shall
+walk'&mdash;activity on an external world. That opens a great door, but
+perhaps we had better be contented just with looking in. 'They shall
+walk'&mdash;progress; 'with me'&mdash;union with Jesus Christ; 'in
+white'&mdash;resplendent purity of character. Now take these four
+things&mdash;activity on an outward universe, progress, union with Christ,
+resplendent purity of character, and you have almost all that we know of
+the future; the rest is partly doubtful and is mostly symbolical or
+negative, and in any case subordinate. Never mind about 'physical
+theories of another life'; never mind about all the questions&mdash;to some
+of us how torturing they sometimes are!&mdash;concerning that future life.
+The more we keep ourselves within the broad limits of these promises
+that are intertwined and folded up together in that one saying, 'They
+shall walk with Me in white,' the better, I think, for the sanity and
+the spirituality of our conception of a future life.</p>
+
+<p>That being understood, the next thing clearly follows, that only those
+who in the sense of the word as it is used here, are 'worthy,' can enter
+upon the possession of such a heaven. From the nature of the gift it is
+clear that there must be a moral and religious congruity between the
+gift and the recipient, or, to put it into plainer words, you cannot get
+heaven unless your nature is capable of receiving these great gifts
+which constitute heaven. People talk about the future state as being 'a
+state of retribution.' Well! that is not altogether a satisfactory form
+of expression,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_201" id="Page_1_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> for retribution may convey the idea, such as is
+presented in earthly rewards and punishments, of there being no natural
+correspondence between the crime and its punishment, or the virtue and
+its reward. A bit of bronze shaped into the form of a cross may be the
+retribution 'For Valour,' and a prison cell may be the retribution by
+legal appointment for a certain crime. But that is not the way that God
+deals out rewards and punishments in the life which is to come. It is
+not a case of retribution, meaning thereby the arbitrary bestowment of a
+certain fixed gift in response to certain virtues, but it is a case of
+<i>outcome</i>, and the old metaphor of sowing and reaping is the true one.
+We sow here and we reap yonder. We pass into that future, 'bringing our
+sheaves with us,' and we have to grind the corn and make bread of it,
+and we have to eat the work of our own hands. They drink as they have
+brewed. 'Their works do follow them,' or they go before them and
+'receive them into everlasting habitations.' Outcome, the necessary
+result, and not a mere arbitrary retribution, is the relation which
+heaven bears to earth.</p>
+
+<p>That is plain, too, from our own nature. We carry ourselves with us
+wherever we go. The persistence of character, the continuity of personal
+being, the continuity of memory, the <i>unobliterable</i>&mdash;if I may coin a
+word&mdash;results upon ourselves of our actions, all these things make it
+certain that what looks to us a cleft, deep and broad, between the
+present life and the next, is to those that have passed it, and see it
+from the other side, but a little crack in the soil scarcely observable,
+and that we carry on into another world the selves that we have made
+here. Whatever death does&mdash;and it does a great deal that we do not know
+of&mdash;it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_202" id="Page_1_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> does not alter, it only brings out, and, as I suppose,
+intensifies, the main drift and set of a character. And so they who
+'have not defiled their garments shall walk with Me in white, for they
+are worthy.'</p>
+
+<p>Ah, brethren! how solemn that makes life; the fleeting moment carries
+Eternity in its bosom. It passes, and the works pass, but nothing human
+ever dies, and we bear with us the net results of all the yesterdays
+into that eternal to-day. You write upon a thin film of paper and there
+is a black leaf below it. Yes, and below the black leaf there is another
+sheet, and all that you write on the top one goes through the dark
+interposed page, and is recorded on the third, and one day that will be
+taken out of the book, and you will have to read it and say, 'What I
+have written I have written.'</p>
+
+<p>So, dear friends, whilst we begin with that unmerited love, and that
+same unmerited love is the sole ground on which the gates of the kingdom
+of heaven are by the Death and Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus
+Christ opened to believers, their place there depends not only on faith
+but on the work which is the fruit of faith. There is such a thing as
+being 'saved yet so as by fire,' and there is such a thing as 'having an
+entrance ministered abundantly unto us'; we have to make the choice.
+There is such a thing as the sore punishment of which they are thought
+worthy who have rejected the Son of God, and counted the blood of the
+Covenant an unholy thing; and there is such a thing as a man saying, 'I
+am not worthy that Thou shouldest come unto me,' and Christ answering,
+'He shall walk with Me in white, for he is worthy' and we have to make
+that choice also.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_203" id="Page_1_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_THREEFOLD_UNITY" id="THE_THREEFOLD_UNITY"></a>THE THREEFOLD UNITY</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'One Lord, one faith, one baptism.'-<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 5.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The thought of the unity of the Church is very prominent in this
+epistle. It is difficult for us, amidst our present divisions, to
+realise how strange and wonderful it then was that a bond should have
+been found which drew together men of all nations, ranks, and
+characters. Pharisee and philosopher, high-born women and slaves, Roman
+patricians and gladiators, Asiatic Greeks and Syrian Jews forgot their
+feuds and sat together as one in Christ. It is no wonder that Paul in
+this letter dwells so long and earnestly on that strange fact. He is
+exhorting here to a unity of spirit corresponding to it, and he names a
+seven-fold oneness&mdash;one body and one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one
+faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. The outward institution
+of the Church, as a manifest visible fact, comes first in the catalogue.
+One Father is last, and between these there lie the mention of the one
+Spirit and the one Lord. The 'body' is the Church. 'Spirit, Lord, God,'
+are the triune divine personality. Hope and faith are human acts by
+which men are joined to God; Baptism is the visible symbol of their
+incorporation into the one body. These three clauses of our text may be
+considered as substantially including all the members of the series. We
+deal with them quite simply now, and consider them in the order in which
+they stand here.</p>
+
+<p>I. The one Lord.</p>
+
+<p>The deep foundation of Christian unity is laid in the divine Christ.
+Here, as generally in the New Testament, the name 'Lord' designates
+Christ in His authority as ruler of men and in His divinity as
+Incar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_204" id="Page_1_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>nation of God. It would not be going too far to suggest that we
+have in the name, standing as it does, for the most part, in majestic
+simplicity, a reference to the Old Testament name of Jehovah, which in
+the Greek translation familiar to Paul is generally rendered by this
+same word. Nor can we ignore the fact that in this great catalogue of
+the Christian unities the Lord stands in the centre of the three
+personalities named, and is regarded as being at once the source of the
+Spirit and the manifestation of the Father. The place which this name
+occupies in relation to the Faith which is next named suggests that the
+living personal Christ is the true uniting principle amongst men. The
+one body realises its oneness in its common relation to the one Lord. It
+is one, not because of identity in doctrine, not because of any of the
+bonds which hold men together in human associations, precious and sacred
+as many of these are, but 'we being many are one bread, for we are all
+partakers of that one bread.' The magnet draws all the particles to
+itself and holds them in a mysterious unity.</p>
+
+<p>II. One faith.</p>
+
+<p>The former clause set forth in one great name all the objective elements
+of the Church's oneness; this clause sets forth, with equally
+all-comprehending simplicity, the subjective element which makes a
+Christian. The one Lord, in the fulness of His nature and the
+perfectness of His work, is the all-inclusive object of faith. He, in
+His own living person, and not any dogmas about Him, is regarded as the
+strong support round which the tendrils of faith cling and twine and
+grow. True, He is made known to us as possessing certain attributes and
+as doing certain things which, when stated in words, become doctrines,
+and a Christ without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_205" id="Page_1_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> these will never be the object of faith. The
+antithesis which is so often drawn between Christ's person and Christian
+doctrines is by no means sound, though the warning not to substitute the
+latter for the former is only too necessary at all times.</p>
+
+<p>The subjective act which lays hold of Christ is faith, which in our text
+has its usual meaning of saving trust, and is entirely misconceived if
+it is taken, as it sometimes is, to mean the whole body of beliefs which
+make up the Christian creed. That which unites us to Jesus Christ is an
+infinitely deeper thing than the acceptance of any creed. A man may
+believe thirty-nine or thirty-nine hundred articles without having any
+real or vital connection with the one Lord. The faith which saves is the
+outgoing of the whole self towards Christ. In it the understanding, the
+emotions, and the will are all in action. The New Testament <i>faith</i> is
+absolutely identical with the Old Testament <i>trust</i>, and the prophet who
+exhorted Israel, 'Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah
+is everlasting strength,' was preaching the very same message as the
+Apostle who cried, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be
+saved.'</p>
+
+<p>That 'saving faith' is the same in all Christians, however different
+they may be in condition and character and general outlook and opinion
+upon many points of Christian knowledge. The things on which they differ
+are on the surface, and sometimes by reason of their divergencies
+Christians stand like frowning cliffs that look threateningly at one
+another across a narrow gorge, but deep below ground they are continuous
+and the rock is unbroken. In many and melancholy ways 'the unity of
+faith and knowledge' is contradicted in the existing organisations of
+the Church, and we are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_206" id="Page_1_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> tempted to postpone its coming to the day of the
+new Jerusalem which is compact together; but the clarion note of this
+great text may encourage us to hope, and to labour in our measure for
+the fulfilment of the hope, that all, who by one faith have been joined
+to the one Lord, may yet know themselves to be one in Him, and present
+to the world the fair picture of one body animated by one spirit.</p>
+
+<p>III. One baptism.</p>
+
+<p>Obviously in Paul's mind baptism here means, not the baptism with the
+Spirit, but the rite, one and the same for all, by which believers in
+Christ enter into the fellowship of the Church. It was then a perpetual
+rite administered as a matter of course to all who professed to have
+been joined to the one Lord by their one faith. The sequence in the
+three clauses of our text is perfectly clear. Baptism is the expression
+and consequence of the faith which precedes it. Surely there is here a
+most distinct implication that it is a declaration of personal faith.
+Without enlarging on the subject, I venture to think that the order of
+the Apostle's thought negatives other conceptions of Christian baptism,
+such as, that it is a communication of Grace, or an expression of the
+feelings and desires of parents, or a declaration of some truth about
+redeemed humanity. Paul's order is Christ's when He said, 'He that
+believeth and is baptized shall be saved.'</p>
+
+<p>It is very remarkable and instructive that whilst thus our text shows
+that baptism was a matter of course and universally practised, the
+references to it in the epistles are so few. The inference is not that
+it was neglected, but that, as being a rite, it could not be as
+important as were Christian truths and Christian character. May we, in a
+word, suggest the contrast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_207" id="Page_1_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> between the frequency and tone of the
+Apostolic references to baptism and those which we find in many quarters
+to-day?</p>
+
+<p>It is remarkable that here the Lord's Supper is not mentioned, and all
+the more so, that in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the passage which
+we have already quoted does put emphasis upon it as a token of Christian
+unity. The explanation of the omission may be found in the fact that, in
+these early days, the Lord's Supper was not a separate rite, but was
+combined with ordinary meals, or perhaps more probably in the
+consideration that baptism was what the Lord's Supper was not&mdash;an
+initial rite which incorporated the possessors of one faith into the one
+body.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_MEASURE_OF_GRACE" id="THE_MEASURE_OF_GRACE"></a>'THE MEASURE OF GRACE'</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the
+measure of the gift of Christ.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 7 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Apostle here makes a swift transition from the thought of the unity
+of the Church to the variety of gifts to the individual. 'Each' is
+contrasted with 'all.' The Father who stands in so blessed and gracious
+a relationship to the united whole also sustains an equally gracious and
+blessed relationship to each individual in that whole. It is because
+each receives His individual gift that God works in all. The Christian
+community is the perfection of individualism and of collectivism, and
+this rich variety of the gifts of grace is here urged as a reason
+additional to the unity of the one body, for the exhortation to the
+endeavour to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.</p>
+
+<p>I. Each Christian soul receives grace through Christ.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_208" id="Page_1_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The more accurate rendering of the Revised Version reads '<i>the</i> grace,'
+and the definite article points to it as a definite and familiar fact in
+the Ephesian believers to which the Apostle could point with the
+certainty that their own consciousness would confirm his statement. The
+wording of the Greek further implies that the grace was given at a
+definite point in the past, which is most naturally taken to have been
+the moment in which each believer laid hold on Jesus by faith. It is
+further to be noted that the content of the gift is the grace itself and
+not the graces which are its product and manifestation in the Christian
+life. And this distinction, which is in accordance with Paul's habitual
+teaching, leads us to the conclusion, that the essential character of
+the grace given through the act of our individual faith is that of a new
+vital force, flowing into and transforming the individual life. From
+that unspeakable gift which Paul supposed to be verifiable by the
+individual experience of every Christian, there would follow the graces
+of Christian character in which would be included the deepening and
+purifying of all the natural capacities of the individual self, and the
+casting out from thence of all that was contrary to the transforming
+power of the new life.</p>
+
+<p>Such an utterance as this, so quietly and confidently taking for granted
+that the experience of every believer verifies it in his own case, may
+well drive us all to look more earnestly into our own hearts, to see
+whether in them are any traces of a similar experience. If it be true,
+that to every one of us is given <i>the</i> grace, how comes it that so many
+of us dare not profess to have any vivid remembrance of possessing it,
+of having possessed it, or of any clear consciousness of possessing it
+now? There may be gifts bestowed upon unconscious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_209" id="Page_1_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> receivers, but surely
+this is not one of these. If we do not know that we have it, it must at
+least remain very questionable whether we do have it at all, and very
+certain that we have it in scant and shrivelled fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The universality of the gift was a startling thing in a world which, as
+far as cultivated heathenism was concerned, might rightly be called
+aristocratic, and by the side of a religion of privilege into which
+Judaism had degenerated. The supercilious sarcasm in the lips of
+Pharisees, 'This people which knoweth not the law are cursed,' but too
+truly expresses the gulf between the Rabbis and the 'folk of the earth'
+as the masses were commonly and contemptuously designated by the former.
+Into the midst of a society in which such distinctions prevailed, the
+proclamation that the greatest gift was bestowed upon all must have come
+with revolutionary force, and been hailed as emancipation. Peter had
+penetrated to grasp the full meaning and wondrous novelty of that
+universality, when on Pentecost he pointed to 'that which had been
+spoken by the prophet Joel' as fulfilled on that day, 'I will pour forth
+of my Spirit upon all flesh ... Yea, and on my servants and handmaidens
+... will I pour forth of my Spirit.' The rushing, mighty wind of that
+day soon dropped. The fiery tongues ceased to quiver on the disciples'
+heads, and the many voices that spoke were silenced, but the gift was
+permanent, and is poured out now as it was then, and now, as then, it is
+true that the whole company of believers receive the Spirit, though
+alas! by their own faults it is not true that 'they are all <i>filled</i>
+with the Holy Spirit.'</p>
+
+<p>Christ is the giver. He has 'power over the Spirit of Holiness' and as
+the Evangelist has said in his comment on our Lord's great words, when
+'He stood and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_210" id="Page_1_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> cried,' 'If any man thirst let him come unto Me and
+drink,' 'This spake He of the Spirit which they that believed on Him
+were to receive.' We cannot pierce into the depth of the mutual
+relations of the three divine Persons mentioned in the context, but we
+can discern that Christ is for us the self-revealing activity of the
+divine nature, the right arm of the Father, or, to use another metaphor,
+the channel through which the else 'closed sea' of God flows into the
+world of creatures. Through that channel is poured into believing hearts
+the river of the water of life, which proceeds out of the one 'throne of
+God and of the Lamb.' This gift of the Spirit of Holiness to all
+believers is the deepest and truest conception of Christ's gifts to His
+Church. His past work of sacrifice for the sins of the world was
+finished, as with a parting cry He proclaimed on Calvary, and the power
+of that sacrifice will never be exhausted, but the taking away of the
+sins of the world is but the initial stage of the work of Christ, and
+its further stages are carried on through all the ages. He 'worketh
+hitherto,' and His present work, in so far as believers are concerned,
+is not only the forthputting of divine energy in regard to outward
+circumstances, but the imparting to them of the Divine Spirit to be the
+very life of their lives and the Lord of their spirits. Christian people
+are but too apt to give undue prominence to what Christ did for them
+when He died, and to lose sight, in the overwhelming lustre of His
+unspeakable sacrifice, of what He is doing for them whilst He lives. It
+would tend to restore the proportions of Christian truth and to touch
+our hearts into a deeper and more continuous love to Him, if we more
+habitually thought of Him, not only as the Christ who died, but also as
+the Christ who rather is risen again, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_211" id="Page_1_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> is even at the right hand of
+God, who also maketh intercession for us.</p>
+
+<p>II. The gift of this grace is in itself unlimited.</p>
+
+<p>Our text speaks of it as being according to the measure of the gift of
+Christ, and that phrase may either mean the gift which Christ receives
+or that which He gives. Probably the latter is the Apostle's meaning
+here, as seems to be indicated by the following words that 'when He
+ascended on high, He gave gifts unto men,' but what He gives is what He
+possesses, and the Apostle goes on to point out that the ultimate issue
+of His giving to the Church is that it attains to the measure of the
+stature of the fulness of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>It may cast some light on this point if we note the remarkable variety
+of expressions in this epistle for the norm or standard or limit of the
+gift. In one place the Apostle speaks of the gift bestowed upon
+believers as being according to the riches of the Father's glory; then
+it has no limit short of a participation in the divine fulness. God's
+glory is the transcendent lustre of His own infinite character in its
+self-manifestation. The Apostle labours to flash through the dim medium
+of words the glory of that light by blending incongruously, but
+effectively, the other metaphor of riches, and the two together suggest
+a wonderful, though vague thought of the infinite wealth and the
+exhaustless brightness which we call Abba, Father. The humblest child
+may lift longing and confident eyes and believe that he has received in
+very deed, through his faith in Jesus Christ, a gift which will increase
+in riches and in light until it makes him perfect as his Father in
+heaven was perfect. It was an old faith, based upon insight far inferior
+to ours, which proclaimed with triumph over the frowns of death. 'I
+shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_212" id="Page_1_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.' Would that those
+who have so much more for faith to build on, built as nobly as did
+these!</p>
+
+<p>The gift has in itself no limit short of participation in the likeness
+of Christ. In another place in this letter the measure of that might
+which is the guarantee of Christian hope is set forth with an abundance
+of expression which might almost sound as an unmeaning accumulation of
+synonyms, as being 'according to the working of the strength of His
+might which He wrought in Christ'; and what is the range of the working
+of that might is disclosed to our faith in the Resurrection of Jesus,
+and the setting of Him high above all rule and authority and power and
+lordship and every creature in the present or in any future. Paul's
+continual teaching is that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was wrought
+in Him, not as a mere human individual but as our head and
+representative. Through Him we rise, not only from an ethical death of
+sin and separation from God, but we shall rise from physical death, and
+in Him the humblest believer possessing a vital union with the Lord of
+life has a share in His dominion, and, as His own faithful word has
+promised, sits with Him on His throne, even as He is set down with the
+Father on His throne.</p>
+
+<p>That gift has in itself no limit short of its own energy. In another
+part of this epistle the Apostle indicates the measure up to which our
+being filled is to take effect, as being 'all the fulness of God' and in
+such an overwhelming vision breaks forth into fervent praise of Him who
+is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, and
+then supplies us with a measure which may widen and heighten our
+petitions and expectations when He tells us that we are to find the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_213" id="Page_1_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+measure of God's working for us, not in the impoverishment of our
+present possessions, but in the exceeding riches of the power that
+worketh in us&mdash;that is to say, that we are to look for the limit of the
+limitless gift in nothing short of the boundless energy of God Himself.
+In the Epistle to the Colossians Paul uses the same illustration with an
+individual reference to his own labours. In our text he associates with
+himself all believers, as being conscious of a power working in them,
+which is really the limitless power of God, and heartens them to
+anticipate that whatever limitless power can effect in them will
+certainly be theirs. God does not leave off till He has done and till He
+can look upon His completed work and pronounce it very good.</p>
+
+<p>III. This boundless grace is in each individual case bounded for the
+time by our own faith.</p>
+
+<p>When I lived near the New Forest I used to hear much of what they called
+'rolling fences.' A man received or took a little piece of Crown land on
+which he built a house and put round it a fence which could be
+judiciously and silently pushed outwards by slow degrees and enclosed,
+year by year, a wider area. We Christian people have, as it were, our
+own small, cultivated plot on the boundless prairie, the extent of which
+we measure for ourselves and which we can enlarge as we will. We have
+been speaking of the various aspects under which the boundlessness of
+the gift is presented by the Apostle, but there is another 'according
+to' in Christ's own words, 'According to your faith be it unto you,' and
+that statement lays down the practical limits of our present possession
+of the boundless gift. We have as much as we desire; we have as much as
+we take; we have as much as we use; we have as much as we can hold. We
+are admitted into the treasure house,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_214" id="Page_1_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> and all around us lie ingots of
+gold and vessels full of coins; we ourselves determine how much of the
+treasure should be ours, and if at any time we feel like empty-handed
+paupers rather than like possible millionaires, the reason lies in our
+own slowness to take that which is freely given to us of God. His word
+to us all is, 'Ye are not straitened in Me, ye are straitened in
+yourselves.' It is well for us to keep ever before us the boundlessness
+of the gift in itself and the working limit in ourselves which
+conditions our actual possession of the riches. For so, on the one hand,
+should we be encouraged to expect great things from God, and, on the
+other hand, be humbled by the contrast between what we might be and what
+we are. The river that rushes full of water from the throne can send but
+a narrow and shallow trickle through the narrow channel choked with much
+rubbish, which we provide for it. It is of little avail that the sun in
+the heavens pours down its flood of light and warmth if the windows of
+our hearts are by our own faults so darkened that but a stray beam,
+shorn of its brightness and warmth, can find its way into our darkness.
+The first lesson which we have to draw from the contrast between the
+boundlessness of the gift and the narrow limits of our individual
+possession and experience of it, is the lesson of penitent recognition
+and confession of the unbelief which lurks in our strongest faith. 'Lord
+I believe, help Thou mine unbelief,' should be the prayer of every
+Christian soul.</p>
+
+<p>Not less surely will the recognition that the form and amount of the
+grace of God, which is possessed by each, is determined by the faith of
+each, lead to tolerance of the diversity of gifts. We have received our
+own proper gift of God, that which the strength and purity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_215" id="Page_1_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> of our faith
+is capable of possessing, and it is not for us to carp at our brethren,
+either at those in advance of us or at those behind us. We have to
+remember that as it takes all sorts of people to make up a world, so it
+takes all varieties of Christian character to make a church. It is the
+body and not the individual members which represents Christ to the
+world. The firmest adherence to our own form of the universal gift will
+combine with the widest toleration of the gifts of others. The white
+light appears when red, green, and blue blend together, not when each
+tries to be the other. 'Every man hath his own proper gift of God, one
+after this fashion and another after that,' and we shall be true to the
+boundlessness of the gift and to the limitations of our own possession
+of it, in the measure of which we combine obedience to the light which
+shines in us, with thankful recognition of that which is granted to
+others.</p>
+
+<p>The contrast between these two must be kept vivid if we would live in
+the freedom of the hope of the glory of God, for in the contrast lies
+the assurance of endless growth. A process is begun in every Christian
+soul of which the only natural end is the full possession of God in
+Christ, and that full possession can never be reached by a finite
+creature, but that does not mean that the ideal mocks us and retreats
+before us like the pot of gold, which the children fancy is at the end
+of the rainbow. Rather it means a continuous succession of our
+realisations of the ideal in ever fuller and more blessed reality. In
+this life we may, on condition of our growth in faith, grow in the
+possession of the fulness of God, and yet at each moment that possession
+will be greater, though at all moments we may be filled. In the
+Christian life to-morrow may be safely reckoned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_216" id="Page_1_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> as destined to be 'as
+yesterday and much more abundant,' and when we pass from the
+imperfections of the most perfect earthly life, there will still remain
+ever before us the glory, which, according to the measure of our
+capacity, is also in us, and we shall draw nearer and nearer to it, and
+be for ever receiving into our expanding spirits more and more of the
+infinite fulness of God.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_GOAL_OF_PROGRESS" id="THE_GOAL_OF_PROGRESS"></a>THE GOAL OF PROGRESS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the
+knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown man, unto the
+measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 13
+(R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The thought of the unity of the Church is much in the Apostle's mind in
+this epistle. It is set forth in many places by his two favourite
+metaphors of the body and the temple, by the relation of husband and
+wife and by the family. It is contemplated in its great historical
+realisation by the union of Jew and Gentile in one whole. In the
+preceding context it is set forth as already existing, but also as lying
+far-off in the future. The chapter begins with an earnest exhortation to
+preserve this unity and with an exhibition of the oneness which does
+really exist in body, spirit, hope, lord, faith, baptism. But the
+Apostle swiftly passes to the corresponding thought of diversity. There
+are varieties in the gifts of the one Spirit; whilst each individual in
+the one whole receives his due portion, there are broad differences in
+spiritual gifts. These differences do not break the oneness, but they
+may tend to do so; they are not causes of separation and do not
+necessarily interfere with unity, but they may be made so. Their
+existence leaves room for brotherly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_217" id="Page_1_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> helpfulness, and creates a
+necessity for it. The wiser are to teach; the more advanced are to lead;
+the more largely gifted are to encourage and stimulate the less richly
+endowed. Such outward helps and brotherly impartations of gifts is, on
+the one hand, a result of the one gift to the whole body, and is on the
+other a sign of, because a necessity arising from, the imperfect degree
+in which each individual has received of Christ's fulness; and these
+helps of teaching and guidance have for their sole object to make
+Christian men able to do without them, and are, as the text tells us, to
+cease when, and to last till, we all attain to the fulness of Christ. To
+Paul, then, the manifest unity of the Church was to be the end of its
+earthly course, but it also was real, though incomplete, in the present,
+and the emphasis of our text is not so much laid on telling us when this
+oneness was to be manifested as in showing us in what it consists. We
+have here a threefold expression of the true unity, as consisting in a
+oneness of relation to Christ, a consequent maturity of manhood and a
+perfect possession of all which is in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>I. The true unity is oneness of relation to Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The Revised Version is here to be preferred, and its 'attain unto'
+brings out the idea which the Authorised Version fails to express, that
+the text is intended to point to the period at which Christ's provision
+of helpful gifts to the growing Church is to cease, when the individuals
+composing it have come to their destined unity and maturity in Him. The
+three clauses of our text are each introduced by the same preposition,
+and there is no reason why in the second and third it should be rendered
+'unto' and in the first should be watered down to 'in.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_218" id="Page_1_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are then two regions in which this unity is to be realised. These
+are expressed by the great words, 'the unity of the faith and knowledge
+of the Son of God.' These words are open to a misunderstanding, as if
+they referred to a unity as between faith and knowledge; but it is
+obvious to the slightest reflection that what is meant is the unity of
+all believers in regard to their faith, and in regard to their
+knowledge. It is to be noted that the Apostle has just said that there
+is one faith, now he points to the realisation of that oneness as the
+very end and goal of all discipline and growth. I suppose that we have
+to think here of the manifold and sad differences existing in Christian
+men, in regard to the depth and constancy and formative power of their
+faith. There are some who have it so strong and vigorous that it is a
+vision rather than a faith, a trust, deep and firm and settled, to which
+the present is but the fleeting shadow, and the unseen the eternal and
+only reality; but, alas! there are others in whom the light of faith
+burns feebly and flickers. Nor are these differences the attributes of
+different men, but the same man varies in the power of his faith, and we
+all of us know what it is to have it sometimes dominant over our whole
+selves, and sometimes weak and crushed under the weight of earthly
+passions. To-day we may be all flame, to-morrow all ice. Our faith may
+seem to us to be strong enough to move mountains, and before an hour is
+past we may find it, by experience, to be less than a grain of mustard
+seed. 'Action and reaction are always equal and contrary,' and that law
+is as true in reference to our present spiritual life as it is true in
+regard to physical objects. We have, then, the encouragement of such a
+word as that of our text for looking forward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_219" id="Page_1_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> to and straining towards
+the reversal of these sad alterations in a fixed and continuous faith
+which should grasp the whole Christ and should always hold Him. There
+may still be diversities and degrees, but each should have his measure
+always full. 'Thy Sun shall no more go down'; there will no longer be
+the contrast between the flashing waters of a flood-tide and the dreary
+mud-banks disclosed at low water. We shall stand at different points,
+but the faces of all will be turned to Him who is the Light of all, and
+every face will shine with the likeness of His, when we see Him as He
+is.</p>
+
+<p>But our text points us to another form of unity&mdash;the oneness of the
+knowledge of the Son of God.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle uses an emphatic term which is very familiar on his lips to
+designate this knowledge. It means not a mere intellectual apprehension,
+but a profound and vital acquaintance, dependent indeed upon faith, and
+realised in experience. It is the knowledge for which Paul was ready to
+'count all things but loss' that he might know Jesus, and winning which
+he would count himself to 'have apprehended.' The unity in this deep and
+blessed knowledge has nothing to do with identity of opinion on the
+points which have separated Christians. It is not to be sought by
+outward unanimity, nor by aggregation in external communities. The
+Apostle's great thought is made small and the truth of it is falsified
+when it is over-hastily embodied in institutions. It has been sought in
+a uniformity which resembles unity as much as a bundle of faggots, all
+cut to the same length, and tied together with a rope, resemble the tree
+from which they were chopped, waving in the wind and living one life to
+the tips of its furthest branches. Men have made out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_220" id="Page_1_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> the Apostle's
+divine vision of a unity in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God 'a
+staunch and solid piece of framework as any January could freeze
+together,' and few things have stood more in the way of the realisation
+of his glowing anticipations than the formation of the great
+Corporation, imposing from its bulk and antiquity, to part from which
+was branded as breaking the unity of the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Paul gives no clear definition here of the time when the one body of
+Christian believers should have attained to the unity of the faith and
+knowledge of the Son of God, and the question may not have presented
+itself to him. It may appear that in view of the immediate context he
+regards the goal as one to be reached in our present life, or it may be
+that he is thinking rather of the Future, when the Master 'should bring
+together every joint and member and mould them into an immortal feature
+of loveliness and perfection.' But the time at which this great ideal
+should be attained is altogether apart from the obligation pressing upon
+us all, at all times, to work towards it. Whensoever it is reached it
+will only be by our drawing 'nearer, day by day, each to his brethren,
+all to God,' or rather, each to God and so all to his brethren. Take
+twenty points in a great circle and let each be advanced by one half of
+its distance to the centre, how much nearer will each be to each? Christ
+is our unity, not dogmas, not polities, not rituals: our oneness is a
+oneness of life. We need for our centre no tower with a top reaching to
+heaven, we have a living Lord who is with us, and in Him, we being many,
+are one.</p>
+
+<p>II. Oneness in faith and knowledge knits all into a 'perfect man.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perfect,' the Apostle here uses in opposition to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_221" id="Page_1_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> immediately
+following expression in the next verse, of 'children.' It therefore
+means not so much moral perfection as maturity or fulness of growth. So
+long as we fall short of the state of unity we are in the stage of
+immaturity. When we come to be one in faith and knowledge we have
+reached full-grown manhood. The existence of differences belongs to the
+infancy and boyhood of the Church, and as we grow one we are putting
+away childish things. What a contrast there is between Paul's vision
+here and the tendency which has been too common among Christians to
+magnify their differences, and to regard their obstinate adherence to
+these as being 'steadfastness in the faith'! How different would be the
+relations between the various communities into which the one body has
+been severed, if they all fully believed that their respective
+shibboleths were signs that they had not yet attained, neither were
+already perfect! When we began to be ashamed of these instead of
+glorying in them we should be beginning to grow into the maturity of our
+Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>But the Apostle speaks of 'a perfect man' in the singular and not of
+'men' in the plural, as he has already described the result of the union
+of Jew and Gentile as being the making 'of twain one new man.' This
+remarkable expression sets forth, in the strongest terms, the vital
+unity which connects all members of the one body so closely that there
+is but one life in them all. There are many members, but one body. Their
+functions differ, but the life in them all is identical. The eye cannot
+say to the hand, 'I have no need of thee,' nor again the head to the
+feet, 'I have no need of you.' Each is necessary to the completeness of
+the whole, and all are necessary to make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_222" id="Page_1_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> up the one body of Christ. It
+is His life which manifests itself in every member and which gives
+clearness of vision to the eye, strength and deftness to the hand. He
+needs us all for His work on the world and for His revelation to the
+world of the fulness of His life. In some parts of England there are
+bell-ringers who stand at a table on which are set bells, each tuned to
+one note, and they can perform most elaborate pieces of music by swiftly
+catching up and sounding each of these in the right place. All Christian
+souls are needed for the Master's hand to bring out the note of each in
+its place. In the lowest forms of life all vital functions are performed
+by one simple sac, and the higher the creature is in the scale the more
+are its organs differentiated. In the highest form of all, 'as the body
+is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being
+many, are one body, so also is Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>III. This perfect manhood is the possession of all who are in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The fulness of Christ is the fulness which belongs to Him, or that of
+which He is full. All which He is and has is to be poured into His
+servants, and when all this is communicated to them the goal will be
+reached. We shall be full-grown men, and more wonderful still, we all
+shall make one perfect man, and individual completenesses will blend
+into that which is more complete than any of these, the one body, which
+corresponds to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>This is the goal of humanity in which, and in which alone, the dreams of
+thinkers about perfectibility will become facts, and the longings that
+are deeply rooted in every soul will find their fulfilment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_223" id="Page_1_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> By our
+personal union with Jesus Christ through faith, our individual
+perfection, both in the sense of maturity and in that of the realisation
+of ideal manhood, is assured, and in Him the race, as well as the
+individual, is redeemed, and will one day be glorified. The Utopias of
+many thinkers are but partial and distorted copies of the kingdom of
+Christ. The reality which He brings and imparts is greater than all
+these, and when the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven, and is
+planted on the common earth, it will outvie in lustre and outlast in
+permanence all forms of human association. The city of wisdom which was
+Athens, the city of power which was Rome, the city of commerce which is
+London, the city of pleasure which is Paris, 'pale their ineffectual
+fires' before the city in the light whereof the nations should walk.</p>
+
+<p>The beginning of the process, of which the end is this inconceivable
+participation in the glory of Jesus, is simple trust in Him. 'He that is
+joined to the Lord is one spirit,' and he who trusts in Him, loves Him,
+and obeys Him, is joined to Him, and thereby is started on a course
+which never halts nor stays so long as the faith which started him
+abides, till he 'grows up into Him in all things which is the head, even
+Christ.' The experience of the Christian life as God means it to be, and
+by the communication of His grace makes it possible for it to become, is
+like that of men embarked on some sun-lit ocean, sailing past shining
+headlands, and ever onwards, over the boundless blue, beneath a calm sky
+and happy stars. The blissful voyagers are in full possession at every
+moment of all which they need and of all of His fulness which they can
+contain, but the full possession at every moment increases as they, by
+it, become<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_224" id="Page_1_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> capable of fuller possession. Increasing capacity brings
+with it increasing participation in the boundless fulness of Him who
+filleth all in all.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHRIST_OUR_LESSON_AND_OUR_TEACHER" id="CHRIST_OUR_LESSON_AND_OUR_TEACHER"></a>CHRIST OUR LESSON AND OUR TEACHER</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard
+Him, and have been taught in Him.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 20, 21.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Apostle has been describing in very severe terms the godlessness and
+corruption of heathenism. He reckons on the assent of the Ephesian
+Christians when he paints the society in which they lived as alienated
+from God, insensible to the restraints of conscience, and foul with all
+uncleanness. That was a picture of heathenism drawn from the life and
+submitted to the judgment of those who knew the original only too well.
+It has been reserved for modern eulogists to regard such statements as
+exaggerations. Those who knew heathenism from the inside knew that they
+were sober truth. The colonnades of the stately temple of Ephesus stank
+with proofs of their correctness.</p>
+
+<p>Out of that mass of moral putridity these Ephesian Christians had been
+dragged. But its effects still lingered in them, and it was all about
+them with its pestilential miasma. So the first thing that they needed
+was to be guarded against it. The Apostle, in the subsequent context,
+with great earnestness gives a series of moral injunctions of the most
+elementary kind. Their very simplicity is eloquent. What sort of people
+must they have formerly been who needed to be bade not to steal and not
+to lie?</p>
+
+<p>But before he comes to the specific duties, he lays down the broad
+general principle of which all these are to be but manifestations&mdash;viz.
+that they and we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_225" id="Page_1_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> need, as the foundation of all noble conduct and of
+all theoretical ethics, the suppression and crucifixion of the old self
+and the investiture with a new self. And this double necessity, says the
+Apostle in my text, is the plain teaching of Jesus Christ to all His
+disciples.</p>
+
+<p>Now the words which I have selected as my text are but a fragment of a
+closely concatenated whole, but I may deal with them separately at this
+time. They are very remarkable. They lay, as it seems to me, the basis
+for all Christian conduct; and they teach us how there is no real
+knowledge of Jesus Christ which does not effloresce into the practice of
+these virtues and graces which the Apostle goes on to describe.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, Christ our Lesson and Christ our Teacher.</p>
+
+<p>Mark the singular expression with which this text begins. 'Ye have not
+so learned <i>Christ</i>.' Now, we generally talk about learning a subject, a
+language, a science, or an art; but we do not talk about learning
+people. But Paul says we are Christ's disciples, not only in the sense
+that we learn of Him as Teacher&mdash;which follows in the next clause&mdash;but
+that we learn Him as the theme of our study.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, the relation of the person of Jesus Christ to all that
+He has to teach and reveal to the world is altogether different from
+that of all other teachers of all sorts of truth, to the truth which
+they proclaim. You can accept the truths and dismiss into oblivion the
+men from whom you got them. But you cannot reject Christ and take
+Christianity. The two are inseparably united. For, in regard to all
+spiritual and to all moral truth&mdash;truth about conduct and
+character&mdash;Jesus Christ <i>is</i> what He teaches. So we may say, turning
+well-known words of a poet in another direction: 'My lesson is in
+Thee.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_226" id="Page_1_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But that is not all. My text goes on to speak about another thing: 'Ye
+have learned Christ if so be that ye have <i>heard Him</i> and been taught.'
+Now that 'If so be' is not the 'if' of uncertainty or doubt, but it is
+equivalent to 'if, as I know to be the case,' or '<i>since</i> ye have heard
+Him.' Away there in Ephesus, years and years after the crucifixion,
+these people who had never seen Christ in the flesh, nor heard a word
+from the lips 'into which grace was poured,' are yet addressed by the
+Apostle as those who had listened to Him and heard Him speak. They had
+'heard Him and been taught.' So He was Lesson and He was Teacher. And
+that is as true about us as it was about them. Let me say only a word or
+two about each of these two thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>I have already suggested that the underlying truth which warrants the
+first of them is that Jesus Christ's relation to His message and
+revelation is altogether different from that of other teachers to what
+they have to communicate to the world. Of course we all know that, in
+regard to the wider sphere of religious and Christian truth, it is not
+only what Christ said, but even more what He did and was, that makes His
+revelation of the Father's heart. Precious as are the words which drop
+from His lips, which are spirit and are life, His life itself is more
+than all His teachings; and it is when we learn, not <i>from</i> Him, but
+when we <i>learn</i> Him, that we see the Father. But my text has solely
+reference to conduct, and in that aspect it just implies this thought,
+that the sum of all duty, the height of all moral perfectness, the
+realised ideal of humanity, is in Christ, and that the true way to know
+what a man or a nation ought to do is to study Him.</p>
+
+<p>How strange it is, when one comes to consider it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_227" id="Page_1_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> that the impression
+of absolute perfection, free from all limitations of race or country or
+epoch or individual character&mdash;and yet not a vague abstraction but a
+true living Person&mdash;has been printed upon the minds and hearts of the
+world by these four little pamphlets which we call gospels! I do not
+think that there is anything in the whole history of literature to
+compare with the impression of veracity and historical reality and
+individual personality which is made by these fragmentary narratives.
+And although it has nothing to do with my present subject, I may just
+say in a sentence that it seems to me that the character of Jesus Christ
+as painted in the Gospels, in its incomparable vividness and vitality,
+is one of the strongest evidences for the simple faithfulness as
+biographies, of these books. Nothing else but the Man seen could have
+resulted in such compositions.</p>
+
+<p>But apart altogether from that, how blessed it is that we have not to
+enter upon any lengthened investigations, far beyond the power of
+average minds, in order to get hold of the fundamental laws of moral
+conduct! How blessed it is that all the harshness of 'Obey this law or
+die' is by His life changed into 'Look at Me, and, for My love's sake,
+study Me and be like Me!' This is the blessed peculiarity which gives
+all its power and distinctive characteristic to the morality of the
+Gospel, that law is changed from a statuesque white ideal, pure as
+marble and cold and lifeless as it, into a living Person with a
+throbbing heart of love, and an outstretched hand of help, whose word
+is, 'If ye love Me, keep My commandments, and be like Me.'</p>
+
+<p>Christian men and women! study Jesus Christ. That is the Alpha and Omega
+of all right knowledge of duty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_228" id="Page_1_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> and of all right practice of it. Learn
+Him, His self-suppression, His self-command, His untroubled calmness,
+His immovable patience, His continual gentleness, His constant reference
+of all things to the Father's will. Study these. To imitate Him is
+blessedness; to resemble Him is perfection. 'Ye have learned Christ' if
+you are Christians at all. You have at least begun the alphabet, but oh!
+in Him 'are hid all the treasures,' not only 'of wisdom and knowledge,'
+but of 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report'; and 'if there
+is any virtue, and if there is any praise,' we shall find them in Him
+who is our Lesson, our perfect Lesson.</p>
+
+<p>But that is not all. Lessons are very well, but&mdash;dear me!&mdash;the world
+wants something besides lessons. It has had plenty of teaching. The
+trouble is not that we are not instructed, but that we do not take the
+lessons that are laid before us. And so my text suggests another thing
+besides the wholly inadequate conception, as it would be if it stood
+alone, of a mere exhibition of what we ought to be.</p>
+
+<p>'If so be that ye have <i>heard</i> Him.' As I said, these Ephesian
+Christians, far away in Asia Minor, with seas and years between them and
+the plains of Galilee and the Cross of Calvary, are yet regarded by the
+Apostle as having listened to Jesus Christ. We, far away down the ages,
+and in another corner of the world, as really, without metaphor, in
+plain fact, may have Jesus Christ speaking to us, and may hear His
+voice. These Ephesians had heard Him, not only because they had heard
+about Him, nor because they had heard Him speaking through His servant
+Paul and others, but because, as Paul believed, that Lord, who had
+spoken with human lips words which it was pos<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_229" id="Page_1_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>sible for a man to utter
+when He was here on earth, when caught up into the third heaven was
+still speaking to men, even according to His own promise, which He gave
+at the very close of His career, 'I have declared Thy name unto My
+brethren, and <i>will</i> declare it.' So, though 'He began both to do and to
+teach' before He was taken up, after His Ascension He continues both the
+doing and the tuition. And, in verity, we all may hear His voice
+speaking in the depths of our hearts; speaking through the renewed
+conscience; speaking by that Spirit who will guide us into all the truth
+that we need; speaking through the ages to all who will listen to His
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>The conception of Christ as a Teacher, which is held by many who deny
+His redeeming work and dismiss as incredible His divinity, seems to me
+altogether inadequate, unless it be supplemented by the belief that He
+now has and exercises the power of communicating wisdom and knowledge
+and warning and stimulus to waiting hearts; and that when we hear within
+the depth of our souls the voice saying to us, 'This is the way, walk ye
+in it,' or saying to us, 'Pass not by, enter not into it,' if we have
+waited for Him, and studied His example and character, and sought, not
+to please ourselves, but to be led by His wisdom, we may be sure that it
+is Christ Himself who speaks. Reverence the inward monitor, and when He
+within thy heart, by His Spirit, calls thee, do thou answer, 'Speak,
+Lord! Thy servant heareth.' 'Ye have learned Christ if so be that ye
+have hearkened to Him.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Secondly, mark the condition of learning the Lesson and hearing the
+Teacher.</p>
+
+<p>Our Authorised Version, in accordance with its very frequent practice,
+has evacuated the last words of my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_230" id="Page_1_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> text of their true force by the
+substitution of the more intelligible '<i>by</i> Him' for what the Apostle
+writes&mdash;'<i>in</i> Him.' The true rendering gives us the condition on which
+we learn our Lesson and hear our Teacher. '<i>In</i> Him,' is no mere
+surplusage, and is not to be weakened down, as this translation of ours
+does, into a mere '<i>by</i> Him' but it declares that, unless we keep
+ourselves in union with Jesus Christ, His voice will not be heard in our
+hearts, and the lesson will pass unlearned.</p>
+
+<p>You know, dear brother, how emphatically and continually in the New
+Testament this doctrine of the dwelling of the believing soul in Christ,
+and the reciprocal dwelling of Christ in the believing soul, is insisted
+upon. And I, for my part, believe that one great cause of the
+unsatisfactory condition of the average Christianity of this day is the
+slurring over and minimising of these twin great and solemn truths. I
+would fain bring you back to the Master's words, as declaring the
+deepest truths in relation to the connection between the believing soul
+and the Christ in whom it believes:&mdash;'Abide in Me, and I in you.' I wish
+you would go home and take this Epistle to the Ephesians and read it
+over, putting a pencil mark below each place in which occurs the words
+'in Christ Jesus.' I think you would learn something if you would do it.</p>
+
+<p>But all that I have to say at present is that, if we would keep
+ourselves, by faith, by love, by meditation, by aspiration, by the
+submission of the will, and by practical obedience, in Jesus Christ,
+enclosed in Him as it were&mdash;then, and then only, should we learn His
+lesson, and then, and then only, should we hear Him speak. Why! if you
+never think about Him, how can you learn Him? If you seldom, or
+sleepily, take up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_231" id="Page_1_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> your Bibles and read the Gospels, of what good is His
+example to you? If you wander away into all manner of regions of thought
+and enjoyment instead of keeping near to Him, how can you expect that He
+will communicate Himself to you? If we keep ourselves in touch with that
+Lord, if we bring all our actions to Him, and measure our conduct by His
+pattern, then we shall learn His lesson. What does a student in a school
+of design do? He puts his feeble copy of some great picture beside the
+original, and compares it touch for touch, line for line, shade for
+shade, and so corrects its errors. Take your lives to the Exemplar in
+that fashion, and go over them bit by bit. Is <i>this</i> like Jesus Christ;
+is <i>that</i> what He would have done? Then '<i>in</i> Him,' thus in contact with
+Him, thus correcting our daubs by the perfect picture, we shall learn
+our lesson and listen to our Teacher.</p>
+
+<p>Still your passions, muzzle your inclinations, clap a bridle on your
+will, and, as some tumultuous crowd would be hushed into silence that
+they might listen to the king speaking to them, make a great silence in
+your hearts, and you will 'hear Him' and be taught 'in Him'.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, the test and result of having learned the Lesson and
+listened to the Teacher is unlikeness to surrounding corruption.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye have <i>not so</i> learned Christ.' Of course the hideous immoralities of
+Ephesus are largely, but by no means altogether, gone from Manchester.
+Of course, nineteen centuries of Christianity have to a very large
+extent changed the tone of society and influenced the moral judgments
+and practices even of persons who are not Christians. But there still
+remains a <i>world</i>, and there still remains unfilled up the gulf between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_232" id="Page_1_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+the worldly and the godly life. And I believe it is just as needful as
+ever it was, though in different ways, for Christians to exhibit
+unlikeness to the world. 'Not so,' must be our motto; or, as the Jewish
+patriot said, 'So did not I, because of the fear of the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>I do not wish you to make yourselves singular; I do not wish you to wear
+conventional badges of unlikeness to certain selected evil habits. A
+Christian man's unlikeness to the world consists a great deal more in
+doing or being what it does not do and is not than in not doing or being
+what it does and is. It is easy to abstain from conventional things; it
+is a great deal harder to put in practice the unworldly virtues of the
+Christian character.</p>
+
+<p>There are wide regions of life in which all men must act alike, be they
+saints or sinners, be they believers, Agnostics, Mohammedans, Turks,
+Jews, or anything else. There are two ways of doing the same thing. If
+two women were sitting at a grindstone, one of them a Christian and the
+other not, the one that pushed her handle half round the circle for
+Christ's sake would do it in a different fashion from the other one who
+took it from her hand and brought it round to the other side of the
+stone, and did it without reference to God.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, be sure of this, that if you and I do not find in ourselves
+the impulse to abstain from coarse enjoyments, to put our feet upon
+passions and desires, appetites and aims, which godless men recognise
+and obey without qualm or restraint, we need to ask ourselves: 'In what
+sense am I a Christian, or in what sense have I heard Christ?' It is a
+poor affair to fling away our faithful protest against the world's evils
+for the sake of receiving the world's smile. Modern Chris<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_233" id="Page_1_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>tianity is
+often not vital enough to be hated by a godless world; and it is not
+hated because it only deserves to be scorned. Keep near Jesus Christ,
+live in the light of His face, drink in the inspiration and instruction
+of His example, and the unlikeness will come, and no mistake. Dwell near
+Him, keep in Him, and the likeness will come, as it always comes to
+lovers, who grow to resemble that or those whom they love. 'It is enough
+for the disciple to be as his Teacher, and for the slave to be like his
+Lord.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_DARK_PICTURE_AND_A_BRIGHT_HOPE" id="A_DARK_PICTURE_AND_A_BRIGHT_HOPE"></a>A DARK PICTURE AND A BRIGHT HOPE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That ye put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man,
+which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 22.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>If a doctor knows that he can cure a disease he can afford to give full
+weight to its gravest symptoms. If he knows he cannot he is sorely
+tempted to say it is of slight importance, and, though it cannot be
+cured, can be endured without much discomfort.</p>
+
+<p>And so the Scripture teachings about man's real moral condition are
+characterised by two peculiarities which, at first sight, seem somewhat
+opposed, but are really harmonious and closely connected. There is no
+book and no system in the whole world that takes such a dark view of
+what you and I are; there is none animated with so bright and confident
+a hope of what you and I may become. And, on the other hand, the common
+run of thought amongst men minimises the fact of sin, but when you say,
+'Well, be it big or little, can I get rid of it anyhow?' there is no
+answer to give that is worth listening to. Christ alone can venture to
+tell men what they are, because Christ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_234" id="Page_1_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> alone can radically change their
+whole nature and being. There are certain diseases of which a constant
+symptom is unconsciousness that there is anything the matter. A
+deep-seated wound does not hurt much. The question is not whether
+Christian thoughts about a man's condition are gloomy or not, but
+whether they are true. As to their being gloomy, it seems to me that the
+people who complain of our doctrine of human nature, as giving a
+melancholy view of men, do really take a far more melancholy one. We
+believe in a fall, and we believe in a possible and actual restoration.
+The man to whom evil is not an intrusive usurper can have no confidence
+that it will ever be expelled. Which is the gloomy system&mdash;that which
+paints in undisguised blackness the facts of life, and over against
+their blackest darkness, the radiant light of a great hope shining
+bright and glorious, or one that paints humanity in a uniform monotone
+of indistinguishable grey involving the past, the present, and the
+future&mdash;which, believing in no disease, hopes for no cure? My text,
+taken in conjunction with the grand words which follow, about 'The new
+man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness,'
+brings before us some very solemn views (which the men that want them
+most realise the least) with regard to what we are, what we ought to be
+and cannot be, and what, by God's help, we may become. The old man is
+'corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,' says Paul. <i>There</i> are a set
+of characteristics, then, of the universal sinful human self. Then there
+comes a hopeless commandment&mdash;a mockery&mdash;if we are to stop with it, 'put
+it off.' And then there dawns on us the blessed hope and possibility of
+the fulfilment of the injunction, when we learn that 'the truth in
+Jesus' is, that we put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_235" id="Page_1_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> off the old man with his deeds. Such is a
+general outline of the few thoughts I have to suggest to you.</p>
+
+<p>I. I wish to fix, first of all, upon the very significant, though brief,
+outline sketch of the facts of universal sinful human nature which the
+Apostle gives here.</p>
+
+<p>These are three, upon which I dilate for a moment or two. 'The old man'
+is a Pauline expression, about which I need only say here that we may
+take it as meaning that form of character and life which is common to us
+all, apart from the great change operated through faith in Jesus Christ.
+It is universal, it is sinful. There is a very remarkable contrast,
+which you will notice, between the verse upon which I am now commenting
+and the following one. The old man is set over against the new. One is
+created, the other is corrupted, as the word might be properly rendered.
+The one is created after God, the other is rotting to pieces under the
+influence of its lusts. The one consists of righteousness and holiness,
+which have their root in truth; the other is under the dominion of
+passions and desires, which, in themselves evil, are the instruments of
+and are characterised by deceit.</p>
+
+<p>The first of the characteristics, then, of this sinful self, to which I
+wish to point for a moment is, that every Christless life, whatsoever
+the superficial differences in it, is really a life shaped according to
+and under the influence of <i>passionate desires</i>. You see I venture to
+alter one word of my text, and that for this simple reason; the word
+'lusts' has, in modern English, assumed a very much narrower
+signification than either that of the original has, or than itself had
+in English when this translation was made. It is a very remarkable
+testimony, by the by, to the weak point in the bulk of men&mdash;to the side
+of their nature which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_236" id="Page_1_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> most exposed to assaults&mdash;that this word,
+which originally meant strong desire of any kind, should, by the
+observation of the desires that are strongest in the mass of people,
+have come to be restricted and confined to the one specific meaning of
+strong animal, fleshly, sensuous desires. It may point a lesson to some
+of my congregation, and especially to the younger portion of the men in
+it. Remember, my brother, that the part of your nature which is closest
+to the material is likewise closest to the animal, and is least under
+dominion (without a strong and constant effort) of the power which will
+save the flesh from corruption, and make the material the vehicle of the
+spiritual and divine. Many a young man comes into Manchester with the
+atmosphere of a mother's prayers and a father's teaching round about
+him; with holy thoughts and good resolutions beginning to sway his heart
+and spirit; and flaunting profligacy and seducing tongues beside him in
+the counting-house, in the warehouse, and at the shop counter, lead him
+away into excesses that banish all these, and, after a year or two of
+riot and sowing to the flesh, he 'of the flesh reaps corruption,' and
+that very literally&mdash;in sunken eye, and trembling hand, and hacking
+cough, and a grave opened for him before his time. Ah, my dear young
+friends! 'they promise them liberty.' It is a fine thing to get out of
+your father's house, and away from the restrictions of the society where
+you are known, and loving eyes&mdash;or unloving ones&mdash;are watching you. It
+is a fine thing to get into the freedom and irresponsibility of a big
+city! 'They promise them liberty,' and 'they themselves become the bond
+slaves of corruption.'</p>
+
+<p>But, then, that is only the grossest and the lowest form of the truth
+that is here. Paul's indictment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_237" id="Page_1_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> against us is not anything so
+exaggerated and extreme as that the animal nature predominates in all
+who are not Christ's. That is not true, and is not what my text says.
+But what it says is just this: that, given the immense varieties of
+tastes and likings and desires which men have, the point and
+characteristic feature of every godless life is that, be these what they
+may, they become the dominant power in that life. Paul does not, of
+course, deny that the sway and tyranny of such lusts and desires are
+sometimes broken by remonstrances of conscience; sometimes suppressed by
+considerations of prudence; sometimes by habit, by business, by
+circumstances that force people into channels into which they would not
+naturally let their lives run. He does not deny that often and often in
+such a life there will be a dim desire for something better&mdash;that high
+above the black and tumbling ocean of that life of corruption and
+disorder, there lies a calm heaven with great stars of duty shining in
+it. He does not deny that men are a law to themselves, as well as a
+bundle of desires which they obey; but what he charges upon us, and what
+I venture to bring as an indictment against you, and myself too, is
+this: that apart from Christ it is not conscience that rules our lives;
+that apart from Christ it is not sense of duty that is strongest; that
+apart from Christ the real directing impulse to which the inward
+proclivities, if not the outward activities, do yield in the main and on
+the whole, is, as this text says, the things that we like, the
+passionate desires of nature, the sensuous and godless heart.</p>
+
+<p>And you say, 'Well, if it is so, what harm is it? Did not God make me
+with these desires, and am not I meant to gratify them?' Yes, certainly.
+The harm of it is, first of all, this, that it is an inversion of the
+true<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_238" id="Page_1_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> order. The passionate desires about which I am speaking, be they
+for money, be they for fame, or be they for any other of the gilded
+baits of worldly joys&mdash;these passionate dislikes and likings, as well as
+the purely animal ones&mdash;the longing for food, for drink, for any other
+physical gratification&mdash;these were never meant to be men's guides. They
+are meant to be impulses. They have motive power, but no directing
+power. Do you start engines out of a railway station without drivers or
+rails to run upon? It would be as reasonable as that course of life
+which men pursue who say, 'Thus I wish; thus I command; let my desire
+stand in the place of other argumentation and reason.' They take that
+part of their nature that is meant to be under the guidance of reason
+and conscience looking up to God, and put it in the supreme place, and
+so, setting a beggar on horseback, ride where we know such equestrians
+are said in the end to go! The desires are meant to be impelling powers.
+It is absurdity and the destruction of true manhood to make them, as we
+so often do, directing powers, and to put the reins into their hand.
+They are the wind, not the helm; the steam, not the driver. Let us keep
+things in their right places. Remember that the constitution of human
+nature, as God has meant it, is this: down there, under hatches, under
+control, the strong impulses; above them, the enlightened understanding;
+above that, the conscience, which has a loftier region than that of
+thought to move in, the moral region; and above that, the God, whose
+face, shining down upon the apex of the nature thus constituted,
+irradiates it with light which filters through all the darkness, down to
+the very base of the being; and sanctifies the animal, and subdues the
+impulses, and enlightens the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_239" id="Page_1_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> understanding, and calms and quickens the
+conscience, and makes ductile and pliable the will, and fills the heart
+with fruition and tranquillity, and orders the life after the image of
+Him that created it.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot dwell any longer on this first point; but I hope that I have
+said enough, not to show that the words are true&mdash;that is a very poor
+thing to do, if that were all that I aimed at&mdash;but to bring them home to
+some of our hearts and consciences. I pray God to impress the conviction
+that, although there be in us all the voice of conscience, which all of
+us more or less have tried at intervals to follow; yet in the main it
+abides for ever true&mdash;and it is true, my dear brethren, about you&mdash;a
+Christless life is a life under the dominion of tyrannous desires. Ask
+yourself what I cannot ask for you, Is it I? My hand fumbles about the
+hinges and handle of the door of the heart. You yourself must open it
+and let conviction come in!</p>
+
+<p>Still further, the words before us add another touch to this picture.
+They not only represent the various passionate desires as being the real
+guides of 'the old man' but they give this other characteristic&mdash;that
+these desires are in their very nature the instruments of deceit and
+lies.</p>
+
+<p>The words of my text are, perhaps, rather enfeebled by the form of
+rendering which our translators have here, as in many cases, thought
+proper to adopt. If, instead of reading 'corrupt according to the
+deceitful lusts,' we read 'corrupt according to the desires of deceit,'
+we should have got not only the contrast between the old man and the new
+man, 'created in righteousness and holiness of truth'&mdash;but we should
+have had, perhaps, a clearer notion of the characteristic of these
+lusts, which the Apostle meant to bring into promi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_240" id="Page_1_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>nence. These desires
+are, as it were, the tools and instruments by which deceit betrays and
+mocks men; the weapons used by illusions and lies to corrupt and mar the
+soul. They are strong, and their nature is to pursue after their objects
+without regard to any consequences beyond their own gratification; but,
+strong as they are, they are like the blinded Samson, and will pull the
+house down on themselves if they be not watched. Their strength is
+excited on false pretences. They are stirred to grasp what is after all
+a lie. They are 'desires of deceit.'</p>
+
+<p>That just points to the truth of all such life being hollow and
+profitless. If regard be had to the whole scope of our nature and
+necessities, and to the true aim of life as deduced therefrom, nothing
+is more certain than that no man will get the satisfaction that his
+ruling passions promise him, by indulging them. It is very sure that the
+way never to get what you need and desire is always to do what you like.</p>
+
+<p>And that for very plain reasons. Because, for one thing, the object only
+satisfies for a time. Yesterday's food appeased our hunger for the day,
+but we wake hungry again. And the desires which are not so purely animal
+have the same characteristic of being stilled for the moment, and of
+waking more ravenous than ever. 'He that drinketh of this water shall
+thirst again.' Because, further, the desire grows and the object of it
+does not. The fierce longing increases, and, of course, the power of the
+thing that we pursue to satisfy it decreases in the same proportion. It
+is a fixed quantity; the appetite is indefinitely expansible. And so,
+the longer I go on feeding my desire, the more I long for the food; and
+the more I long for it, the less taste it has when I get it. It must be
+more strongly spiced to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_241" id="Page_1_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> titillate a jaded palate. And there soon comes
+to be an end of the possibilities in that direction. A man scarcely
+tastes his brandy, and has little pleasure in drinking it, but he cannot
+do without it, and so he gulps it down in bigger and bigger draughts
+till delirium tremens comes in to finish all. Because, for another
+thing, after all, these desires are each but a fragment of one's whole
+nature, and when one is satisfied another is baying to be fed. The grim
+brute, like the watchdog of the old mythology, has three heads, and each
+gaping for honey cakes. And if they were all gorged, there are other
+longings in men's nature that will not let them rest, and for which all
+the leeks and onions of Egypt are not food. So long as these are unmet,
+you 'spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for
+that which satisfieth not.'</p>
+
+<p>So we may lay it down as a universal truth, that whoever takes it for
+his law to do as he likes will not for long like what he does; or, as
+George Herbert says,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Shadows well mounted, dreams in a career,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Embroider'd lies, nothing between two dishes&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;These are the pleasures here.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Do any of you remember the mournful words with which one of our greatest
+modern writers of fiction closes his saddest, truest book: 'Ah! <i>vanitas
+vanitatum</i>! Which of us is happy in this world? which of us has his
+desire? or, having it, is satisfied?' No wonder that with such a view of
+human life as that the next and last sentence should be, 'Come,
+children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for the play is played
+out.' Yes! if there be nothing more to follow than the desires which
+deceive, man's life, with all its bustle and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_242" id="Page_1_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> emotion, is a subject for
+cynical and yet sad regard, and all the men and women that toil and fret
+are 'merely players.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, one more point in this portraiture of 'the old man,' is
+that these <i>deceiving desires corrupt</i>. The language of our text conveys
+a delicate shade of meaning which is somewhat blurred in our version.
+Properly, it speaks of 'the old man which is <i>growing</i> corrupt,' rather
+than 'which is corrupt,' and expresses the steady advance of that inward
+process of decay and deterioration which is ever the fate of a life
+subordinated to these desires. And this growing evil, or rather inward
+eating corruption which disintegrates and destroys a soul, is contrasted
+in the subsequent verse with the 'new man which is <i>created</i> in
+righteousness.' There is in the one the working of life, in the other
+the working of death. The one is formed and fashioned by the loving
+hands and quickening breath of God; the other is gradually and surely
+rotting away by the eating leprosy of sin. For the former the end is
+eternal life; for the latter, the second death.</p>
+
+<p>And the truth that underlies that awful representation is the familiar
+one to which I have already referred in another connection, that, by the
+very laws of our nature, by the plain necessities of the case, all our
+moral qualities, be they good or bad, tend to increase by exercise. In
+whatever direction we move, the rate of progress tends to accelerate
+itself. And this is preeminently the case when the motion is downwards.
+Every day that a bad man lives he is a worse man. My friend! you are on
+a sloping descent. Imperceptibly&mdash;because you will not look at the
+landmarks&mdash;but really, and not so very slowly either; convictions are
+dying out, impulses to good are becoming feeble,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_243" id="Page_1_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> habits of neglect of
+conscience are becoming fixed, special forms of sin&mdash;avarice, or pride,
+or lust&mdash;are striking their claws deeper into your soul, and holding
+their bleeding booty firmer. In all regions of life exercise strengthens
+capacity. The wrestler, according to the old Greek parable, who began by
+carrying a calf on his shoulders, got to carry an ox by and by.</p>
+
+<p>It is a solemn thought this of the steady continuous aggravation of sin
+in the individual character. Surely nothing can be small which goes to
+make up that rapidly growing total. Beware of the little beginnings
+which 'eat as doth a canker.' Beware of the slightest deflection from
+the straight line of right. If there be two lines, one straight and the
+other going off at the sharpest angle, you have only to produce both far
+enough, and there will be room between them for all the space that
+separates hell from heaven! Beware of lading your souls with the weight
+of small single sins. We heap upon ourselves, by slow, steady accretion
+through a lifetime, the weight that, though it is gathered by grains,
+crushes the soul. There is nothing heavier than sand. You may lift it by
+particles. It drifts in atoms, but heaped upon a man it will break his
+bones, and blown over the land it buries pyramid and sphynx, the temples
+of gods and the homes of men beneath its barren solid waves. The leprosy
+gnaws the flesh off a man's bones, and joints and limbs drop off&mdash;he is
+a living death. So with every soul that is under the dominion of these
+lying desires&mdash;it is slowly rotting away piecemeal, 'waxing corrupt
+according to the lusts of deceit.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Note how, this being so, we have here the hopeless command to put
+off the old man.</p>
+
+<p>That command 'put it off' is the plain dictate of con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_244" id="Page_1_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>science and of
+common sense. But it seems as hopeless as it is imperative. I suppose
+everybody feels sometimes, more or less distinctly, that they ought to
+make an effort and get rid of these beggarly usurpers that tyrannise
+over will, and conscience, and life. Attempts enough are made to shake
+off the yoke. We have all tried some time or other. Our days are full of
+foiled resolutions, attempts that have broken down, unsuccessful
+rebellions, ending like the struggles of some snared wild creature, in
+wrapping the meshes tighter round us. How many times, since you were a
+boy or a girl, have you said&mdash;'Now I am <i>determined</i> that I will never
+do that again. I have flung away opportunities. I have played the fool
+and erred exceedingly&mdash;but I now turn over a new leaf!' Yes, and you
+have turned it&mdash;and, if I might go on with the metaphor, the first gust
+of passion or temptation has blown the leaf back again, and the old page
+has been spread before you once more just as it used to be. The history
+of individual souls and the tragedy of the world's history recurring in
+every age, in which the noblest beginnings lead to disastrous ends, and
+each new star of promise that rises on the horizon leads men into
+quagmires and sets in blood, sufficiently show how futile the attempt in
+our own strength to overcome and expel the evils that are rooted in our
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>Moralists may preach, 'Unless above himself he can erect himself, how
+mean a thing is man'; but all the preaching in the world is of no avail.
+The task is an impossibility. The stream cannot rise above its source,
+nor be purified in its flow if bitter waters come from the fountain.
+'Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?' There is no power in
+human nature to cast off this clinging self. As in the awful vision of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_245" id="Page_1_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> poet, the serpent is grown into the man. The will is feeble for
+good, the conscience sits like a discrowned king issuing empty mandates,
+while all his realm is up in rebellion and treats his proclamations as
+so much waste paper. How can a man re-make himself? how cast off his own
+nature? The means at his disposal themselves need to be cleansed, for
+themselves are tainted. It is the old story&mdash;who will keep the
+keepers?&mdash;who will heal the sick physicians? You will sometimes see a
+wounded animal licking its wounds with its own tongue. How much more
+hopeless still is our effort by our own power to stanch and heal the
+gashes which sin has made! 'Put off the old man'&mdash;yes&mdash;and if it but
+clung to the limbs like the hero's poisoned vest, it might be possible.
+But it is not a case of throwing aside clothing, it is stripping oneself
+of the very skin and flesh&mdash;and if there is nothing more to be said than
+such vain commonplaces of impossible duty, then we must needs abandon
+hope, and wear the rotting evil till we die.</p>
+
+<p>But that is not all. 'What the law could not do, in that it was weak
+through the flesh,' God sending His own Son did&mdash;He condemned sin in the
+flesh. So we come to</p>
+
+<p>III. The possibility of fulfilling the command.</p>
+
+<p>The context tells us how this is possible. The law, the pattern, and the
+power for complete victory over the old sinful self, are to be found,
+'as the truth is&mdash;in Jesus.' Union with Christ gives us a real
+possession of a new principle of life, derived from Him, and like His
+own. That real, perfect, immortal life, which hath no kindred with evil,
+and flings off pollution and decay from its pure surface, will wrestle
+with and finally overcome the living death of obedience to the
+deceitful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_246" id="Page_1_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> lusts. Our weakness will be made rigorous by His inbreathed
+power. Our gravitation to earth and sin will be overcome by the yearning
+of that life to its source. An all-constraining motive will be found in
+love to Him who has given Himself for us. A new hope will spring as to
+what may be possible for us, when we see Jesus, and in Him recognise the
+true Man, whose image we may bear. We shall die with Him to sin, when,
+resting by faith on Him who has died for sin, we are made conformable to
+His death, that we may walk in newness of life. Faith in Jesus gives us
+a share in the working of that mighty power by which He makes all things
+new. The renovation blots out the past, and changes the direction of the
+future. The fountain in our hearts sends forth bitter waters that cannot
+be healed. 'And the Lord showed him a tree,' even that Cross whereon
+Christ was crucified for us, 'which, when he had cast into the waters,
+the waters were made sweet.'</p>
+
+<p>I remember a rough parable of Luther's, grafted on an older legend, on
+this matter, which runs somewhat in this fashion: A man's heart is like
+a foul stable. Wheelbarrows and shovels are of little use, except to
+remove some of the surface filth, and to litter all the passages in the
+process. What is to be done with it? 'Turn the Elbe into it,' says he.
+The flood will sweep away all the pollution. Not my own efforts, but the
+influx of that pardoning, cleansing grace which is in Christ will wash
+away the accumulations of years, and the ingrained evil which has
+stained every part of my being. We cannot cleanse ourselves, we cannot
+'put off' this old nature which has struck its roots so deep into our
+being; but if we turn to Him with faith and say&mdash;Forgive me, and
+cleanse, and strip from me the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_247" id="Page_1_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> foul and ragged robe fit only for the
+swine-troughs in the far-off land of disobedience, He will receive us
+and answer all our desires, and cast around us the pure garment of His
+own righteousness. 'The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus shall
+make us free from the law of sin and death.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_NEW_MAN" id="THE_NEW_MAN"></a>THE NEW MAN</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in
+righteousness and true holiness.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 24.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We had occasion to remark in a former sermon that Paul regards this and
+the preceding clauses as the summing up of 'the truth in Jesus'; or, in
+other words, he considers the radical transformation and renovation of
+the whole moral nature as being the purpose of the revelation of God in
+Christ. To this end they have 'heard Him.' To this end they have
+'learned Him.' To this end they have been 'taught in Him,' receiving, by
+union with Him, all the various processes of His patient discipline.
+This is the inmost meaning of all the lessons in that great school in
+which all Christians are scholars, and Christ is the teacher and the
+theme, and union to Him the condition of entrance, and the manifold
+workings of His providence and His grace the instruments of training,
+and heaven the home when school time is over&mdash;that we should become new
+men in Christ Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>This great practical issue is set forth here under three aspects&mdash;one
+negative, two positive. The negative process is single and simple&mdash;'put
+off the old man.' The positive is double&mdash;a spiritual 'renewal' effected
+in our spirits, in the deep centre of our personal being,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_248" id="Page_1_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> by that
+Divine Spirit who, dwelling in us, is 'the spirit of our minds'; and
+then, consequent upon that inward renewal, a renovation of life and
+character, which is described as being the 'putting on,' as if it were a
+garment, of 'the new man,' created by a divine act, and consisting in
+moral and spiritual likeness to God. It is not necessary to deal, except
+incidentally, with the two former, but I desire to consider the last of
+these&mdash;the putting on of the new man&mdash;a little more closely, and to try
+to bring out the wealth and depth of the Apostle's words in this
+wonderful text.</p>
+
+<p>The ideas contained seem to me in brief to be these&mdash;the great purpose
+of the Gospel is our moral renewal; that moral renewal is a creation
+after God's image; that new creation has to be put on or appropriated by
+us; the great means of appropriating it is contact with God's truth. Let
+us consider these points in order.</p>
+
+<p>I. The great purpose of the Gospel is our moral renewal; 'the new man
+... created in righteousness and ... holiness.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, of course, there are other ways of stating the end of the Gospel.
+This is by no means an exhaustive setting forth of its purpose. We may
+say that Christ has come in order that men may know God. We may say that
+He comes in order that the Divine Love, which ever delights to
+communicate, may bestow itself, and may conceive of the whole majestic
+series of acts of self-revelation from the beginning as being&mdash;if I may
+so say&mdash;for the gratification of that impulse to impart itself, which is
+the characteristic of love in God and man. We may say that the purpose
+of the whole is the deliverance of men from the burden and guilt of sin.
+But whether we speak of the end of the Gospel as the glory of God, or
+the blessedness of man, or as here,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_249" id="Page_1_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> as being the moral perfection of
+the individual or of the race, they are all but various phrases of the
+one complete truth. The Gospel is the consequence and the manifestation
+of the love of God, which delights to be known and possessed by loving
+souls, and being known, changes them into its own likeness, which to
+know is to be happy, which to resemble is to be pure.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing that strikes me about this representation of our text is
+the profound sense of human sinfulness which underlies it.</p>
+
+<p>The language is utterly unmeaning&mdash;or at all events grossly
+exaggerated&mdash;unless all have sinned, and the nature which belongs to men
+universally, apart from the transforming power of Christ's Spirit, be
+corrupt and evil. And that it is so is the constant view of Scripture.
+The Bible notion of what men need in order to be pure and good is very
+different from the superficial notions of worldly moralists and
+philanthropists. We hear a great deal about 'culture,' as if all that
+were needed were the training and strengthening of the nature, as if
+what was mainly needed was the development of the understanding. We hear
+about 'reformation' from some who look rather deeper than the
+superficial apostles of culture. And how singularly the very word
+proclaims the insufficiency of the remedy which it suggests!
+'Re-formation' affects form and not substance. It puts the old materials
+into a new shape. Exactly so&mdash;and much good may be expected from that!
+They are the old materials still, and it matters comparatively little
+how they are arranged. It is not re-formation, but re-novation, or, to
+go deeper still, re-generation, that the world needs; not new forms, but
+a new life; not the culture and development<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_250" id="Page_1_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> of what it has in itself,
+but extirpation of the old by the infusion of something now and pure
+that has no taint of corruption, nor any contact with evil. 'Verily, I
+say unto you, ye must be born again.'</p>
+
+<p>All slighter notions of the need and more superficial diagnoses of the
+disease lead to a treatment with palliatives which never touch the true
+seat of the mischief, The poison flowers may be plucked, but the roots
+live on. It is useless to build dykes to keep out the wild waters.
+Somewhere or other they will find a way through. The only real cure is
+that which only the Creating hand can effect, who, by slow operation of
+some inward agency, can raise the level of the low lands, and lift them
+above the threatening waves. What is needed is a radical transformation,
+going down to the very roots of the being; and that necessity is clearly
+implied in the language of this text, which declares that a nature
+possessing righteousness and holiness is 'a new man' to be 'put on' as
+from without, not to be evolved as from within.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be further noticed what the Apostle specifies as the elements,
+or characteristics of this new nature&mdash;righteousness and holiness.</p>
+
+<p>The proclamation of a new nature in Christ Jesus, great and precious
+truth as it is, has often been connected with teaching which has been
+mystical in the bad sense of that word, and has been made the stalking
+horse of practical immorality. But here we have it distinctly defined in
+what that new nature consists. There is no vague mystery about it, no
+tampering with the idea of personality. The people who put on the new
+man are the same people after as before. The newness consists in moral
+and spiritual characteristics. And these are all summed up in the
+two&mdash;righteousness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_251" id="Page_1_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> and holiness. To which is added in the substantially
+parallel passage in Colossians, 'Renewed in knowledge after the image of
+Him that created Him,' where, I suppose, we must regard the 'knowledge'
+as meaning that personal knowledge and acquaintance which has its
+condition in love, and is the foundation of the more purely moral
+qualities of which our text speaks.</p>
+
+<p>Is there, then, any distinction between these two? I think there is very
+obviously so. 'Righteousness' is, I suppose, to be understood here in
+its narrower meaning of observance of what is right, the squaring of
+conduct according to a solemn sovereign law of duty. Substantially it is
+equivalent to the somewhat heathenish word 'morality,' and refers human
+conduct and character to a law or standard. What, then, is 'holiness'?
+It is the same general conduct and character, considered, however, under
+another aspect, and in another relation. It involves the reference of
+life and self to God, consecration to, and service of Him. It is not a
+mere equivalent of purity, but distinctly carries the higher reference.
+The obedience now is not to a law but to a Lord. The perfection now does
+not consist in conformity to an ideal standard, but in likeness and
+devotion to God. That which I ought to do is that which my Father in
+heaven wills. Or, if the one word may roughly represent the more secular
+word 'morality,' the other may roughly represent the less devout phrase,
+'practical religion.'</p>
+
+<p>These are 'new,' as actually realised in human nature. Paul thinks that
+we shall not possess them except as a consequence of renovation. But
+they are not 'new' in the sense that the contents of Christian morality
+are different from the contents of the law written on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_252" id="Page_1_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> men's hearts. The
+Gospel proclaims and produces no fantastic ethics of its own. The
+actions which it stamps in its mint are those which pass current in all
+lands&mdash;not a provincial coinage, but recognised as true in ring, and of
+full weight everywhere. Do not fancy that Christian righteousness is
+different from ordinary 'goodness,' except as being broader and deeper,
+more thorough-going, more imperative. Divergences there are, for our law
+is more than a republication of the law written on men's hearts. Though
+the one agrees with the other, yet the area which they cover is not the
+same. The precepts of the one, like some rock-hewn inscriptions by
+forgotten kings, are weathered and indistinct, often illegible, often
+misread, often neglected. The other is written in living characters in a
+perfect life. It includes all that the former attempts to enjoin, and
+much more besides. It alters the perspective, so to speak, of heathen
+morals, and brings into prominence graces overlooked or despised by
+them. It breathes a deeper meaning and a tenderer beauty into the words
+which express human conceptions of virtue, but it does take up these
+into itself. And instead of setting up a 'righteousness' which is
+peculiar to itself, and has nothing to do with the world's morality,
+Christianity says, as Christ has taught us, 'Except your righteousness
+<i>exceed</i> the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not
+enter into the kingdom of God.' The same apostle who here declares that
+actual righteousness and holiness are new things on the earth, allows
+full force to whatsoever weight may be in the heathen notion of
+'virtue,' and adopts the words and ideas which he found ready made to
+his hands, in that notion&mdash;as fitly describing the Christian graces
+which he enjoined. Grecian moralists supplied him with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_253" id="Page_1_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> names true,
+honest, just, and pure. His 'righteousness' accepted these as included
+within its scope. And we have to remember that we are not invested with
+that new nature, unless we are living in the exercise of these common
+and familiar graces which the consciences and hearts of all the world
+recognise for 'lovely' and 'of good report,' hail as 'virtue,' and crown
+with 'praise.'</p>
+
+<p>So, then, let me pause here for a moment to urge you to take these
+thoughts as a very sharp and salutary test. You call yourselves
+Christian people. The purpose of your Christianity is your growth and
+perfecting in simple purity, and devotion to, and dependence on, our
+loving Father. Our religion is nothing unless it leads to these.
+Otherwise it is like a plant that never seeds, but may bear some feeble
+blossoms that drop shrunken to the ground before they mature. To very
+many of us the old solemn remonstrance should come with awakening
+force&mdash;'Ye did run well, what did hinder you?' You have apprehended
+Christ as the revealer and bringer of the great mercy of God, and have
+so been led in some measure to put your confidence in Him for your
+salvation and deliverance. But have you apprehended Him as the mould
+into which your life is to be poured, that life having been made fluent
+and plastic by the warmth of His love? You have apprehended Him as your
+refuge; have you apprehended Him as your inward sanctity? You have gone
+to Him as the source of salvation from the guilt and penalties of sin;
+have you gone to Him, and are you daily growing in the conscious
+possession of Him, as the means of salvation from the corruption and
+evil of sin? He comes to make us good. What has He made you? Anything
+different from what you were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_254" id="Page_1_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> twenty years ago? Then, if not, and in so
+far as you are unchanged and unbettered, the Gospel is a failure for
+you, and you are untrue to it. The great purpose of all the work of
+Christ&mdash;His life, His sorrows, His passion, His resurrection, His glory,
+His continuous operation by the Spirit and the word is to make new men
+who shall be just and devout, righteous and holy.</p>
+
+<p>II. A second principle contained in these words, is that this moral
+Renewal is a Creation in the image of God.</p>
+
+<p>The new man is 'created after the image of God'&mdash;that is, of course,
+according to or in the likeness of God. There is evident reference here
+to the account of man's creation in Genesis, and the idea is involved
+that this new man is the restoration and completion of that earlier
+likeness, which, in some sense, has faded out of the features and form
+of our sinful souls. It is to be remembered, however, that there is an
+image of God inseparable from human nature, and not effaceable by any
+obscuring or disturbance caused by sin. Man's likeness to God consists
+in his being a person, possessed of a will and self-consciousness, and
+that mysterious gift of personality abides whatever perishes. But beyond
+that natural image of God, as we may call it, there is something else
+which fades wholly with the first breath of evil, like the reflexion of
+the sky on some windless sea. The natural likeness remains, and without
+it no comparison would be possible. We should not think of saying that a
+stone or an eagle were unlike God. But while the personal being makes
+comparison fitting, what makes the true contrast? In what respect is man
+unlike God? In moral antagonism. What is the true likeness? Moral
+harmony. What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_255" id="Page_1_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> separates men from their Father in heaven? Is it that His
+'years are throughout all generations,' and 'my days are as an
+handbreadth'? Is it that His power is infinite, and mine all thwarted by
+other might and over tending to weakness and extinction? Is it that His
+wisdom, sunlike, waxes not nor wanes, and there is nothing hid from its
+beams, while my knowledge, like the lesser light, shines by reflected
+radiance, serves but to make the night visible, and is crescent and
+decaying, changeful and wandering? No. All such distinctions based upon
+what people call the sovereign attributes of God&mdash;the distinctions of
+creator and created, infinite and finite, omnipotent and weak, eternal
+and transient&mdash;make no real gulf between God and man. If we have only to
+say, 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are' His 'ways higher
+than' our 'ways,' that difference is not unlikeness, and establishes no
+separation; for low and flat though the dull earth be, does not heaven
+bend down round it, and send rain and sun, dew and blessing? But it is
+because 'your ways are not <i>as</i> my ways'&mdash;because there is actual
+opposition, because the <i>directions</i> are different&mdash;that there is
+unlikeness. The image of God lies not only in that personality which the
+'Father of Lies' too possesses, but in 'righteousness and holiness.'</p>
+
+<p>But besides this reference to the original creation of man, there is
+another reason for the representation of the new nature as being a work
+of divine creative power. It is in order to give the most emphatic
+expression possible to the truth that we do not make our righteousness
+for ourselves, but receive it as from Him. The new man is not our work,
+it is God's creation. As at the beginning, the first human life is
+represented as not originated in the line of natural cause and effect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_256" id="Page_1_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>,
+but as a new and supernatural commencement, so in every Christian soul
+the life which is derived from God, and will unfold itself in His
+likeness, comes from His own breath inbreathed into the nostrils. It too
+is out of the line of natural causes. It too is a direct gift from God.
+It too is a true supernatural being&mdash;a real and new creation.</p>
+
+<p>May I venture a step further? 'The new man' is spoken of here as if it
+had existence ere we 'put it on.' I do not press that, as if it
+necessarily involved the idea which I am going to suggest, for the
+peculiar form of expression is probably only due to the exigencies of
+the metaphor. Still it may not be altogether foreign to the whole scope
+of the passage, if I remind you that the new man, the true likeness of
+God, has, indeed, a real existence apart from our assumption of it. Of
+course, the righteousness and holiness which make that new nature in me
+have no being till they become mine. But we believe that the
+righteousness and holiness which we make ours come from another, who
+bestows them on us. 'The new man' is not a mere ideal, but has a
+historical and a present existence. The ideal has lived and lives, is a
+human person, even Jesus Christ the express image of the Father, who is
+the beginning of the new creation, who of God is made unto us wisdom and
+righteousness. That fair vision of a humanity detached from all
+consequences of sin, renewed in perfect beauty, stainless and Godlike,
+is no unsubstantial dream, but a simple fact. He ever liveth. His word
+to us is, 'I counsel thee to buy of me&mdash;white raiment.' And a full
+parallel to the words of our text, which bid us 'put on the new man,
+created after God in righteousness and holiness,' is found in the other
+words of the same Apostle&mdash;'Let us cast off the works<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_257" id="Page_1_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> of darkness, and
+let us put on the armour of light. Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>In accordance with this&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>III. It is further to be noticed that this new creation has to be put on
+and appropriated by us.</p>
+
+<p>The same idea which, as I have already remarked, is conveyed by the
+image of a new creation, is reiterated in this metaphor of putting on
+the new nature, as if it were a garment. Our task is not to weave it,
+but to wear it. It is made and ready.</p>
+
+<p>And that process of assumption or putting on has two parts. We are
+clothed upon with Christ in a double way, or rather in a double sense.
+We are 'found in Him not having our own righteousness,' but invested
+with His for our pardon and acceptance. We are clothed with His
+righteousness for our purifying and sanctifying.</p>
+
+<p>Both are the conditions of our being like God. Both are the gifts of
+God. The one, however, is an act; the other a process. Both are
+received. The one is received on condition of simple faith; the other is
+received by the medium of faithful effort. Both are included in the wide
+conception of salvation, but the law for the one is 'Not by works of
+righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us'; and the
+law for the other is&mdash;'Work out your own salvation with fear and
+trembling.' Both come from Christ, but for the one we have the
+invitation, 'Buy of Me white raiment that thou mayest be clothed'; and
+for the other we have the command, 'Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
+make not provision for the flesh.' There is the assumption of His
+righteousness which makes a man a Christian, and has for its condition
+simple faith. There is the assumption of His righteousness sanctifying
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_258" id="Page_1_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> transforming us which follows in a Christian course, as its
+indispensable accompaniment and characteristic, and that is realised by
+daily and continuous effort.</p>
+
+<p>And one word about the manner, the effort as set forth here; twofold, as
+I have already pointed out&mdash;a negative and positive. We are not
+concerned here with the relations of these amongst themselves, but I may
+remark that there is no growth in holiness possible without the constant
+accompanying process of excision and crucifixion of the old. If you want
+to grow purer and liker Christ, you must slay yourselves. You cannot
+gird on 'righteousness' above the old self, as some beggar might buckle
+to himself royal velvet with its ermine over his filthy tatters. There
+must be a putting off in order to and accompanying the putting on. Strip
+yourselves of yourselves, and then you 'shall not be found naked,' but
+clothed with the garments of salvation, as the bride with the robe which
+is the token of the bridegroom's love, and the pledge of her espousals
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>And let nobody wonder that the Apostle here commands us, as by our own
+efforts, to put on and make ours what is in many other places of
+Scripture treated as God's gift. These earnest exhortations are
+perfectly consistent with the belief that all comes from God. Our
+faithful adherence to our Lord and Master, our honest efforts in His
+strength to secure more and more of His likeness, determine the extent
+to which we shall possess that likeness. The new nature is God's gift,
+and it is given to us according to His own fulness indeed, but also
+according to the measure of our faith. Blessed be His name! we have
+nothing to do but to accept His gift. The garment with which He clothes
+our nakedness and hides our filth is woven in no earthly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_259" id="Page_1_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> looms. As with
+the first sinful pair, so with all their children since, 'the Lord God
+made them' the covering which they cannot make for themselves. But we
+have to accept it, and we have by daily toil, all our lives long, to
+gather it more and more closely around us, to wrap ourselves more and
+more completely in its ample folds. We have by effort and longing, by
+self-abnegation and aspiration, by prayer and work, by communion and
+service, to increase our possession of that likeness to God which lives
+in Jesus Christ, and from Him is stamped ever more and more deeply on
+the heart. For the strengthening of our confidence and our gratitude, we
+have to remember with lowly trust that it is true of us, 'If any man be
+in Christ he is a new creature.' For the quickening of our energy and
+faithful efforts we have to give heed to the command, and fulfil it in
+ourselves&mdash;'Be ye renewed in the Spirit of your minds, and put on the
+new man.'</p>
+
+<p>IV. And, finally, the text contains the principle that the means of
+appropriating this new nature is contact with the truth.</p>
+
+<p>If you will look at the margins of some Bibles you will see that our
+translators have placed there a rendering, which, as is not unfrequently
+the case, is decidedly better than that adopted by them in the text.
+Instead of 'true holiness,' the literal rendering is 'holiness of
+truth'&mdash;and the Apostle's purpose in the expression is not to
+particularise the quality, but the origin of the 'holiness.' It is 'of
+truth,' that is, produced by the holiness which flows from the truth as
+it is in Jesus, of which he has been speaking a moment before.</p>
+
+<p>And we come, therefore, to this practical conclusion, that whilst the
+agent of renovation is the Divine Spirit, and the condition of
+renovation is our cleaving to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_260" id="Page_1_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> Christ, the medium of renovation and the
+weapon which transforming grace employs is 'the word of the truth of the
+Gospel' whereby we are sanctified. There we get the law, and there we
+get the motive and the impulse. There we get the encouragement and the
+hope. In it, in the grand simple message&mdash;'God was in Christ,
+reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto
+them,' lie the germs of all moral progress. And in proportion as we
+believe that&mdash;not with the cold belief of our understandings, but with
+the loving affiance of our hearts and our whole spiritual being&mdash;in
+proportion as we believe that, in that proportion shall we grow in
+'knowledge,' shall we grow in 'righteousness,' in the 'image of Him that
+created us.' The Gospel is the great means of this change, because it is
+the great means by which He who works the change comes near to our
+understandings and our hearts.</p>
+
+<p>So let us learn how impossible are righteousness and holiness, morality
+and religion in men, unless they flow from this source. It is the truth
+that sanctifies. It is the Spirit who wields that truth who sanctifies.
+It is Christ who sends the Spirit who sanctifies. But, brethren, beyond
+the range of this light is only darkness, and that nature which is not
+cleansed by His priestly hand laid upon it remains leprous, and he who
+is clothed with any other garment than His righteousness will find 'the
+covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.' And let us
+learn, on the other hand, the incompleteness and monstrosity of a
+professed belief in 'the truth' which does not produce this
+righteousness and holiness. It may be real&mdash;God forbid that we should
+step into His place and assume His office of discerning the thoughts of
+the heart, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_261" id="Page_1_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> genuineness of Christian professions! But, at any
+rate, it is no exaggeration nor presumption to say that a professed
+faith which is not making us daily better, gentler, simpler, purer, more
+truthful, more tender, more brave, more self-oblivious, more loving,
+more strong&mdash;more like Christ&mdash;is wofully deficient either in reality or
+in power&mdash;is, if genuine, ready to perish&mdash;if lit at all, smouldering to
+extinction. Christian men and women! is 'the truth' moulding you into
+Christ's likeness? If not, see to it whether it be the truth which you
+are holding, and whether you are holding the truth or have unconsciously
+let it slip from a grasp numbed by the freezing coldness of the world.</p>
+
+<p>And for us all, let us see that we lay to heart the large truths of this
+text, and give them that personal bearing without which they are of no
+avail. <i>I</i> need renovation in my inmost nature. Nothing can renew <i>my</i>
+soul but the power of Christ, who is <i>my</i> life. <i>I</i> am naked and foul.
+Nothing can cleanse and clothe <i>me</i> but He. The blessed truth which
+reveals Him calls for <i>my</i> individual faith. And if <i>I</i> put <i>my</i>
+confidence in that Lord, He will dwell in <i>my</i> inmost spirit, and so
+sway <i>my</i> affections and mould <i>my</i> will that <i>I</i> shall be transformed
+unto His perfect likeness. He begins with each one of us by bringing the
+best robe to cast over the rags of the returning prodigal. He ends not
+with any who trust Him, until they stand amid the hosts of the heavens
+who follow Him, clothed with fine linen clean and white, which is the
+righteousness of His Holy ones.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_262" id="Page_1_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="GRIEVING_THE_SPIRIT" id="GRIEVING_THE_SPIRIT"></a>GRIEVING THE SPIRIT</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the
+day of redemption.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 30.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The miracle of Christianity is the Incarnation. It is not a link in a
+chain, but a new beginning, the entrance into the cosmic order of a
+Divine Power. The sequel of Bethlehem and Calvary and Olivet is the
+upper room and the Pentecost. There is the issue of the whole mission
+and work of Christ&mdash;the planting in the heart of humanity of a new and
+divine life. All Christendom is professing to commemorate that fact
+to-day, [Preached on Whitsunday] but a large portion of us forget that
+it was but a transient sign of a perpetual reality. The rushing mighty
+wind has died down into a calm; the fiery tongues have ceased to flicker
+on the disciples' heads, but the miracle, which is permanent, and is
+being repeated from day to day, in the experience of every believing
+soul, is the inrush of the very breath of God into their lives, and the
+plunging of them into a fiery baptism which melts their coldness and
+refines away their dross. Now, my text brings before us some very
+remarkable thoughts as to the permanent working of the Divine Spirit
+upon Christian souls, and upon this it bases a very tender and
+persuasive exhortation to conduct. And I desire simply to try to bring
+out the fourfold aspect in those words. There is, first, a wondrous
+revelation; second, a plain lesson as to what that Divine Spirit chiefly
+does; third, a solemn warning as to man's power and freedom to thwart
+it; and, lastly, a tender motive for conduct. 'Grieve not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_263" id="Page_1_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> the Holy
+Spirit, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.'</p>
+
+<p>Now let us look briefly at these four thoughts: Here we have&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. A wonderful revelation.</p>
+
+<p>Wonderful to all, startling to some. If you can speak of grief, you must
+be speaking of a person. An influence cannot be sorry, whatever may
+happen to it. And that word of my text is no more violent metaphor or
+exaggeratedly strong way of suggesting a motive, but it keeps rigidly
+within the New Testament limits, in reference to that Divine Spirit,
+when to Him it attributes this personal emotion of sorrow with its
+correlation of possible joy.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I do not need to dwell upon the thought here, but I do desire to
+emphasise it, especially in view of the strangely hazy and defective
+conceptions which so many Christian people have upon this matter. And I
+desire to remind you that the implied assumption of a personal Spirit,
+capable of being 'grieved,' which is in this text, is in accordance with
+all the rest of the New Testament teaching.</p>
+
+<p>What did Jesus Christ mean when He spoke of one who 'will guide you into
+all truth'; of one who 'whatsoever He shall hear, those things shall He
+speak'? What does the book of the Acts mean when it says that the Spirit
+said to the believers in Antioch, 'Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the
+work whereunto I have called them'? What did Paul mean when he said, 'In
+every city the Holy Ghost testifieth that bonds and afflictions await
+me'? What does the minister officiating in baptism mean when he says, 'I
+baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
+Ghost'? That form presents,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_264" id="Page_1_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> according to many interpretations, a Divine
+Person, a Man, and an Influence. Why are these bracketed together? And
+what do we mean when, at the end of every Christian service, we invoke
+'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and
+the fellowship of the Holy Spirit'? A Man, and God, and an Influence&mdash;is
+that the interpretation? You cannot get rid from the New Testament
+teaching, whether you accept it or not&mdash;you cannot eliminate from it
+this, that the divine causality of our salvation is threefold and one,
+the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.</p>
+
+<p>Now, brethren, I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that
+practically the average orthodox believer believes in a duality, and not
+a Trinity, in the divine nature. I do not care about the scholastic
+words, but what I would insist upon is that the course of Christian
+thinking has been roughly this. First of all, in the early Church, the
+question of the Divine nature came into play, mainly in reference to the
+relation of the Eternal Word to the Eternal Father, and of the
+Incarnation to both. And then, when that was roughly settled, there came
+down through many ages, and there still subsists, the endeavour to cast
+into complete and intelligible forms the doctrine, if I must use the
+word, of Christ's nature and work. And now, as I believe, to a very
+large extent, the foremost and best thinking of the Christian Church is
+being occupied with that last problem, the nature and work of that
+Divine Spirit. I believe that we stand on the verge of a far clearer
+perception of, and of a far more fervent and realising faith in, the
+Spirit of God, than ever the Churches have seen before. And I pray you
+to remember that however<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_265" id="Page_1_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> much your Christian thought and Christian
+faith may be centred upon, and may be drawing its nourishment and its
+joy from, the work of Jesus Christ who died on the Cross for our
+salvation, and lives to be our King and Defender, there is a gap&mdash;not
+only in your Christian Creed, but also in your Christian experiences and
+joys and power, unless you have risen to this thought, that the Divine
+Spirit is not only an influence, a wind, a fire, an oil, a dove, a dew,
+but a Divine Person. We have to go back to the old creed&mdash;'I believe in
+God the Father Almighty ... and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord
+... I believe in the Holy Ghost.'</p>
+
+<p>But further, this same revelation carries with it another, and to some
+of us a startling thought. 'Grieve not the Holy Spirit': that Divine
+Person is capable of grief. I do not believe that is rhetorical
+exaggeration. Of course I know that we should think of God as the
+ever-blessed God, but we also in these last days begin to think more
+boldly, and I believe more truly, that if man is in the image of God,
+and there is a divine element in humanity, there must be a human element
+in divinity. And though I know that it is perilous to make affirmations
+about a matter so far beyond our possibility of verification by
+experience, I venture to think that perhaps the doctrine that God is
+lifted up high above all human weaknesses and emotions does not mean
+that there can be no shadow cast on the divine blessedness by the dark
+substance of human sin. I do not venture to assert: I only suggest; and
+this I know, that He who said to us, 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
+Father,' had His eyes filled with tears, even in His hour of triumph, as
+He looked across the valley and saw the city spark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_266" id="Page_1_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>ling in the rays of
+the morning sun. May we venture to see there an unveiling of the divine
+heart? Love has an infinite capacity of sorrow as of joy. But I leave
+these perhaps too presumptuous and lofty thoughts, to turn to the other
+points involved in the words before us.</p>
+
+<p>I said, in the second place, there was&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>II. A plain lesson here, as to the great purpose for which the Divine
+Spirit has been lodged in the heart of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>I find that in the two words of my text, 'the Holy Spirit,' and 'ye were
+thereby sealed unto the day of redemption.' If the central
+characteristic which it imports us to know and to keep in mind is that
+implied by the name, 'the Holy Spirit' then, of course, the great work
+that He has to perform upon earth is to make men like Himself. And that
+is further confirmed by the emblem of the seal which is here; for the
+seal comes in contact with the thing sealed, and leaves the impression
+of its own likeness there. And whatever else&mdash;and there is a great deal
+else that I cannot touch now&mdash;may be included in that great thought of
+the sealing by the Divine Spirit, these things are inseparably connected
+with, and suggested by it, viz. the actual contact of the Spirit of God
+with our spirits, which is expressed, as you may remember, in the other
+metaphors of being baptized in and anointed with, and yet more
+important, the result purposed by that contact being mainly to make us
+holy.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I pray you to think of how different that is from all other notions
+of inspiration that the world has ever known, and how different it is
+from a great many ideas that have had influence within the Christian
+Church. People say there are not any miracles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_267" id="Page_1_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> now, and say we are worse
+off than when there used to be. That Divine Spirit does not come to give
+gifts of healing, interpretations of tongues, and all the other abnormal
+and temporary results which attended the first manifestations. These,
+when they were given, were but means to an end, and the end subsists
+whilst the means are swept away. It is better to be made good than to be
+filled with all manner of miraculous power. 'In this rejoice, not that
+the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names
+are written in heaven.' All the rest is transient. It is gone; let it
+go, we are not a bit the poorer for want of it. This remains&mdash;not
+tongues, nor gifts of healing, nor any other of these miraculous and
+extraordinary and external powers&mdash;but the continual operation of a
+divine influence, moulding men into its own likeness.</p>
+
+<p>Christianity is intensely ethical, and it sets forth, as the ultimate
+result of all its machinery, changing men into the likeness of God.
+Holiness is that for which Christ died, that for which the Divine Spirit
+works. Unless we Christian people recognise the true perspective of the
+Spirit's gifts, and put at the base the extraordinary, and higher than
+these, but still subordinate, the intellectual, and on top of all the
+spiritual and moral, we do not understand the meaning of the central
+gift and possible blessing of Christianity, to make us holy, or, if you
+do not like the theological word, let us put it into still plainer and
+more modern English, to make you and me good men and women, like God.
+That is the mightiest work of that Divine Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>We have here&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>III. A plain warning as to the possibility of thwarting these
+influences.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_268" id="Page_1_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nothing here about irresistible grace; nothing here about a power that
+lays hold upon a man, and makes him good, he lying passive in its hands
+like clay in the hands of the potter! You will not be made holy without
+the Divine Spirit, but you will not be made holy without your working
+along with it. There is a possibility of resisting, and there is a
+possibility of co-operating. Man is left free. God does not lay hold of
+any one by the hair of his head, and drag him into paths of
+righteousness whether he will or no. But whilst there is the necessity
+for co-operation, which involves the possibility of resistance, we must
+also remember that that new life which comes into a man, and moulds his
+will as well as the rest of his nature, is itself the gift of God. We do
+not get into a contradiction when we thus speak, we only touch the edge
+of a great ocean in which our plummets can find no bottom. The same
+unravellable knot as to the co-operation of the divine and the creatural
+is found in the natural world, as in the experiences of the Christian
+soul. You have to work, and your work largely consists in yielding
+yourselves to the work of God upon you. 'Work out your own salvation
+with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you.' Brethren!
+If you and I are Christian people, we have put into our hearts and
+spirits the talent. It depends on us whether we wrap it in a napkin, and
+stow it away underground somewhere, or whether we use it, and fructify
+and increase it. If you wrap it in a napkin and put it away underground,
+when you come to take it out, and want to say, 'Lo! there Thou hast that
+is Thine,' you will find that it was not solid gold, which could not
+rust or diminish, but that it has been like some volatile essence, put
+away in an unventilated place, and im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_269" id="Page_1_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>perfectly secured: the napkin is
+there, but the talent has vanished. We have to work with God, and we can
+resist. Ay, and there is a deeper and a sadder word than that applied by
+the same Apostle in another letter to the same subject. We can 'quench'
+the light and extinguish the fire.</p>
+
+<p>What extinguishes it? Look at the catalogue of sins that lie side by
+side with this exhortation of my text! They are all small
+matters&mdash;bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil-speaking, malice,
+stealing, lying, and the like; very 'homely' transgressions, if I may so
+say. Yes, and if you pile enough of them upon the spark that is in your
+hearts you will smother it out. Sin, the wrenching of myself away from
+the influences, not attending to the whispers and suggestions, being
+blind to the teaching of the Spirit through the Word and through
+Providence: these are the things that 'grieve the Holy Spirit of God.'</p>
+
+<p>And so, lastly, we have here&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>IV. A Tender Motive, a dissuasive from sin, a persuasive to yielding and
+to righteousness.</p>
+
+<p>Many a man has been kept from doing wrong things by thinking of a sad
+pale face sitting at home waiting for him. Many a boy has been kept from
+youthful transgressions which war against his soul here, on the streets
+of Manchester, full as they are of temptations, by thinking that it
+would grieve the poor old mother in her cottage, away down in the
+country somewhere. We can bring that same motive to bear, with
+infinitely increased force, in regard to our conduct as Christian
+people. 'Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.' A father feels a pang if he
+sees that his child makes no account of some precious gift that he has
+bestowed upon him, and leaves it lying about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_270" id="Page_1_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> anywhere. A loving friend,
+standing on the margin of the stream, and calling to his friends in a
+boat when they are drifting to the rapids, turns away sad if they do not
+attend to his voice. That Divine Spirit pleads with us, and proffers its
+gifts to us, and turns away&mdash;I was going to use too strong a word,
+perhaps&mdash;sick at heart, not because of wounded authority, but because of
+wounded love and baffled desire to help, when we, in spite of It, will
+take our own way, neglect the call that warns us of our peril, and leave
+untouched the gifts that would have made us safe.</p>
+
+<p>Dear brethren, surely such a dissuasive from evil, and such a persuasive
+to good, is mightier than all abstractions about duty and conscience and
+right, and the like. 'Do it rightly' says Paul, 'and you will please Him
+that hath called you'; leave the evil thing undone, 'and my heart shall
+be glad, even mine.' You and I can grieve the Christ whose Spirit is
+given to us. You and I can add something to 'the joy of our Lord.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="GODS_IMITATORS" id="GODS_IMITATORS"></a>GOD'S IMITATORS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> v. 1.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Revised Version gives a more literal and more energetic rendering of
+this verse by reading, 'Be ye, therefore, <i>imitators</i> of God, <i>as
+beloved</i> children.' It is the only place in the Bible where that bold
+word 'imitate' is applied to the Christian relation to God. But, though
+the expression is unique, the idea underlies the whole teaching of the
+New Testament on the subject of Christian character and conduct. To be
+like God, and to set ourselves to resemble Him, is the sum of all duty;
+and in the measure in which we approxi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_271" id="Page_1_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>mate thereto, we come to
+perfection. So, then, there are here just two points that I would
+briefly touch upon now&mdash;the one is the sublime precept of the text, and
+the other the all-sufficient motive enforcing it. 'Be ye imitators of
+God as'&mdash;because you are, and know yourselves to be&mdash;'beloved children,'
+and it therefore behoves you to be like your Father.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, this sublime precept.</p>
+
+<p>Now notice that, broad as this precept is, and all-inclusive of every
+kind of excellence and duty as it may be, the Apostle has a very
+definite and specific meaning in it. There is one feature, and only one,
+in which, accurately speaking, a man may be like God. Our limited
+knowledge can never be like the ungrowing perfect wisdom of God. Our
+holiness cannot be like His, for there are many points in our nature and
+character which have no relation or correspondence to anything in the
+divine nature. But what is left? Love is left. Our other graces are not
+like the God to whom they cleave. My faith is not like His faithfulness.
+My obedience is not like His authority. My submission is not like His
+autocratic power. My emptiness is not like His fulness. My aspirations
+are not like His gratifying of them. They correspond to God, but
+correspondence is not similarity; rather it presupposes unlikeness. Just
+as a concavity will fit into a convexity, for the very reason that it is
+concave and not convex, so the human unlikenesses, which are
+correspondent to God, are the characteristics by which it becomes
+possible that we should cleave to Him and inhere in Him. But whilst
+there is much in which He stands alone and incomparable, and whilst we
+have all to say, 'Who is like unto Thee, O Lord?' or what likeness shall
+we compare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_272" id="Page_1_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> unto Him? we yet can obey in reference to one thing,&mdash;and to
+one thing only, as it seems to me&mdash;the commandment of my text, 'Be ye
+imitators of God.' We can be <i>like</i> Him in nothing else, but our love
+not only corresponds to His, but is of the same quality and nature as
+His, howsoever different it may be in sweep and in fervour and in
+degree. The tiniest drop that hangs upon the tip of a thorn will be as
+perfect a sphere as the sun, and it will have its little rainbow on its
+round, with all the prismatic colours, the same in tint and order and
+loveliness, as when the bow spans the heavens. The dew-drop may imitate
+the sun, and we are to be imitators of God; knit to Him by the one thing
+in us which is kindred to Him in the deepest sense&mdash;the love that is the
+life of God and the perfecting of man.</p>
+
+<p>Well, then, notice how the Apostle in the context fastens upon a certain
+characteristic of that divine love which we are to imitate in our lives;
+and thereby makes the precept a very practical and a very difficult one.
+Godlike love will be love that gives as liberally as His does. What is
+the very essence of all love? Longing to be like. And the purest and
+deepest love is love which desires to impart itself, and that is God's
+love. The Bible seems to teach us that in a very mysterious sense, about
+which the less we say the less likely we are to err, there is a quality
+of giving up, as well as of giving, in God's love; for we read of the
+Father that 'spared not His Son,' by which is meant, not that He did not
+shrink from inflicting something upon the Son, but that He did not
+grudgingly keep that Son for Himself. 'He spared not His own Son, but
+delivered Him up to the death for us all.' And if we can say but little
+about that surrender on the part of the infinite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_273" id="Page_1_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> Fountain of all love,
+we can say that Jesus Christ, who is the activity of the Father's love,
+spared not Himself, but, as the context puts it, 'gave Himself <i>up</i> for
+us.'</p>
+
+<p>And that is the pattern for us. That thought is not a subject to be
+decorated with tawdry finery of eloquence, or to be dealt with as if it
+were a sentimental prettiness very fit to be spoken of, but impossible
+to be practised. It is the duty of every Christian man and woman, and
+they have not done their duty unless they have learned that the bond
+which unites them to men is, in its nature, the very same as the bond
+which unites men to God; and that they will not have lived righteously
+unless they learn to be 'imitators of God,' in the surrender of
+themselves for their brother's good.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, friend, that grips us very tight&mdash;and if there were a little more
+reality and prose brought into our sentimental talk about Christian
+love, and that love were more often shown in action, in all the
+self-suppression and taking a lift of a world's burdens, which its great
+Pattern demands, the world would be less likely to curl a scornful lip
+at the Church's talk about brotherly love.</p>
+
+<p>You say that you are a Christian&mdash;that is to say a child of God. Do you
+know anything, and would anybody looking at you see that you knew
+anything, about the love which counts no cost and no sacrifice too great
+to be lavished on the unworthy and the sinful?</p>
+
+<p>But that brings me to another point. The Apostle here, in the context,
+not for the sake of saying pretty things, but for the sake of putting
+sharp points on Christian duty, emphasises another thought, that Godlike
+love will be a forgiving love. Why should we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_274" id="Page_1_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> be always waiting for the
+other man to determine our relations to him, and consider that if he
+does not like us we are absolved from the duty of loving him? Why should
+we leave him to settle the terms upon which we are to stand? God has
+love, as the Sermon on the Mount puts it, 'to the unthankful and the
+evil,' and we shall not be imitating His example unless we carry the
+same temper into all our relationships with our fellows.</p>
+
+<p>People sit complacently and hear all that I am now trying to enforce,
+and think it is the right thing for me to say, but do you think it is
+the right thing for you to do? When a man obviously does not like you,
+or perhaps tries to harm you, what then? How do you meet him? 'He maketh
+His sun to shine, and sendeth His rain, on the unthankful and the evil.'
+'Be ye imitators of God, as beloved children.'</p>
+
+<p>Now note the all-sufficient motive for this great precept.</p>
+
+<p>The sense of being loved will make loving, and nothing else will. The
+only power that will eradicate, or break without eradicating, our
+natural tendency to make ourselves our centres, is the recognition that
+there, at the heart, and on the central throne of the universe, and the
+divinest thing in it, there sits perfect and self-sacrificing Love,
+whose beams warm even us. The only flame that kindles love in a man's
+heart, whether it be to God or to man, is the recognition that he
+himself stands in the full sunshine of that blaze from above, and that
+God has loved him. Our hearts are like reverberating furnaces, and when
+the fire of the consciousness of the divine love is lit in them, then
+from sides and roof the genial heat is reflected back again to intensify
+the central flame.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_275" id="Page_1_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> Love begets love, and according to Paul, and
+according to John, and according to the Master of both of them, if a man
+loves God, then that glowing beam will glow whether it is turned to
+earth or turned to heaven.</p>
+
+<p>The Bible does not cut love into two, and keep love to God in one
+division of the heart and love to man in another, but regards them as
+one and the same; the same sentiment, the same temper, the same attitude
+of heart and mind, only that in the one case the love soars, and in the
+other it lives along the level. The two are indissolubly tied together.</p>
+
+<p>It is because a man knows himself to be beloved that therefore he is
+stimulated and encouraged to be an 'imitator of God' and, on the other
+hand, the sense of being God's child underlies all real imitation of
+Him. Imitation is natural to the child. It is a miserable home where a
+boy does not imitate his father, and it is the father's fault in nine
+cases out of ten if he does not. Whoever feels himself to be a beloved
+child is thereby necessarily drawn to model himself on the Father that
+he loves, because he knows that the Father loves him.</p>
+
+<p>So I come to the blessed truth that Christian morality does not say to
+us, 'Now begin, and work, and tinker away at yourselves, and try to get
+up some kind of excellence of character, and then come to God, and pray
+Him to accept you.' That is putting the cart before the horse. The order
+is reversed. We are to begin with taking our personal salvation and
+God's love to us for granted, and to work from that. Realise that you
+are beloved children, and then set to work to live accordingly. If we
+are ever to do what is our bounden duty to do, in all the various
+relations of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_276" id="Page_1_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> life, we must begin with recognising, with faithful and
+grateful hearts, the love wherewith God has loved us. We are to think
+much and confidently of ourselves as beloved of God, and that, and only
+that, will make us loving to men.</p>
+
+<p>The Nile floods the fields of Egypt and brings greenness and abundance
+wherever its waters are carried, because thousands of miles away, close
+up to the Equator, the snows have melted and filled the watercourses in
+the far-off wilderness. And so, if we are to go out into life, living
+illustrations and messengers of a love that has redeemed even us, we
+must, in many a solitary moment, and in the depths of our quiet hearts,
+realise and keep fast the conviction that God hath loved us, and Christ
+hath died for us.</p>
+
+<p>But a solemn consideration has to be pressed on all our consciences, and
+that is that there is something wrong with a man's Christian confidence
+whose assurance that he himself possesses a share in the love of God in
+Christ, is not ever moving him to imitation of the love in which he
+trusts. It is a shame that any one without Christian faith and love
+should be as charitable, as open to pity and to help, as earnest in any
+sort of philanthropic work, as Christian men and women are. But godless
+and perfectly secular philanthropy treads hard on the heels of Christian
+charity to-day. The more shame to us if we have been eating our morsels
+alone, and hugging ourselves in the possession of the love which has
+redeemed us; and if it has not quickened us to the necessity of copying
+it in our relations to our fellows. There is something dreadfully wrong
+about such a Christian character. 'He that loveth not his brother whom
+he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_277" id="Page_1_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Take these plain principles, and honestly fit them to your characters
+and lives, and you will revolutionise both.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="WHAT_CHILDREN_OF_LIGHT_SHOULD_BE" id="WHAT_CHILDREN_OF_LIGHT_SHOULD_BE"></a>WHAT CHILDREN OF LIGHT SHOULD BE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Walk as children of light.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> v. 8.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It was our Lord who coined this great name for His disciples. Paul's use
+of it is probably a reminiscence of the Master's, and so is a hint of
+the existence of the same teachings as we now find in the existing
+Gospels, long before their day. Jesus Christ said, 'Believe in the
+light, that ye may be the children of light'; and Paul gives
+substantially the same account of the way by which a man becomes a Son
+of the Light when he says, in the words preceding my text, 'Ye were
+sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>Union with Him makes light, just as the bit of carbon will glow as long
+as it is in contact with the electric force, and subsides again into
+darkness when that is switched off. To be in Christ is to be a child of
+light, and to believe in Christ is to be in Him.</p>
+
+<p>But the intense moral earnestness of our Apostle is indicated by the
+fact that on both occasions in which he uses this designation he does
+so, not for the purpose of heightening the sense of the honour and
+prerogative attached to it, but for the sake of deducing from it plain
+and stringent moral duties, and heightening the sense of obligation to
+holy living.</p>
+
+<p>'Walk as children of light.' Be true to your truest, deepest self.
+Manifest what you are. Let the sweet, sacred secrets of inward communion
+come out in the trivialities of ordinary conduct; make of your every
+thought a deed, and see to it that every deed be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_278" id="Page_1_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> vitalised and purified
+by its contact with the great truths and thoughts that lie in this name.
+These are various ways of putting this one all-sufficient directory of
+conduct.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in the context, the Apostle expands this concentrated exhortation
+in three or four different directions, and perhaps we may best set forth
+its meaning if we shape our remarks by these, I venture to cast them,
+for the sake of emphasis, into a hortatory form.</p>
+
+<p>I. Aim at an all-round productiveness of the natural fruits of the
+light.</p>
+
+<p>The true reading is, 'Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the
+light' (not <i>spirit</i>, as the Authorised Version reads it) 'is in all
+goodness and righteousness and truth.' Now, it is obvious that the
+alteration of 'light' instead of 'spirit' brings the words into
+connection with the preceding and the following. The reference to the
+'fruits of the spirit' would be entirely irrelevant in this place; a
+reference to the 'fruit of the <i>light</i>,' as being every form of goodness
+and righteousness and truth, is altogether in place.</p>
+
+<p>There is, then, a natural tendency in the light to blossom out into all
+forms and types of goodness. 'Fruit' suggests the idea of natural,
+silent, spontaneous, effortless growth. And, although that is by no
+means a sufficient account of the process by which bad men become good
+men, it is an inseparable element, in all true moral renovation, that it
+be the natural outcome and manifestation of an inward principle;
+otherwise it is mere hypocritical adornment, or superficial appearance.
+If we are to do good we must first of all <i>be</i> good. If from us there
+are to come righteousness and truth, and all other graces of character,
+there must, first of all, be the radical change which is involved in
+passing from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_279" id="Page_1_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> separateness in the darkness to union with Jesus Christ in
+the light. The Apostle's theory of moral renovation is that you must
+begin with the implantation in the spirit of the source of all moral
+goodness&mdash;viz. Jesus Christ&mdash;brought into the heart by the uniting power
+of humble faith. And then there will be lodged in our being a vital
+power, of which the natural outcome will be all manner of fair and pure
+things. Effort is needed, as I shall have to say; but prior to effort
+there must be union with Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>This wide, general commandment of our text is sufficiently definite,
+thinks Paul; for if the light be in you it will naturally effloresce
+into all forms of beauty. Light is the condition of fruitfulness.
+Everywhere the vital germ is only acted upon by the light. No sunshine,
+no flowers; darkness produces thin, etiolated, whitened, and feeble
+shoots at the best. Let the light blaze in, and the blanched feebleness
+becomes vigorous and unfolds itself. How much more will light be the
+condition of fruitfulness when the very light itself is the seed from
+which all fruit is developed.</p>
+
+<p>But, still further, mark how there must be an all-round completeness in
+order that we shall fairly set forth the glory and power of the light of
+which our faith makes us children and partakers. The fruit 'is in all
+goodness and righteousness and truth.' These three aspects&mdash;the good,
+the right, the true&mdash;may not be a scientific, ethical classification,
+but they give a sufficiently plain and practical distinction. Goodness,
+in which the prevailing idea is beneficence and the kindlier virtues;
+righteousness, which refers to the sterner graces of justice; truth, in
+which the prevalent idea is conformity in action with facts and the
+conditions of man's life and entire sincerity&mdash;these three<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_280" id="Page_1_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> do cover,
+with sufficient completeness, the whole ground of possible human
+excellence. But the Apostle widens them still further by that little
+word <i>all</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We all tend to cultivate those virtues which are in accordance with our
+natural dispositions, or are made most easy to us by our circumstances.
+And there is nothing in which we more need to seek comprehensiveness
+than in the effort to educate ourselves into, and to educe from
+ourselves, kinds of goodness and forms of excellence which are not
+naturally in accordance with our dispositions, or facilitated by our
+circumstances. The tree planted in the shrubbery will grow all lopsided;
+the bushes on the edge of the cliff will be shorn away on the windward
+side by the teeth of the south-western gale, and will lean over
+northwards, on the side of least resistance. And so we all are apt to
+content ourselves with doing the good things that are easiest for us, or
+that fit into our temperament and character. Jesus Christ would have us
+to be all-round men, and would that we should seek to aim after and
+possess the kinds of excellence that are least cognate to our
+characters. Are you strong, and do you pride yourself upon your
+firmness? Cultivate gentleness. Are you amiable, and pride yourself,
+perhaps, upon your sympathetic tenderness? Try to get a little iron and
+quinine into your constitution. Seek to be the man that you are least
+likely to be, and aim at a comprehensive development of '<i>all</i>
+righteousness and goodness and truth.'</p>
+
+<p>Further, remember that this all-round completeness is not attained as
+the result of an effortless growth. True, these things are the fruits of
+the light, but also true, they are the prizes of struggle and the
+trophies of warfare. No man will ever attain to the compre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_281" id="Page_1_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>hensive moral
+excellence which it is in his own power to win; no Christian will ever
+be as all-round a good man as he has the opportunities of being, unless
+he makes it his business, day by day, to aim after the conscious
+increase of gifts that he possesses, and the conscious appropriation and
+possession of those of which he is still lacking. 'Nothing of itself
+will come,' or very little. True, the light will shine out in variously
+tinted ray if it be in a man, as surely as from the seed come the blade
+and the ear and the full corn in the ear, but you will not have nor keep
+the light which thus will unfold itself unless you put forth appropriate
+effort. Christ comes into our hearts, but we have to bring Him there.
+Christ dwells in our hearts, but we have to work into our nature, and
+work out in action, the gifts that He bestows. They will advance but
+little in the divine life who trust to the natural unfolding of the
+supernatural life within them, and do not help its unfolding by their
+own resolute activity. 'Walk as children of the light.' There is your
+duty, for 'the fruit of the light is all righteousness.' One might have
+supposed that the commandments would be, 'Be passive as children of the
+light, for the light will grow.' But the Apostle binds together, as
+always, the two things, the divine working and the human effort at
+reception, retention, and application of that divine work, just as he
+does in the great classical passage, 'Work out your own salvation, for
+it is God that worketh in you.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Secondly, the general exhortation of my text widens out itself into
+this&mdash;test all things by Christ's approval of them.</p>
+
+<p>'Proving what is well pleasing unto the Lord.' That, according to the
+natural construction of the Greek, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_282" id="Page_1_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> the main way by which the Apostle
+conceives that his general commandment of 'walking as children of the
+light' is to be carried out. You do it if, step by step, and moment by
+moment, and to every action of life, you apply this standard&mdash;Does
+Christ like it? Does it please Him? When that test is rigidly applied,
+then, and only then, will you walk as becomes the children of the light.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, there is a standard&mdash;not what men approve, not what my
+conscience, partially illuminated, may say is permissible, not what is
+recognised as allowable by the common maxims of the world round about
+us, but Christ's approval. How different the hard, stern, and often
+unwelcome prescriptions of law and rigidity of some standards of right
+become when they are changed into that which pleases the Divine Lord and
+Lover! Surely it is something blessed that the hard, cold, and to such a
+large extent powerless conceptions of duty or obligation shall be
+changed into pleasing Jesus Christ; and that so our hearts shall be
+enlisted in the service of our consciences, and love shall be glad to do
+the Beloved's will. There are many ways by which the burden of life's
+obligations is lightened to the Christian. I do not know that any of
+them is more precious than the fact that law is changed into His will,
+and that we seek to do what is right because it pleases the Master.
+There is the standard.</p>
+
+<p>It will be easy for us to come to the right appreciation of individual
+actions when we are living in the light. Union with Jesus Christ will
+make us quick to discern His will. We have a conscience;&mdash;well, that
+needs educating and enlightening, and very often correcting. We have the
+Word of God;&mdash;well, that needs explanation, and needs to be brought
+close to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_283" id="Page_1_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> our hearts. If we have Christ dwelling in us, in the measure
+in which we are in sympathy with Him, we shall be gifted with clear
+eyes, not indeed to discern the expedient&mdash;that belongs to another
+region altogether&mdash;but we shall be gifted with very clear eyes to
+discern right from wrong, and there will be an instinctive recoil from
+the evil, and an instinctive attachment of ourselves to the good. If we
+are in the Lord we shall easily be able to prove what is acceptable and
+well-pleasing to Him.</p>
+
+<p>We shall never walk as the children of the light, unless we have the
+habit of referring everything, trifles and great things, to His
+arbitrament, and seeking in them all to do what is pleasing in His
+sight. The smallest deed may be brought under the operation of the
+largest principles. Gravitation influences the microscopic grain of sand
+as well as planets and sun. There is nothing so small but you can bring
+it into this category&mdash;it either pleases or displeases Jesus Christ. And
+the faults into which Christian men fall and in which they continue are
+very largely owing to their carelessness in applying this standard to
+the small things of their daily lives. The sleepy Custom House officers
+let the contraband article in because it seems to be of small bulk.
+There are old stories about how strong castles were taken by armed men
+hidden in an innocent-looking cart of forage. Do you keep up a rigid
+inspection at the frontier, and see to it that everything vindicates its
+right to enter because it is pleasing to Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>III. Thirdly, we have here another expansion of the general command, and
+that is&mdash;keep well separate from the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_284" id="Page_1_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> darkness, but rather
+reprove them.' Now, your time will not allow me to dwell, as I had hoped
+to do, upon the considerations to be suggested here. The very briefest
+possible mention of them is all that I can afford.</p>
+
+<p>'The unfruitful works of darkness';&mdash;well, then, the darkness has its
+works, but though they be works they are not worth calling fruit. That
+is to say, nothing except the conduct which flows from union with Jesus
+Christ so corresponds to the man's nature and relations, or has any such
+permanence about it as to entitle it to be called fruit. Other acts may
+be 'works' but Paul will not dishonour the great word 'fruit' by
+applying it to such rubbish as these, and so he brands them as
+'unfruitful works of darkness.'</p>
+
+<p>Keep well clear of them, says the Apostle. He is not talking here about
+the relations between Christians and others, but about the relations
+between Christian men and the <i>works</i> of darkness. Only, of course, in
+order to avoid fellowship with the works you will sometimes have to keep
+yourselves well separate from their doers. Much association with such
+men is forced upon us by circumstances, and much is the imperative duty
+of Christian beneficence and charity. But I venture to express the
+strong and growing conviction that there are few exhortations that the
+secularised Church of this generation needs more than this commandment
+of my text: 'Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness'
+'What communion hath light with darkness?' Ah! we see plenty of it,
+unnatural as it is, in the so-called Church of to-day. 'What concord
+hath Christ with Belial? What part hath he that believeth with an
+infidel? Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_285" id="Page_1_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And, brethren, remember, a part of the separation is that your light
+shall be a constant condemnation of the darkness. 'But rather reprove
+them,' says my text; that is a work that devolves upon all Christians.
+It is to be done, no doubt, by the silent condemnation of evil which
+ever comes from the quiet doing of good. As an old preacher has it, 'The
+presence of a saint hinders the devil of elbow-room for doing his
+tricks.' The old legend told us that the fire-darting Apollo shot his
+radiant arrows against the pythons and 'dragons of the slime.' The sons
+of light have the same office&mdash;by their light of life to make the
+darkness aware of itself, and ashamed of itself; and to change it into
+light.</p>
+
+<p>But silent reproving is not all our duty. The Christian Church has
+wofully fallen beneath its duty, not only in regard to its complicity
+with the social crimes of each generation, but in regard to its cowardly
+silence towards them; especially when they flaunt and boast themselves
+in high places. What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to
+war? What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to impurity?
+What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to drunkenness? What
+has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to the social vices that
+are honeycombing society and this city to-day? If you are the sons of
+light, walk as the sons of light, and have 'no fellowship with the
+unfruitful works of darkness'; but set the trumpet to your lips, and
+'declare unto My people their transgressions, and to the house of Israel
+their sin.'</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_286" id="Page_1_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_FRUIT_OF_THE_LIGHT" id="THE_FRUIT_OF_THE_LIGHT"></a>THE FRUIT OF THE LIGHT</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and
+truth.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> v. 9 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This is one of the cases in which the Revised Version has done service
+by giving currency to an unmistakably accurate and improved reading.
+That which stands in our Authorised Version, 'the fruit of the Spirit'
+seems to have been a correction made by some one who took offence at the
+violent metaphor, as he conceived it, that 'light' should bear 'fruit'
+and desired to tinker the text so as to bring it into verbal
+correspondence with another passage in the Epistle to the Galatians,
+where 'the fruits of the Spirit' are enumerated. But the reading, 'the
+fruit of the <i>light</i>,' has not only the preponderance of manuscript
+authority in its favour, but is preferable because it preserves a
+striking image, and is in harmony with the whole context.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle has just been exhorting his Ephesian friends to walk as
+'children of the light' and before he goes on to expand and explain that
+injunction he interjects this parenthetical remark, as if he would say,
+To be true to the light that is in you is the sum of duty, and the
+condition of perfectness, '<i>for</i> the fruit of the light is in all
+goodness and righteousness and truth' That connection is entirely
+destroyed by the substitution of 'spirit.' The whole context, both
+before and after my text, is full of references to the light as working
+in the life; and a couple of verses after it we read about 'the
+unfruitful works of darkness' an expression which evidently looks back
+to my text.</p>
+
+<p>So please to understand that our text in this sermon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_287" id="Page_1_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> is&mdash;'The fruit of
+the <i>light</i> consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth.'</p>
+
+<p>I. Now, first of all, I have just a word to say about this light which
+is fruitful.</p>
+
+<p>Note&mdash;for it is, I think, not without significance&mdash;a minute variation
+in the Apostle's language in this verse and in the context. He has been
+speaking of 'light,' now he speaks of '<i>the</i> light'; and that, I think,
+is not accidental. The expression, 'walk as children of light,' is more
+general and vague. The expression, 'the fruit of <i>the</i> light,' points to
+some specific source from which all light flows. And observe, also, that
+we have in the previous context, 'Ye were sometime darkness, but now are
+ye light <i>in the Lord</i>,' which evidently implies that the light of which
+my text speaks is not natural to men, but is the result of the entrance
+into their darkness of a new element.</p>
+
+<p>Now I do not suppose that we should be entitled to say that Paul here is
+formally anticipating the deep teaching of the Apostle John that Jesus
+Christ is '<i>the</i> Light of men,' and especially of Christian men. But he
+is distinctly asserting, I think, that the light which blesses and
+hallows humanity is no diffused glow, but is all gathered and
+concentrated into one blazing centre, from which it floods the hearts of
+men. Or, to put away the metaphor, he is here asserting that the only
+way by which any man can cease to be, in the doleful depths of his
+nature, darkness in its saddest sense is by opening his heart through
+faith, that into it there may rush, as the light ever does where an
+opening&mdash;be it only a single tiny cranny&mdash;is made, the light which is
+Christ, and without whom is darkness.</p>
+
+<p>I know, of course, that, apart altogether from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_288" id="Page_1_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> exercise of faith in
+Jesus Christ, there do shine in men's hearts rays of the light of
+knowledge and of purity; but if we believe the teaching of Scripture,
+these, too, are from Christ, in His universally-diffused work, by which,
+apart altogether from individual faith, or from a knowledge of
+revelation, He is 'the light that lighteth every man coming into the
+world.' And I hold that, wheresoever there is conscience, wheresoever
+there is judgment and reason, wheresoever there are sensitive desires
+after excellence and nobleness, <i>there</i> is a flickering of a light which
+I believe to be from Christ Himself. But that light, as widely diffused
+as humanity, fights with, and is immersed in, darkness. In the physical
+world, light and darkness are mutually exclusive: where the one is the
+other comes not; but in the spiritual world the paradox is true that the
+two co-exist. Apart from revelation and the acceptance of Jesus Christ's
+person and work by our humble faith, the light struggles with the
+darkness, and the darkness obstinately refuses to admit its entrance,
+and 'comprehendeth it not.' And so, ineffectual but to make restless and
+to urge to vain efforts and to lay up material for righteous judgment,
+is the light that shines in men whose hearts are shut against Christ.
+The fruitful light is Christ within us, and, unless we know and possess
+it by the opening of heart and mind and will, the solemn words preceding
+my text are true of us: 'Ye were sometime darkness.' Oh, brother! do you
+see to it that the subsequent words are true of you: 'Now are ye light
+in the Lord.' Only if you are in Christ are you truly light.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now, secondly, notice the fruitfulness of this indwelling light.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_289" id="Page_1_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of course the metaphor that light, like a tree, grows and blossoms and
+puts forth fruit, is a very strong one. And its very violence and
+incongruity help its force. Fruit is generally used in Scripture in a
+good sense. It conveys the notion of something which is the natural
+outcome of a vital power, and so, when we talk about the light being
+fruitful, we are setting, in a striking image, the great Christian
+thought that, if you want to get right conduct, you must have renewed
+character; and that if you have renewed character you will get right
+conduct. This is the principle of my text. The light has in it a
+productive power; and the true way to adorn a life with all things
+beautiful, solemn, lovely, is to open the heart to the entrance of Jesus
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>God's way is&mdash;first, new life, then better conduct. Men's way is,
+'cultivate morality, seek after purity, try to be good.' And surely
+conscience and experience alike tell us that that is a hopeless effort.
+To begin with what should be second is an anachronism in morals, and
+will be sure to result in failure in practice. He is not a wise man that
+tries to build a house from the chimneys downwards. And to talk about
+making a man's doings good before you have secured a radical change in
+the doer, by the infusion into him of the very life of Jesus Christ
+Himself, is to begin at the top story, instead of at the foundation.
+Many of us are trying to put the cart before the horse in that fashion.
+Many of us have made the attempt over and over again, and the attempt
+always has failed and always will fail. You may do much for the mending
+of your characters and for the incorporation in your lives of virtues
+and graces which do not grow there naturally and without effort. I do
+not want<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_290" id="Page_1_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> to cut the nerves of any man's stragglings, I do not want to
+darken the brightness of any man's aspirations, but I do say that the
+people who, apart from Jesus Christ, and the entrance into their souls
+by faith of His quickening power, are seeking, some of them nobly, some
+of them sadly, and all of them vainly, to cure their faults of
+character, will never attain anything but a superficial and fragmentary
+goodness, because they have begun at the wrong end.</p>
+
+<p>But 'make the tree good' and its fruit will be good. Get Christ into
+your heart, and all fair things will grow as the natural outcome of His
+indwelling. The fruitfulness of the light is not put upon its right
+basis until we come to understand that the light is Christ Himself, who,
+dwelling in our hearts by faith, is made <i>in</i> us as well as '<i>unto</i> us
+wisdom, and righteousness, and salvation, and redemption.' The beam that
+is reflected from the mirror is the very beam that falls on the mirror,
+and the fair things in life and conduct which Christian people bring
+forth are in very deed the outcome of the vital power of Jesus Christ
+which has entered into them. 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in
+me,' is the Apostle's declaration in the midst of his struggles; and the
+perfected saints before the throne cast their crowns at His feet, and
+say, 'Not unto us! not unto us, but unto Thy name be the glory.' The
+talent is the Lord's, only the spending of it is the servant's. And so
+the order of the Divine appointment is, first, the entrance of the
+light, and then the conduct that flows from it.</p>
+
+<p>Note, too, how this same principle of the fruitfulness of the light
+gives instruction as to the true place of effort in the Christian life.
+The main effort ought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_291" id="Page_1_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> to be to get more of the light into ourselves.
+'Abide in Me, and I in you.' And so, and only so, will fruit come.</p>
+
+<p>And such an effort has to take in hand all the circumference of our
+being, and to fix thoughts that wander, and to still wishes that
+clamour, and to empty hearts that are full of earthly loves, and to
+clear a space in minds that are crammed with thoughts about the
+transient and the near, in order that the mind may keep in steadfast
+contemplation of Jesus, and the heart may be bound to Him by cords of
+love that are not capable of being snapped, and scarcely of being
+stretched, and the will may in patience stand saying, 'Speak, Lord! for
+Thy servant heareth'; and the whole tremulous nature may be rooted and
+built up in and on Him. Ah, brother! if we understand all that goes to
+the fulfilment of that one sweet and merciful injunction, 'Abide in Me,'
+we shall recognise that there is the field on which Christian effort is
+mainly to be occupied.</p>
+
+<p>But that is not all. For there must be likewise the effort to
+appropriate, and still more to manifest in conduct, the fruit-bringing
+properties of that indwelling light. 'Giving all diligence add to your
+faith.' 'Having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all
+filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the
+Lord.' We are often told that just as we trust Christ for our
+forgiveness and acceptance, so we are to trust Him for our sanctifying
+and perfecting. It is true, and yet it is not true. We are to trust Him
+for our sanctifying and our perfecting. But the faith which trusts Him
+for these is not a substitute for effort, but it is the foundation of
+effort. And the more we rely on His power to cleanse us from all evil,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_292" id="Page_1_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+the more are we bound to make the effort in His power and in dependence
+on Him, to cleanse ourselves from all evil, and to secure as our own the
+natural outcomes of His dwelling within us, which are 'the fruits of the
+light.'</p>
+
+<p>III. And so, lastly, notice the specific fruits which the Apostle here
+dwells upon.</p>
+
+<p>They consist, says he, in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Now
+'goodness' here seems to me to be used in its narrower sense, just as
+the same Apostle uses it in the Epistle to the Romans, in contrast with
+'righteousness,' where he says, 'for a good man some would even dare to
+die.' There he means by 'good,' as he does here by 'goodness,' not the
+general expression for all forms of virtue and gracious conduct, but the
+specific excellence of kindliness, amiability, or the like.
+'Righteousness' again, is that which rigidly adheres to the strict law
+of duty, and carefully desires to give to every man what belongs to him,
+and to every relation of life what it requires. And 'truth' is rather
+the truth of sincerity, as opposed to hypocrisy and lies and shams, than
+the intellectual truth as opposed to error.</p>
+
+<p>Now, all these three types of excellence&mdash;kindliness, righteousness,
+truthfulness&mdash;are apt to be separated. For the first of
+them&mdash;amiability, kindliness, gentleness&mdash;is apt to become too soft, to
+lose its grip of righteousness, and it needs the tonic of the addition
+of those other graces, just as you need lime in water if it is to make
+bone. Righteousness, on the other hand, is apt to become stern, and
+needs the softening of goodness to make it human and attractive. The
+rock is grim when it is bare; it wants verdure to drape it if it is to
+be lovely. Truth needs kindliness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_293" id="Page_1_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> and righteousness, and they need
+truth. For there are men who pride themselves on 'speaking out,' and
+take rudeness and want of regard for other people's sensitive feelings
+to be sincerity. And, on the other hand, it is possible that amiability
+may be sweeter than truth is, and that righteousness may be hypocritical
+and insincere. So Paul says, 'Let this white light be resolved in the
+prism of your characters into the threefold rays of kindliness,
+righteousness, truthfulness.'</p>
+
+<p>And then, again, he desires that each of us should try to make our own a
+fully developed, all-round perfection&mdash;<i>all</i> goodness and righteousness
+and truth; of every sort, that is, and in every degree. We are all apt
+to cultivate graces of character which correspond to our natural
+disposition and make. We are all apt to become <i>torsos</i>, fragmentary,
+one-sided, like the trees that grow against a brick wall, or those which
+stand exposed to the prevailing blasts from one quarter of the sky. But
+we should seek to appropriate types of excellence to which we are least
+inclined, as well as those which are most in harmony with our natural
+dispositions. If you incline to kindliness, try to brace yourselves with
+righteousness; if you incline to righteousness, to take the stern,
+strict view of duty, and to give to every man what he deserves, remember
+that you do not give men their dues unless you give them a great deal
+more than their deserts, and that righteousness does not perfectly allot
+to our fellows what they ought to receive from us, unless we give them
+pity and indulgence and forbearance and forgiveness when it is needed.
+The one light breaks into all colours&mdash;green in the grass, purple and
+red in the flowers, flame-coloured in the morning sky, blue in the deep
+sea. The light that is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_294" id="Page_1_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> in us ought, in like manner, to be analysed
+into, and manifested in, 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good
+report.'</p>
+
+<p>And so, dear friends, here is a test for us all. Devout emotion,
+orthodox creed, practical diligence in certain forms of benevolence and
+philanthropic work, are all very well; but Jesus Christ came to make us
+like Himself, and to turn our darkness into light that betrays its
+source by its resemblance, though it be a weakened one, to the sun from
+which it came. We have no right to call ourselves Christ's followers
+unless we are, in some measure, Christ's pictures.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a message of cheer and hope for us all. We have all tried, and
+tried, and tried, over and over again, to purge and mend these poor
+characters of ours. How long the toil, how miserable and poor the
+results! A million candles will not light the night; but when God's
+mercy of sunrise comes above the hills, beasts of prey slink to their
+dens and birds begin to sing, and flowers open, and growth resumes
+again. We cannot mend ourselves except partially and superficially; but
+we can open will, heart, and mind, by faith, for His entrance; and where
+He comes, there He slays the evil creatures that live in and love the
+dark, and all gracious things will blossom into beauty. If we are in the
+Lord we shall be light; and if the Lord, who is the Light, is in us, we,
+too, shall bear fruits of 'all righteousness and goodness and truth.'</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_295" id="Page_1_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="PLEASING_CHRIST" id="PLEASING_CHRIST"></a>PLEASING CHRIST</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> v. 10.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>These words are closely connected with those which precede them in the
+8th verse&mdash;'Walk as children of light.' They further explain the mode by
+which that commandment is to be fulfilled. They who, as children of
+light, mindful of their obligations and penetrated by its brightness,
+seek to conform their active life to the light to which they belong, are
+to do so by making experiment of, or investigating and determining, what
+is 'acceptable to the Lord.' It is the sum of all Christian duty, a
+brief compendium of conduct, an all-sufficient directory of life.</p>
+
+<p>There need only be two remarks made by way of explanation of my text.
+One is that the expression rendered 'acceptable' is more accurately and
+forcibly given, as in the Revised Version, by the plainer word
+'well-pleasing.' And the other is that 'the Lord' here, as always in the
+New Testament&mdash;unless the context distinctly forbids it&mdash;means Jesus
+Christ. Here the context distinctly demands it. For only a sentence or
+two before, the Apostle has been speaking about 'those who were sometime
+darkness having been made light in the Lord'&mdash;which is obviously in
+Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And here, therefore, what pleases <i>Christ</i> is the Christian's highest
+duty, and the one prescription which is required to be obeyed in order
+to walk in the light is, to do that which pleases Him.</p>
+
+<p>I. So, then, in these brief words, so comprehensive, and going so deep
+into the secrets of holy and noble living, I want you to notice that we
+have, first, the only attitude which corresponds to our relations to
+Christ.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_296" id="Page_1_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>How remarkable it is that this Apostle should go on the presumption that
+our conduct affects Him, that it is possible for us to please, or to
+displease Jesus Christ now. We often wonder whether the beloved dead are
+cognisant of what we do; and whether any emotions of something like
+either our earthly complacency or displeasure, can pass across the
+undisturbed calm of their hearts, if they are aware of what their loved
+ones here are doing. That question has to be left very much in the dark,
+however our hearts may sometimes seek to enforce answers. But this we
+know, that that loving Lord, not merely by the omniscience of His
+divinity, but by the perpetual knowledge and sympathy of His perfect
+manhood, is not only cognizant of, but is affected by, the conduct of
+His professed followers here on earth. And since it is true that He now
+is not swept away into some oblivious region where the dead are, but is
+close beside us all, cognizant of every act, watching every thought, and
+capable of having something like a shadow of a pang passing across the
+Divine depth of His eternal joy and repose at the right hand of God,
+then, surely, the only thing that corresponds to such a relationship as
+at present subsists between the Christian soul and the Lord is that we
+should take as our supreme and continual aim that, 'whether present or
+absent, we should be well-pleasing to Him.' Nor does that demand rest
+only upon the realities of our present relation to that Lord, but it
+goes back to the past facts on which our present relation rests. And the
+only fitting response to what He has been and done for us is that we
+should, each of us, in the depth of our hearts, and in the widest
+circumference of the surface of our lives, enthrone Him as absolute
+Lord, and take His good pleasure as our supreme law. Jesus Christ is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_297" id="Page_1_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+King because He is Redeemer. The only adequate response to what He has
+done for me is that I should absolutely submit myself to Him, and say to
+Him, 'O Lord! truly I am Thy servant! Thou hast loosed my bonds.' The
+one fitting return to make for that Cross and Passion is to enthrone His
+will upon my will, and to set Him as absolute Monarch over the whole of
+my nature. Thoughts, affections, purposes, efforts, and all should crown
+Him King, because He has died for me. The conduct which corresponds to
+the relations which we bear to Christ as the present Judge of our work,
+and the Redeemer of our souls by His mighty deed in the past, is this of
+my text, to make my one law His will, and to please Him that hath called
+me to be His soldier.</p>
+
+<p>The meaning of being a Christian is that, in return for the gift of a
+whole Christ, I give my whole self to Him. 'Why call ye me Lord! Lord!
+and do not the things which I say?' If He is what He assuredly is to
+every one of us, nothing can be plainer than that we are thereby bound
+by obligations which are not iron, but are more binding than if they
+were, because they were woven out of the cords of love and the bands of
+a man, bound to serve Him supremely, Him only, Him always, Him by the
+suppression of self, and the making His pleasure our law.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to notice that we have here the
+all-sufficient guide for practical life.</p>
+
+<p>It sounds very mystical, and a trifle vague, to say, Do everything to
+please Jesus Christ. It is all-comprehensive; it is mystical in the
+sense that it goes down below the mere surface of prescriptions about
+conduct. But it is not vague, and it is capable of immediate application
+to every part, and to every act, of every man's life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_298" id="Page_1_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For what is it that pleases Jesus Christ? His own likeness; as,
+according to the old figure&mdash;which is, I suppose, true to spiritual
+facts, whether to external facts or not&mdash;the refiner knows that the
+metal is ready to flow when he can see his own face in it. Jesus Christ
+desires most that we should all be like Him. That we are to bear His
+image is as comprehensive, and at the same time as specific, a way of
+setting forth the sum of Christian duty, as are the words of my text.
+The two phrases mean the same thing.</p>
+
+<p>And what is the likeness to Jesus Christ which it is thus our supreme
+obligation and our truest wisdom and perfection to bear? Well! we can
+put it all into two words&mdash;self-suppression and continual consciousness
+of obedience to the Divine will. The life of Jesus Christ, in its brief
+records in Scripture, is felt by every thoughtful man to contain within
+its narrow compass adequate direction for, and to set forth the ideal
+of, human life. That is not because He went through all varieties of
+earthly experience, for He did not. The life of a Jewish peasant
+nineteen centuries ago was extremely unlike the life of a Manchester
+merchant, of a college professor, of a successful barrister, of a
+struggling mother, in this present day. But in the narrow compass of
+that life there are set forth these two things, which are the basis of
+all human perfection&mdash;the absolute annihilation of self-regard, and the
+perpetual recognition of a Divine will. These are the things which every
+Christian man and woman is bound by the power of Christ's Cross to
+translate into the actions correspondent with their particular
+circumstances. And so the student at his desk and the sailor on his
+deck, the miner in his pit, the merchant on 'Change, the worker in
+various handicrafts, may each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_299" id="Page_1_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> be sure that they are doing what is
+pleasing to Christ if, in their widely different ways, they seek to do
+what they can do in all the varieties of life&mdash;crucify self, and commune
+with God.</p>
+
+<p>That is not easy. Whatever may be the objections to be brought against
+this summary of Christian duty, the objection that it is vague is the
+last that can be sustained. Try it, and you will find out that it is
+anything but vague. It will grip tight enough, depend upon it. It will
+go deep enough down into all the complexities of our varying
+circumstances. If it has a fault (which it has not) it is in the
+direction of too great stringency for unaided human nature. But the
+stringency is not too great when we depend upon Him to help us, and an
+impossible ideal is a certain prophet of its own fulfilment some day.</p>
+
+<p>So, brethren, here is the sufficient guide, not because it cumbers us
+with a mass of wretched little prescriptions such as a martinet might
+give, about all sorts of details of conduct. That is left to profitless
+casuists like the ancient rabbis. But the broad principles will
+effloresce into all manner of perfectnesses and all fruits. He that has
+in his heart these thoughts, that the definition of virtue is pleasing
+Jesus Christ, that the concrete form of goodness is likeness to Him, and
+that the elements of likeness to Him are these two, that I should never
+think about myself, and always think about God, needs no other guide or
+instructor to fill his life with 'whatsoever things are lovely and of
+good report,' and to make his own all that the world calls virtue, and
+all which the consciences of good men have conspired to praise.</p>
+
+<p>But not only does this guide prove its sufficiency by reason of its
+comprehensiveness, but also because there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_300" id="Page_1_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> is no difficulty in
+ascertaining what at each moment it prescribes. Of course, I know that
+such a precept as this cannot contain in itself guidance in matters of
+mere practical expediency. But, apart from these&mdash;which are to be
+determined by the ordinary exercise of prudence and common sense&mdash;in
+regard to the right and the wrong of our actions, I believe that if a
+man wants to know Christ's will, and takes the way of knowing it which
+Christ has appointed, he shall not be left in darkness, but shall have
+the light of life.</p>
+
+<p>For love has a strange power of divining love's wishes, as we all know,
+and as many a sweetness in the hearts and lives of many of us has shown
+us. If we cherish sympathy with Jesus Christ we shall look on things as
+He looks on them, and we shall not be left without the knowledge of what
+His pleasure is. If we keep near enough to Him the glance of His eye
+will do for guidance, as the old psalm has it. They are rough animal
+natures that do not understand how to go, unless their instructors be
+the crack of the whip or the tug of the bridle. 'I will guide thee with
+Mine eye.' A glance is enough where there are mutual understanding and
+love. Two musical instruments in adjoining rooms, tuned to the same
+pitch, have a singular affinity, and if a note be struck on the one the
+other will vibrate to the sound. And so hearts here that love Jesus
+Christ and keep in unison with Him, and are sympathetic with His
+desires, will learn to know His will, and will re-echo the music that
+comes from Him. And if our supreme desire is to know what pleases Jesus
+Christ, depend upon it the desire will not be in vain, 'If any man wills
+to do His will he shall know of the doctrine.' Ninety per cent. of all
+our perplexities as to conduct come from our not having a pure and
+simple wish to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_301" id="Page_1_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> do what is right in His sight, clearly supreme above all
+others. When we have that wish it is never left unsatisfied.</p>
+
+<p>And even if sometimes we do make a mistake as to what is Christ's
+pleasure, if our supreme wish and honest aim in the mistake have been to
+do His pleasure, we may be sure that He will be pleased with the deed.
+Even though its body is not that which He willed us to do, its spirit is
+that which He does desire. And if we do a wrong thing, a thing in itself
+displeasing to Him, whilst all the while we desired to please Him, we
+shall please Him in the deed which would otherwise have displeased Him.
+And so two Christian men, for instance, who take opposite sides in a
+controversy, may both of them be doing what is well-pleasing in His
+sight, whilst they are contradicting one another, if they are doing it
+for His sake. And it is possible that the inquisitor and his victim may
+both have been serving Christ. At all events, let us be sure of this,
+that whensoever we desire to please Him, He will help us to do it, and
+ordinarily will help us by making clear to us the path on which His
+smile rests.</p>
+
+<p>III. Again, notice that we have here an all-powerful motive for
+Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>The one thing which all other summaries of duty lack is motive power to
+get themselves carried into practice. But we all know, from our own
+happy human experience, that no motive which can be brought to bear upon
+men is stronger, when there are loving hearts concerned, than this
+simple one, 'Do it to please me.' And that is what Jesus Christ really
+says. That is no piece of mere sentiment, brethren, nor of mere pulpit
+rhetoric. That is the deepest thought of Christian morality, and is the
+distinctive peculiarity which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_302" id="Page_1_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> gives the morality of the New Testament
+its clear supremacy over all other. There are precepts in it far nobler
+and loftier than can be found elsewhere. The perspective of virtues and
+graces in it is different from that which ordinarily prevails amongst
+men. But I do not think that it is in the details of its precepts so
+much as in the communication of power to obey them, and in the
+suggestion of the motive which makes them all easy, that the difference
+of Christ's ethics from all the teaching of the world beside is most
+truly to be found.</p>
+
+<p>And here lies the excellence thereof. It is a poor, cold thing to say to
+a man, 'Do this because it is right.' It is a still more powerless thing
+to say to him, 'Do this because it is expedient' 'Do this because, in
+the long run, it leads to happiness.' It is all different when you say,
+'Do this to please Jesus Christ, to please that Christ who pleased not
+Himself but gave Himself for you.' That is the fire that melts the ore.
+That is the heat that makes flexible the hard, stiff material. That is
+the motive which makes duty delight, which makes 'the rough places
+plain' and 'the crooked things straight.' It does not abolish natural
+tastes, it does not supersede natural disinclinations, but it does
+smooth and soften unwelcome and hard tasks, and it invests service with
+a halo of glory, and changes the coldness of duty into rosy light; as
+when the sunrise strikes on the peaks of the frozen mountains. The one
+motive which impels men, and can be trusted to secure in them whatsoever
+things are noble, is to please Him.</p>
+
+<p>So we have the secret of blessedness in these words. For self-submission
+and suppression are blessedness. Our miseries come from our unbridled
+wills, far more than from our sensitive organisations. It is because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_303" id="Page_1_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> we
+do not accept providences that providences hurt. It is because we do not
+accept the commandments that the commandments are burdensome. Those who
+have no will, except as it is vitalised by God's will, have found the
+secret of blessedness, and have entered into rest. In the measure in
+which we approximate to that condition, our wills will be strengthened
+as well as our hearts set at ease.</p>
+
+<p>And blessedness comes, too, because the approbation of the Master, which
+is the aim of the servant, is reflected in the satisfaction of an
+approving conscience, which points onwards to the time when the Master's
+approval shall be revealed in the servant's glory.</p>
+
+<p>I was reading the other day about a religious reformer who arose in
+Eastern lands a few years since, and gathered many disciples. He and his
+principal follower were seized and about to be martyred. They were
+suspended by cords from a gibbet, to be fired at by a platoon of
+soldiers. And as they hung there, the disciple turned to his teacher,
+and as his last word on earth said, 'Master! are you satisfied with me?'
+His answer was a silent smile; and the next minute a bullet was in his
+heart. Dear brethren, do you turn to Jesus Christ with the same
+question, 'Master! art Thou satisfied with me?' and you will get His
+smile here; and hereafter, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="UNFRUITFUL_WORKS_OF_DARKNESS" id="UNFRUITFUL_WORKS_OF_DARKNESS"></a>UNFRUITFUL WORKS OF DARKNESS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but
+rather reprove them.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> v. 11.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We have seen in a former sermon that 'the fruit,' or outcome, 'of the
+Light' is a comprehensive perfection,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_304" id="Page_1_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> consisting in all sorts and
+degrees of goodness and righteousness and truth. Therefore, the
+commandment, 'Walk as children of the light,' sums up all Christian
+morality. Is there need, then, for any additional precept? Yes; for
+Christian people do not live in an empty world. If there were no evil
+round them, and no proclivity to evil within them, it would be amply
+sufficient to say to them, 'Be true to the light which you behold.' But
+since both these things are, the commandment of my text is further
+necessary. We do not work <i>in vacuo</i>, and therefore friction and
+atmosphere have to be taken account of; and an essential part of
+'walking as children of the light' is to know how to behave ourselves
+when confronted with 'the works of darkness.'</p>
+
+<p>These Ephesian Christians lived in a state of society honeycombed with
+hideous immorality, the centre of which was the temple, which was their
+city's glory and shame. It was all but impossible for them to have
+nothing to do with the works of evil, unless, indeed, they went out of
+the world. But the difficulty of obedience does not affect the duty of
+obedience, nor slacken in the smallest degree the stringency of a
+command. This obligation lies upon us as fully as it did upon them, and
+the discharge of it by professing Christians would bring new life to
+moribund churches.</p>
+
+<p>I. Let me ask you to note with me, first, the fruitlessness inherent in
+all the works of darkness.</p>
+
+<p>You may remember that I pointed out, in a former discourse on the
+context, that the Apostle, here and elsewhere, draws a very significant
+distinction between 'works' and 'fruit,' and that distinction is put
+very strikingly in the words of my text. There are works which are
+barren. It is a grim thought that there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_305" id="Page_1_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> may be abundant activity which,
+in the eyes of God, comes to just nothing; and that pages and pages of
+laborious calculations, when all summed up, have for result a great
+round 0. Men are busy, and hosts of them are doing what the old fairy
+stories tell us that evil spirits were condemned to do&mdash;spinning ropes
+out of sea-sand; and their life-work is nought when they come to reckon
+it up.</p>
+
+<p>I have no time to dwell upon this thought, but I wish, just for a moment
+or two, to illustrate it.</p>
+
+<p>All godless life is fruitless, inasmuch as it has no permanent results.
+Permanent results of a sort, indeed, follow everything that men do, for
+all our actions tend to make character, and they all have a share in
+fixing that which depends upon character&mdash;viz. destiny, both here and
+yonder. And thus the most fleeting of our deeds, which in one aspect is
+as transitory as the snow upon the great plains when the sun rises,
+leaves everlasting traces upon ourselves and upon our condition. But yet
+acts concerned with transitory things may have permanent fruit, or may
+be as transient as the things with which they are concerned. And the
+difference depends on the spirit in which they are done. If the roots
+are only in the surface-skin of soil, when that is pared off the plant
+goes. A life that is to be eternal must strike its roots through all the
+superficial <i>humus</i> down to the very heart of things. When its roots
+twine themselves round God then the deeds which blossom from them will
+blossom unfading for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Think of men going empty-handed into another world, and saying, 'O Lord!
+I made a big fortune in Manchester when I lived there, and I left it all
+behind me'; or, 'I mastered a science, and one gleam of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_306" id="Page_1_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> light of
+eternity has antiquated it'; or, 'I gained prizes, won my aims, and they
+have all dropped from my hands, and here I stand, having to say in the
+most tragic sense: Nothing in my hands I bring.' And another man dies in
+the Lord, and his 'works do follow' him. It is not every vintage that
+bears exportation. Some wines are mellowed by crossing the ocean; some
+are turned into vinegar. The works of darkness are unfruitful because
+they are transient.</p>
+
+<p>And they are unfruitful because, whilst they last, they yield no real
+satisfaction. The Apostle could say to another Church with a certainty
+as to what the answer would be, 'What fruit had ye <i>then</i>'&mdash;when ye were
+doing them&mdash;'in the things whereof ye are now ashamed?' And the answer
+is 'None!' Of course, it is true that men do bad things because they
+like them better than good. Of course, it is true that the misery of
+mankind is that they have no appetite in the general for the only real
+satisfaction. But it is also true that no man who feeds his heart and
+mind on anything short of God is really at rest in anything that he does
+or possesses. Occasional twinges of conscience, dim perceptions that
+after all they are walking in a vain show; glimpses of nobler
+possibilities, a vague unrest, an unwillingness to reflect and look the
+facts of their condition in the face, like men that will not take stock
+because they half suspect that they are insolvent&mdash;these are the
+conditions that attach to all godless men's lives. There is no real
+fruit for their thirsty lips to feed upon. The smallest man is too large
+to be satisfied with anything short of Infinity, The human heart is like
+some narrow opening on a hill-side, so narrow that it looks as if a
+glassful of water would fill it. But it goes away down, down,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_307" id="Page_1_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> down into
+the depths of the mountain, and you may pour in hogsheads and no effect
+is visible. God, and God alone, brings to the thirsty heart the fruit
+that it needs.</p>
+
+<p>Another solemn thought illustrates the unfruitfulness of a godless life.
+There is no correspondence between what such a man does and what he is
+intended to do. Think of what the most degraded and sensuous wretch that
+shambles about the slums of a city, sodden with beer and rotten with
+profligacy, could be. Think of the raptures of devout contemplation and
+the energies of holy work which are possible for that soul, and then
+say&mdash;though it is an extreme case, the principle holds in less extreme
+cases&mdash;Are these things that men do apart from God, however shining,
+noble, illustrious they may be in the eyes of the world, and trumpeted
+forth by the mouthpieces of popular opinion, are these things worth
+calling fruits fit to be borne by such a tree? No more than the cankers
+on a rose-bush or the galls on an oak-tree are worthy of being called
+fruit are these works that some of you have as the only products of a
+life's activity. 'Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth
+grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?'</p>
+
+<p>II. And now, secondly, notice the plain Christian duty of abstinence.</p>
+
+<p>'Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.' Now, the
+text, as it stands in our version, seems to suggest that these dark
+works are personified as companions whom a good man ought to avoid; and
+that, therefore, the bearing of the exhortation is, 'Have nothing to do,
+in your own individual lives, with evil things that one man can commit.'
+But I take it that, important as that injunction and prohibi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_308" id="Page_1_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>tion is,
+the Apostle's meaning is somewhat different, and that my text would
+perhaps be more accurately translated if another word were substituted
+for 'have no fellowship with.' The original expression seems rather to
+mean, 'Do not go partners with other people in works of darkness, which
+it takes more than one to commit.' Or, to put it into another language,
+the Apostle is regarding Christian people here as members of society,
+and exhorting them to a certain course of conduct in reference to plain
+and palpable existing evils around them. And such an exhortation to the
+duty of plain abstinence from things that the opinion of the world
+around us has no objection to, but which are contrary to the light, is
+addressed to all Christian people.</p>
+
+<p>The need of it I do not require to illustrate at any length. But let me
+remind you that the devil has no more cunning way of securing a long
+lease of life for any evil than getting Christian people and Christian
+Churches to give it their sanction. What was it that kept slavery alive
+for centuries? Largely, that Christian men solemnly declared that it was
+a divine institution. What is it that has kept war alive for all these
+centuries? Largely, that bishops and preachers have always been ready to
+bless colours, and to read a Christening service over a man-of-war&mdash;and,
+I suppose, to ask God that an eighty-ton gun might be blessed to smash
+our enemies to pieces, and not to blow our sailors to bits. And what is
+it that preserves the crying evils of our community, the immoralities,
+the drunkenness, the trade dishonesty, and all the other things that I
+do not need to remind you of in the pulpit? Largely this, that
+professing Christians are mixed up with them. If only the whole body<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_309" id="Page_1_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> of
+those who profess and call themselves Christians would shake their hands
+clear of all complicity with such things, they could not last.
+Individual responsibility for collective action needs to be far more
+solemnly laid to heart by professing Christians than ever it has been.</p>
+
+<p>Nor need I remind you, I suppose, with what fatal effects on the Gospel
+and the Church itself all such complicity is attended. Even the
+companions of wrongdoers despise, whilst they fraternise with, the
+professing Christian who has no higher standard than their own. What was
+it that made the Church victorious over the combined forces of imperial
+persecution, pagan superstition, and philosophic speculation? I believe
+that among all the causes that a well-known historian has laid down for
+the triumph of Christianity, what was as powerful as&mdash;I was going to say
+even more than&mdash;the Gospel of peace and love which the Church proclaimed
+was the standard of austere morality which it held up to a world rotting
+in its own filth. And sure I am that wherever the Church says, 'So do
+not I, because of the fear of the Lord,' it will gain a power, and will
+be regarded with a possibly reluctant, but a very real, respect which no
+easy-going coming down to the level of popular moralities will ever
+secure for a silver-slippered Christianity. And so, brethren, I would
+say to you, Do not be afraid of the old name <i>Puritan</i>. Ignorant people
+use it as a scoff. It should be a crown of glory. 'Have no fellowship
+with the unfruitful works of darkness.'</p>
+
+<p>But how is this to be done? Well, of course, there is only one way of
+abstaining, and that is, to abstain. But there are a great many
+different ways of abstain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_310" id="Page_1_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>ing. Light is not fire. And the more that
+Christian people feel themselves bound to stand aloof from common evils,
+the more are they bound to see that they do it in the spirit of the
+Master, which is meekness. It is always an invidious position to take
+up. And if we take it up with any heat and temper, with any lack of
+moderation, with any look of ostentation of superior righteousness, or
+with any trace of the Boanerges spirit which says, 'Let us call down
+fire from heaven and consume them,' our testimony will be weakened, and
+the world will have a right to say to us, 'Jesus we know, and Paul we
+know; but who are ye?' 'Who made this man a judge and a divider over
+us?' 'In meekness instructing them that oppose themselves.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, note the still harder Christian duty of vigorous protest.</p>
+
+<p>The further duty beyond abstinence which the text enjoins is
+inadequately represented by our version, 'but rather reprove them.' For
+the word rendered in our version 'reprove' is the same which our Lord
+employed when He spoke of the mission of the Comforter as being to
+'convince (or convict) the world of sin.' And it does not merely mean
+'reprove,' but so to reprove as to produce the conviction which is the
+object of the reproof.</p>
+
+<p>This task is laid on the shoulders of all professing Christians. A
+<i>silent</i> abstinence is not enough. No doubt, the best way, in some
+circumstances, to convict the darkness is to shine. Our holiness will
+convict sin of its ugliness. Our light will reveal the gloom. The
+presentation of a Christian life is the Christian man's mightiest weapon
+in his conflict with the world's evil. But that is not all. And if
+Christian people think that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_311" id="Page_1_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> they have done all their duty, in regard to
+clamant and common iniquities, by simply abstaining from them and
+presenting a nobler example, they have yet to learn one very important
+chapter of their duty. A dumb Church is a dying Church, and it ought to
+be; for Christ has sent us here in order, amongst other things, that we
+may bring Christian principles to bear upon the actions of the
+community; and not be afraid to speak when we are called upon by
+conscience to do so.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am not going to dwell upon this matter, but I want just to point
+out to you how, in the context here, there are two or three very
+important principles glanced at which bear upon it. And one of them is
+this, that one reason for speaking out is the very fact that the evils
+are so evil that a man is ashamed to speak about them. Did you ever
+notice this context, in which the Apostle, in the next verse to my text,
+gives the reason for his commandment to 'reprove' thus&mdash;'<i>For</i> it is a
+shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret'?
+Did you ever hear of a fantastic tenderness for morality so very
+sensitive that it is not at all shocked when the immoral things are
+<i>done</i>, but glows with virtuous indignation when a Christian man speaks
+out about them? There are plenty of people nowadays who tell us that it
+is 'indelicate' and 'indecent' and 'improper,' and I do not know how
+much else, for a Christian teacher or minister to say a word about
+certain moral scandals. But they do not say anything about the
+immorality and the indelicacy and the indecency of doing them. Let us
+have done with that hypocrisy, brethren. I am arguing for no disregard
+for proprieties; I want all fitting reticence observed, and I do not
+wish indiscriminate rebukes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_312" id="Page_1_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> to be flung at foul things; but it is too
+much to require that, by reason of the very inky cloud of filth that
+they fling up like cuttlefish, they should escape censure. Let us
+remember Paul's exhortation, and reprove <i>because</i> the things are too
+bad to be spoken about.</p>
+
+<p>Further, note in the context the thought that the conviction of the
+darkness comes from the flashing upon it of the light. 'All things when
+they are reproved are made manifest by the light.' Which, being
+translated into other words, is this:&mdash;Be strong in your brave protest,
+because it only needs that the thing should be seen as it is, and called
+by its right name, in order to be condemned.</p>
+
+<p>The Assyrians had a belief that if ever, by any chance, a demon saw
+himself in a mirror, he was frightened at his own ugliness and
+incontinently fled. And if Christian people would only hold up the
+mirror of Christian principle to the hosts of evil things that afflict
+our city and our country, they would vanish like ghosts at sunrise. They
+cannot stand the light, therefore let us cast the light upon them.</p>
+
+<p>And do not forget the other final principle here, which is imperfectly
+represented by our translation. We ought to read, 'Whatever is made
+manifest is light.' Yes. In the physical world when light falls upon a
+thing, you see it because there is on it a surface of light. And in the
+moral world the intention of all this conviction is that the thing
+disclosed to be darkness should, in the very disclosure, cease to be
+dark, should forsake its nature and be transformed into light. Such
+transformation is not always the case. Alas! There are evil deeds on
+which the light falls, and it does nothing. But the purpose in all cases
+should be, and the issue in many will be, that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_313" id="Page_1_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> merciful conviction
+by the light will be followed by the conversion of darkness into light.</p>
+
+<p>And so, dear brethren, I bring this text to your hearts, and lay it upon
+your consciences. We may not all be called upon to speak; we are all
+called upon to <i>be</i>. You can shine, and by shining show how dark the
+darkness is. The obligation is laid upon us all; the commandment still
+comes to every Christian which was given to the old prophet, 'Declare
+unto My people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their
+sin.' A quaint old writer says that the presence of a saint 'hinders the
+devil of elbow room to do his tricks.' We can all rebuke sin by our
+righteousness, and by our shining reveal the darkness to itself. We do
+not walk as children of the light unless we keep ourselves from all
+connivance with works of darkness, and by all means at our disposal
+reprove and convict them. 'Come out from among them, and be ye separate,
+and touch no unclean thing, saith the Lord.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PAULS_REASONS_FOR_TEMPERANCE" id="PAULS_REASONS_FOR_TEMPERANCE"></a>PAUL'S REASONS FOR TEMPERANCE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but
+rather reprove them. 12. For it is a shame even to speak of those
+things which are done of them in secret. 13. But all things that
+are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth
+make manifest is light. 14. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that
+sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee
+light. 15. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but
+as wise, 16. Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. 17.
+Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the
+Lord is. 18. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be
+filled with the Spirit; 19. Speaking to yourselves in psalms, and
+hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart
+to the Lord; 20. Giving thanks always for all things unto God and
+the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; 21. Submitting
+yourselves one to another in the fear of God.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> v. 11-21.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>There are three groups of practical exhortations in this passage, of
+which the first deals with the Christian as a reproving light in
+darkness; the second, with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_314" id="Page_1_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> Christian life as wisdom in the midst of
+folly; and the third with Christian sobriety and inspiration as the true
+exhilaration in contrast with riotous drunkenness. Probably such
+intoxication was prevalent in Ephesus in connection with the worship of
+'Diana of the Ephesians,' for Paul was not the man to preach vague
+warnings against vices to which his hearers were not tempted. An
+under-current of allusion to such orgies accompanying the popular cult
+may be discerned in his words.</p>
+
+<p>These two preceding sets of precepts can only be briefly touched on now.
+They lead up to the third, and the second is built on the first by a
+'therefore' (ver. 15). The Apostle has just been saying that Christians
+were 'darkness, but are now light in the Lord,' and thence drawing the
+law for their life, to walk as 'children of light.' A very important
+part of such walk is recoiling from all share in 'the unfruitful works
+of darkness,'&mdash;a significant expression branding such deeds as being
+both bad in their source and in their results. Dark doings have
+consequences tragic enough and certain enough, but they are barren of
+all such issues as correspond to men's obligations and capacities. Their
+outcome is like the growths on a tree, which are not fruit, but products
+of disease. There is no fruit grown in the dark; there is no worthy
+product from us unless Christ is our light. If He is, and we are
+therefore 'light in the Lord,' we shall 'reprove' or 'convict' the
+Christless life. Its sinfulness will be shown by the contrast with the
+Christ-life. A thunder-cloud never looks so lividly black as when
+smitten by sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Our lives ought to make evil things ashamed to show their ugly faces.
+Christians should be, as it were, the incarnate conscience of a
+community. The Apostle is not thinking so much of words as of deeds,
+though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_315" id="Page_1_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> words are not to be withheld when needful. The agent of reproof
+is 'the light,' which here is the designation of character as
+transformed by Jesus, and the process of reproof or conviction is simply
+the manifestation of the evil in its true nature, which comes from
+setting it in the beams of the light. To show sin as it is, is to
+condemn it; 'for everything that is made manifest is light.' Observe
+that Paul here speaks of 'light,' not 'the light,'&mdash;that is, he is
+speaking now not of Christian character, which he had likened to light,
+but of physical light to which he had likened it, and is backing up his
+figurative statement as to the reproving and manifesting effects of the
+former, by the plain fact as to the latter, that, when daylight shines
+on anything, it is revealed, and, as it were, becomes light. He clenches
+his exhortation by quoting probably an early Christian hymn, which
+regards Christ as the great illuminator, ready to shine on all drowsy,
+dark souls as soon as they stir and rouse themselves from drugged and
+fatal sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The second set of exhortations here is connected with the former by a
+'therefore,' which refers to the whole preceding precept. Because the
+Christian is to shake himself free from complicity with works of
+darkness, and to be their living condemnation, he must take heed to his
+goings. A climber on a glacier has to look to his feet, or he will slip
+and fall down a crevasse, perhaps, from which he will never be drawn up.
+Heedlessness is folly in such a world as this. '"Don't care" comes to
+the gallows.' The temptation to 'go as you please' is strong in youth,
+and it is easy to scoff at 'cold-blooded folks who live by rule,' but
+they are the wise people, after all. A great element in that heedfulness
+is a quick insight into the special duty and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_316" id="Page_1_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> opportunity of the moment,
+for life is not merely made up of hours, but each has its own particular
+errand for us, and has some possibility in it which, neglected, may be
+lost for ever.</p>
+
+<p>The mystic solemnity of time is that it is made up of 'seasons.' We
+shall walk heedfully in the degree in which we are awake to the moment's
+meaning, and grasp opportunity by the forelock, or, as Paul says, 'buy
+up the opportunity.' But wise heed to our walk is not enough, unless we
+have a sure standard by which to regulate it. A man may take great care
+of his watch, but unless he can compare it with a chronometer, or, as
+they do in Edinburgh, pull out their watches when the one o'clock gun is
+fired on a signal from Greenwich, he may be far out and not know it. So
+the Apostle adds the one way to keep our lives right, and the one source
+of true, practical wisdom&mdash;the 'understanding what the will of the Lord
+is.' He will not go far wrong whose instinctive question, as each new
+moment, with its solemn, animating possibilities, meets him, is, 'What
+wilt Thou have me to do?' He will not be nearly right who does not first
+of all ask that.</p>
+
+<p>Then Paul comes to his precept of temperance. It naturally flows from
+the preceding, inasmuch as a drunken man is as sure to be incapable of
+taking heed to his conduct as of walking straight. He reels in both. He
+is stone-blind to the meaning of the moments. He hears no call, though
+the 'voice of the trumpet' may be 'exceeding loud,' and as for
+understanding what the will of the Lord is, that is far beyond him. The
+intoxication of an hour or the habit of drinking makes obedience to the
+foregoing precepts impossible. This master vice carries all other vices
+in its pocket.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_317" id="Page_1_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Paul makes a daring, and, as some would think, an irreverent,
+comparison, when he proposes being 'filled with the Spirit' as the
+Christian alternative or substitute to being 'drunken with wine.' But
+the daring comparison suggests deep truth. The spurious exhilaration,
+the loosening of the bonds of care, the elevation above the pettiness
+and monotony of daily life, which the drunkard seeks, and is degraded
+and deceived in proportion as he momentarily finds, are all ours,
+genuinely, nobly, and to our infinite profit, if we have our empty
+spirits filled with that Divine Life. That exhilaration does not froth
+away, leaving bitter dregs in the cup. That loosening of the bonds of
+care, and elevation above life's sorrows, does not flow from foolish
+oblivion of facts, nor end in their being again roughly forced on us.
+'Riot' bellows itself hoarse, and is succeeded by corresponding
+depression; but the calm joys of the Spirit-filled spirit last, grow,
+and become calmer and more joyful every day.</p>
+
+<p>The boisterous songs of boon companions are set in contrast with the
+Christian 'psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,' which were already in
+use, and a snatch from one of which Paul has just quoted.
+Good-fellowship tempts men to drink together, and a song is a
+shoeing-horn for a glass; but the <i>camaraderie</i> is apt to end in blows,
+and is a poor caricature of the bond knitting all who are filled with
+the Spirit to one another, and making them willing to serve one another.
+The roystering or maudlin geniality cemented by drink generally ends in
+quarrels, as everybody knows that the truculent stage of intoxication
+succeeds the effusively affectionate one. But they who have the Spirit
+in them, and not only 'live in the Spirit,' but 'walk in the Spirit,'
+esteem each the other better than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_318" id="Page_1_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> themselves. In a word, to be filled
+with the Spirit is the way to possess all the highest forms of the good
+which men are tempted to intoxication to secure, and which in it they
+find only for a moment, and which is coarse and unreal.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SLEEPERS_AT_NOONDAY" id="SLEEPERS_AT_NOONDAY"></a>SLEEPERS AT NOONDAY</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Wherefore He saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the
+dead, and Christ shall give thee light,'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> v. 14.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This is the close of a short digression about 'light.' The 'wherefore'
+at the beginning of my text seems to refer to the whole of the verses
+that deal with that subject. It is as if the Apostle had said, 'I have
+been telling you about light and its blessed effects. Now I tell you how
+you may win it for yours. The condition on which it is to be received by
+men is that they awake and arise from the dead.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>He saith.</i>' Who? The speaker whose words are quoted is not named, but
+this is the common formula of quotation from the <i>Old Testament</i>. It is,
+therefore, probable that the word 'Creator' or 'God' is to be supplied.
+But there is no Old Testament passage which exactly corresponds to the
+words before us; the nearest approach to such being the ringing
+exhortation of the prophet to the Messianic Church, 'Arise! Shine, for
+thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.' And it
+is probable that the Apostle is here quoting, without much regard either
+to the original connection or the primary purpose of the word, a
+well-known old saying which seemed to him appropriately to fall in with
+the trend of his thoughts. Like other writers he often adorns his own
+words with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_319" id="Page_1_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> citation of those of others without being very careful
+as to whether he, in some measure, diverts these from their original
+intention. But the words of my text fairly represent the prophetic
+utterance, in so far as they echo the call to the sleepers to wake, and
+share the prophet's confidence that light is streaming out for all those
+whose eyes are opened.</p>
+
+<p>The want of precise correspondence between our text and the prophetic
+passage has led some to suppose that we have here the earliest recorded
+fragment of a Christian hymn. It would be interesting if that were so,
+but the formula of citation seems to oblige us to look to Scripture for
+the source from which my text is taken. However, let us leave these
+thoughts, and come to the text itself. It is an earnest call from God.
+It describes a condition, peals forth a summons, and gives a promise.
+Let us listen to what 'He saith' in all these regards.</p>
+
+<p>I. First of all, then, the condition of the persons addressed.</p>
+
+<p>The two sad metaphors, <i>slumberers</i> and <i>dead</i>, are applied to the same
+persons. There must, therefore, be some latitude in the application of
+the figures and they must be confined in their interpretation to some
+one or more points in which sleep and death are alike.</p>
+
+<p>Now we all know that, as the proverb says, 'sleep is the image of
+death.' And what is the point of comparison? Mainly this, that the
+sleeper and the corpse are alike unconscious of an external world,
+unable to receive impressions from it, or to put forth action on it; and
+there, as I take it, is especially the point which is in the Apostle's
+view.</p>
+
+<p>The sleeper and the dead man alike are in the midst<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_320" id="Page_1_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> of an order of
+things of which they are all unaware. And you and I live in two worlds,
+one, this low, fleeting, material one; and the other the white, snowy
+peaks that girdle it as do the Alps the Lombard plains; and men live all
+unconscious of that which lies on their horizon. But the metaphor of a
+level ground encircled by mountains does not fully represent the
+closeness of the connection between these two worlds, of both of which
+every one of us is a denizen. For on all sides, pressing in upon us,
+enfolding us like an atmosphere, penetrating into all the material,
+underlying all which is visible, all of which has its roots in the
+unseen, is that world which the mass of men are in a conspiracy to
+ignore and forget. And just as the sleeper is unconscious of all around
+him in his chamber, and of all the stir and beauty of the world in which
+he lives, so the bulk of us go blind and darkling through life, absorbed
+in the things seen, and never lift even a momentary and lack-lustre
+glance to the august realities which lie behind these, and give them all
+their significance and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; and just as in a dream men are busy with baseless phantoms that
+vanish and are forgotten, and seem to themselves to be occupied, whilst
+all the while they are lying prone and passive, so the mass of us are
+sleep-walkers. What are many men who will be hurrying on to the
+Manchester Exchange on Tuesday? What are they but men who are dreaming
+that they are at work, but are only at work on dreams which will vanish
+when the eyes are opened? Practical men, who are busy and absorbed with
+affairs and with the things of this present, curl their lips about
+'idealists' of all sorts, be they idealists of thought, or of art, or of
+benevolence, or of religion, and call them dreamers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_321" id="Page_1_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> The boot is on the
+other leg. It is the idealists that are awake, and it is you people that
+live for to-day, and have not learned that to-day is a little fragment
+and sliver of eternity&mdash;it is you who are dreamers, and all these things
+round about us&mdash;the solid-seeming realities&mdash;are illusions, and</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Like the bubbles on a river,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Sparkling, bursting, borne away,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>they will disappear. There is only one reality, and that is God, and the
+only lives that lay hold of the substance are those which grasp Him. The
+rest of you are shadows hunting for shadows.</p>
+
+<p>The two metaphors of my text coincide in suggesting another thing, and
+that is the awful contrast in the average life between what is in a man
+and what comes out of him. 'Dormant power,' we talk about. Ah, how
+tragically the true man is dormant in all the work of worldly hearts!
+God has made a great mistake in making you what you are, if there is no
+place for you to exercise your powers in but this present world, and
+nothing to exercise them on except the things that pass and perish.
+Travellers in lands where civilisation used to be, and barbarism now is,
+find sculptured stones from temples turned into fences for cattle-sheds
+and walls round pigstyes. And that is something like what men do with
+the faculties that God has given them. Why, the best part of you,
+brother, if you are not a Christian, and living a Christian life&mdash;the
+best part of you is asleep, and it is only the lower nature of you that
+is awake! Sometimes the sleepers stir uneasily. It used to be said that
+earthquakes were caused by a giant rolling himself from side to side in
+his troubled slumber. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_322" id="Page_1_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> there are earthquakes in your heart and
+spirit caused by the half-waking of the dormant self, the true man, who
+is immersed and embruted in sense and the things of time. Some of you by
+earthly lusts, some of you by over-indulgence in fleshly appetites,
+eating and drinking and the like; some of you by absorption in the mere
+externals of trade and profession and occupation to the entire neglect
+of the inward thing which would glorify and exalt these&mdash;but all of us
+somehow, unless we are living for God, have lulled our best, true,
+central self into slumber, and lie as if dead.</p>
+
+<p>Now, brethren, do not forget that this exhortation of my text, and
+therefore this description, is addressed to a community of professing
+Christians. I hope you will not misunderstand me as if I thought that
+such a picture as I have been trying to draw applies only to men that
+have no religion in them at all. It applies in varying degrees to men
+that have, as&mdash;I was going to say the bulk, but perhaps that is
+exaggeration, let me say a tragically large number&mdash;of professing
+Christians, and a proportionate number of the professing Christians in
+this audience have, a little life and a great circumference of death.
+Dear brethren, you may call yourselves, and may be Christian people, and
+have somewhat shaken off the torpor, and roused yourself from the
+slumbering death of which I have been speaking. Remember that it still
+hangs to you, and that it was of Christians that the Master said:
+'Whilst the Lord was away they all slumbered and slept'; and that it was
+of a Christian Church, and not of a pagan world, that the same voice
+from heaven said: 'Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.' And
+so I beseech you, bear with me, and do not think I am scolding, or
+flinging about wild words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_323" id="Page_1_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> at random, when I make a very earnest appeal
+to each individual professing, and real, Christian in this congregation,
+and ask them to consider, each for themselves, how much of sleep is
+still in their drowsy eyes, and how far it is true that the quickening
+life of Jesus Christ has penetrated, as the sunbeams into the darkness,
+into the heavy mass of their natural death.</p>
+
+<p>II. Secondly, let me ask you to look at the summons to awake.</p>
+
+<p>It comes like the morning bugle to an army, 'Awake, thou that sleepest,
+and arise from the dead.' Now, I am not going to waste your time by
+talking about the old, well-worn, interminable, and unprofitable
+controversy as to God's part and man's in this awaking, but I do wish to
+insist upon this plain fact, that the command here presupposes upon our
+parts, whether we be Christian people or not, the ability to obey. God
+would not mock a man by telling him to do what he cannot do. And it is
+perfectly clear that the one attitude in which we may be sure of God's
+help to keep any of His commandments, and this amongst the rest, is when
+we are trying to keep them. 'Stretch out thy hand,' said Christ to the
+man whose disease was that he could not stretch it out. 'Arise and
+walk,' said Christ to the man whose lifelong sadness it was that his
+limbs had no power. 'Lazarus, come forth,' said Christ unto the dull,
+cold ear of death. And Lazarus heard, wherever he was, and, though his
+feet were tangled with the graveclothes, he came stumbling out, because
+the power to do what he was bid had come wrapped in the command to do
+it. And if these other two men had turned to Jesus and said, 'What is
+the use of telling me to stretch out my hand,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_324" id="Page_1_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> or me to move my limbs?
+Thou knowest that I can not,' they would have lain there paralysed till
+they died. But when they heard the command there came a tingling sense
+of new ability into the withered limb. 'And he stretched forth his hand,
+and it was restored whole as the other.' Ay, but the process of
+restoration began when he willed to stretch it out in obedience to the
+command, which was a promise as much as a command. So we need not
+trouble ourselves with the question how the dead man can arise, or how
+the sleeper can wake himself.</p>
+
+<p>This, at all events, is clear, that if what I have been saying is true
+as to the main point in view in both the metaphors, viz. the
+unconsciousness of the unseen world, and the slumbering powers that we
+have within us, then the remedy for that <i>is</i> in our own hands. There
+are scarcely any limits to be put to a man's capacity of determining for
+himself what shall be the object of his thought, his interest, his
+affection, or his pursuits. You can withdraw your desires and
+contemplations from the intrusive and absorbing present. You can coerce
+yourselves to concentrate more thought than you do, more interest,
+affection, and effort than you have ever done, upon the things that are
+unseen. You can turn your gaze thither. You cannot directly and
+immediately regulate your feelings, but you can settle the thoughts
+which shall guide the feelings, and you can, and you <i>do</i>, fix for
+yourselves, though not consciously, the things which shall be uppermost
+in your regard, and supreme in the ordering of your life.</p>
+
+<p>And so the commandment of my text is but this, 'Wake from the illusions;
+rouse yourselves to the contemplation of the things unseen and eternal.
+Let<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_325" id="Page_1_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> the Lord always be before your face.' And you will be awake and
+alive.</p>
+
+<p>III. And so my last point is the promise of the morning light which
+gladdens the wakeful eye. 'Christ shall give thee light.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, if the words of my text are an allusion to the prophecy to which I
+have already referred, it is striking to observe, though I cannot dwell
+upon the thought, that Paul here unhesitatingly ascribes to Jesus Christ
+an action which, in the source of his quotation, is ascribed to Jehovah.
+'Arise, shine, for thy light has come, and the glory of <i>Jehovah</i> is
+risen upon thee,' says the prophet. 'Arise! thou that sleepest,' says
+Paul, 'and <i>Christ</i> shall give thee light.' As always, he regards his
+Lord as possessed of fully divine attributes; and he has learned the
+depth of the Master's own saying, 'Whatsoever things the Father doeth,
+these also doeth the Son <i>likewise</i>.' But I turn from that to the main
+point to be insisted upon here, that the Apostle is setting forth this
+as a certainty, that if a man will open his eyes he will have light
+enough. The sunshine is flooding the world. It falls upon the closed
+eyelids of the sleepers, and would fain gently lift them, that it might
+enter. A man needs nothing more than to shake off the slumber, and bring
+himself into the conscious presence of the unseen glories that surround
+us, in order to get light enough and to spare&mdash;whether you mean by light
+knowledge for guidance on the path of life, or whether you mean by it
+purity that shall scatter the darkness of evil from the heart, or
+whether you mean by it the joy that comes in the morning, radiant and
+fresh as the sunrise over the Eastern hills. 'Awake, and Christ <i>shall</i>
+give thee light.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_326" id="Page_1_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The miracle of Goshen is reversed, in the case of many of us, the land
+is flashing in the sunshine, but within our houses there is midnight
+darkness, not because there is not light around, but because the
+shutters are shut. Oh, brethren, it is a solemn thing to choose the
+darkness rather than the light. And you do that&mdash;though not consciously,
+and in so many words, making your election&mdash;by indifference, by neglect,
+by the direction of the main current of your thoughts and desires and
+aims to perishable things, and by the deeds that follow from such a
+disposition. These choose for you, and you, in effect, choose by them.</p>
+
+<p>I beseech you, do not let Christ's own trumpet-call fall upon your ears,
+as if faint and far away, like the unwelcome summons that comes to a
+drowsy man in the morning. You know that if, having been called, he
+makes up his mind to lie a little longer, he is almost sure to fall more
+dead asleep than he was before. And if you hear, however dim, distantly,
+and through my poor words, Christ's voice saying to you, 'Awake! thou
+that sleepest,' do not neglect it. The only safe course is to spring up
+at once. If thou dost, 'Christ shall give thee light,' never fear. The
+light is all about you. You only need to open your eyes, and it will
+pour in. If you do not, you surround yourself with darkness that may be
+felt here, and ensures for yourself a horror of great darkness in the
+death hereafter.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_327" id="Page_1_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="REDEEMING_THE_TIME" id="REDEEMING_THE_TIME"></a>REDEEMING THE TIME</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'See, then, that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
+redeeming the time, because the days are evil.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> v. 15, 16.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Some of us have, in all probability, very little more 'time' to
+'redeem.' Some of us have, in all probability, the prospect of many
+years yet to live. For both classes my text presents the best motto for
+another year. The most frivolous among us, I suppose, have some thoughts
+when we step across the conventional boundary that seems to separate the
+unbroken sequence of moments into periods; and as you in your business
+take stock and see how your accounts stand, so I would fain, for you and
+myself, make this a moment in which we may see where we are going, what
+we are doing, and how we are using this great gift of life.</p>
+
+<p>My text gives us the true Christian view of time. It tells us what to do
+with it, and urges by implication certain motives for the conduct.</p>
+
+<p>I. We have, first, what we ought to think about 'the time.'</p>
+
+<p>There are two words in the New Testament, both of which are translated
+<i>time</i>, but they mean very different things. One of them, the more
+common, simply implies the succession of moments or periods; the other,
+which is employed here, means rather a definite portion of time to which
+some definite work or occurrence belongs. It is translated sometimes
+<i>season</i>, sometimes <i>opportunity</i>. Both these renderings occur in
+immediate proximity in the Epistle to the Galatians, where the Apostle
+says: 'As we have therefore opportunity let us do good to all men, for
+in due season we shall reap, if we faint not....' And, again, it is
+employed side<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_328" id="Page_1_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> by side with the other word to which I have referred, in
+the Acts of the Apostles, where we read, 'It is not for you to know the
+times or the seasons'&mdash;the former word simply indicating the succession
+of moments, the latter word indicating epochs or crises to which special
+work or events belong.</p>
+
+<p>And so here 'redeeming the <i>time</i>' does not merely mean making the most
+of moments, but means laying hold of, and understanding the special
+significance of, life as a whole, and of each succeeding instant of it
+as the season for some specific duty. It is not merely 'time,' it is
+'<i>the</i> time'; not merely the empty succession of beats of the pendulum,
+but these moralised, as it were, heightened, and having significance,
+because each is apprehended as having a special mission, and affording
+an opportunity for a special work.</p>
+
+<p>Now, there are two aspects of that general thought, on each of which I
+would touch. The Apostle here uses the singular number, and speaks not
+of the times, but of 'the time'; as if the whole of life were an
+opportunity, a season for some one clear duty which manifestly belongs
+to it, and is meant to be done in it.</p>
+
+<p>What is that? There are a great many ways of answering that question,
+but even more important perhaps than the way of answering is the mood of
+mind which asks it. If we could only get into this, as our habitual
+temper and disposition, asking ourselves what life is for, then we
+should have conquered nine-tenths of our temptations, and all but
+secured that we shall aim at the purpose which thus clearly and
+constantly shines before us. Oh! if I could get some of my friends here
+this morning, who have never really looked this solemn question in the
+face, to rise above the mere accidents of their daily occupations,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_329" id="Page_1_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> and
+to take their orders, not from circumstances, or from the people whom
+they admire and imitate, but at first hand from considering what they
+really are here for, and why their days in their whole sweep are given
+them, I should not have spoken in vain. The sensualist answers the
+question in one way, the busy Manchester man in another, the careful,
+burdened mother in another, the student in another, the moralist in
+another. But all that is good in each answer is included in the wider
+one, that the end of life, the purpose for which 'the season' is granted
+us, is that 'we should glorify God and enjoy Him for ever.'</p>
+
+<p>I do not care whether you say that the end for which we live is the
+salvation of our souls, or whether you put it in other words, and say
+that it is the cultivation and perfecting of a Christ-like and
+God-pleasing character, or whether you admit still another aspect, and
+say that it is the intention of time to prepare us for that which lies
+beyond time. Time is the lackey of eternity, and the chamberlain that
+opens the gates of the Kingdom of God. All these various answers are at
+bottom one. Life is ours mainly in order that, by faith in Jesus Christ,
+we should struggle, and do, and by struggles, by sorrows, and by all
+that befalls us, should grow liker Him, and so fitter for the calm joys
+of that place where the throb of the pendulum has ceased, and the hours
+are stable and eternal. We live here in order to get ready for living
+yonder. And we get ready for living yonder, when here we understand that
+every moment of life is granted us for the one purpose, which can be
+pursued through all life&mdash;viz. the becoming liker our dear Lord, and the
+drinking in to our own hearts more of His Spirit, and moulding our
+characters more in conformity with His image.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_330" id="Page_1_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> That is what my life and
+yours are given us for. If we succeed in that, we succeed all round. If
+we fail in that, whatever else we succeed in, we have failed altogether.</p>
+
+<p>But then, remember, still further, the other aspect in which we can look
+at this thought. That ultimate, all-embracing end is reached through a
+multitude of nearer and intermediate ones. Whilst life, as a whole, is
+the season for learning to know and for possessing God, life is broken
+up into smaller portions and periods, each of which has some special
+duty appropriate to it and a 'lesson for the day.'</p>
+
+<p>Now many of us, who entirely agree, theoretically, in saying that all
+life is granted for this highest purpose, go wrong here and fail to
+discern the significance of single moments. To-day is always
+commonplace; it is yesterday that is beautiful, and to-morrow that is
+full of possibilities, to the vulgar mind. But to-day is common and low.
+There are mountains ahead and mountains behind, purple with distance and
+radiant with sunshine, and the sky bends over them and seems to touch
+their crests. But here, on the spot where we stand, life seems flat and
+mean, and far away from the heavens. We admit the meaning of life taken
+altogether, but it is very hard to break up that recognition into
+fragments, and to feel the worth of these fleeting moments which, just
+because they are here, seem to be of small account. So we forget that
+life is only the aggregate of small present instants, and that the hour
+is sixty times sixty insignificant seconds, and the day twenty-four
+brief hours, and the year 365 commonplace days, and the life threescore
+years and ten. Brethren, carry your theoretical recognition of the
+greatness and solemnity of the purposes for which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_331" id="Page_1_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> life has been given
+here into each of the moments of the passing day, and you will find that
+there is nothing so elastic as time; and that you can crowd into a day
+as much as a languid thousand years do sometimes hold, of sacrifice and
+service, of holy joys, and of likeness to Jesus Christ. He who has
+learned that all the moments are heavy with significance, and pregnant
+with immortal issues, he, too, in some measure may share in the
+prerogative of the timeless God, and to Him 'one day may be as a
+thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' It is not the beat of
+the pendulum or the tick of the clock that measure time, but it is the
+deeds which we crowd into it, and the feelings and thoughts which it
+ministers to us. This passing life draws all its importance from the
+boundless eternal issues to which it leads. Every little puddle on the
+paving-stones this morning, a quarter of an inch broad and a film deep,
+will be mirroring bright sunshine, and blue with the reflected heaven.
+And so we may make the little drop of our lives radiant with the image
+of God, and bright with the certainties of immortality.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now, note secondly, how to make the most of the season.</p>
+
+<p>'Redeeming the time,' says the Apostle. The figure is very simple and
+natural, and has only been felt to be difficult and obscure, because
+people have tried to ride the metaphor further than it was meant. The
+questions of who is the seller and what is the price do not enter into
+the Apostle's mind at all. Metaphors are not to be driven so far as
+that. We have to confine ourselves to the simple thought that there is a
+need for making the opportunity which is given truly our own; and that
+that can only be done by giving something in exchange for it. That is
+the notion of purchase, is it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_332" id="Page_1_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> not? Acquisition, by giving something
+else. Thus, says Paul, you have to buy the opportunity which time
+affords us.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, to begin with, life gives us opportunities and no more.
+We <i>may</i>, in and through it, become wise, good, pure, happy, noble,
+Christ-like, or we may not. The opportunity is there, swinging, as it
+were, <i>in vacuo</i>. Lay hold of it, says he, and turn it into more than an
+opportunity&mdash;even an actuality and a fact.</p>
+
+<p>And how is that to be done? We have to give something away, if we get
+the opportunity for our very own. What have we to give away? Well,
+mainly the lower ends for which the moment might serve. These have to be
+surrendered&mdash;sometimes abandoned altogether, always rigidly restricted
+and kept in utter subordination to the highest purposes. To-day is given
+us mainly that we may learn to know God better, and to love Him more,
+and to serve Him more joyfully. Our daily duties are given us for the
+same purpose. But if we go about them without thinking of God or the
+highest ends which life is meant to serve, then we shall certainly lose
+the highest ends, and an opportunity will go past us unimproved. But if,
+on the other hand, whilst we follow our daily business for the sake of
+legitimate temporal gain, we see, above that, the aspect of daily life
+as educating in all Christian nobleness and lofty thoughts and purposes,
+then we shall have given away the lower ends for the sake of attaining
+the higher. You live, suppose, to found a business, to become masters of
+your trade, to gain wisdom and knowledge, to establish for yourselves a
+position amongst your fellow-men, to cultivate your character so as to
+grow in wisdom and purity, apart from God. Or you live in order to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_333" id="Page_1_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> win
+affection and move thankfully in the heaven of loving associations in
+your home, amongst your children. Or you live for the sake of carrying
+some lower but real good amongst men. Many of these ends are beautiful
+and noble, and necessary for the cultivation and discharge of the
+various duties and relationships of life; but unless they are all kept
+secondary, and there towers above them this other, life is wasted. If
+life is not to be wasted, they must be bartered for the higher, and we
+must recognise that to give all things for the sake of Christ and His
+love is wise merchandise and good exchange. 'What things were gain to
+me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea! doubtless, and I count all
+things but loss that I may win Him and be found of Him.' You must barter
+the lower if you are to secure the higher ends for which life is the
+appointed season.</p>
+
+<p>And then, still more minutely, my text gives us another suggestion about
+this 'redeeming the time.' 'See, then,' says the Apostle, 'that ye walk
+circumspectly.' The word rendered circumspectly might better, perhaps,
+be translated in some such way as 'strictly,' 'rigidly,' 'accurately,'
+'punctiliously.' As I take it, it is to be connected with the 'walk,'
+and not with the 'see, then,' as the Revised Version does.</p>
+
+<p>So here is a practical direction, walk strictly, accurately, looking to
+your feet; as a man would do who was upon what they call in the Alps an
+<i>arr&ecirc;te</i>. Suppose a narrow ridge of snow piled on the top of a ledge of
+rock, with a precipice of 5000 feet on either side, and a cornice of
+snow hanging over empty space. The climber puts his alpenstock before
+his foot, he tests with his foot before he rests his weight, for a false
+step and down he goes!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_334" id="Page_1_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'See that you walk circumspectly,' rigidly, accurately, punctiliously.
+Live by law&mdash;that is to say, live by principles which imply duties; for
+to live by inclination is ruin. The only safety is, look to your feet
+and look to your road, and restrain yourselves, 'and so redeem the
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>There is something else to look to. Feet? Yes! Road? Yes! But also look
+to your guide. Tread in Christ's footsteps, 'follow the Lamb
+whithersoever He goeth.' Make Him the pattern and example, and then you
+shall walk safely; and the path will carry you right into 'His presence
+where there is fulness of joy.' No great, noble, right, blessed life is
+lived without rigid self-control, self-denial, and self-crucifixion. Do
+not fancy that that means the absence of joy and spontaneity. 'I will
+walk at liberty for I keep Thy precepts.' Hedges are blessings when, on
+the other side, there are bottomless swamps of poisonous miasma, into
+which if a man ventures he will either drown or be plague-stricken. The
+narrow way that leads to life is the way of peace, just because it is a
+way of restrictions. Better to walk on the narrowest path that leads to
+the City than to be chartered libertines, wandering anywhere at our own
+bitter wills, and finding 'no end, in devious mazes lost.' Freedom
+consists in obeying from the heart the restriction of love; and walking
+punctiliously.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, note the motives for this course.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle says, 'see that ye walk strictly, not as fools but as wise.'
+That is to say, such limitation, which buys the opportunity and uses it
+for the highest purposes, is the only true wisdom. If you take the mean,
+miserable, partial, fleeting purposes for which some of us, alas, are
+squandering our lives, and contrast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_335" id="Page_1_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> these with the great, perfect,
+all-satisfying, blessed, and eternal end for which it was given us, how
+can we escape being convicted of folly? One day, dear friends, it will
+be found out that the virgins that were not ready when the Lord came
+were the foolish ones. One day it will be asked of you and of me, 'What
+did you do with the life which I gave you, that you might know Me?' And
+if we have only the answer, 'O Lord! I founded a big business in
+Manchester&mdash;I made a fortune&mdash;I wrote a clever book, that was most
+favourably reviewed&mdash;I brought up a family'&mdash;the only thing fit to be
+said to us is, 'Thou fool!' The only wisdom is the wisdom that secures
+the end for which life was given.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another motive here. 'Redeeming the time <i>because</i> the
+days are evil.' That is singular. 'The days' are 'the time,' and yet
+they are 'evil' days, which being translated into other words is just
+this&mdash;we are to make a definite effort to keep in view, and to effect,
+the purposes for which all the days of our lives are given us, because
+these days have in themselves a tendency to draw us away from the true
+path and to blind us as to their real meaning. The world is full of
+possibilities of good and evil, and the same day which, in one aspect,
+is the 'season' for serving God is, in another aspect, an 'evil' day
+which may draw us away from Him. And if we do not put out manly effort,
+it certainly will do so. The ocean is meant to bear the sailor to his
+port, but from the waves rise up fair forms, siren voices, with sweet
+harps and bright eyes that tempt the weary mariner to his destruction.
+And the days which may be occasions for our getting nearer God, if we
+let them work their will upon us, will be evil days which draw us away
+from Him.</p>
+
+<p>Let me add one last motive which is not stated in my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_336" id="Page_1_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> text, but is
+involved in the very idea of <i>opportunity</i> or <i>season</i>&mdash;viz. that the
+time for the high and noble purposes of which I have been speaking is
+rigidly limited and bounded; and once past is irrevocable. The old, wise
+mythological story tells us that Occasion is bald behind, and is to be
+grasped by the forelock. The moment that is past had in it wonderful
+possibilities for us. If we did not grasp them with promptitude and
+decision they have gone for ever. You may as well try to bring back the
+water that has been sucked over Niagara, and churned into white foam at
+its base, as to recall the wasted opportunities. They stand all along
+the course of our years, solemn monuments of our unfaithfulness, and
+none of them can ever return again. Life is full of too-lates; that sad
+sound that moans through the roofless ruins of the past, like the wind
+through some deserted temple. 'Too late, too late; ye cannot enter now.'
+'The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore he shall
+beg in harvest and have nothing.' Oh! let us see to it that we wring out
+of the passing moments their highest possibilities of noblest good. Let
+us begin to live; for only he who lives to God really lives. Life is
+given to us that we may know Jesus Christ&mdash;trust Him, love Him, serve
+Him, be like Him. That is the pearl which, if we bring up from the sea
+of time, we shall not have been cast in vain into its stormy waves. Do
+you take care that this new year which is dawning upon us go not to join
+the many wasted years that lie desolate behind us, but let us all see to
+it that the flood which sweeps us and it away bears us straight to God,
+Who is our home. 'Now is the accepted time, now is the day of
+salvation.'</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_337" id="Page_1_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_PANOPLY_OF_GOD" id="THE_PANOPLY_OF_GOD"></a>THE PANOPLY OF GOD</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span>
+vi. 13.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The military metaphor of which this verse is the beginning was obviously
+deeply imprinted on Paul's mind. It is found in a comparatively
+incomplete form in his earliest epistle, the first to the Thessalonians,
+in which the children of the day are exhorted to put on the breastplate
+of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. It reappears,
+in a slightly varied form, in the Epistle to the Romans, where those
+whose salvation is nearer than when they believed, are exhorted, because
+the day is at hand, to cast off, as it were, their night-gear, and to
+put on the 'armour of light'; and here, in this Epistle of the
+Captivity, it is most fully developed. The Roman legionary, to whom Paul
+was chained, here sits all unconsciously for his portrait, every detail
+of which is pressed by Paul into the service of his vivid imagination;
+the virtues and graces of the Christian character, which are 'the armour
+of light,' are suggested to the Apostle by the weapon which the soldier
+by his side wore. The vulgarest and most murderous implements assume a
+new character when looked upon with the eyes of a poet and a Christian.
+Our present text constitutes the general introduction to the great
+picture which follows, of 'the panoply of God.'</p>
+
+<p>I. We must be ready for times of special assaults from evil.</p>
+
+<p>Most of us feel but little the stern reality underlying the metaphor,
+that the whole Christian life is warfare, but that in that warfare there
+are crises, seasons of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_338" id="Page_1_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> special danger. The interpretation which makes
+the 'evil day' co-extensive with the time of life destroys the whole
+emphasis of the passage: whilst all days are days of warfare, there will
+be, as in some prolonged siege, periods of comparative quiet; and again,
+days when all the cannon belch at once, and scaling ladders are reared
+on every side of the fortress. In a long winter there are days sunny and
+calm followed, as they were preceded, by days when all the winds are let
+loose at once. For us, such times of special danger to Christian
+character may arise from temporal vicissitudes. Joy and prosperity are
+as sure to occasion them as are sorrows, for to Paul the 'evil day' is
+that which especially threatens moral and spiritual character, and these
+may be as much damaged by the bright sunshine of prosperity as by the
+midwinter of adversity, just as fierce sunshine may be as fatal as
+killing frost. They may also arise, without any such change in
+circumstances, from some temptation coming with more than ordinary
+force, and directed with terrible accuracy to our weakest point.</p>
+
+<p>These evil days are ever wont to come on us suddenly; they are heralded
+by no storm signals and no falling barometer. We may be like soldiers
+sitting securely round their camp fire, till all at once bullets begin
+to fall among them. The tiger's roar is the first signal of its leap
+from the jungle. Our position in the world, our ignorance of the future,
+the heaped-up magazines of combustibles within, needing only a spark,
+all lay us open to unexpected assaults, and the temptation comes
+stealthily, 'as a thief in the night.' Nothing is so certain as the
+unexpected. For these reasons, then, because the 'evil day' will
+certainly come, because it may come at any time, and because it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_339" id="Page_1_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> is most
+likely to come 'when we look not for it,' it is the dictate of plain
+common sense to be prepared. If the good man of the house had known at
+what hour the thief would have come, he would have watched; but he would
+have been a wiser man if he had watched all the more, because he did
+<i>not</i> know at what hour the thief would come.</p>
+
+<p>II. To withstand these we must be armed against them before they come.</p>
+
+<p>The main point of the exhortation is this previous preparation. It is
+clear enough that it is no time to fly to our weapons when the enemy is
+upon us. Aldershot, not the battlefield, is the place for learning
+strategy. Belshazzar was sitting at his drunken feast while the Persians
+were marching on Babylon, and in the night he was slain. When great
+crises arise in a nation's history, some man whose whole life has been
+preparing him for the hour starts to the front and does the needed work.
+If a sailor put off learning navigation till the wind was howling and a
+reef lay ahead, his corpse would be cast on the cruel rocks. It is well
+not to be 'over-exquisite,' to cast the fashion of 'uncertain evils,'
+but certain ones cannot be too carefully anticipated, nor too sedulously
+prepared for.</p>
+
+<p>The manner in which this preparation is to be carried out is distinctly
+marked here. The armour is to be put on before the conflict begins. Now,
+without anticipating what will more properly come in considering
+subsequent details, we may notice that such a previous assumption
+implies mainly two things&mdash;a previous familiarity with God's truth, and
+a previous exercise of Christian virtues. As to the former, the
+subsequent context speaks of taking the sword of the Spirit, which is
+the word of God, and of having the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_340" id="Page_1_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> loins girt with truth, which may be
+objective truth. As to the latter, we need not elaborate the Apostle's
+main thought that resistance to sudden temptations is most vigorous when
+a man is accustomed to goodness. One of the prophets treats it as being
+all but impossible that they who have been accustomed to evil shall
+learn to do well, and it is at least not less impossible that they who
+have been accustomed to do well shall learn to do evil. Souls which
+habitually walk in the clear spaces of the bracing air on the mountains
+of God will less easily be tempted down to the shut-in valleys where
+malaria reigns. The positive exercise of Christian graces tends to
+weaken the force of temptation. A mind occupied with these has no room
+for it. Higher tastes are developed which makes the poison sweetness of
+evil unsavoury, and just as the Israelites hungered for the strong,
+coarse-smelling leeks and garlic of Egypt, and therefore loathed 'this
+light bread,' so they whose palates have been accustomed to manna will
+have little taste for leeks and garlic. The mental and spiritual
+activity involved in the habitual exercise of Christian virtues will go
+far to make the soul unassailable by evil. A man, busily occupied, as
+the Apostle would have us to be, may be tempted by the devil, though
+less frequently the more he is thus occupied; but one who has no such
+occupations and interests tempts the devil. If our lives are inwardly
+and secretly honeycombed with evil, only a breath will be needed to
+throw down the structure. It is possible to become so accustomed to the
+calm delights of goodness, that it would need a moral miracle to make a
+man fall into sin.</p>
+
+<p>III. To be armed with this armour, we must get it from God.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_341" id="Page_1_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Though it consists mainly of habitudes and dispositions of our own
+minds, none the less have we to receive these from above. It is 'the
+panoply of God,' therefore we are to be endued with it, not by exercises
+in our own strength, but by dependence on Him. In old days, before a
+squire was knighted, he had to keep a vigil in the chapel of the castle,
+and through the hours of darkness to watch his armour and lift his soul
+to God, and we shall never put on the armour of light unless in silence
+we draw near to Him who teaches our hands to war and our fingers to
+fight. Communion with Christ, and only communion with Christ, receives
+from Him the life which enables us to repel the diseases of our spirits.
+What He imparts to those who thus wait upon Him, and to them only, is
+the Spirit which helps their infirmities and clothes their undefended
+nakedness with a coat of mail. If we go forth to war with evil, clothed
+and armed only with what we can provide, we shall surely be worsted in
+the fray. If we go forth into the world of struggle from the secret
+place of the Most High, 'no weapon that is formed against us shall
+prosper,' and we shall be more than conquerors through Him that loved
+us.</p>
+
+<p>But waiting on God to receive our weapons from Him is but part of what
+is needful for our equipment. It is we who have to gird our loins and
+put on the breastplate, and shoe our feet, and take the shield of faith,
+and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. The cumbrous
+armour of old days could only be put on by the help of another pulling
+straps, and fixing buckles, and lifting and bracing heavy shields on
+arms, and fastening helmets upon heads; but we have, by our own effort,
+to clothe ourselves with God's great gift, which is of no use to us, and
+is in no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_342" id="Page_1_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> real sense ours, unless we do. It takes no small effort to
+keep ourselves in the attitude of dependence and receptivity, without
+which none of the great gifts of God come to us, and, least of all, the
+habitual practice of Christian virtues. The soldier who rushed into the
+fight, leaving armour and arms huddled together on the ground, would
+soon fall, and God's giving avails nothing for our defence unless there
+is also our taking. It is the woful want of taking the things that are
+freely given to us of God, and of making our own what by His gift is our
+own, that is mainly responsible for the defeats of which we are all
+conscious. Looking back on our own evil days, we must all be aware that
+our defeats have mainly come from one or other of the two errors which
+lie so near us all, and which are intimately connected with each
+other&mdash;the one being that of fighting in our own strength, and the other
+being that of leaving unused our God-given power.</p>
+
+<p>IV. The issue of successful resistance is increased firmness of footing.</p>
+
+<p>If we are able to 'withstand in the evil day,' we shall 'stand' more
+securely when the evil day has stormed itself away. If we keep erect in
+the shock of battle, we shall stand more secure when the wild charge has
+been beaten back. The sea hurls tons of water against the slender
+lighthouse on the rock, and if it stands, the smashing of the waves
+consolidates it. The reward of firm resistance is increased firmness. As
+the Red Indians used to believe that the strength of the slain enemies
+whom they had scalped passed into their arms, so we may have power
+developed by conflict, and we shall more fully understand, and more
+passionately believe in, the principles and truths which have served us
+in past fights. David would not wear Saul's armour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_343" id="Page_1_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> because, as he said,
+'I have not proved it,' and the Christian who has come victoriously
+through one struggle should be ready to say, 'I have proved it'; we have
+the word of the Lord, which is <i>tried</i>, to trust to, and not we only,
+but generations, have tested it, and it has stood the tests. Therefore,
+it is not for us to hesitate as to the worth of our weapons, or to doubt
+that they are more than sufficient for every conflict which we may be
+called upon to wage.</p>
+
+<p>The text plainly implies that all our life long we shall be in danger of
+sudden assaults. It does contemplate victory in the evil day, but it
+also contemplates that after we have withstood, we have still to stand
+and be ready for another attack to-morrow. Our life here is, and must
+still be, a continual warfare. Peace is not bought by any victories;
+'There is no discharge in that war.' Like the ten thousand Greeks who
+fought their way home through clouds of enemies from the heart of Asia,
+we are never safe till we come to the mountain-top, where we can cry,
+'The Sea!' But though all our paths lead us through enemies, we have
+Jesus, who has conquered them all, with us, and our hearts should not
+fail so long as we can hear His brave voice encouraging us: 'In the
+world ye have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the
+world.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_GIRDLE_OF_TRUTH" id="THE_GIRDLE_OF_TRUTH"></a>'THE GIRDLE OF TRUTH'</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Stand, therefore, having girded your loins with truth.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> vi.
+14 (R.V.).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The general exhortation here points to the habitual attitude of the
+Christian soldier. However many conflicts he may have waged, he is still
+to be ever ready<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_344" id="Page_1_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> for fresh assaults, for in regard to them he may be
+quite sure that to-morrow will bring its own share of them, and that the
+evil day is never left behind so long as days still last. That general
+exhortation is followed by clauses which are sometimes said to be
+cotemporaneous with it, and to be definitions of the way in which it is
+to be accomplished, but they are much rather statements of what is to be
+done before the soldier takes his stand. He is to be fully equipped
+first: he is to take up his position second. We may note that, in all
+the list of his equipment, there is but one weapon of offence&mdash;the sword
+of the Spirit; all the rest are defensive weapons. The girdle, which is
+the first specified, is not properly a weapon at all, but it comes first
+because the belt keeps all the other parts of the armour in place, and
+gives agility to the wearer. Having girded your loins (R.V.) is better
+than having your loins girded (A.V.), as bringing out more fully that
+the assumption of the belt is the soldier's own doing.</p>
+
+<p>I. We must be braced up if we are to fight.</p>
+
+<p>Concentration and tension of power is an absolute necessity for any
+effort, no matter how poor may be the aims to which it is directed, and
+what is needed for the successful prosecution of the lowest transient
+successes will surely not be less indispensable in the highest forms of
+life. If a poor runner for a wreath of parsley or of laurel cannot hope
+to win the fading prize unless all his powers are strained to the
+uttermost, the Christian athlete has still more certainly to run, so as
+the racer has to do, 'that he may obtain.' Loose-flowing robes are
+caught by every thorn by the way, and a soul which is not girded up is
+sure to be hindered in its course. 'This one thing I do' is the secret
+of all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_345" id="Page_1_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> successful doing, and obedience to the command of Jesus, 'let
+your loins be girded about,' is indispensable, if we would avoid
+polluting contact with evil. His other command associated with it will
+never be accomplished without it. The lamps will not be burning unless
+the loins are girt. The men who scatter their loves and thoughts over a
+wide space, and to whom the discipline which confines their energies
+within definite channels is distasteful, are destined to be failures in
+the struggle of life. It is better to have our lives running between
+narrow banks, and so to have a scour in the stream, than to have them
+spreading wide and shallow, with no driving force in all the useless
+expanse. Such concentration and bracing of oneself up is needful, if any
+of the rest of the great exhortations which follow are to be fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>It may be that Paul here has haunting his memory our Lord's words which
+we have just quoted; and, in any case, he is in beautiful accord with
+his brother Peter, who begins all the exhortations of his epistle with
+the words, 'Wherefore, girding up the loins of your mind, be sober, and
+set your minds perfectly upon the grace that is to be brought unto you
+at the revelation of Jesus Christ.' Peter, indeed, is not thinking of
+the soldier's belt, but he is, no doubt, remembering many a time when,
+in the toils of the fishing-boat, he had to tighten his robes round his
+waist to prepare for tugging at the oar, and he feels that such
+concentration is needful if a Christian life is ever to be sober, and to
+have its hope set perfectly on Christ and His grace.</p>
+
+<p>II. The girdle is to be truth.</p>
+
+<p>The question immediately arises as to whether truth here means objective
+truth&mdash;the truth of the Gospel, or subjective truth, or, as we are
+accustomed to say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_346" id="Page_1_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> truthfulness. It would seem that the former
+signification is rather included in the sword of the Spirit, which is
+the word of God, and it is best to regard the phrase 'with (literally
+"in") truth' here as having its ordinary meaning, of which we may take
+as examples the phrases, 'the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth';
+'love rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth';
+'whom I love in truth.' Absolute sincerity and transparent truthfulness
+may well be regarded as the girdle which encloses and keeps secure every
+other Christian grace and virtue.</p>
+
+<p>We do not need to go far to find a slight tinge of unreality marring the
+Christian life: we have only to scrutinise our own experiences to detect
+some tendency to affectation, to saying a little more than is quite
+true, even in our sincerest worship. And we cannot but recognise that in
+all Christian communities there is present an element of conventionalism
+in their prayers, and that often the public expression of religious
+emotions goes far beyond the realities of feeling in the worshippers. In
+fact, terrible as the acknowledgment may be, we shall be blind if we do
+not recognise that the average Christianity of this day suffers from
+nothing more than it does from the lack of this transparent sincerity,
+and of absolute correspondence between inward fact and outward
+expression. Types of Christianity which make much of emotion are, of
+course, specially exposed to such a danger, but those which make least
+of it are not exempt, and we all need to lay to heart, far more
+seriously than we ordinarily do, that God 'desires truth in the outward
+parts.' The sturdy English moralist who proclaimed 'Clear your mind of
+cant' as the first condition of attaining wisdom, was not so very far
+from Paul's point of view in our text,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_347" id="Page_1_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> but his exhortation covered but
+a small section of the Apostle's.</p>
+
+<p>This absolute sincerity is hard to attain, and still harder to retain.
+Hideous as the fact of posing or attitudinising in our religion may be,
+it is one that comes very easily to us all, and, when it comes, spreads
+fast and spoils everything. Just as the legionary's armour was held in
+its place by the girdle, and if that worked loose or was carelessly
+fastened, the breastplate would be sure to get out of position, so all
+the subsequent graces largely depend for their vigorous exercise on the
+prime virtue of truthfulness. Righteousness and faith will be weakened
+by the fatal taint of insincerity, and, on the other hand, conscious
+truthfulness will give strength to the whole man. Braced up and
+concentrated, our powers for all service and for all conflict will be
+increased. 'The bond of perfectness' is, no doubt, 'Love,' but that
+perfect bond will not be worn by us, unless we have girded our loins
+with truthfulness.</p>
+
+<p>It may be that in Paul's memory there is floating Isaiah's great vision
+of the 'Branch' out of the stock of Jesse, on whom the Spirit of the
+Lord was to rest, and on whom it was proclaimed that faithfulness (or as
+it is rendered in the Septuagint, by the same phrase which the Apostle
+here employs, 'in truth') was to be the girdle of his reins; but, at all
+events, that which the prophet saw to be in the ideal Messiah, the
+Apostle sees as essential to all the subjects of that King.</p>
+
+<p>III. Our truthfulness is the work of God's truth.</p>
+
+<p>We have already pointed out that the expression in the text may either
+be taken as referring to the subjective quality of truthfulness, or to
+the objective truth of God as contained in the Gospel, but these two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_348" id="Page_1_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
+interpretations may be united, for the main factor in producing the
+former is the faithful use of the latter and an honest submission to its
+operation. The Psalmist of old had learned that the great safeguard
+against sin was the resolve, 'Thy word have I hid in my heart.' That
+word brings to bear the mightiest motives that can sway life. It moves
+by love, by fear, by hope: it proposes the loftiest aim, even to imitate
+God as dear children; it gives clear directions, and draws straight and
+plain the pilgrim's path; it holds out the largest promises, and in a
+measure fulfils them, even in the narrowest and most troubled lives. If
+we have made God's truth our own, and are faithfully applying it to the
+details of daily life and submitting our whole selves to its operation,
+we shall be truthful and shall instinctively shrink from all unreality.
+If we know the truth as it is in Jesus, and walk in it, that 'truth will
+make us free,' and if thus 'we are in Him that is true, even in His Son,
+Jesus Christ,' that truth abiding in us, and with us, for ever, will
+make us truthful. In a heart so occupied and filled there is no room for
+the make-believes which are but too apt to creep into religious
+experience. Such a soul will recoil with an instinct of abhorrence from
+all that savours of ostentation, and will feel that its truest treasure
+cannot be shown. It is our duty not to hide God's righteousness within
+our hearts, but it is equally our duty to hide His word there. We have
+to seek to make manifest the 'savour of His knowledge in every place,'
+but we have also to remember that in our hearts there is a secret place,
+and that 'not easily forgiven are they who draw back the curtains,' and
+let a careless world look in. It is not for others to pry into the
+hidden mysteries of the fellowship of a soul with the indwelling
+Christ,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_349" id="Page_1_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> however it may be the Christian duty to show to all and sundry
+the blessed and transforming effects of that fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>But God's truth must be received and its power submitted to, if it is to
+implant in us the supreme grace of perfect truthfulness. Our minds and
+hearts must be saturated with it by many an hour of solitary reflection,
+by meditation which will diffuse its aroma like a fragrant perfume
+through our characters, and by the habit of bringing all circumstances,
+moods, and desires to be tested by its infallible criterion, and by the
+unreluctant acceptance of its guidance at every moment of our lives.
+There are many of us who, in a real though terribly imperfect sense,
+hold the truth, but who know nothing, or next to nothing, of its power
+to make us truthful. If it is to be of any use to us, we must make it
+ours in a far deeper sense than it is ours now; for many of us the
+girdle has been but carelessly fastened and has worked loose, and
+because, by our own faults, we have not 'abode in the truth,' it has
+come to pass that there is 'no truth in us.' We have set before us in
+the text the one condition on which all Christian progress depends, and
+if by any slackness we loosen the girdle of truthfulness, and admit into
+our religious life any taint of unreality, if our prayers say just a
+little more than is quite true, and our penitence a little less, we
+shall speedily find that hypocrisy and trivial insincerity are separated
+by very narrow limits. God's truth in the Gospel cleanses the inner man,
+but not without his own effort, and, therefore, we are commanded to
+'cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting
+holiness, in the fear of the Lord.'</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_350" id="Page_1_350">[Pg 350]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_BREASTPLATE_OF_RIGHTEOUSNESS" id="THE_BREASTPLATE_OF_RIGHTEOUSNESS"></a>'THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS'</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Having put on the breastplate of righteousness.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> vi. 14.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>There can be no doubt that in this whole context the Apostle has in mind
+the great passage in Isaiah lix. where the prophet, in a figure of
+extreme boldness, describes the Lord as arming Himself to deliver the
+oppressed faithful, and coming as a Redeemer to Zion. In that passage
+the Lord puts on righteousness as a breastplate&mdash;that is to say, God, in
+His manifestation of Himself for the deliverance of His people, comes
+forth as if arrayed in the glittering armour of righteousness. Paul does
+not shrink from applying the same metaphor to those who are to be
+'imitators of God as beloved children,' and from urging upon them that,
+in their humble degree and lowly measure, they too are to be clothed in
+the bright armour of moral rectitude. This righteousness is manifested
+in character and in conduct, and as the breastplate guards the vital
+organs from assault, it will keep the heart unwounded.</p>
+
+<p>We must note that Paul here gathers up the whole sum of Christian
+character and conduct into one word. All can be expressed, however
+diversified may be the manifestations, by the one sovereign term
+'righteousness,' and that is not merely a hasty generalisation, or a too
+rapid synthesis. As all sin has one root and is genetically one, so all
+goodness is at bottom one. The germ of sin is living to oneself: the
+germ of goodness is living to God. Though the degrees of development of
+either opposite are infinite, and the forms of its expression
+innumerable, yet the root of each is one.</p>
+
+<p>Paul thinks of righteousness as existent before the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_351" id="Page_1_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> Christian soldier
+puts it on. In this thought we are not merely relying on the metaphor of
+our text, but bringing it into accord with the whole tone of New
+Testament teaching, which knows of only one way in which any soul that
+has been living to self, and therefore to sin, can attain to living to
+God, and therefore can be righteous. We must receive, if we are ever to
+possess, the righteousness which is of God, and which becomes ours
+through Jesus Christ. The righteousness which shines as a fair but
+unattainable vision before sinful men, has a real existence, and may be
+theirs. It is not to be self-elaborated, but to be received.</p>
+
+<p>That existent righteousness is to be put on. Other places of Scripture
+figure it as the robe of righteousness; here it is conceived of as the
+breastplate, but the idea of assumption is the same. It is to be put on,
+primarily, by faith. It is given in Christ to simple belief. He that
+hath faith thereby has the righteousness which is through faith in
+Christ, for in his faith he has the one formative principle of reliance
+on God, which will gradually refine character and mould conduct into
+whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. That righteousness
+which faith receives is no mere forensic treating of the unjust as just,
+but whilst it does bring with it pardon and oblivion from past
+transgressions, it makes a man in the depths of his being righteous,
+however slowly it may afterwards transform his conduct. The faith which
+is a departure from all reliance on works of righteousness which we have
+done, and is a single-eyed reliance on the work of Jesus Christ, opens
+the heart in which it is planted to all the influences of that life
+which was in Jesus, that from Him it may be in us. If Christ be in us
+(and if He is not, we are none of His), 'the spirit is life because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_352" id="Page_1_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> of
+righteousness,' however the body may still be 'dead because of sin.'</p>
+
+<p>But the putting on of the breastplate requires effort as well as faith,
+and effort will be vigorous in the measure in which faith is vivid, but
+it should follow, not precede or supplant, faith. There is no more
+hopeless and weary advice than would be the exhortation of our text if
+it stood alone. It is a counsel of despair to tell a man to put on that
+breastplate, and to leave him in doubt where he is to find it, or
+whether he has to hammer it together by his own efforts before he can
+put it on. There is no more unprofitable expenditure of breath than the
+cry to men, Be good! Be good! Moral teaching without Gospel preaching is
+little better than a waste of breath.</p>
+
+<p>This injunction is continuously imperative upon all Christian soldiers.
+They are on the march through the enemy's country, and can never safely
+lay aside their armour. After all successes, and no less after all
+failures, we have still to arm ourselves for the fight, and it is to be
+remembered that the righteousness of which Paul speaks differs from
+common earthly moralities only as including and transcending them all.
+It is, alas, too true that Christian righteousness has been by
+Christians set forth as something fantastic and unreal, remote from
+ordinary life, and far too heavenly-minded to care for common virtues.
+Let us never forget that Jesus Himself has warned us, that except our
+righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, we
+shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The greater orbit encloses
+the lesser within itself.</p>
+
+<p>The breastplate of righteousness is our defence against evil. The
+opposition to temptation is best<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_353" id="Page_1_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> carried on by the positive cultivation
+of good. A habit of righteous conduct is itself a defence against
+temptation. Untilled fields bear abundant weeds. The used tool does not
+rust, nor the running water gather scum. The robe of righteousness will
+guard the heart as effectually as a coat of mail. The positive
+employment with good weakens temptation, and arms us against evil. But
+so long as we are here our righteousness must be militant, and we must
+be content to live ever armed to meet the enemy which is always hanging
+round us, and watching for an opportunity to strike. The time will come
+when we shall put off the breastplate and put on the fine linen 'clean
+and white,' which is the heavenly and final form of the righteousness of
+Saints.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_SOLDIERS_SHOES" id="A_SOLDIERS_SHOES"></a>A SOLDIER'S SHOES</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span>
+vi. 15.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Paul drew the first draft of this picture of the Christian armour in his
+first letter. It is a finished picture here. One can fancy that the
+Roman soldier to whom he was chained in his captivity, whilst this
+letter was being written, unconsciously sat for his likeness, and that
+each piece of his accoutrements was seized in succession by the
+Apostle's imagination and turned to a Christian use. It is worth
+noticing that there is only one offensive weapon mentioned&mdash;'the sword
+of the Spirit.' All the rest are defensive&mdash;helmet, breastplate, shield,
+girdle, and shoes. That is to say, the main part of our warfare consists
+in defence, in resistance, and in keeping what we have, in spite of
+everybody, men and devils, who attempt to take it from us. 'Hold fast
+that thou hast; let no man take thy crown.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_354" id="Page_1_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now, it seems to me that the ordinary reader does not quite grasp the
+meaning of our text, and that it would be more intelligible if, instead
+of 'preparation,' which means the process of getting a thing ready, we
+read 'preparedness,' which means the state of mind of the man who is
+ready. Then we have to notice that the little word 'of' does duty to
+express two different relations, in the two instances of its use here.
+In the first case&mdash;'the preparedness of the Gospel'&mdash;it states the
+origin of the thing in question. That condition of being ready comes
+from the good news of Christ. In the second case&mdash;'the Gospel of
+peace'&mdash;it states the result of the thing in question. The good news of
+Christ gives peace. So, taking the whole clause, we may paraphrase it by
+saying that the preparedness of spirit, the alacrity which comes from
+the possession of a Gospel that sheds a calm over the heart and brings a
+man into peace with God, is what the Apostle thinks is like the heavy
+hob-nailed boots that the legionaries wore, by which they could stand
+firm, whatever came against them.</p>
+
+<p>I. The first thing that I would notice here is that the Gospel brings
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose that there was ringing in Paul's head some echoes of the music
+of Isaiah's words, 'How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him
+that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good
+tidings of good!' But there is a great deal more than an unconscious
+quotation of ancient words here; for in Paul's thought, the one power
+which brings a man into harmony with the universe and to peace with
+himself, is the power which proclaims that God is at peace with him. And
+Jesus Christ is our peace, because He has swept away the root and bitter
+fountain of all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_355" id="Page_1_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> disquiet of men's hearts, and all their chafing at
+providences&mdash;the consciousness that there is discord between themselves
+and God. The Gospel brings peace in the deepest sense of that word, and,
+primarily, peace with God, from out of which all other kinds of
+tranquillity and heart-repose do come&mdash;and they come from nothing
+besides.</p>
+
+<p>But what strikes me most here is not so much the allusion to the blessed
+truth that was believed and experienced by these Ephesian Christians,
+that the Gospel brought peace, and was the only thing that did, as the
+singular emergence of that idea that the Gospel was a peace-bringing
+power, in the midst of this picture of fighting. Yes, it brings both. It
+brings us peace first, and then it says to us, 'Now, having got peace in
+your heart, because peace with God, go out and fight to keep it.' For,
+if we are warring with the devil we are at peace with God; and if we are
+at peace with the devil we are warring with God. So the two states of
+peace and war go together. There is no real peace which has not conflict
+in it, and the Gospel <i>is</i> 'the Gospel of peace,' precisely because it
+enlists us in Christ's army and sends us out to fight Christ's battles.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, dear brother, the only way to realise and preserve 'the peace
+of God which passes understanding' is to fling ourselves manfully into
+the fight to which all Christ's soldiers are pledged and bound. The two
+conditions, though they seem to be opposite, will unite; for this is the
+paradox of the Christian life, that in all regions it makes compatible
+apparently incompatible and contradictory emotions. 'As sorrowful'&mdash;and
+Paul might have said 'therefore' instead of 'yet'&mdash;'as sorrowful yet
+always rejoicing; as having nothing yet'&mdash;therefore&mdash;'possessing all
+things'; as in the thick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_356" id="Page_1_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> of the fight, and yet kept in perfect peace,
+because the soul is stayed on God. The peace that comes from friendship
+with Him, the peace that fills a heart tranquil because satisfied, the
+peace that soothes a conscience emptied of all poison and robbed of all
+its sting, the peace that abides because, on all the horizon in front of
+us nothing can be seen that we need to be afraid of&mdash;that peace is the
+peace which the Gospel brings, and it is realised in warfare and is
+consistent with it. All the armies of the world may camp round the
+fortress, and the hurtling noise of battle may be loud in the plains,
+but up upon the impregnable cliff crowned by its battlements there is a
+central citadel, with a chapel in the heart of it; and to the
+worshippers there none of the noise ever penetrates. The Gospel which
+laps us in peace and puts it in our hearts makes us soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>II. Further, this Gospel of peace will prepare us for the march.</p>
+
+<p>A wise general looks after his soldiers' boots. If they give out,
+nothing else is of much use. The roads are very rough and very long, and
+there need to be strong soles and well-sewed uppers, and they will be
+none the worse for a bit of iron on the heels and the toes, in order
+that they may not wear out in the midst of the campaign. 'Thy shoes
+shall be iron and brass,' and these metals are harder than any of the
+rock that you will have to clamber over. Which being translated into
+plain fact is just this&mdash;a tranquil heart in amity with God is ready for
+all the road, is likely to make progress, and is fit for anything that
+it may be called to do.</p>
+
+<p>A calm heart makes a light foot; and he who is living at peace with God,
+and with all disturbance within<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_357" id="Page_1_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> hushed to rest, will, for one thing, be
+able to see what his duty is. He will see his way as far as is needful
+for the moment. That is more than a good many of us can do when our eyes
+get confused, because our hearts are beating so loudly and fast, and our
+own wishes come in to hide from us God's will. But if we are weaned from
+ourselves, as we shall be if we are living in possession of the peace of
+God which passes understanding, the atmosphere will be transparent, as
+it is on some of the calm last days of autumn, and we shall see far
+ahead and know where we ought to go.</p>
+
+<p>The quiet heart will be able to fling its whole strength into its work.
+And that is what troubled hearts never can do, for half their energy is
+taken up in steadying or quieting themselves, or is dissipated in going
+after a hundred other things. But when we are wholly engaged in quiet
+fellowship with Jesus Christ we have the whole of our energies at our
+command, and can fling ourselves wholly into our work for Him. The
+steam-engine is said to be a very imperfect machine which wastes more
+power than it utilises. That is true of a great many Christian people;
+they have the power, but they are so far away from that deep sense of
+tranquillity with God, of which my text speaks, that they waste much of
+the power that they have. And if we are to have for our motto 'Always
+Ready.' as an old Scottish family has, the only way to secure that is by
+having 'our feet shod with the preparedness' that comes from the Gospel
+that brings us peace. Brethren, duty that is done reluctantly, with
+hesitation, is not done. We must fling ourselves into the work gladly
+and be always 'ready for all Thy perfect will.'</p>
+
+<p>There was an English commander, who died some years ago, who was sent
+for to the Horse Guards one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_358" id="Page_1_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> day and asked, 'How long will it take for
+you to be ready to go to Scinde?' 'Half an hour,' said he; and in
+three-quarters he was in the train, on his road to reconquer a kingdom.
+That is how we ought to be; but we never shall be, unless we live
+habitually in tranquil communion with God, and in the full faith that we
+are at peace with Him through the blood of His Son. A quiet heart makes
+us ready for duty.</p>
+
+<p>III. Again, the Gospel of peace prepares us for combat.</p>
+
+<p>In ancient warfare battles were lost or won very largely according to
+the weight of the masses of men that were hurled against each other; and
+the heavier men, with the firmer footing, were likely to be the victors.
+Our modern scientific way of fighting is different from that. But in the
+old time the one thing needful was that a man should stand firm and
+resist the shock of the enemies as they rushed upon him. Unless our
+footing is good we shall be tumbled over by the onset of some unexpected
+antagonist. And for good footing there are two things necessary. One is
+a good, solid piece of ground to stand on, that is not slippery nor
+muddy, and the other is a good, strong pair of soldier's boots, that
+will take hold on the ground and help the wearer to steady himself.
+Christ has set our feet on the rock, and so the first requisite is
+secured. If we, for our part, will keep near to that Gospel which brings
+peace into our hearts, the peace that it brings will make us able to
+stand and bear unmoved any force that may be hurled against us. If we
+are to be 'steadfast, unmovable,' we can only be so when our feet are
+shod with the preparedness of the Gospel of peace.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_359" id="Page_1_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The most of your temptations, most of the things that would pluck you
+away from Jesus Christ, and upset you in your standing will come down
+upon you unexpectedly. Nothing happens in this world except the
+unexpected; and it is the sudden assaults that we were not looking for
+that work most disastrously against us. A man may be aware of some
+special weakness in his character, and have given himself carefully and
+patiently to try to fortify himself against it, and, lo! all at once a
+temptation springs up from the opposite side; the enemy was lying in
+hiding there, and whilst his face was turned to fight with one foe, a
+foe that he knew nothing about came storming behind him. There is only
+one way to stand, and that is not merely by cultivating careful
+watchfulness against our own weaknesses, but by keeping fast hold of
+Jesus Christ manifested to us in His Gospel. Then the peace that comes
+from that communion will itself guard us.</p>
+
+<p>You remember what Paul says in one of his other letters, where he has
+the same beautiful blending together of the two ideas of peace and
+warfare: 'The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall
+garrison your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.' It will be, as it were,
+an armed force within your heart which will repel all antagonism, and
+will enable you to abide in that Christ, through whom and in whom alone
+all peace comes. So, because we are thus liable to be overwhelmed by a
+sudden rush of unexpected temptation, and surprised into a sin before we
+know where we are, let us keep fast hold by that Gospel which brings
+peace, which will give us steadfastness, however suddenly the masked
+battery may begin to play upon us, and the foe may steal out of his
+ambush and make a rush against our unprotectedness. That is the only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_360" id="Page_1_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>
+way, as I think, by which we can walk scatheless through the world.</p>
+
+<p>Now, dear brethren, remember that this text is part of a commandment. We
+are to put on the shoes. How is that to be done? By a very simple way: a
+way which, I am afraid, a great many Christian people do not practise
+with anything like the constancy that they ought. For it is the Gospel
+that brings the peace, and if its peace brings the preparedness, then
+the way to get the preparedness is by soaking our minds and hearts in
+the Gospel of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>You hear a good deal nowadays about deepening the spiritual life, and
+people hold conventions for the purpose. All right; I have not a word to
+say against that. But, conventions or no conventions, there is only one
+thing that deepens the spiritual life, and that is keeping near the
+Christ from whom all the fulness of the spiritual life flows. If we will
+hold fast by our Gospel, and let its peace lie upon our minds, as the
+negative of a photograph lies upon the paper that it is to be printed
+upon, until the image of Jesus Christ Himself is reproduced in us, then
+we may laugh at temptation. For there will be no temptation when the
+heart is full of Him, and there will be no sense of surrendering
+anything that we wish to keep when the superior sweetness of His grace
+fills our souls. It is empty vessels into which poison can be poured. If
+the vessel is full there will be no room for it. Get your hearts and
+minds filled with the wine of the kingdom, and the devil's venom of
+temptation will have no space to get in. It is well to resist
+temptation; it is better to be lifted above it, so that it ceases to
+tempt. And the one way to secure that is to live near Jesus Christ, and
+let the Gospel of His grace take up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_361" id="Page_1_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> more of our thoughts and more of
+our affections than it has done in the past. Then we shall realise the
+fulfilment of the promise: 'He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SHIELD_OF_FAITH" id="THE_SHIELD_OF_FAITH"></a>THE SHIELD OF FAITH</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Above all, taking the shield of faith, whereby ye shall be able to
+quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> vi. 16.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>There were two kinds of shields in use in ancient warfare&mdash;one smaller,
+carried upon the arm, and which could be used, by a movement of the arm,
+for the defence of threatened parts of the body in detail; the other
+large, planted in front of the soldier, fixed in the ground, and all but
+covering his whole person. It is the latter which is referred to in the
+text, as the word which describes it clearly shows. That word is
+connected with the Greek word meaning 'door,' and gives a rough notion
+of the look of the instrument of defence&mdash;a great rectangular oblong,
+behind which a man could stand untouched and untouchable. And that is
+the kind of shield, says Paul, which we are to have&mdash;no little defence
+which may protect some part of the nature, but a great wall, behind
+which he who crouches is safe.</p>
+
+<p>'Above all' does not mean here, as superficial readers take it to mean,
+most especially and primarily, as most important, but it simply means
+<i>in addition to</i> all these other things. Perhaps with some allusion to
+the fact that the shield protected the breastplate, as well as the
+breastplate protected the man, there may be a reference to the kind of
+double defence which comes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_362" id="Page_1_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> to him who wears that breastplate and lies
+behind the shelter of a strong and resolute faith.</p>
+
+<p>I. Now, looking at this metaphor from a practical point of view, the
+first thing to note is the missiles, 'the fiery darts of the wicked.'</p>
+
+<p>Arch&aelig;ologists tell us that there were in use in ancient warfare javelins
+tipped with some kind of combustible, which were set on fire, and flung,
+so that they had not only the power of wounding but also of burning; and
+that there were others with a hollow head, which was in like manner
+filled, kindled, and thrown into the ranks of the enemy. I suppose that
+the Apostle's reason for specifying these fiery darts was simply that
+they were the most formidable offensive weapons that he had ever heard
+of. Probably, if he had lived to-day, he would have spoken of
+rifle-bullets or explosive shells, instead of fiery darts. But, though
+probably the Apostle had no further meaning in the metaphor than to
+suggest that faith was mightier than the mightiest assaults that can be
+hurled against it, we may venture to draw attention to two particulars
+in which this figure is specially instructive and warning. The one is
+the action of certain temptations in setting the soul on fire; the other
+is the suddenness with which they assail us.</p>
+
+<p>'The fiery darts.' Now, I do not wish to confine that metaphor too
+narrowly to any one department of human nature, for our whole being is
+capable of being set on fire, and 'set on fire of hell,' as James says.
+But there are things in us all to which the fiery darts do especially
+appeal: desires, appetites, passions; or&mdash;to use the word which refined
+people are so afraid of, although the Bible is not, '<i>lusts</i>&mdash;which war
+against the soul,' and which need only a touch of fire to flare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_363" id="Page_1_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> up like
+a tar-barrel, in thick foul smoke darkening the heavens. There are fiery
+darts that strike these animal natures of ours, and set them all aflame.</p>
+
+<p>But, there are other fiery darts than these. There are plenty of other
+desires in us: wishes, cowardices, weaknesses of all sorts, that, once
+touched with the devil's dart, will burn fiercely enough. We all know
+that.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is the other characteristic of suddenness. The dart comes
+without any warning. The arrow is invisible until it is buried in the
+man's breast. The pestilence walks in darkness, and the victim does not
+know until its poison fang is in him. Ah! yes! brethren, the most
+dangerous of our temptations are those that are sprung upon us unawares.
+We are going quietly along the course of our daily lives, occupied with
+quite other thoughts, and all at once, as if a door had opened, not out
+of heaven but out of hell, we are confronted with some evil thing that,
+unless we are instantaneously on our guard, will conquer us almost
+before we know. Evil tempts us because it comes to us, for the most
+part, without any beat of drum or blast of trumpet to say that it is
+coming, and to put us upon our guard. The batteries that do most harm to
+the advancing force are masked until the word of command is given, and
+then there is a flash from every cannon's throat and a withering hail of
+shot that confounds by its unexpectedness as well as kills by its blow.
+The fiery darts that light up the infernal furnace in a man's heart, and
+that smite him all unawares and unsuspecting, these are the weapons that
+we have to fear most.</p>
+
+<p>II. Consider next, the defence: 'the shield of faith.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, the Old Testament says things like this: 'Fear not, Abraham; I am
+thy Shield.' The psalmist invoked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_364" id="Page_1_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> God, in a rapturous exuberance of
+adoring invocations, as his fortress, and his buckler, and the horn of
+his salvation, and his high tower. The same psalm says, 'The Lord is a
+shield to all them that put their trust in Him'; and the Book of
+Proverbs, which is not given to quoting psalms, quotes that verse.
+Another psalm says, 'The Lord God is a sun and shield.'</p>
+
+<p>And then Paul comes speaking of 'the shield of <i>faith</i>.' What has become
+of the other one? The answer is plain enough. My faith is nothing except
+for what it puts in front of me, and it is God who is truly my shield;
+my faith is only called a shield, because it brings me behind the bosses
+of the Almighty's buckler, against which no man can run a tilt, or into
+which no man can strike his lance, nor any devil either. God is a
+defence; and my trust, which is nothing in itself, is everything because
+of that with which it brings me into connection. Faith is the condition,
+and the only condition, of God's power flowing into me, and working in
+me. And when that power flows into me, and works in me, then I can laugh
+at the fiery darts, because 'greater is He that is with us than all they
+that are with them.'</p>
+
+<p>So all the glorification which the New Testament pours out upon the act
+of faith properly belongs, not to the act itself, but to that with which
+the act brings us into connection. Wherefore, in the first Epistle of
+John, the Apostle, who recorded Christ's saying, 'Be of good cheer; I
+have overcome the world,' translates it into, 'This is the victory that
+overcometh the world'&mdash;<i>not</i>, our Christ, but&mdash;'even our faith.' And it
+overcomes because it binds us in deep, vital union with Him who has
+overcome; and then all His conquering power comes into us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_365" id="Page_1_365">[Pg 365]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That is the explanation and vindication of the turn which Paul gives to
+the Old Testament metaphor here, when he makes our shield to be faith.
+Suppose a man was exercising trust in one that was unworthy of it, would
+that trust defend him from anything? Suppose you were in peril of some
+great pecuniary loss, and were saying to yourself, 'Oh! I do not care.
+So-and-so has guaranteed me against any loss, and I trust to him,' and
+suppose he was a bankrupt, what would be the good of your trust? It
+would not bring the money back into your pocket. Suppose a man is
+leaning upon a rotten support; the harder he leans the sooner it will
+crumble. So there is no defence in the act of trust except what comes
+into it from the object of trust; and my faith is a shield only because
+it grasps the God who is the shield.</p>
+
+<p>But, then, there is another side to that thought. My faith will quench,
+as nothing else will, these sudden impulses of fiery desires, because my
+faith brings me into the conscious presence of God, and of the unseen
+realities where He dwells. How can a man sin when God's eye is felt to
+be upon him? Suppose conspirators plotting some dark deed in a corner,
+shrouded by the night, as they think; and suppose, all at once, the day
+were to blaze in upon them, they would scatter, and drop their designs.
+Faith draws back the curtain which screens off that unseen world from so
+many of us, and lets in the light that shines down from above and shows
+us that we are compassed about by a cloud of witnesses, and the Captain
+of our Salvation in the midst of them. Then the fiery darts fizzle out,
+and the points drop off them. No temptation continues to flame when we
+see God.</p>
+
+<p>They have contrivances in mills that they call 'auto<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_366" id="Page_1_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>matic sprinklers.'
+When the fire touches them it melts away a covering, and a gas is set
+free that puts the fire out. And if we let in the thought of God, it
+will extinguish any flame. 'The sun puts out the fire in our grates,'
+the old women say. Let God's sun shine into your heart, and you will
+find that the infernal light has gone out. The shield of faith quenches
+the fiery darts of the 'wicked.'</p>
+
+<p>Yes! and it does it in another way. For, according to the Epistle to the
+Hebrews, faith realises 'the things hoped for,' as well as 'unseen.' And
+if a man is walking in the light of the great promises of Heaven, and
+the great threatenings of a hell, he will not be in much danger of being
+set on fire, even by 'the fiery darts of the wicked.' He that receives
+into his heart God's strength; he that by faith is conscious of the
+divine presence in communion with him; he that by faith walks in the
+light of eternal retribution, will triumph over the most sudden, the
+sharpest, and the most fiery of the darts that can be launched against
+him.</p>
+
+<p>III. The Grasp of the Shield.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Taking</i> the shield,' then, there is something to be done in order to
+get the benefit of that defence. Now, there are a great many very good
+people at present who tell Christian men that they ought to exercise
+faith for sanctifying, as they exercise it for justifying and
+acceptance. And some of them&mdash;I do not say all&mdash;forget that there is
+effort needed to exercise faith for sanctifying; and that our energy has
+to be put forth in order that a man may, in spite of all resistance,
+keep himself in the attitude of dependence. So my text, whilst it
+proclaims that we are to trust for defence against, and victory over,
+recurring tempta<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_367" id="Page_1_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>tions, just as we trusted for forgiveness and
+acceptance at the beginning, proclaims also that there must be effort to
+grasp the shield, and to realise the defence which the shield gives to
+us.</p>
+
+<p>For to trust is an act of the heart and will far more than of the head,
+and there are a great many hindrances that rise in the way of it; and to
+keep behind the shield, and not depend at all upon our own wit, our
+wisdom, or our strength, but wholly upon the Christ who gives us wit and
+wisdom, and strengthens our fingers to fight&mdash;that will take work! To
+occupy heart and mind with the object of faith is not an easy thing.</p>
+
+<p>So, brethren, effort to compel the will and the heart to trust; effort
+to keep the mind in touch with the verities and the Person who are the
+objects of our faith; and effort to keep ourselves utterly and wholly
+ensconced behind the Shield, and never to venture out into the open,
+where our own arm has to keep our own heads, but to hang wholly upon
+Him&mdash;these things go to 'taking' the shield of faith. And it is because
+we fail in these, and not because there are any holes or weak places in
+the shield, that so many of the fiery darts find their way through, and
+set on fire and wound us. The Shield is impregnable, beaten as we have
+often been. 'This is the victory that overcometh the world'&mdash;and the
+devil and his darts&mdash;'even our faith.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_HELMET_OF_SALVATION" id="THE_HELMET_OF_SALVATION"></a>'THE HELMET OF SALVATION'</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Take the helmet of salvation.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> vi. 17.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We may, perhaps, trace a certain progress in the enumeration of the
+various pieces of the Christian armour in this context. Roughly
+speaking, they are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_368" id="Page_1_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> in three divisions. There are first our graces of
+truth, righteousness, preparedness, which, though they are all conceived
+as given by God, are yet the exercises of our own powers. There is next,
+standing alone, as befits its all-comprehensive character, faith which
+is able to ward against and overcome not merely this and that
+temptation, but all forms of evil. That faith is the root of the three
+preceding graces, and makes the transition to the two which follow,
+because it is the hand by which we lay hold of God's gifts. The two
+final parts of the Christian armour are God's gifts, pure and
+simple&mdash;salvation and the word of God. So the progress is from
+circumference to centre, from man to God. From the central faith we have
+on the one hand that which it produces in us; on the other, that which
+it lays hold of from God. And these two last pieces of armour, being
+wholly God's gift, we are bidden with especial emphasis which is shown
+by a change in construction, to take or receive these.</p>
+
+<p>I. The Salvation.</p>
+
+<p>Once more Old Testament prophecy suggests the words of this exhortation.
+In Isaiah's grand vision of God, arising to execute judgment which is
+also redemption, we have a wonderful picture of His arraying Himself in
+armour. Righteousness is His flashing breastplate: on His head is an
+helmet of salvation. The gleaming steel is draped by garments of
+retributive judgment, and over all is cast, like a cloak, the ample
+folds of that 'zeal' which expresses the inexhaustible energy and
+intensity of the divine nature and action. Thus arrayed He comes forth
+to avenge and save. His redeeming work is the manifestation and issue of
+all these characteristics of His nature. It flames with divine fervour:
+it manifests the justice which repays,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_369" id="Page_1_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> but its inmost character is
+righteousness, and its chief purpose is to save. His helmet is
+salvation; the plain, prose meaning of which would appear to be that His
+great purpose of saving men is its own guarantee that His purpose should
+be effected, and is the armour by which His work is defended.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle uses the old picture with perfect freedom, quoting the words
+indeed, but employing them quite differently. God's helmet of salvation
+is His own purpose; man's helmet of salvation is God's gift. He is
+strong to save because He wills to save; we are strong and safe when we
+take the salvation which He gives.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be further noticed that the same image appears in Paul's rough
+draft of the Christian armour in Thessalonians, with the significant
+difference that there the helmet is 'the hope of salvation,' and here it
+is the salvation itself. This double representation is in full accord
+with all Scripture teaching, according to which we both possess and hope
+for salvation, and our possession determines the measure of our hope.
+That great word negatively implies deliverance from evil of any kind,
+and in its lower application, from sickness or peril of any sort. In its
+higher meaning in Scripture the evil from which we are saved is most
+frequently left unexpressed, but sometimes a little glimpse is given, as
+when we read that 'we are saved from wrath through Him' or 'saved from
+sin.' What Christ saves us from is, first and chiefly, from sin in all
+aspects, its guilt, its power, and its penalty; but His salvation
+reaches much further than any mere deliverance from threatening evil,
+and positively means the communication to our weakness and emptiness of
+all blessings and graces possible for men. It is inward and properly
+spiritual, but it is also outward, and it is not fully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_370" id="Page_1_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> possessed until
+we are clothed with 'salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.'</p>
+
+<p>Hence, in Scripture our salvation is presented as past, as present, and
+as future. As past it is once for all received by initial faith in
+Christ; and, in view of their faith, Paul has no scruples as to saying
+to the imperfect Christians whose imperfections he scourges, 'Ye have
+been saved,' or in building upon that past fact his earnest exhortations
+and his scathing rebukes. The salvation is present if in any true sense
+it is past. There will be a daily growing deliverance from evil and a
+daily growing appropriation and manifestation of the salvation which we
+have received. And so Paul more than once speaks of Christians as 'being
+saved.' The process begun in the past is continued throughout the
+present, and the more a Christian man is conscious of its reality even
+amidst flaws, failures, stagnation, and lapses, the more assured will be
+his hope of the perfect salvation in the future, when all that is here,
+tendency often thwarted, and aspirations often balked, and sometimes
+sadly contradicted, will be completely, uninterruptedly, and eternally
+realised. If that hope flickers and is sometimes all but dead, the
+reason mainly lies in its flame not being fed by present experience.</p>
+
+<p>II. The helmet of salvation.</p>
+
+<p>This salvation in its present form will keep our heads in the day of
+battle. Its very characteristic is that it delivers us from evil, and
+all the graces with which Paul equips his ideal warrior are parts of the
+positive blessings which our salvation brings us. The more assured we
+are in our own happy consciousness of possessing the salvation of God,
+the more shall we be defended from all the temptations that seek to stir
+into action our lower selves. There will be no power in our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_371" id="Page_1_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> fears to
+draw us into sin, and the possible evils that appeal to earthly passions
+of whatever sort will lose their power to disturb us, in the precise
+measure in which we know that we are saved in Christ. The consciousness
+of salvation will tend to damp down the magazine of combustibles that we
+all carry within us, and the sparks that fall will be as innocuous as
+those that light on wet gunpowder. If our thoughts are occupied with the
+blessings which we possess they will be guarded against the assaults of
+evil. The full cup has no room for poison. The eye that is gazing on the
+far-off white mountains does not see the filth and frivolities around.
+If we are living in conscious possession and enjoyment of what God gives
+us, we shall pass scatheless through the temptations which would
+otherwise fall on us and rend us. A future eagerly longed for, and
+already possessed in germ, will kill a present that would otherwise
+appeal to us with irresistible force.</p>
+
+<p>III. Take the helmet.</p>
+
+<p>We might perhaps more accurately read <i>receive</i> salvation, for that
+salvation is not won by any efforts of our own, but if we ever possess
+it, our possession is the result of our accepting it as a gift from God.
+The first word which the Gospel speaks to men and which makes it a
+Gospel, is not Do this or that, but Take this from the hands that were
+nailed to the Cross. The beginning of all true life, of all peace, of
+all self-control, of all hope, lies in the humble and penitent
+acceptance by faith of the salvation which Christ brings, and with which
+we have nothing to do but to accept it.</p>
+
+<p>But Paul is here speaking to those whom he believes to have already
+exercised the initial faith which united them to Christ, and made His
+salvation theirs, and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_372" id="Page_1_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> these the exhortation comes with special
+force. To such it says, 'See to it that your faith ever grasps and feeds
+upon the great facts on which your salvation reposes&mdash;God's changeless
+love, Christ's all-sufficient sacrifice and ascended life, which He
+imparts to us if we abide in Him. Hold fast and prolong by continual
+repetition the initial act by which you received that salvation. It is
+said that on his death-bed Oliver Cromwell asked the Puritan divine who
+was standing by it whether a man who had once been in the covenant could
+be lost, and on being assured that he could not, answered, 'I know that
+I was once in it'; but such a building on past experiences is a building
+on sand, and nothing but continuous faith will secure a continuous
+salvation. A melancholy number of so-called Christians in this day have
+to travel far back through the years before they reach the period when
+they took the helmet of salvation. They know that they were far better
+men, and possessed a far deeper apprehension of Christ and His power in
+the old days than is theirs now, and they need not wonder if God's great
+gift has unnoticed slipped from their relaxed grasp. A hand that clings
+to a rock while a swollen flood rushes past needs to perpetually be
+tightening its grip, else the man will be swept away; and the present
+salvation, and, still more, the hope of a future salvation, are not ours
+on any other terms than a continual repetition of the initial act by
+which we first received them. But there must also be a continually
+increased appropriation and manifestation in our lives of a progressive
+salvation that will come as a result of a constantly renewed faith; but
+it will not come unless there be continuous effort to work into our
+characters, and to work out in our lives, the transforming and
+vitalising power of the life given to us in Jesus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_373" id="Page_1_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> Christ. If our
+present experience yields no sign of growing conformity to the image of
+our Saviour, there is only too abundant reason for doubting whether we
+have experienced a past salvation or have any right to anticipate a
+perfect future salvation.</p>
+
+<p>The last word to be said is, Live in frequent anticipation of that
+perfect future. If that anticipation is built on memory of the past and
+experience of the present, it cannot be too confident. That hope maketh
+not ashamed. In the region of Christian experience alone the weakest of
+us has a right to reckon on the future, and to be sure that when that
+great to-morrow dawns for us, it 'shall be as this day and much more
+abundant.' With this salvation in its imperfect form brightening the
+present, and in its completeness filling the future with unimaginable
+glory, we can go into all the conflicts of this fighting world and feel
+that we are safe because God covers our heads in the day of battle.
+Unless so defended we shall go into the fight as the naked Indians did
+with the Spanish invaders, and be defeated as they were. The plumes may
+be shorn off the helmet, and it may be easily dinted, but the head that
+wore it will be unharmed. And when the battle and the noise of battle
+are past, the helmet will be laid aside, and we shall be able to say, 'I
+have fought a good fight, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
+righteousness.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SWORD_OF_THE_SPIRIT" id="THE_SWORD_OF_THE_SPIRIT"></a>'THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT'</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> vi. 17.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We reach here the last and only offensive weapon in the panoply. The
+'of' here does not indicate apposition, as in the 'shield of faith,' or
+'the helmet of salva<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_374" id="Page_1_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>tion,' nor is it the 'of' of possession, so that
+the meaning is to be taken as being the sword which the Spirit wields,
+but it is the 'of' expressing origin, as in the 'armour of God'; it is
+the sword which the Spirit supplies. The progress noted in the last
+sermon from subjective graces to objective divine facts, is completed
+here, for the sword which is put into the Christian soldier's hand is
+the gift of God, even more markedly than is the helmet which guards his
+head in the day of battle.</p>
+
+<p>I. Note what the word of God is.</p>
+
+<p>The answer which would most commonly and almost unthinkingly be given
+is, I suppose, the Scriptures; but while this is on the whole true, it
+is to be noted that the expression employed here properly means a word
+spoken, and not the written record. Both in the Old and in the New
+Testaments the word of God means more than the Bible; it is the
+authentic utterance of His will in all shapes and applying to all the
+facts of His creation. In the Old Testament 'God said' is the expression
+in the first chapter of Genesis for the forthputting of the divine
+energy in the act of creation, and long ages after that divine poem of
+creation was written a psalmist re-echoed the thought when he said 'For
+ever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in the heavens. Thou hast established
+the earth and it abideth.'</p>
+
+<p>But, further, the expression designates the specific messages which
+prophets and others received. These are not in the Old Testament spoken
+of as a unity: they are individual words rather than a word. Each of
+them is a manifestation of the divine will and purpose; many of them are
+commandments; some of them are warnings; and all, in some measure,
+reveal the divine nature.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_375" id="Page_1_375">[Pg 375]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That self-revelation of God reaches for us in this life its permanent
+climax, when He who 'at sundry times and in divers manner spake unto the
+fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by a
+Son.' Jesus is the personal 'word of God' though that name by which He
+is designated in the New Testament is a different expression from that
+employed in our text, and connotes a whole series of different ideas.</p>
+
+<p>The early Christian teachers and apostles had no hesitation in taking
+that sacred name&mdash;the word of the Lord&mdash;to describe the message which
+they spoke. One of their earliest prayers when they were left alone was,
+that with all boldness they might speak Thy word; and throughout the
+whole of the Acts of the Apostles the preached Gospel is designated as
+the word of God, even as Peter in his epistle quotes one of the noblest
+of the Old Testament sayings, and declares that the 'word of the Lord'
+which 'abideth for ever' is 'the word which by the gospel is preached
+unto you.'</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, then, Paul here is exhorting the Ephesian Christians, most of
+whom probably were entirely ignorant of the Old Testament, to use the
+spoken words which they had heard from him and other preachers of the
+Gospel as the sword of the Spirit. Since he is evidently referring to
+Christian teaching, it is obvious that he regards the old and the new as
+one whole, that to him the proclamation of Jesus was the perfection of
+what had been spoken by prophets and psalmists. He claims for his
+message and his brethren's the same place and dignity that belonged to
+the former messengers of the divine will. He asserts, and all the more
+strongly, because it is an assertion by implication only, that the same
+Spirit which moved in the prophets and saints of former days is moving
+in the preachers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_376" id="Page_1_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> of the Gospel, and that their message has a wider
+sweep, a deeper content, and a more radiant light than that which had
+been delivered in the past. The word of the Lord had of old partially
+declared God's nature and His will: the word of God which Paul preached
+was in his judgment the complete revelation of God's loving heart, the
+complete exhibition to men of God's commandments of old; longing eyes
+had seen a coming day and been glad and confidently foretold it, now the
+message was 'the coming one has come.'</p>
+
+<p>It is as the record and vehicle of that spoken Gospel, as well as of its
+earlier premonitions, that the Bible has come to be called the word of
+God, and the name is true in that He speaks in this book. But much harm
+has resulted from the appropriation of the name exclusively to the book,
+and the forgetfulness that a vehicle is one thing and that which it
+carries quite another.</p>
+
+<p>II. The purpose and power of the word.</p>
+
+<p>The sword is the only offensive weapon in the list. The spear which
+played so great a part in ancient warfare is not named. It may well be
+noted that only a couple of verses before our text we read of the Gospel
+of peace, and that here with remarkable freedom of use of his metaphors,
+Paul makes the word of God, which as we have seen is substantially
+equivalent to the preached Gospel, the one weapon with which Christian
+men are to cut and thrust. Jesus said 'I come not to send peace, but a
+sword,' but Paul makes the apparent contradiction still more acute when
+he makes the very Gospel itself the sword. We may recall as a parallel,
+and possibly a copy of our text, the great words of the Epistle to the
+Hebrews which speak of the word of God as 'living and active and sharper
+than any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_377" id="Page_1_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> two-edged sword.' And we cannot forget the magnificent
+symbolism of the Book of Revelation which saw in the midst of the
+candlestick one like unto a Son of Man, and 'out of His mouth proceeded
+a sharp, two-edged sword.' That image is the poetic embodiment of our
+Lord's own words which we have just quoted, and implies the penetrating
+power of the word which Christ's gentle lips have uttered. Gracious and
+healing as it is, a Gospel of peace, it has an edge and a point which
+cut down through all sophistications of human error, and lay bare the
+'thoughts and intents of the heart.' The revelation made by Christ has
+other purposes which are not less important than its ministering of
+consolation and hope. It is intended to help us in our fight with evil,
+and the solemn old utterance, 'with the breath of His mouth He will slay
+the wicked,' is true in reference to the effect of the word of Christ on
+moral evil. Such slaying is but the other side of the life-giving power
+which the word exercises on a heart subject to its influence. For the
+Christian soldier's conflict with evil as threatening the health of his
+own Christian life, or as tyrannising over the lives of others, the
+sword of the Spirit is the best weapon.</p>
+
+<p>We are not to take the rough-and-ready method, which is so common among
+good people, of identifying this spirit-given sword with the Bible. If
+for no other reason, yet because it is the Spirit which supplies it to
+the grasp of the Christian soldier, our possession of it is therefore a
+result of the action of that Spirit on the individual Christian spirit;
+and what He gives, and we are to wield, is 'the <i>engrafted</i> word which
+is able to save our souls.' That word, lodged in our hearts, brings to
+us a revelation of duty and a chart of life, because it brings a loving
+recognition of the character<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_378" id="Page_1_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> of our Father, and a glad obedience to His
+will. If that word dwell in us richly, in all wisdom, and if we do not
+dull the edge of the sword by our own unworthy handling of it, we shall
+find it pierce to the 'dividing asunder of joints and marrow,' and the
+evil within us will either be cast out from us, or will shrivel itself
+up, and bury itself deep in dark corners.</p>
+
+<p>Love to Christ will be so strong, and the things that are not seen will
+so overwhelmingly outweigh the things that are seen, that the solemn
+majesty of the eternal will make the temporal look to our awed eyes the
+contemptible unreality which it really is. They who humbly receive and
+faithfully use that engrafted word, have in it a sure touchstone against
+which their own sins and errors are shivered. It is for the Christian
+consciousness the true Ithuriel's spear, at the touch of which 'upstarts
+in his own shape the fiend' who has been pouring his whispered poison
+into an unsuspicious ear. The standard weights and measures are kept in
+government custody, and traders have to send their yard measures and
+scales thither if they wish them tested; but the engrafted word,
+faithfully used and submitted to, is always at hand, and ready to
+pronounce its decrees, and to cut to the quick the evil by which the
+understanding is darkened and conscience sophisticated.</p>
+
+<p>III. The manner of its use.</p>
+
+<p>Here that is briefly but sufficiently expressed by the one commandment,
+'take,' or perhaps more accurately, 'receive.' Of course, properly
+speaking, that exhortation does not refer to our manner of fighting with
+the sword, but to the previous act by which our hand grasps it. But it
+is profoundly true that if we take it in the deepest sense, the
+possession of it will teach the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_379" id="Page_1_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> use of it. No instruction will impart
+the last, and little instruction is needed for the first. What is needed
+is the simple act of yielding ourselves to Jesus Christ, and looking to
+Him only, as our guide and strength. Before all Christian warfare must
+come the possession of the Christian armour, and the commandment that
+here lies at the beginning of all Paul's description of it is '<i>Take</i>.'
+Our fitness for the conflict all depends on our receiving God's gift,
+and that reception is no mere passive thing, as if God's grace could be
+poured into a human spirit as water is into a bucket. Hence, the
+translation of this commandment of Paul's by 'take' is better than that
+by 'receive,' inasmuch as it brings into prominence man's activity,
+though it gives too exclusive importance to that, to the detriment of
+the far deeper and more essential element of the divine action. The two
+words are, in fact, both needed to cover the whole ground of what takes
+place when the giving God and the taking man concur in the great act by
+which the Spirit of God takes up its abode in a human spirit. God's gift
+is to be received as purely His gift, undeserved, unearned by us. But
+undeserved and unearned as it is, and given 'without money and without
+price,' it is not ours unless our hand is stretched out to take, and our
+fingers closed tightly over the free gift of God. There is a dead lift
+of effort in the reception; there is a still greater effort needed for
+the continued possession, and there is a life-long discipline and effort
+needed for the effective use in the struggle of daily life of the sword
+of the Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>If that engrafted word is ever to become sovereign in our lives, there
+must be a life-long attempt to bring the tremendous truths as to God's
+will for human conduct which it plants in our minds into practice, and
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_380" id="Page_1_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> bring all our practice under their influence. The motives which it
+brings to bear on our evils will be powerless to smite them, unless
+these motives are made sovereign in us by many an hour of patient
+meditation and of submission to their sweet and strong constraint. One
+sometimes sees on a wild briar a graft which has been carefully inserted
+and bandaged up, but which has failed to strike, and so the strain of
+the briar goes on and no rosebuds come. Are there not some of us who
+profess to have received the engrafted word and whose daily experience
+has proved, by our own continual sinfulness, that it is unable to 'save
+our souls'?</p>
+
+<p>There are in the Christian ranks some soldiers whose hands are too
+nerveless or too full of worldly trash to grasp the sword which they
+have received, much less to strike home with it at any of the evils that
+are devastating their own lives or darkening the world. The feebleness
+of the Christian conflict with evil, in all its forms, whether
+individual or social, whether intellectual or moral, whether heretical
+or grossly and frankly sensual, is mainly due to the feebleness with
+which the average professing Christians grasp the sword of the Spirit.
+When David asked the priests for weapons, and they told him that
+Goliath's sword was lying wrapt in a cloth behind the ephod, and that
+they had none other, he said, 'There is none like that, give it me.' If
+we are wise, we will take the sword that lies in the secret place, and,
+armed with it, we shall not need to fear in any day of battle.</p>
+
+<p>We do well that we take heed to the word of God, 'as unto a lamp shining
+in a dark place until the day dawn,' when swords will be no more needed,
+and the Word will no longer shine in darkness but be the Light that
+makes the Sun needless for the brightness of the New Jerusalem.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_381" id="Page_1_381">[Pg 381]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="PEACE_LOVE_AND_FAITH" id="PEACE_LOVE_AND_FAITH"></a>PEACE, LOVE, AND FAITH</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> vi. 23.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The numerous personal greetings usually found at the close of Paul's
+letters are entirely absent from this Epistle. All which we have in
+their place is this entirely general good wish, and the still more
+general and wider one in the subsequent verse.</p>
+
+<p>There is but one other of the Apostle's letters similarly devoid of
+personal messages, viz. the Epistle to the Galatians, and their absence
+there is sufficiently accounted for by the severe and stern tone of that
+letter. But it is very difficult to understand how they should not
+appear in a letter to a church with which the Apostle had such prolonged
+and cordial relations as he had with the church at Ephesus. And hence
+the absence of these personal greetings is a strong confirmation of the
+opinion that this Epistle was not originally addressed to the church at
+Ephesus, but was a kind of circular intended to go round the various
+churches in Asia Minor, and only sent first to that at Ephesus. That
+opinion is further confirmed by the fact known to many of you that in
+some good ancient manuscripts the words 'at Ephesus' are omitted from
+the first verse of the letter; which thus stands without any specific
+address.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, this trinity of inward graces is Paul's highest and
+best wish for his friends. He has no earthly prosperity to wish for
+them. His ambition soars higher than that; he desires for them peace,
+love, faith.</p>
+
+<p>Now, will you take the lesson? There is no better test of a man than the
+things that he wishes for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_382" id="Page_1_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> people that he loves most. He desires for
+them, of course, his own ideal of happiness. What do you desire most for
+those that are dearest to you? You parents, do you train up your
+children, for instance, so as to secure, or to do your best to secure,
+not outward prosperity, but these loftier gifts; and for yourselves,
+when you are forming your wishes, are these the things that you want
+most? 'Set your affections on things above,' and remember that whoso has
+that trinity of graces, peace, love, faith, is rich and blessed,
+whatsoever else he has or needs. And whoso has them not is miserable and
+poor.</p>
+
+<p>But I wish especially to look a little more closely at these three
+things in themselves and in their relation to one another. I take it
+that the Apostle is here tracking the stream to its fountain; that he is
+beginning with effects and working backwards and downwards to causes; so
+that to get the order of nature and of time we must reverse the order
+here, and begin where he ends and end where he begins. The Christian
+life in its higher vigour and excellence is rooted in faith. That faith
+associates to itself, and is inseparably connected with love, and the
+faith and love together issue in a deep restful tranquillity which
+nothing can break.</p>
+
+<p>Now, let us look at these three things as the three greatest blessings
+that any can bear in their hearts, and wring out of time, sorrow, and
+change.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, the root of everything is a continuous and growing trust.</p>
+
+<p>Remember that this prayer or wish of my text was spoken in reference to
+brethren; that is to say, to those who, by the hypothesis, already
+possessed Christian faith. And Paul wishes for them, and can wish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_383" id="Page_1_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> for
+them, nothing better and more than the increase and continuousness of
+that which they already possess. The highest blessing that the brethren
+can receive is the enlargement and the strengthening of their faith.</p>
+
+<p>Now we talk so much in Christian teaching about this 'faith' that, I
+fancy, like a worn sixpence in a man's pocket, its very circulation from
+hand to hand has worn off the lettering. And many of us, from the very
+familiarity of the word, have only a dim conception of what it means. It
+may not be profitless, then, to remind you, first of all, that this
+faith is neither more nor less than a very familiar thing which you are
+constantly exercising in reference to one another&mdash;that is to say,
+simple confidence. You trust your husband, your wife, your child, your
+parent, your friend, your guide, your lawyer, your doctor, your banker.
+Take that very same emotion and attitude of the mind by which you put
+your well-being, in different aspects and provinces, into the hands of
+men and women round about you; lift the trailing flowers that go all
+straggling along the ground, and twine them round the pillars of God's
+throne, and you get the confidence, the trust, of the praises and
+glories of which the New Testament is full. There is nothing mysterious
+in it, it is simply the exercise of confidence, the familiar cement that
+binds all human relationship together, and makes men brotherly and
+kindred with their kind. Faith is trust, and trust saves a man's soul.</p>
+
+<p>Then, remember further that the faith which is the foundation of
+everything is essentially personal trust reposing upon a person, upon
+Jesus Christ. You cannot get hold of a man in any other way than by
+that. The only real bond that binds people together is the personal bond
+of confidence, manifesting itself in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_384" id="Page_1_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> love. And it is no mere doctrine
+that we present for a man's faith, but it is the person about whom the
+doctrine speaks. We say, indeed, that we can only know the person on
+whom we must trust by the revelation of the truths concerning Him which
+make the Christian doctrines; but a man may believe the whole of them,
+and have no faith. And what is the step in advance which is needed in
+order to turn credence into faith&mdash;belief in a doctrine into trust? In
+one view it is the step from the doctrine to the person. When you grasp
+Christ, the living Christ, and not merely the doctrine, for yours, then
+you have faith.</p>
+
+<p>Only remember, my brother, if you say you trust Christ, the question has
+immediately to be asked: What Christ is it that you are trusting? Is it
+the Christ that died for your sins on the Cross, or is it a Christ that
+taught you some great moral truths and set you a lovely example of life
+and conduct? Which of the two is it? for these two Christs are very
+different, and the faith that grasps the one is extremely unlike the
+faith that grasps the other. And so I press upon you this question: What
+Christ is it to Whom your confidence turns, and for what is it that you
+are looking to Him? Is it for help and guidance of some vague kind; is
+it for pattern or example, or is it for the salvation of your sinful
+souls, by the might of His great sacrifice?</p>
+
+<p>Then, remember still further, that this personal outgoing of confidence,
+which is the action both of a man's will and of a man's intellect, to
+the person revealed to us in the great doctrines of the Gospel&mdash;that
+this faith, if it is to be worth anything, must be continuous. Paul
+could desire nothing better for his Ephesian friends than that they
+should have that which they had&mdash;faith;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_385" id="Page_1_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> that they should continue to
+have it, and that it should be perennial and increasing all through
+their lives. You can no more get present good from past faith than the
+breath you drew yesterday into your lungs will be sufficient to
+oxygenate your blood at this moment. As soon as you break the electric
+contact, the electric light goes out, and no matter how long a man has
+been living a life of faith, that past life will not in the smallest
+degree help him at the present moment unless the faith is continuous.
+Remember this, then, a broken faith is a broken peace; a broken faith is
+a broken salvation; and so long, and only so long, as you are knit to
+Jesus Christ by the conscious exercise of a faith realised at the
+moment, are you in the reception of blessing from Him at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>And, still further, this faith ought to be progressive. So Paul desired
+it to be with these people. If there is no growth, do you think there is
+much life? I know I am speaking to plenty of people who call themselves
+Christians, whose faith is not one inch better to-day than it was when
+it was born&mdash;perhaps a little less rather than more. Oh! the hundreds
+and thousands of professing Christians, average Christians, that clog
+and weaken all churches, whose faith has no progressive element in it,
+and is not a bit stronger by all the discipline of life and by their
+experience of its power. Brethren! is it so with us? Let us ask
+ourselves that; and let us ask very solemnly this other question: If my
+faith has no growth, how do I know that it has got any life?</p>
+
+<p>And so let me remind you further that this faith, the personal outgoing
+of a man's intellect and will to the personal Saviour revealed in the
+Scriptures as the sacrifice for our sins, and the life of our spirits,
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_386" id="Page_1_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> ought to be continuous and progressive, is the foundation of all
+strength, blessedness, goodness, in a human character; and if we have it
+we have the germ of all possible excellence and growth, not because of
+what it is in itself, for in itself it is nothing more than the opening
+of the heart to the reception of the celestial influences of grace and
+righteousness that He pours down. And, therefore, this is the thing that
+a wise man will most desire for himself, and for those that are dearest
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>Depend upon it, whether it is what we want most or not, it is what God
+wants most for us. He does not care nearly so much that our lives should
+be joyful as that they should be righteous and full of faith; and He
+subjects us to many a sorrow and loss and disappointment in order that
+the life of nature may be broken and the life of faith may be strong. If
+we rightly understand the relative value of outward and of inward
+things, we shall be thankful for the storms that drive us nearer to Him;
+for the darkening earth that may make the pillar of cloud glow at the
+heart into a pillar of fire, and for all the discipline, painful though
+it may be, with which God answers the prayer, 'Lord, increase our
+faith.'</p>
+
+<p>II. And now, next, notice how inseparably associated with a true faith
+is love.</p>
+
+<p>The one is effect that never is found without its cause; the other is
+cause which never but produces its effect. These two are braided
+together by the Apostle as inseparable in reality and inseparable in
+thought. And that it is so is plain enough, and there follow from it
+some practical lessons that I desire to lay upon your hearts and my own.</p>
+
+<p>There are, then, here two principles, or rather two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_387" id="Page_1_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> sides of one
+thought; no faith without love, no love without faith.</p>
+
+<p>No faith is genuine and deep which does not at once produce in the heart
+where it is lodged an answering love to God. That is clear enough. Faith
+is, as I have said, the recognition and the reception of the divine love
+into the heart; and we are so constituted as that if a man once knows
+and believes in any real sense the love that God has to him, he answers
+it back again with his love as certainly as an echo which gives back the
+sound that reaches it.</p>
+
+<p>Our faith is, if I may so say, like a burning-glass, which concentrates
+the rays of the divine love upon our hearts, and focuses them into a
+point that kindles our hearts into flame. If we have the confidence that
+God loves us, in any real depth, we shall answer by the gush of our love
+to Him.</p>
+
+<p>And so here is a test for men's faith. You call yourselves Christians.
+If I were to come to you and ask you, 'Do you believe in the Lord Jesus
+Christ?' most of you would say, 'Yes!' Try your faith, my friend, by
+this test: Does it make you love Him at all? If it does not, it is more
+words than anything else; and it needs a wonderful deepening before it
+can have any real power in your hearts. There is no faith worthy the
+name unless its child, all but as old as itself, be the answer of the
+heart to Him, pouring itself out in thankful gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>No love without faith; 'we love Him because He first loved us.' God must
+begin, we can only come second. Man's natural selfishness is only
+overcome by the clearest demonstration of the love of God to him; and
+until that love, in its superbest because its lowliest form, the form of
+the sacrifice on the Cross, has pene<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_388" id="Page_1_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>trated into a man's heart through
+his faith, there will be no love.</p>
+
+<p>So then, dear friends, there is a test for your love. We hear a great
+deal said nowadays, as there has always been a great deal said, about
+the essence of all religion consisting in love to God; and about men
+'rejecting the cumbrous dogmas of the New Testament, and falling back
+upon the great and simple truths, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
+all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with
+all thy strength; and thy neighbour as thyself,' and saying 'that is
+their religion.' Well, I venture to say that without the faith of the
+heart in, not the cumbrous dogmas, but the central fact of the New
+Testament, that Christ died on the Cross for me, you will never get the
+old commandment of love to God with heart and soul and strength and mind
+really kept and carried out; and that if you want men to have their
+hearts and wills bound into loving fellowship with God, it is only by
+the path of faith in Him who is the sacrifice for sin that such
+fellowship is reached. Hence there follows a very plain, practical
+advice. Do you want your heart's love to be increased? Learn the way to
+do it. You cannot work yourselves into a fervour of religious emotion of
+any valuable kind. A man cannot get to love more by saying, 'I am
+determined I will.' We have no direct control over our affections in
+that fashion. You cannot make water boil except by one way, and that is
+by putting plenty of fire under it; and you cannot make your affections
+melt and flow except by heating them by the contemplation of the truth
+which is intended to bring them out. That is to say, the more we
+exercise our minds on the contemplation of Christ's great love to us,
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_389" id="Page_1_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> the more we put forth the energies of our souls in the act of
+simple self-distrust and reliance upon Him, the more will our love be
+fervent and strong. You can only increase love by increasing the faith
+from which it comes. So do you see to it, if you call yourselves
+Christians, that you try to deepen all your Christian affections by an
+honest, meditative, prayerful contemplation and grasp of the great love
+of God in Jesus Christ. And do not wonder if your Christian life be, as
+it is in so many of us, stunted, not progressive, bringing no blessing
+to ourselves and little good to anybody else. The explanation is easy
+enough. You do not look at the Cross of Christ, nor live in the
+contemplation and reception of His great grace.</p>
+
+<p>III. And now, lastly, these two inseparably associated graces of faith
+and love bring with them, and lead to, the third&mdash;peace.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to be but a very modest, sober-tinted wish which the Apostle
+here has for his brethren that the highest and best thing he can ask for
+them is only quiet. Very modest by the side of joy and excitement, in
+their coats of many colours, and yet the deepest and truest blessing
+that any of us can have&mdash;peace. It comes to us by one path, and that is
+by the path of faith and love.</p>
+
+<p>These two bring peace with God, peace in our inmost spirits, the peace
+of self-annihilation and submission, the peace of obedience, the peace
+of ceasing from our own works, and entering, therefore, into the rest of
+God. Trust is peace. There is no tranquillity like that of feeling 'I am
+not responsible for this: He is; and I rest myself on Him.'</p>
+
+<p>Love is peace. There is no rest for our hearts but on the bosom of some
+one that is dear to us, and in whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_390" id="Page_1_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> we can confide. But ah, brother!
+every tree in which the dove nestles is felled down sooner or later, and
+the nest torn to pieces, and the bird flies away. But if we turn
+ourselves to the undying Christ, the perpetual revelation of the eternal
+God, then, then our love and our faith will bring us rest. There will be
+peace in trusting Him whom we never can trust and be put to shame. There
+will be peace in loving Him who is more than worthy of and able to repay
+the deep and perennial love of all hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Self-surrender is peace. It is our wills that trouble us. Disturbance
+comes, not from without, but from within. When the will bows, when I
+say, 'Be it then as Thou wilt,' when in faith and love I cease to
+strive, to murmur, to rebel, to repine, and enter into His loving
+purposes, then there is peace.</p>
+
+<p>Obedience is peace. To recognise a great will that is sovereign, and to
+bow myself to it, not because it is sovereign, but because it is sweet,
+and sweet because I love it, and love Him whose it is&mdash;that is peace.
+And then, whatever may be outward circumstances, there shall be 'peace
+subsisting at the heart of endless agitation'; and deep in my soul I may
+be tranquil, though all about me may be the hurly-burly of the storm.</p>
+
+<p>The Christian peace is an armed peace, paradoxical as it appears; and
+according to the great word of the Apostle, is a sentry which garrisons
+the beleaguered heart and mind, surrounded by many foes, and keeps them
+in Christ Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>'There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked,' he is 'as a troubled
+sea which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt'; but over the
+wildest commotion one Voice, low, gentle, omnipotent, says: 'Peace! be
+still!' and the heart quiets itself, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_391" id="Page_1_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> there may be a ground
+swell, and the weather clears. He is your peace, trust Him, love Him,
+and you cannot but possess the 'peace of God which passeth
+understanding.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_WIDE_RANGE_OF_GODS_GRACE" id="THE_WIDE_RANGE_OF_GODS_GRACE"></a>THE WIDE RANGE OF GOD'S GRACE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in
+sincerity.' <span class="smcap">Ephes.</span> vi. 24.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>In turning to the great words which I have read as a text, I ask you to
+mark their width and their simplicity. They are wide; they follow a very
+comprehensive benediction, with which, so to speak, they are concentric.
+But they sweep a wider circle. The former verse says, 'Peace be to the
+brethren.' But beyond the brethren in these Asiatic churches (as a kind
+of circular letter to whom this epistle was probably sent) there rises
+before the mind of the Apostle a great multitude, in every nation, and
+they share in his love, and in the promise and the prayer of my text.
+Mark its simplicity: everything is brought down to its most general
+expression. All the qualifications for receiving the divine gift are
+gathered up in one&mdash;love. All the variety of the divine gifts is summed
+up in that one comprehensive expression&mdash;'grace.'</p>
+
+<p>I. So then, note, first, the comprehensive designation of the recipients
+of grace.</p>
+
+<p>They are 'all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption.' Little
+need be said explanatory of the force of this general expression. We
+usually find that where Scripture reduces the whole qualification for
+the reception of the divine gift, and the conditions which unite to
+Jesus Christ, to one, it is faith, not love, that is chosen. But here
+the Apostle takes the process at the second stage, and instead of
+emphasising the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_392" id="Page_1_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> faith which is the first step, he dwells upon the love
+which is its uniform consequence. This love rests upon the faith in
+Jesus Christ our Lord.</p>
+
+<p>Then note the solemn fulness of the designations of the object of this
+faith-born love. 'Jesus Christ our Lord'&mdash;the name of His humanity; the
+name of His office; the designation of His dominion. He is Jesus the
+Man. Jesus is the Christ, the Fulfiller of all prophecy; the flower of
+all previous revelation; the Anointed of God with the fulness of His
+Divine Spirit as Prophet, Priest, and King. Jesus Christ is the
+Lord&mdash;which, at the lowest, expresses sovereignty, and if regard be had
+to the Apostolic usage, expresses something more, even participation in
+Deity. And it is this whole Christ, the Jesus, the Christ, the Lord; the
+love to whom, built upon the faith in Him in all these aspects and
+characteristics, constitutes the true unity of the true Church.</p>
+
+<p>That Church is not built upon a creed, but it is built upon a whole
+Christ, and not a maimed one. And so we must have a love which answers
+to all those sides of that great revealed character, and is warm with
+human love to Jesus; and is trustful with confiding love to the Christ;
+and is lowly with obedient love to the Lord. And I venture to go a step
+further, and say,&mdash;and is devout with adoring love to the eternal Son of
+the Father. This is the Apostle's definition of what makes a Christian:
+Faith that grasps the whole Christ and love that therefore flows to Him.
+It binds all who possess it into one great unity. As against a spurious
+liberalism which calls them Christians who lay hold of a fragment of the
+one entire and perfect chrysolite, we must insist that a Christian is
+one who knows Jesus, who knows Christ, who knows the Lord, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_393" id="Page_1_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> who
+loves Him in all these aspects. Only we must remember, too, that many a
+time a man's heart outruns his creed, and that many a soul glows with
+truer, deeper, more saving devotion and trust to a Christ whom the
+intellect imperfectly apprehends, than are realised by unloving hearts
+that are associated with clearer heads. Orchids grow in rich men's
+greenhouses, fastened to a bit of stick, and they spread a fairer
+blossom that lasts longer than many a plant that is rooted in a more
+fertile soil. Let us be thankful for the blessed inconsistencies which
+knit some to the Christ who is more to them than they know.</p>
+
+<p>There is also here laid down for us the great principle, as against all
+narrowness and all externalism, and all so-called ecclesiasticism, that
+to be joined to Jesus Christ is the one condition which brings a man
+into the blessed unity of the Church. Now it seems to me that, however
+they may be to be lamented on other grounds, and they are to be lamented
+on many, the existence of diverse Churches does not necessarily
+interfere with this deep-seated and central unity. There is a great deal
+said to-day about the reunion of Christendom, by which is meant the
+destruction of existing communions and the formation of a wider one. I
+do not believe, and I suppose you do not, that our existing
+ecclesiastical organisations are the final form of the Church of the
+living God. But let us remember that the two things are by no means
+contradictory, the belief in, and the realising of, the essential unity
+of the Church, and the existence of diverse communions. You will see on
+the side of many a Cumberland hill a great stretch of limestone with
+clefts a foot or two deep in it&mdash;there are flowers in the clefts, by the
+bye&mdash;but go down a couple of yards and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_394" id="Page_1_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> divisions have all
+disappeared, and the base-rock stretches continuously. The separations
+are superficial; the unity is fundamental. Do not let us play into the
+hands of people whose only notion of unity is that of a mechanical
+juxtaposition held together by some formula or orders; but let us
+recognise that the true unity is in the presence of Jesus Christ in the
+midst, and in the common grasp of Him by us all.</p>
+
+<p>There is a well-known hymn which was originally intended as a High
+Church manifesto, which thrusts at us Nonconformists when it sings:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'<i>We</i> are not divided,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;All one body <i>we</i>.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And oddly enough, but significantly too, it has found its way into all
+our Nonconformist hymn-books, and we, 'the sects,' are singing it, with
+perhaps a nobler conception of what the oneness of the body, and the
+unity of the Church is, than the writer of the words had. 'We are not
+divided,' though we be organised apart. 'All one body we,' for we all
+partake of that one bread, and the unifying principle is a common love
+to the one Jesus Christ our Lord.</p>
+
+<p>II. Mark the impartial sweep of the divine gifts.</p>
+
+<p>My text is a benediction, or a prayer; but it is also a prophecy, or a
+statement, of the inevitable and uniform results of love to Jesus
+Christ. The grace will follow that love, necessarily and certainly, and
+the lovers will get the gift of God because their love has brought them
+into living contact with Jesus Christ; and His life will flow over into
+theirs. I need not remind you that the word 'grace' in Scripture means,
+first of all, the condescending love of God to inferiors, to sinners, to
+those who deserved something else; and, secondly, the whole fulness of
+blessing and gift that follow upon that love.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_395" id="Page_1_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> And, says Paul, these
+great gifts from heaven, the one gift in which all are comprised, will
+surely follow the opening of the heart in love to Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, brethren! God's grace makes uncommonly short work of ecclesiastical
+distinctions. The great river flows through territories that upon men's
+maps are painted in different colours, and of which the inhabitants
+speak in different tongues. The Rhine laves the pine-trees of
+Switzerland, and the vines of Germany, and the willows of Holland; and
+God's grace flows through all places where the men that love Him do
+dwell. It rises, as it were, right over the barriers that they have
+built between each other. The little pools on the sea-shore are separate
+when the tide is out, but when it comes up it fills all the pot-holes
+that the pebbles have made, and unifies them in one great flashing,
+dancing mass; and so God's grace comes to all that love Him, and
+confirms their unity.</p>
+
+<p>Surely that is the true test of a living Church. 'When Barnabas came,
+and saw the grace of God, he was glad.' It was not what he had expected,
+but he was open to conviction. The Church where he saw it had been very
+irregularly constituted; it had no orders and no sacraments, and had
+been set a-going by the spontaneous efforts of private Christians, and
+he came to look into the facts. He asked for nothing more when he saw
+that the converts had the life within them. And so we, with all our
+faults&mdash;and God forbid that I should seem to minimise these&mdash;with all
+our faults, we poor Nonconformists, left to the uncovenanted mercies,
+have our share of that gift of grace as truly, and, if our love be
+deeper, more abundantly, than the Churches that are blessed with orders
+and sacraments, and an 'unbroken historical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_396" id="Page_1_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> continuity.' And when we
+are unchurched for our lack of these, let us fall back upon St.
+Augustine's 'Where Christ is, there the Church is'; and believe that to
+us, even to us also, the promise is fulfilled, 'Lo! I am with you
+always, even to the end of the world.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, note the width to which our sympathies should go.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle sends out his desires and prayers so as to encircle the same
+area as the grace of God covers and as His love enfolds. And we are
+bound to do the same.</p>
+
+<p>I am not going to talk about organic unity. The age for making new
+denominations is, I suppose, about over. I do not think that any sane
+man would contemplate starting a new Church nowadays. The rebound from
+the iron rigidity of a mechanical unity that took place at the
+Reformation naturally led to the multiplication of communities, each of
+which laid hold of something that to it seemed important. The folly of
+ecclesiastical rulers who insisted upon non-essentials lays the guilt of
+the schism at <i>their</i> doors, and not at the doors of the minority who
+could not, in conscience, accept that which never should have been
+insisted upon as a condition. But whilst we must all feel that power is
+lost, and much evil ensues from the isolation, such as it is, of the
+various Churches, yet we must remember that re-union is a slow process;
+that an atmosphere springs up round each body which is a very subtle,
+but none the less a very powerful, force, and that it will take a very,
+very long time to overcome the difficulties and to bring about any
+reconstruction on a large scale. But why should there be three
+Presbyterian Churches in Scotland, with the same creed, confessions of
+faith, and ecclesiastical constitution? Why should there be half a dozen
+Methodist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_397" id="Page_1_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> bodies in England, of whom substantially the same thing may
+be said? Will it always pass the wit of man for Congregationalists and
+Baptists to be one body, without the sacrifice of conviction upon either
+side? Surely no! You young men may see these fair days; men like me can
+only hope that they will come and do a little, such as may be possible
+in a brief space, to help them on.</p>
+
+<p>Putting aside, then, all these larger questions, I want, in a sentence
+or two, to insist with you upon the duty that lies on us all, and which
+every one of us may bear a share in discharging. There ought to be a far
+deeper consciousness of our fundamental unity. They talk a great deal
+about 'the rivalries of jarring sects.' I believe that is such an
+enormous exaggeration that it is an untruth. There is rivalry, but you
+know as well as I do that, shabby and shameful as it is, it is a kind of
+commercial rivalry between contiguous places of worship, be they chapels
+or churches, be they buildings belonging to the same or to different
+denominations. I, for my part, after a pretty long experience now, have
+seen so little of that said bitter rivalry between the Nonconformist
+sects, <i>as sects</i>, that to me it is all but non-existent. And I believe
+the most of us ministers, going about amongst the various communities,
+could say the same thing. But in the face of a cultivated England
+laughing at your creed of Jesus, the Christ, the Lord; and in the face
+of a strange and puerile recrudescence of sacerdotalism and
+sacramentarianism, which shoves a priest and a rite into the place where
+Christ should stand, it becomes us Nonconformists who believe that we
+know a more excellent way to stand shoulder to shoulder, and show that
+the unities that bind us are far more than the diversities that
+separate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1_398" id="Page_1_398">[Pg 398]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It becomes us, too, to further conjoint action in social matters. Thank
+God we are beginning to stir in that direction in Manchester&mdash;not before
+it was time. And I beseech you professing Christians, of all Evangelical
+communions, to help in bringing Christian motives and principles to bear
+on the discussion of social and municipal and economical conditions in
+this great city of ours.</p>
+
+<p>And there surely ought to be more concert than we have had in aggressive
+work; that we should a little more take account of each other's action
+in regulating our own; and that we should not have the scandal, which we
+too often have allowed to exist, of overlapping one another in such a
+fashion as that rivalry and mere trade competition is almost inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>These are very humble, prosaic suggestions, but they would go a long
+way, if they were observed, to sweeten our own tempers, and to make
+visible to the world our true unity. Let us all seek to widen our
+sympathies as widely as Christ's grace flows; to count none strangers
+whom He counts friends; to discipline ourselves to feel that we are
+girded with that electric chain which makes all who grasp it one, and
+sends the same keen thrill through them all. If a circle were a mile in
+diameter, and its circumference were dotted with many separate points,
+how much nearer each of these would be if it were moved inwards, on a
+straight line, closer to the centre, so as to make a circle a foot
+across. The nearer we come to the One Lord, in love, communion, and
+likeness, the nearer shall we be to one another.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><i>EXPOSITIONS OF<br />
+HOLY SCRIPTURE</i><br /></h2>
+
+<h3>ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.<br /></h3>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2>FIRST AND SECOND PETER<br />AND FIRST JOHN</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS_2"></a>CONTENTS</h2><p style="font-size: smaller; text-align: right;">[<a href='#CONTENTS_1'>Ephesians contents</a>]</p>
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents: Part 1">
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Sojourners of the Dispersion</span> (1 Peter i. 1)</td><td align='right'><a href='#SOJOURNERS_OF_THE_DISPERSION'>                  1</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">By, Through, Unto</span> (1 Peter i. 5)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#BY_THROUGH_UNTO'>                           7</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Sorrowful, Yet Always Rejoicing</span> (1 Peter i. 6) </td><td align='right'><a href='#SORROWFUL_YET_ALWAYS_REJOICING'>             17</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The True Gold and Its Testing</span> (1 Peter i. 7)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_TRUE_GOLD_AND_ITS_TESTING'>                27</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Joy in Believing</span> (1 Peter i. 8)    </td><td align='right'><a href='#JOY_IN_BELIEVING'>                         34</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Christ and His Cross the Centre of the Universe</span>
+    (1 Peter i. 10, 11, 12)   </td><td align='right'><a href='#CHRIST_AND_HIS_CROSS_THE_CENTRE_OF_THE_UNIVERSE'>                                       41</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hope Perfectly</span> (1 Peter i. 13) </td><td align='right'><a href='#HOPE_PERFECTLY'>                             51</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Family Likeness</span> (1 Peter i. 15) </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_FAMILY_LIKENESS'>                        61</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Father and Judge</span> (1 Peter i. 17) </td><td align='right'><a href='#FATHER_AND_JUDGE'>                           69</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Purifying the Soul</span> (1 Peter i. 22) </td><td align='right'><a href='#PURIFYING_THE_SOUL'>                         76</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Living Stones on the Living Foundation Stone</span>
+    (1 Peter ii. 4, 5)                </td><td align='right'><a href='#LIVING_STONES_ON_THE_LIVING_FOUNDATION_STONE'>                               86</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Spiritual Sacrifices</span> (1 Peter ii. 5)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#SPIRITUAL_SACRIFICES'>                      92</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Mirrors of God</span> (1 Peter ii. 9)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#MIRRORS_OF_GOD'>                           101</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Christ the Exemplar</span> (1 Peter ii. 21) </td><td align='right'><a href='#CHRIST_THE_EXEMPLAR'>                      107</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hallowing Christ</span> (1 Peter iii. 14, 15)</td><td align='right'><a href='#HALLOWING_CHRIST'>                     116</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Christian Asceticism</span> (1 Peter iv. 1-8)</td><td align='right'><a href='#CHRISTIAN_ASCETICISM'>                     123</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Slave's Girdle</span> (1 Peter v. 5)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_SLAVES_GIRDLE'>                        130</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Sylvanus</span> (1 Peter v. 12, R.V.)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#SYLVANUS'>                           138</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Apostolic Testimony and Exhortation</span> (1 Peter v. 12)</td><td align='right'><a href='#AN_APOSTOLIC_TESTIMONY_AND_EXHORTATION'>     146</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Church in Babylon</span> (1 Peter v. 13)     </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_CHURCH_IN_BABYLON'>                 154</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Marcus, My Son</span> (1 Peter v. 13)   </td><td align='right'><a href='#MARCUS_MY_SON'>                          161</a></td></tr>
+
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Like Precious Faith</span> (2 Peter i. 1)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#LIKE_PRECIOUS_FAITH'>                       170</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Man Summoned by God's Glory and Energy</span> (2 Peter i. 3)</td><td align='right'><a href='#MAN_SUMMONED_BY_GODS_GLORY_AND_ENERGY'>      178</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Partakers of the Divine Nature</span> (2 Peter i. 4)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#PARTAKERS_OF_THE_DIVINE_NATURE'>            189</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Power of Diligence</span> (2 Peter i. 5)     </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_POWER_OF_DILIGENCE'>                 198</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Going Out and Going in</span> (2 Peter i. 11, 15) </td><td align='right'><a href='#GOING_OUT_AND_GOING_IN'>                206</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Owner and His Slaves</span> (2 Peter ii. 1)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_OWNER_AND_HIS_SLAVES'>                 215</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Be Diligent</span> (2 Peter iii. 14)       </td><td align='right'><a href='#BE_DILIGENT'>                       224</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Growth</span> (2 Peter iii. 18)      </td><td align='right'><a href='#GROWTH'>                             234</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN</td></tr>
+
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Message and Its Practical Results</span> (1 John i. 5-ii. 6)</td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_MESSAGE_AND_ITS_PRACTICAL_RESULTS'>  247</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Walking in the Light</span> (1 John i. 7)   </td><td align='right'><a href='#WALKING_IN_THE_LIGHT'>                      253</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Commandment, Old Yet New</span> (1 John ii. 7, 8)   </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_COMMANDMENT_OLD_YET_NEW'>          261</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Youthful Strength</span> (1 John ii. 14) </td><td align='right'><a href='#YOUTHFUL_STRENGTH'>                         269</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">River and Rock</span> (1 John ii. 17)   </td><td align='right'><a href='#RIVER_AND_ROCK'>                          279</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Love That Calls Us Sons</span> (1 John iii. 1) </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_LOVE_THAT_CALLS_US_SONS'>               289</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Unrevealed Future of the Sons of God</span> (1 John iii. 2) </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_UNREVEALED_FUTURE_OF_THE_SONS_OF_GOD'>  301</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Purifying Influence of Hope</span> (1 John iii. 3)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_PURIFYING_INFLUENCE_OF_HOPE'>          310</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Practical Righteousness</span> (1 John iii. 7)   </td><td align='right'><a href='#PRACTICAL_RIGHTEOUSNESS'>                 320</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Christ's Mission the Revelation of God's Love</span>
+    (1 John iv. 10)                                   </td><td align='right'><a href='#CHRISTS_MISSION_THE_REVELATION_OF_GODS_LOVE'>              329</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Servant As His Lord</span> (1 John iv. 17)  </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_SERVANT_AS_HIS_LORD'>                  338</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Love and Fear</span> (1 John iv. 18)    </td><td align='right'><a href='#LOVE_AND_FEAR'>                          347</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Ray and the Reflection</span> (1 John iv. 19) </td><td align='right'><a href='#THE_RAY_AND_THE_REFLECTION'>                355</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I_PETER" id="I_PETER"></a>I. PETER</h2>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_1" id="Page_2_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="SOJOURNERS_OF_THE_DISPERSION" id="SOJOURNERS_OF_THE_DISPERSION"></a>SOJOURNERS OF THE DISPERSION</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered
+...'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 1.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The words rendered 'strangers scattered' are literally 'sojourners of
+the Dispersion,' and are so rendered in the Revised Version. The
+Dispersion was the recognised name for the Jews dwelling in Gentile
+countries; as, for instance, it is employed in John's Gospel, when the
+people in Jerusalem say, 'Whither will this man go that we shall not
+find Him? Will he go to the Dispersion amongst the Greeks?' Obviously,
+therefore the word here may refer to the scattered Jewish people, but
+the question arises whether the letter corresponds to its apparent
+address, or whether the language which is employed in it does not almost
+oblige us to see here a reference, not to the Jew, but to the whole body
+of Christian people, who, whatever may be their outward circumstances,
+are, in the deepest sense, in the foundations of their life, if they be
+Christ's, 'strangers of the Dispersion.'</p>
+
+<p>Now if we look at the letter we find such words as these&mdash;'The times of
+your ignorance'&mdash;'your vain manner of life handed down from your
+fathers'&mdash;'in time past were not a people'&mdash;'the time past may suffice
+to have wrought the will of the Gentiles'&mdash;all of which, as you see, can
+only be accommodated to Jewish believers by a little gentle violence,
+but all of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_2" id="Page_2_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> find a proper significance if we suppose them
+addressed to Gentiles, to whom they are only applicable in the higher
+sense of the words to which I have referred. If we understand them so,
+we have here an instance of what runs all through the letter; the taking
+hold of Jewish ideas for the purpose of lifting them into a loftier
+region, and transfiguring them into the expression of Christian truth.
+For example, we read in it: 'Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a
+holy nation'; and again: 'Ye are built up a spiritual house, to be a
+holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices.' These and other
+similar passages are instances of precisely the same transference of
+Jewish ideas as I find, in accordance with many good commentators, in
+the words of my text.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, here is Peter's notion of&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. What the Christian Life is.</p>
+
+<p>All those who really have faith in Jesus Christ are 'strangers of the
+Dispersion'; scattered throughout the world, and dwelling dispersedly in
+an order of things to which they do not belong, 'seeking a city which
+hath foundations.' The word 'strangers' means, originally, persons for a
+time living in an alien city. And that is the idea that the Apostle
+would impress upon us as true for each of us, in the measure in which
+our Christianity is real. For, remember, although all men may be truly
+spoken of as being 'pilgrims and sojourners upon the earth' by reason of
+both the shortness of the duration of their earthly course and the
+disproportion between their immortal part and the material things
+amongst which they dwell, Peter is thinking of something very different
+from either the brevity of earthly life or the infinite necessities of
+an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_3" id="Page_2_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> immortal spirit when he calls his Christian brethren strangers. Not
+because we are men, not because we are to die soon, and the world is to
+outlast us; not because other people will one day live in our houses and
+read our books and sit upon our chairs, and we shall be forgotten, but
+because we are Christ's people are we here sojourners, and must regard
+this as not our rest. Not because our immortal soul cannot satisfy
+itself, however it tries, upon the trivialities of earth any more than a
+human appetite can on the husks that the swine do eat, but because new
+desires, tastes, aspirations, affinities, have been kindled in us by the
+new life that has flowed into us; therefore the connection that other
+men have with the world, which makes some of them altogether 'men of the
+world, whose portion is in this life,' is for us broken, and we are
+strangers, scattered abroad, solitary, not by reason of the inevitable
+loneliness in which, after all love and companionship, every soul lives;
+not by reason of losses or deaths, but by reason of the contrariety
+between the foundation of our lives, and the foundation of the lives of
+the men round us; therefore we stand lonely in the midst of crowds;
+strangers in the ordered communities of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, there is no solitude so utter as the solitude of being the only man
+in a crowd that has a faith in his heart, and there is no isolating
+power like the power of rending all ties that true attachment with Jesus
+Christ has. 'Think not that I am come to bring peace on earth, but a
+sword'&mdash;to set a man against his own household, if they be not of the
+household of faith. These things are the inevitable issues of
+religion&mdash;to make us strangers, isolated in the midst of this world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_4" id="Page_2_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And now let us think of&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>II. Some of the plain consequent duties that arise from this
+characteristic of the Christian Life.</p>
+
+<p>Let me put them in the shape of one or two practical counsels. First let
+us try to keep up, vivid and sharp, a sense of separation. I do not mean
+that we should withdraw ourselves from sympathies, nor from services,
+nor from the large area of common ground which we have with our fellows,
+whether they be Christians or no&mdash;with our fellow-citizens; with those
+who are related to us by various bonds, by community of purpose, of aim,
+of opinion, or of affection. But just as Abraham was willing to go down
+into the plain and fight for Lot, though he would not go down and live
+in Sodom, and just as he would enter into relations of amity with the
+men of the land, and yet would not abandon his black camels'-hair tent,
+pitched beneath the terebinth tree, in order to go into their city and
+abide with them, so one great part of the wisdom of a Christian man is
+to draw the line of separation decisively, and yet to keep true to the
+bond of union. Unless Christian people do make a distinct effort to keep
+themselves apart from the world and its ways, they will get confounded
+with these, and when the end comes they will be destroyed with them.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes voyagers find upon some lonely island an English castaway, who
+has forgotten home, and duty, and everything else, to luxuriate in an
+easy life beneath tropical skies, and has degraded himself to the level
+of the savage islanders round him. There are professing
+Christians&mdash;perhaps in my audience&mdash;who, like that poor castaway, have
+'forgotten the imperial palace whence they came,' and have gone down and
+down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_5" id="Page_2_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> and down, to live the fat, contented, low lives of the men who
+find their good upon earth and not in heaven. Do you, dear brethren, try
+to keep vivid the sense that you belong to another community. As Paul
+puts it, with a metaphor drawn from Gentile instead of from Jewish life,
+as in our text, 'Our citizenship is in heaven.' Philippi, to the
+Christian Church of which that was said, was a Roman colony; and the
+characteristics of a Roman colony were that the inhabitants were
+enrolled as members of the Roman tribes, and had their names on the
+register of Rome, and were governed by its laws. So we, living here in
+an outlying province, have our names written in the 'Golden Book' of the
+citizens of the new Jerusalem. Do not forget, if I might use a very
+homely illustration, what parish your settlement is in; remember what
+kingdom you belong to.</p>
+
+<p>Again, if we are strangers of the Dispersion, let us live by our own
+country's laws, and not by the codes that are current in this foreign
+land where we are settled for a time. You remember what was the
+complaint of the people in Persia to Esther's king? 'There is a people
+whose laws are different from all the peoples that be upon the earth.'
+That was an offence that could not be tolerated in a despotism that
+ground everything down to the one level of a slavish uniformity. It will
+be well for us Christian people if men look at us, and say, 'Ah, that
+man has another rule of conduct from the one that prevails generally. I
+wonder what is the underlying principle of his life; it evidently is not
+the same as mine.'</p>
+
+<p>Live by our King's law. People in our colonies, at least the officials,
+set wonderful store by the approbation of the Colonial Office at home.
+It does not matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_6" id="Page_2_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> what the colonial newspapers say, it is 'what will
+they say in Downing Street?' And if a despatch goes out approving of
+their conduct, neighbours may censure and sneer as they list. So we
+Christians have to report to Home, and have so to live 'that whether
+present or absent'&mdash;in a colony or in the mother country&mdash;'we may be
+well pleasing unto Him.'</p>
+
+<p>Keep up the honour and advance the interests of your own country. You
+are here, among other reasons, to represent your King, and people take
+their notions of Him very considerably from their experience of you. So
+see to it that you live like the Master whom you say you serve.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian Government sends out what are called military colonies,
+studded along the frontier, with the one mission of extending the
+empire. We are set along the frontier with the same mission. The
+strangers are scattered. Congested, they would be less useful;
+dispersed, they may push forward the frontiers. Seed in a seed-basket is
+not in its right place; but sown broadcast over the field, it will be
+waving wheat in a month or two. 'Ye are the salt of the earth'&mdash;salt is
+<i>sprinkled</i> over what it is intended to preserve. You are the strangers
+of the Dispersion, that you may be the messengers of the Evangelisation.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, let us be glad when we think, and let us often think, of&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>III. The Home in Glory.</p>
+
+<p>That is a beautiful phrase which pairs off with the one in my text, in
+which another Apostle speaks of the ultimate end as 'our gathering
+together in Christ.' All the scattered ones, like chips of wood in a
+whirlpool, drift gradually closer and closer, until they unite in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_7" id="Page_2_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+solid mass in the centre. So at the last the 'strangers' are to be
+brought and settled in their own land, and their lonely lives are to be
+filled with happy companionship, and they to be in a more blessed unity
+than now. 'Fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God.'
+If we, dwelling in this far-off land, were habitually to talk, as
+Australians do of coming to England of 'going home,' though born in the
+colony, it would be a glad day for us when we set out on the journey. If
+Christian people lived more by faith, as they profess to do, and less by
+sight, they would oftener think of the home-coming and the union; and
+would be happy when they thought that they were here but for awhile, and
+when they realised these two blessed elements of permanence and of
+companionship, which another Apostle packs into one sentence, along with
+that which is greater than them both, 'so shall we ever be with the
+Lord.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BY_THROUGH_UNTO" id="BY_THROUGH_UNTO"></a>BY, THROUGH, UNTO</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'... Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to
+be revealed in the last time.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 5.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Revised Version substitutes 'guarded' for 'kept,' and the
+alteration, though slight, is important, for it not only more accurately
+preserves the meaning of the word employed, but it retains the military
+metaphor which is in it. The force of the expression will appear if I
+refer, in a sentence, to other cases in which it is employed in the New
+Testament. For instance, we read that the governor of Damascus '<i>kept</i>
+the city with a garrison,' which is the same word, and in its purely
+metaphorical usage Paul employs it when he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_8" id="Page_2_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> says that 'the peace of God
+shall keep'&mdash;guard, garrison&mdash;'your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.'
+We have to think of some defenceless position, some unwalled village out
+in the open, with a strong force round it, through which no assailant
+can break, and in the midst of which the weakest can sit secure. Peter
+thinks that every Christian has assailants whom no Christian by himself
+can repel, but that he may, if he likes, have an impregnable ring of
+defence drawn round him, which shall fling back in idle spray the
+wildest onset of the waves, as a breakwater or a cliff might do.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another very beautiful and striking point to be made, and
+that is the connection between the words of my text and those
+immediately preceding. The Apostle has been speaking about 'the
+inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away,' and
+he says 'it is reserved in Heaven for you who are kept.' So, then, the
+same power is working on both sides of the veil, preserving the
+inheritance for the heirs, and preserving the heirs for the inheritance.
+It will not fail them, and they will not miss it. It were of little
+avail to care for either of the two members separately, but the same
+hand that is preparing the inheritance and making it ready for the
+owners is round about the pilgrims, and taking care of them till they
+get home.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, our Apostle is looking at this keeping in three aspects,
+suggested by his three words 'by,' 'through,' 'unto,' which respectively
+express the real cause or power, the condition or occasion on which that
+power works, and the end or purpose to which it works. So these three
+little words will do for lines on which to run our thoughts now&mdash;'by,'
+'through,' 'for.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_9" id="Page_2_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I. In the first place, what are we guarded for?</p>
+
+<p>'Guarded ... unto salvation.' Now that great word 'salvation' was a new
+and strange one to Peter's readers&mdash;so new and strange that probably
+they did not understand it in its full nobleness and sweep. Our
+understanding of it, or, at least, our impression of it, is weakened by
+precisely the opposite cause. It has become so tarnished and
+smooth-rubbed that it creates very little definite impression. Like a
+bit of seaweed lifted out of the sunny waves which opened its fronds and
+brightened its delicate colours, it has become dry and hard and sapless
+and dim. But let me try for one moment to freshen it for our conceptions
+and our hearts. Salvation has in it the double idea of being made safe,
+and being made sound. Peril threatening to slay, and sickness unto
+death, are the implications of the conditions which this great word
+presupposes. The man that needs to be saved needs to be rescued from
+peril and needs to be healed of a disease. And if you do not know and
+feel that that is <i>you</i>, then you have not learned the first letters of
+the alphabet which are necessary to spell 'salvation.' You, I, every
+man, we are all sick unto death, because the poison of self-will and sin
+is running hot through all our veins, and we are all in deadly peril
+because of that poison-peril of death, peril arising from the weight of
+guilt that presses upon us, peril from our inevitable collision with the
+Divine law and government which make for righteousness.</p>
+
+<p>And so salvation means, negatively, the deliverance from all the evils,
+whether they be evils of sorrow or evils of sin, which can affect a man,
+and which do affect us all in some measure. But it means far more than
+that, for God's salvation is no half-and-half thing, contented, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_10" id="Page_2_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> some
+benevolent man might be, in a widespread flood or disaster, with
+rescuing the victims and putting them high up enough for the water not
+to reach them, and leaving them there shivering cold and starving. But
+when God begins by taking away evils, it is in order that He may clear a
+path for flooding us with good. And so salvation is not merely what some
+of you think it is, the escape from a hell, nor only what some of you
+more nobly take it to be, a deliverance from the power of sin in your
+hearts; but it is the investiture of each of us with every good and
+glory, whether of happiness or of purity, which it is possible for a man
+to receive and for God to give. It is the great word of the New
+Testament, and they do a very questionable service to humanity who
+weaken the grandeur and the greatness of the Scriptural conception of
+salvation, by weakening the darkness and the terribleness of the
+Scriptural conception of the dangers and the sicknesses from which it
+delivers.</p>
+
+<p>But, then, there is another point that I would suggest raised by the
+words of my text in their connection. Peter is here evidently speaking
+about a future manifestation of absolute exemption from all the ills
+that flesh and spirit are heir to, and radiant investure with all the
+good that humanity can put on, which lies beyond the great barrier of
+this mortal life. And that complete salvation, in its double aspect, is
+obviously the end for which all that guarding of life is lavished upon
+us, as it is the end for which all the discipline of life is given to
+us, and as it is the end for which the bitter agony and pain of the
+Christ on the Cross were freely rendered. But that ultimate and
+superlative perfection has its roots and its beginning here. And so in
+Scripture you find salvation sometimes regarded as a thing in the past<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_11" id="Page_2_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+experience of every Christian man which he received at the very
+beginning of his course, and sometimes you have it treated as being
+progressive, running on continually through all his days; and sometimes
+you have it treated, as in my text, as laid up yonder, and only to be
+reached when life is done with. But just a verse or two after my text we
+read that the Christian man here, on condition of his loving Jesus
+Christ and believing in Him, rejoices because he here and now 'receives
+the end of his faith, even the salvation of his soul.' And so there are
+the two things&mdash;the incipient germ to-day, the full-foliaged
+fruit-bearing tree planted in the higher house of the Lord.</p>
+
+<p>These two things are inseparably intertwined. The Christian life in its
+imperfection here, the partial salvation of to-day demands, unless the
+universe is a chaos and there is no personal God the centre of it, a
+future life, in which all that is here tendency shall be realised
+possession, and in which all that here but puts up a pale and feeble
+shoot above the ground, shall grow and blossom and bear fruit unto life
+eternal. 'Like the new moon with a ragged edge, e'en in its
+imperfections beautiful,' all the characteristics of Christian life on
+earth prophesy that the orb is crescent, and will one day round itself
+into its pure silvery completeness. If you see a great wall in some
+palace, with slabs of polished marble for most of its length, and here
+and there stretches of course rubble shoved in, you would know that that
+was not the final condition, that the rubble had to be cased over, or
+taken out and replaced by the lucent slab that reflected the light, and
+showed, by its reflecting, its own mottled beauty. Thus the very
+inconsistencies, the thwarted desires, the broken resolutions, the
+aspira<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_12" id="Page_2_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>tion that never can clothe themselves in the flesh of reality,
+which belong to the Christian life, declare that this is but the first
+stage of the structure, and point onwards to the time when the
+imperfections shall be swept away, 'and for brass He will bring gold,
+for iron He will bring silver,' and then the windows shall be set 'in
+agates, and the gates in carbuncles, and all the borders in pleasant
+stones.' Perfect salvation is obviously the only issue of the present
+imperfect salvation.</p>
+
+<p>That is what you are 'kept' for. That is what Christ died to bring you.
+That is what God, like a patient workman bringing out the pattern in his
+loom by many a throw of a sharp-pointed shuttle, and much twisting of
+the threads into patterns, is trying to make of you, and that is what
+Christ on the Cross has died to effect. Brethren, let us think more than
+we do, not only of the partial beginnings here, but of that perfect
+salvation for which Christian men are being 'kept' and guarded, and
+which, if you and I will observe the conditions, is as sure to come as
+that X, Y, Z follow A, B, C. That is what we are kept for.</p>
+
+<p>II. Notice what we are guarded by.</p>
+
+<p>'The <i>power</i> of God,' says Peter, laying hold of the most general
+expression that he can find, not caring to define ways and means, but
+pointing to the one great force that is sure to do it.</p>
+
+<p>Now if we were to translate with perfect literality, we should read, not
+<i>by</i> the power of God, but <i>in</i> the power of God. And whilst it is quite
+probable that what Peter meant was 'by,' I think it adds great force and
+beauty to the passage, and is entirely accordant with the military
+metaphor, which I have already pointed out, if we keep the simple local
+sense of the word, and read,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_13" id="Page_2_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> 'guarded <i>in</i> the power of God.' And that
+suggests a whole stream of Scriptural representations, both in the Old
+and in the New Testament. Let me recall one or two. 'The name of the
+Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe.' 'He
+that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the
+shadow of the Almighty.' 'Israel shall dwell safely,' says one of the
+old prophets, 'in unwalled villages, for I will be a wall of fire round
+about her.' The psalmist said, 'The Angel of the Lord encampeth round
+about them that fear Him.' And all these representations concur in this
+one thought, that we are safe, enclosed in God, and that He, by His
+power, compasses us about. And so no foe can get at us who cannot break
+down or climb over the encircling wall of defence. An army in an enemy's
+country will march in hollow square, and put its most precious
+treasures, or its weaker members, its sick, its women, its children, its
+footsore, into the middle there, and with a line of lances on either
+side, and stalwart arms to wield them, the feeblest need fear no foe. We
+'are kept in the power of God unto salvation.'</p>
+
+<p>But do not forget how, far beyond the psalmist and prophet, and in
+something far more sublime and wonderful than a poetic figure, the New
+Testament catches up the same phrase, and gives us, as the condition of
+vitality, as the condition of fertility, as the condition of
+tranquillity, as the condition of security, the same thing&mdash;'in Christ.'
+Remember His very last words prior to His great intercessory prayer, in
+which He spoke about keeping those that were given Him in His name. And
+just before that He said to them, 'In the world ye shall have
+tribulation, but in Me ye shall have peace.' Kept, guarded as behind the
+battlements of some great fort,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_14" id="Page_2_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> which has in its centre a quiet,
+armoured chamber into which no noise of battle, nor shout of foeman, can
+ever come. 'In Christ,' though the world is all in arms without, 'ye
+shall have peace.' 'Guarded in the power of God unto salvation.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, what we are kept through.</p>
+
+<p>'Through faith.' Now there we come across another of the words which we
+know so well that we do not understand them. You all think that it is
+the right thing for me to preach about 'faith.' I daresay some of you
+have never tried to apprehend what it means. And I daresay there are a
+great many of you to whom the utterance of the word suggests that I am
+plunging into the bathos and commonplaces of the pulpit. Perhaps, if you
+would try to understand it, you would find it was a bigger thing than
+you fancied. What is faith? I will give you another expression that has
+not so many theological accretions sticking to it, and which means
+precisely the same thing&mdash;trust. And we all know that we do not trust
+with our heads, but with our hearts and wills. You may believe
+undoubtedly, and have no faith at all, for it is the heart and the will
+that go forth, and clutch at the thing trusted; or, as I should rather
+say, at the person trusted; for, at bottom, what we trust is always a
+person, and even when we 'trust to nature,' it is because, more or less
+clearly, we feel that somehow or other at the back of nature there is a
+Will and an Intelligence that are working and trustworthy. However, that
+is a subject that I do not need to touch upon here. Faith is trust,
+trust in a Person, trust that, like the fabled goddess rising, radiant
+and aspiring to the heavens, out of the roll of the tempestuous ocean,
+springs from the depths of absolute self-distrust and diffidence. There
+is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_15" id="Page_2_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> a spurious kind of faith which has no good in it, just because it
+did not begin with going down into the depths of one's own heart, and
+finding out how rotten and hopeless everything was there. My friend, no
+man has a vigorous Christian faith who has not been very near utter
+despair. 'Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee.' The zenith, which
+is the highest point in the sky above us, is always just as far aloft as
+the nadir, which is the lowest point in the sky at the Antipodes, is
+beneath us. Your faith is measured by your self-despair.</p>
+
+<p>Further, why is it that I must have faith in order to get God's power at
+work in me? Many people seem to think that faith is appointed by God as
+the condition of salvation out of mere arbitrary selection and caprice.
+Not at all. If God could save you without your faith, He would do it. He
+does not, because He cannot. Why must I have faith in order that God's
+power may keep me? Why must you open your window in order to let the
+fresh air in? Why must you pull up the blind in order to let the light
+in? Why must you take your medicine or your food if you want to be cured
+or nourished? Why must you pull the trigger if your revolver is to go
+off? Unless I trust God, distrusting myself, and the spark of faith is
+struck out of the rock of my heart by the sharp steel in the midst of
+the darkness of despair, God cannot pour out upon me His power. There is
+nothing arbitrary about it. It is inseparable from the very nature of
+the case. If you do not want Him, you cannot have Him. If you do not
+know that you need Him, you cannot have Him. If you do not trust that He
+will come to you and help you, you will not have Him.</p>
+
+<p>So then, brother, your faith, my faith, anybody's faith is nothing of
+itself. It is only the valve that opens and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_16" id="Page_2_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> lets the steam rush in. It
+is only the tap you turn to let Thirlmere come into your basins. It is
+not you that saves yourself. It is not your faith that keeps you, any
+more than it is the outstretched hand with which a man, ready to
+stumble, grasps the hand of a stalwart, steadfast man on the pavement by
+his side that keeps him up. It is the other man's hand that holds you
+up, but it is your hand that lays hold of him. It is God that saves, it
+is God that guards, it is God that is able to keep us from falling, and
+to give us an inheritance among all them that are sanctified. He will do
+it if we turn to Him, and ask and expect Him to do it. If you will
+comply with the conditions and not else, He will fulfil His promise and
+accomplish His purpose. But my unbelief can thwart Omnipotence, and
+hinder Christ's all-loving purpose, just as on earth we read that 'He
+could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief.' I am sure
+that there are people here who all their lives long have been thus
+hampering Omnipotence and neutralising the love of Christ, and making
+His sacrifice impotent and His wish to save them vain. Stretch out your
+hands as this very Peter once did, crying, 'Lord, save, or I perish';
+and He will answer, not by word only, but by act: 'According to thy
+faith be it unto thee.' Salvation, here and hereafter, is God's work
+alone. It cannot be exercised towards a man who has not faith. It will
+certainly be exercised towards any man who has.</p>
+
+<p>Help us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, to live the lives which we live in the
+flesh by the faith of the Son of God. And may we know what it is to be
+in him, strengthened within the might of His spirit.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_17" id="Page_2_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="SORROWFUL_YET_ALWAYS_REJOICING" id="SORROWFUL_YET_ALWAYS_REJOICING"></a>SORROWFUL, YET ALWAYS REJOICING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be,
+ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 6.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>You will remember the great saying of our Lord's in the Sermon on the
+Mount, in which He makes the last of the beatitudes, that which He
+pronounces upon His disciples, when men shall revile them and persecute
+them, and speak all manner of evil falsely against them for His sake,
+and bids them rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is their reward
+in Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Now it seems to me that in the words of my text there is a distinct echo
+of that saying of Christ's. For not only is the whole context the same,
+but a somewhat unusual and very strong word which our Lord employs is
+also employed here by Peter. 'Rejoice and be <i>exceeding glad</i>,' said
+Christ. 'Ye <i>rejoice greatly</i>,' said the Apostle, and he is echoing his
+Master's word. Then with regard to the context; Christ proposes to His
+followers this exceeding gladness as evoked in their hearts by the very
+thing that might seem to militate against it&mdash;viz., men's antagonism.
+Similarly, Peter, throughout this whole letter, and in my text, is
+heartening the disciples against impending persecution, and, like his
+Lord, he bids them face it, if not 'with frolic welcome' at all events
+with undiminished and undimmed serenity and cheerfulness. Christ based
+the exhortation on the thought that great would be their reward in
+Heaven. Peter points to the salvation ready to be revealed as being the
+ground of the joy that he enjoined. So in the words and in the whole
+strain and structure of the exhortation the servant is copying his
+Master.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_18" id="Page_2_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But, of course, although the immediate application of these words is to
+Churches fronting the possibility and probability of actual persecution
+and affliction for the sake of Jesus Christ, the principle involved
+applies to us all. And the worries and the sorrows of our daily life
+need the exhortation here, quite as much as did the martyr's pains.
+White ants will pick a carcass clean as soon as a lion will, and there
+is quite as much wear and tear of Christian gladness arising from the
+small frictions of our daily life as from the great strain and stress of
+persecution.</p>
+
+<p>So our Apostle has a word for us all. Now it seems to me that in this
+text there are three things to be noticed: a paradox, a possibility, a
+duty. 'In which ye rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are
+in heaviness through manifold temptations.' Look at these three points.</p>
+
+<p>I. This paradox.</p>
+
+<p>Two emotions diametrically opposed are to be contained within the narrow
+room of one disposition and temper. 'Ye greatly rejoice.... Ye are in
+heaviness.' Can such a thing be? Well! let us think for a moment. The
+sources of the two conflicting emotions are laid out before us; they may
+be constantly operative in every life. On the one hand, 'in which ye
+greatly rejoice.' Now that 'in which' does not point back only to the
+words that immediately precede, but to the whole complex clause that
+goes before. And what is the 'which' that is there? These things; the
+possession of a new life&mdash;'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
+Jesus Christ who hath begotten us again!'&mdash;the springing up in a man's
+heart of a strange new hope, like a new star that swims into the sky,
+and sheds a radiance all about it&mdash;'Begotten unto<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_19" id="Page_2_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> a lively hope by the
+resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead'; a new wealth&mdash;an
+'inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away; a new
+security&mdash;guarded by the power of God through faith unto salvation.'
+These things belong, <i>ipso facto</i>, and in the measure of his faith, to
+every Christian man, a new life, a new hope, a new wealth, and a new
+security; and in their conjoint action, all four of them brought to bear
+upon a man's temper and spirit, will, if he is realising them, make him
+glad.</p>
+
+<p>Then, on the other hand, we have other fountains pouring their streams
+into the same reservoir. And just as the deep fountains which are open
+to us by faith will, if we continue to exercise that faith, flood our
+spirits with sweet waters, so these other fountains will pour their
+bitter floods over every heart more or less abundantly and continually.
+'Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold
+temptations.' There are confluent streams that one has sometimes seen,
+where a clear river joins, and flows in the same bed with, one all foul
+with half-melted ice, and the two run side by side for a space, scarcely
+mingling their waters. Thus the paradox of the Christian life is that
+within the same narrow banks may flow the sunny and the turbid, the
+clear and the dark, the sorrow that springs from earthly fountains, the
+joy that pours from the heavenly heights.</p>
+
+<p>Now notice that this is only one case of the paradox of the whole
+Christian life. For the peculiarity of it is that it owns two;&mdash;it
+belongs to, and is exposed to, all the influences of the forces and
+things of time, whilst in regard to its depths, it belongs to, and is
+under the influence of, 'the things that are unseen and eternal'; so
+that you have the external life common to the Christian and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_20" id="Page_2_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> to all
+other people, and then you have the life 'hid with Christ in God,' the
+roots of it going down through all the superficial soil, and grappling
+the central rock of all things. Thus a series of paradoxes and perennial
+contradictions describes the twofold life that every believing spirit
+lives, 'as unknown and yet well known, as dying and, behold we live, as
+sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making rich, as having
+nothing and yet possessing all things.'</p>
+
+<p>Remember, too, that according to Peter's conception neither of these two
+sources pours out a flood which obliterates or dams back the other. They
+are to co-exist. The joy is not to deprive the heaviness of its weight,
+nor the sorrow of its sting. There is no artificial stoicism about
+Christianity, no attempt to sophisticate one's self out of believing in
+the reality of the evils that assail us, or to forbid that we shall feel
+their pain and their burden. Many good people fail to get the good of
+life's discipline, because they have somehow come to think that it is
+wrong to weep when Christ sends sorrows, and wrong to feel, as other men
+feel, the grip and bite of the manifold trials of our earthly lives.
+'Weep for yourselves,' for the feeling of the sorrow is the precedent
+condition to the benefit from the sorrow, and it yields 'the peaceable
+fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.'</p>
+
+<p>But, on the other hand, the black stream is not to bank up the sunny
+one, or prevent it from flowing into the heart, ay! and flowing over,
+the other. And so the co-existence of the joys that come from above, and
+the sorrows that spring from around, and some of them from beneath, is
+the very secret of the Christian life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_21" id="Page_2_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II. Further, consider the blessed possibility of this paradox.</p>
+
+<p>Can two conflicting emotions live in a man's heart at once? Rather, we
+might ask, are there ever emotions in a man's heart that are not hemmed
+in by conflicting ones? Is there ever such a thing in the world's
+experience as a pure joy, or as a confidence which has no trace of fear
+in it? Are there any pictures without shadows? They are only daubs if
+they are. Instead of wondering at this co-existence of joy and sorrow,
+we must recognise that it is in full accord with all our experience,
+which never brings a joy, but, like the old story of the magic palace,
+there is one window unlighted, and which never brings a sorrow so black
+and over-arching so completely the whole sky, but that somewhere, if the
+eye would look for it, there is a bit of blue. The possibility of the
+paradox is in accordance with all human experience.</p>
+
+<p>But then, you say, 'my feelings of joy or sorrow are very largely a
+matter of temperament, and still more largely a matter of responding to
+the facts round about me. And I cannot pump up emotions to order; and if
+I could they would be factitious, artificial, insincere, and do me more
+harm than good.' Perfectly true. There are a great many ugly names for
+manufactured emotions, and none of them a bit too ugly. Peter does not
+wish you to try to get up feeling to order. It is the bane of some type
+of Christianity that that is done. You cannot thus manufacture emotion.
+No; but I will tell you what you can do. You can determine what you will
+think about most, and what you will look at most, and if you settle
+that, that will settle what you feel. And so, though it is by a
+roundabout way, we can regulate our emotions. A man travelling in a
+railway train can choose which side of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_22" id="Page_2_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> carriage he will look out
+at, either the one where the sunshine is falling full on the front of
+each grass-blade and tree, or the side where it is the shadowed side of
+each that is turned to him. If he will look out of the one window, he
+will see everything verdant and bright, and if he will look out at the
+other, there will be a certain sobriety and dulness over the landscape.
+You can settle which window you are going to look out at. If the
+one&mdash;'in which ye greatly rejoice.' If the other&mdash;'ye are in heaviness
+through manifold temptations.' You have seen patterns wrought in black
+and white, you may focus your eye so as to get white on a black ground,
+or black on a white ground, just as you like. You can do that with your
+life, and either fix upon the temptations and the heaviness as the main
+thing, or you can fix upon the new life, and the new wealth, and the new
+hope, and the new security as the main things. If you do the one, down
+you will go into the depths of gloom, and if you do the other, up you
+will spring into the ethereal heights of sober and Christian gladness.</p>
+
+<p>So then, brethren, this possibility depends on these things, the choice
+of our main object of contemplation, and that breaks up into two
+thoughts about which I wish to say a word. The reason why so many
+Christian people have only religion enough to make them gloomy, or to
+weight them with a sense of burdens and unfulfilled aspirations and
+broken resolutions, and have not enough to make them glad, is mainly
+because they do not think enough about the four things in which they
+might 'greatly rejoice.' I believe that most of us would be altogether
+different people, as professing Christians, if we honestly tried to keep
+the mightiest things uppermost, and to fill heart and mind far more than
+we do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_23" id="Page_2_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> with the contemplation of these great facts and truths which,
+when once they are beheld and cleaved to, are certain to minister
+gladness to men's souls. These great truths which you and I say we
+believe, and which we profess to live by, will only work their effect
+upon us, so long as they are present to our minds and hearts. You can no
+more expect Christian verities to keep you from falling, or to
+strengthen you in weakness, or to gladden you in sorrow, if you are not
+thinking about them, than you can expect the most succulent or most
+nutritive food to nourish you if you do not eat it. As long as Christ
+and His grace are present in our hearts and minds by thought, so long,
+and not one moment longer, do they minister to us the joy of the Lord.
+You switch off from the main current, and out go all the lights, and
+when you switch off from Christ out goes the gladness.</p>
+
+<p>Then another thing I would point out is that the possibility of this
+co-existence of joy and of heaviness depends further on our taking the
+right point of view from which to look at the sources of the heaviness.
+Notice how beautifully, although entirely incidentally, and without
+calling attention to it, Peter here minimises the 'manifold temptations'
+which he does expect, however minimised, will make men heavy. He calls
+them 'temptations.' Now that is rather an unfortunate word, because it
+suggests the idea of something that desires to drag a man into sin. But
+suppose, instead of 'temptations,' with its unfortunate associations,
+you were to substitute a word that means the same thing, and is free
+from that association&mdash;viz.,'trial,'&mdash;you would get the right point of
+view. As long as I look at my sorrows mainly in regard to their power to
+sadden me, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_24" id="Page_2_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> have not got to the right point of view for them. They
+<i>are</i> meant to sadden me, they are meant to pain, they are meant to
+bring the tears, they are meant to weight the heart and press down the
+spirits, but what for? To test what I am made of, and by testing to
+bring out and strengthen what is good, and to cast out and destroy what
+is evil. We shall never understand, even so much as it is possible for
+us to understand, and that is not very much, of the mystery of pain
+until we come to recognise that its main purpose is to help in making
+character. And when you think of your sorrows, disappointments, losses,
+when you think of your pains and sickness, and all the ills that flesh
+is heir to, principally as being 'trials,' in the deep sense of that
+word&mdash;viz., a means of testing you, and thereby helping you, bettering
+you, and building up character&mdash;then it is more possible to blend the
+sorrow that they produce with the joy to which they may lead. The
+Apostle adds the other thought of the transitoriness of sorrow, and yet
+further, the other of its necessity for the growth of humanity. So they
+are not only to be felt, not only to be wept over, not only to make us
+sad, but they are to be accepted, and used as means by which we may be
+perfected. And when once you get occupied in trying to get all the good
+that is in it out of a grief, you will be astonished to find how the
+bitterness that was in it was diminished.</p>
+
+<p>We may have the oil on the water, calming, though not ending, its
+agitation. We may carry our own atmosphere with us, and like the diver
+that goes down into depths of the sea, and cannot be reached by the
+hungry water around his crystal bell, and has communication with the
+upper air, where the light of the sun is, so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_25" id="Page_2_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> you and I, down at the
+slimy bottom, and with the waste of water all around us, which if it
+could get at us would choke us, may walk at liberty, in peace and
+gladness. And so, 'though the labour of the olive shall fail and the fig
+tree not blossom, though the flocks be cut off from the folds and the
+herd from the stalls,' we may joy in the Lord, and 'rejoice in the God
+of our salvation.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Now lastly, we have here a duty.</p>
+
+<p>Peter takes it for granted that these good people, who had persecution
+hanging over them, were still rejoicing greatly in the Lord. He does not
+feel it necessary to enjoin it upon them. It is a matter of course in
+their Christian life. And you will find that all through the New
+Testament this same tone is adopted which recognises gladness as being,
+on the one hand, an inseparable characteristic of the Christian
+experience, and on the other hand as being a thing that is a Christian
+man's duty to cultivate. Now I do not believe that the most of Christian
+people have ever looked at the thing in that light at all. If joy has
+come to them, they have been thankful for it, but they have very, very
+seldom felt that, if they are not glad, there is something wrong. And a
+great many of us, I am sure, have never recognised the fact that it is
+our duty to 'rejoice in the Lord always.' Have you realised it? I do not
+mean have you tried to get up, as I have been saying, factitious
+emotions, but have you felt that if you are doing what, as Christian men
+or women, it is your plain duty to do, there will come into your hearts
+this joy of the Lord. I have told you why you are not happier
+Christians, why so many of us have, as I said, only got religion enough
+to make you gloomy and burdened. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_26" id="Page_2_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> is because you do not think enough
+about Jesus Christ, and what He has given you, and what He is doing for
+you and in you. It is because you have not the new life in strong
+experience and possession, and because you have not the new hope
+springing in your hearts, and because you have not the new wealth
+realised often in present possession, and because you have not the new
+security which He is ready to give you. It is your duty, Christian man
+and woman, to be a joyful Christian, and if you are not, then the
+negligence is sin.</p>
+
+<p>It is a hard duty. It is not easy to turn away from that which is
+torturing flesh or sense or natural desires or human affections, and to
+realise the unseen. It is not easy, but it is possible. And, like all
+other difficult things, it is worth doing. For there is nothing more
+helpful, more recommendatory, of our Christianity to other people, and
+more certain to tell on the vigour and efficiency of our Christian
+service, than that we should be rejoicing in the Lord, and living in the
+possession of the experience of Christ's joy which He has left for us.</p>
+
+<p>There is one other thing I must say. I have been talking about the
+co-existence of joy and sorrows. In one form or another that
+co-existence is universal. The difference is this. A Christian man has
+superficial sorrows and central gladness, and other men have superficial
+gladness and central sorrow. 'Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful.'
+Many of you know what that means&mdash;the black aching centre, full of
+unrest, grimly unparticipant of the dancing delights going on about it,
+like some black rock that stands up in the midst of a field flooded with
+sunshine, and gay with flowers. 'The end of that mirth is heaviness.'
+Better a surface<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_27" id="Page_2_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> sadness and a core of joy than the opposite, a skin of
+verdure over the scarcely cold lava. Better a transient sorrow with an
+eternal joy than the opposite, mirth, 'like the crackling of thorns
+under a pot,' which dies down into a doleful ring of black ashes in the
+pathless desert. Choose whether you will have joy dwelling with and
+conquering sorrow, or unrest and sorrow, darkening and finally
+shattering your partial and fleeting joys.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_TRUE_GOLD_AND_ITS_TESTING" id="THE_TRUE_GOLD_AND_ITS_TESTING"></a>THE TRUE GOLD AND ITS TESTING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of
+gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found
+unto praise and honour and glory ...'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 7.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Apostle is fond of that word 'precious.' In both his letters he uses
+it as an epithet for diverse things. According to one translation, he
+speaks of Christ as 'precious to you which believe.' He certainly speaks
+of 'the precious blood of Christ,' and of 'exceeding great and precious
+promises,' and here in my text, as well as in the Second Epistle, he
+speaks about 'precious faith.' It is a very wide general term, not
+expressing anything very characteristic beyond the one notion of value.
+But in the text, according to our Authorised Version, it looks at first
+sight as if it were not the faith, but the <i>trial</i> of the faith that the
+Apostle regards as thus valuable. There are difficulties of rendering
+which I need not trouble you with. Suffice it to say that, speaking
+roughly and popularly, the 'trial of your faith' here seems to mean
+rather the <i>result of</i> that trial, and might be fairly represented by
+the slightly varied expression, 'your faith having been tried, might be
+found,' etc.</p>
+
+<p>I must not be tempted to discourse about the reasons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_28" id="Page_2_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> why such a
+rendering seems to express the Apostle's meaning more fully, but, taking
+it for granted, there are just three things to notice&mdash;the true wealth,
+the testing of the wealth, and the discovery at last of the preciousness
+of the wealth.</p>
+
+<p>I. Peter pits against each other faith that has been tried, and 'gold
+that perisheth'; he puts away all the other points of comparison and
+picks out one, and that is that the one lasts and the other does not.
+Now I must not be seduced into going beyond the limits of my text to
+dilate upon the other points of contrast and pre-eminence; but I would
+just notice in a sentence that everybody admits, yet next to nobody acts
+upon, the admission that inward good is far more valuable than outward
+good. 'Wisdom is more precious than rubies,' say people, and yet they
+will choose the rubies, and take no trouble to get the wisdom. Now the
+very same principles of estimating value which set cultivated
+understandings and noble hearts above great possessions and large
+balances at the bankers, set the life of faith high above all others.
+And the one thought which Peter wishes to drive into our heads and
+hearts is that there is only one kind of wealth that will never be
+separated from its possessor. Nothing is truly ours that remains outside
+of us.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>''Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands.'</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Nothing that is there whilst I am here is really mine. I do not own it
+if it is possible that I shall lose it. And so with profound meaning our
+Lord speaks about 'that which is another's' in comparison with 'that
+which is your own.' It is another's because it passes, like quicksilver
+under pressure, from hand to hand, and no man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_29" id="Page_2_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> really holds it, but it
+leaps away from his grasp. And if a man retains it all his days, still,
+according to the grim old proverb, 'shrouds have no pockets,' and when
+he dies his hands open, or sometimes they clutch together, but there is
+nothing inside the palms, and they only close upon themselves. Dear
+brethren, if there is anything that can be filched away from us,
+anything about which it is true that, on the one hand, 'moth and
+rust'&mdash;natural processes&mdash;'do corrupt' it, on the other hand, 'thieves
+break through and steal'&mdash;accidents of human conduct can deprive us of
+it, then we may <i>call</i> it ours, but it is not ours. It possesses us, if
+we are devoted to it as our best good, and fighting and toiling, and
+sometimes lying and cheating, and flinging the whole fierce energy of
+our nature into first gripping and then holding it; it possesses us; we
+do not possess it. But if there is anything that can become so
+interwoven and interlaced with the very fibres of a man's heart that
+they and it cannot be parted, if there is anything that empty hands will
+clasp the closer, because they <i>are</i> emptied of earth's vanities, then
+that is truly possessed by its possessor. And our faith, which will not
+be trodden in the grave, but will go with us into the world beyond, and
+though it be lost in one aspect, in sight, it will be eternal as trust,
+will be ours, imperishable as ourselves, and as God. Therefore, do not
+give all the energy of your lives to amassing the second-best riches.
+Seek the highest things most. 'Covet earnestly the best gifts,' and let
+the coveting regulate your conduct. And do not be put off with wealth
+that will fail you sooner or later.</p>
+
+<p>II. Note, again, the testing of the wealth.</p>
+
+<p>I need not dwell upon that very familiar metaphor of the furnace for
+gold, and the fining-pot for silver, only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_30" id="Page_2_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> remember that there are two
+purposes for which metallurgists apply fire to metals. The one is to
+test them, and the other is to cleanse them, or, to use technical words,
+one is for the purpose of assaying them, and the other is for the
+purpose of refining them. And so, linking the words of my text with the
+words of the previous verse, we find that the Apostle lays it down that
+the purpose of all the diverse trials, or 'temptations' as he calls
+them, that come to us, is this one thing, that our faith should be
+'tried,' and 'found, unto praise and honour and glory.' The fire carries
+away the dross; it makes the pure metal glow in its lustre. It burns up
+the 'wood, hay, stubble'; it makes the gold gleam and the precious
+stones coruscate and flash.</p>
+
+<p>And so note this general notion here of the intention of all life's
+various aspects being to test character is specialised into this, that
+it is meant to test faith, first of all. Of course it is meant to test
+many other things. A man's whole character is tested by the experiences
+of his daily life, all that is good and all that is evil in him, and we
+might speak about the effect of life's discipline upon a great many
+different sides of our nature. But here the whole stress is put upon the
+effect of life in testing and clarifying and strengthening one part of a
+Christian's character, and that is his faith. Why does Peter pick out
+faith? Why does he not say 'trial of your hope,' of your 'love,' of your
+'courage,' of half a dozen other graces? Why 'the trial of your
+<i>faith</i>?' For this reason, because as the man's faith is, so is the man.
+Because faith is the tap-root, in the view of the New Testament, of all
+that is good and strong and noble in humanity. Because if you strengthen
+a man's trust you strengthen everything that comes from it. Reinforce
+the centre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_31" id="Page_2_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> and all is reinforced. Your faith is the vital point from
+which your whole life as Christians is developed, and whatever
+strengthens that strengthens you. And, therefore, although everything
+that befalls you calls for the exercise of, and therefore tests, and
+therefore, rightly undergone, strengthens a great many various virtues
+and powers and beauties in a human character, the main good of it all is
+that it deepens, if the man is right, his simple trust in God manifested
+by his trust in and love to Jesus Christ: and so it reinforces the faith
+which works by love, and thus tends to make all things in life good and
+fair.</p>
+
+<p>Now if thus the main end of life is to strengthen faith, let us remember
+that we have to give a wider meaning to the word 'trials' than
+'afflictions.' Ah! there is as sharp a trial of my faith in prosperity
+as in any adversity. People say, 'It is easy to trust God when things
+are going well with us.' That is quite true. But it is a great deal
+easier to stop trusting God, or thinking about Him, when things are
+going well with us, and we do not seem to need Him so much, as in the
+hours of darkness. You remember the old story about the traveller, when
+the sun and the wind tried which could make him take off his cloak; and
+the sun did it. Some of us, I daresay, have found out that the faith
+which gripped God when we felt we needed Him, because we had not
+anything else but Him, is but too apt to lose hold of Him when fleeting
+delights and apparent treasures come and whisper invitations in our
+hearts. There are diseases that are proper to the northern, dark,
+ice-bound regions of the earth. Yes! and there are a great many more
+that belong to the tropics; as there is such a thing as sunstroke, which
+is, perhaps, as dangerous as the cramping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_32" id="Page_2_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> cold from the icebergs of the
+north. Some of us should understand what that Scripture means: 'Because
+they have no changes, therefore they fear not God.' Prosperity,
+untroubled lives, lives even as the lives of those of the majority of
+mankind now, have their own most searching trials of faith.</p>
+
+<p>But on the other hand, if there are 'ships that have gone down at sea,
+when heaven was all tranquillity,' there come also dark and nights of
+wild tempest when we have to lay to and ride out the gale with a
+tremendous strain on the cable. Our sorrows, our disappointments, our
+petty annoyances, and the great irrevocable griefs that sooner or later
+darken the very earth, are all to be classified under this same purpose,
+'that the trial of your faith ... might be found unto praise and honour
+and glory.' And so, I beseech you, open your eyes to the meaning of
+life, and do not suppose that you have found the last word to say about
+it when you say 'I am afflicted,' or 'I am at ease.' The affliction and
+the ease, like two wheels in some great machine working in opposite
+directions, fit with their cogs into one another and move something
+beyond them in one uniform direction. And affliction and ease cooperate
+to this end, that we might be partakers of His holiness.</p>
+
+<p>I believe experience teaches the most of us, if we will lay its lessons
+to heart, that the times when Christian people grow most in the divine
+life is in their times of sorrow. One of the old divines says, 'Grace
+grows best in winter'; and there are edible plants which need a touch of
+frost before they are good to eat. So it is with our faith. Only let us
+take care that the fire does not burn it up, as 'wood, hay, stubble,'
+but ir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_33" id="Page_2_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>radiates it and glorifies it, as 'gold, silver, and precious
+stones.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Now a word, lastly, about the ultimate discovery.</p>
+
+<p>'Might be found unto praise and honour and glory.' Note these three
+words, which I think are often neglected, and sometimes
+misunderstood&mdash;'praise, honour, glory.' Whose? People sometimes say
+'God's,' since His people's ultimate salvation redounds to His praise;
+but it is much better to understand the praise as given to the
+Christians whose faith has stood the testing fires. 'Well done, good and
+faithful servant'&mdash;is not that praise from lips, praise from which is
+praise indeed? As Paul says, 'then shall every man have praise of God.'
+We are far too much afraid of recognising the fact that Jesus Christ in
+Heaven, like Jesus Christ on earth, will praise the deeds that come from
+love to Him, though the deeds themselves may be very imperfect. Do you
+remember 'She hath wrought a good work on Me,' said about a woman that
+had done a perfectly useless thing, which was open to a great many very
+shrewd objections? But Jesus Christ accepted it. Why? Because it was the
+pure utterance of a loving heart. And, depend upon it, though we have to
+say 'Unclean! unclean! We are unprofitable servants,' He will say 'Come!
+ye blessed of My Father.' Praise from Christ is praise indeed.</p>
+
+<p>'Honour.' That suggests bystanders, a public opinion, if I may so say;
+it suggests 'have thou authority over ten cities,' and that men will
+have their deeds round them as a halo, in that other world. As 'praise'
+suggests the redeemed man's relation to his Lord, so 'honour' suggests
+the redeemed man's relation to the fellow-citizens of the New Jerusalem.
+'Glory' speaks of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_34" id="Page_2_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> man himself as transfigured and lifted up into
+the light and lustre of communion with, and conformity to, the image of
+the Lord. 'Then shall we appear with Him in glory. Then shall the
+righteous blaze forth like the sun in My heavenly Father's Kingdom.'</p>
+
+<p>'Shall be found.' Ah! there will be many surprises yonder. Do you
+remember that profound revelation of our Master when He represents those
+on whom He lavishes His eulogies as the Judge, as turning to Him and
+saying, 'Lord! when saw we Thee in ... prison and visited thee?' They do
+not recognise themselves or their acts in Christ's account of them. They
+have found that their lives were diviner than they knew. There will be
+surprises there. As one of the prophets represents the ransomed Israel,
+to her amazement, surrounded by clinging troops of children, and asking,
+'These! Where have they been? I was left alone,' so many a poor, humble
+soul, fighting along in this world, having no recognition on earth, and
+the lowliest estimate of all its own actions, will be astonished at the
+last when it receives 'praise, and honour, and glory, at the appearing
+of Jesus Christ.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="JOY_IN_BELIEVING" id="JOY_IN_BELIEVING"></a>JOY IN BELIEVING</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'In Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with
+joy unspeakable and full of glory.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 8.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Apostle has just previously been speaking about the great and
+glorious things which are to come to Christians on the appearing of
+Jesus Christ, and that naturally suggests to him the thought of the
+condition of believing souls during the period of the Lord's absence and
+com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_35" id="Page_2_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>parative concealment. Having lifted his readers' hopes to that great
+Future, when they would attain to 'praise and honour and glory' at
+Christ's appearing, he drops to the present and to earth, and recalls
+the disadvantages and deprivations of the present Christian experience
+as well as its privileges and blessings. 'Whom having not seen, ye
+love,' that is a very natural thought in the mind of one whose love to
+Jesus rested on the ever-remembered blessed experience of years of happy
+companionship, when addressing those who had no such memories. It points
+to an entirely unique fact. There is nothing else in the world parallel
+to that strange, deep personal attachment which fills millions of hearts
+to this Man who died nineteen centuries ago, and which is utterly unlike
+the feelings that any men have to any other of the great names of the
+past. To love one unseen is a paradox, which is realised only in the
+relation of the Christian soul to Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Apostle goes on with what might at first seem a mere repetition
+of the preceding thought, but really brings to view another strange
+anomaly. 'In Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice
+with joy unspeakable and full of glory.' Love longs for the presence of
+the beloved, and is restless and defrauded of its gladness so long as
+absence continues. But this strange love, which is kindled by an unseen
+Man, does not need His visible presence in order to be a fountain of joy
+unspeakable and full of glory. Thus the Apostle takes it for granted
+that every one who believes knows what this joy is. It is a large
+assumption, contradicted, I am afraid, by the average experience of the
+people that at this day call themselves Christians.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_36" id="Page_2_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We notice&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. The All-sufficient Ground or Source of this Glad Emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'In whom,' with all the disabilities and pains and absence, 'yet
+believing,' you can put out a long arm of faith across the gulf that
+lies, not only between to-day and eighteen centuries ago, but the deeper
+and more impassible gulf that lies between earth and heaven, and clasp
+Christ with a really firm grasp, which will fill the hand, and which we
+shall feel has laid hold of something, or rather has laid hold of a
+living person and a loving heart. That is faith. The Apostle uses a very
+strong form of expression here, which is only very partially represented
+by our English version. He does not say only '<i>in</i> whom believing,' but
+'<i>towards</i> whom'; putting emphasis upon the effort and direction of the
+faith, rather than upon the repose of the heart when it has found its
+object and rests upon Him. And so the conception of the true Christian
+attitude is that of a continual outgoing of Trust and its child Love; of
+Desire and its child Possession; and of Expectation and its child
+Fruition towards that unseen Christ. It is much to believe Him, it is
+more to believe in Him; it is&mdash;I was going to say&mdash;most of all to
+believe towards Him. For in this region, quite as much as, and I think
+more than, in the one to which the saying was originally applied,
+'search is better than attainment.' Our condition must always be that of
+'forgetting the things that are behind'; and however much we may realise
+the union with the unseen Christ in the act of resting upon Him, that
+must never be suffered to interfere with the longing for the larger
+possession of myself, and fuller consequent likeness to Him, which is
+expressed in that great though simple phrase of my text<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_37" id="Page_2_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> 'believing
+towards Him.' Such a continual outgoing of effort, as well as the rest
+and blessedness of reposing on Him, is indispensable for all true
+gladness. For the intensest activity of our whole being is essential to
+the real joy of any part of it, and we shall never know the rapture of
+which humanity, even here and now, is capable until we gather our whole
+selves, heart, will, and all our practical, as well as our intellectual,
+powers in the effort to make more of Christ our own, and to minimise the
+distance between us to a mere vanishing point, 'Believing towards whom
+ye rejoice.'</p>
+
+<p>That act of trust, however inadequate the object upon which it rests,
+and however mistaken may be our conceptions of that on which we lean,
+always brings a gladness which is real, until disappointment
+disillusionises and saddens us. There is nothing that so sheds peace
+over the heart as reliance, absolute and quiet, upon some object worthy
+of trust. It is blessed to trust one another until, as is too often the
+case, we find that what we thought to be an oak against which we leaned
+is but a broken reed that has no pith in it, and no possibility of
+support. So far as it goes, all trust is blessed, but the most blessed
+is simple reliance upon, and aspiration after, Jesus Christ. Ever to
+yearn for Him, not with the yearning of those who have no possession,
+but with that of those who, having a little, desire to have more, is to
+bring into our lives the one solid and sufficient good without which
+there is no gladness, and with which there can be no unmingled sorrow,
+wrapping the whole man in its ebon folds. For this Christ is enough for
+all my nature and for the satisfaction of every desire. In Him my mind
+finds the truth; my will the law; my love the answering love; my hope
+its object; my fears their dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_38" id="Page_2_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>sipation; my sins their forgiveness; my
+weaknesses their strength; and, to all that I am, what He is answers, as
+fulness to emptiness, and as supply to need. So, 'believing towards Him,
+we rejoice.'</p>
+
+<p>But note that the joy is strictly contemporaneous with the faith. Tear
+away electric wire from the source of energy, and the light goes out
+instantly. It is as another Apostle says, '<i>in believing</i>' that we have
+'joy and peace.' And that is why so many of us know little of it.
+Yesterday's faith will not contribute to to-day's gladness, any more
+than yesterday's meals will satisfy to-day's hunger. Present joy depends
+upon present faith, and the measure of the one is the measure of the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>Notice again&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>II. The Characteristics of the Christian Gladness.</p>
+
+<p>'Unspeakable,' and, as the word ought to be rendered, not 'full of
+glory' but 'glorified.' Unspeakable. Still waters run deep. It is poor
+wealth that can be counted; it is shallow emotion that can be crammed
+into the narrow limits of any human vocabulary. Fathers and mothers,
+parents and children, husbands and wives, know that. And the depths of
+the joy that a believing soul has in Jesus Christ are not to be spoken.
+Perhaps it is better that it should not be attempted to speak them.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Not easily forgiven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are those, who, setting wide the doors that bar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The secret bridal chambers of the heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let in the day.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is in shallow streams that the sunlight gleams on the pebbles at the
+bottom. The abysses of ocean are dark, and have never been searched by
+its light. I suspect the depth of the emotion which bubbles over into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_39" id="Page_2_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+words, and finds no difficulty in expressing itself. The joy which can
+be manifested in all its extent has a very small extent. Christian joy
+is unspeakable, too, because just as you cannot teach a blind man what
+colour is like, and cannot impart to anybody the blessedness of wedded
+love, or parental affection, by ever so much talking&mdash;and, therefore,
+the poetry of the world is never exhausted&mdash;so there is only one way of
+conveying to a man what is the actual joy of trusting in Christ, and
+that is, that he himself should trust Him. We may talk till Doomsday,
+and then, as the Queen of Sheba said, when she came to Solomon, 'the
+half hath not been told.'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He must be loved ere that to you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;He will seem worthy of your love.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is unspeakable gladness springing from the possession of an
+unspeakable gift.</p>
+
+<p>'Glorified.' There is nothing more ignoble than the ordinary joys of
+men. They are too often like the iridescent scum on a stagnant pond,
+fruit and proof of corruption. They are fragile and hollow, for all the
+play of colour on them, like a soap bubble that breaks of its own
+tenuity, and is only a drop of dirty water. Joy is too often ignoble,
+and yet, although it is by no means the highest conception of what
+Christ's Gospel can do for us, it is blessed to think that it can take
+that emotion, so often shameful, so often frivolous, so often lowering
+rather than elevating, and can lift it into loftiness, and transfigure
+it, and glorify it and make it a power, a power for good and for
+righteousness, and for 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report'
+in our lives. And that is what trusting towards Christ will do for our
+gladnesses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_40" id="Page_2_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lastly, in one word, let me lay upon your consciences, as Christian
+people</p>
+
+<p>III. The Obligation of Gladness.</p>
+
+<p>Peter takes it for granted that all these brethren to whom he is writing
+have experience of this deep and ennobled joy. He does not say, 'You
+ought to rejoice,' but he says, 'You do rejoice.' And yet a verse or two
+before he said, 'Ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.' So,
+then, he was not blinking the hard, painful facts of anybody's troubled
+life. He was not away upon the heights serenely contemptuous of the grim
+possibilities that lurk down in the dark valleys. He took in all the
+burdens and the pains and the anxieties and the harassments, and the
+losses, and the bleeding hearts and the cares that can burden any of us.
+And he said, in spite of them all, 'Ye rejoice.'</p>
+
+<p>Do you? I am afraid there is no more irrefragable proof of the unreality
+of an enormous proportion of the Christian profession of this day than
+the joyless lives&mdash;in so far as their religion contributes to their
+joy&mdash;of hosts of us. We have religion enough to make us miserable, we
+have religion enough to make us uncomfortable about doing things that we
+would like to do. We are always haunted by the feeling that we are
+falling so far below our professions, and we are either miserable when
+we bethink ourselves, or, more frequently, indifferent, accordingly. And
+the whole reason of such experience lies here, we have not an adequately
+strong and continued trust in Jesus Christ working righteousness in our
+lives, nobleness in our characters, and so lifting us above the regions
+where mists and malaria lie. Let us get high enough up, and we shall
+find clear sky.</p>
+
+<p>You call yourselves Christians. Does your religion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_41" id="Page_2_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> bring any gladness
+to you? Does it burn brightest in the dark, like the pillar of cloud
+before the Israelites? 'Greek fire' burned below the water, and so was
+in high repute. Our gladness is a poor affair if it is at the mercy of
+temperaments or of circumstances. Jesus Christ comes to cure
+temperaments, and to enable us to resist circumstances. So I venture to
+say that, whatever may be our condition in regard to externals, or
+whatever may be our tendencies of disposition, we are bound, as a piece
+of Christian duty, to try to cultivate this joyful spirit, and to do it
+in the only right way, by cultivating the increase of our faith in Jesus
+Christ. 'Rejoice in the Lord always'; the man who said that was a
+prisoner, with death looking into his eyeballs. As he said it, he felt
+that his friends in Philippi might think the exhortation overstrained,
+and so he repeated it, to show that he recognised the apparent
+impossibility of obeying it, and yet deliberately enjoined it; 'and
+again I say, rejoice.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHRIST_AND_HIS_CROSS_THE_CENTRE_OF_THE_UNIVERSE" id="CHRIST_AND_HIS_CROSS_THE_CENTRE_OF_THE_UNIVERSE"></a>CHRIST AND HIS CROSS THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched
+diligently ... the things which are now reported unto you ... which
+things the angels desire to look into.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 10, 11, 12.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I have detached these three clauses from their surroundings, not because
+I desire to treat them fragmentarily, but because we thereby throw into
+stronger relief the writer's purpose to bring out the identity of the
+Old and the New Revelation, the fact that Christ and His sufferings are
+the centre of the world's history, to which all that went before points,
+from which all that follows after flows; and that not only thus does He
+stand in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_42" id="Page_2_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> midst of humanity, but that from Him there ran out
+influences into other orders of beings, and angels learn from Him
+mysteries hitherto unknown to them. The prophets prophesy of the grace
+which comes in the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
+follow, and the same Spirit which taught them teaches the preachers of
+the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They that went before had for their deepest
+message the proclamation, 'He will come'; they that follow after have
+for their deepest message, 'He has come.' And angels listen to, and
+echo, the chorus, from all the files that march in front, and all that
+bring up the rear, 'Hosanna! Blessed be Him that cometh in the name of
+the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>My purpose, then, is just to try to bring before you the magnificent
+unity into which these texts bind all ages, and all worlds, planting
+Jesus Christ and His Cross in the centre of them all. There are four
+aspects here in which the writer teaches us to regard this unity: Jesus
+and the Cross are the substance of prophecy, the theme of Gospel
+preaching, the study of angels, and presented to each of us for our
+individual acceptance. Now, let us look briefly at these four points.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, Christ and His Cross is the substance of prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>Now, of course, we have to remember that general statements have to be
+interpreted widely, and without punctilious adherence to the words; and
+we have also to remember that great mischief has been done, and great
+discredit cast, on the whole conception of ancient revelation by the
+well-meaning, but altogether mistaken, attempts of good people to read
+the fully developed doctrine of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice into
+every corner of the ancient revelation. But whilst I admit all that,
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_43" id="Page_2_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> would desire to emphasise the fact, I think that in this
+generation, and to-day, there is a great deal more need to insist upon
+the truth that the inmost essence and deepest purpose of the whole Old
+Testament system is to create an attitude of expectance, and to point
+onwards, with ever-growing distinctness, to one colossal and mysterious
+figure in which the longings of generations shall be fulfilled, and the
+promises of God shall be accomplished. The prophet was more than a
+foreteller, as is being continually insisted upon nowadays. There were
+prophets who never uttered a single prediction. Their place in Israel
+was to be the champions of righteousness, and&mdash;I was going to say&mdash;the
+knights of God, as against law and ceremonial and externalism. But,
+beyond that, there underlie the whole system of prophecy, and there come
+sparkling and flashing up to the surface every now and then, bright
+anticipations, not only of a future kingdom, but of a personal King, and
+not only of a King, but a sufferer. All the sacrifices, almost all the
+institutions, the priesthood and the monarchy included, had this
+onward-looking aspect, and Israel as a whole, in the proportion in which
+it was true to the spirit of its calling, stood a-tiptoe, as it were,
+looking down the ages for the coming of the Hope of the Covenant that
+had been promised to the fathers. The prophets, I might say, were like
+an advance-guard sent before some great monarch in his progress towards
+his capital, who rode through the slumbering villages and called, 'He
+comes! He comes! The King cometh meek and having salvation,' and then
+passed on.</p>
+
+<p>Now, all that is to be held fast to-day. I would give all freedom to
+critical research, and loyally accept the results of it, so far as these
+are established, and are not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_44" id="Page_2_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> mere hypotheses, with regard to the date
+and the circumstances of the construction of the various elements of
+that Old Testament. But what I desire especially to mark is that, with
+the widest freedom, there must be these two things conserved which Peter
+here emphasises, the real inspiration of the prophetic order, and its
+function to point onwards to Jesus. And so long as you keep these
+truths, as long as you believe that God spoke through prophets, as long
+as you believe that the very heart of their message was the proclamation
+of Jesus Christ, and that to bear witness to Him was the function, not
+only of prophet, but of priest and king and nation, then you are at
+liberty to deal as you like with mere questions of origin and of date.
+But if, in the eagerness of the chase after the literary facts of the
+origin of the Old Testament, we forget that it is a unity, that it is a
+divine unity, that it is a progressive revelation, and that 'the
+testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy' then I venture to say that
+the most uncritical, old-fashioned reader of the Old Testament that
+found Jesus Christ in the Song of Solomon, and in the details of the
+Tabernacle, and in all the <i>minuti&aelig;</i> of worship and sacrifice, was
+nearer to the living heart of the thing than the most learned scholar
+that has been so absorbed in the inquiries as to how and when this,
+that, and the other bit of the Book was written, that he fails to see
+the one august figure that shines out, now more and now less dimly, and
+gives unity to the whole. 'To Him gave all the prophets witness.' And
+when Peter declared, as he did in my text, that ancient Israel, by its
+spokesmen and its organs, testified beforehand of the sufferings of
+Christ, he is but echoing what he had learned from his Master, who turns
+to some of us with the same rebuke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_45" id="Page_2_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> with which He met His disciples
+after the Resurrection: 'O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that
+the prophets have spoken.' The Old and the New are a unity, and Christ
+and His Cross are the substance and the centre of both.</p>
+
+<p>II. Note here Christ and His Cross, the theme of Gospel preaching.</p>
+
+<p>If you will glance at your leisure over the whole context from which I
+have picked these clauses as containing its essence, you will find that
+the Apostle speaks of the things which the prophets foretold as being
+the same as 'those which are now reported unto you by them that have
+preached the Gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from
+heaven.' I must not take for granted that you are all referring to your
+Bibles, but I should like to point out, as the basis of one or two
+things that I wish to say, the remarkable variety of phrase employed in
+the text to describe the one thing. First, Peter speaks of it as
+'salvation,' then he speaks of it in the next clause as 'the grace that
+should come unto you.' Then, in the next phrase, he designates it more
+particularly as 'the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
+follow.' Now, if we put these designations together&mdash;salvation, grace,
+Christ's sufferings, the subsequent glory&mdash;we come to this, that the
+facts of Christ's life, death, resurrection, and ascension are the great
+vehicle which brings to men God's grace, that that grace has for its
+purpose and its effect man's salvation, and that these facts are the
+Gospel which Christian preachers have to proclaim.</p>
+
+<p>Now notice what follows from such thoughts as these. To begin with, the
+Gospel is not a speculation, is not a theology, still less a morality,
+not a declaration of principles, but a history of fact, things that were
+done on this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_46" id="Page_2_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> earth of ours, and that the Apostle's Creed which is
+worked into the service of the Anglican Church is far nearer the
+primitive conception of the Gospel than are any of the more elaborate
+and doctrinal ones which have followed. For we have to begin with the
+facts that Christ lived, died, was buried, rose again from the dead ...
+ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God. Whatever
+else the Gospel is, that is the kernel and the basis of it all. Out of
+these facts will come all manner of doctrines, philosophies of religion,
+theologies, revelations about God and man. Out of them will come all
+ethics, the teaching of duty, the exhibition of a pattern of conduct,
+inspiration to follow the model that is set before us. Out of them will
+come, as I believe, guidance and light for social and economical and
+political questions and difficulties. But what we have to lay hold of,
+and what we preachers have to proclaim, is the story of the life, and
+eminently the story of the death.</p>
+
+<p>Why does Peter put in the very centre here 'the sufferings of Christ'?
+That suggests another thought, that amongst these facts which, taken
+together, make the Gospel, the vital part, the central and the
+indispensable part, is the story of the Cross. Now what Christ said, not
+what Christ did, not what Christ was, beautiful and helpful as all that
+is, but to begin with what Christ bore, is the fact that makes the life
+of the Gospel. And just as He is the centre of humanity, so the Cross is
+the centre of His work. Why is that? Because the deepest need of all of
+us is the need to have our sins dealt with, both as guilt and as power,
+and because nothing else in the whole story of Christ's manifestation
+deals with men's sins as the fact of His death on the Cross does,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_47" id="Page_2_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+therefore the sacrifice and sufferings are the heart of the Gospel.</p>
+
+<p>And so, brethren, we have to mark that the presentation of Christian
+truth which slurs over that fact of the Sacrifice and Atonement of Jesus
+Christ, has parted with the vital power which makes the story into a
+gospel. It is no gospel to tell a man that Jesus Christ died, unless you
+go on to say He 'died for our sins according to the Scriptures.' And it
+is no gospel to talk about the beauty of His life, and the perfectness
+of His example, and the sweetness of His nature, and the depth, the
+wisdom, and the tenderness of His words, unless you can say this is 'the
+Lamb of God,' 'the Word made flesh,' 'who bare our sins, and carried our
+sicknesses and our sorrows.' Strike out from the gospel that you preach
+'the sufferings of Christ,' and you have struck out the one thing that
+will draw men's hearts, that will satisfy men's needs, that will bind
+men to Him with cords of love. 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men
+unto Me.' So, wherever you get what they call an ethical gospel which
+deals with moralities, and does not impart the power that will vitalise
+moralities, and make them into thankful service and sacrifices, in
+return for the great Sacrifice; wherever you get a gospel that falters
+in its enunciation of the sufferings of Christ, and wherever you get a
+gospel that secularises the Christian service of the Sabbath, and will
+rather discuss the things that the newspapers discuss, and the new books
+that the reviewers are talking about, and odds and ends of that sort
+that are thought to be popular and attractive, you get a gospel <i>minus</i>
+the thing that, in the Old Testament and in the New alike, stands forth
+in the centre of all. 'We preach Christ crucified'; it is not enough to
+preach Christ. Many a man does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_48" id="Page_2_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> that, and might as well hold his tongue.
+'We preach Christ crucified.' And the same august Figure which loomed
+before the vision of prophets, and shines through many a weary age,
+stands before us of this generation; ay! and will stand till the end of
+the world, as the centre, the pivot of human history, the Christ who has
+died for men. The Christ that will stand in the centre of the
+development of humanity is the Christ that died on the Cross. If your
+gospel is not that, you have yet to learn the deepest secret of His
+power.</p>
+
+<p>III. Once more, here we have Christ and His Cross as the study of
+angels.</p>
+
+<p>'Which things the angels desire to look into.' Now, the word that Peter
+employs there is an unusual one in Scripture. Its force may, perhaps, be
+best conveyed by referring to one of the few instances in which it is
+employed. It is used to describe the attitude of Peter and John when
+they stooped down and looked into the sepulchre. Perhaps there may be a
+reference in Peter's mind to that incident, when he saw the 'two angels
+... sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the
+body of Jesus had lain.' Perhaps, also, there floats in his mind some
+kind of reference to the outspread wings and bended heads of the
+brooding cherubim who sat above the Mercy-seat, gazing down upon the
+miracle of love that was manifested beneath them there. But be that as
+it may, the idea conveyed is that of eager desire and fixed attention.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am not going to enlarge at all upon the thought that is here
+conveyed, except just to make the one remark that people have often
+said, 'Why should a race of insignificant creatures on this little globe
+of ours be so dignified in the divine procedure as that there should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_49" id="Page_2_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> be
+the stupendous mystery of the Incarnation, and the Death for their
+sakes?' <i>Not</i> for their sakes only, for the New Testament commits itself
+to the thought that whilst sinful men are the only subjects of the
+redeeming grace of Jesus Christ, other orders of creatures do benefit
+thereby, and do learn from it what else they would not have known, of
+the mystery and the miracle and the majesty of the Divine love. 'To the
+principalities and the powers in heavenly places He hath made known by
+the Church the manifold wisdom of God.' And we can understand how these
+other orders&mdash;what we call higher orders, which they may be or they may
+not&mdash;of being, learn to know God as we learn to know Him, by the
+manifestation of Himself in His acts, and how the crown of all
+manifestations consists in this, that He visits the sinful sons of men,
+and by His own dear Son brings them back again. The elder brethren in
+the Father's house do not grudge the ring and the robe given to the
+prodigals; rather they learn therein more than they knew before of the
+loving-kindness of God.</p>
+
+<p>Now all that is nowadays ignored, and it is not fashionable to speak
+about the interest of angels in the success of Redemption, and a good
+many 'advanced' Christians do not believe in angels at all, because they
+'cannot verify' the doctrine. I, for my part, accept the teaching, which
+seems to me to be a great deal more reasonable than to suppose that the
+rest of the universe is void of creatures that can praise and love and
+know God. I accept the teaching, and think that Peter was, perhaps, not
+a dreamer when he said, 'The angels desire to look into these things.'
+They do not share in the blessings of redemption, but they can behold
+what they do not themselves experience. The Seer in the Revela<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_50" id="Page_2_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>tion was
+not mistaken, when he believed that he heard redeemed men leading the
+chorus to Him that had redeemed them by His blood out of all nations,
+and then heard the thunderous echo from an innumerable host of angels
+who could not say 'Thou hast redeemed us,' but who could bring praise
+and glory to Him because He had redeemed men.</p>
+
+<p>IV. And now my last point is that Christ and His Cross is, by the
+Gospel, offered to each of us.</p>
+
+<p>Notice how emphatically in this context the Apostle gathers together his
+wider thoughts, and focusses them into a point. 'The prophets have
+inquired and searched diligently ... of the grace that should come to
+<i>you</i>.... To them it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but <i>unto
+us</i> they did minister the things, which are now reported <i>unto you</i> by
+them that have preached the Gospel <i>unto you</i>.' And so he would take his
+wide thoughts, as it were, and gather all together, to a point, and
+press the point against each man's heart.</p>
+
+<p>Dear brethren, these wide views are of no avail to us unless we realise
+the individual relation which Christ bears to each one of us. He bears a
+relation, as I have been saying, to all humanity. All the ages belong to
+Him. 'He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.' From His
+Cross there flash up rays of light into the heavens above, and out over
+the whole rolling series of the centuries, from the beginning to the
+end. Yes; but from His Cross there comes a beam straight to your heart,
+and the Christ whom angels desire to look into, of whom prophets
+prophesy and Apostles proclaim His advent, who is the Lord of all the
+ages, and the Lover of mankind, comes to thee and says 'I am thy
+Saviour,' and to thee this wide message is brought. Every eye has the
+whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_51" id="Page_2_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> sunshine, and each soul may have the whole Christ. His universal
+relations in time and space matter little to you, unless He has a
+particular relation to yourself.</p>
+
+<p>And He will never have that in its atoning power, unless you do for
+yourself and by yourself the most individual and solitary act that a
+human soul can do, and that is, lay your hand on the head of 'the Lamb
+... that takes away the sin of the world,' and put your sins there. You
+must begin with 'my Christ,' which you can do only by personal faith.
+And then afterwards you can come to 'our Christ,' the Christ of all the
+worlds, the Christ of all the ages. Go to Him by yourself. You must do
+it as if there were not any other beings in the whole universe but you
+two, Jesus and you. And when you have so gone, then you will find that
+you have 'come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of
+angels, to the general assembly, and Church of the first born.' Christ
+and His Cross are the substance of prophecy, the theme of the Gospel,
+the study of the angels. What are they to me?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="HOPE_PERFECTLY" id="HOPE_PERFECTLY"></a>HOPE PERFECTLY</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to
+the end, for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the
+revelation of Jesus Christ.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 13.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Christianity has transformed hope, and given it a new importance, by
+opening to it a new world to move in, and supplying to it new guarantees
+to rest on. There is something very remarkable in the prominence given
+to hope in the New Testament, and in the power ascribed to it to order a
+noble life. Paul goes so far as to say that we are saved by it. To a
+Christian it is no longer a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_52" id="Page_2_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> pleasant dream, which may be all an
+illusion, indulgence in which is pretty sure to sap a man's force, but
+it is a certain anticipation of certainties, the effect of which will be
+increased energy and purity. So our Apostle, having in the preceding
+context in effect summed up the whole Gospel, bases upon that summary a
+series of exhortations, the transition to which is marked by the
+'wherefore' at the beginning of my text. The application of that word is
+to be extended, so as to include all that has preceded in the letter,
+and there follows a series of practical advices, the first of which, the
+grace or virtue which he puts in the forefront of everything, is not
+what you might have expected, but it is 'hope perfectly.'</p>
+
+<p>I may just remark, before going further, in reference to the language of
+my text, that, accurately translated, the two exhortations which precede
+that to hope are subsidiary to it, for we ought to read, 'Wherefore,
+girding up the loins of your mind, and being sober, hope.' That is to
+say, these two are preliminaries, or conditions, or means by which the
+desired perfecting of the Christian hope is to be sought and attained.</p>
+
+<p>Another preliminary remark which I must make is that what is enjoined
+here has not reference to the duration but to the quality of the
+Christian hope. It is not 'to the end,' but, as the Margin of the
+Authorised and the Revised Version concurs in saying, it is 'hope
+perfectly.'</p>
+
+<p>So, then, there are three things here&mdash;the object, the duty, and the
+cultivation of Christian hope. Let us take these three things in order.</p>
+
+<p>I. The object of the Christian hope.</p>
+
+<p>Now, that is stated, in somewhat remarkable language, as 'the grace that
+is to be brought unto you at the revela<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_53" id="Page_2_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>tion of Jesus Christ.' We
+generally use that word 'grace' with a restricted signification to the
+gifts of God to men here on earth. It is the earnest of the inheritance,
+rather than its fulness. But here it is quite obvious that by the
+expression the Apostle means the very same thing as he has previously
+designated in the preceding context by three different phrases&mdash;'an
+inheritance incorruptible and undefiled,' 'praise and honour and glory
+at the revelation of Jesus Christ,' and 'the end of your faith, even the
+salvation of your souls.' The 'grace' is not contrasted with the
+'glory,' but is another name for the glory. It is not the earnest of the
+inheritance, but it is the inheritance itself. It is not the means
+towards attaining the progressive and finally complete 'salvation of
+your souls,' but it is that complete salvation in all its fulness.</p>
+
+<p>Now, that is an unusual use of the word, but that it should be employed
+here, as describing the future great object of the Christian hope,
+suggests two or three thoughts. One is that that ultimate blessedness,
+with all its dim, nebulous glories, which can only be resolved into
+their separate stars, when we are millions of leagues nearer to its
+lustre, is like the faintest glimmer of a new and better life in a soul
+here on earth, purely and solely the result of the undeserved,
+condescending love of God that stoops to sinful men, and instead of
+retribution bestows upon them a heaven. The grace that saved us at
+first, the grace that comes to us, filtered in drops during our earthly
+experience, is poured upon us in a flood at last. And the brightest
+glory of heaven is as much a manifestation of the Divine grace as the
+first rudimentary germs of a better life now and here. The foundation,
+the courses of the building, the glittering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_54" id="Page_2_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> pinnacle on the summit,
+with its golden spire reaching still higher into the blue, is all the
+work of the same unmerited, stooping, pardoning love. Glory is grace,
+and Heaven is the result of God's pardoning mercy.</p>
+
+<p>There is another suggestion here to be made, springing from this
+eloquent use of this term, and that is not merely the identity of the
+source of the Christian experience upon earth and in the future, but the
+identity of that Christian experience itself in regard of its essential
+character. If I may so say, it is all of a piece, homogeneous, and of
+one web. The robe is without seam, woven throughout of the same thread.
+The life of the humblest Christian, the most imperfect Christian, the
+most infantile Christian, the most ignorant Christian here on earth, has
+for its essential characteristics the very same things as the lives of
+the strong spirits that move in light around the Throne, and receive
+into their expanding nature the ever-increasing fulness of the glory of
+the Lord. Grace here is glory in the bud; glory yonder is grace in the
+fruit.</p>
+
+<p>But there is still further to be noticed another great thought that
+comes out of this remarkable language. The words of my text, literally
+rendered, are 'the grace that is being brought unto you.' Now, there
+have been many explanations of that remarkable phrase, which I think is
+not altogether exhausted by, nor quite equivalent to, that which
+represents it in our version&mdash;viz. 'to be brought unto you.' That
+relegates it all into the future; but in Peter's conception it is, in
+some sense, in the present. It is 'being brought.' What does that mean?
+There are far-off stars in the sky, the beams from which have set out
+from their home of light millenniums since, and have been rushing
+through the waste places of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_55" id="Page_2_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> universe since long before men were,
+and they have not reached our eyes yet. But they are on the road. And so
+in Peter's conception, the apocalypse of glory, which is the crowning
+manifestation of grace, is rushing towards us through the ages, through
+the spheres, and it will be here some day, and the beams will strike
+upon our faces, and make them glow with its light. So certain is the
+arrival of the grace that the Apostle deals with it as already on its
+way. The great thing on which the Christian hope fastens is no
+'peradventure,' but a good which has already begun to journey towards
+us.</p>
+
+<p>Again, there is another thought still to be suggested, and that is, the
+revelation of Jesus Christ is the coming to His children of this grace
+which is glory, of this glory which is grace. For mark how the Apostle
+says, 'the grace which is being brought to you in the revelation of
+Jesus Christ.' And that revelation to which he here refers is not the
+past one, in His incarnate life upon earth, but it is the future one, to
+which the hope of the faithful Church ought ever to be steadfastly
+turned, the correlated truth to that other one on which its faith rests.
+On these two great pillars, rising like columns on either side of the
+gulf of Time, 'He has come,' 'He will come,' the bridge is suspended by
+which we may safely pass over the foaming torrent that else would
+swallow us up. The revelation in the past cries out for the revelation
+in the future. The Cross demands the Throne. That He has come once, a
+sacrifice for sin, stands incomplete, like some building left unfinished
+with rugged stones protruding which prophesy an addition at a future
+day; unless you can add 'unto them that look for Him will He appear the
+second time without sin unto salvation.' In that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_56" id="Page_2_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> revelation of Jesus
+Christ His children shall find the glory-grace which is the object of
+their hope.</p>
+
+<p>So say all the New Testament writers. 'When Christ, who is our life,
+shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory' says Paul.
+'The grace that is to be brought unto you in the revelation of Jesus
+Christ,' chimes in Peter. And John completes the trio with his 'We know
+that when He shall appear we shall be like Him.' These three things,
+brethren&mdash;with Christ, glory with Him, likeness to Him&mdash;are all that we
+know, and blessed be God! all that we need to know, of that dim future.
+And the more we confine ourselves to these triple great certainties, and
+sweep aside all subordinate matters, which are concealed partly because
+they could not be revealed, and partly because they would not help us if
+we knew them, the better for the simplicity and the power and the
+certainty of our hope. The object of Christian hope is Christ, in His
+revelation, in His presence, in His communication to us for glory, in
+His assimilating of us to Himself.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It is enough that Christ knows all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;And we shall be with Him.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'The grace that is being brought unto you in the revelation of Jesus
+Christ.'</p>
+
+<p>II. And now notice the duty of the Christian hope.</p>
+
+<p>Hope a duty? That strikes one as somewhat strange. I very much doubt
+whether the ordinary run of good people do recognise it as being as
+imperative a duty for them to cultivate hope as to cultivate any other
+Christian excellence or virtue. For one man that sets himself
+deliberately and consciously to brighten up, and to make more operative
+in his daily life, the hope of future bles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_57" id="Page_2_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>sedness, you will find a
+hundred that set themselves to other kinds of perfecting of their
+Christian character. And yet, surely, there do not need any words to
+enforce the fact that this hope full of immortality is no mere luxury
+which a Christian man may add to the plain fare of daily duty or leave
+untasted according as he likes, but that it is an indispensable element
+in all vigorous and life-dominating Christian experience.</p>
+
+<p>I do not need to dwell upon that, except just to suggest that such a
+vividness and continuity of calm anticipation of a certain good beyond
+the grave is one of the strongest of all motives to the general
+robustness and efficacy of a Christian life. People used to say a few
+years ago, a great deal more than they do now, that the Christian
+expectation of Heaven was apt to weaken energy upon earth, and they used
+to sneer at us, and talk about our 'other worldliness' as if it were a
+kind of weakness and defect attached to the Christian experience. They
+have pretty well given that up now. Anti-Christian sarcasm, like
+everything else, has its fashions, and other words of reproach and
+contumely have now taken the place of that. The plain fact is that no
+man sees the greatness of the present, unless he regards it as being the
+vestibule of the future, and that this present life is unintelligible
+and insignificant unless beyond it, and led up to by it, and shaped
+through it, there lies the eternal life beyond. The low flat plain is
+dreary and desolate, featureless and melancholy, when the sky above it
+is filled with clouds. But sweep away the cloud-rack, and let the blue
+arch itself above the brown moorland, and all glows into lustre, and
+every undulation is brought out, and tiny shy forms of beauty are found
+in every corner. And so, if you drape Heaven with the clouds and mists
+born of indiffer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_58" id="Page_2_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>ence and worldliness, the world becomes mean, but if
+you dissipate the cloud and unveil heaven, earth is greatened. If the
+hope of the grave that is to be brought onto you at the revelation of
+Jesus Christ shines out above all the flatness of earth, then life
+becomes solemn, noble, worthy of, demanding and rewarding, our most
+strenuous efforts. No man can, and no man will, strike such effectual
+blows on things present as the man, the strength of whose arm is derived
+from the conviction that every stroke of the hammer on things present is
+shaping that which will abide with him for ever.</p>
+
+<p>My text not only enjoins this hope as a duty, but also enjoins the
+perfection of it as being a thing to be aimed at by all Christian
+people. What is the perfection of hope? Two qualities, certainty and
+continuity. Certainty; the definition of earthly hope is an anticipation
+of good less than certain, and so, in all the operations of this great
+faculty, which are limited within the range of earth, you get blended as
+an indistinguishable throng, 'hopes and fears that kindle hope,' and
+that too often kill it. But the Christian has a certain anticipation of
+certain good, and to him memory may be no more fixed than hope, and the
+past no more unalterable and uncertain than the future. The motto of our
+hope is not the 'perhaps,' which is the most that it can say when it
+speaks the tongue of earth, but the 'verily! verily!' which comes to its
+enfranchised lips when it speaks the tongue of Heaven. Your hope,
+Christian man, should not be the tremulous thing that it often is, which
+expresses itself in phrases like 'Well! I do not know, but I tremblingly
+hope,' but it should say, 'I know and am sure of the rest that
+remaineth, not because of what I am, but because of what He is.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_59" id="Page_2_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another element in the perfection of hope is its continuity. That hits
+home to us all, does it not? Sometimes in calm weather we catch a sight
+of the gleaming battlements of 'the City which hath foundations,' away
+across the sea, and then mists and driving storms come up and hide it.
+There is a great mountain in Central Africa which if a man wishes to see
+he must seize a fortunate hour in the early morning, and for all the
+rest of the day it is swathed in clouds, invisible. Is that like your
+hope, Christian man and woman, gleaming out now and then, and then again
+swallowed up in the darkness? Brethren! these two things, certainty and
+continuity, are possible for us. Alas! that they are so seldom enjoyed
+by us.</p>
+
+<p>III. And now one last word. My text speaks about the discipline or
+cultivation of this Christian hope.</p>
+
+<p>It prescribes two things as auxiliary thereto. The way to cultivate the
+perfect hope which alone corresponds to the gift of God is 'girding up
+the loins of your mind, and being sober.' Of course, there is here one
+of the very few reminiscences that we have in the Epistles of the
+<i>ipsissima verba</i> of our Lord. Peter is evidently referring to our
+Lord's commandment to have 'the loins girt and the lamps burning, and ye
+yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord.' I do not need to
+remind you of the Eastern dress that makes the metaphor remarkably
+significant, the loose robes that tangle a man's feet when he runs, that
+need to be girded up and belted tight around his waist, as preliminary
+to all travel or toil of any kind. The metaphor is the same as that in
+our colloquial speech when we talk about a man 'pulling himself
+together.' Just as an English workman will draw his belt a hole tighter
+when he has some special task to do, so Peter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_60" id="Page_2_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> says to us, make a
+definite effort, with resolute bracing up and concentration of all your
+powers, or you will never see the grace that is hurrying towards you
+through the centuries. There are abundance of loose, slack-braced people
+up and down the world, in all departments, and they never come to any
+good. It is a shame that any man should have his thoughts so loosely
+girt and vagrant as that any briar by the roadside can catch them and
+hinder his advance. But it is a tenfold shame for Christian people, with
+such an object to gaze upon, that they should let their minds be
+dissipated all over the trivialities of Time, and not gather them
+together and project them, as I may say, with all their force towards
+the sovereign realities of Eternity. A sixpence held close to your eye
+will blot out the sun, and the trifles of earth close to us will prevent
+us from realising the things which neither sight, nor experience, nor
+testimony reveal to us, unless with clenched teeth, so to speak, we make
+a dogged effort to keep them in mind.</p>
+
+<p>The other preliminary and condition is 'being sober,' which of course
+you have to extend to its widest possible signification, implying not
+merely abstinence from, or moderate use of, intoxicants, or material
+good for the appetites, but also the withdrawing of one's self sometimes
+wholly from, and always restraining one's self in the use of, the
+present and the material. A man has only a given definite quantity of
+emotion and interest to expend, and if he flings it all away on the
+world he has none left for Heaven. He will be like the miller that
+spoils some fair river, by diverting its waters into his own sluice, in
+order that he may grind some corn. If you have the faintest film of dust
+on the glass of the telescope, or on its mirror, if it is a reflecting
+one, you will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_61" id="Page_2_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> not see the constellations in the heavens; and if we have
+drawn over our spirits the film of earthly absorption, all these bright
+glories above will, so far as we are concerned, cease to be.</p>
+
+<p>So, brethren, there is a solemn responsibility laid upon us by the gift
+of that great faculty of looking before and after. What did God make you
+and me capable of anticipating the future for? That we might let our
+hopes run along the low levels, or that we might elevate them and twine
+them round the very pillars of God's Throne; which? I do not find fault
+with you because you hope, but because you hope so meanly, and about
+such trivial and transitory things. I remember I once saw a sea-bird
+kept in a garden, confined within high walls, and with clipped wings,
+set to pick up grubs and insects. It ought to have been away out,
+hovering over the free ocean, or soaring with sunlit wing to a height
+where earth became a speck, and all its noises were hushed. That is what
+some of you are doing with your hope, degrading it to earth instead of
+letting it rise to God; enter within the veil, and gaze upon the glory
+of the 'inheritance incorruptible and undefiled.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_FAMILY_LIKENESS" id="THE_FAMILY_LIKENESS"></a>THE FAMILY LIKENESS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy, in all manner
+of conversation.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 15.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>That is the sum of religion&mdash;an all-comprehensive precept which includes
+a great deal more than the world's morality, and which changes the
+coldness of that into something blessed, by referring all our purity to
+the Lord that called us. One may well wonder where a Galilean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_62" id="Page_2_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> fisherman
+got the impulse that lifted him to such a height; one may well wonder
+that he ventured to address such wide, absolute commandments to the
+handful of people just dragged from the very slough and filth of
+heathenism to whom he spoke. But he had dwelt with Christ, and they had
+Christ in their hearts. So for him to command and for them to obey, and
+to aim after even so wide and wonderful an attainment as perfecting like
+God's was the most natural thing in the world. 'Be ye holy as He that
+hath called you is holy, and that in all manner of conversation.' The
+maximum of possible attainment, the minimum of imperative duty!</p>
+
+<p>So, then, there are three things here&mdash;the pattern, the field, and the
+inspiration or motive of holiness.</p>
+
+<p>I. The Pattern of Holiness.</p>
+
+<p>'As He that hath called you is holy.' God's holiness is the very
+attribute which seems to separate Him most from the creatures; for its
+deepest meaning is His majestic and Divine elevation above all that is
+creatural. But here, of course, the idea conveyed by the word is not
+that, if I may so say, metaphysical one, but the purely moral one. The
+holiness of God which is capable of imitation by us is His separation
+from all impurity. There is a side of His holiness which separates Him
+from all the creatures, to which we can only look up, or bow with our
+faces in the dust; but there is a side of His holiness which, wonderful
+as it is, and high above all our present attainment as it is, yet is not
+higher than the possibilities which His indwelling Spirit puts within
+our reach, nor beyond the bounds of the duty that presses upon us all.
+'As He which hath called you is holy.' Absolute and utter purity is His
+holiness, and that is the pattern for us.</p>
+
+<p>Religion is imitation. The truest form of worship is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_63" id="Page_2_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> to copy. All
+through heathenism you find that principle working. 'They that make them
+are like unto them.' Why are heathen nations so besotted and sunken and
+obstinate in their foulnesses? Because their gods are their examples,
+and they, first of all, make the gods after the pattern of their own
+evil imaginations, and then the evil imaginations, deified, react upon
+the maker and make him tenfold more a child of hell than themselves.
+Worship is imitation, and there is no religion which does not
+necessarily involve the copying of the example or the pattern of that
+Being before whom we bow. For religion is but love and reverence in the
+superlative degree, and the natural operation of love is to copy, and
+the natural operation of reverence is the same. So that the old Mosaic
+law, 'Be ye holy as I am holy,' went to the very heart of religion. And
+the New Testament form of it, as Paul puts it in a very bold word, 'Be
+ye <i>imitators</i> of God, as beloved children,' sets its seal on the same
+thought that we are religious in the proportion in which we are
+consciously copying and aspiring after God.</p>
+
+<p>But then, says somebody or other, 'it is not possible.' Well, if it were
+not possible, try it all the same. For in this world it is aim and not
+attainment that makes the noble life; and it is better to shoot at the
+stars, even though your arrow never reaches them, than to fire it along
+the low levels of ordinary life. I do not see that however the
+unattainableness of the model may be demonstrated, that has anything to
+do with the duty of imitation. Because, though absolute conformity
+running throughout the whole of a life is not possible here on earth, we
+know that in each individual instance in which we came short of
+conformity the fault was ours, and it might have been otherwise. Instead
+of bewildering our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_64" id="Page_2_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>selves with questions about 'unattainable' or
+'attainable,' suppose we asked, at each failure, 'Why did I not copy God
+<i>then</i>; was it because I could not, or because I would not?' The answer
+would come plain enough to knock all that sophisticated nonsense out of
+our heads, and to make us feel that the law which puts an unattainable
+ideal before the Christian as his duty is an intensely practical one,
+and may be reduced to practice at each step in his career. Imitation of
+the Father, and to be perfect, 'as our Father in heaven is perfect,' is
+the elementary and the ultimate commandment of all Christian morality.
+'Be ye holy as He that hath called you is holy.'</p>
+
+<p>Then let me remind you that the unattainableness is by no means so
+demonstrable as some people seem to think. A very tiny circle may have
+the same centre as one that reaches beyond the suburbs of the universe,
+and holds all stars and systems within its great round. And the tiniest
+circle will have the same geometrical laws applied to it as the
+greatest. The difference between finite and infinite has nothing to do
+with the possibility of our becoming like God, if we believe that 'in
+the image of God created He him'; and that men who have been not only
+made by original creation in the Divine image, but have been born again
+by the incorruptible seed of the Word into a kindred life with His, and
+derived from Him, can surely grow like what they have got, and unfold
+into actually possessed and achieved resemblance to their Father the
+kindred life that is poured into their veins.</p>
+
+<p>So every way it is better indefinitely to approximate to that great
+likeness, though with many flaws and failures, than to say it cannot be
+reached, and so I will content myself down here, in my sins and my
+meannesses. No! dear brethren, 'we are saved by hope,' and one prime<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_65" id="Page_2_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+condition of growth in nobleness is to believe it possible that, by His
+blessing we may be like Him here on earth in the measure of our
+perception of His beauty and reception of His grace.</p>
+
+<p>II. Again, notice the field of this Godlike holiness.</p>
+
+<p>'In all manner of conversation.' Of course I do not need to remind you
+that the word 'conversation' does not mean <i>talk</i>, but <i>conduct</i>; that
+it applies to the whole of the outward life. Peter says that every part
+of the Christian man's activity is to be the field on which his
+possession of the holiness derived from and like God's is to be
+exhibited. It is to be seen in all common life. Here is no cloistered
+and ascetic holiness which tabooes large provinces of every man's
+experience, and says 'we must not go in there, for fear of losing our
+purity,' but rather wherever Christ has trod before we can go. That is a
+safe guide, and whatever God has appointed there we can go and that we
+can do. 'On the bells of the horses shall be written <i>Holiness to the
+Lord</i>.' The horse-bells that make merry music on their bridles are not
+very sacred things, but they bear the same inscription as flamed on the
+front of the high priest's mitre; and the bowls in every house in
+Jerusalem, as the prophet says, shall bear the same inscription that was
+written on the sacrificial vessels, and all shall belong to Him.</p>
+
+<p>Only, whilst thus we maintain the possibility of exhibiting Godlike
+holiness in all the dusty fields of common life, let us remember the
+other side.</p>
+
+<p>In this day there is very little need to preach against an ascetic
+Christianity. There has been enough said of late years about a Christian
+man being entitled to go into all fields of occupation and interest, and
+there to live his Christianity. I think the time is about come for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_66" id="Page_2_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> a
+caution or two to be dropped on the other side, 'Blessed is he that
+condemneth not himself in the thing which he alloweth.' Apply this
+commandment vigorously and honestly to trade, to recreation&mdash;especially
+to recreation&mdash;to social engagements, to the choice of companions, to
+the exercise of tastes. Ask yourselves 'Can I write <i>Holiness to the
+Lord</i> on them?' If not, do not have anything to do with them. I wonder
+what the managers of theatres and music-halls would say if anybody
+proposed that motto to be put upon the curtain for the spectators to
+read before it is drawn up for the play. Do you think it would fit?
+Don't you, Christian men and women, don't you go into places where it
+would not fit. And remember that 'in all manner of conversation' has two
+sides to it, one declaring the possibility of sanctifying every creature
+of God, and one declaring the impossibility of a Christian man going,
+without dreadful danger and certain damage, into places where he cannot
+carry that consecration and purity with him.</p>
+
+<p>Again the field is all trivial things. 'In all manner of conversation.'
+There is nothing that grows so low but that this scythe will travel near
+enough to the ground to harvest it. There is nothing so minute but it is
+big enough to mirror the holiness of God. The tiniest grain of mica,
+upon the face of the hill, is large enough to flash back a beam; and the
+smallest thing we can do is big enough to hold the bright light of
+holiness. 'All'! Ah! If our likeness to God does not show itself in
+trifles, what in the name of common sense is there left for it to show
+itself in? For our lives are all made up of trifles. The great things
+come three or four of them in the seventy years; the little ones come
+every time the clock ticks. And as they say, 'Take care of the pence,
+and the pounds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_67" id="Page_2_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> will take care of themselves.' If we keep the little
+things rigidly under the dominion of this principle, no doubt the big
+things will fall under it too, when they emerge. And if we do not&mdash;as
+the old Jewish book says:&mdash;'He that despiseth little things shall fall
+by little and little.' Whosoever has not a Christianity that sanctifies
+the trifles has a Christianity that will not sanctify the crises of his
+life. So, dear brother, this motto is to be written over every portal
+through which you and I go; and whatsoever we can put our hands to, in
+it we may magnify and manifest the holiness of God.</p>
+
+<p>III. Now, lastly, note the motive or inspiration of holiness.</p>
+
+<p>The language of my text might read like 'the Holy One who hath called
+you.' Peter would stir his hearers to the emulation of the Divine
+holiness by that thought of the bond that unites Him and them. 'He hath
+called you.' In which word, I suppose, he includes the whole sum of the
+Divine operations which have resulted in the placing of each of his
+auditors within the circle of the Christian community as the subjects of
+Christ's grace, and not only the one definite act to which the
+theologians attach the name of 'calling.' In the briefest possible way
+we may put the motive thus&mdash;the inspiration of imitation is to be found
+in the contemplation of the gifts of God. What He has said and done to
+me, calling me out of my darkness and alienation and lavishing the
+tokens of His love, the voice of His beseechings, the monitions of His
+Spirit, the message of His Son, the Incarnate Word, and invitation of
+God&mdash;all these things are included in His call. And all of them are the
+reasons why, bound by thankfulness, overcome by his forbearance,
+responding to His entreaties, and glued to Him by the strength of the
+hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_68" id="Page_2_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> that holds us, and the tenacity of His love, we should strive to
+'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called.'</p>
+
+<p>And not only so, but in the thought of the Divine calling there lies a
+fountain of inspiration when we remember the purpose of the calling. As
+Paul puts it in one of his letters: 'God has not called us to
+uncleanness but to holiness.' That to which He summons, or invites (for
+you may use either word), is holiness like His own. That is the crown of
+all His purposes for men, the great goal and blessed home to which He
+would lead us all.</p>
+
+<p>And so, if in addition to the fact of His 'gift and calling' and all
+that is included within it, if in addition to the purpose of that
+calling we further think of the relation between us and Him which
+results from it, so as that we, as the next verse says, call Him who
+hath called us, 'Our Father,' then the motive becomes deeper and more
+blessed still. Shall we not try to be like the Father of our spirits,
+and seek for His grace, to bear the likeness of sons?</p>
+
+<p>My text speaks only of effort, let us not forget that the truest way to
+be partakers of His holiness is to open our hearts for the entrance of
+the Spirit of His Son, and possessing that&mdash;having these promises and
+that great fulfilment of them&mdash;then to perfect holiness in the fear and
+love of the Lord.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_69" id="Page_2_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="FATHER_AND_JUDGE" id="FATHER_AND_JUDGE"></a>FATHER AND JUDGE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'If ye call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons
+judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your
+sojourning here in fear.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 17.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'If ye call on Him as Father,' when ye pray, say, 'Our Father which art
+in heaven.' One can scarcely help supposing that the Apostle is here, as
+in several other places in his letter, alluding to words that are
+stamped ineffaceably upon his memory, because they had dropped from
+Christ's lips. At all events, whether there is here a distinct allusion
+to what we call the Lord's Prayer or no, it is here recognised as the
+universal characteristic of Christian people that their prayers are
+addressed to God in the character of Father. So that we may say that
+there is no Christianity which does not recognise and rejoice in
+appealing to the paternal relationship.</p>
+
+<p>But, then, I suppose in Peter's days, as in our days, there were people
+that so fell in love with one aspect of the Divine nature that they had
+no eyes for any other; and who so magnified the thought of the Father
+that they forgot the thought of the Judge. That error has been committed
+over and over again in all ages, so that the Church as a whole, one may
+say, has gone swaying from one extreme to the other, and has rent these
+two conceptions widely apart, and sometimes has been foolish enough to
+pit them against each other instead of doing as Peter does here,
+braiding them together as both conspiring to one result, the production
+in the Christian heart of a wholesome awe. If ye call on Him as Father
+'who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_70" id="Page_2_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> every man's
+work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear.'</p>
+
+<p>So then, look at this twofold aspect of God's character.</p>
+
+<p>Both these conceptions ought to be present, flamingly and vividly,
+burning there before him, to every Christian man. 'Ye call Him Father,'
+but the Father is the Judge. True, the Judge is Father, but Peter
+reminds us that whatever blessed truths may be hived in that great Name
+of Father, to be drawn thence by devout meditation and filial love,
+there is not included in it the thought of weak-minded indulgence to His
+children, in any of their sins, nor any unlikelihood of inflicting penal
+consequences on a rebellious child. 'Father' does not exclude 'Judge,'
+'and without respect of persons He judg<i>eth</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Without respect of persons'&mdash;the word is a somewhat unusual New
+Testament one, but it has special appropriateness and emphasis on
+Peter's lips. Do you remember who it was that said, and on what occasion
+he said it: 'Now I perceive that God is no respecter of persons'? It was
+Peter when he had learned the lesson on the housetop at Joppa, looking
+out over the Mediterranean, and had it enforced by Cornelius' message.
+The great thought that had blazed upon him as a new discovery on that
+never-be-forgotten occasion, comes before him again, and this unfamiliar
+word comes with it, and he says, 'without respect of persons He judges.'
+Mountains are elevated, valleys are depressed and sunken, but I fancy
+that the difference between the top of Mount Everest and the gorge
+through which the Jordan runs would scarcely be perceptible if you were
+standing on the sun. Thus, 'without respect of persons,' great men and
+little, rich men and poor, educated men and illiterate, people that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_71" id="Page_2_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+perch themselves on their little stools and think themselves high above
+their fellows: they are all on one dead level in the eye of the Judge.
+And this question is as to the quality of the work and not as to the
+dignity of the doer. 'Without respect of persons' implies universality
+as well as impartiality. If a Christian man has been ever so near God,
+and then goes away from Him, he is judged notwithstanding his past
+nearness. And if a poor soul, all crusted over with his sins and leprous
+with the foulness of long-standing iniquity, comes to God and asks for
+pardon, he is judged according to his penitence, 'without respect of
+persons.' That great hand holds an even balance. And though the
+strictness of the judicial process may have its solemn and its awful
+aspect, it has also its blessed and its comforting one.</p>
+
+<p>Now, do not run away with the notion that the Apostle is speaking here
+of that great White Throne and the future judgment that for many of us
+lies, inoperative on our creeds, on the other side of the great cleft of
+death. That is a solemn thought, but it is not Peter's thought here. If
+any of you can refer to the original, you will see that even more
+strongly than in our English version, though quite sufficiently strongly
+there, the conception is brought out of a continuous Divine judgment
+running along, all through a man's life, side by side with his work. The
+judgment here meant is not all clotted together, as it were, in that
+final act of judgment, leaving the previous life without it, but it runs
+all through the ages, all through each man's days. I beseech you to
+ponder that thought, that at each moment of each of our lives an
+estimate of the moral character of each of our deeds is present to the
+Divine mind.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course we believe that,' you say. 'That is com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_72" id="Page_2_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>monplace; not worth
+talking about.' Ah! but because we believe it, as of course, we slip out
+of thinking about it and letting it affect our lives. And what I desire
+to do for you, dear friends, and for myself, is just to put emphasis on
+the one half of that little word 'judgeth' and ask you to take its three
+last letters and lay them on your minds. Do we feel that, moment by
+moment, these little spurs of bad temper, these little gusts of
+worldliness, that tiny, evanescent sting of pride and devildom which has
+passed across or been fixed in our minds, are all present to God, and
+that He has judged them already, in the double sense that He has
+appraised their value and estimated their bearing upon our characters,
+and that He has set in motion some of the consequences which we shall
+have to reap?</p>
+
+<p>Oh! one sometimes wishes that people did not so much believe in a future
+judgment, in so far as it obscures to them the solemn thought of a
+present and a continuous one. 'Verily, there is a God that <i>judgeth</i> in
+the earth,' and, of course, all these provisional decisions, which are
+like the documents that in Scotch law are said to 'precognosce the
+case,' are all laid away in the archives of heaven, and will be
+produced, docketed and in order, at the last for each of us. Christian
+people sometimes abuse the doctrine of justification by faith as if it
+meant that Christians at the last were not to be judged. But they are,
+and there is such a thing as 'salvation yet so as by fire,' and such a
+thing as salvation in fulness. Do not let filial confidence drive out
+legitimate fear.</p>
+
+<p>He 'judges according to every man's work.' I do not think it is
+extravagant attention to niceties to ask you to notice that the Apostle
+does not say 'works,' but 'work'; as if all the separate actions were
+gathered into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_73" id="Page_2_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> a great whole, as indeed they are, because they are all
+the products of one mind and character. The trend and drift, so to
+speak, of our life, rather than its isolated actions and the underlying
+motives, in their solemn totality and unity, these are the materials of
+this Divine judgment.</p>
+
+<p>Now, let me say a word about the disposition which the Apostle enjoins
+upon us in the view of these facts.</p>
+
+<p>The Judge is the Father, the Father is the Judge. The one statement
+proclaims the merciful, compassionate, paternal judgment, the other the
+judicial Fatherhood. And what comes from the combination of these two
+ideas, which thus modify and illuminate one another? 'Pass the time of
+your sojourning here in fear.' What a descent that sounds from the
+earlier verses of the letter: 'In whom, though now ye see Him not, yet
+believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving
+the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.' Down from
+those heights of 'joy unspeakable,' and 'already glorified,' the apostle
+drops plump into <i>this</i> dungeon: 'Pass the time of your sojourning here
+in fear.' Of course, I need not remind you that the 'fear' here is not
+the 'fear which hath torment'; in fact, I do not think that it is a fear
+that refers to God at all. It is not a sentiment or emotion of which God
+is the object. It is not the reverent awe which often appears in
+Scripture as 'the fear of God,' which is a kind of shorthand expression
+for all modes of devout sentiment and emotion; but it is a fear, knowing
+our own weakness and the strong temptations that are round us, of
+falling into sin. That is the one thing to be afraid of in this world.
+If a man rightly understood what he is here for, then the only thing
+that he would be terrified for would be that he should miss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_74" id="Page_2_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> the purpose
+of his being here and lose his hold of God thereby. There is nothing
+else worth being afraid of, but that <i>is</i> worth being afraid of. It is
+not slavish dread, nor is it cowardice, but the well-grounded emotion of
+men that know themselves too well to be confident and know the world too
+well to be daring and presumptuous.</p>
+
+<p>Don't you think that Peter had had a pretty rough experience in his life
+that had taught him the wisdom of such an exhortation? And does it not
+strike you as very beautiful that it should come, of all people in the
+world, from his lips? The man that had said, 'Though all should forsake
+Thee, yet will not I.' 'Why cannot I follow Thee now?' 'Bid me come to
+Thee on the water.' 'This be far from Thee, Lord, it shall not be unto
+Thee'&mdash;the man that had whipped out his sword in the garden, in a spasm
+of foolish affection, now, in his quiet old age, when he has learnt the
+lesson of failures and follies and sins and repentance, says in effect:
+'Remember me, and do not you be presumptuous.' 'Pass the time of your
+sojourning here in fear.' 'If I had known myself a little better, and
+been a little more afraid of myself, I should not have made such a fool
+of myself or such shipwreck of my faithfulness.'</p>
+
+<p>Dear friends, no mature Christian is so advanced as that he does not
+need this reminder, and no Christian novice is so feeble as that,
+keeping obedient to this precept, he will not be victorious over all his
+evils. The strongest needs to fear; the weakest, fearing, is safe. For
+such fearfulness is indispensable to safety. It is all very well to go
+along with sail extended and a careless look-out. But if, for instance,
+a captain keeps such when he is making the mouth of the Red Sea where
+there are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_75" id="Page_2_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> a narrow channel and jagged rocks and a strong current, if he
+has not every man at his quarters and everything ready to let go and
+stop in a moment, he will be sure to be on the reefs before he has tried
+the experiment often. And the only safety for any of us is ever to be on
+the watch, and to dread our own weakness. 'Blessed is the man that
+feareth always.'</p>
+
+<p>Such carefulness over conduct and heart is fully compatible with all the
+blessed emotions to which it seems at first antagonistic. There is no
+discord between the phrase that I have quoted about 'joy unspeakable and
+full of glory,' and this temper, but rather the two help one another.
+And such blended confidence and fear are the parents of courage. The man
+that is afraid that he will do wrong and so hurt himself and grieve his
+Saviour, is the man that will never be afraid of anything else. Martyrs
+have gone to the stake 'fearing not them that kill the body, and after
+that have no more that they can do,' because they were so afraid to sin
+against God that they were not afraid to die rather than to do it. And
+that is the temper that you and I should have. Let that one fear, like
+Moses' rod, swallow up all the other serpents and make our hearts
+impervious to any other dread.</p>
+
+<p>'Pass the time of your <i>sojourning</i>.' You do not live in your own
+country, you are in an alien land. You are passing through it. Troops on
+the march in an enemy's country, unless they are led by an idiot, will
+send out clouds of scouts in front and on the wings to give timeous
+warning of any attempted assault. If we cheerily and carelessly go
+through this world as if we were marching in a land where there were no
+foes, there is nothing before us but defeat at the last. Only let us
+remember that sleepless watchfulness is needed only in this time of
+so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_76" id="Page_2_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>journing, and that when we get to our own country there is no need
+for such patrols and advance guards and rearguards and men on the flank
+as were essential when we were on the march. People that grow exotic
+plants here in England keep them in glass houses. But when they are
+taken to their native soil the glass would be an impertinence. As long
+as we are here we have to wear our armour, but when we get yonder the
+armour can safely be put off and the white robes that had to be tucked
+up under it lest they should be soiled by the muddy ways can be let
+down, for they will gather no pollution from the golden streets. The
+gates of that city do not need to be shut, day nor night. For when sin
+has ceased and our liability to yield to temptation has been exchanged
+for fixed adhesion to the Lord Himself, then, and not till then, is it
+safe to put aside the armour of godly fear and to walk, unguarded and
+unarmed, in the land of perpetual peace.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PURIFYING_THE_SOUL" id="PURIFYING_THE_SOUL"></a>PURIFYING THE SOUL</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'... ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the
+Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 22.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Note these three subsidiary clauses introduced respectively by 'in,'
+'through,' 'unto.' They give the means, the Bestower, and the issue of
+the purity of soul. The Revised Version, following good authorities,
+omits the clause, 'through the Spirit.' It may possibly be originally a
+marginal gloss of some scribe who was nervous about Peter's orthodoxy,
+which finally found its way into the text. But I think we shall be
+inclined to retain it if we notice that, throughout this epistle, the
+writer is fond<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_77" id="Page_2_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> of sentences on the model of the present one, and of
+surrounding a principal clause with subsidiary ones introduced by a
+similar sequence of prepositions. For instance, in this very chapter, to
+pass over other examples, we read, 'Kept by' (or in) 'the power of God
+through faith unto salvation.' So, for my present purpose, I take the
+doubtful words as part of the original text. They unquestionably convey
+a true idea, whether they are genuine here or no.</p>
+
+<p>One more introductory remark&mdash;'Ye have purified your souls'&mdash;a bold
+statement to make about the vast multitude of the 'dispersed' throughout
+all the provinces of Asia Minor whom the Apostle was addressing. The
+form of the words in the original shows that this purifying is a process
+which began at some definite point in the past and is being continued
+throughout all the time of Christian life. The hall-mark of all
+Christians is a relative purity, not of actions, but of soul. They will
+vary, one from another; the conception of what is purity of soul will
+change and grow, but, if a man is a Christian, there was a moment in his
+past at which he potentially, and in ideal, purified his spirit, and
+that was the moment when he bowed down in obedience to the truth. There
+are suggestions for volumes about the true conception of soul-purity in
+these words of my text. But I deal with them in the simplest possible
+fashion, following the guidance of these significant little words which
+introduce the subordinate clauses.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, then, we have here the great thought that</p>
+
+<p>I. Soul purity is in, or by, obedience.</p>
+
+<p>Now, of course, 'the truth'&mdash;truth with the definite article&mdash;is the sum
+of the contents of the Revelation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_78" id="Page_2_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> God in Jesus Christ, His life, His
+death, His Glory. For to Peter, as to us He should be, Jesus Christ was
+Truth Incarnate. 'In Him were hid all the treasures of wisdom and
+knowledge.' The first thought that is suggested to me from this
+expression&mdash;obedience to the truth&mdash;is that the revelation of God in
+Jesus Christ is, as its ultimate intention, meant to be obeyed. There
+are plenty of truths which have no influence on life and conduct, for
+which all is done that they can demand when they are accepted. But <i>the</i>
+truth is no inert substance like the element which recent chemical
+discoveries have found, which is named 'argon,' the do-nothing: <i>the</i>
+truth is, as physiologists say, a ferment. It is intended to come into
+life, and into character, and into the inmost spirit of a man, and grip
+them, and mould them, and transform them, and animate them, and impel
+them. The truth is to be 'obeyed.'</p>
+
+<p>Now that altogether throws over two card-castles which imperfect
+Christians are very apt to build. One which haunted the thoughts of an
+earlier generation of Christians more than it does the present, is that
+we have done all that 'the truth' asks of us when we have intellectually
+endorsed it. And so you get churches which build their membership upon
+acceptance of a creed and excommunicate heretics, whilst they keep
+do-nothing and uncleansed Christians within their pale. But God does not
+tell us anything that we may know. He tells us in order that, knowing,
+we may be and do. And right actions, or rather a character which
+produces such, is the last aim of all knowledge, and especially of all
+moral and religious truth. So 'the truth' is not 'argon', it is a
+ferment. And if men, steeped to the eyebrows in orthodoxy, think that
+they have done enough when they have set their hands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_79" id="Page_2_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> to a confession of
+faith, and that they are Christians because they can say, 'all this I
+steadfastly believe,' they need to remember that religious truth which
+does not mould and transform character and conduct is a king dethroned;
+and for dethroned kings there is a short step between the throne from
+which they have descended and the scaffold on which they die.</p>
+
+<p>But there is another&mdash;what I venture to call a card-castle, which more
+of us build in these days of indifference as to creed&mdash;and that is that
+a great many of us are too much disposed to believe that 'the truth as
+it is in Jesus' has received from us all which it expects when we trust
+to it for what we call our 'salvation,' meaning thereby forgiveness of
+sins and immunity from punishment. These are elements of salvation
+unquestionably, but they are only part of it. And the very truths on
+which Christian people rest for this initial salvation, which is
+forgiveness and acceptance, are meant to be the guides of our lives and
+the patterns for our imitation. Why, in this very letter, in reference
+to the very parts of Christ's work, on which faith is wont to rest for
+salvation,&mdash;the death on the Cross to which we say that we trust, and
+which we are so accustomed to exalt as a unique and inimitable work that
+cannot be reproduced and needs no repetition, world without end&mdash;Peter
+has no hesitation in saying that Christ was our 'Pattern,' and that,
+even when He went to the Cross, He died 'leaving us an example that we
+should follow in His steps.' So, brethren, the truth needs to be known
+and believed: the truth needs not only to be believed but to be trusted
+in; the truth needs not only to be believed and to be trusted in, but to
+be obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>Still further, another thought following upon and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_80" id="Page_2_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> some extent
+modifying the preceding one, is suggested here, and that is that the
+faith, which I have just been saying is sometimes mistakenly regarded as
+being all that truth calls for from us, is itself obedience. As I have
+said, the language in the original here implies that there was a given
+definite moment in the past when these dispersed strangers obeyed, and,
+by obeying the truth, purified their souls. What was that moment? Some
+people would say the moment when the rite of baptism was administered. I
+would say the moment when they bowed themselves in joyful acceptance of
+the great Word and put out a firm hand of faith to grasp Jesus Christ.
+That <i>is</i> obedience. For, in the very act of thus trusting, there is
+self-surrender, is there not? Does not a man depart from himself and bow
+himself humbly before his Saviour when he puts his trust in Him? Is not
+the very essence of obedience, not the mere external act, but the
+melting of the will to flow in such directions as His master-impulse may
+guide it? Thus, faith in its depth is obedience; and the moment when a
+man believes, in the deepest sense of the word, that moment, in the
+deepest realities of his spirit, he becomes obedient to the will and to
+the love of his Saviour Lord, Who is the Truth as He is the Way and the
+Life. We find, not only in this Epistle, but throughout the Epistles,
+that the two words 'disobedience' and 'unbelief,' are used as
+equivalents. We read, for instance, of those that 'stumble at the word,
+being disobedient,' and the like. So, then, faith is obedience in its
+depth, and, if our faith has any vitality in it, it carries in it the
+essence of all submission.</p>
+
+<p>But then, further, my text implies that the faith which is, in its
+depth, obedience, in its practical issues will produce the practical
+obedience which the text enjoins. It is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_81" id="Page_2_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> no mere piece of theological
+legerdemain which counts that faith is righteousness. But, just as all
+sin comes from selfishness, so, and therefore, all righteousness will
+flow from giving up self, from decentralising, as it were, our souls
+from their old centre, self, and taking a new centre, God in Christ.
+Thus the germ of all practical obedience lies in vital faith. It is, if
+I might so say, the mother-tincture which, variously combined, coloured,
+and perfumed, makes all the precious things, the virtues and graces of
+humanity, which the believing soul pours out as a libation before its
+God. It is the productive energy of all practical goodness. It is the
+bottom heat in the greenhouse which makes all the plants grow and
+flourish. Faith is obedience, and faith produces obedience. Does my
+faith produce obedience? If it does not, it is not faith.</p>
+
+<p>Then, with regard to this first part of my subject, comes the final
+thought that practical obedience works inwards as well as outwards, and
+purifies the soul which renders it. People generally turn that round the
+other way, and, instead of saying that to do right helps to make a man
+right within, they say 'make the tree good, and its fruit good'&mdash;first
+the pure soul, and then the practical obedience. Both statements are
+true. For every act that a man does reacts upon the doer, just as,
+whether the shot hits the target or not, the gun kicks back on the
+shoulder of the man that fired it. Conduct comes from character, but
+conduct works back upon character, and character is largely the deposit
+from the vanished seas of actions. So, then, whilst the deepest thought
+is, be good and you will do good, it is not to be forgotten that the
+other side is true&mdash;do good, and it will tend to make you good.
+Obedience purifies the soul, while, on the other hand, a man that lives
+ill comes to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_82" id="Page_2_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> think as he lives, and to become tenfold more a child of
+evil. 'The dyer's hand is subdued to what it works in.' 'Ye have
+purified your souls,' ideally, in the act of faith, and continuously, in
+the measure in which you practically obey the truth.</p>
+
+<p>We have here</p>
+
+<p>II. Purifying through the Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>I have already said that these words are possibly no part of the
+original text, but that they convey a true Christian idea, whether the
+words are here genuine or no. I need not enlarge upon this part of my
+subject at any length. Let me just remind you how the other verse in
+this chapter, to which I have already referred as cast in the same mould
+as our text, covers, from a different point of view, the same ground
+exactly as our text. Here there is put first the human element: 'Ye have
+purified your souls in obeying the truth,' and secondly the Divine
+element; 'through the Spirit.' The human part is put in the foreground,
+and God's part comes in, I was going to say, subordinately, as a
+condition. The reverse is the case in the other text, which runs: 'Kept
+<i>in</i> the power of God <i>through</i> faith'&mdash;where the Divine element is in
+the foreground, as being the true cause, and the human dwindles to being
+merely a condition&mdash;'Kept by' (or in) 'the power of God through faith.'
+Both views are true; you may take the vase by either handle. When the
+purpose is to stimulate to action, man's part is put in the foreground
+and God's part secondarily. When the purpose is to stimulate to
+confidence, God's part is put in the foreground and the man's is
+secondary. The two interlock, and neither is sufficient without the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>The true Agent of all purifying is that Divine Spirit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_83" id="Page_2_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> I have said that
+the moment of true trust is the moment of initial obedience, and of the
+beginning of purity. And it is so because, in that moment of initial
+faith, there enters into the heart the communicated Divine life of the
+Spirit, which thenceforward is lodged there, except it be quenched by
+the man's negligence or sin. Thence, from that germ implanted in the
+moment of faith, the germ of a new life, there issue forth to ultimate
+dominion in the spirit, the powers of that Divine Spirit which make for
+righteousness and transform the character. Thus, the true cause and
+origin of all Christian nobility and purity of character and conduct
+lies in that which enters the heart at the moment that the heart is
+opened for the coming of the Lord. But, on the other hand, this Divine
+Spirit, the Source of all purity, will not purify the soul without the
+man's efforts. '<i>Ye</i> have purified your souls.' You need the Spirit
+indeed. But you are not mere passive recipients. You are to be active
+co-operators. In this region, too, we are 'labourers together with God.'
+We cannot of ourselves do the work, for the very powers with which we do
+it, or try to do it, are themselves in need of cleansing. And for a man
+to try to purify the soul by his own effort alone is to play the part of
+the sluttish house-wife who would seek to wipe a dish clean with a dirty
+cloth. You need the Divine Spirit to work in you, and you need to use,
+by your own effort, the Divine Spirit that does work in you. He is as
+'rushing, mighty wind'; but, unless the sails are set and the helm
+gripped, the wind will pass the boat and leave it motionless. He is
+Divine fire that burns up the dross and foulness; but, unless we 'guard
+the holy fire' and feed it, it dies down into grey cold ashes. He is the
+water of life; but, un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_84" id="Page_2_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>less we dig and take heed to keep clear the
+channels, no refreshing will permeate to the roots of the wilting
+flowers, and there will be dryness, thirst, and barrenness, even on the
+river's banks.</p>
+
+<p>So, brethren, neither God alone nor man alone can purify the soul. We
+need Him, else we shall labour in vain. He needs us, else He will bestow
+His gift, and we shall receive 'the grace of God in vain.'</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, we have here&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>III. Purifying ... unto ... love.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle was speaking to men of very diverse nationalities who had
+been rent asunder by deep gulfs of mutual suspicion and conflicting
+interests and warring creeds, and a great mysterious, and, as it would
+seem to the world then, utterly inexplicable bond of unity had been
+evolved amongst them, and Greek and barbarian, bond and free, male and
+female, had come together in amity. The 'love of the brethren' was the
+creation of Christianity, and was the outstanding fact which, more than
+any other, amazed the beholders in these early days. God be thanked!
+there are signs in our generation of a closer drawing together of
+Christian people than many past ages, alas, have seen.</p>
+
+<p>But my text suggests solemn and great thoughts with regard to Christian
+love and unity. The road to unity lies through purity, and the road to
+purity lies through obedience. Yes; what keeps Christian people apart is
+their impurities. It is not their creeds. It is not any of the
+differences that appear to separate them. It is because they are not
+better men and women. Globules of quicksilver will run together and make
+one mass; but not if you dust them over. And it is the impurities on the
+quicksilver that keep us from coalescing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_85" id="Page_2_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So then we have to school ourselves into greater conformity to the
+likeness of our Master, to conquer selfishness, and to purify our souls,
+or else all this talk about Christian unity is no better than sounding
+brass, and more discordant than tinkling cymbals. Let us learn the
+lesson. 'The unfeigned love of the brethren' is not such an easy thing
+as some people fancy, and it is not to be attained at all on the road by
+which some people would seek it. Cleanse yourselves, and you will flow
+together.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, we have Peter's conception of a pure soul and a pure life.
+It is a stately building, based deep on the broad foundation of the
+truth as it is in Jesus; its walls rising, but not without our effort,
+being builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit, and
+having as the shining apex of its heaven-pointing spire 'unfeigned love
+to the brethren.' The measure of our obedience is the measure of our
+purity. The measure of our purity is the measure of our brotherly love.
+But that love, though it is the very aim and natural issue of purity,
+still will not be realised without effort on our part. Therefore my
+text, after its exhibition of the process and issues of the purifying
+which began with faith, glides into the exhortation: 'See that ye love
+one another with a pure heart'&mdash;a heart purified by obedience&mdash;and that
+'fervently.'</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_86" id="Page_2_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="LIVING_STONES_ON_THE_LIVING_FOUNDATION_STONE" id="LIVING_STONES_ON_THE_LIVING_FOUNDATION_STONE"></a>LIVING STONES ON THE LIVING FOUNDATION STONE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'To Whom coming, as unto a living stone ... ye also, as living
+stones, are built up.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> ii. 4, 5.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I wonder whether Peter, when he wrote these words, was thinking about
+what Jesus Christ said to him long ago, up there at C&aelig;sarea Philippi. He
+had heard from Christ's lips, 'Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will
+build My Church.' He had understood very little of what it meant then.
+He is an old man now, years of experience and sorrow and work have
+taught him the meaning of the words, and he understands them a great
+deal better than his so-called successors have done. For we may surely
+take the text as the Apostle's own disclaimer of that which the Roman
+Catholic Church has founded on it, and has blazoned it, in gigantic
+letters round the dome of St. Peter's, as meaning. It is surely
+legitimate to hear him saying in these words: 'Make no mistake, it is
+Jesus Himself on whom the Church is built. The confession of Him which
+the Father in heaven revealed to me, not I, the poor sinner who
+confessed it&mdash;the Christ whom that confession set forth, He is the
+foundation stone, and all of you are called and honoured to ring out the
+same confession. Jesus is the one Foundation, and we all, apostles and
+humble believers, are but stones builded on Him.' Peter's relation to
+Jesus is fundamentally the same as that of every poor soul that 'comes
+to' Him.</p>
+
+<p>Now, there are two or three thoughts that may very well be suggested
+from these words, and the first of them is this:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_87" id="Page_2_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. Those that are in Christ have perpetually to make the effort to come
+nearer Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Remember that the persons to whom the Apostle is speaking are no
+strangers to the Saviour. They have been professing Christians from of
+old. They have made very considerable progress in the Divine life; they
+are near Jesus Christ; and yet Peter says to them, 'You can get nearer
+if you try,' and it is your one task and one hope, the condition of all
+blessedness, peace, and joy in your religious life that you should
+perpetually be making the effort to come closer, and to keep closer, to
+the Lord, by whom you say that you live.</p>
+
+<p>What is it to come to Him? The context explains the figurative
+expression, in the very next verse or two, by another and simpler word,
+which strips away the figure and gives us the plain fact&mdash;'in Whom
+believing.' The act of the soul by which I, with all my weakness and
+sin, cast myself on Jesus Christ, and grapple Him to my heart, and bind
+myself with His strength and righteousness&mdash;that is what the Apostle
+means here. Or, to put it into other words, this 'coming,' which is here
+laid as the basis of everything, of all Christian prosperity and
+progress for the individual and for the community, is the movement
+towards Christ of the whole spiritual nature of a man&mdash;thoughts, loves,
+wishes, purposes, desires, hopes, will. And we come near to Him when day
+by day we realise His nearness to us, when our thoughts are often
+occupied with Him, bring His peace and Himself to bear as a motive upon
+our conduct, let our love reach out its tendrils towards, and grasp, and
+twine round Him, bow our wills to His commandment, and in everything
+obey Him. The distance between heaven and earth does part us, but the
+distance between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_88" id="Page_2_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> a thoughtless mind, an unrenewed heart, a rebellious
+will, and Him, sets between Him and us a greater gulf, and we have to
+bridge that by continual honest efforts to keep our wayward thoughts
+true to Him and near Him, and to regulate our affections that they may
+not, like runaway stars, carry us far from the path, and to bow our
+stubborn and self-regulating wills beneath His supreme commandment, and
+so to make all things a means of coming nearer the Lord with whom is our
+true home.</p>
+
+<p>Christian men, there are none of us so close to Him but that we may be
+nearer, and the secret of our daily Christian life is all wrapped up in
+that one word which is scarcely to be called a figure, 'coming' unto
+Him. That nearness is what we are to make daily efforts after, and that
+nearness is capable of indefinite increase. We know not how close to His
+heart we can lay our aching heads. We know not how near to His fulness
+we may bring our emptiness. We have never yet reached the point beyond
+which no closer union is possible. There has always been a film&mdash;and,
+alas! sometimes a gulf&mdash;between Him and us, His professing servants. Let
+us see to it that the conscious distance diminishes every day, and that
+we feel ourselves more and more constantly near the Lord and intertwined
+with Him.</p>
+
+<p>II. Those who come near Christ will become like Christ.</p>
+
+<p>'To Whom coming, as unto a living stone, ye also as living stones.' Note
+the verbal identity of the expressions with which Peter describes the
+Master and His servants. Christ is the Stone&mdash;that is Peter's
+interpretation of 'on this <i>rock</i> will I build My Church.' There is a
+reference, too, no doubt, to the many Old Testament<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_89" id="Page_2_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> prophecies which
+are all gathered up in that saying of our Lord's. Probably both Jesus
+and Peter had in mind Isaiah's 'stone of stumbling,' which was also a
+'sure corner-stone, and a tried foundation.' And words in the context
+which I have not taken for consideration, 'disallowed indeed of men, but
+chosen of God and precious,' plainly rest upon the 118th Psalm, which
+speaks of 'the stone which the builders rejected' becoming 'the head of
+the corner.'</p>
+
+<p>But, says Peter, He is not only the foundation Stone, the corner Stone,
+but a <i>living</i> Stone, and he does not only use that word to show us that
+he is indulging in a metaphor, and that we are to think of a person and
+not of a thing, but in the sense that Christ is eminently and
+emphatically the living One, the Source of life.</p>
+
+<p>But, when he turns to the disciples, he speaks to them in exactly the
+same language. They, too, are 'living stones,' because they come to the
+'Stone' that is 'living.' Take away the metaphor, and what does this
+identity of description come to? Just this, that if we draw near to
+Jesus Christ, life from Him will pass into our hearts and minds, which
+life will show itself in kindred fashion to what it wore in Jesus
+Christ, and will shape us into the likeness of Him <i>from</i> whom we draw
+our life, because <i>to</i> Him we have come. I may remind you that there is
+scarcely a single name by which the New Testament calls Jesus Christ
+which Jesus Christ does not share with us His younger brethren. By that
+Son we 'receive the adoption of sons.' Is He the Light of the world? We
+are lights of the world. And if you look at the words of my text, you
+will see that the offices which are attributed to Christ in the New
+Testament are gathered up in those which the Apostle here ascribes to
+Christ's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_90" id="Page_2_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> servants. Jesus Christ in His manhood was the Temple of God.
+Jesus Christ in His manhood was the Priest for humanity. Jesus Christ in
+His manhood was the sacrifice for the world's sins. And what does Peter
+say here? 'Ye are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to
+offer up spiritual sacrifices.' You draw life from Jesus Christ if you
+keep close to Him, and that life makes you, in derived and subordinate
+fashion, but in a very real and profound sense, what Jesus Christ was in
+the world. The whole blessedness and secret of the gifts which our Lord
+comes to bestow upon men may be summed up in that one thought, which is
+metaphorically and picturesquely set forth in the language of my text,
+and which I put into plainer and more prosaic English when I say&mdash;they
+that come near Christ become as Christ. As 'living stones' they, too,
+share in the life which flows from Him. Touch Him, and His quick Spirit
+passes into our hearts. Rest upon that foundation-stone and up from it,
+if I may so say, there is drawn, by strange capillary attraction, all
+the graces and powers of the Saviour's own life. The building which is
+reared upon the Foundation is cemented to the Foundation by the
+communication of the life itself, and, coming to the living Rock, we,
+too, become alive.</p>
+
+<p>Let us keep ourselves near to Him, for, disconnected, the wire cannot
+carry the current, and is only a bit of copper, with no virtue in it, no
+power. Attach it once more to the battery and the mysterious energy
+flashes through it immediately. 'To Whom coming,' because He lives, 'ye
+shall live also.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly:</p>
+
+<p>They who become like Christ because they are near Him, thereby grow
+together.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_91" id="Page_2_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'To whom coming, as unto a living stone, ye also, as living stones, are
+built up.' That building up means not only the growth of individual
+graces in the Christian character, the building up in each single soul
+of more and more perfect resemblance to the Saviour, but from the
+context it rather refers to the welding together, into a true and
+blessed unity, of all those that partake of that common life. Now, it is
+very beautiful to remember, in this connection, to whom this letter was
+written. The first words of it are: 'To the strangers <i>scattered abroad</i>
+throughout,' etc. etc. All over Asia Minor, hundreds of miles apart,
+here one there another little group, were these isolated believers, the
+scattered stones of a great building. But Peter shows them the way to a
+true unity, notwithstanding their separation. He says to them in effect:
+'You up in Bithynia, and you others away down there on the southern
+coast, though you never saw one another, though you are separated by
+mountain ranges and weary leagues; though you, if you met one another,
+perhaps could not understand what you each were saying, if you "come
+unto the living Stone, ye as living stones are built up" into one.'
+There is a great unity into which all they are gathered who, separated
+by whatever surface distinctions, yet, deep down at the bottom of their
+better lives, are united to Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>But there may be another lesson here for us, and that is, that the true
+and only secret of the prosperity and blessedness and growth of a
+so-called Christian congregation is the individual faithfulness of its
+members, and their personal approximation of Jesus Christ. If we here,
+knit together as we are nominally for Christian worship, and by faith in
+that dear Lord, are true to our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_92" id="Page_2_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> profession and our vocation, and keep
+ourselves near our Master, then we shall be built up; and if we do not,
+we shall not.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear friends, all comes to this: <i>There</i> is the Stone laid; it does
+not matter how <i>close</i> we are lying to it, it will be nothing to us
+unless we are <i>on</i> it. And I put it to each of you. Are you built on the
+Foundation, and from the Foundation do you derive a life which is daily
+bringing you nearer to Him, and making you liker Him? All blessedness
+depends, for time and for eternity, on the answer to that question. For
+remember that, since that living Stone is laid, it is <i>something</i> to
+you. Either it is the Rock on which you build, or the Stone against
+which you stumble and are broken. No man, in a country evangelised like
+England&mdash;I do not say Christian, but evangelised&mdash;can say that Jesus
+Christ has no relation to, or effect upon, him. And certainly no people
+that listen to Christian preaching, and know Christian truth as fully
+and as much as you do, can say it. He is the Foundation on which we can
+rear a noble, stable life, if we build upon Him. If He is not the
+Foundation on which I build, He is the Stone on which I shall be broken.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SPIRITUAL_SACRIFICES" id="SPIRITUAL_SACRIFICES"></a>SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'... Spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.'&mdash;1
+<span class="smcap">Peter</span> ii. 5.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>In this verse Peter piles up his metaphors in a fine profusion,
+perfectly careless of oratorical elegance or propriety. He gathers
+together three symbols, drawn from ancient sacrificial worship, and
+applies them all to Christian people. In the one breath they are
+'temples,' in the next 'priests,' in the third 'sacrifices.' All<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_93" id="Page_2_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> the
+three are needed to body out the whole truth of the relationship of the
+perfect universal religion&mdash;which is Christianity&mdash;to the fragmentary
+and symbolical religion of ancient time.</p>
+
+<p>Christians individually and collectively are temples, inasmuch as they
+are 'the habitation of God through the Spirit.' They are priests by
+virtue of their consecration, their direct access to God, their function
+of representing God to men, and of bringing men to God. They are
+sacrifices, inasmuch as one main part of their priestly function is to
+offer themselves to God.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is very difficult for us to realise what an extraordinary
+anomaly the Christian faith presented at its origin, surrounded by
+religions which had nothing to do with morality, conduct, or spiritual
+life, but were purely ritualistic. And here, in the midst of them,
+started up a religion bare and bald, and with no appeal to sense, no
+temple, no altar, no sacrifice. But the Apostles with one accord declare
+that they had all these things in far higher form than those faiths
+possessed them, which had only the outward appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Now, this conception of the sacrificial element in the Christian life
+runs through the whole New Testament, and is applied there in a very
+remarkable variety of forms. I have taken the words of my text, not so
+much to discourse upon them especially. My object now is rather to
+gather together the various references to the Christian life as
+essentially sacrificial, and to trace the various applications which
+that idea receives in the New Testament. There are four classes of
+these, to which I desire especially to refer.</p>
+
+<p>I. There is the living sacrifice of the body.</p>
+
+<p>'I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye <i>present</i>'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_94" id="Page_2_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>&mdash;which is a
+technical word for a priest's action&mdash;'your bodies a living sacrifice,'
+in contrast with the slaying, which was the presentation of the animal
+victim. Now, that 'body' there is not equivalent to self is distinctly
+seen when we notice that Paul goes on, in the very next clause, to say,
+'and be transformed by the renewing of your <i>mind</i>.' So that he is
+speaking, not of the self, but of the corporeal organ and instrument of
+the self, when he says 'present your <i>bodies</i> a living sacrifice.'</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the central idea of sacrifice is surrender to God; and, of
+course, the place where that surrender is made is the inmost self. The
+will is the man, and when the will bows, dethroning self and enthroning
+God, submitting to His appointments, and delighting to execute His
+commandments, then the sacrifice is begun. But, inasmuch as the body is
+the organ of the man's activity, the sacrifice of the will and of self
+must needs come out into visibility and actuality in the aggregate of
+deeds, of which the body is the organ and instrument. But there must
+first of all be the surrender of my inmost self, and only then, and as
+the token and outcome of that, will any external acts, however religious
+they may seem to be, come into the category of sacrifice when they
+express a conscious surrender of myself to God. 'The flesh profiteth
+nothing,' and yet the flesh profiteth much. But here is the order that
+another of the Apostles lays down: 'Yield <i>yourselves</i> to God,' and
+then, 'your members as instruments of righteousness to Him.'</p>
+
+<p>To speak of the sacrifice of the body as a living sacrifice suggests
+that it is not the slaying of any bodily appetite or activity that is
+the true sacrifice and worship, but the hallowing of these. It is a
+great deal easier, and it is sometimes necessary, to cut off the
+offending<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_95" id="Page_2_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> right hand, to pluck out the offending right eye, or, putting
+away the metaphor, to abstain rigidly from forms of activity which are
+perfectly legitimate in themselves, and may be innocuous to other
+people, if we find that they hurt us. But that is second best, and
+though it is better in the judgment of common sense to go into life
+maimed than complete to be cast into hell-fire, it is better still to go
+into life symmetrical and entire, with no maiming in hand or organ. So
+you do not offer the living sacrifice of the body when you annihilate,
+but when you suppress, and direct, and hallow its needs, its appetites,
+and its activities.</p>
+
+<p>The meaning of this sacrifice is that the whole active life should be
+based upon, and be the outcome of, the inward surrender of self unto
+God. 'On the bells of the horses shall be written, Holiness to the Lord,
+and every pot and vessel in Jerusalem shall be holy as the bowls upon
+the altar'&mdash;in such picturesque and yet profound fashion did an ancient
+prophet set forth the same truth that lies in this declaration of our
+Apostle, that the body, the instrument of our activities, should be a
+living sacrifice to God. Link all its actions with Him; let there be
+conscious reference to Him in all that I do. Let foot and hand and eye
+and brain work for Him, and by Him, and in constant consciousness of His
+presence; suppress where necessary, direct always, appetites and
+passions, and make the body the instrument of the surrendered spirit.
+And then, in the measure in which we can do so, the greatest cleft and
+discord in human life will be filled, and body, soul, and spirit will
+harmonise and make one music of praise to God.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! brethren, these bad principles have teeth to bite very close into
+our daily lives. How many of us, young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_96" id="Page_2_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> and old, have 'fleshly lusts
+which war against the soul'? How many of you young men have no heart for
+higher, purer, nobler things, because the animal in you is strong! How
+many of you find that the day's activities blunt you to God! How many of
+us are weakened still under that great antagonism of the flesh lusting
+against the spirit, so that we cannot do the things that we would!
+Sensuality, indulgence in animal propensities, yielding to the clamant
+voices of the beast that is within us&mdash;these things wreck many a soul;
+and some of those that are listening to me now. Let the man govern and
+coerce the animal, and let God govern the man. 'I beseech you that you
+yield your bodies a living sacrifice.'</p>
+
+<p>II. There is the sacrifice of praise.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, logically and properly, this, and all the others that I am
+going to speak about, are included within that to which I have already
+directed attention. But still they are dealt with separately in
+Scripture, and I follow the guidance. We read in the Epistle to the
+Hebrews: 'By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise unto God
+continually&mdash;that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks unto His
+name.' There, then, is another of the regions into which the notion of
+sacrifice as the very essence of Christian life is to be carried.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing more remarkable in Scripture than the solemn importance
+that it attaches to what so many people think so little about, and that
+is <i>words</i>. It even sometimes seems to take them as being more truly the
+outcome and revelation of a man's character than his deeds are. And that
+is true, in some respects. But at all events there is set forth, ever
+running all through the Scripture, that thought, that one of the best
+sacrifices that men can make to God is to render up the trib<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_97" id="Page_2_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>ute of
+their praise. In the great psalm which lays down with clearness never
+surpassed in the New Testament the principles of true Christian worship,
+this is declared: 'Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me.' The true
+offering is not the slaying of animals or the presentation of any
+material things, but the utterance of hearts welling up thankfulness. In
+the ancient ritual there stood within the Holy place, and after the
+altar of burnt-offering had been passed, three symbols of the relation
+of the redeemed soul to God. There was the great candlestick, which
+proclaimed 'Ye are the light of the world.' There was the table on which
+the so-called shewbread was laid, and in the midst there was the altar
+of incense, on which, day by day, morning and evening, there was kindled
+the fragrant offering which curled up in wreaths of blue smoke aspiring
+towards the heavens. It lay smouldering all through the day, and was
+quickened into flame morning and evening. That is a symbol representing
+what the Christian life ought to be&mdash;a continual thank-offering of the
+incense of prayer and praise.</p>
+
+<p>Nor that only, brethren, but also there is another shape in which our
+words should be sacrifices, and that is in the way of direct utterances
+to men, as well as of thanksgiving to God. What a shame it is, and what
+a confession of imperfect, partial redemption and regeneration on the
+part of professing Christians it is, that there are thousands of us who
+never, all our lives, have felt the impulse or necessity of giving
+utterance to our Christian convictions! You can talk about anything
+else; you are tongue-tied about your religion. Why is that? You can make
+speeches upon political platforms, or you can discourse on many subjects
+that interest you. You never speak a word to anybody about the Master
+that you say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_98" id="Page_2_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> you serve. Why is that? 'What is bred in the bone comes
+out in the flesh.' What is deep in the heart sometimes lies there
+unuttered, but more often demands expression. I venture to think that if
+your Christianity was deeper, it would not be so dumb. You strengthen
+your convictions by speech. A man's belief in anything grows
+incalculably by the very fact of proclaiming it. And there is no surer
+way to lose moral and spiritual convictions than to huddle them up in
+the secret chambers of our hearts. It is like a man carrying a bit of
+ice in his palm. He locks his fingers over it, and when he opens them it
+has all run out and gone. If you want to deepen your Christianity,
+declare it. If you would have your hearts more full of gratitude, speak
+your praise. There used to be in certain religious houses a single
+figure kneeling on the altar-steps, by day and by night, ever uttering
+forth with unremitting voice, the psalm of praise. That perpetual
+adoration in spirit, if not in form, ought to be ours. The fruit of the
+lips should continually be offered. Literally, of course, there cannot
+be that unbroken and exclusive utterance of thanksgiving. There are many
+other things that men have to talk about; but through all the utterances
+there ought to spread the aroma&mdash;like some fragrance diffused through
+the else scentless air from some unseen source of sweetness&mdash;of that
+name to which the life is one long thanksgiving.</p>
+
+<p>III. There is the sacrifice of help to men.</p>
+
+<p>The same passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to which I have already
+referred, goes on to bracket together the sacrifice of praise and of
+deeds. It continues thus:&mdash;'But to do good and to communicate forget
+not.' Again I say, logically this comes under the first division.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_99" id="Page_2_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> But
+still it may be treated separately, and it just carries this
+thought&mdash;your praying and singing praises are worse than useless unless
+you go out into the world an embodiment and an imitation of the love
+which you hymn. True philanthropy has its roots in true religion. The
+service of man is the service of God.</p>
+
+<p>That principle cuts two ways. It comes as a sharp test of their prayers
+and psalm-singing to emotional Christians, who are always able to gush
+in words of thankfulness, and it confronts them with the question, What
+do you do for your brother? That is a question that comes very close to
+us all. Do not talk about being the priests of the Most High God unless
+you are doing the priestly office of representing God to men, and
+carrying to them the blessings that they need. Your service to God is
+worthless unless it is followed by diligent, fraternal, wise,
+self-sacrificing service for men.</p>
+
+<p>The same principle points in another direction. If, on the one hand, it
+crushes as hypocrisy a religion of talk, on the other hand it declares
+as baseless a philanthropy which has no reference to God. And whilst I
+know that there are many men who, following the dictates of their
+hearts, and apart altogether from any reference to higher religious
+sanctions, do exercise pity and compassion and help, I believe that for
+the basing of a lasting, wide, wise benevolence, there is nothing solid
+and broad except Christ and Him crucified, and the consciousness of
+having been&mdash;sinful and needy as we are&mdash;received and blessed by Him.
+Let the philanthropists learn that the surrender of self, and the fruit
+of the lips giving thanks to His name, must precede the highest kind of
+beneficence. Let the Christian learn that benevolence is the garb in
+which religion is dressed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_100" id="Page_2_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> 'True worship and undefiled ... is this, to
+visit the widow and the fatherless in their affliction.' Morality is the
+dress of Religion; Religion is the body of Morality.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Lastly, there is the sacrifice of death.</p>
+
+<p>'I am ready to be offered,' says the Apostle&mdash;to be <i>poured out</i>, as a
+libation. And again, 'If I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of
+your faith, I rejoice with you all.' And so may</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Death the endless mercies seal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;And make the sacrifice complete.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It may become not a reluctant being dragged out of life whilst we cling
+to it with both our hands. It may be not a reluctant yielding to
+necessity, but a religious act, in which a man resignedly and trustfully
+and gratefully yields himself to God; and says, 'Father! into Thy hands
+I commit my spirit.'</p>
+
+<p>Ah! brethren, is not that a better way to die than to be like some poor
+wretch in a stream, that clutches at some unfixed support on the bank,
+and is whirled away down, fiercely resisting and helpless? We may thus
+make our last act an act of devotion, and go within the veil as priests
+bearing in our hands the last of our sacrifices. The sacrifice of death
+will only be offered when a life of sacrifice has preceded it. And if
+you and I, moved by the mercies of God, yield ourselves living
+sacrifices, using our lips for His praise and our possessions for man's
+help, then we may die as the Apostle expected to do, and feel that by
+Christ Jesus even death becomes 'an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice
+acceptable, well-pleasing unto God.'</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_101" id="Page_2_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="MIRRORS_OF_GOD" id="MIRRORS_OF_GOD"></a>MIRRORS OF GOD</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'... That ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called
+you out of darkness ...'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> ii. 9.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The <i>Revised Version</i>, instead of 'praises,' reads <i>excellencies</i>&mdash;and
+even that is but a feeble translation of the remarkable word here
+employed. For it is that usually rendered 'virtues'; and by the word, of
+course, when applied to God, we mean the radiant excellencies and
+glories of His character, of which our earthly qualities, designated by
+the same name, are but as shadows.</p>
+
+<p>It is, indeed, true that this same expression is employed in the Greek
+version of the Old Testament in Isaiah xliii. in a verse which evidently
+was floating before Peter's mind. 'This people have I formed for Myself;
+they shall show forth My praise.'</p>
+
+<p>But even while that is admitted, it is to be observed that the
+expression here does not merely mean that the audible praise of God
+should be upon the lips of Christian people, but that their whole lives
+should, in a far deeper sense than that, be the manifestation of what
+the Apostle here calls 'excellencies of God.'</p>
+
+<p>I. Here we get a wonderful glimpse into the heart of God.</p>
+
+<p>Note the preceding words, in which the writer describes all God's
+mercies to His people, making them 'a chosen generation, a royal
+priesthood, a holy nation'; a people 'His own possession.' All that is
+done for one specific purpose&mdash;'that ye should show forth the praises of
+Him who hath called you out of darkness.' That is to say, the very aim
+of all God's gracious manifesta<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_102" id="Page_2_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>tions of Himself is that the men who
+apprehend them should go forth into the world and show Him for what He
+is.</p>
+
+<p>Now that aim may be, and often has been, put so as to present an utterly
+hard and horrible notion. That God's glory is His only motive may be so
+stated as to mean nearly an Almighty Selfishness, which is far liker the
+devil than God. People in old days did not always recognise the danger
+that lay in such a representation of what we call God's motive for
+action. But if you think for a moment about this statement, all that
+appears hard and repellent drops clean away from it, and it turns out to
+be another way of saying, 'God is Love.' Because, what is there more
+characteristic of love than an earnest desire to communicate itself and
+to be manifested and beheld? And what is it that God reveals to the
+world for His own glory but the loftiest and most wondrous compassion,
+that cannot be wearied out, that cannot be provoked, and the most
+forgiving Omnipotence, that, in answer to all men's wanderings and
+rebellions, only seeks to draw them to itself? That is what God wants to
+be known for. Is <i>that</i> hard and repellent? Does that make Him a great
+tyrant, who only wants to be abjectly worshipped? No; it makes Him the
+very embodiment and perfection of the purest love. Why does He desire
+that He should be known? for any good that it does to Him? No; except
+the good that even His creatures can do to Him when they gladden His
+paternal heart by recognising Him for what He is, the Infinite Lover of
+all souls.</p>
+
+<p>But the reason why He desires, most of all, that the light of His
+character may pour into every heart is because He would have every heart
+gladdened and blessed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_103" id="Page_2_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> for ever by that received and believed light. So
+the hard saying that God's own glory is His supreme end melts into 'God
+is Love.' The Infinite desires to communicate Himself, that by the
+communication men may be blessed.</p>
+
+<p>II. There is another thing here, and that is, a wonderful glimpse of
+what Christian people are in the world for.</p>
+
+<p>'This people have I formed for Myself,' says the fundamental passage in
+Isaiah already referred to, 'they shall show forth My praise.' It was
+not worth while forming them except for that. It was still less worth
+while redeeming them except for that.</p>
+
+<p>But you may say, 'I am saved in order that I may enjoy all the blessings
+of salvation, immunities from fear and punishment, and the like.' Yes!
+Certainly! But is that all? Or is it the main thing? I think not. There
+is not a creature in God's universe so tiny, even although you cannot
+see it with a microscope, but that it has a claim on Him that made it
+for its well-being. That is very certain. And so my salvation&mdash;with all
+the blessedness for me that lies wrapped up and hived in that great
+word&mdash;my salvation is an adequate end with God, in all His dealing, and
+especially in His sending of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>But there is not a creature in the whole universe, though he were
+mightier than the archangels that stand nearest God's throne, who is so
+great and independent that his happiness and well-being is the sole aim
+of God's gifts to him. For every one of us the Apostle means the word,
+'No man liveth to himself'&mdash;he could not if he were to try&mdash;'and no man
+dieth to himself.' Every man that receives anything from God is thereby
+made a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_104" id="Page_2_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> steward to impart it to others. So we may say&mdash;and I speak now
+to you who profess to be Christians&mdash;'you were not saved for your own
+sakes.' One might almost say that that was a by-end. You were
+saved&mdash;shall I say?&mdash;for God's sake; and you were saved for man's sake?
+Just as when you put a bit of leaven into a lump of dough, each grain of
+the lump, as it is leavened and transformed, becomes the medium for
+passing on the mysterious transforming influence to the particle beyond,
+so every one of us, if we have been brought out of darkness into
+marvellous light, have been so brought, not only that we may recreate
+and bathe our own eyes in the flooding sunshine, but that we may turn to
+our brothers and ask them to come too out of the doleful night into the
+cheerful, gladsome day. Every man that Jesus Christ conquers on the
+field He sends behind Him, and says, 'Take rank in My army. Be My
+soldier.' Every yard of line in a new railway when laid down is used to
+carry materials to make the next yard; and so the terminus is reached.
+Even so, Christian people were formed for Christ that they might show
+forth His praise.</p>
+
+<p>Look what a notion that gives us of the dignity of the Christian life,
+and of the special manifestation of God which is afforded to the world
+in it. You, if you love as you ought to do, are a witness of something
+far nobler in God than all the stars in the sky. You, if you set forth
+as becomes you His glorious character, have crowned the whole
+manifestation that He makes of Himself in Nature and in Providence. What
+people learn about God from a true Christian is a better revelation than
+has ever been made or can be made elsewhere. So the Bible talks about
+principalities and powers in heav<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_105" id="Page_2_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>enly places who have had nobody knows
+how many millenniums of intercourse with God, nobody knows how deep and
+intimate, learning from Christian people the manifold wisdom which had
+folds and folds in it that they had never unfolded and never could have
+done. 'Ye are My witnesses,' saith the Lord. Sun and stars tell of
+power, wisdom, and a whole host of majestic attributes. We are witnesses
+that 'He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He
+increaseth strength.' Who was it that said</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">''Twas great to speak a world from naught,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis greater to redeem?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'Ye are saved that ye may show forth the praise of Him who hath called
+you out of darkness into His marvellous light.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, we have here a piece of stringent practical direction.</p>
+
+<p>All that I have been saying thus far refers to the way in which the very
+fact of a man's being saved from his sin is a revelation of God's mercy,
+love, and restoring power. But there are two sides to the thought of my
+text; and the one is that the very existence of Christian people in the
+world is a standing witness to the highest glory of God's name; and the
+other is that there are characteristics which, as Christian men, we are
+bound to put forth, and which manifest in another fashion the
+excellencies of our redeeming God.</p>
+
+<p>The world takes its notions of God, most of all, from the people who say
+that they belong to God's family. They read us a great deal more than
+they read the Bible. They <i>see</i> us; they only <i>hear</i> about Jesus Christ.
+'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image' nor any like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_106" id="Page_2_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>ness of
+the Divine, but thou shalt make <i>thyself</i> an image of Him, that men
+looking at it may learn a little more of what He is. If we have any
+right to say that we are a royal priesthood, a chosen nation, God's
+'possession,' then there will be in us some likeness of Him to whom we
+belong stamped more or less perfectly upon our characters; and just as
+people cannot look at the sun, but may get some notion of its power when
+they gaze upon the rare beauty of the tinted clouds that lie round about
+it, if, in the poor, wet, cold mistiness of our lives there be caught,
+as it were, and tangled some stray beams of the sunshine, there will be
+colour and beauty there. A bit of worthless tallow may be saturated with
+a perfume which will make it worth its weight in gold. So our poor
+natures may be drenched with God and give Him forth fragrant and
+precious, and men may be drawn thereby. The witness of the life which is
+Godlike is the duty of Christian men and women in the world, and it is
+mainly what we are here for.</p>
+
+<p>Nor does that exclude the other kind of showing forth the praises, by
+word and utterance, at fit times and to the right people. We are not all
+capable of that, in any public fashion; we are all capable of it in some
+fashion. There is no Christian that has not somebody to whom their
+words&mdash;they may be very simple and very feeble&mdash;will come as nobody
+else's words can. Let us use these talents and these opportunities for
+the Master.</p>
+
+<p>But, above all, let us remember that none of these works&mdash;either the
+involuntary and unconscious exhibition of light and beauty and
+excellencies caught from Him; or the voluntary and vocal proclamations
+of the name of Him from whom we have caught them&mdash;can be done to any
+good purpose if any taint of self mingles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_107" id="Page_2_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> with it. 'Let your light so
+shine before men that they may behold your good works and
+glorify'&mdash;whom? you?&mdash;'your <i>Father</i> which is in heaven.'</p>
+
+<p>The harp-string gives out its note only on condition that, being
+touched, it vibrates, and ceases to be visible. Be you unseen,
+transparent, and the glory of the Lord shall shine through you.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHRIST_THE_EXEMPLAR" id="CHRIST_THE_EXEMPLAR"></a>CHRIST THE EXEMPLAR</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for
+us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps.'&mdash;1
+<span class="smcap">Peter</span> ii. 21.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>These words are a very striking illustration of the way in which the
+Gospel brings Christ's principles to bear upon morals and duty. The
+Apostle is doing nothing more than exhorting a handful of slaves to the
+full and complete and patient acceptance of their hard lot, and in order
+to teach a very homely and lowly lesson to the squalid minds of a few
+captives, he brings in the mightiest of all lessons by pointing to the
+most beautiful, most blessed, and most mysterious fact in the world's
+history&mdash;the cross of Christ. It is the very spirit of Christianity that
+the biggest thing is to regulate the smallest duties of life. Men's
+lives are made up of two or three big things and a multitude of little
+ones, and the greater rule the lesser; and, my friends, unless we have
+got a religion and a morality that can and will keep the trifles of our
+lives right there will be nothing right; unless we can take those
+deepest truths, make them the ruling principles, and lay them down side
+by side with the most trivial things of our lives, we are something
+short. Is there nothing in your life or mine so small<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_108" id="Page_2_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> that we cannot
+bring it into captivity and lift it into beauty by bringing it into
+connection with saving grace? Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an
+example. This is the first thing that strikes me, and I intend it also
+by way of introduction. Look how the Apostle has put the points
+together, as though there are two aspects which go together and cannot
+be rendered apart, like the under side and the upper side of a coin.
+'Christ also suffered for us,' and so for us says all the orthodox.
+'Leaving us an example'&mdash;there protests all the heretics. Yes, but we
+know that there is a power in both of them, and the last one is only
+true when we begin with the first. He suffered for us. There, there, my
+friends, is the deepest meaning of the cross, and if you want to get
+Christ for an example, begin with taking Him as the sacrifice, for He
+gave His life for you. Don't part the two things. If you believe Him to
+be Christ, then you take Him at the cross: if you want to see the
+meaning of Christ as an example, begin with Him as your Saviour.
+'Because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye
+should follow His steps.' These are the words, and what God hath joined
+together let no man put asunder. With these few remarks I shall deal
+with the words a little more exhaustively, and I see in them three
+things&mdash;the sufferings of Christ our gain, the sufferings of Christ our
+pattern, and the suffering of Christ our power to imitate.</p>
+
+<p>And first of all that great proclamation which underlies the whole
+matter&mdash;Christ also suffered for us. The sufferings of Christ are
+thereby our gain. I shall not dwell on the larger questions which these
+words naturally open for us, and I shall content myself with some of the
+angles and side views of thought, and one to begin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_109" id="Page_2_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> with is this: It is
+very interesting to notice how, as his life went on, and his inspiration
+became more full, this Apostle got to understand, as being the very
+living and heart centre of his religion, the thing which at first was a
+stumbling-block and mystery to him. You remember when Christ was here on
+earth, and was surrounded by all His disciples, the man who actually led
+antagonism to the thought of a saving Messiah, was this very Apostle
+Peter. How he displayed his ignorance in the words, 'This shall not be
+unto Thee, O Lord'; and you remember also how his audacity rose to the
+height of saying, 'Why cannot I follow Thee now, Lord? I will lay down
+my life for Thy sake,' so little did he understand the purposes of
+Christ's suffering and Christ's death. And even after His resurrection
+we don't find that Peter in his early preaching had got as far as he
+seems to have got in this letter from which my text is taken. You will
+notice that in this letter he speaks a great deal about the sufferings
+of Christ, which he puts side by side and in contrast with God's
+glorifying of His Son. Christ's cross, which at first had come to him as
+a rejection, has now come to him in all its reality, and to him there
+was the one grand thing, 'He suffered for us,' as though he realises
+Christ in all His beauty and purity, and not only as a beautiful teacher
+and dear friend. That which at first seemed to him as an astounding
+mystery and perfect impossibility, he now comes to understand. With
+those two little words, 'for us,' where there was before impossibility,
+disappointment, and anomaly, the anomaly vanishes, although the mystery
+becomes deeper. In one sense it was incomprehensible; in another sense
+it was the only explanation of the fact. And, my friends, I want you to
+build one thought on this.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_110" id="Page_2_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> Unless you and I lay hold of the grand truth
+that Jesus Christ died for us, it seems to me that the story of the
+Gospel and the story of the cross is the saddest and most depressing
+page of human history. That there should have been a man possessed of
+such a soul, such purity, such goodness, such tenderness, such
+compassion, and such infinite mercy&mdash;if there were all this to do
+nothing but touch men's hearts and prick and irritate them into bitter
+enmity&mdash;if the cross were the world's wages to the world's best Teacher,
+and nothing more could be said, then, my friends, it seems to me that
+the hopes of humanity have, in the providence of God, suffered great
+disaster, and a terrible indictment stands against both God and man. Oh,
+yes, the death of Jesus Christ, and the whole history of the world's
+treatment of Him, is an altogether incomprehensible and miserable
+thing&mdash;a thing to be forgotten, and a thing to be wept over in tears of
+blood, and no use for us unless we do as Peter did, apply all the warmth
+of the heart to this one master key, 'for us,' and then the mystery is
+only an infinitude of love and mercy. What before we could not
+understand we now begin to see, and to understand the love of God which
+passeth all understanding. Oh, my friends, I beseech you never think of
+the cross of Christ without taking those two words. It is a necessary
+explanation to make the picture beautiful: 'for us,' 'for us'; 'for me,
+for me.' And then notice still further that throughout the whole of this
+Epistle the comparative vagueness of the words 'for me' is interpreted
+definitely. So far as the language of my text is concerned there can be
+nothing more expressive, more outspoken, or more intelligible, 'Christ
+also suffered for us,' for our realm. But that is not all that Peter
+would have us learn. If you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_111" id="Page_2_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> want to know the nature of the work, and
+what the Saviour suffered on the cross for our behalf, advantage, and
+benefit, here is the definition in the following verse, 'Who His own
+self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we being dead to
+sins should live unto righteousness.' 'For us,' not merely as an
+example; 'for us,' not merely for His purity, His beautiful life and
+calm death; no, better than all that, though a glorious example it is.
+He has taken away our sins, we are sprinkled with the blood of Jesus
+Christ; 'for us' in the sense of the words in another part of the
+Epistle, 'Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with
+corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of
+Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,' and if so, we
+are living examples of what Christ our Saviour has done for the whole
+world.</p>
+
+<p>There is another point I want to speak about in dwelling on the first
+part of the text. If you will read this Epistle of Peter at your
+leisure, you will see that while with Paul both make the cross of Christ
+the centre of their teaching, Paul speaks more about His death, and
+Peter more about His sufferings. Throughout the letters of Peter the
+phrase runs, and the phrase has come almost entirely into modern
+Christian usage from this Apostle. Paul speaks about the death, Peter
+speaks of the sufferings. The eye-witness of a Loving Friend, the man
+who had stood by His side through much of His sufferings (though he fled
+at last), a vivid imagination of His Master's trials, and a warm heart,
+led Peter to dwell not only on the one fact of the death, but also on
+the accompaniments of that awful death, of the mental and physical pain,
+and especially the temper of the Saviour. I shall not dwell on this,
+except to make one pass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_112" id="Page_2_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>ing remark on it, viz., that there is a kind of
+preaching which prevails among the Roman Catholic Church, and is not
+uncommon to many of the Protestant churches, which dwells unduly on the
+physical fact of Christ's death and sufferings. I think, for my part, we
+are going to the other extreme, and a great many of us are losing a very
+great source of blessing to ourselves and to those whom we influence,
+because we don't realise and don't dwell sufficiently on the physical
+and mental sorrows and agony He went through with the death on the
+cross; and one bad effect of all this is that Christ's atonement has
+become to be a kind of theological jungle, and I don't know that the
+popular mind can have in the ordinary way any better means of the
+deliverance of Christ's cross from this theological maze than a little
+more frankness and honesty in dwelling on the sorrows and pain of our
+dear Lord.</p>
+
+<p>Now a word about the second part. The sufferings of Christ as
+represented here in the text are not only for our gain but our pattern,
+leaving us an example that we should follow His steps. We are not
+concerned here about the general principles of Christian ethics, and I
+don't think I need dwell on them at all as being great blessings to us;
+and passing from that I would rather dwell on the one specific thought
+before us&mdash;on the beautiful life, the gracious words, the gentle deeds,
+the wisdom, the rectitude, the tenderness, the submission to the Father
+and the oblivion to Himself, which characterises the whole life of Jesus
+Christ, from the very first up to the agony on the cross. We have looked
+to Him as our gain, and as the head and beginning of our salvation, and
+now we have to turn from that mysterious and solemn thought and look to
+Him as an ideal pattern by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_113" id="Page_2_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> which our life should be moulded and shaped.
+'Leaving us an example.' Just as Elijah's mantle dropped from him as he
+rose, so Christ in going up to the Father fluttered down on the world a
+pattern which He had in His sufferings. He goes away, but the pattern
+abides with us. 'Leaving us an example.' The word used here is
+translated quite correctly. The word example is a very remarkable and
+unusual one; it means literally a thing to be retained. You put a
+copyhead before a child, and tell him to copy it, and trace it over till
+he retains it; or, to come to modern English, you put the copyhead on
+the top of a page. What blots, pothooks, and angles you and I make as we
+are trying to write on the top of the page of life. See, there is the
+pattern. Lo, another man hath written above, and you are asked to make
+your life exactly the same, the same angles and the same corners&mdash;to
+make your life in all respects coincide with that. My friends, we shall
+all have to take our copybooks to the Master's desk some day. There will
+be a headline there which Christ hath written, and one which we have
+written, and how do you think we shall like to put the two side by side?
+My friends, we had better do it to-day than have to do it then. There is
+the pattern life; the copy is plain. I don't think I need say any more
+about the other metaphor contained here. The Divine Exemplar has left us
+the headline that we should follow His footsteps, and it is a blessed
+thought to know that we are to follow in His own steps. 'What, cannot I
+follow Thee now?' said Peter once, and you remember when the Apostle had
+been restored to his office, the words of the Saviour were&mdash;'Feed My
+lambs; feed My sheep; feed My lambs, follow thou Me.' This is also our
+privilege. As a guide going across a wet moor with a trav<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_114" id="Page_2_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>eller calls
+out, 'Step where I step, or else you will be bogged,' so we must tread
+in the steps of the Saviour, and then we shall come safe on the other
+side. Tread in His steps, aye, in the steps which are marked with
+bleeding feet, for 'He suffered and left us an example.' I will just add
+one word, dear friends, to deepen the thought in its impressiveness,
+that the cross of Christ it to be the pattern of our lives. It stands
+alone, thank God, for mighty power in its relation to the salvation of
+the world, and it stands alone in awful terror. You and I are, at the
+very worst, but at the edge of the storm which broke in all its dreadful
+fury over His head; we love to go but a little way down the hillside,
+while He descended to the very bottom; we love to drink but very little
+of the cup which He drained the last drop of and held it up empty and
+reversed, showing that nothing trickled from it, and exclaimed, 'The cup
+which My Father hath given Me have I drunk.' But although alone in all
+its mighty power, and though alone in all its awful terror, it may be
+copied by us in two things&mdash;perfect submission to our Maker, and
+non-resistance and meekness with regard to man. There is only one way of
+carrying the cross of Christ, which God lays on us all, and that is
+bowing our back. If we resist, it will crush us, and if we yield we have
+something to endure; and there is but one thing which enables a man to
+patiently bear the sorrows and griefs which come to us all, and that is
+the simple secret, 'Father, not as I will, but Thy will be done.' Christ
+suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in His
+footsteps, and when we patiently do this the rod becomes a guiding
+staff, and the crown of thorns a crown of glory.</p>
+
+<p>But my text reminds me that the sufferings of Christ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_115" id="Page_2_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> are not only our
+gain and our pattern, but they are also our power to imitate&mdash;the power
+to fight the battle for Christ. Example is not all. The world wants more
+than that. The reason for men's badness is not because they have not
+plenty of patterns of good. If a copyhead could save the world it would
+have been saved long ago. Patterns of good are plenty; the mischief is
+we don't copy them. There are footsteps in abundance, but then our legs
+are lame, and we cannot tread in them, and what is the use of copies if
+we have a broken pen, muddy ink, and soiled paper? So we want a great
+deal more than that. No, my friends, the world is not to be saved by
+example. You and I know that the weakness and the foolishness of men
+know a great deal better than the wisest of men ever did, so we want
+something more. Examples don't give the power nor the wish to get it. Is
+not that true about you? Don't you feel that if this is all which
+religion has given you it stops short? The gospel comes and says, 'If
+you love Christ Jesus because you know that He died for you,' then there
+will be something else than the copybook. That copy and pattern will be
+laid to your heart and transferred there. You will not have to go on
+trying to make a bungling imitation; you will get it photographed on
+your spirit, and on your character more distinctly and more clearly down
+to the very minutest shade of resemblance to the Master, and with simple
+loving trust you will go on from strength to strength glorifying God in
+your life. They that begin with the cross of Christ, and make the
+sacrifice their all in all, will advance heavenward joyously; the cross
+and the sacrifice will be the pattern of your pilgrimage here, and the
+perfectness of your characters unto the likeness of the Son. The cross
+is the agency of sancti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_116" id="Page_2_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>fication as well as the means of
+forgiveness&mdash;saving grace to save us from the world, saving grace to
+help us everywhere and in everything for our salvation, and saving grace
+to help us to conquer our self-will, and saving grace to bind us to Him,
+whose abundant goodness and gratitude no man can tell. If we love Him we
+shall keep His commandments; if we love them we shall grow in grace, and
+not else. None else, my brother, my sister, but the Eternal Exemplar
+stands there as our refuge; and if you want to be filled with this
+all-saving grace, deep down to the bottom of His tender heart, if you
+want to be good, and of pure mind, then you have to begin with that
+Saviour who died for you, and trust to the cross for your forgiveness.
+Then listen to Him saying, Any man who comes after Me, let him take up
+My cross'&mdash;take it up, mark&mdash;'and follow Me.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="HALLOWING_CHRIST" id="HALLOWING_CHRIST"></a>HALLOWING CHRIST</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; but sanctify
+the Lord God in your hearts.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> iii. 14, 15.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>These words are a quotation from the prophet Isaiah, with some very
+significant variations. As originally spoken, they come from a period of
+the prophet's life when he was surrounded by conspirators against him,
+eager to destroy, and when he had been giving utterance to threatening
+prophecies as to the coming up of the King of Assyria, and the voice of
+God encouraged him and his disciples with the ringing words: 'Fear not
+their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of Hosts Himself, and let
+Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread, and He shall be for a
+sanctuary.' Peter was in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_117" id="Page_2_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> similar circumstances. The gathering storm of
+persecution of the Christians as Christians seems to have been rising on
+his horizon, and he turns to his brethren, and commends to them the old
+word which long ago had been spoken to and by the prophet. But the
+variations are very remarkable. The Revised Version correctly reads my
+text thus: 'Fear not their fear, neither be troubled, but sanctify in
+your hearts Christ as Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>I. We have first to note the substitution, as a matter of course,
+without any need for explanation or vindication, of Jesus Christ in
+place of the Jehovah of the Old Testament.</p>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that the reading adopted in the Revised Version is the
+true one, as attested by weighty evidence in the manuscripts, and in
+itself more probable by reason of its very difficulty. The other reading
+adopted in Authorised Versions is likely to have arisen from a marginal
+note which crept into the text, and was due to some copyist who was
+struck by Peter's free handling of the passage, and wished to make the
+quotations verbally accurate.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if we think for a moment of the Jew's reverence for the letter of
+Scripture, and then think again of the Jew's intense monotheism and
+dread of putting any creature into the place of God, we shall understand
+how saturated with the belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and how
+convinced that it was the vital centre of all Christian teaching, this
+Apostle must have been when, without a word of explanation, he took his
+pen, and, as it were, drew it through 'Lord God' in Isaiah's words, and
+wrote in capitals over it, 'Christ as Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>What does that mean? Some of us would, perhaps,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_118" id="Page_2_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> hesitate to say that it
+means that He who was all through the growing ages of brightening
+revelation of old, named 'Jehovah,' is now named Jesus Christ. I believe
+that from the beginning He whom we call, according to the teaching of
+the great prologue of John's Gospel, the 'Word of God,' was the Agent of
+all Divine revelation. But whether that be so or no, whether we have the
+right to say that the same Person who was revealed as 'Jehovah' is now
+revealed as 'Jesus Christ,' the 'Word made flesh,' or no, we distinctly
+fail to apprehend who and what Jesus Christ was to the writer of this
+epistle, and fail to sanctify Him in our hearts, unless we say: 'To Thee
+belongeth all that belongs to God.' That is the first great truth that
+comes out of these words, and I would commend it to any of you who may
+be hesitating about that Christian fact of the true divinity of Jesus
+Christ. You cannot strike it out of the New Testament, and if you try to
+do so you tear the book to pieces, and reduce it to rags and tatters.</p>
+
+<p>Further, mark here what the Apostle means by the Christian sanctifying
+of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>That is a strange expression. How am I to sanctify Jesus Christ? Well,
+it is the same word that is used in the Lord's Prayer, and perhaps its
+use there may throw light on Peter's meaning here. 'Hallowed be Thy
+name'&mdash;explains the meaning of <i>hallowing</i> Christ as Lord in our hearts.
+We sanctify or hallow one who is holy already, when we recognise the
+holiness, and honour what we recognise. So that the plain meaning of the
+commandments here is: set Christ in your hearts on the pedestal and
+pinnacle that belongs to Him, and then bow down before Him with all
+reverence and sub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_119" id="Page_2_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>mission. Be sure that you give Him all that is His
+due, and in the love of your hearts, as well as in the thinkings of your
+minds, recognise Him for what He is, the Lord. Let us take care that our
+thoughts about Jesus Christ are full of devout awe and reverence. I
+venture to think that a great deal of modern and sentimental
+Christianity is very defective in this respect. You cannot love Jesus
+Christ too much, but you can love Him with too little reverence. And if
+you take up some of our luscious modern hymns that people are so fond of
+singing, I think you will find in them a twang of unwholesomeness, just
+because the love is not reverent enough, and the approaching confidence
+has not enough of devout awe in it. This generation looks at the half of
+Christ. When people are suffering from indigestion, they can only see
+half of the thing that they look at, and there are many of us that can
+only see a part of the whole Christ: and so, forgetting that He is
+judge, and forgetting that He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and
+forgetting that whilst He is manifested in the flesh our brother He is
+also <i>God</i> manifest in the flesh, our Creator as well as our Redeemer,
+and our Judge as well as our Saviour, some do not enough hallow Him in
+their hearts as Lord.</p>
+
+<p>Peter had heard Jesus say that 'all men should honour the Son as they
+honoured the Father.' I beseech you, embrace the whole Christ, and see
+to it that you do not dethrone Him from His rightful place, or take from
+Him the glory that is due to His name. For your love will suffer, and
+become a mere sentiment, inoperative and sometimes unwholesome, unless
+you keep in mind Peter's injunction.</p>
+
+<p>But, further, there is included in this commandment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_120" id="Page_2_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> not only what
+Isaiah said, 'Let Him be your fear and your dread,' but also a reverent
+love and trust. For we do not hallow Christ as we ought, unless we
+absolutely confide in every word of His lips. Did you ever think that
+not to trust Jesus Christ is to blaspheme and profane that holy name by
+which we are called; and that to hallow Him means to say to Him, 'I
+believe every word that Thou speakest, and I am ready to risk my life
+upon Thy veracity'? Distrust is dishonouring the Master, and taking from
+Him the glory that is due unto His name.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another point to be noted: 'Sanctify in your hearts Christ
+as Lord.' That is Peter's addition to Isaiah's words, and it is not a
+mere piece of tautology, but puts great emphasis into the exhortation.
+What is a man's heart, in New Testament and Old Testament language? It
+is the very centre-point of the personal self. And when Peter says,
+'Hallow Him in your hearts,' he means that, deep down in the very midst
+of your personal being, as it were, there should be, fundamental to all,
+and interior to all, this reverential awe and absolute trust in Jesus
+Christ&mdash;an habitual thought, a central emotion, an all-dominant impulse.
+'Out of the heart are the issues of life.' Put the healing agent into
+it, the fountain-head, and all the streams that pour out thence will be
+purified and sweetened. Deep in the heart put Christ, and life will be
+pure.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in another part of this letter the Apostle says, 'Ye are a
+spiritual house.' I think some notion of the same sort is running in his
+mind here. He thinks of each man's heart as being a shrine in which the
+god is enthroned, and in which worship is rendered. And if we have
+Christ in our hearts, then our hearts are tem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_121" id="Page_2_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>ples; and if we 'hallow'
+the Christ that dwells within us, we shall take care that there are no
+foul things in that sanctuary. We dishonour the indwelling Deity when
+into that same heart we allow to come lusts, foulnesses, meannesses,
+worldlinesses, passions, sins, and all the crew of reptiles and wild
+beasts that we sometimes admit there. If we hallow Christ in our hearts,
+in any true fashion, He will turn out the money-changers and overturn
+the tables. And if we desire to hallow Him in our hearts, we too, must
+by His Spirit's help, purge the temple that He may enter and abide.</p>
+
+<p>And so I come to the next point, and that is the Christian courage and
+calmness that ensue from hallowing Christ in the heart.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle first puts his exhortation: 'Be not afraid of their terror,
+neither be troubled,' and then he presents us an opposite injunction,
+obedience to which is the only means of obeying the first exhortation.
+If you do not sanctify Christ in your hearts, you cannot help being
+afraid of their terror, and troubled. If you do, then there is no fear
+that you will fall into that snare. That is to say, the one thing that
+delivers men from the fears that make cowards of us all is to have
+Christ lodged within our hearts. Sunshine puts out culinary fires. They
+who have the awe and the reverent love that knit them to Jesus Christ,
+and who carry Him within their hearts, have no need to be afraid of
+anything besides. Only he who can say, 'The Lord is the strength of my
+life' can go on to say, 'Of whom shall I be afraid?' There is nothing
+more hopeless than to address to men, ringed about with dangers, the
+foolish exhortations: 'Cheer up! do not be frightened,' unless you can
+tell them some reason for not being frightened. And the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_122" id="Page_2_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> one reason that
+will carry weight with it, in all circumstances, is the presence of
+Jesus.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'With Christ in the vessel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;I smile at the storm.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The world comes to us and says: 'Do not be afraid, do not be afraid; be
+of good courage; pluck up your heart, man.' The Apostle comes and says:
+'Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts; and then, and only then, will
+you be bold.' The boldness which fronts the certain dangers and
+calamities and the possible dangers and calamities of this life, without
+Christ, is not boldness, but foolhardiness. 'The simple passeth on, and
+is punished,' says the book of Proverbs. It is easy to whistle when
+going through the churchyard, and to say, 'Who's afraid?' But the ghosts
+rise all the same, and there is only one thing that lays them, and that
+is&mdash;the present Christ.</p>
+
+<p>In like manner the sanctifying of Jesus Christ in the heart is the
+secret of calmness. 'Fear not their fear, neither be troubled.' I wonder
+if Peter was thinking at all of another saying: 'Let not your heart be
+troubled; neither let it be afraid.' Perhaps he was. At any rate, his
+thought is parallel with our Lord's when He said, 'Let not your heart be
+troubled. Believe in God, and believe in Me.' The two alternatives are
+possible; we shall have either troubled hearts, or hearts calmed by
+faith in Christ. The ships behind the breakwater do not pitch and toss.
+The little town up amongst the hills, with the high cliffs around it,
+lies quiet, and 'hears not the loud winds when they call.' And the heart
+that has Christ for its possession has a secret peace, whatever strife
+may be raging round it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_123" id="Page_2_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Be not troubled; sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.' Peter leaves
+out a clause of Isaiah's, though he conveys the idea without reiterating
+the words. But Isaiah had added a sweet promise which means much the
+same thing as I have now been saying, when he went on to declare that to
+those who sanctify the Lord God in their hearts, He shall be for a
+sanctuary. 'The sanctuary was an asylum where men were safe. And if we
+have made our hearts temples in which Christ is honoured, worshipped,
+and trusted, then we shall dwell in Him as in the secret place of the
+Most High'; and in the inner chamber of the Temple it will be quiet,
+whatever noises are in the camp, and there is light coming from the
+Shekinah, whatever darkness may lie around. If we take Christ into our
+hearts, and reverence and love Him there, He will take us into His
+heart, and we shall dwell in peace, because we dwell in Him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHRISTIAN_ASCETICISM" id="CHRISTIAN_ASCETICISM"></a>CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm
+yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered
+in the flesh hath ceased from sin. 2. That he no longer should live
+the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the
+will of God. 3. For the time past of our life may suffice us to
+have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in
+lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and
+abominable idolatries: 4. Wherein they think it strange that ye run
+not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: 5.
+Who shall give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and
+the dead. 6. For, for this cause was the gospel preached also to
+them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in
+the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. 7. But the end
+of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto
+prayer. 8. And, above all things, have fervent charity among
+yourselves; for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.'&mdash;1
+<span class="smcap">Peter</span> iv. 1-8.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Christian morality brought two new things into the world&mdash;a new type of
+life in sharp contrast with the sensuality rife on every side, and a new
+set of motives powerfully aiding in its realisation. Both these
+novelties are presented in this passage, which insists on a life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_124" id="Page_2_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> in
+which the spirit dominates the flesh, and is dominated by the will of
+God, and which puts forward purely Christian ideas as containing the
+motives for such a life. The facts of Christ's life and the prospect of
+Christ's return to judge the world are here urged as the reason for
+living a life of austere repression of 'the flesh' that we may do God's
+will.</p>
+
+<p>I. We have, first, in verses 1 and 2, a general precept, based upon the
+broad view of Christ's earthly history. 'Christ hath suffered in the
+flesh.' That is the great fact which should shape the course of all His
+followers. But what does suffering in the flesh mean here? It does not
+refer only to the death of Jesus, but to His whole life. The phrase 'in
+the flesh' is reiterated in the context, and evidently is equivalent to
+'during the earthly life.' Our Lord's life was, in one aspect, one
+continuous suffering, because He lived the higher life of the spirit.
+That higher life had to Him, and has to us, rich compensations; but it
+sets those who are true to it at necessary variance with the lower types
+of life common among men, and it brings many pains, all of which Jesus
+knew. The last draught from the cup was the bitterest, but the
+bitterness was diffused through all the life of the Man of Sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>That life is here contemplated as the pattern for all Christ's servants.
+Peter says much in this letter of our Lord's sufferings as the atonement
+for sin, but here he looks at them rather as the realised ideal of all
+worthy life. We are to be 'partakers of Christ's sufferings' (v. 13),
+and we shall become so in proportion as His own Spirit becomes the
+spirit which lives in us. If Jesus were only our pattern, Christianity
+would be a poor affair, and a gospel of despair; for how should we
+reach<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_125" id="Page_2_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> to the pure heights where He stood? But, since He can breathe
+into us a spirit which will hallow and energise our spirits, we can rise
+to walk beside Him on the high places of heroic endurance and of holy
+living. Very beautifully does Peter hint at our sore conflict, our
+personal defencelessness, and our all-sufficient armour, in the
+picturesque metaphor 'arm yourselves.' The 'mind of Christ' is given to
+us if we will. We can gird it on, and if we do, it will be as an
+impenetrable coat-of-mail, which will turn the sharpest arrows and
+resist the fiercest sword-cuts.</p>
+
+<p>The last clause of verse 1 is a parenthesis, and, if it is for the
+moment omitted, the sentence runs smoothly on, especially if the Revised
+Version's reading is adopted. The purpose of arming us with the same
+mind is that, whilst we live on earth, we should live according to the
+will of God, and should renounce 'the lusts of men,' which are in us as
+in all men, and which men who are not clad in the armour which Christ
+gives to us yield to.</p>
+
+<p>But what of the parenthetical statement? Clearly, the words which follow
+it forbid its being taken to mean that dead men do not sin. Rather the
+Apostle's thought seems to be that such suffering in daily life after
+Christ's pattern, and by His help, is at once a sign that the sufferer
+has shaken off the dominion of sin, and is a means of further
+emancipating him from it.</p>
+
+<p>But the two great thoughts in this paragraph are, that the Christian
+life is one in which God's will, and not man's desires, is the
+regulating force, and that the pattern of that life and the power to
+copy the pattern are found in Christ, the sufferer for righteousness'
+sake.</p>
+
+<p>II. More specific injunctions, entering into the details of the higher
+life, follow, interwoven, as in the preced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_126" id="Page_2_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>ing verses, with a statement
+of the motives which make obedience to them possible to our weakness.
+The sins in view are those most closely connected with 'the flesh' in
+its literal meaning, amongst which are included 'abominable idolatries,'
+because gross acts of sensual immorality were inseparably intertwined
+with much of heathen worship. These sins of flesh were especially
+rampant among the luxurious Asiatic lands, to which this letter was
+addressed, but they flooded the whole Roman empire, as the works of
+poets like Martial and of moralists like Epictetus equally show. But New
+York or London could match the worst scenes in Rome or Ephesus, and
+perhaps would not be far behind the foul animalism of Sodom and
+Gomorrah. Lust and drunkenness are eating out the manhood of our race on
+both sides of the Atlantic, and, if we have 'the same mind' as the
+suffering Christ, we shall put on the armour for war to the knife with
+these in society, and for the rigid self-control of our own animal
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>Observe the strong motives which Peter just touches without expanding. A
+sad irony lies in his saying that the time past may suffice. The flesh
+had had enough of time given to it,&mdash;had not God a right to the rest?
+The flesh should have had none; it had had all too much. Surely the
+readers had had enough of the lower life, more than enough. Were they
+not sick of it, 'satisfied' even to disgust? Let us look back on our
+wasted years, and give no more precious moments to serve the corruptible
+flesh. Further, the life of submission to the animal nature is
+characteristic of 'the Gentiles,' and in sharp contrast, therefore, to
+that proper to Christ's followers. That is as true to-day, in America
+and England, as ever it was. Indeed, as wealth has increased,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_127" id="Page_2_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> and
+so-called 'civilisation' has diffused material comforts, senseless
+luxury, gluttony, drunkenness, and still baser fleshy sins, have become
+more flagrantly common in society which is not distinctively and
+earnestly Christian; and there was never more need than there is to-day
+for Christians to carry aloft the flag of self-control and temperance in
+all things belonging to 'the flesh.'</p>
+
+<p>If we have the mind of Christ, we shall get the same treatment from the
+world which Peter says that the primitive Christians did from the
+idolaters round them. We shall be wondered at, just as a heathen stared
+with astonishment at this strange, new sect, which would have nothing to
+do with feasts and garlands and wine-cups and lust disguised as worship.
+The spectacle, when repeated to-day, of Christians steadfastly refusing
+to share in that lower life which is the only life of so many, is,
+perhaps, less wondered at now, because it is, thank God! more familiar;
+but it is not less disliked and 'blasphemed.' A total abstainer from
+intoxicants will not get the good word of the distiller or brewer or
+consumer of liquor. He will be called faddist, narrow, sour-visaged, and
+so on and so on. 'You may know a genius because all the dunces make
+common cause against him,' said Swift. You may know a Christian after
+Christ's pattern because all the children of the flesh are in league to
+laugh at him and pelt him with nicknames.</p>
+
+<p>Further, the thought of Christ as the judge should both silence the
+blasphemers and strengthen the blasphemed to endure. That judgment will
+vindicate the wisdom of those who sowed to the spirit and the folly of
+those who sowed to the flesh. The one will reap corruption; the other,
+life everlasting.</p>
+
+<p>The difficult verse 6 cannot be adequately dealt with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_128" id="Page_2_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> here, but we may
+note that introductory 'for' shows that it, too, contains a motive
+urging to life, 'to the will of God,' and that no such motive appears in
+it if it is taken to mean, as by some, that the gospel is preached after
+death to the dead. Surely to say that 'the gospel was preached also (or,
+even) to them that are dead' is not to say that it was preached to them
+when dead.</p>
+
+<p>Peter's letter is of late enough date to explain his looking back to a
+generation now passed away, who had heard it in their lifetime. Nor does
+one see how the meaning of 'in the flesh,' which belongs to the phrase
+in the frequent instances of its occurrence in this context, can be
+preserved in the clause 'that they might be judged according to men in
+the flesh,' unless that means a judgment which takes place during the
+earthly life.</p>
+
+<p>We note, too, that the antithesis between being judged 'according to men
+in the flesh,' and living 'according to God in the spirit' recalls that
+in verse 2 between living in the flesh to the lusts of men and to the
+will of God. It would appear, therefore, that the Apostle's meaning is
+that the very aim of the preaching of the gospel to those who are gone
+to meet the Judge was that they might by it be judged while here in the
+flesh, in regard to the lower life 'according to men' (or, as verse 2
+has it, 'to the lusts of men'), and, being so judged, and sin condemned
+in their flesh, might live according to God in their spirits. That is
+but to say in other words that the gospel is meant to search hearts, and
+bring to light and condemn the lusts of the flesh, and to impart the new
+life which is moulded after the will of God.</p>
+
+<p>III. The reference to Christ as the judge suggests a final motive for a
+life of suppression of the lower nature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_129" id="Page_2_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>&mdash;the near approach of the end
+of all things. The distinct statement by our Lord in Acts i. 7 excludes
+the knowledge of the time of the end from the revelation granted to the
+Apostles, so that there need be no hesitation in upholding their
+authority, and yet admitting their liability to mistake on that point.
+But the force of the motive is independent of the proximity of the
+judgment. Its certainty and the indefiniteness of the time when we each
+shall have to pass into the other state of being are sufficient to
+preserve for each of us the whole pressure of the solemn thought that
+for us the end is at hand, and to enforce thereby Peter's exhortation,
+'Be ye therefore of sound mind.'</p>
+
+<p>The prospect of that end will sweep away many illusions as to the worth
+of the enjoyments of sense, and be a bridle on many vagrant desires.
+Self-control in all regions of our nature is implied in the word. Our
+various faculties are meant to be governed by a sovereign will, which is
+itself governed by the Divine will; and, if we see plain before us the
+dawning of the day of the Lord, the vision will help to tame the
+subordinate parts of ourselves, and to establish the supremacy of the
+spirit over the flesh. One special form of that general self-control is
+that already enjoined,&mdash;the suppression of the animal appetites,
+especially the abstinence from intoxicants. That form of self-control is
+especially meant by the second of these exhortations, 'Be sober.' How
+could a man lift the wine cup to his lips, and drown his higher nature
+in a flood of drunken riot, if the end, with its solemnities of
+judgment, blazed before his inner eye? But this self-command is
+inculcated that we may be fit to pray. These lower appetites will take
+all desire for prayer and all earnestness in it out of us, and only
+when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_130" id="Page_2_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> we keep the wings of appetites close clipped will the pinions grow
+by which we can mount up with wings as eagles. A praying drunkard is an
+impossible monster.</p>
+
+<p>But exhortations to self-control are not all. We have to think of
+others, as well as of our own growth in purity and spirituality.
+Therefore Peter casts one swift glance to the wider circle of the
+brethren, which encompasses each of us, and gives the all-embracing
+direction, which carries in itself everything. 'Fervent love' to our
+fellow-Christians is the counterpoise to earnest government of
+ourselves. There is a selfishness possible even in cultivating our
+religion, as many a monk and recluse has shown. Such love as Peter here
+enjoins will save us from the possible evils of self-regard, and it will
+'cover the multitude of sins,'&mdash;by which is not meant that, having it,
+we shall be excused if we in other respects sin, but that, having it, we
+shall be more desirous of veiling than of exposing our brother's faults,
+and shall be ready to forgive even when our brother offends against us
+often. Perhaps Peter was remembering the lesson which he had once had
+when he was told that 'seventy times seven' was not too great a
+multitude of sins against brotherly love to be forgiven by it in one
+day.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SLAVES_GIRDLE" id="THE_SLAVES_GIRDLE"></a>THE SLAVE'S GIRDLE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'... Be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and
+giveth grace to the humble.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> v. 5.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The Apostle uses here an expression of a remarkable kind, and which
+never occurs again in Scripture. The word rendered in the Authorised
+Version 'be clothed,' or better in the Revised Version, 'gird yourselves
+with,' really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_131" id="Page_2_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> implies a little more than either of those renderings
+suggests. It describes a kind of garment as well as the act of putting
+it on, and the sort of garment which it describes was a remarkable one.
+It was a part of a slave's uniform. Some scholars think that it was a
+kind of white apron, or overall, or something of that sort; others think
+that it was simply a scarf or girdle; but, at all events, it was a
+distinguishing mark of a slave, and he put it on when he meant work.
+And, says Peter, 'Do you strap round you the slave's apron, and do it
+for the same reason that He did it, to serve.'</p>
+
+<p>So, then, there are three points in my text, and the first is what we
+have to wear; second, what we have to wear it for; and, third, why we
+should wear it.</p>
+
+<p>I. What we have to wear.</p>
+
+<p>'Gird yourselves with the slave's apron of humility.' Humility does not
+consist in being, or pretending to be, blind to one's strong points.
+There is no humility in a man denying that he can do certain things if
+he can do them, or even refusing to believe he can do them well, if God
+has given him special faculties in any given direction. That is not
+humility at all. But to know whence all my strength comes, and to know
+what a little thing it is, after all; not to estimate myself highly,
+and, still further, not to be always insisting upon other people
+estimating me highly, and to think a great deal more about their claims
+on me than fretfully to insist upon my due modicum of respect and
+attention from others, that is the sort of temper that Peter means here.</p>
+
+<p>Now, that temper which may recognise fully any gift that God has given
+me, its sweep and degree, but that nevertheless takes a true, because a
+lowly, measure of myself, and does not always demand from other people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_132" id="Page_2_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+their regard and assistance, that temper is a thing that we can
+cultivate. We can increase it, and we are all bound to try specifically
+and directly to do so. Now, I believe that a great part of the feeble
+and unprogressive character of so many Christian people amongst us is
+due to this, that they do not definitely steady their thoughts and focus
+them on the purpose of finding out the weak points to which special
+attention and discipline should be directed. It is a very easy thing to
+say, 'Oh, I am a poor, weak, sinful creature!' It would do you a great
+deal more good to say, 'I am a very passionate one, and my business is
+to control that quick temper of mine,' or, 'I am a great deal too much
+disposed to run after worldly advantage, and my business is to subdue
+that,' or, 'I am afraid I am rather too close-fisted, and I ought to
+crucify myself into liberality.' It would be a great deal better, I say,
+to apply the general confession to specific cases, and to set ourselves
+to cultivate individual types of goodness, as well as to seek to be
+filled with the all-comprehensive root of it all, which lies in union
+with Jesus Christ. We have often to preach, dear brethren, that the way
+of self-improvement is not by hammering at ourselves, but by letting God
+mould us, and to keep the balance right. We have also to insist upon the
+other side of the truth, and to press the complementary thought that
+specific efforts after the cultivation of specific virtues and all the
+more if they are virtues that are not natural to us, for the gospel is
+given to us to mend our natural tempers&mdash;is the duty of all Christian
+people that would seek to live as Christ would have them.</p>
+
+<p>And how is this to be done? How am I to gird upon myself and to keep&mdash;if
+I may transpose the metaphor into the key of modern English&mdash;tightly
+buckled around<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_133" id="Page_2_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> me this belt which may hold in place a number of fine
+articles of clothing?</p>
+
+<p>Well, there are three things, I think, that we may profitably do. Go
+down deep enough into yourself if you want to cure a lofty estimate of
+yourself. The top storeys may be beautifully furnished, but there are
+some ugly things and rubbish down in the cellar. There is not one of us
+but, if we honestly let the dredge down into the depths, as far down as
+the <i>Challenger's</i> went, miles and miles down, will bring up a pretty
+collection of wriggling monstrosities that never have been in the
+daylight before, and are ugly enough to be always shrouded in their
+native darkness. Down in us all, if we will go deep enough, and take
+with us a light bright enough, we shall discover enough to make anything
+but humility ridiculous, if it were not wicked. And the only right place
+and attitude for a man who knows himself down to the roots of his being
+is the publican's when 'he stood afar off, and would not so much as lift
+up his eyes to heaven, and said, God be merciful to me a sinner.' Ah,
+dear friends, it will put an end to any undue exaltation of ourselves if
+we know ourselves as we are.</p>
+
+<p>Further, let us try to cultivate this temper, by looking at God, and
+having communion with Him. Think of Him as the Giver of anything in us
+that is good, and that annihilates our pride. Think of Jesus as our
+pattern; how that kills our satisfaction in little excellences! If you
+get high enough up the mountainside, the undulating country which when
+you were down amongst the knolls showed all variations of level, and
+where he who lived on the top of one little mound thought himself in a
+fine, airy situation as compared with his neighbour down in the close
+valley, is smoothed down, and brought to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_134" id="Page_2_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> one uniform level; and from
+the hilltop the rolling land is a plateau.</p>
+
+<p>I have heard of a child who, when she was told that the sun was
+ninety-five millions of miles off, asked if that was from the top or the
+bottom storey of the house! There is about as much difference between
+the great men and the little, between heroes and the unknown men, as
+measured against the distance to God, as there is difference in the
+distance to the sun from the slates and from the cellar. Let us live
+near God, and so aspiration will come in the place of satisfaction, and
+the unattained will gleam before us, and beckon us not in vain, and the
+man that sees what an infinite stretch there is before him will be
+delivered from the temptations of self-conceit, and will say, 'Not as
+though I had already attained, either were already perfected, but I
+follow after.'</p>
+
+<p>But there is another advice to be given&mdash;cultivate the habit of thinking
+about other people, their excellences, their claims on you. To be always
+trying to get a footing in a social grade above our own is a poor
+effort, but there is a sense in which it is good advice&mdash;live with your
+<i>betters</i>. We can all do that. A man writes a bit of a book, preaches a
+sermon, makes a speech&mdash;all the newspapers pat him on the back, and say
+what a clever fellow he is. But let him steep his mind and his heart in
+the great works of the <i>great</i> men, and he finds out what a poor little
+dwarf he is by the side of them. And so all round the circle. Live with
+bigger men, not with little ones. And learn to discount&mdash;and you may
+take a very liberal discount off&mdash;either the praises or the censures of
+the people round you. Let us rather say, 'With me it is a very small
+matter to be judged of man's judgment. He that judgeth me is the Lord.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_135" id="Page_2_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are plenty of hands, foremost among them a black one that is not
+so much a hand as a claw, ready to snatch the girdle of humility off
+you! Buckle it tight about you, brother; and in an immovable temper of
+lowly estimate of yourself live and work.</p>
+
+<p>II. The second thought here is, What we are to wear the apron or girdle
+for?</p>
+
+<p>The Revised Version makes a little alteration in the reading as well as
+in the translation of our text, the previous words to which, in the
+Authorised Version stand, 'Yea, all of you be subject one to another.'
+There is another reading which strikes out that clause, and adds a
+portion of it to the first part of my text, which then runs thus: 'Yea,
+all of you gird yourselves with humility to serve one another.' That is
+what Christian humility is for. The slave put on his garment, whatever
+it was, when he had work to do.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps there is a deeper thought here. I wonder if it is fanciful
+to see in the text one of the very numerous allusions in this epistle to
+the events in our Lord's Passion. You remember that Jesus laid aside His
+garments, and took a towel, and girded Himself, and washed the
+disciples' feet, and then said, 'The servant is not above His master. I
+have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.'
+Probably, I think, there floated before the memory of the man who had
+said, 'Lord, Thou shalt never wash my feet,' and then, with the swift
+recoil to the opposite pole which makes us love Him so much, hurried to
+say, 'Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head'&mdash;some
+reminiscence of that upper chamber, and of how the Master had girded
+Himself with the slave's apron, or towel, in order that He might serve
+the disciples; and then had told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_136" id="Page_2_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> them that that was the pattern for all
+Christian men, and for all Christian living till the very end.</p>
+
+<p>Service coming from humility, and humility manifested in service, are
+the requirements laid down in the text. Humility is the preparation for
+service; and service is the test of humility. If a man does not feel
+himself to be needy and low, he will never be able, and he will never be
+willing, to help those that are. You must go down if you would lift up.
+Laces and velvets and the fine feathers that the peacocks of
+self-conceit in this world strut about in are terribly in the way of
+Christian work. Rough work needs rough dress; and the only garb in which
+we shall be able to do the deeds of self-sacrifice that are needed in
+order to help our brethren is humility, the preparation for all service.</p>
+
+<p>But, further, service is the test of humility. Plenty of people will
+say, 'I know that I have nothing to boast of,' and so forth; but they
+never do any work. And there is a still more spurious kind of humility,
+that of a great many professing Christians (I wonder of how many of us)
+who, when we ask them for any kind of Christian service, say, 'I do not
+feel myself at all competent. I am sure I could not take a class in the
+Sunday School. I do not feel sufficiently master of the subject. I
+cannot talk. I have no facilities for influencing other people,' and so
+on. Too many of us are very humble when there is anything to be done,
+and never at any other time as far as anybody can see; and that sort of
+humility the Apostle does not commend. It is unfortunately very frequent
+amongst professing Christians. Christian humility is not particular
+about the sort of work it does for Jesus. Never mind whether you are on
+the quarter-deck, with gold lace on your coat and epaulettes on your
+shoulders as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_137" id="Page_2_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> an officer, or whether you are a cabin-boy doing the
+humblest duties, or a stoker working away down fifty feet below
+daylight. As long as the work is done for the great Admiral, that is
+enough; and whoever does any work for Him will never want for a reward.
+There are some of us who like to be officers, but do not like carrying a
+musket in the ranks. Humility is the preparation for service, and
+service is the test of humility.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, why we should wear this girdle.</p>
+
+<p>There is one reason given in my text, which Peter quotes from the Old
+Testament. 'God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.'
+That is often true even in regard to outward life. Providence and man
+often seem to be in league together to lift up the lowly ones and thwart
+the proud. If a man walks with his head very high, in this low-roofed
+world, he is pretty sure to get it knocked against the rafters before he
+has done. But it is the spiritual region that the Apostle is thinking
+about, in which the one condition of receiving God's grace is a lowly
+sense of my own character and nature, which is conscious of sin and
+weakness, and waits before Him. And the one condition of not receiving
+any of that grace is to keep a stiff upper lip and a high head. If I
+think that I am rich, 'and increased with goods, and have need of
+nothing,' that 'nothing' is exactly what I shall get from God, and if I
+have need of everything, and know that I have, that 'everything' is what
+I shall get from Him. 'He resisteth the proud, and He giveth grace to
+the humble.' On the high barren mountain-tops the dew and the rain slide
+off and find their way down to the lowly valleys, where they run as
+fertilising rivers. And the man that is humble and of a contrite heart,
+'with that man will I dwell, saith the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_138" id="Page_2_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> Lord.' If we gird ourselves with
+the slave's dress of humility, then we shall one day have to say, 'My
+soul shall rejoice in the Lord, for He hath clothed me with the garments
+of salvation; and He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness; as
+a bridegroom decketh himself with his ornaments, and as a bride adorneth
+herself with her jewels.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SYLVANUS" id="SYLVANUS"></a>SYLVANUS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'By Sylvanus, our faithful brother, as I account him, I have
+written unto you briefly.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> v. 12 (R.V).</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I adopt the Revised Version because, in one or two small points, it
+brings out more clearly the Apostle's meaning. This Sylvanus is, beyond
+all reasonable doubt, the same man who is known to us in the Acts of the
+Apostles by the name of Silas. A double name was very common amongst
+Jews, whose avocations brought them into close connection with Gentiles.
+You will find other instances of it amongst the Apostles: in <i>Paul</i>
+himself, whose Hebrew name was <i>Saul</i>; <i>Simon</i> and <i>Peter</i>; and probably
+in <i>Bartholomew</i> and <i>Nathanael</i>. And there is no reasonable doubt that
+a careful examination of the various places in which Silas and Sylvanus
+are mentioned shows that they were borne by one person.</p>
+
+<p>Now let me put together the little that we know about this man, because
+it will help us to some lessons. He was one of the chief men in the
+church at Jerusalem when the dispute arose about the necessity for
+circumcision for the Gentile Christians. He was despatched to Antioch
+with the message of peace and good feeling which the church at Jerusalem
+wisely sent forth to heal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_139" id="Page_2_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> the strife. He remained in Antioch, although
+his co-deputy went back to Jerusalem; and the attraction of Paul&mdash;the
+great mass of that star&mdash;drew this lesser light into becoming a
+satellite, moving round the greater orb. So, when the unfortunate
+quarrel broke out between Paul and Barnabas, and the latter went sulkily
+away by himself with his dear John Mark, without his brethren's
+blessing, Paul chose Silas and set out upon his first missionary tour.
+He was Paul's companion in the prison and stripes at Philippi, and in
+the troubles at Thessalonica; and, though they were parted for a little
+while, he rejoined the Apostle in the city of Corinth. From thence Paul
+wrote the two letters to the Thessalonians, both of which are sent in
+the name of himself and Silas or Sylvanus. There is one more reference
+to Sylvanus in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, which mentions him
+as having been associated with Paul in the evangelisation of the church
+there.</p>
+
+<p>Then he drops out of the book altogether, and we never hear anything
+more about him, except this one passing reference, which shows us to him
+in an altogether new relation. He is no longer attached to Paul, but to
+Peter. Paul was probably either in prison, or, possibly, martyred. At
+all events, Sylvanus now stood to Peter in a relationship similar to
+that in which he formerly stood to Paul. He was evidently acquainted
+with and known to the churches to whom this letter was addressed, and,
+therefore, is chosen to carry Peter's message to them.</p>
+
+<p>Now I would suggest, in passing, how Sylvanus' relations to the two
+Apostles throws light upon the perfectly cordial alliance between them,
+and how it shatters into fragments the theory which was thought to be
+such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_140" id="Page_2_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> wonderful discovery some years ago, as to the 'great schism' in
+the early church between one section, led by Peter, and the more liberal
+party, headed by Paul. Instead of that, we find the two men working
+together, and the only division between them was not as to the sort of
+gospel they preached, but as to the people to whom they preached. This
+little incident helps us to realise how natural it was for a man steeped
+in Paul's teaching to attach himself, if circumstances suggested it, to
+the person who has been said to have been antagonistic in the whole
+drift of his conceptions of Christianity to that Apostle.</p>
+
+<p>But I do not wish to speak about that now. I take this figure of a man
+who so contentedly and continually took such a subordinate place&mdash;played
+second fiddle quite willingly all his days, and who toiled on without
+any notice or record, and ask whether it does not teach one or two
+things.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, I think we may see here a hint as to the worth and
+importance of subordinate work.</p>
+
+<p>Not a syllable that Silas ever said is recorded in Scripture. He had
+been a chief man among the brethren when he was in Jerusalem, but, like
+some other chief men in little spheres, he came to be anything but a
+chief man when he got alongside of Paul, and found his proper work. He
+did not say: 'I have always pulled the stroke oar, and I am not going to
+be second. I do not intend to be absorbed in this man's brilliant
+lustre. I would rather have a smaller sphere where my light may not
+suffer by comparison than be overshone by him.' By no means! He could
+not do Paul's work, but he could endure stripes along with him in the
+prison at Philippi, and he took them. He could not write as Peter
+could;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_141" id="Page_2_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> it was not his work to do that. But he could carry one of
+Peter's letters. And so, 'by Sylvanus, a faithful brother, I have
+written to you.' Perhaps Sylvanus was amanuensis as well as
+letter-carrier, for I daresay Peter was no great hand with a pen; he was
+better accustomed to haul nets. At all events, subordinate work was what
+God had set him to do, and so he found joy in it.</p>
+
+<p>Well, then, is not that a pattern for us? People in the world or in the
+Church who can do prominent work are counted by units; and those who can
+do valuable subordinate work are counted by thousands&mdash;by millions.
+'Those members which seem to be more feeble are the more necessary,'
+says Paul. It is a great truth, which it would do us all good to lay
+more to heart.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to tell what is superior and what is subordinate work. I
+suppose that in a steam engine the smallest rivet is quite as essential
+as the huge piston, and that if the rivet drops out the piston-rod is
+very likely to stop rising and falling. So it is a very vulgar way of
+talking to speak about A.'s work being large and B.'s work being small,
+or to assume that we have eyes to settle which work is principal and
+which subordinate.</p>
+
+<p>The Athenians, who deemed themselves wisest in the world, thought there
+were few people of less importance than the fanatical Jew who was
+preaching a strange story about what they knew so little of that they
+took Jesus and Resurrection to be the names of a pair of gods, one male
+and one female. But in the eyes that see truly&mdash;the eyes of God&mdash;the
+relative importance of Apostle and Stoic was otherwise appraised.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot tell, as the book of Ecclesiastes has it, 'which shall
+prosper&mdash;this or that.' And if we begin to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_142" id="Page_2_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> settle which is important
+work, we shall be sure to make mistakes, both in our judgment about
+other people, and in our sense of the obligations laid upon ourselves.
+Let us remember that when a thing is to be done by the co-operation of a
+great many parts, each part is as important as the other, and each is
+indispensable. Although more glory may come to the soldiers who go to
+the front and do the fighting, the troops miles in the rear, that are
+quietly in camp looking after the stores and keeping open the lines of
+communication, are quite as essential to the success of the campaign.
+Their names will not get into the gazette; there will probably not be
+any honours at the conclusion of the war showered upon them; but, if
+they had not been doing their subordinate work, the men at the front
+would never have been able to do theirs. Therefore, the old wise law in
+Israel was: 'As his part is that goeth down into the battle, so shall
+his part be that tarrieth by the stuff; they shall part alike.'</p>
+
+<p>And so it is good for people that have only one talent, and cannot do
+much, and must be contented to help somebody else that can do more, to
+remember this pretty little picture of Sylvanus, 'the faithful brother,'
+contented all his life to be a satellite of somebody; first of all
+helping Paul, and then helping Paul's brother Peter. Let us not be too
+lazy, or too proud with the pride that apes humility, to do the little
+that we can do because it is little.</p>
+
+<p>II. Another lesson which is own sister to that first one, but which may
+be taken for a moment separately, is, the importance and obligation of
+persistently doing our task, though nobody notices it.</p>
+
+<p>As I remarked, there is not one word of anything that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_143" id="Page_2_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> Sylvanus said, or
+of anything that he did apart from Paul or Peter, recorded. And for all
+the long stretch of years&mdash;we do not know how many, but a very large
+number&mdash;that lie between this text of mine, where we find him in
+conjunction with Peter, and that day at Corinth, where we left him with
+Paul, the Acts of the Apostles does not think it worth while to mention
+his name. Was he sitting with his hands in his pockets all the while, do
+you think, doing no Christian work? Did he say, as some good people are
+apt to say now, 'Well, I went to teach in Sunday School for a while, and
+I took an interest in this, that, or the other thing for a bit, but
+nobody took any notice of me; and I supposed I was not wanted, and so I
+came away!'</p>
+
+<p>Not he. That is what a great many of us do. Though we sometimes are not
+honest enough to say it to ourselves, yet we do let the absence of
+'recognition' (save the mark) influence us in the earnestness of our
+Christian work to far too great an extent. And I dare say there are good
+friends among us who, if they would be quite honest with themselves,
+would take the hint, and, if I may use such a word, the rebuke, to
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Dear brethren, all the work that any of us do has to become unnoticed
+after a little while. It will not last. Nobody will know about you or me
+thirty years after we are dead. What does it matter whether they know
+anything about us, or say anything about us, or pat us on the back for
+anything that we do, or recognise our service whilst we live? Surely, if
+we are Christian men and women, we have a better reason for working than
+that. '<i>I</i> will never forget any of their works.' That ought to be
+enough for us, ought it not? Whoever forgets, He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_144" id="Page_2_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> remembers; and if He
+remembers, He will not remain in our debt for anything that we have
+done.</p>
+
+<p>So let us keep on, noticed or unnoticed; it matters very little which it
+is. There is a fillip, no doubt&mdash;and we should not be men and women if
+we did not feel it&mdash;in the recognition of what we have tried to do. And
+sometimes it comes to us; but the absence of it is no reason for
+slackening our work. And this man, so patiently and persistently
+'pegging away' at his obscure task during all these years which have
+been swallowed up in oblivion, may preach a sermon to us all.</p>
+
+<p>Only let us remember that he also shows us that unnoticed work is
+noticed, and that unrecorded services are recorded. Here are you and I,
+nineteen centuries after he is dead, talking about him, and his name
+will live and last as long as the world, because, though written in no
+other history, it has been recorded here. Jesus Christ's record, the
+Book of Life, contains the names of 'fellow-labourers' whose names have
+dropped out of every other record; and that should be enough for us.
+Sylvanus did no work that Christ did not see, and no work that Christ
+did not remember, and no work of which he did not, eighteen hundred
+years since, enter into the enjoyment of the fruit, and which he enjoys
+up there, whilst we are thinking about him down here.</p>
+
+<p>III. The last thing that I would suggest is&mdash;here is an example to us of
+a character which we can all earn, and which will be the best that any
+man can get.</p>
+
+<p>A great genius, a wise philosopher, an eloquent preacher, a statesman, a
+warrior, poet, painter? No! 'A faithful brother.' He may have been a
+commonplace one. We do not know anything about his intellectual
+capacity. He may have had very narrow limitations and very few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_145" id="Page_2_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> powers,
+or he may have been a man of large faculty and acquirements. But these
+things drop out of sight; and this remains&mdash;that he was <i>faithful</i>. I
+suppose the eulogium is meant in both senses of the word. The one of
+these is the root of the other; for a man that is full of faith is a man
+who may be trusted, is reliable, and will be sure to fulfil all the
+obligations of his position, and to do all the duties that are laid upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>You and I, whether we are wise or not, whether we are learned or not,
+whether we have large faculties or not, whether we have great
+opportunities or very small ones, can all equally earn that name if we
+like. If the perfect judgment, the clear eye, of Jesus Christ beholds in
+us qualities which will permit Him to call us by that name, what can we
+want better? 'A faithful brother.' Trust in Christ; let that be the
+animating principle of all that we do, the controlling power that
+restrains and limits and stimulates and impels. And then men will know
+where to have us, and will be sure, and rightly sure, that we shall not
+shirk our obligations, nor scamp our work, nor neglect our duties. And
+being thus full of faith, and counted faithful by Him, we need care
+little what men's judgments of us may be, and need desire no better
+epitaph than this&mdash;a faithful brother.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_146" id="Page_2_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_APOSTOLIC_TESTIMONY_AND_EXHORTATION" id="AN_APOSTOLIC_TESTIMONY_AND_EXHORTATION"></a>AN APOSTOLIC TESTIMONY AND EXHORTATION</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'... I have written briefly, exhorting, and testifying that this is
+the true grace of God wherein ye stand.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> v. 12.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'I have written briefly,' says Peter. But his letter, in comparison with
+the other epistles of the New Testament, is not remarkably short; in
+fact, is longer than many of them. He regards it as short when measured
+by the greatness of its theme. For all words which are devoted to
+witnessing to the glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ, must be narrow
+and insufficient as compared with that, and after every utterance the
+speaker must feel how inadequate his utterance has been. So in that word
+'briefly' we get a glimpse of the Apostle's conception of the
+transcendent greatness of the Gospel which he had to proclaim. This
+verse seems to be a summary of the contents of the Epistle. And if we
+observe the altered translation of the latter portion of my text which
+is given in the Revised Version, we shall see that the verse is itself
+an example of both 'testifying' and exhorting. For the last clause is
+not, as our Authorised Version renders it, 'Wherein ye stand'&mdash;a
+statement of a fact, however true that may be&mdash;but a commandment, 'In
+which stand fast.' And so we have here the Apostle's all-sufficient
+teaching, and this all-comprehensive exhortation. He 'witnesses' that
+this is the true grace of God, and because it is, he exhorts, 'stand
+fast therein.' Let us look at these two points.</p>
+
+<p>I. Peter's testimony.</p>
+
+<p>Now there is a very beautiful, though not, to superficial readers,
+obvious, significance in this testimony.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_147" id="Page_2_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> 'This is the true grace of
+God.' What is meant by '<i>this</i>'? Not merely the teaching which he has
+been giving in the preceding part of the letter, but that which somebody
+else had been giving. Now these churches in Asia Minor, to whom this
+letter was sent, were in all probability founded by the Apostle Paul, or
+by men working under his direction: and the type of doctrine preached in
+them was what people nowadays call Pauline. And here Peter puts his seal
+on the teaching that had come from his brother Apostle, and says: 'The
+thing that you have learned, and that I have had no part in
+communicating to you, <i>this</i> is the true grace of God.' If such be the
+primary application of the words (and I think there can be little doubt
+that it is), then we have an interesting evidence, all the stronger
+because unobtrusive, of the cordial understanding between the two great
+leaders of the Church in apostolic times; and the figments that have
+been set forth, with great learning and little common sense, about the
+differences that divided these great teachers of Christianity, melt away
+into thin air. Their division was only a division of the field of
+labour. 'They would that I should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto
+the circumcision.' All the evidence confirms what Paul says, 'Whether it
+were they or I, so we preach, and so' all the converts 'believed.' Thus
+it is not without significance and beauty that we here see dimly through
+the ages Peter stretching out his hands to Paul's convert, and saying,
+'This&mdash;which my beloved brother Paul taught you&mdash;this is the true grace
+of God.'</p>
+
+<p>But, apart altogether from that thought, note two things; the one, the
+substance of this witness-bearing; and the other, Peter's right to bear
+it. As to the substance of the testimony; 'grace' which has become a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_148" id="Page_2_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+threadbare word in the minds of many people, used with very little
+conception of its true depth and beauty of meaning, is properly love in
+exercise towards inferior and sinful creatures who deserve something
+else. Condescending, pardoning, and active love, is its proper meaning.
+And, says Peter, the inmost significance of the gospel is that it is the
+revelation of such a love as being in God's heart.</p>
+
+<p>Another meaning springs out of this. That same message is not only a
+revelation of love, but it is a communication of the gifts of love. And
+the 'true grace of God' is shorthand for all the rich abundance and
+variety and exuberant manifoldness and all-sufficiency of the sevenfold
+perfect gifts for spirit and heart which come from faith in Jesus
+Christ. The truths that lie here in the Gospel, the truths which glow
+and throb in this letter of Peter's, are the revelation and the
+communication to men of the rich gifts of the Divine heart, which will
+all flow into that soul which opens itself for the entrance of God's
+word. And what are these truths? The main theme of this letter is Jesus
+Christ, the Lamb of God, that was slain. 'Ye were as sheep going astray,
+but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.' He
+dwells upon Christ's innocence, upon Christ's meekness; but most of all
+upon the Christ that died, 'whom, having not seen, we love, and in whom,
+though unseen, we, believing, receive the end of our faith'&mdash;and the end
+of the gospel&mdash;'even the salvation of our souls.'</p>
+
+<p>Thus, dear brethren, this gospel, the gospel of the Divine Christ that
+died for our sins, and lives to give His Spirit to all waiting hearts;
+this is the true grace of God. It is very needful for us to keep in view
+always that lofty conception of what this gospel is, that we may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_149" id="Page_2_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> not
+bring it down to the level of a mere theory of religion; nor think of it
+as a mere publication of dry doctrines; that we may not lose sight of
+what is the heart of it all, but may recognise this fact, that a gospel
+out of which are struck, or in which are diminished, the truths of the
+sacrifice of Christ and His ever-living intercession for us, is not the
+true grace of God, and is neither a revelation of His love to inferior
+and sinful men, nor a communication of His gifts to our weakness. Let us
+remember Peter's witness. This&mdash;the full gospel of incarnation,
+sacrifice, resurrection, ascension, and reign in glory, and return as
+Judge&mdash;this, and nothing else, 'is the true grace of God.' And this
+gospel is not exalted to its highest place unless it is regarded as such
+by our waiting and recipient hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Further, what right had this man to take this position and say, 'I
+testify that this is the true grace of God'? He was no great genius; he
+did not know anything about comparative religion, which is nowadays
+supposed to be absolutely essential to understanding any one religion.
+He was not a scholar or a philosopher. What business had he to bring in
+his personality thus, as if he were an authority, and say, '<i>I</i> testify
+that this is the true grace of God'?</p>
+
+<p>Well there are two or three answers: one peculiar to him and others
+common to all Christian people. The one peculiar to him is, as I
+believe, that he was conscious, and rightly conscious, that Jesus Christ
+had bestowed upon him the power to witness, and the authority to impose
+his testimony upon men as a word from God. In the most inartificial and
+matter-of-course way Peter here lets us see the apostolic conception of
+apostolic authority. He had a right&mdash;not because of what he was
+himself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_150" id="Page_2_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> but because of the authority which Christ had conferred on
+him&mdash;to say to men, 'I do not ask you to give heed to me, Peter. I
+myself also am a man (as he said to Cornelius), but I call on you to
+accept Christ's word, spoken through me, His commissioned messenger,
+when <i>I</i> testify, and through me Christ testifies, that this is the true
+grace of God.'</p>
+
+<p>Now no one but an apostle has the right to say that; but we Christian
+people have a right to say something like it, and if we have not
+apostolic authority, we may have what is very nearly as good, and
+sometimes as powerful in its effect upon other people, and that is
+authority based on personal experience. If we have plunged deep into the
+secrets of God, and lived closely and faithfully in communion with Him,
+and for ourselves have found the grace of God, His love and the gifts of
+His love, coming into our lives, and ennobling, calming, elevating each
+of us; then we, too, have a right to go to men and say, 'Never mind
+about me; never mind about whether I am wise or foolish, I do not argue,
+but I tell you I have tasted the manna, and it is sweet. I have drunk of
+the water, and it comes cool and fresh from the rock. One thing I know,
+that whereas I was blind, now I see. I believed, and therefore have I
+spoken, and on the strength of my own tasting of it, I testify that
+this, which has done so much for me, is the true grace of God.' If we
+testify thus, and back up our witness with lives corresponding, some who
+are wholly untouched by a preacher's eloquence and controversialists'
+arguments, will probably be led by our attestation to make the
+experiment for themselves. 'Ye are My witnesses,' says God. He did not
+say, 'Ye are my advocates.' He did not bid us argue for Him, but He bid
+us witness for Him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_151" id="Page_2_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II. Further, notice Peter's exhortation.</p>
+
+<p>According to the right rendering the last clause is, as I have already
+said, 'in which stand fast.' The translation in the Authorised Version,
+'in which ye stand,' gives a true thought, though not the Apostle's
+intention here. For, as a matter of fact, men cannot stand upright and
+firm unless their feet are planted on the rock of that true grace of
+God. If our heels are well fixed on it, then our goings will be
+established. It is no use talking to men about steadfastness of purpose,
+stability of life, erect independence, resistance to antagonistic
+forces, and all the rest, unless you give them something to stand upon.
+If you talk so to a man who has his foot upon shifting sands or slippery
+clay; the more he tries the deeper will he sink into the one, or slide
+the further upon the other. The best way to help men to stand fast is to
+give them something to stand upon. And the only standing ground that
+will never yield, nor collapse, nor, like the quicksand with the tide
+round it, melt away, we do not know how, from beneath our feet, is 'the
+grace of God.' Or, as Dr. Watts says, in one of his now old-fashioned
+hymns:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Lo! on the solid Rock I stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;And all beside is shifting sand.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>However, that is not what the Apostle Peter meant. He says, 'See that
+you keep firmly your position in reference to this true grace of God.'
+Now I am not going to talk to you about intellectual difficulties in the
+way of hearty and whole-souled acceptance of the gospel
+revelation&mdash;difficulties which are very real and very widespread in
+these days, but which possibly very slightly affect us; at least I hope
+so.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_152" id="Page_2_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But whilst these slay their thousands, the difficulties that affect us
+all in the way of keeping a firm hold on, or firm standing in (for the
+two metaphors coalesce) the gospel, which is the true grace of God, are
+those that arise from two causes working in combination. One is our own
+poor weak hearts, wavering wills, strong passions, unbridled desires,
+forgetful minds; and the other is all that army and babel of seductions
+and inducements, in occupations legitimate and necessary, in enjoyments
+which are in themselves pure and innocent, in family delights, in home
+engagements, in pursuits of commerce or of daily business&mdash;all that
+crowd of things that tempt us to forget the true grace and to wander
+away in a foolish and vain search after vain and foolish substitutes.</p>
+
+<p>Dear brethren, it is not so much because there are many adversaries in
+the intellectual world as because we are such weak creatures ourselves,
+and the world around us is so strong against us, that we need to say to
+one another and to ourselves, over and over again, 'Stand ye fast
+therein.' You cannot keep hold of a rope even, without the act of
+grasping tending to relax, and there must be a conscious and repeated
+tightening up of the muscles, or the very cord on which we hang for
+safety will slip through our relaxed palms. And however we may be
+convinced that there are no hope and no true blessedness for us except
+in keeping hold of God, we need that grasp to be tightened up by daily
+renewed efforts, or else it will certainly become slack, and we shall
+lose the thing that we should hold fast. So my text exhorts us against
+ourselves, and against the temptations of the world, which are always
+present with us, and are far more operative in bringing down the
+temperature of the Christian Church, and of its individual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_153" id="Page_2_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> members,
+than any chilling that arises from intellectual doubts.</p>
+
+<p>And how are we to obey the exhortation? Well, plainly, if 'this' is the
+revelation of God in Jesus Christ, 'the true grace of God' which alone
+will give stability to our feet, then we 'shall not stand fast' in it
+unless we make conscious efforts to apprehend, and comprehend, and keep
+hold of it in our minds as well as in our hearts. May I say one very
+plain word? I am very much afraid that people do not read their Bibles
+very much now (or if they do read them, they do not study them), and
+that anything like an intelligent familiarity with the whole sweep of
+the great system (for it is a system) of Divine truth, evolved 'at
+sundry times and in divers manners' in this Word, is a very rare thing
+amongst even good people. They listen to sermons, with more or less
+attention; they read newspapers, no doubt; they read good little books,
+and magazines, and the like; and volumes that profess to be drawn from
+Scripture. These are all right and good in their place. But sure I am
+that a robust and firm grasp of the gospel, 'which is the grace of God,'
+is not possible with a starvation diet of Scripture. And so I would say,
+try to get hold of the depth and width of meaning in the Word.</p>
+
+<p>Again, try to keep heart and mind in contact with it amidst distractions
+and daily duties. Try to bring the principles of the New Testament
+consciously to bear on the small details of everyday life. Do you look
+at your day's work through these spectacles? Does it ever occur to you,
+as you are going about your business, or your profession, or your
+domestic work, to ask yourselves what bearing the gospel and its truths
+have upon these? If my ordinary, so-called secular, avocations are
+evacuated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_154" id="Page_2_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> of reference to, and government by, the Word of God, I want
+to know what of my life is left as the sphere in which it is to work.
+There is no need that religion and daily life should be kept apart as
+they are. There is no reason why the experience of to-day, in shop, and
+counting-house, and kitchen, and study, should not cast light upon, and
+make more real to me, 'the true grace of God.' Be sure that you desire,
+and ask for, and put yourself in the attitude of receiving, the gifts of
+that love, which are the graces of the Christian life. And when you have
+got them, apply them, 'that you may be able to withstand in the evil
+day; and, having done all, to stand.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_CHURCH_IN_BABYLON" id="THE_CHURCH_IN_BABYLON"></a>THE CHURCH IN BABYLON</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth
+you ...'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> v. 13.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We have drawn lessons in previous addresses from the former parts of the
+closing salutations of this letter. And now I turn to this one to see
+what it may yield us. The Revised Version omits 'the church,' and
+substitutes 'she'; explaining in a marginal note that there is a
+difference of opinion as to whether the sender of the letter is a
+community or an individual. All the old MSS., with one weighty
+exception, follow the reading 'she that is in Babylon.' But it seems so
+extremely unlikely that a single individual, with no special function,
+should be bracketed along with the communities to whom the letter was
+addressed, as 'elected together with' them, that the conclusion that the
+sender of the letter is a church, symbolically designated as a 'lady,'
+seems the natural one.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another question&mdash;where was Babylon?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_155" id="Page_2_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> An equal diversity
+of opinion has arisen about that. I do not venture to trouble you with
+the arguments <i>pro</i> and <i>con</i>, but only express my own opinion that
+'Babylon' means Rome.</p>
+
+<p>We have here the same symbolical name as in the Book of Revelation,
+where, whatever further meanings are attached to the designation, it is
+intended primarily as an appellation for the imperial city, which has
+taken the place filled in the Old Testament by Babylon, as the
+concentration of antagonism to the Kingdom of God.</p>
+
+<p>If these views of the significance of the expression are adopted we have
+here the Church in Rome, the proud stronghold of worldly power and
+hostility, sending its greetings to the scattered Christian communities
+in the provinces of what is now called Asia Minor. The fact of such
+cordial communications between communities separated by so many
+contrarieties as well as by race and distance, familiar though it is,
+may suggest several profitable considerations, to which I ask your
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>I. We have here an object lesson as to the uniting power of the gospel.</p>
+
+<p>Just think of the relations which, in the civil world, subsisted between
+Rome and its subject provinces; the latter, with bitter hatred in their
+hearts to everything belonging to the oppressing city, having had their
+freedom crushed down and their aspirations ruthlessly trampled upon; the
+former, with the contempt natural to metropolitans in dealing with
+far-off provincials. The same kind of relationship subsisted between
+Rome and the outlying provinces of its unwieldly empire as between
+England, for instance, and its Indian possessions. And the same uniting
+bond came in which binds the Christian converts of these Eastern lands
+of ours to England by a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_156" id="Page_2_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> far firmer bond than any other. There was
+springing up amidst all the alienation and hatred and smothered
+rebellion a still incipient, but increasing, and even then strong bond
+that held together Roman Christians and Cappadocian believers. They were
+both 'one in Christ Jesus.' The separating walls were high, but,
+according to the old saying, you cannot build walls high enough to keep
+out the birds; and spirits, winged by the common faith, soared above all
+earthly-made distinctions and met in the higher regions of Christian
+communion. When the tide rises it fills and unifies the scattered pools
+on the beach. So the uniting power of Christian faith was manifest in
+these early days, when it bound such discordant elements together, and
+made 'the church that was in Babylon' forget that they were to a large
+extent Romans by birth, and stretch out their hands, with their hearts
+in them, to the churches to whom this letter was sent.</p>
+
+<p>Now, brethren, our temptation is not so much to let barriers of race and
+language and distance weaken our sense of Christian community, as it is
+to let even smaller things than these do the same tragical office for
+us. And we, as Christian people, are bound to try and look over the
+fences of our 'denominations' and churches, and recognise the wider
+fellowship and larger company in which all these are merged. God be
+thanked! there are manifest tokens all round us to-day that the age of
+separation and division is about coming to an end. Yearnings for unity,
+which must not be forced into acts too soon, but which will fulfil
+themselves in ways not yet clear to any of us, are beginning to rise in
+Christian hearts. Let us see to it, dear friends, that we do our parts
+to cherish and to increase these, and to yield ourselves to the uniting
+power of the common faith.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_157" id="Page_2_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II. We note, further, the clear recognition here of what is the strong
+bond uniting all Christians.</p>
+
+<p>Peter would probably have been very much astonished if he had been told
+of the theological controversies that were to be waged round that word
+'elect.' The emphasis here lies, not on 'elect,' but on 'together.' It
+is not the thing so much as the common possession of the thing which
+bulks largely before the Apostle. In effect he says, 'The reason why
+these Roman Christians that have never looked you Bithynians in the face
+do yet feel their hearts going out to you, and send you their loving
+messages, is because they, in common with you, have been recipients of
+precisely the same Divine act of grace.' We do not now need to discuss
+the respective parts of man and God in it, nor any of the interminable
+controversies that have sprung up around the word. God had, as the fact
+of their possession of salvation showed, chosen Romans and Asiatics
+together to be heirs of eternal life. By the side of these transcendent
+blessings which they possessed in common, how pitiably small and
+insignificant all the causes which kept them apart looked and were!</p>
+
+<p>And so here we have a partial parallel to the present state of
+Christendom, in which are seen at work, on one hand, superficial
+separation; on the other, underlying unity. The splintered peaks may
+stand, or seem to stand, apart from their sister summits, or may frown
+at each other across impassable gorges, but they all belong to one
+geological formation, and in their depths their bases blend
+indistinguishably into a continuous whole. Their tops are miles apart,
+but beneath the surface they are one. And so the things that bind
+Christian men together are the great things and the deepest things;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_158" id="Page_2_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> and
+the things that part them are the small and superficial ones. Therefore
+it is our wisdom&mdash;not only for the sake of the fact of our unity and for
+the sake of our consciousness of unity, but because the truths which
+unite are the most important ones&mdash;that they shall bulk largest in our
+hearts and minds. And if they do, we shall know our brother in every man
+that is like-minded with us towards them, whatever shibboleth may
+separate us. I spoke a moment ago about the separate pools on the beach,
+and the tide rising. When the tide goes down, and the spiritual life
+ebbs, the pools are parted again. And so ages of feeble spiritual
+vitality have been ages of theological controversy about secondary
+matters; and ages of profound realisation by the Church of the great
+fundamentals of gospel truth have been those when its members were drawn
+together, they knew not how. Hence they can say of and to each other,
+'Elect together with you.'</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, for the sake of the strength of our own religious life, do not
+let us fix our attention on the peculiarities of our sects, but upon the
+catholic truths believed everywhere, always, by all. Then we shall 'walk
+in a large place,' and feel how many there are that are possessors of
+'like precious faith' with ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>III. Then, lastly, we may find here a hint as to the pressing need for
+such a realisation of unity.</p>
+
+<p>'The church that is in Babylon' was in a very uncongenial place. Thank
+God, no Babylon is so Babylonish but that a Church of God may be found
+planted in it. No circumstances are so unfavourable to the creation and
+development of the religious life but that the religious life may grow
+there. An orchid will find footing upon a bit of stick, because it draws
+nourishment from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_159" id="Page_2_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> atmosphere; and they who are fed by influx of the
+Divine Spirit may be planted anywhere, and yet flourish in the courts of
+our God. So 'the church that is in Babylon' gives encouragement as to
+the possibility of Christian faith being triumphant over adverse
+conditions.</p>
+
+<p>But it also gives a hint as to the obligation springing from the
+circumstances in which Christian people are set, to cultivate the sense
+of belonging to a great brotherhood. Howsoever solitary and surrounded
+by uncongenial associations any Christian man may be, he may feel that
+he is not alone, not only because his Master is with him, but because
+there are many others whose hearts throb with the same love, whose lives
+are surrounded by the same difficulties. It is by no means a mere piece
+of selfish consolation which this same Apostle gives in another part of
+his letter, when he bids the troubled so be of good cheer, as
+remembering that the 'same afflictions were accomplished in the
+brotherhood which is in the world.' He did not mean to say, 'Take
+comfort, for other people are as badly off as you are,' but he meant to
+call to the remembrance of the solitary sufferer the thousands of his
+brethren who were 'dreeing the same weird' in the same uncongenial
+world.</p>
+
+<p>If thus you and I, Christian men, are pressed upon on all sides by such
+worldly associations, the more need that we should let our hearts go out
+to the innumerable multitude of our fellows, companions in the
+tribulation, and patience, and kingdom of Jesus Christ. Precisely
+because the Roman believers were in Babylon, they were glad to think of
+their brethren in Asia. Isolated amidst Rome's splendours and sins, it
+was like a breath of cool air stealing into some banqueting house heavy
+with the fumes of wine, or some slaughter-house reeking with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_160" id="Page_2_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> smell
+of blood, to remember these far-off partakers of a purer life.</p>
+
+<p>But if I might for a moment diverge, I would venture to say that in the
+conditions of thought, and the tendencies of things in our own and other
+lands, it is more than ever needful that Christian people should close
+their ranks, and stand shoulder to shoulder. For men who believe in a
+supernatural revelation, in the Divine Christ, in an atoning Sacrifice,
+in an indwelling Spirit, are guilty of suicidal folly if they let the
+comparative trivialities that part them, separate God's army into
+isolated groups, in the face of the ordered battalions that are
+assaulting these great truths.</p>
+
+<p>Because persecution was beginning to threaten and rumble on the horizon,
+like a rising thundercloud, it was the more needful, in Peter's time,
+that Christians parted by seas, by race, language, and customs, should
+draw together. And for us, fidelity to our testimony and loyalty to our
+Master, to say nothing of common sense and the instinct of
+self-preservation, command Christian men in this day to think more, and
+to speak more, and to make more, of the great verities which they all
+possess in common.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, brethren, living in Babylon, we should open our windows to
+Jerusalem; and though we dwell here as aliens, we may say, 'We are come
+unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; to an
+innumerable company of angels; to the spirits of just men made perfect;
+and to the Church of the first-born whose names are written in Heaven.'</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_161" id="Page_2_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="MARCUS_MY_SON" id="MARCUS_MY_SON"></a>MARCUS, MY SON</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'... So doth Marcus, my son.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> v. 13.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The outlines of Mark's life, so far as recorded in Scripture, are
+familiar. He was the son of Mary, a woman of some wealth and position,
+as is implied by the fact that her house was large enough to accommodate
+the 'many' who were gathered together to pray for Peter's release. He
+was a relative, probably a cousin (Col. iv. 10, Revised Version), of
+Barnabas, and possibly, like him, a native of Cyprus. The designation of
+him by Peter as 'my son' naturally implies that the Apostle had been the
+instrument of his conversion. An old tradition tells us that he was the
+'young man' mentioned in his Gospel who saw Christ arrested, and fled,
+leaving his only covering in the captor's hands. However that may be, he
+and his relatives were early and prominent disciples, and closely
+connected with Peter, as is evident from the fact that it was to Mary's
+house that he went after his deliverance. Mark's relationship to
+Barnabas made it natural that he should be chosen to accompany him and
+Paul on their first missionary journey, and his connection with Cyprus
+helps to account for his willingness to go thither, and his
+unwillingness to go further into less known ground. We know how he left
+the Apostles, when they crossed from Cyprus to the mainland, and
+retreated to his mother's house at Jerusalem. We have no details of the
+inglorious inactivity in which he spent the time until the proposal of a
+second journey by Paul and Barnabas. In the preparations for it, the
+foolish indulgence of his cousin, far less kind than Paul's wholesome
+sever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_162" id="Page_2_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>ity, led to a rupture between the Apostles, and to Barnabas
+setting off on an evangelistic tour on his own account, which received
+no sympathy from the church at Antioch, and has been deemed unworthy of
+record in the Acts.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed some twelve years or more, during which Mark seems to have
+remained quiescent; or, at all events, he does not appear to have had
+any work in connection with the great Apostle. Then we find him
+reappearing amongst Paul's company when he was in prison for the first
+time in Rome; and in the letters to Coloss&aelig; he is mentioned as being a
+comfort to the Apostle then. He sends salutations to the Colossians, and
+is named also in the nearly contemporaneous letter to Philemon.
+According to the reference in Colossians, he was contemplating a journey
+amongst the Asiatic churches, for that in Coloss&aelig; is bidden to welcome
+him. Then comes this mention of him in the text. The fact that Mark was
+beside Peter when he wrote seems to confirm the view that Babylon here
+is a mystical name for Rome; and that this letter falls somewhere about
+the same date as the letters to Coloss&aelig; and Philemon. Here again he is
+sending salutations to Asiatic churches. We know nothing more about him,
+except that some considerable time after, in Paul's last letter, he asks
+Timothy, who was then at Ephesus, the headquarters of the Asiatic
+churches, to 'take Mark,' who, therefore, was apparently also in Asia,
+'and bring him' with him to Rome; 'for,' says the Apostle, beautifully
+referring to the man's former failure, 'he is profitable to me for'&mdash;the
+very office that he had formerly flung up&mdash;'the ministry.'</p>
+
+<p>So, possibly, he was with Paul in his last days. And then, after that,
+tradition tells us that he attached him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_163" id="Page_2_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>self more closely to the Apostle
+Peter; and, finally, at his direction and dictation, became the
+evangelist who wrote the 'Gospel according to Mark.'</p>
+
+<p>Now that is his story; and from the figure of this 'Marcus, my son,' and
+from his appearance here in this letter, I wish to gather two or three
+very plain and familiar lessons.</p>
+
+<p>I. The first of them is the working of Christian sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Mark was a full-blooded Jew when he began his career. 'John, whose
+surname was Mark,' like a great many other Jews at that time, bore a
+double name&mdash;one Jewish, 'John,' and one Gentile, 'Marcus.' But as time
+goes on we do not hear anything more about 'John,' nor even about 'John
+Mark,' which are the two forms of his name when he is first introduced
+to us in the Acts of the Apostles, but he finally appears to have cast
+aside his Hebrew and to have been only known by his Roman name. And that
+change of appellation coincides with the fact that so many of the
+allusions which we have to him represent him as sending messages of
+Christian greeting across the sea to his Gentile brethren. And it
+further coincides with the fact that his gospel is obviously intended
+for the use of Gentile Christians, and, according to an old and reliable
+tradition, was written in Rome for Roman Christians. All of which facts
+just indicate two things, that the more a man has real operative love to
+Jesus Christ in his heart, the more he will rise above all limitations
+of his interests, his sympathy, and his efforts, and the more surely
+will he let himself out, as far as he can, in affection towards and
+toils for all men.</p>
+
+<p>This change of name, though it is a mere trifle, and may have been
+adopted as a matter of convenience, may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_164" id="Page_2_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> also be taken as reminding us
+of a very important truth, and that is, that if we wish to help people,
+the first condition is that we go down and stand on their level, and
+make ourselves one with them, as far as we can. And so Mark may have
+said, 'I have put away the name that parts me from these Gentiles, for
+whom I desire to work, and whom I love; and I take the name that binds
+me to them.' Why, it is the very same principle, in a small
+instance&mdash;just as a raindrop that hangs on the thorn of a rose-bush is
+moulded by the same laws that shape the great sphere of the central
+sun&mdash;it is a small instance of the great principle which brought Jesus
+Christ down into the world to die for us. You must become like the
+people that you want to help. 'Forasmuch as the children were partakers
+of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same, that
+He might deliver them.' And so, not only the duty of widening our
+sympathies, but one of the supreme conditions of being of use to
+anybody, are set forth in the comparatively trifling incident, which we
+pass by without noticing it, that this man, a Jew to his finger-tips,
+finally found himself&mdash;or, rather, finally was carried, for it was no
+case of unconscious drifting&mdash;into the position of a messenger of the
+Cross to the Gentiles; and for the sake of efficiency in his work, and
+of getting close by the side of people whom he wanted to influence,
+flung away deliberately that which parted him from them. It is a small
+matter, but a little window may show a very wide prospect.</p>
+
+<p>II. The history of Mark suggests the possibility of overcoming early
+faults.</p>
+
+<p>We do not know why he refused to bear the burden of the work that he had
+so cheerily begun. Probably the reason that I have suggested may have
+had something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_165" id="Page_2_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> to do with it. When he started he did not bargain for
+going into unknown lands, in which there were many toils to be
+encountered. He was willing to go where he knew the ground, and where
+there were people that would make things easy for him; but when Paul
+went further afield, Mark's courage ebbed out at his finger ends, and he
+slunk back to the comfort of his mother's house in Jerusalem. At all
+events, whatever his reason, his return was a fault; or Paul would not
+have been so hard upon him as he was. The writer of the Acts puts Paul's
+view of the case strongly by the arrangement of clauses in the sentence
+in which he tells us that the Apostle 'thought not good to take him with
+them who withdrew from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to
+the work.' If he thus threw down his tools whenever he came to a little
+difficulty, and said, 'As long as it is easy work, and close to the base
+of operations, I am your man, but if there is any sacrifice wanted you
+must look out for somebody else,' he was not precisely a worker after
+Paul's own heart. And the best way to treat him was as the Apostle did;
+and to say to Barnabas' indulgent proposal, 'No! he would not do the
+work before, and now he shall not do it.' That is often God's way with
+us. It brings us to our senses, as it brought Mark to his.</p>
+
+<p>We do not know how long it took to cure Mark of his early fault, but he
+was thoroughly cured. The man that was afraid of dangers and
+difficulties and hypothetical risks in Asia Minor became brave enough to
+stand by the Apostle when he was a prisoner, and was not ashamed of his
+chain. And afterwards, so much had he won his way into the Apostle's
+confidence, and made himself needful for him by his services and his
+sweetness, that the lonely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_166" id="Page_2_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> prisoner, with the gibbet or headsman's
+sword in prospect, feels that he would like to have Mark with him once
+more, and bids Timothy bring him with himself, for 'he is profitable to
+me for the ministry.' 'He can do a thousand things that a man like me
+cannot do for himself, and he does them all for love and nothing for
+reward.' So he wants Mark once more. And thus not only Paul's
+generosity, but Mark's own patient effort had pasted a clean sheet over
+the one that was inscribed with the black story of his desertion, and he
+became 'profitable for' the task that he had once in so petulant and
+cowardly a way, flung up.</p>
+
+<p>Well, translate that from the particular into the general and it comes
+to this. Let no man set limits to the possibilities of his own
+restoration, and of his curing faults which are most deeply rooted
+within himself. Hope and effort should be boundless. There is nothing
+that a Christian man may not reach, in the way of victory over his worse
+self, and ejection of his most deeply-rooted faults, if only he will be
+true to Jesus, and use the gifts that are given to him. There are many
+of us whose daily life is pitched in a minor key; whose whole landscape
+is grey and monotonous and sunless; who feel as if yesterday must set
+the tune for to-day, and as if, because we have been beaten and baffled
+so often, it is useless to try again. But remember that the field on
+which the Stone of Help was erected, to commemorate the great and
+decisive victory that Israel won, was the very field on which the same
+foes had before contended, and <i>then</i> Israel had been defeated.</p>
+
+<p>So, brethren, we may win victories on the very soil where formerly we
+were shamefully put to the rout; and our Christ with us will make
+anything possible for us,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_167" id="Page_2_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> in the way of restoration, of cure of old
+faults, of ceasing to repeat former sins. I suppose that when a spar is
+snapped on board a vessel, and lashed together with spun yarn and
+lanyards, as a sailor knows how to do, it is stronger at the point of
+fracture than it was before. I suppose that it is possible for a man to
+be most impregnable at the point where he is naturally weakest, if he
+chooses to use the defences that Jesus Christ has given.</p>
+
+<p>III. Take another lesson&mdash;the greatness of little service.</p>
+
+<p>We do not hear that this John Mark ever tried to do any work in the way
+of preaching the gospel. His business was a very much humbler one. He
+had to attend to Paul's comfort. He had to be his factotum, man of all
+work; looking after material things, the commissariat, the thousand and
+one trifles that some one had to see to if the Apostle's great work was
+to get done. And he did it all his life long. It was enough for him to
+do thoroughly the entirely 'secular' work, as some people would think
+it, which it was in his power to do. That needed some self-suppression.
+It would have been so natural for Mark to have said, 'Paul sends Timothy
+to be bishop in Crete; and Titus to look after other churches;
+Epaphroditus is an official here; and Apollos is a great preacher there.
+And here am I, grinding away at the secularities yet. I think I'll
+"strike," and try and get more conspicuous work.' Or he might perhaps
+deceive himself, and say, 'more directly religious work,' like a great
+many of us that often mask a very carnal desire for prominence under a
+very saintly guise of desire to do spiritual service. Let us take care
+of that. This 'minister,' who was not a minister at all, in our sense of
+the word, but only in the sense of being a servant, a private attendant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_168" id="Page_2_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+and valet of the Apostle, was glad to do that work all his days.</p>
+
+<p>That was self-suppression. But it was something more. It was a plain
+recognition of what we all ought to have very clearly before us, and
+that is, that all sorts of work which contribute to one end are one sort
+of work; and that at bottom the man who carried Paul's books and
+parchments, and saw that he was not left without clothes, though he was
+so negligent of cloaks and other necessaries, was just as much helping
+on the cause of Christ as the Apostle when he preached.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder if any of you remember the old story about an organist and his
+blower. The blower was asked who it was that played that great sonata of
+Beethoven's, or somebody's. And he answered, 'I do not know who played,
+but I blew it.' There is a great truth there. If it had not been for the
+unknown man at the bellows, the artist at the keys would not have done
+much. So Mark helped Paul. And as Jesus Christ said, 'He that receiveth
+a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward.'</p>
+
+<p>IV. Take as the last lesson the enlarged sphere that follows
+faithfulness in small matters.</p>
+
+<p>What a singular change! The man who began with being a servant of Paul
+and of Barnabas ends by being the evangelist, and it is to him, under
+Peter's direction, that we owe what is possibly the oldest, and, at all
+events, in some aspects, an entirely unique, narrative of our Lord's
+life. Do you think that Peter would ever have said to him: 'Mark! come
+here and sit down and write what I tell you,' if there had not been
+beforehand these long years of faithful service? So is it always, dear
+friends, 'He that is faithful in that which is least<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_169" id="Page_2_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> is faithful also
+in much.' That is not only a declaration that faithfulness is one in
+kind, whatever be the diameter of the circle in which it is exercised,
+but it may also be taken as a promise, though that was not the original
+intention of the saying.</p>
+
+<p>For quite certainly, in God's providence, the tools do come to the hand
+that can wield them, and the best reward that we can get for doing well
+our little work is to have larger work to do. The little tapers are
+tempted, if I may use so incongruous a figure, to wish themselves set up
+on loftier stands. Shine your brightest in your corner, and you will be
+'exalted' in due time. It is so, as a rule, in this world; sometimes too
+much so, for, as they say is the case at the English bar, so it is
+sometimes in God's Church, 'There is no medium between having nothing to
+do and being killed with work.' Still the reward for work is more work.
+And the law will be exemplified most blessedly when Christ shall say,
+'Well done! good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a
+few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.'</p>
+
+<p>So this far-away figure of the minister-evangelist salutes us too, and
+bids us be of good cheer, notwithstanding all faults and failures,
+because it is possible for us, as he has proved, to recover ourselves
+after them all. God will not be less generous in forgiveness than Paul
+was; and even you and I may hear from Christ's lips, 'Thou art
+profitable to Me for the ministry.'</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_170" id="Page_2_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="II_PETER" id="II_PETER"></a>II. PETER</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LIKE_PRECIOUS_FAITH" id="LIKE_PRECIOUS_FAITH"></a>LIKE PRECIOUS FAITH</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'... Them that have obtained like precious faith with us through
+the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i.
+1.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Peter seems to have had a liking for that word 'precious.' It is not a
+very descriptive one; it does not give much light as to the quality of
+the things to which it is applied; but it is a suggestion of one-idea
+value. It is interesting to notice the objects to which, in his two
+letters&mdash;for I take this to be his letter&mdash;he applies it. He speaks of
+the trial of faith as being 'precious.' He speaks (with a slight
+modification of the word employed) of Jesus Christ as being 'to them
+that believe, precious.' He speaks of the 'precious' blood of Christ.
+These instances are in the first epistle. In this second epistle we have
+the words of my text, and a moment after, 'exceeding great and precious
+promises.' Now look at Peter's list of valuables; 'Christ, Christ's
+blood, God's promises, our Faith, and the discipline to which that faith
+is subjected.' These are things that the old man had found out to be of
+worth.</p>
+
+<p>But then there is another word in my text that must be noted, 'like
+precious.' It brings into view two classes, to one of which Peter
+himself belongs&mdash;'us' and 'they.' Who are these two classes? It may be
+that he is thinking of the immense difference between the intelligent
+and developed faith of himself and the other Apostles, and the
+rudimentary and infantile faith of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_171" id="Page_2_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> recent believers to whom he may
+be speaking. And, if so, that would be beautiful, but I rather take it
+that he is tacitly contrasting in his own mind the difference between
+the Gentile converts as a whole, and the members of the Jewish community
+who had become believers in Jesus Christ, and that he is repeating the
+lesson that he had learned on the housetop at Joppa, and had had further
+confirmed to him by the experience of C&aelig;sarea, and that he is really
+saying exactly what he said when he defended himself before the Council
+in Jerusalem: 'Seeing that God had given unto them the like gift that he
+did unto us, who was I, that I should withstand God?' And so he looks
+out over all the Christian community, and ignores 'the middle wall of
+partition,' and says, 'Them that have obtained like precious faith with
+us.' I wish very simply to try to draw out the thoughts that lie in
+these words, and cluster round that well-worn and threadbare theological
+expression and Christian verity of 'faith' or 'trust.'</p>
+
+<p>I. And the first thing that I would desire to point you to is, what we
+learn here as to the object of faith.</p>
+
+<p>Now those of you who are using the Revised Version will notice that
+there is a very slight, but important, alteration there, from the
+rendering in the old translation. We read in the latter: 'Like precious
+faith with us <i>through</i> the righteousness, ...' and that is a meaning
+that might be defended. But the Revised Version says, and says more
+accurately as far as the words go, and more truly as far as Christian
+thought goes, 'them that have obtained like precious faith with us <i>in</i>
+the righteousness.' Now, I daresay, it will occur to us all that that is
+a departure from the usual form in which faith is presented to us in the
+New Testament, because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_172" id="Page_2_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> there, thank God! we are clearly taught that the
+one thing which faith grapples is not a thing but a Person. Christian
+faith is only human trust turned in a definite direction. Just as our
+trust lays hold on one another, so the object of faith is, in the
+deepest analysis, no doctrine, no proposition, not even a Divine fact,
+not even a Divine promise, but the Doer of the fact, and the Promiser of
+the promise, and the Person, Jesus Christ. When you say, 'I trust
+so-and-so's word!' what you mean is, 'I trust <i>him</i>, and so I put
+credence in his word.' And Christianity would have been delivered from
+mountains of misconception, and many a poor soul would have felt that a
+blaze of light had come in upon it, if this had been clearly proclaimed,
+and firmly apprehended by preachers and by hearers, that the object of
+trust is the living Person, Jesus Christ, and that the trust which
+grapples us to Him is essentially a personal relation entered into by
+our wills and hearts far more than by our heads.</p>
+
+<p>All that is being apprehended by the Christian Church to-day a great
+deal more clearly than it used to be when some of us were young. But we
+have the defects of our qualities. And this generation is accustomed far
+too lightly and superficially to say 'Oh! I do not care about doctrines.
+I cleave to the living Christ!' Amen! say I. But there is another
+question&mdash;What Christ is it that you are cleaving to? For our only way
+of knowing a person with whom we have no external acquaintance is by
+what we are told about him, and believe about him. And so, while we
+cannot assert too strongly that faith or trust in the living Christ, and
+not in a dogma, is the basis of real Christian life, we have need to be
+very definite and sure as to what Christ&mdash;which Christ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_173" id="Page_2_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>&mdash;it is that we
+are trusting to? And there my text comes in, and tells us that faith is
+to grasp Christ as our righteousness; and another saying of the Apostle
+Paul's comes in, who for once speaks of faith as being faith not only in
+the Christ, but in 'His blood':&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Jesus! Thy blood and righteousness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;My beauty are, my glorious dress.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Brethren! you will not get beyond that. The Christ, trusting in whom we
+have life and salvation, is the Christ whose blood cleanses, whose
+righteousness clothes us poor, sinful men. So, while proclaiming with
+all emphasis, and rejoicing to press it upon all my brethren, that
+salvation comes by personal trust in the Person, I supplement and fill
+out, not contradict, that proclamation, when I further say that the
+Person by trusting in whom we are saved, is the Jesus whose blood
+cleanses and whose righteousness becomes ours. That righteousness is, in
+our text, contemplated as God's, as being embodied in Christ's, that
+from Him it may be imparted to us, if we will fulfil the condition on
+which alone it can be ours, viz., faith. It becomes ours, by no mere
+imputation which has not a reality at the back of it, but because faith
+brings us into such a vital union with Jesus Christ as that His
+righteousness, or at least a spark from the central flame, becomes ours,
+not only in reference to our exemption from the burden of our guilt, but
+in reference to our becoming conformed to the image of His dear Son, and
+created anew in righteousness and holiness. The object of faith is
+Christ, the Christ whose blood and righteousness cleanses and clothes
+sinful souls.</p>
+
+<p>II. Let me ask you to look, in the next place, to what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_174" id="Page_2_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> this text
+suggests to us about the worth of Christian faith.</p>
+
+<p>Peter calls it precious. Consider its worth as a channel. There is a
+very remarkable expression used in the Acts of the Apostles, 'The door
+of faith.' A door is of little value in itself, worth a few shillings at
+the most, but if it opens the way into a palace then it is worth
+something. And all the preciousness that there is in faith comes, not
+from its intrinsic value, but from the really precious things which it
+gives into our hands. Just as the dyer's hand may be tinged with royal
+purple, if he has been working in it, or a woman's hand may be scented
+and made fragrant if she has been handling perfumes, so the hand of
+faith takes tint and fragrance from that with which it is conversant. It
+is precious because it is the channel by which all precious things flow
+into our hearts and lives. If Ladysmith is, as I suppose it is,
+dependent for its water supply on one lead pipe, the preciousness of
+that pipe is not measured by what it would fetch if it were put up to
+auction for its lead, but by that which flows through it, and without
+which Death would come. And my faith is the pipe by which all the water
+of life comes sparkling and rejoicing into my thirsty soul. It is the
+opening of the door 'that the King of Glory may come in'; it is the
+taking down of the shutters that the sunshine may blaze into the
+darkened chamber; it is the grasping of the electric wire that the
+circuit may be completed. God puts out His hand, and we lay hold of it.
+It is not the outstretched hand from earth, but the down-stretched hand
+from heaven that makes the tottering man stand. So, dear friends, let us
+understand that salvation does not come as the reward of faith, but that
+the salvation is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_175" id="Page_2_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> <i>in</i> the faith, because faith is the channel by which
+all God's salvation pours into us. So there is nothing arbitrary in the
+way of salvation, as some shallow thinkers seem to propose, and there is
+no reason in the question, 'Why does God make salvation depend upon
+faith?' God could not but make salvation depend upon faith, because
+there is no other possible way by which the blessings which are gathered
+together into that one great pregnant word 'salvation' could find their
+way into a man's heart but through the channel of his trust. Have you
+opened that channel? If you have not, you need not wonder it cannot be
+otherwise&mdash;that salvation does not come unto you.</p>
+
+<p>Consider its worth as a defence. The Apostle in one place speaks about
+'the shield of faith.' But there is nothing in the belief that I am safe
+to make me safe. It is very often a fatal blunder. All depends upon that
+or Him, to which or whom I am trusting for my safety. Put yourself
+beneath the true Shield&mdash;'The Lord God is a sun and shield'&mdash;and then
+you will be safe. Your way of running into the strong tower which alone,
+with its massive walls, protects us from all danger and from all sin, is
+by trusting Him.</p>
+
+<p>Just as light things on a ship's deck have to be lashed in order to be
+secured and lie still, you and I have to lash ourselves to Jesus Christ;
+then, not by reason of the lashings, but by reason of Him, we are
+fastened and secured.</p>
+
+<p>Consider the worth of faith as a means of purifying. This very Apostle,
+in his great speech in Jerusalem, when vindicating the reception of the
+Gentiles into the Church, spoke of God as having 'purified their hearts
+by faith.' And here again, I say, there is no cleansing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_176" id="Page_2_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> power in the
+act of trust. Cleansing power is in that which, by the act of trust,
+comes into my heart. Faith is not simple receptivity, not mere passive
+absorbing of what is given, but it is the active taking by desire as
+well as by confidence. And when we trust in Jesus Christ, His blood and
+righteousness, there flows into our hearts that Divine life which, like
+a river turned into a dung-heap, will sweep all the filth before it. You
+have to get the purifying power by faith. Ay! and you have to utilise
+the purifying power by effort and by work. 'What God hath joined
+together, let not men put asunder.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Now, lastly, note the identity of faith.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Like</i> precious,' says Peter, and, as I said, there may be defended a
+double application of the word, and two sets of pairs of classes may be
+supposed to have been in his mind. I do not discuss which of these may
+be the case, only I would suggest to you that from this beautiful
+gathering together of all the diversities of the Christian character,
+conception, and development into one great whole, we are taught that the
+one thing that makes a Christian is this trust. That is the universal
+characteristic; that is uniform, whatever may differ. Ah! how much and
+how little it takes to make a Christian. 'Only faith?' you say. Yes,
+thank God! not this, or that, not rites, not anything that a priest can
+do to you. Not orthodoxy; not morality; these will come, but trust in
+Christ and His blood and righteousness. England is a Christian country;
+is it? This is a Christian congregation; is it? You are a Christian; are
+you? Are you trusting in that Christ? If you are not; no! though you be
+orthodox up to the eyebrows, and though seven or seven hundred
+sacraments may have been given to you,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_177" id="Page_2_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> and though you be a clean living
+man&mdash;all that does not make a Christian, but <i>this</i> does&mdash;'Like precious
+faith with us in the righteousness of God and our Saviour.'</p>
+
+<p>Again, this great thought of the identity or uniformity of the one
+characteristic may suggest to us how Christian faith is one, under all
+varieties of form. There never has been in the Christian Church again,
+notwithstanding all our deplorable divisions and schisms, such a
+tremendous cleft as there was in the primitive Church between the Jewish
+and Gentile components thereof. But Peter flings this flying bridge
+across that abyss, and knits the two sides together, because he knows
+that away out yonder, amongst the Gentiles, and here in the little
+circle of the Jewish believers, there was the one faith that unifies
+all.</p>
+
+<p>So, dear friends, there should be the widest charity, but no vagueness;
+for the Christian faith in Him which unifies and bridges over all
+differences, mental and theological, is the Christ by whose blood we are
+cleansed, with whose righteousness we are made righteous.</p>
+
+<p>Again, from the same thought flows the other, of the identity of the
+uniform characteristic, at all stages of development or maturity. The
+mustard-seed and the tree, 'which is greater than all herbs,' have the
+same life in them. And the feeblest, tremulous little spark in some
+heart, just kindled, and scarcely capable of sustaining itself, is one
+with the flame leaping heaven-high, which lights up and cleanses the
+whole soul. So for those in advance, humility, and for those in the
+rear, hope. And something more than hope, for if you have the feeblest
+beginning of tremulous trust, you have that which only needs to be
+fostered to make you like Jesus Christ. Look at what follows our text:
+'Add to your faith, virtue,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_178" id="Page_2_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> and to virtue, knowledge,' and so on,
+through the whole linked series of Christian graces. They all come out
+of that trust which knits us to Him who is the source of them all. So
+you and I are responsible for bringing our faith to the highest
+development of which it is capable.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! alas! are we not all like this very Apostle, who, in an ecstasy of
+trust and longing, ventured himself on the wave, and as soon as he felt
+the cold water creeping above his knees lost his trust, and so lost his
+buoyancy, and was ready to go down like a stone? He had so little faith,
+that he was beginning to sink; he had so much that he put out his
+hand&mdash;a desperate hand it was&mdash;and cried, 'Lord, save me!' And the hand
+came, and that steadied him, and bore him up till the water was beneath
+the soles of his feet again. 'Lord! I believe; help Thou my unbelief!'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="MAN_SUMMONED_BY_GODS_GLORY_AND_ENERGY" id="MAN_SUMMONED_BY_GODS_GLORY_AND_ENERGY"></a>MAN SUMMONED BY GOD'S GLORY AND ENERGY</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'... His Divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain
+unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath
+called us to glory and virtue.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 3.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'I knew thee,' said the idle servant in our Lord's parable, 'that thou
+wert an austere man, reaping where thou didst not sow, and gathering
+where thou hadst not strewed. I was afraid, and went and hid my talent
+in the earth.' Our Lord would teach us all with that pregnant word the
+great truth that if once a man gets it into his head that God's
+principal relation to him is to demand, and to command, you will get no
+work out of that man; that such a notion will paralyse all activity and
+cut the nerve of all service. And the converse is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_179" id="Page_2_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> as true, namely, that
+the one thought about God, which is fruitful of all blessing, joy,
+spontaneous, glad activity, is the thought of Him as giving, and not of
+demanding, of bestowing, and not of commanding. Teach a man that he is,
+as the book of James has it,'the giving God,' and let that thought soak
+into the man's heart and mind, and you will get any work out of him. And
+only when that thought is deep in the spirit will there be true service.</p>
+
+<p>Now that is the connection in which the words of my text come; for they
+are laid as the broad foundation of the great commandment that follows:
+'Beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to
+your virtue knowledge,' and so on, all the round of the ladder by which
+the Apostle represents us as climbing up to God. The foundation of this
+injunction is&mdash;God has given you everything. You have got it to begin
+with, and so do you set yourselves to work, and see that you make the
+thing that is yours your own, and incorporate into your being and into
+the very substance of your soul, and work out in all the blessed
+activities of a Christian life, the gifts that His royal and kingly hand
+has bestowed upon you. Take for granted that God loves you and gives you
+His whole self, and work on in the fulness of His possessed gift.</p>
+
+<p>That is the connection of the words before us. I take them just as they
+lie in our passage, dealing first of all with this question&mdash;God's call
+to you and me; how it is done. Now I do not know if I can venture to
+indulge any remarks about Biblical criticism, but you will perhaps bear
+with me just for a moment whilst I say that the people who know a great
+deal more about such subjects than either you or I, agree with one
+consent that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_180" id="Page_2_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> the proper way of reading this verse of my text is not as
+our Bible has it; 'Him that has called us <i>to</i> glory and virtue,' but
+'Him that hath called us <i>by</i>&mdash;by his own glory and virtue.' Do you see
+the difference? In one case the language expresses the things in
+imitation of the Divine nature to which God summons you and me when He
+calls us. That is how our Bible has taken it; but the deeper thought
+still is the things in that Divine nature and activity itself which
+constitute His great summons and invitation of men to His side; and
+these are the two, whatever they might be, which the Apostle here
+describes in that rather peculiar and unusual language for Scripture,
+'Who has called us by His own glory and His own virtue.' I venture to
+dwell on these two points for a moment or two.</p>
+
+<p>Now, first of all, God's glory. Threadbare and consequently vague as the
+expression is in the minds of a great many people who have heard it with
+their ears ever since they were little children, God's glory has a very
+distinct and definite meaning in Scripture, and all starts, as I think,
+from the Old Testament use of the expression, which was the distinct
+specific name for the supernatural light that lay between the cherubim,
+and brooded over the ark on the mercy-seat. The word signifies
+specifically and originally the glory of God, and irradiation of a
+material, though supernatural, symbol of His Divine and spiritual
+presence. Very well, lay hold of that material picture, for God teaches
+us as we do our children, with pictures. Take the symbol and lift it up
+into the spiritual region, and it is just this: the glory of God in its
+deepest meaning is the irradiation and the perpetual pouring out and out
+and out from Himself, as the rays of the sun stream out from its great
+orb, pouring out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_181" id="Page_2_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> from Himself the light and the perfectness and the
+beauty of His own self revelation. And I think we may fairly translate
+and paraphrase the first words of my text into this: God's great way of
+summoning men to Himself is by laying out His love upon them and letting
+the fulness of that ineffable and uncreated light, in which is no
+darkness at all, stream into the else blinded and hopeless lives and
+hearts of men. Then the other side of the Apostle's thought seems to
+me&mdash;if we will only strip it of the threadbare technicalities associated
+with it&mdash;as great and wonderful, God's glory and God's virtue. A
+heathenish kind of smack lingers about that word, both as applied to men
+and as applied to God, and so seldom found in the New Testament; but
+meaning here, as I venture to say, without stopping to show it&mdash;meaning
+here substantially the same thing that we mean by that word energy or
+power. You know old women in country places talk about the virtues of
+plants. They do not mean by this the goodness of plants, but they mean
+the occult powers which they suppose them able to put forth. We read in
+one of the gospels that our Lord Himself said at one singular period of
+His life that virtue had gone out of Him, meaning thereby not goodness
+but energy. So I think we get a sufficient equivalent to the Apostle's
+meaning if for the second two words of my text we read, 'He hath called
+us by the glory, the raying out of his love, and He hath called us by
+the activity and the energy, the power in action of His great and
+illustrious Spirit.' So you see these two things, the light that streams
+out of an energy which is born of the streaming light. These two things
+are really at bottom but one, various aspects of one idea. Modern
+physicists tell us that all the activity in the system comes from the
+sun,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_182" id="Page_2_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> and in the higher region all the activity comes from the sun, and
+there is no mightier force in the physical universe than the sunlight.
+Lightnings are vulgar, noisy, and limited in contrast. The
+all-conquering force is the light that streams out, and so says Peter in
+his vivid picturesque way&mdash;not meaning the mere talk of philosophy or
+theology&mdash;the manifestation of the glory of God is the mightiest force
+in the whole universe. It is not like the play of the moonbeam upon an
+iceberg, ineffectual, cold, merely touching the death without melting or
+warming it, but it rays out like the sun in the heavens, and the work
+done by the light is mightier than all our work. By His glory, and by
+the transcendent energies which reside in that illustrious manifestation
+of the uncreated light, God summons men to Himself. Well, if that is
+anything like fair exposition of the words before us, let me just ask
+you before I go further to stop on them for one moment. If I may venture
+to say so, put off your theological spectacles for a minute, and do not
+let us harden this thought down with any mere dogma that can be selected
+in the language of the creeds. Let us try and put it into words a little
+less hackneyed. Suppose, instead of talking about calling, you were to
+talk about inviting, summoning, beckoning; or I might use tenderer words
+still&mdash;beseeching, wooing, entreating; for all that lies in the thought.
+God summoning and calling, in that sense, men to Himself, by the raying
+out of His own perfect beauty, and the might with which the beams go
+forth into the darkness. Ah! is not that beautiful, dear brethren; that
+there is nothing more, indeed, for God to do to draw us to Himself than
+to let us see what He is? So perfectly fair, so sweet, so tender, so
+strong, so absolutely corresponding to all the necessities of our
+beings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_183" id="Page_2_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> and the hunger of our hearts, that when we see Him we cannot
+choose but love Him, and that He can do nothing more to call wandering
+hearts back to the light and sweetness of His own heart than to show
+them Himself. And so from all corners of His universe, and in every
+activity of His hand and heart and spirit, we can hear a voice saying,
+'Son, give me thine heart.' 'Oh! taste and see that God is good.'
+'Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace; thereby good shall come
+unto thee.'</p>
+
+<p>But great and wonderful as such a thought seems to be when we look at it
+in the freshness which belongs to it, do you suppose that that was all
+that Peter was thinking about? Do you think that a wide, general, and if
+you leave it by itself, vague utterance like that which I have been
+indulging in, would give all the specific precision and fulness of the
+meaning of the word before us? I think not. I fancy that when this
+Apostle wrote these words he remembered a time long, long ago, when
+somebody stood by the little fishing-cobble there, and as the men were
+up to their knees in slush and dirt, washing their nets, said to them,
+'Follow Me.' I think that was in Peter's estimate God's call to him by
+God's glory and by God's virtue. And so I pause there for a moment to
+say that all the lustrous pouring out of light, all that transcendent
+energy of active love, is not diffused nebulous through a universe; it
+is not even spread in that sense over all the deeds of His hand; but
+whilst it is everywhere, it has a focus and a centre and a fire. The
+fire is gathered into the Son, Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ in His manhood
+and in His Deity; Jesus Christ in His life, passion, death,
+resurrection, ascension, and kingly reign. The whole creation, as this
+New Testament pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_184" id="Page_2_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>claims Him to us, is God's glory and God's virtue,
+whereby He draws men to Himself. I cannot stay to dwell on that thought
+as I should be glad to do. Let me just remind you of the two parts into
+which it splits itself up; and I commend it, dogmatically as I have to
+state it in such an audience as this&mdash;I commend it to the multitudes of
+young men here present. The highest form of the Divine glory is Jesus
+Christ, not the attributes with which men clothe the Divinity, not those
+abstractions which you find in books of theology. All that is but the
+fringe of the glory. And I tell you, dear friends, the living white
+light at the centre and heart of all the radiance of the flame is the
+light of life which is conveyed into the gentle Christ. As the Apostle
+John has it, 'We beheld His glory.' Yes, and taking and binding together
+the two words which people have so often treated against each other, 'We
+beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full
+of grace and truth,' the highest light in Him that says, 'I am the light
+of the world'&mdash;very light of very light. As a much maligned document has
+it,'very light of very light,' the brightness of His glory, the
+irradiation of His splendour, and the express image of His person. And
+as the light so the power. Christ the power; power in its highest,
+noblest form, the power of patient gentleness and Divine suffering;
+power in its widest sweep, 'unto every one that believeth'; power in its
+most wondrous operation, 'the power of God unto salvation.' So I come to
+you, I hope, with one message on my lips and in my heart. If you want
+light, look to Christ. If you want to behold that unveiled face, the
+glory of the Lord, turn to Him, and let His sunshine smite you on the
+face as the light smote Stephen, and then you can say, 'He that hath
+seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_185" id="Page_2_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> Him hath seen the Father.' My brother, the highest, noblest,
+perfect, and, as I believe, final form in which all God's glory, all
+God's energy, are gathered together, and make their appeal to you and
+me, was when a Galilean peasant stood up in a little knot of forgotten
+Jews and said to them, and through them to you and me, 'Come unto Me all
+ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' He calls
+by His glory and by His virtue.</p>
+
+<p>Now still further. Confining myself as before to the words as they lie
+here in this text, let me ask you to think, and that for a moment or two
+only, on the great and wondrous purpose which this Divine energy and
+light had in view in summoning us to itself. His Divine power hath given
+unto us all things that pertain to life and all things that pertain to
+godliness. Look at that! One of the old Psalms says: 'Gather my saints
+together unto me, those who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice;
+assemble them all before my throne, and I will judge my people.' Is that
+the last and final revelation of God's purpose of drawing men to Him? Is
+that why He sends out His heralds and summons through the whole
+intelligent creation? Nay, something better. Not to judge, not to
+scourge, not to chastise, not to avenge. To give. This is the meaning of
+that summons that comes out through the whole earth, 'Come up hither,'
+that when we get there we may be flooded with the richness of His mercy,
+and that He may pour His whole soul out over us in the greatness of His
+gifts. This is God, and the perpetual activity summoning men to Himself
+that there He may bless them. He makes our hearts empty that He may fill
+them. He shapes us as we are that we may need Him and may recreate
+ourselves in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_186" id="Page_2_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> Him. He says, 'Bring all your vessels and I will fill them
+full.' Now look in this part of my subject at what I may venture to call
+the magnificent confidence that this Peter has in the&mdash;what shall I
+say?&mdash;the encyclop&aelig;dical&mdash;if I may use a long word&mdash;and universal
+character of God. All things that pertain to life, all things that
+pertain to godliness. And somebody says, 'Yes, that is tautology, that
+is saying the same thing twice over in different language.' Never mind,
+says Peter, so much the better, it will help to express the exuberant
+abundance and fulness. He takes a leaf out of his brother Paul's book.
+He is often guilty when he speaks of God's gifts of that same sin of
+tautology, as for instance, 'Now unto Him who is able to do exceeding,
+abundantly, above all'&mdash;there are four of them&mdash;'all that we can ask or
+think.' Yes, in all forms language is but faint and feeble, weak and
+poor in the presence of that great miracle of a love that passeth
+knowledge and that we may know the heights and depths. And so says our
+Apostle, 'All things that pertain to life, all things that pertain to
+godliness.' The whole circle all round, all the 360 degrees of it, God's
+love will come down and lie on the top of it as it were, superimposed,
+so that there should not be a single gift where there is a flaw or a
+defect. Everything you want of life, everything you want for godliness.
+Yes, of course, the gift must bear some kind of proportion to the giver.
+You do not expect a millionaire to put down half a crown to a
+subscription list if he gives anything at all. And God says to you and
+me, 'Come and look at My storehouses, count if you can those golden
+vases filled with treasure, look at those massive ingots of bullion,
+gaze into the vanishing distances of the infiniteness of My nature and
+of My possessions, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_187" id="Page_2_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> then listen to Me. I give thee Myself&mdash;Myself,
+that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God. All things that
+pertain to life, all things that pertain to godliness. But I cannot pass
+on from this part of my subject without venturing one more remark. It is
+this: I do not suppose it is too minute, verbal criticism. This great
+encyclop&aelig;diacal gift is represented in my text, not as a thing that you
+are going to get, Christian men and women, but as a thing that you have
+gotten. And any of you that are able to test the correctness of my
+assertion will see I have thought the form of language used in the
+original is such as to point still more specifically than in our
+translation, to some one definite act in the past in which all that
+fulness of glory and virtue of life and godliness was given to us men.
+Is there any doubt as to what that is? We talk sometimes as if we had to
+ask God to give us more. God cannot give you any more than He gave you
+nineteen hundred years ago. It was all in Christ. Get a very vulgar
+illustration which is altogether inadequate for a great many purposes,
+but may serve for one. Suppose some man told you that there was a
+thousand pounds paid to your credit at a London bank, and that you were
+to get the use of it as you drew cheques against it. Well, the money is
+there, is it not? The gift is given, and yet for all that you may be
+dying, and half-dead, a pauper. I was reading a book only the other day
+which contained a story that comes in here. An Arctic expedition, some
+years ago, found an ammunition chest that Commander Parry had left fifty
+years ago, safe under a pile of stones. The wood of the chest had not
+rotted yet; the provisions inside of it were perfectly sweet, and good,
+and eatable. There it had lain all those years. Men had died of
+starvation within arm's length<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_188" id="Page_2_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> of it. It was there all the same. And
+so, if I might venture to vulgarise the great theme that I try to speak
+about, God has given us His Son, and in Him, all that pertains to life
+and all that pertains to godliness. My brother, take the things that are
+freely given to you of God.</p>
+
+<p>And so that leads me to one last word, and it shall only be a word, in
+regard to what our text tells us of the way by which on our side we can
+yield to this Divine call, and receive this Divine fulness of gifts,
+through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory. Through the
+knowledge! Yes, well there are two kinds of knowledge, are there not?
+There is the knowledge by which you know a book, for instance, on the
+subject of study, and there is the knowledge by which you know one
+another; and the kind of thing I mean when I say, 'I know mathematics,'
+is entirely different to what I mean when I say, 'I know John, Thomas,'
+or whoever he may be. And I venture to say that the knowledge, which is
+the condition of receiving the whole fulness of the glory and the whole
+fulness of the light, is a great deal more like the thing we mean when
+we talk of knowing one another than when we talk of knowing a book. That
+is to say, a man may have all the creeds and confessions of faith clear
+in his head, and yet none of the life, none of the light, none of the
+power, and none of the godliness. But if we know Him as our brother,
+know Him as our friend, our sacrifice, our Redeemer, Lord, all in all;
+know Him as our heaven, our righteousness, and our strength; if we know
+Him with the knowledge which is possession; if we know Him with the
+knowledge which, as the profoundest of the Apostles says, 'hath the
+truth in life'; if we know Him, see then, 'This is life eternal, to
+know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_189" id="Page_2_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, friends, my words are done. God is calling you. No, let us put it a
+little more definitely than that&mdash;God is calling <i>thee</i>. There is no
+speech nor language where His voice is not heard. His words are gone out
+to the end of the world, and have reached even thyself. He calls thee,
+oh! brother, sister, friend, that you and I may turn round to Him and
+say, 'When Thou saidst, Seek ye my face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy
+face, Lord, will I seek.' Amen.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PARTAKERS_OF_THE_DIVINE_NATURE" id="PARTAKERS_OF_THE_DIVINE_NATURE"></a>PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'He hath given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that
+by these ye might be partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped
+the corruption that is in the world through lust.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 4.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'Partakers of the Divine nature.' These are bold words, and may be so
+understood as to excite the wildest and most presumptuous dreams. But
+bold as they are, and startling as they may sound to some of us, they
+are only putting into other language the teaching of which the whole New
+Testament is full, that men may, and do, by their faith, receive into
+their spirits a real communication of the life of God. What else does
+the language about being 'the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty'
+mean? What else does the teaching of regeneration mean? What else mean
+Christ's frequent declarations that He dwells in us and we in Him, as
+the branch in the vine, as the members in the body? What else does 'he
+that is joined to the Lord in one spirit' mean? Do not all teach that in
+some most real sense the very pur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_190" id="Page_2_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>pose of Christianity, for which God
+has sent His Son, and His Son has come, is that we, poor, sinful, weak,
+limited, ignorant creatures as we are, may be lifted up into that solemn
+and awful elevation, and receive in our trembling and yet strengthened
+souls a spark of God? 'That ye may be partakers of the Divine nature'
+means more than 'that you may share in the blessings which that nature
+bestows.' It means that into us may come the very God Himself.</p>
+
+<p>I. So I want you to look with me, first, at this lofty purpose which is
+here presented as being the very aim and end of God's gift in the
+gospel.</p>
+
+<p>The human nature and the Divine are both kindred and contrary. And the
+whole Bible is remarkable for the emphasis with which it insists upon
+both these elements of the comparison, declaring, on the one hand, as no
+other religion has ever declared, the supreme sovereign, unapproachable
+elevation of the infinite Being above all creatures, and on the other
+hand, holding forth the hope, as no other religion has ever ventured to
+do, of the possible union of the loftiest and the lowest, and the
+lifting of the creature into union with God Himself. There are no gods
+of the heathen so far away from their worshippers, and there are none so
+near them, as our God. There is no god that men have bowed before, so
+unlike the devotee; and there is no system which recognises that, as is
+the Maker so are the made, in such thorough-going fashion as the Bible
+does. The arched heaven, though high above us, it is not inaccessible in
+its serene and cloudless beauty, but it touches earth all round the
+horizon, and man is made in the image of God.</p>
+
+<p>True, that divine nature of which the ideal man is the possessor has
+faded away from humanity. But still the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_191" id="Page_2_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> human is kindred with the
+divine. The drop of water is of one nature with the boundless ocean that
+rolls shoreless beyond the horizon, and stretches plumbless into the
+abysses. The tiniest spark of flame is of the same nature as those
+leaping, hydrogen spears of illuminated gas that spring hundreds of
+thousands of miles high in a second or two in the great central sun.</p>
+
+<p>And though on the one hand there be finiteness and on the other
+infinitude: though we have to talk, in big words, of which we have very
+little grasp, about 'Omniscience,' and 'Omnipresence,' and 'Eternity,'
+and such like, these things may be deducted and yet the Divine nature
+may be retained; and the poor, ignorant, finite, dying creature, that
+perishes before the moth, may say, 'I am kindred with Him whose years
+know no end; whose wisdom knows no uncertainty nor growth; whose power
+is Omnipotence; and whose presence is everywhere.' He that can say, 'I
+am,' is of the same nature as His whose mighty proclamation of Himself
+is '<span class="smcap">I AM THAT I AM.</span>' He who can say 'I will' is of the same nature as He
+who willeth and it is done.</p>
+
+<p>But that kindred, belonging to every soul of man, abject as well as
+loftiest, is not the 'partaking' of which my text speaks; though it is
+the basis and possibility of it; for my text speaks of men as
+'<i>becoming</i> partakers,' and of that participation as the result, not of
+humanity, but of God's gift of 'exceeding great and precious promises.'
+That creation in the image and likeness of God, which is represented as
+crowned by the very breath of God breathed into man's nostrils implies
+not only kindred with God in personality and self-conscious will, but
+also in purity and holiness. The moral kindred has darkened into
+unlikeness, but the other remains. It is not the gift<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_192" id="Page_2_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> here spoken of,
+but it supplies the basis which makes that gift possible. A dog could
+not become possessor of the Divine nature, in the sense in which my text
+speaks of it. Any man, however bad, however foolish, however degraded,
+abject and savage, can become a partaker of it, and yet no man has it
+without something else than the fact of his humanity.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, is it? No mere absorption, as extravagant mystics have
+dreamed, into that Divine nature, as a drop goes back into the ocean and
+is lost. There will always be 'I' and 'thou,' or else there were no
+blessedness, nor worship, nor joy. We must so partake of the Divine
+nature as that the bounds between the bestowing God and the partaking
+man shall never be broken down. But that being presupposed, union as
+close as is possible, the individuality of the giver and the receiver
+being untampered with is the great hope that all Christian men and women
+ought consciously to cherish.</p>
+
+<p>Only mark, the beginning of the whole is the communication of a Divine
+life which is manifested mainly in what we call moral likeness. Or to
+put it into plain words, the teaching of my text is no dreamy teaching,
+such as an eastern mystic might proclaim, of absorption into an
+impersonal Divine. There is no notion here of any partaking of these
+great though secondary attributes of the Divine mind which to many men
+are the most Godlike parts of His nature. But what my text mainly means
+is, you may, if you like, become 'holy as God is holy.' You may become
+loving as God is loving, and with a breath of His own life breathed into
+your hearts. The central Divinity in the Divine, if I may so say, is the
+amalgam of holiness and love. That is God; the rest is what belongs to
+God. God <i>has</i> power; God <i>is</i> love.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_193" id="Page_2_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> That is the regnant attribute, the
+spring that sets everything agoing. And so, when my text talks about
+making us all, if we will, partakers of a Divine nature, what it means,
+mainly, is this&mdash;that into every human spirit there may pass a seed of
+Divine life which will unfold itself there in all purity of holiness, in
+all tenderness and gentleness of love. 'God is love; and he that
+dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' Partakers we shall be
+in the measure in which by our faith we have drawn from Him the pure and
+the hearty love of whatever things are fair and noble; the measure in
+which we love righteousness and hate iniquity.</p>
+
+<p>And then remember also that this lofty purpose which is here set forth
+is a purpose growingly realised in man. The Apostle puts great stress
+upon that word in my text, which, unfortunately, is not rendered
+adequately in our Bible, 'that by these ye might <i>become</i> partakers of
+the Divine nature.' He is not talking about a <i>being</i>, but about a
+<i>becoming</i>. That is to say, God must ever be passing, moment by moment,
+into our hearts if there is to be anything godly there. No more
+certainly must this building, if we are to see, be continually filled
+with light-beams that are urged from the central sun by its impelling
+force than the spirit must be receiving, by momentary communication, the
+gift of life from God if it is to live. Cut off the sunbeam from the sun
+and it dies, and the house is dark; cut off the life from the root and
+it withers, and the creature shrivels. The Christian man lives only by
+continual derivation of life from God; and for ever and ever the secret
+of his being and of his blessedness is not that he has become a
+possessor, but that he has become a partaker, of the Divine nature.</p>
+
+<p>And that participation ought to, and will, be a growing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_194" id="Page_2_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> thing. By daily
+increase we shall be made capable of daily increase. Life is growth; the
+Divine life in Him is not growth, but in us it does grow, and our
+infancy will be turned into youth; and our youth into maturity; and,
+blessed be His name, the maturity will be a growing one, to which grey
+hairs and feebleness will never come, nor a term ever be set. More and
+more of God we may receive every day we live, and through the endless
+ages of eternity; and if we have Him in our hearts, we shall live as
+long as there is anything more to pass from God to us. Until the
+fountain has poured its whole fulness into the cistern, the cistern will
+never be broken. He who becomes partaker of the Divine nature can never
+die. So as Christ taught us the great argument for immortality is the
+present relation between God and us, and the fact that He is the God of
+Abraham points to the resurrection life.</p>
+
+<p>II. Look, in the second place, at the costly and sufficient means
+employed for the realisation of this great purpose. 'He hath given to us
+exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might become
+partakers,' etc.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the mere words of a promise will not communicate this Divine
+life to men's souls. 'Promises' here must necessarily, I think, be
+employed in the sense of fulfilment of the promises. And so we might
+think of all the great and wondrous words which God has spoken in the
+past, promises of deliverance, of forgiveness, and the like; but I am
+rather disposed to believe that the extreme emphasis of the epithets
+which the Apostle selects to describe these promised things now
+fulfilled suggests another interpretation.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that by these 'exceeding great and precious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_195" id="Page_2_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> promises' is
+meant the unspeakable gift of God's own Son, and the gift therein and
+thereafter of God's life-giving Spirit. For is not this the meaning of
+the central fact of Christianity, the incarnation&mdash;that the Divine
+becomes partaker of the human in order that the human may partake of the
+Divine? Is not Christ's coming the great proof that however high the
+heavens may stretch above the flat, sad earth, still the Divine nature
+and the human are so kindred that God can enter into humanity and be
+manifest in the flesh? Contrariety vanishes; the difference between the
+creature and the Creator disappears. These mere distinctions of power
+and weakness, of infinitude and finiteness, of wisdom and of ignorance,
+of undying being and decaying life, vanish, as of secondary consequence,
+when we can say, 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.' There can
+be no insuperable obstacle to man's being lifted up into a union with
+the Divine, since the Divine found no insuperable obstacle in descending
+to enter into union with the human.</p>
+
+<p>So then, because God has given us His Son it is clear that we may become
+partakers of the Divine nature; inasmuch as He, the Divine, has become
+partaker of the children's flesh and blood, and in that coming of the
+Divine into the human there was brought the seed and the germ of a life
+which can be granted to us all. Brethren! there is one way, and one way
+only, by which any of us can partake of this great and wondrous gift of
+a share in God, and it is through Jesus Christ. 'No man hath ascended up
+into Heaven,' nor ever will either climb or fly there, 'save He that
+came down from Heaven; even the Son of man which is in Heaven.' And in
+Him we may ascend, and in Him we may receive God.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_196" id="Page_2_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Christ is the true Prometheus, if I may so speak, who brings to earth in
+the fragile reed of his humanity the sacred and immortal fire which may
+be kindled in every heart. Open your hearts to Him by faith and He will
+come in, and with Him the rejoicing life which will triumph over the
+death of self and sin, and give to you a share in the nature of God.</p>
+
+<p>III. Let me say, lastly, that this great text adds a human accompaniment
+of that Divine gift: 'Having escaped the corruption that is in the world
+through lust.'</p>
+
+<p>The only condition of receiving this Divine nature is the opening of the
+heart by faith to Him, the Divine human Christ, who is the bond between
+men and God, and gives it to us. But that condition being presupposed,
+this important clause supplies the conduct which attends and attests the
+possession of the Divine nature.</p>
+
+<p>Notice, here is human nature without God, described as 'the corruption
+that is in the world in lust.' It is like a fungus, foul-smelling,
+slimy, poisonous; whose growth looks rather the working of decay than of
+vitality. And, says my text, that is the kind of thing that human nature
+is if God is <i>not</i> in it. There is an 'either' and 'or' here. On the one
+hand we must have a share in the Divine nature, or, on the other, we
+have a share in the putrescence 'that is in the world through lust.'</p>
+
+<p>Corruption is initial destruction, though of course other forms of life
+may come from it; destruction is complete corruption. The word means
+both. A man either escapes from lust and evil, or he is destroyed by
+it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_197" id="Page_2_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And the root of this rotting fungus is 'in lust,' which word, of course,
+is used in a much wider meaning than the fleshly sense in which we
+employ it in modern times. It means 'desire' of all sorts. The root of
+the world's corruption is my own and my brothers' unbridled and godless
+desires.</p>
+
+<p>So there are two states&mdash;a life plunged in putridity, or a heart touched
+with the Divine nature. Which is it to be? It cannot be both. It must be
+one or the other. Which?</p>
+
+<p>A man that has got the life of God, in however feeble measure, in him,
+will flee away from this corruption like Lot out of Sodom. And how will
+he flee out of it? By subduing his own desires; not by changing
+position, not by shirking duty, not by withdrawing himself into
+unwholesome isolation from men and men's ways. The corruption is not
+only 'in the world,' so that you could get rid of it by getting out of
+the world, but it is 'in the world in lust,' so that you carry the
+fountain of it within yourself. The only way to escape is by no outward
+flight, but by casting out the unclean thing from our own souls.</p>
+
+<p>Depend upon it, the measure in which a man has the love of God in him
+can be very fairly estimated by the extent to which he is doing this.
+There is a test for you Christian people. There have been plenty of men
+and women in all ages of the Church, and they abound in this generation,
+who will make no scruple of declaring that they possess a portion of
+this Divine Spirit and a spark of God in their souls. Well then, I say,
+here is the test, bring it all to this&mdash;does that life within you cast
+out your own evil desires? If it does, well; if it does not, the less
+you say about Christ in your hearts the less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_198" id="Page_2_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> likely you will be to
+become either a hypocrite, or a self-deceiver.</p>
+
+<p>And so, brethren, remember, one last word, viz., that whilst on the one
+hand whoever has the life of God in his heart will be fleeing from this
+corruption, on the other hand you can weaken&mdash;ay! and you can kill the
+Divine life by not so fleeing. You have got it, if you have it, to
+nourish, to cherish, and to do that most of all by obeying it. If you do
+not obey, and if habitually you keep the plant with all its buds picked
+off one after another as they begin to form, you will kill it sooner or
+later. You Christian men and women take warning. God has given you Jesus
+Christ. It was worth while for Christ to live; it was worth while for
+Christ to die, in order that into the souls of all sinful,
+God-forgetting, devil-following men there might pass this Promethean
+spark of the true fire.</p>
+
+<p>You get it, if you will, by simple faith. You will not keep it unless
+you obey it. Mind you do not quench the Holy Spirit, and extinguish the
+very life of God in your souls.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_POWER_OF_DILIGENCE" id="THE_POWER_OF_DILIGENCE"></a>THE POWER OF DILIGENCE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Giving all diligence, add to your faith ...'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 5.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It seems to me very like Peter that there should be so much in this
+letter about the very commonplace and familiar excellence of diligence.
+He over and over again exhorts to it as the one means to the attainment
+of all Christian graces, and of all the blessedness of the Christian
+life. We do not expect fine-spun counsels from a teacher whose natural
+bent is, like his, but plain, sturdy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_199" id="Page_2_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> common sense, directed to the
+highest matter, and set aglow by fervent love to his Lord. The Apostle
+paints himself, and his own way of Christian living, when he thus
+frequently exhorts his brethren to 'give all diligence.' He says in this
+same chapter that he himself will 'give diligence [<i>endeavour</i>, in
+Authorised Version] that they may be able after his decease to have
+these things always in remembrance.' We seem to see Peter, not much
+accustomed to wield a pen, sitting down to what he felt a somewhat
+difficult task, and pointing the readers to his own example as an
+instance of the temper which they must cherish if they are to make
+anything of their Christian life. 'Just as I labour for your sakes at
+this unfamiliar work of writing, so do you toil at perfecting your
+Christian graces.'</p>
+
+<p>Now it strikes me that we may gain some instruction if we throw together
+the various objects to which in Scripture, and especially in this
+letter, we are exhorted to direct this virtue of diligence, and mark how
+comprehensive its range, and how, for all beauty of character and
+progress in the Divine life, it is regarded as an indispensable
+condition. Let us then look, first, at the homely excellence that is the
+master-key to all Christian maturity and grace, and then at the various
+fields in which we are to apply it.</p>
+
+<p>I. Now as to the homely virtue itself, 'giving all diligence.'</p>
+
+<p>We all know what 'diligence' means, but it is worth while to point out
+that the original meaning of the word is not so much <i>diligence</i> as
+<i>haste</i>. It is employed, for instance, to describe the eager swiftness
+with which the Virgin went to Elizabeth after the angel's salutation and
+annunciation. It is the word employed to describe the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_200" id="Page_2_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> murderous hurry
+with which Herodias came rushing in to the king to demand John the
+Baptist's head. It is the word with which the Apostle, left solitary in
+his prison, besought his sole trusty companion Timothy to 'make haste so
+as to come to him before winter.' Thus, the first notion in the word is
+haste, which crowds every moment with continuous effort, and lets no
+hindrances entangle the feet of the runner. Wise haste has sometimes to
+be content to go slowly. 'Raw haste' is 'half sister to delay.' When
+haste degenerates into hurry, and becomes agitation, it is weakness, not
+strength; it turns out superficial work, which has usually to be pulled
+to pieces and done over again, and it is sure to be followed by reaction
+of languid idleness. But the less we hurry the more should we hasten in
+running the race set before us.</p>
+
+<p>But with this caution against spurious haste, we cannot too seriously
+lay to heart the solemn motives to wise and well-directed haste. The
+moments granted to any of us are too few and precious to let slip
+unused. The field to be cultivated is too wide and the possible harvest
+for the toiler too abundant, and the certain crop of weeds in the
+sluggard's garden too poisonous, to allow dawdling to be considered a
+venial fault. Little progress will be made if we do not work as feeling
+that 'the night is far spent, the day is at hand,' or as feeling the
+apparently opposite but really identical conviction, 'I must work the
+works of Him that sent me while it is day. The night cometh when no man
+can work.' The day of full salvation, repose, and blessedness is near
+dawning. The night of weeping, the night of toil, is nearly past. By
+both aspects of this brief life we should be spurred to haste.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_201" id="Page_2_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The first element, then, in Christian diligence is economy of time as of
+most precious treasure, and the avoidance, as of a pestilence, of all
+procrastination. 'To-morrow and to-morrow' is the opiate with which
+sluggards and cowards set conscience asleep, and as each to-morrow
+becomes to-day it proves as empty of effort as its predecessors, and,
+when it has become yesterday, it adds one more to the solemn company of
+wasted opportunities which wait for a man at the bar of God. 'All their
+yesterdays have lighted' such idlers 'to dusty death,' because in each
+they were saying, 'to-morrow we will begin the better course,' instead
+of beginning it to-day. 'Now is the accepted time.' 'Wherefore, giving
+all haste, add to your faith.'</p>
+
+<p>Another of the phases of the virtue, which Peter here regards as
+sovereign, is represented in our translation of the word by
+'earnestness,' which is the parent of diligence. Earnestness is the
+sentiment, of which diligence is the expression. So the word is
+frequently translated. Hence we gather that no Christian growth is
+possible unless a man gives his mind to it. Dawdlers will do nothing.
+There must be fervour if there is to be growth. The heated bar of iron
+will go through the obstacle which the cold one will never penetrate. We
+must gather ourselves together under the impulse of an all-pervading and
+noble earnestness, too deep to be demonstrative, and which does not
+waste itself in noise, but settles down steadily to work. The engine
+that is giving off its steam in white puffs is not working at its full
+power. When we are most intent we are most silent. Earnestness is dumb,
+and therefore it is terrible.</p>
+
+<p>Again we come to the more familiar translation of the word as in the
+text. 'Diligence' is the panacea for all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_202" id="Page_2_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> diseases of the Christian
+life. It is the homely virtue that leads to all success. It is a great
+thing to be convinced of this, that there are no mysteries about the
+conditions of healthy Christian living, but that precisely the same
+qualities which lead to victory in any career to which a man sets
+himself do so in this; that, on the one hand, we shall never fail if in
+earnest and saving the crumbs of moments, we give ourselves to the work
+of Christian growth; and that on the other hand, no fine emotions, no
+select moments of rapture and communion will ever avail to take the
+place of the dogged perseverance and prosaic hard work which wins in all
+other fields; and wins, and is the only thing that does win, in this one
+too. If you want to be a strong Christian&mdash;that is to say, a happy
+man&mdash;you must bend your back to the work and 'give all diligence.'
+Nobody goes to heaven in his sleep. No man becomes a vigorous Christian
+by any other course than 'giving all diligence.' It is a very lowly
+virtue. It is like some of the old wives' recipes for curing diseases
+with some familiar herb that grows at every cottage door. People will
+not have that, but if you bring them some medicine from far away, very
+rare and costly, and suggest to them some course out of the beaten rut
+of ordinary, honest living, they will jump at that. Quackery always
+deals in mysteries and rare things. The great physician cures diseases
+with simples that grow everywhere. A pennyworth of some familiar root
+will cure an illness that nothing else will touch. It is a homely
+virtue, but if in its homeliness we practised it, this Church and our
+own souls would wear a different face from what it and they do to-day.</p>
+
+<p>II. Note the wide field of action for this homely grace.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_203" id="Page_2_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I can do nothing more&mdash;nor is it necessary that I should&mdash;than put
+before your mind, in a sentence or two, the various applications of it
+which our letter gives.</p>
+
+<p>First, note that in our text, 'giving all diligence, add to your faith.'
+That is to say, unless you work with haste, with earnestness, and
+therefore with much putting forth of strength, your faith will not
+evolve the graces of character which is in it to bring forth. If, on the
+other hand, we set ourselves to our tasks, then out of faith will come,
+as the blossoms mysteriously and miraculously do out of an apparently
+dead stump, virtue, manliness, and knowledge, and temperance, and
+patience, and godliness, and brotherly mindedness, and charity. All that
+galaxy of light and beauty will shine forth on the one condition of
+diligence, and it will not appear without that. Without it, the faith,
+though it may be genuine, which lies in a man who is idle in cultivating
+Christian character, will bear but few and shrivelled fruits. The
+Apostle uses a very remarkable expression here, which is rendered in our
+Bible imperfectly 'giving all diligence.' He has just been saying that
+God has 'given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, and
+exceeding great and precious promises.' The Divine gift, then, is
+everything that will help a man to live a high and godly life. And, says
+Peter, on this very account, because you have all these requisites for
+such a life already given you, see that you 'bring besides into' the
+heap of gifts, as it were, that which you and only you can bring,
+namely, 'all diligence.' The phrase implies that diligence is our
+contribution. And the very reason for exercising it is the completeness
+of God's gift. 'On this very account'&mdash;because He has given so much&mdash;we
+are to lay 'all diligence' by the side of His gifts, which are useless
+to the sluggard.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_204" id="Page_2_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the one hand there are all great gifts and boundless possibilities as
+to life and godliness, and on the other diligence as the condition on
+which all these shall actually become ours, and, passing into our lives,
+will there produce all these graces which the Apostle goes on to
+enumerate. The condition is nothing recondite, nothing hard either to
+understand or to practise, but it is simply that commonplace, humdrum
+virtue of diligence. If we will put it forth, then the gifts that God
+has given, and which are not really ours unless we put it forth, will
+pass into the very substance of our being, and unfold themselves
+according to the life that is in them; even the life that is in Jesus
+Christ Himself, in all forms of beauty and sweetness and power and
+blessedness. 'Diligence' makes faith fruitful. Diligence makes God's
+gifts ours.</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, the Apostle gives an even more remarkable view of the
+possible field for this all-powerful diligence when he bids his readers
+exercise it in order to 'make their calling and election sure.' Peter's
+first letter shows that he believed that Christians were 'chosen
+according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.' But for all that he
+is not a bit afraid of putting the other side of the truth, and saying
+to us in effect. 'We cannot read the eternal decrees of God nor know the
+names written in the Book of Life. These are mysteries above us. But if
+you want to be sure that you are one of the called and chosen, work and
+you will get the assurance.' The confirmation of the 'call,' of the
+'election,' both in fact and in my consciousness depends upon my action.
+The 'diligence,' of which the Apostle thinks such great things, reaches,
+as it were, a hand up into heaven and binds a man to that great
+unrevealed, electing purpose of God. If we desire that upon our
+Christian lives there shall shine the per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_205" id="Page_2_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>petual sunshine of an
+unclouded confidence that we have the love and the favour of God, and
+that for us there is no condemnation, but only 'acceptance in the
+beloved,' the short road to it is the well-known and trite path of toil
+in the Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>Still further, one of the other writers of the New Testament gives us
+another field in which this virtue may expatiate, when the author of the
+Epistle to the Hebrews exhorts to diligence, in order to attain 'the
+full assurance of hope.' If we desire that our path should be brightened
+by the clear vision of our blessed future beyond the grave, and above
+the stars, and within the bosom of God, the road to that happy assurance
+and sunny, cloudless confidence in a future of rest and fellowship with
+God lies simply here&mdash;work! as Christian men should, whilst it is called
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>The last of the fields in which this virtue finds exercise is expressed
+by our letter, when Peter says, 'Seeing that we look for such things,
+let us <i>be diligent</i>, that we may be found of Him in peace without spot,
+and blameless.' If we are to be 'found in peace,' we must be 'found
+spotless,' and if we are to be 'found spotless' we must be 'diligent.'
+'If that servant begin to say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;
+and to be slothful, and to eat and drink with the drunken, the lord of
+that servant will come in an hour when he is not aware.' On the other
+hand, 'who is that faithful servant whom his lord hath set ruler over
+his household? Blessed is that servant whom his lord when he cometh
+shall find so doing?' Doing so, and diligently doing it, 'he shall be
+found in peace.'</p>
+
+<p>What a beautiful ideal of Christian life results from putting together
+all these items. A fruitful faith, a sure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_206" id="Page_2_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> calling, a cloudless hope, a
+peaceful welcome at last! The Old Testament says, 'The hand of the
+diligent maketh rich'; the New Testament promises unchangeable riches to
+the same hand. The Old Testament says, 'Seest thou a man diligent in his
+business, he shall stand before kings.' The New Testament assures us
+that the noblest form of that promise shall be fulfilled in the
+Christian man's communion with his Lord here, and perfected when the
+diligent disciple shall 'be found of Him in peace,' and stand before the
+King in that day, accepted and himself a king.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="GOING_OUT_AND_GOING_IN" id="GOING_OUT_AND_GOING_IN"></a>GOING OUT AND GOING IN</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'An entrance ... my decease.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> i. 11, 15.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I do not like, and do not often indulge in, the practice of taking
+fragments of Scripture for a text, but I venture to isolate these two
+words, because they correspond to one another, and when thus isolated
+and connected, bring out very prominently two aspects of one thing. In
+the original the correspondence is even closer, for the words, literally
+rendered, are 'a going in' and 'a going out.' The same event is looked
+at from two sides. On the one it is a departure; on the other it is an
+arrival. That event, I need not say, is Death.</p>
+
+<p>I note, further, that the expression rendered, 'my decease,' employs the
+word which is always used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament
+to express the departure of the Children of Israel from bondage, and
+which gives its name, in our language, to the Second Book of the
+Pentateuch. 'My exodus'&mdash;associations suggested by the word can scarcely
+fail to have been in the writer's mind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_207" id="Page_2_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Further, I note that this expression for Death is only employed once
+again in the New Testament&mdash;viz., in St. Luke's account of the
+Transfiguration, where Moses and Elias spake with Jesus 'concerning His
+decease&mdash;the exodus&mdash;which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.' If you
+look on to the verses which follow the second of my texts, you will see
+that the Apostle immediately passes on to speak about that
+Transfiguration, and about the voice which He heard then in the holy
+mount. So that I think we must suppose that in the words of our second
+text he was already beginning to think about the Transfiguration, and
+was feeling that, somehow or other, his 'exodus' was to be conformed to
+his Master's.</p>
+
+<p>Now bearing all these points in mind, let us just turn to these words
+and try to gather the lessons which they suggest.</p>
+
+<p>I. The first of them is this, the double Christian aspect of death.</p>
+
+<p>It is well worth noting that the New Testament very seldom condescends
+to use that name for the mere physical fact of dissolution. It reserves
+it for the most part for something a great deal more dreadful than the
+separation of body and soul, and uses all manner of periphrases, or what
+rhetoricians call euphemising, that is, gentle expressions which put the
+best face upon a thing instead of the ugly word itself. It speaks, for
+instance, as you may remember, in the context here about the 'putting
+off' of a tent or 'a tabernacle,' blending the notions of stripping off
+a garment and pulling down a transitory abode. It speaks about death as
+a sleep, and in that and other ways sets it forth in gracious and gentle
+aspects, and veils the deformity, and loves and hopes away the
+dreadfulness of it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_208" id="Page_2_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now other languages and other religions besides Christianity have done
+the same things, and Roman and Greek poets and monuments have in like
+manner avoided the grim, plain word&mdash;death, but they have done it for
+exactly the opposite reason from that for which the Christian does it.
+They did it because the thing was so dark and dismal, and because they
+knew so little and feared so much about it. And Christianity does it for
+exactly the opposite reason, because it fears it not at all, and knows
+it quite enough. So it toys with leviathan, and 'lays its hand on the
+cockatrice den,' and my text is an instance of this.</p>
+
+<p>'My decease ... an entrance.' So the terribleness and mystery dwindled
+down into this&mdash;a change of position; or if locality is scarcely the
+right class of ideas to apply to spirits detached from the body&mdash;a
+change of condition. That is all.</p>
+
+<p>We do not need to insist upon the notion of change of place. For, as I
+say, we get into a fog when we try to associate place with pure
+spiritual existence. But the root of the conviction which is expressed
+in both these phrases, and most vividly by their juxtaposition, is this,
+that what happens at death is not the extinction, but the withdrawal, of
+a person, and that the man <i>is</i>, as fully, as truly as he was, though
+all the relations in which he stands may be altered.</p>
+
+<p>Now no materialistic teaching has any right to come in and bar that
+clear faith and firm conclusion. For by its very saying that it knows
+nothing about life except in connection with organisation, it
+acknowledges that there is a difference between them. And until science
+can tell me how it is that the throb of a brain or the quiver of a
+nerve, becomes transformed into morality,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_209" id="Page_2_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> into emotion, I maintain that
+it knows far too little of personality and of life to be a valid
+authority when it asserts that the destruction of the organisation is
+the end of the man. I feel myself perfectly free&mdash;in the darkness in
+which, after all investigation, that mysterious transformation of the
+physical into the moral and the spiritual lies&mdash;I feel perfectly free to
+listen to another voice, the voice which tells me that life can subsist,
+and that personal being can be as full&mdash;ay, fuller&mdash;apart altogether
+from the material frame which here, and by our present experience, is
+its necessary instrument. And though accepting all that physical
+investigation can teach us, we can still maintain that its light does
+not illumine the central obscurity; and that, after all, it still
+remains true that round about the being of each man, as round about the
+being of God, clouds and darkness roll,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Life and thought have gone away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i16">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Side by side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Leaving door and window wide.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That, and nothing more, is death&mdash;'My decease ... an entrance.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, the combination of these two words suggests to us that the
+one act, in the same moment, is both departure and arrival. There is not
+a pin-point of space, not the millionth part of a second of time,
+intervening between the two. There is no long journey to be taken. A man
+in straits, and all but desperation, is recorded in the old Book to have
+said: 'There is but a step between me and death.' Ah, there is but a
+step between death and the Kingdom; and he that passes out at the same
+moment passes in.</p>
+
+<p>I need not say a word about theories which seem to me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_210" id="Page_2_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> to have no basis
+at all in our only source of information, which is Revelation; theories
+which would interpose a long period of unconsciousness&mdash;though to the
+man unconscious it be no period at all&mdash;between the act of departure and
+that of entrance. Not so do I read the teaching of Scripture: 'This day
+thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.' We pass out, and as those in the
+vestibule of a presence-chamber have but to lift the curtain and find
+themselves face to face with the king, so we, at one and the same
+moment, depart and arrive.</p>
+
+<p>Friends stand round the bed, and before they can tell by the undimmed
+mirror that the last breath has been drawn, the saint is 'with Christ,
+which is far better.' To depart <i>is</i> to be with Him. There is a moment
+in the life of every believing soul in which there strangely mingle the
+lights of earth and the lights of heaven. As you see in dissolving
+views, the one fades and the other consolidates. Like the mighty angel
+in the Apocalypse, the dying man stands for a moment with one foot on
+the earth and the other already laved and cleansed by the waters of that
+'sea of glass mingled with fire which is before the Throne,' 'Absent
+from the body; present with the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>Further, these two words suggest that the same act is emancipation from
+bondage and entrance into royalty.</p>
+
+<p>'My exodus.' Israel came out of Egyptian servitude and dropped chains
+from wrists and left taskmasters cracking their useless whips behind
+them, and the brick kilns and the weary work were all done when they
+went forth. Ah, brethren, whatever beauty and good and power and
+blessedness there may be in this mortal life, there are deep and sad
+senses in which, for all of us, it is a prison-house and a state of
+captivity. There is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_211" id="Page_2_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> bondage of flesh; there is a dominion of the
+animal nature; there are limitations, like high walls, cribbing,
+cabining, confining us&mdash;the limitations of circumstance. There is the
+slavery of dependence upon this poor, external, and material world.
+There are the tyranny of sin and the subjugation of the nobler nature to
+base and low and transient needs. All these fetters, and the scars of
+them, drop away. Joseph comes out of prison to a throne. The kingdom is
+not merely one in which the redeemed man is a subject, but one in which
+he himself is a prince. 'Have thou authority over ten cities.' These are
+the Christian aspects of death.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now note, secondly, the great fact on which this view of death
+builds itself.</p>
+
+<p>I have already remarked that in one of my texts the Apostle seems to be
+thinking about Jesus Christ and His decease. The context also refers to
+another incident in his own life, when our Lord foretold to him that the
+putting off his tabernacle was to be 'sudden,' and added: 'Follow thou
+Me.'</p>
+
+<p>Taking these allusions into account, they suggest that it is the death
+of Jesus Christ&mdash;and that which is inseparable from it, His
+Resurrection&mdash;that changes for a soul believing on Him the whole aspect
+of that last experience that awaits us all. It is His exodus that makes
+'my exodus' a deliverance from captivity and an entrance upon royalty.</p>
+
+<p>I need not remind you, how, after all is said and done, we are sure of
+life eternal, because Jesus Christ died and rose again. I do not need to
+depreciate other imperfect arguments which seem to point in that
+direction, such as the instincts of men's natures, the craving for some
+retribution beyond, the impossibility of believing that life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_212" id="Page_2_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> is
+extinguished by the fact of physical death. But whilst I admit that a
+good deal may be said, and strong probabilities may be alleged, it seems
+to me that however much you may argue, no words, no considerations,
+moral or intellectual, can suffice to establish more than that it would
+be a very good thing if there were a future life and that it is probable
+that there is. But Jesus Christ comes to us and says, 'Touch Me, handle
+Me; a spirit hath not flesh and bones as I have. Here I am. I <i>was</i>
+dead; I <i>am</i> alive for evermore.' So then <i>one</i> life, that we know
+about, <i>has</i> persisted undiminished, apart from the physical frame, and
+that one Man has gone down into the dark abyss, and has come up the same
+as when He descended. So it is His exodus&mdash;and, as I believe, His death
+and Resurrection alone&mdash;on which the faith in immortality impregnably
+rests.</p>
+
+<p>But that is not the main point which the text suggests. Let me remind
+you how utterly the whole aspect of any difficulty, trial, or sorrow,
+and especially of that culmination of all men's fears&mdash;death itself&mdash;is
+altered when we think that in the darkest bend of the dark road we may
+trace footsteps, not without marks of blood in them, of Him that has
+trodden it all before us. 'Follow thou Me,' He said to Peter; and it
+should be no hard thing for us, if we love Him, to tread where He trod.
+It should be no lonely road for us to walk, however the closest clinging
+hands may be untwined from our grasp, and the most utter solitude of
+which a human soul is capable may be realised, when we remember that
+Jesus Christ has walked it before us.</p>
+
+<p>The entrance, too, is made possible because He has preceded us. 'I go to
+prepare a place for you.' So we may be sure that when we go through
+those dark gates and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_213" id="Page_2_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> across the wild, the other side of which no man
+knows, it is not to step out of 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day'
+into some dim, cold, sad land, but it is to enter into His presence.</p>
+
+<p>Israel's exodus was headed by a mummy case, in which the dead bones of
+their whilom leader were contained. Our exodus is headed by the Prince
+of Life, who was dead and is alive for evermore.</p>
+
+<p>So, brethren, I beseech you, treasure these thoughts more than you do.
+Turn to Jesus Christ and His resurrection from the dead more than you
+do. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that the Christianity of this
+day is largely losing the habitual contemplation of immortality which
+gave so much of its strength to the religion of past generations. We are
+all so busy in setting forth and enforcing the blessings of Christianity
+in its effects in the present life that, I fear me, we are largely
+forgetting what it does for us at the end, and beyond the end. And I
+would that we all thought more of our exodus and of our entrance in the
+light of Christ's death and resurrection. Such contemplation will not
+unfit us for any duty or any enjoyment. It will lift us above the
+absorbed occupation with present trivialities, which is the bane of all
+that is good and noble. It will teach us 'a solemn scorn of ills.' It
+will set on the furthest horizon a great light instead of a doleful
+darkness, and it will deliver us from the dread of that 'shadow feared
+of man,' but not by those who, listening to Jesus Christ, have been
+taught that to depart is to be with Him.</p>
+
+<p>III. Now I meant to have said a word, in the close of my sermon, about a
+third point&mdash;viz., the way of securing that this aspect of death shall
+be our experience, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_214" id="Page_2_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> your time will not allow of my dwelling upon
+that as I should have wished. I would only point out that, as I have
+already suggested, this context teaches us that it is His death that
+must make our deaths what they may become; and would ask you to notice,
+further, that the context carries us back to the preceding verses. 'An
+entrance shall be <i>ministered</i> unto you <i>abundantly</i>.' We have just
+before read, 'If these things be in you and <i>abound</i>, they make you that
+ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
+Jesus Christ'; and just before is the exhortation, 'giving all
+diligence, minister to your faith virtue.'</p>
+
+<p>So the Apostle, by reiterating the two words which he had previously
+been using, teaches us that if death is to be to us that departure from
+bondage and entrance into the Kingdom, we must here and now bring forth
+the fruits of faith. There is no entrance hereafter, unless there has
+been a habitual entering into the Holy Place by the blood of Jesus
+Christ even whilst we are on earth. There is no entrance by reason of
+the fact of death, unless all through life there has been an entrance
+into rest by reason of the fact of faith.</p>
+
+<p>And so, dear brethren, I beseech you to remember that it depends on
+yourself whether departing shall be arrival, and exodus shall be
+entrance. One thing or other that last moment must be to us all&mdash;either
+a dragging us reluctant away from what we would fain cleave to, or a
+glad departure from a foreign land and entrance to our home. It may be
+as when Peter was let out of prison, the angel touched him, and the
+chains fell from his hands, and the iron gate opened of its own accord,
+and he found himself in the city. It is for you to settle which of the
+two it shall be. And if you will take Him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_215" id="Page_2_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> for your King, Companion,
+Saviour, Enlightener, Life here, 'the Lord shall bless your going out
+and coming in from this time forth and even for evermore.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_OWNER_AND_HIS_SLAVES" id="THE_OWNER_AND_HIS_SLAVES"></a>THE OWNER AND HIS SLAVES</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Denying the Lord that bought them.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> ii. 1.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The institution of slavery was one of the greatest blots on ancient
+civilisation. It was twice cursed, cursing both parties, degrading each,
+turning the slave into a chattel, and the master, in many cases, into a
+brute. Christianity, as represented in the New Testament, never says a
+word to condemn it, but Christianity has killed it. 'Make the tree good
+and its fruit good.' Do not aim at institutions, change the people that
+live under them and you change <i>them</i>. Girdle the tree and it will die,
+and save you the trouble of felling it. But not only does Christianity
+never condemn slavery, though it was in dead antagonism to all its
+principles, and could not possibly survive where its principles were
+accepted, but it also takes this essentially immoral relation and finds
+a soul of goodness in the evil thing, which serves to illustrate the
+relation between God and man, between Christ and us. It does with
+slavery as it does with war, uses what is good in it as illustrating
+higher truths, and trusts to the operation, the slow operation of its
+deepest principles for its destruction.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, we have one Apostle, in his letters, binding on his forehead
+as a crown the designation, 'Paul,' a <i>slave</i> of 'Jesus Christ,' and we
+have in my text an expanded allusion to slavery. The word that is here
+rendered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_216" id="Page_2_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> rightly enough, 'Lord,' is the word which has been transferred
+into English as 'despot,' and it carries with it some suggestion of the
+roughness and absoluteness of authority which that word suggests to us.
+It does not mean merely 'master,' it means 'owner,' and it suggests an
+unconditional authority, to which the only thing in us that corresponds
+is abject and unconditional submission. That is what Christ is to you
+and me; the Lord, the Despot, the Owner.</p>
+
+<p>But we have not only owner and slave here; we have one of the ugliest
+features of the institution referred to. You have the slave-market, 'the
+Lord that <i>bought</i> them,' and because He purchased them, owns them.
+Think of the hell of miseries that are connected with that practice of
+buying and selling human flesh, and then estimate the magnificent
+boldness of the metaphor which Peter does not scruple to take from it
+here, speaking of the owner who acquired them by a price. And not only
+that, but slaves will run away, and when they are stopped, and asked who
+they belong to, will say they know nothing about him. And so here is the
+runaway's denial, 'denying the Lord that bought them.' Now I ask you to
+think of these three points.</p>
+
+<p>I. Here we have the Owner of us all.</p>
+
+<p>I do not need, I suppose, to spend a moment in showing you that this
+relationship, which is laid down in our text, subsists between Jesus
+Christ and men, and it subsists between Jesus Christ and all men. For
+the people about whom the Apostle is saying that they have 'denied the
+Lord that bought them' can, by no construction, be supposed to be true
+Christians, but were enemies that had crept into the Church without any
+real allegiance to Jesus Christ, and were trying to wreck it, and to
+destroy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_217" id="Page_2_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> His work. So there is no reference here to a little elected
+group out of the midst of humanity, who especially belonged to Jesus
+Christ, and for whom the price has been paid; but the outlook of my text
+in its latter portion is as wide as humanity. The Lord&mdash;that is, Jesus
+Christ&mdash;owns all men.</p>
+
+<p>Let me expand that thought in one or two illustrations which may help to
+make it perhaps more vivid. The slave's owner has absolute authority
+over him. You remember the occasion when a Roman officer, by reflecting
+upon the military discipline of the legion, and the mystical power that
+the commander's word had to set all his men in obedient activity, had
+come to the conclusion that, somehow or other, this Jesus whom he
+desired to heal his servant had a similar power in the material
+universe, and that just as he, subordinate officer though he was, had
+yet&mdash;by reason of the fact that he was 'under authority,' and an organ
+of a higher authority&mdash;the power to say to his servant, 'Go,' and he
+would go; and to another one, 'Come,' and he would come; so this Christ
+had power to say to disease, 'Depart,' and it would depart; and to
+health, 'Come,' and it would come; and to all the material forces of the
+universe, 'Do this,' and obediently they would do it. That is the
+picture, in another region, of the relation which Jesus Christ bears to
+men, though, alas, it is not the picture of the relation which men bear
+to Christ. But to all of us He has the right to say, wherever we are,
+'Come,' the right to say, 'Go,' the right to say, 'Do,' the right to
+say, 'Be this, that, and the other thing.'</p>
+
+<p>Absolute authority is His; what should be yours? Unconditional
+submission. My friend, it is no use your calling yourself a Christian
+unless that is your attitude. My<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_218" id="Page_2_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> sermon to-night has something else to
+do than simply to present truths to you. It has to press truths on you,
+and to appeal not only to your feelings, not only to your
+understandings, but to your wills. And so I come with this question: Do
+you, dear friend, day by day, yield to the absolute Master the absolute
+submission? And is that rebellious will&mdash;which is in you, as it is in us
+all&mdash;tamed and submitted so as that you can say, 'Speak, Lord! Thy
+servant heareth'? Is it?</p>
+
+<p>Further, the owner has the right, as part of that absolute authority of
+which I have been speaking, to settle without appeal each man's work. In
+those Eastern monarchies where the king was surrounded, not by
+constitutional ministers, but by his personal slaves, he made one man a
+shoeblack or a pipe-bearer, and the man standing next to him his prime
+minister. And neither the one nor the other had the right to say a word.
+Jesus Christ has the right to regulate your life in all its details, to
+set you your tasks. Some of us will get what the world vulgarly calls
+'more important duties'; some will get what the world ignorantly calls
+more 'insignificant' ones. What does that matter? It was our Owner that
+set us to our work, and if He tells us to black shoes, let us black them
+with all the pith of our elbows, and with the best blacking and brushes
+we can find; and if He sets us to work, which people think is more
+important and more conspicuous, let us do that too, in the same spirit,
+and for the same end.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the owner has the absolute right of possession of all the slave's
+possessions. He gets a little bit of land in the corner of his master's
+plantation, and grows his vegetables, yams, pumpkins, a leaf of tobacco
+or two, or what not, there. And if his master comes along and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_219" id="Page_2_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> says,
+'These are mine,' the slave has no recourse, and is obliged to accept
+the conditions and to give them up. So Jesus Christ claims ours as well
+as us&mdash;ours because He claims us&mdash;and whilst, on the other hand, the
+surrender of external good is incomplete without the surrender of the
+inward will, on the other hand the abandonment and surrender of the
+inward life is incomplete, if it be not hypocritical, without the
+surrender of external possessions. All the slave's goods belonged to the
+owner.</p>
+
+<p>And the owner has another right. He can say, 'Take that man's child and
+sell him in the market!' and he can break up the family ties and
+separate husband and wife, and parent and child, and not a word can be
+said. Our Master comes, not with rough authority, but with loving,
+though absolute authority, and He sometimes untwines the hands that are
+most closely clasped, and says to the one of the two that have grown
+together in love and blessedness, 'Come!' and he cometh, and to the
+other 'Go!' and she goeth. Blessed they who can say, 'It is the Lord!
+Let Him do what seemeth Him good.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, dear friends, this absolute authority cannot be exercised by any
+man upon another man, and this unconditional submission, which Jesus
+Christ asks from us all, ought not to be rendered by any man to a man.
+It is a degradation when a human creature is put even in the external
+relation of slavery and servitude to another human creature, but it is
+an honour when Jesus Christ says to me, 'Thou art Mine,' and I say to
+Him, 'I am Thine, O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; Thou hast loosed my
+bonds.' In the old Saxon monarchies, some antiquarians tell us, the
+foundation of our modern nobility or aristocracy is found in that the
+king's servants became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_220" id="Page_2_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> nobles. Jesus Christ's slave is everybody else's
+master. And it is the highest honour that a man can have to bow himself
+before that Lord, and to take His yoke upon him and learn of Him. So
+much, then, for my first point; now a word with regard to the second.</p>
+
+<p>II. The sale, and the price.</p>
+
+<p>'The Lord that bought them.' You perhaps remember other words which say,
+'Ye are bought with a price; be not the servants of men'; also other
+words of this Apostle himself, in which he speaks, in his other letter,
+of being 'bought with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without
+blemish and without spot.' Now notice, Christ's ownership of us does not
+depend on Christ's Divinity, which I suppose most of us believe, but on
+Christ's sacrifice for us. It is perfectly true that creation gives
+rights to the Creator. It is perfectly true that if we believe, as I
+think the New Testament teaches, that He, who before His name was Jesus
+was the Eternal Word of God, was the Agent of all Creation, and
+therefore has rights. But Christ's heart does not care for rights of
+that sort. It wants something far deeper, far tenderer, far closer than
+any such. And He comes to us with the language that is the language of
+love over all the universe, as between man and woman, as between man and
+man, as between man and God, as between God and man, upon His lips, and
+says, 'Thou must love Me, for I have died for thee.' Yes, brother; the
+only ground upon which absolute possession of a man can be rested is the
+ground of prior absolute surrender to Him. Christ must give Himself to
+me before He can ask me to give myself to Him. So all that was
+apparently harsh in the relationship, as I have been trying to set it
+forth to you, melts away and disappears. No owner ever owned a slave as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_221" id="Page_2_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+truly as a loving woman owns her husband, or a loving husband his wife,
+because the ownership is the expression of perfect love on both sides.
+And that is the golden bond that binds men's souls to Christ in a
+submission which, the more abject it is, the more elevating it is, just
+because 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me.'</p>
+
+<p>I do not dwell upon any cold theological doctrine of an Atonement, but I
+wish you to feel that deep in this great metaphor of our text there lie
+the two things; first, the price that was paid, and, second, the bondage
+from which the slave was delivered. He belonged to another master before
+Christ bought him for Himself. 'He that committeth sin is the slave of
+sin.' Some of you are your own despots, your own tyrants. The worse half
+of you has got the upper hand. The mutineers that ought to have been
+down under hatches, and shackled, have taken possession of the deck and
+clapped the captain and the officers, and all the sextants and
+log-books, away into a corner, and they are driving the ship&mdash;that is,
+you&mdash;on to the rocks, as hard as they can. A man that is not Christ's
+slave has a far worse slavery in submitting to these tyrant sins that
+have tempted him with the notion of how fine it is to break through
+these old-womanly restraints and conventional fads of a narrow morality,
+and to have his fling, and do as he likes and follow nature. Ay, some of
+you have been doing that, and could write a far better commentary than
+any preacher ever wrote, out of your own experience, on the great words,
+'Whilst they promised them liberty, they themselves are the slaves of
+corruption!' Young men, is that true about any of you&mdash;that you came
+here into Manchester to a situation, and lonely lodgings, comparatively
+innocent, and that some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_222" id="Page_2_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>body said, 'Oh, do not be a milksop! come along
+and see life,' and you thought it was fine to shake off the shackles
+that your poor old mother used to try to put upon your limbs? And what
+have you made of it? I will tell you what a great many young men have
+made of it&mdash;I have seen scores of them in the forty years that I have
+been preaching here: 'His bones are full of the iniquity of his youth,
+which shall lie down with him in the dust.'</p>
+
+<p>There is a slavery which is blessedness, and there is a slavery which at
+first is delightsome to the worst part of us, and afterwards becomes
+bitter and deadly. And it is the bondage of sin, the bondage to my worst
+self, the bondage to my indulged passions, the bondage to other men, the
+bondage to the material world. Jesus Christ speaks to each of us in His
+great sacrifice, by which He says to us, 'The Son will make you free,
+and you shall be free indeed.' The Lord has bought us. Have you let Him
+emancipate you from all your bondage? Dear friends, bear with me if I
+press again upon you, I pray God that it may ring in your ears till you
+can answer that question, Jesus Christ having bought me, do I belong to
+Him?</p>
+
+<p>III. And now, lastly, notice the runaways.</p>
+
+<p>Did it ever occur to you what a pathetic force there is in Peter's
+picking out that word 'denying' as the shorthand expression for all
+sorts of sins? Who was it that thrice denied that he knew Him? That
+experience went very deep into the Apostle; and here, as I take it, is a
+most significant illustration of his penitent remembrance of his past
+life, all the more significant because of its reticence. The allusion is
+one that nobody could catch that did not know his past, but which to
+those who did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_223" id="Page_2_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> know it was full of meaning and of pathos:&mdash;'Denying the
+Lord, as <i>I</i> did on that dismal morning, in the High Priest's palace. I
+am speaking about it, for I know what it comes to, and the tears that
+will follow after.'</p>
+
+<p>But what I desire to press upon you, dear friends, is just this: That in
+that view of the lives of people who are not Christians there is
+suggested to us the essential sinfulness, the black ingratitude, and the
+absolute folly of refusing to acknowledge the claims of Him to whom we
+belong, and who has bought us at such a price. You can do it by word,
+and perhaps some of us are not guiltless in that respect. You can do it
+by paring down the character and office of Jesus Christ, and minimising
+the importance of His sacrifice from the world's sins, and thinking of
+Him, not as the Owner that bought us, but as the Master that teaches us.
+You can do it by cowardly hiding of your colours and being too
+shamefaced, too sensitive to the curled lip of the man that works at the
+next bench, or sits at the next desk, or the student that is beside you,
+or somebody else whose opinion you esteem, which prevents you from
+saying like a man, 'I belong to Jesus Christ, and whomsoever other
+people serve, as for me, I am going to serve Him.' And you can do it,
+and many of you are doing it, by simply ignoring His claims, refusing to
+turn to Him, not yielding up your will to Him, not turning your heart to
+Him, not setting your dependence upon Him. Is it not a shame that men,
+whose hearts will glow with thankfulness when another man, especially if
+he is a superior, comes to them with some gift, valuable, but nothing as
+compared with the transcendent gift that Christ brings, will yet let Him
+die for them and not care anything about Him? I can under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_224" id="Page_2_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>stand the
+vehement antagonism that some people have to Christ and Christianity,
+but what I cannot understand is the attitude of the immense mass of
+people that come to services like this, who profess to believe that
+Jesus Christ's love for them brought Him to the cross, and yet will not
+even pay the poor tribute of a little interest and a momentary
+inclination of heart towards Him. 'Is it nothing to you, all ye that
+pass by,' that Jesus Christ died for you? He bought you for His own. Let
+me beseech you to 'yield yourselves' servants, slaves of Christ, and
+then you will be free, and you will hear Him say in the very depth of
+your hearts, 'Henceforth I call you not slaves, but friends.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BE_DILIGENT" id="BE_DILIGENT"></a>BE DILIGENT</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be
+diligent that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and
+blameless.'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> iii. 14.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>As we pass the conventional boundary of another year, most of us, I
+suppose, cast glances into the darkness ahead. To those of us who have
+the greater part of our lives probably before us, the onward look will
+disclose glad possibilities. To some of us, who have life mostly behind
+us, the prospect will take 'a sober colouring from an eye that hath kept
+watch over man's mortality,' and there will be little on the lower
+levels to attract. My text falls in with the mood which the season
+fosters. It directs our onward look to a blessed certainty instead of a
+peradventure, and it deduces important practical consequences from the
+hope. These three things are in the words of our text: a clear vision
+that should fill the future; a definite aim for life, drawn from the
+vision; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_225" id="Page_2_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> an earnest diligence in the pursuit of that aim, animated
+by that hope.</p>
+
+<p>Now these three&mdash;a bright hope, a sovereign purpose, and a diligent
+earnestness&mdash;are the three conditions of all noble life. They themselves
+are strength, and they will bring us buoyancy and freshness which will
+prolong youth into old age, and forbid anything to appear uninteresting
+or small.</p>
+
+<p>So I ask you to look at these three points, as suggested by my text.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, the clear hope which should fill our future.</p>
+
+<p>'Seeing that ye look for such things.' What things? Peter has been
+drawing a very vivid and solemn picture of the end, in two parts, one
+destructive, the other constructive. Anticipating the predictions of
+modern science, which confirm his prophecy, he speaks of the dissolution
+of all things by fervent heat, and draws therefrom the lesson: 'What
+manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and
+godliness?'</p>
+
+<p>But that dissolution by fire is not, as people often call it, the 'final
+conflagration.' Rather is it a regenerating baptism of fire, from which
+'the heavens and the earth that now are'&mdash;like the old man in the fable,
+made young in the flame&mdash;shall emerge renewed and purified. The lesson
+from that prospect is the words of our text.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am not going to dwell upon that thought of a new heaven and a new
+earth renewed by means of the fiery change that shall pass upon them,
+but simply to remark that there is a great deal in the teaching of both
+Old and New Testaments which seems to look in that direction. It is, at
+least, a perfectly tenable belief, and in my humble judgment is
+something more, that this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_226" id="Page_2_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> earth, the scene of man's tragedy and crime,
+the theatre of the display of the miracle of redeeming love, emancipated
+from the bondage of corruption, shall be renewed and become the seat of
+the blessed. They who dwell in it, and it on which they dwell pass
+through analogous changes, and as for the individuals, the 'new
+creation' is the old self purified by the fire of the Divine Spirit into
+incorruption and righteousness, so the world in which they live shall,
+in like manner, be 'that new world which is the old,' only having
+suffered the fiery transformation and been glorified thereby.</p>
+
+<p>But passing from that thought, which, however interesting it may be as a
+matter of speculation, is of very small practical importance, notice,
+still further, the essential part of the hope which the Apostle here
+sets forth&mdash;viz., that that order of things towards which we may look is
+one permeable only for feet that have been washed and made clean.
+'Therein dwelleth righteousness.' <i>Righteousness</i> there, of course, is
+the abstract for the concrete; the quality is put for the persons that
+exhibit it. And just as the condition of being at home in this present
+material world is the possession of flesh and blood, which puts
+creatures into relationships therewith, and just as it is impossible for
+a finite, bodyless spirit to move amongst, and influence, and be
+influenced by, the gross materialities of the heavens and the earth that
+now are, so is it impossible for anything but purity to be at rest in,
+or even to enter into that future world. 'The gates' of the New
+Jerusalem 'shall not be closed day nor night'; but through the ever-open
+gates none can pass except they who have washed their robes and made
+them white in the blood of the Lamb. There stand at the gates of that
+Paradise unseen, the repulsions of the angel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_227" id="Page_2_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> with the flaming sword,
+and none can enter except the righteous. Light kills the creatures of
+the darkness.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&nbsp;&nbsp;'How pure that soul must be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, placed within Thy piercing sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall shrink not, but with calm delight<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">&nbsp;&nbsp;Can live, and look on Thee!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus, then, brethren, an order of things free from all corruption, and
+into which none can pass but the pure, should be the vision that ever
+flames before us. Peter takes it for granted that the anticipation of
+that future is an inseparable part of the Christian character. The word
+which he employs, by its very form, expresses that that expectance is
+habitual and continuous. I am afraid that a great many so-called
+Christians very seldom send their thoughts, and still less frequently
+their desires, onwards to that end. In all your dreams of the future,
+how much space has been filled by this future which is no dream? Have
+you, in these past days, and do you, as a matter of habitual and
+familiar occupation of your mind, let your eyes travel on beyond and
+above the low levels of earth and peradventures, to fix them on that
+certainty?</p>
+
+<p>Opticians make glasses with three ranges, and write upon a little bar
+which shifts their eyepieces, 'Theatre,' 'Field,' 'Marine.' Which of the
+three is your glass set to? The turn of a button determines its range.
+You can either look at the things close at hand, or, if you set the
+eyepiece right and use the strongest, you can see the stars. Which is it
+to be? The shorter range shows you possibilities; the longer will show
+you certainties. The shorter range shows you trifles; the longer, all
+that you can desire. The shorter range shows you hopes that are destined
+to be outgrown and left behind; the longer, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_228" id="Page_2_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> far-off glories, a
+pillar of light which will move before you for ever. Oh, how many of the
+hopes that guided our course, and made our objective points in the past,
+are away down below the backward horizon! How many hopes we have
+outgrown, whether they were fulfilled or disappointed. But we may have
+one which will ever move before us, and ever draw our desires. The
+greater vision, if we were only wise enough to bring our lives
+habitually under its influence, would at once dim and ennoble all the
+near future.</p>
+
+<p>Let us then, dear friends, not desecrate that wondrous faculty of
+looking before as well as after which God has given to us, by wasting it
+upon the nothings of this world, but heave it higher, and anchor it more
+firmly in the very Throne of God Himself. And for us let one solemn,
+blessed thought more and more fill with its substance and its light the
+else dim and questionable and insufficient future, and walk evermore as
+seeing Him who is invisible, and as hasting unto the coming of the day
+of the Lord.</p>
+
+<p>II. Then, secondly, note the definite aim which this clear hope should
+impress upon life.</p>
+
+<p>If you knew that you were going to emigrate soon, and spend all your
+life on the other side of the world, in circumstances the outlines of
+which you knew, you would be a fool if you did not set yourself to get
+ready for them. The more clearly we see and the more deeply we feel that
+future hope, which is disclosed for us in the words of my text, the more
+it will prescribe a dominant purpose which will give unity, strength,
+buoyancy, and blessedness to any life. 'Seeing that ye look for such
+things, be diligent.' For what? 'That ye may be found of Him in peace,
+without spot, and blameless.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_229" id="Page_2_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now mark the details of the aim which this great hope impresses upon
+life, as they are stated in the words of my text. Every word is weighty
+here. 'That ye may be <i>found</i>.' That implies, if not search, at least
+investigation. It suggests the idea of the discovery of the true
+condition, character, or standing of a man which may have been hidden or
+partially obscured before&mdash;and now, at last, is brought out clearly.
+With the same suggestion of investigation and discovery, the same phrase
+is employed in other places; as, for instance, when the Apostle Paul
+speaks about being 'found naked,' or as when he speaks about being
+'found in Him, not having mine own righteousness.' So, then, there is
+some process of examination or investigation, resulting in the
+discovery, possibly for the first time, of what a man really is.</p>
+
+<p>Then note, 'Found <i>in Him</i>,' or as the Revised Version reads it, 'in His
+sight.' Then Christ is the Investigator, and it is before 'those pure
+eyes and perfect judgment' that they have to pass, who shall be admitted
+into the new heavens and the new earth, 'wherein dwelleth
+righteousness.'</p>
+
+<p>Then mark what is the character which, discovered on investigation by
+Jesus Christ, admits there: 'without spot and blameless.' There must be
+the entire absence of every blemish, stain, or speck of impurity. The
+purer the white the more conspicuous the black. Soot is never so foul as
+when it lies on driven snow. They who enter there must have nothing in
+them akin to evil. 'Blameless' is the consequence of 'spotless.' That
+which in itself is pure attracts no censure, whether from the Judge or
+from the assessors and onlookers in His court.</p>
+
+<p>But, further, these two words, in almost the same identical form&mdash;one of
+them absolutely the same, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_230" id="Page_2_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> other almost so&mdash;are found in Peter's
+other letter as a description of Jesus Christ Himself. He was a Lamb
+'without blemish and without spot.' And thus the character that
+qualifies for the new heavens is the copy of us in Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Still further, only those who thus have attained to the condition of
+absolute, speckless purity and conformity to Jesus Christ will meet His
+searching eye in calm tranquillity and be 'found of Him <i>in peace</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>The steward brings his books to his master. If he knows that there has
+been trickery with the figures and embezzlement, how the wretch shakes
+in his shoes, though he may stand apparently calm, as the master's keen
+eye goes down the columns! If he knows that it is all right, how calmly
+he waits the master's signature at the end, to pass the account! The
+soldiers come back with victory on their helmets, and are glad to look
+their captain in the face. But if they come back beaten, they shrink
+aside and hide their shame. If we are to meet Jesus Christ with quiet
+hearts, and we certainly shall meet Him, we must meet Him 'without spot
+and blameless.' The discovery, then, of what men truly are will be like
+the draining of the bed of a lake. Ah, what ugly, slimy things there are
+down in the bottom! What squalor and filth flung in from the houses, and
+covered over many a day by the waters! All that surface work will be
+drained off from the hearts of men. Shall we show slime and filth, or
+shall we show lovely corals and silver sands without a taint or a speck?</p>
+
+<p>These are the details of the life's aim of a Christian man. And they may
+all be gathered up into one. The end which we should seek as sovereign
+and high above all others is the conformity of our character to Jesus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_231" id="Page_2_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+Christ our Lord. Never mind about anything else; let us leave all in
+God's hands. He will do better for us than we can do for ourselves. Let
+us trust Him for the contingent future; and let us set ourselves to
+secure this, that, whether joy or sorrow, whether wealth or poverty,
+whether success or failure, whether sweet companionship or solitary
+tears be our lot for the rest of our lives, we may grow in grace, and in
+the knowledge and likeness of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Make
+that your aim, and freshness, buoyancy, enthusiasm, the ennobling of
+everything in this world, and the bending of all to be contributory of
+it, will gladden your days. Make anything else your aim, and you fail of
+your highest purpose, and your life, however successful, will be dreary
+and disappointed, and its end will be shame.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, notice the earnest diligence with which that aim should be
+pursued, in the light of that hope.</p>
+
+<p>Peter is fond of using the word which is here translated 'be diligent.'
+Hard work, honest effort, continuous and persevering, is His simple
+recipe for all nobleness. You will find He employs it, for instance, at
+least three times in this letter, in such connections as, 'Besides this,
+giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue,' and so on through the
+whole glorious series; and again, 'Wherefore the rather, brethren, give
+diligence to make your calling and election sure.' So, then, there is no
+mystery about the way of securing the aim; work towards it, and you will
+get it.</p>
+
+<p>Now, of course, there are a great many other considerations to be
+brought in in reference to the Christian man's means of becoming
+Christlike. We should have to speak of the gifts of a Divine Spirit, of
+the dependence upon God for it, and the like; but for the present
+purpose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_232" id="Page_2_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> we may confine ourselves to Peter's own prescription, 'be
+diligent,' and that will secure it. But then the word itself opens out
+into further meanings than that. It not only implies diligence: there
+may be diligence of a very mechanical and ineffective sort. The word
+also includes in its meaning earnestness, and it very frequently
+includes that which is the ordinary consequence of earnestness&mdash;viz.,
+haste and economy of time.</p>
+
+<p>So I venture, in closing, just to throw my remarks into three simple
+exhortations. Be in earnest in cultivating a Christlike character.
+Half-and-half Christians, like a great many of us, are of no use either
+to God or to men or to themselves. Dawdling and languid, braced up and
+informed by no earnestness of purpose, and never having had enthusiasm
+enough to set themselves fairly alight, they do no good and they come to
+nothing. 'I would thou wert cold or hot.' One thing sorely wanted in the
+average Christianity of this day is that professing Christians should
+give the motives which their faith supplies for earnest consecration due
+weight and power. Nothing else will succeed. You will never grow like
+Christ unless you are in earnest about it any more than you could pierce
+a tunnel through the Alps with a straw. It needs an iron bar tipped with
+diamond to do it. Unless your whole being is engaged in the task, and
+you gather your whole self together into a point, and drive the point
+with all your force, you will never get through the rock barrier that
+rises between you and the fair lands beyond. Be in earnest, or give it
+up altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Then another thing I would venture to say is, Make it your <i>business</i> to
+cultivate a character like that of Jesus Christ. If you would go to the
+work of growing a Christ-like spirit one-hundredth part as
+systematically as you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_233" id="Page_2_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> will go to your business to-morrow, and stick at
+it, there would be a very different condition of things in most of our
+hearts. No man becomes noble and good and like the dear Lord 'by a
+jump,' without making a systematic and conscious effort towards it.</p>
+
+<p>I would say, lastly, Make haste about cultivating a Christlike
+character. The harvest is great, the toil is heavy, the sun is drawing
+to the west, the evening shadows are very long with some of us, the
+reckoning is at hand, and the Master waits to count your sheaves. There
+is no time to lose, brother; set about it as you have never done before,
+and say, 'This one thing I do.'</p>
+
+<p>And so let us not fill our minds with vain hopes which, whether they be
+fulfilled or not, will not satisfy us, but lift our eyes to and stay our
+anticipations on those glories beyond, as real as God is real, and as
+certain as His word is true. Let these hopes concentrate and define for
+us the aims of our life; and let the aims, clearly accepted and
+recognised, be pursued with earnestness, with 'diligence,' with haste,
+with the enthusiasm of which they, and they only, are worthy. Let us
+listen to our Master, 'I must work the works of Him that sent Me while
+it is day; the night cometh.' And let us listen to the words of the
+servant, which reverse the metaphor, and teach the same lesson in a
+trumpet call which anticipates the dawn and rouses the sleeping
+soldiers: 'The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us cast off
+the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.'</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_234" id="Page_2_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="GROWTH" id="GROWTH"></a>GROWTH</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour
+Jesus Christ....'&mdash;2 <span class="smcap">Peter</span> iii. 18.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>These are the last words of an old man, written down as his legacy to
+us. He was himself a striking example of his own precept. It would be an
+interesting study to examine these two letters of the Apostle Peter, in
+order to construct from them a picture of what he became, and to
+contrast it with his own earlier self when full of self-confidence,
+rashness, and instability. It took a lifetime for Simon, the son of
+Jonas, to grow into Peter; but it was done. And the very faults of the
+character became strength. What he had proved possible in his own case
+he commands and commends to us, and from the height to which he has
+reached, he looks upwards to the infinite ascent which he knows he will
+attain when he puts off this tabernacle; and then downwards to his
+brethren, bidding them, too, climb and aspire. His last word is like
+that of the great Roman Catholic apostle to the East Indies: 'Forward!'
+He is like some trumpeter on the battlefield who spends his last breath
+in sounding an advance. Immortal hope animates his dying injunction:
+'Grow! grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.'</p>
+
+<p>So I think we may take these words, dear friends, as the starting-point
+for some very plain remarks about what I am afraid is a neglected duty,
+the duty of growth in Christian character.</p>
+
+<p>I. I begin, first, with a word or two about the direction which
+Christian growth ought to take.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_235" id="Page_2_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now those of you who use the Revised Version will see in it a very
+slight, but very valuable alteration. It reads there: 'Grow in the grace
+and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.' The effect of that alteration
+being to bring out more clearly that whilst the direction of the growth
+is twofold, the process is one. And to bring out more clearly, also,
+that both the grace and the knowledge have connection with Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>He is the Giver and the Author of the grace. He is the Object of the
+knowledge. The one is more moral and spiritual; the other, if we may so
+say, more intellectual; but both are realised by one act of progress,
+and both inhere in, and refer to, and are occupied with, and are derived
+from, Jesus Christ Himself.</p>
+
+<p>Let us look a little more closely at this double direction, this
+bifurcation, as it were, of Christian growth. The tree, like some of our
+forest trees, in its normal progress, diverges into two main branches at
+a short distance upwards from the root.</p>
+
+<p>First, we have growth in the 'grace' of Christ. Grace, of course, means,
+first, the undeserved love and favour which God in Jesus Christ bears to
+us sinful and inferior creatures; and then it means the consequence of
+that love and favour in the manifold spiritual endowments which in us
+become 'graces,' beauties, and excellences of Christian character. So
+then, if you are a Christian, you ought to be continually realising a
+deeper and more blessed consciousness of Christ's love and favour as
+yours. You ought to be, if I may so say, nestling every day nearer and
+nearer to His heart, and getting more and more sure, and more and more
+happily sure, of more and more of His mercy and love to you.</p>
+
+<p>And if you are a Christian you ought not only thus to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_236" id="Page_2_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> be realising
+daily, with increasing certitude and power, the fact of His love, but
+you ought to be drinking in and deriving more and more every day of the
+consequences of that love, of the spiritual gifts of which His hands are
+full. There is open for each of us in Him an inexhaustible store of
+abundance. And if our Christian life is real and vigorous there ought to
+be in us a daily increasing capacity, and therefore a daily increasing
+possession of the gifts of His grace. There ought to be, in other words,
+also a daily progressive transformation into His likeness. It is 'the
+grace of our Lord Jesus,' not only in the sense that He is the Author
+and the Bestower of it to each of us, but also in the sense that He
+Himself possesses and exemplifies it. So that there is nothing mystical
+and remote from the experience of daily life in this exhortation: 'Grow
+in grace'; and it is not growth in some occult theological virtue, or
+transcendent experience, but a very plain, practical thing, a daily
+transformation, with growing completeness and precision of resemblance,
+into the likeness of Jesus Christ; the grace that was in Him being
+transferred to me, and my character being growingly irradiated and
+refined, softened and ennobled by the reflection of the lustre of His.</p>
+
+<p>This it is to 'grow into the grace of our Lord and Saviour'; a deeper
+consciousness of His love creeping round the roots of my heart every
+day, and fuller possession of His gifts placed in my opening hand every
+day; and a continual approximation to the beauty of His likeness, which
+never halts nor ceases.</p>
+
+<p>'Grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.' The knowledge of a
+person is not the same as the knowledge of a creed or of a thought or of
+a book. We are to grow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_237" id="Page_2_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> in the knowledge of Christ, which includes but
+is more than the intellectual apprehension of the truths concerning Him.
+He might turn the injunction into&mdash;'Increase your acquaintance with your
+Saviour.' Many Christians never get to be any more intimate with Him
+than they were when they were first introduced to Him. They are on a
+kind of bowing acquaintance with their Master, and have little more than
+that. We sometimes begin an acquaintance which we think promises to
+ripen into a friendship, but are disappointed. Circumstances or some
+want of congeniality which is discovered prevent its growth. So with not
+a few professing Christians. They have got no nearer Jesus Christ than
+when they first knew Him. Their friendship has not grown. It has never
+reached the stage where all restraints are laid aside and there is
+perfect confidence. 'Grow in the knowledge of your Lord and Saviour
+Jesus Christ.' Get more and more intimate with Him, nearer to Him, and
+franker and more cordial with Him day by day.</p>
+
+<p>But there is another side to the injunction besides that. We are to grow
+in the grasp, the intellectual grasp and realisation of the truths which
+lie wrapped up and enfolded in Him. The first truths that a man learns
+when he becomes a Christian are the most important. The lesson that the
+little child learns contains the Omega as well as the Alpha of all
+truth. There is no word in all the gospel that is an advance on that
+initial word, the faith of which saves the most ignorant who trusts to
+it. We begin with the end, if I may say so, and the highest truth is the
+first truth that we learn. But the aspect which that truth bears to the
+man when, first of all, it dawns upon him, and he sees in it the end of
+his fears, the cleansing of his heart, the pardoning of his sins, his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_238" id="Page_2_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+acceptance with God, is a very different thing from the aspect that it
+ought to wear to him, after, say forty years of pondering, of growing up
+to it, after years of experience have taught him. Life is the best
+commentary upon the truths of the gospel, and the experience teaches
+their depths and their power, their far-reaching applications and
+harmonies. So our growth in the knowledge of Jesus Christ is not a
+growing away from the earliest lessons, or a leaving them behind, but a
+growing up to and into them. So as to learn more fully and clearly all
+their infinite contents of grace and truth. The treasure put into our
+hands at first is discovered in its true preciousness as life and trial
+test its metal and its inexhaustibleness. The child's lesson is the
+man's lesson. All our Christian progress in knowledge consists in
+bringing to light the deep meaning, the far-reaching consequences of the
+fact of Christ's incarnation, death, and glory. 'God so loved the world
+that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him
+should not perish, but have everlasting life.' The same truth which
+shone at first a star in a far-off sky, through a sinful man's night of
+fear and agony, grows in brilliance as we draw nearer to it, until at
+last it blazes, the central Sun of the Universe, the hearth for all
+vital warmth, the fountain of all guiding light, the centre of all
+energy. Christ in His manhood, in His divinity, Christ in His cross,
+resurrection, and glory, is the object of all knowledge, and we grow in
+the knowledge of Him by penetrating more deeply into the truths which we
+have long ago learned, as well as by following them as they lead us into
+new fields, and disclose unsuspected issues in creed and practice.</p>
+
+<p>That growth will not be one-sided; for grace and knowl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_239" id="Page_2_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>edge will advance
+side by side&mdash;the moral and spiritual keeping step with the
+intellectual, the practical with the theoretical. And that growth will
+have no term. It is growth towards an infinite object of our aspiration,
+imitation, and affection. So we shall ever approach and never surpass
+Jesus Christ. Such endless progress is the very salt of life. It keeps
+us young when physical strength decays. It flames, an immortal hope, to
+light the darkness of the grave when all other hopes are quenched in
+night.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now, for a moment, look at another thought, viz., the obligation.</p>
+
+<p>It is a command, that is to say, the will is involved. Growth is to be
+done by effort, and the fact that it is a command teaches us this, that
+we are not to take this one metaphor as if it exhausted the whole of the
+facts of the case in reference to Christian progress.</p>
+
+<p>You would never think of telling a child to grow any more than you would
+think of telling a plant to grow, but Peter does tell Christian men and
+women to grow. Why? Because they are not plants, but men with wills,
+which can resist, and can either further or hinder their progress.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;... and there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Lo! in the middle of the wood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Grows green and broad, and takes no care.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But that is not how we grow. 'In the sweat of thy brow,' with pain and
+peril, with effort and toil, and not otherwise, do men grow in
+everything but stature. And especially is it so in the Christian
+character. There are other metaphors that need to be taken into
+consideration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_240" id="Page_2_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> as well as this of growth, with all its sweet suggestions
+of continuous, effortless, spontaneous advance.</p>
+
+<p>The Christian progress is not only growth, it is warfare. The Christian
+progress is not only growth, it is a race. The Christian progress is not
+only growth, it is mortifying the old man. The Christian progress is not
+only growth, it is putting off the old man with his deeds and putting on
+the new! 'First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the
+ear,' was never meant for a complete account of how the Christian life
+is perfected.</p>
+
+<p>We are bidden to grow, and that command points to hindrances and
+resistance, to the need for effort and the governing action of our own
+wills.</p>
+
+<p>The command is one sorely needed in the present state of our average
+Christianity. Our churches are full of monsters, specimens of arrested
+growth, dwarfs, who have scarcely grown since they were babes, infants
+all their lives. I come to you with a very plain question: Have you any
+more of Christ's beauty in your characters, any more of His grace in
+your hearts, any more of His truth in your minds than you had a year
+ago, ten years ago, or at that far-off period when some of you
+greyheaded men first professed to be Christians? Have you experienced so
+many things in vain? Have the years taught you nothing? Ah, brethren!
+for how many of us is it true: 'When for the time ye ought to be
+teachers ye have need that one teach you which be the first principles
+of the oracles of God'? 'Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord
+and Saviour.'</p>
+
+<p>And we need the command because all about us there are hindrances. There
+is the hindrance of an abuse of the evangelical doctrine of conversion,
+and the idea that springs up in many hearts that if once a man has
+'passed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_241" id="Page_2_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> from death unto life,' and has managed to get inside the door
+of the banqueting-hall, that is enough. And there are numbers of people
+in our Nonconformist communities especially, where that doctrine of
+conversion is most distinctly preached, whose growth is stopped by the
+abuse that they make of it in fancying if they have once exercised faith
+in Jesus Christ they may safely and sinlessly stand still. 'Conversion'
+is turning round. What do we turn round for? Surely, in order that we
+may travel on in the new direction, not that we may stay where we are.
+There is also the hindrance of mere indolence, and there is the
+hindrance arising from absorption in the world and its concerns.</p>
+
+<p>If all your strength is going thither, there is none left to grow with.
+Many professing Christians take such deep draughts of the intoxicating
+cup of this world's pleasures that it stunts their growth. People
+sometimes give children gin in order to keep them from growing. Some of
+you do that for your Christian character by the deep draughts that you
+take of the Circean cup of this world's pleasures and cares.</p>
+
+<p>And not unfrequently, some one favourite evil, some lust or passion, or
+weakness, or desire, which you have not the strength to cast out, will
+kill all aspirations and destroy all possibilities of growth; and will
+be like an iron band round a little sapling, which will confine it and
+utterly prevent all expansion. Is that the case with any of us? We all
+need&mdash;and I pray you suffer&mdash;the word of exhortation.</p>
+
+<p>III. Now, again, consider the method of growth.</p>
+
+<p>There are two things essential to the growth of animal life. One is
+food, the other is exercise; and your Christian character will grow by
+no other means.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_242" id="Page_2_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now as to the first. The true means by which we shall grow in Christian
+grace is by holding continual intercourse and communion with Jesus
+Christ. It is from Him that all come. He is the Fountain of Life; He
+gives the life, He nourishes the life, He increases the life. And whilst
+I have been saying, in an earlier part of this discourse, that we are
+not to expect an effortless growth, I must here say that we shall very
+much mistake what Christian progress requires if we suppose that the
+effort is most profitably directed to the cultivation of specific and
+single acts of goodness and purity. Our efforts are best when directed
+to keeping ourselves in union with our Lord. The heart united to Him
+will certainly be advancing in all things fair and lovely and of good
+report. Keep yourselves in touch with Christ; and Christ will make you
+grow. That is to say, occupy heart and mind with Him, let your thoughts
+go to Him. Do you ever, from morning to night, on a week-day, think
+about your Master, about His truth, about the principles of His Gospel,
+about His great love to you? Keep your heart in union with Him, in the
+midst of the rush and hurry of your daily life. Are your desires turning
+to Him? Do they go out towards Him and feel after Him? It will take an
+effort to keep up the union with Him, but without the effort there will
+be no contact, and without the contact there will be no growth. As soon
+may you expect a plant, wrenched from the soil and shut out from the
+sunshine to grow, as expect any Christian progress in the hearts which
+are disjoined from Jesus Christ. But rooted in that soil, smiled upon by
+that sun, watered by the perpetual dew from His Heaven, we shall 'grow
+like the lily, and cast forth our roots like Lebanon. The secret of real
+Christian progress and the direction in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_243" id="Page_2_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> which the effort of Christian
+progress can most profitably and effectually be made, is simply in
+keeping close to our Lord and Master. He is the food of the Spirit. 'I
+am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more
+abundantly.'</p>
+
+<p>Communion with Christ includes prayer. Desire to grow will help our
+growth. We tend to become what we long to be. Desire which impels to
+effort will not be in vain if it likewise impels to prayer. We may have
+the answer to our petition for growth in set ways; we may be but
+partially conscious of the answer, nor know that our faces shine when we
+go among men. But certainly if we pray for what is in such accordance
+with His will as 'growth in grace' is, we shall have the petition that
+we desire. That longing to know Him better and to possess more of His
+grace, like the tendrils of some climbing plant, will always find the
+support round which it may twine, and by which it may ascend.</p>
+
+<p>The other condition of growth is exercise. Use the grace which you have,
+and it increases. Practice the truth which you know, and many things
+will become clearer. The blacksmith's muscles are strengthened by
+wielding the forge-hammer, but unused they waste. The child grows by
+exercise. To him that hath&mdash;truly possesses with that possession which
+only use secures&mdash;shall be given.</p>
+
+<p>Communion with Christ, including prayer, and exercise are the means of
+growth.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Lastly, observe the solemn alternative to growth.</p>
+
+<p>It is not a question of either growing or not growing, and there an end;
+but if you will look at the context you will see that the exhortation of
+my text comes in in a very significant connection. 'Behold! beware, lest
+being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_244" id="Page_2_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> led away ... ye fall from your own steadfastness.' 'But grow in
+grace.' That is to say, the only preventive of falling away from
+steadfastness is continual progress. The alternative of advance is
+retrogression. There is no standing still upon the inclined plane. If
+you are not going up, gravity begins to act, and down you go. There must
+either be continual advance or there will be certain decay and
+corruption. As soon as growth ceases in this physiology <i>disintegration</i>
+commences. Just as the graces exercised are strengthened, so the graces
+unexercised decay. The slothful servant wraps his talent in a napkin,
+and buries it in the ground. He may try to persuade his Master and
+himself with 'There Thou hast that is Thine'; but He will not take up
+what you buried. Rust and verdigris will have done their work upon the
+coin; the inscription will be obliterated and the image will be marred.
+You cannot bury your Christian grace in indolence without diminishing
+it. It will be like a bit of ice wrapped in a cloth and left in the sun,
+it will all have gone into water when you come to take it out. And the
+truth that you do <i>not</i> live by, whose relations and large harmonies and
+controlling power are not being increasingly realised in your lives;
+that truth is becoming less and less real, more and more shadowy, and
+ghostlike to you. Truth which is not growing is becoming fossilised.
+'The things most surely believed' are often the things which have least
+power. Unquestioned truth too often lies 'bedridden in the dormitory of
+the soul side by side with exploded error.' The sure way to reduce your
+knowledge of Jesus Christ to that inert condition is to neglect
+increasing it and applying it to your daily life. There are men, in all
+churches, and there are some whole communions whose creeds are the most
+orthodox, and also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_245" id="Page_2_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> utterly useless, and as near as possible
+nonentities, simply because the creed is accepted and shelved. If your
+belief is to be of any use to you, or to be held by you in the face of
+temptations to abandon it, you must keep it fresh, and oxygenated, so to
+say, by continual fresh apprehension of it and closer application of it
+to conduct. As soon as the stream stands, it stagnates; and the very
+manna from God will breed worms and stink. And Christian truth
+unpractised by those who hold it, corrupts itself and corrupts them.</p>
+
+<p>So Peter tells us that the alternative is growth or apostasy. This decay
+may be most real and unsuspected. There are many, many professing
+Christians all ignorant that, like the Jewish giant of old, their
+strength is gone from them, and the Spirit of God departed. My brother,
+I beseech you, rouse yourself from your contented slothfulness. Do not
+be satisfied with merely having come within the Temple. Count nothing as
+won whilst anything remains to be won. There is a whole ocean of
+boundless grace and truth rolling shoreless there before you. Do not
+content yourselves with picking up a few shells on the beach, but launch
+out into the deep, and learn to know more and more of the grace and
+truth and beauty of your Saviour and your God.</p>
+
+<p>But remember dead things do not grow. You cannot grow unless you are
+alive, and you are not alive unless you have Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Have you given yourselves to Him? have you taken Him as yours? given
+yourselves to Him as His servants, subjects, soldiers? taken Him for
+yours as your Saviour, Sacrifice, Pattern, Inspirer, Friend? If you
+have, then you have life which will grow if you keep it in union with
+Him. Joined to Him, men are like a 'tree that is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_246" id="Page_2_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> planted by the rivers
+of water,' which spreads its foliage and bears its fruit, and year after
+year flings a wider shadow upon the grass, and lifts a sturdier bole to
+the heavens. Separated from Him they are like the chaff, which has
+neither root nor life, and which cannot grow.</p>
+
+<p>Which, my friend, are you?</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_247" id="Page_2_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="I_JOHN" id="I_JOHN"></a>I. JOHN</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_MESSAGE_AND_ITS_PRACTICAL_RESULTS" id="THE_MESSAGE_AND_ITS_PRACTICAL_RESULTS"></a>THE MESSAGE AND ITS PRACTICAL RESULTS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare
+unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. 6.
+If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we
+lie, and do not the truth: 7. But if we walk in the light, as He is
+in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of
+Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. 8. If we say that
+we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
+9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us
+our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10. If we say
+that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in
+us.'</p>
+
+<p>'My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin
+not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
+Christ the righteous: 2. And He is the propitiation for our sins:
+and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 3.
+And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His
+commandments. 4. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His
+commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5. But whoso
+keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected:
+hereby know we that we are in Him. 6. He that saith he abideth in
+Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">John</span> i.
+5-ii. 6.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>John is the mystic among the New Testament writers. He dwells much on
+the immediate union of the soul with God, and he has little to say about
+institutions and rites. His method is not to argue, but to utter deep,
+simple propositions which convince by their own light. But he is also
+intensely eager for plain, practical morality, and in that respect sets
+the example which, unfortunately, too many of the more mystical types of
+Christian teaching have failed to follow. To him the outcome and test of
+all deep hidden union with God is righteousness in life.</p>
+
+<p>The blending of these two elements, which is the very keynote of this
+letter, is wonderfully set forth in this passage. They would require
+much more space than we command for their treatment, for every clause is
+weighty as gold. We can but skim the surface, and try to bring out the
+salient points.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_248" id="Page_2_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I. We have, first, a wonderful gathering up of the whole gospel message
+into one utterance as to the essential nature of God. Light is in all
+languages the symbol of knowledge, of joy, of purity. It is the source
+of life. Its very nature is to ray itself out into and conquer darkness.
+Its splendor dazzles every eye; all things rejoice in its beams.
+Darkness is the type of ignorance, of sorrow, of sin. But, whilst the
+symbol is thus rich in manifold revelations, probably purity and
+self-communication are the predominating ideas here.</p>
+
+<p>John has been honoured to give the world the three great revelations
+that God is spirit, is light, is love. And this profound saying in some
+sense includes both the others, inasmuch as light, which to the popular
+mind is most widely apart from matter, may well stand for the emblem of
+spirit, and, since to radiate is its inseparable quality, does represent
+in symbol the delight in imparting Himself, which is the very heart of
+the declaration that God is love. If, then, we grasp these two thoughts
+of absolute purity and of self-impartation as the very nature and
+property of God, John tells us that we grasp the kernel of the Gospel.</p>
+
+<p>And he thinks that men never will grasp them certainly unless a
+'message' from God, a definite revelation in historical fact, certifies
+them. We may hope or doubt, or desire, but we cannot be sure that God is
+light unless he tells us so by unmistakable act. John knew what act that
+was&mdash;the sending of His only-begotten Son. To the positive statement
+John, in his usual manner, appends an emphatic negative one: 'Darkness
+is not in him, no, not in any way.' He is light, all light, only light.</p>
+
+<p>II. With characteristic moral earnestness, John passes at once to the
+practical effects which the message is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_249" id="Page_2_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> meant to have. We are not told
+what God is simply that we may know, but that, knowing, we may do and
+be. If He is light, two things will follow in those who are in union
+with Him&mdash;they will walk in light, and they will in His light see their
+own evil. John deals with these two consequences in verses 6-10&mdash;the
+former in verses 6 and 7; the latter in verses 8-10. The parallelism in
+the construction of these two sets of verses is striking:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+
+<tr>
+<td><span class="smcap">Verses</span> 6, 7. </td>
+<td><span class="smcap">Verses</span> 8, 9.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>If we say </td>
+<td>If we say</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>
+that we have fellowship with
+Him, and walk in darkness,
+</td>
+<td>
+that we have no sin
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>
+we lie, and do not the truth.
+</td>
+<td>
+we deceive ourselves, and the
+truth is not in us.
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>
+But if we walk in the light,
+as He is in the light,
+</td>
+<td>
+If we confess our sins,
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>
+we have fellowship one with another.
+</td>
+<td>
+He is faithful and righteous to
+forgive us our sins,
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>
+and the blood of Jesus His Son
+cleanseth us from all sin.
+</td>
+<td>
+and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p>As to the former of these two paragraphs, the underlying thought is that
+fellowship with God necessarily involves moral likeness to Him. Worship
+is always aspiration after, and conformity to, the character of the god
+worshipped, and there can be no true communion with a God who is light
+unless the worshipper walks in light. In plain language, all high-flying
+pretensions to communion with God must verify themselves by practical
+righteousness. That cuts deep into an emotional religion, which has much
+to say about raptures and the like, but produces little purifying effect
+on the humble details of daily life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_250" id="Page_2_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are always professing Christians who talk of their blessed
+experiences, and woefully fail in prosaic virtues. It is a pity that a
+man should hold his head so high that he does not look to keep his feet
+out of the mud. Such a profession is for the most part tainted with more
+or less conscious falsehood, and is always a proof that the truth&mdash;the
+sum of God's revelation&mdash;is not operative in the man; that he is not
+turning his belief into act, as all belief should be. On the other hand,
+the true relation resulting from the message is that we should walk in
+the light, as He is in it.</p>
+
+<p>Verse 10 seems to be simply a reiteration of the preceding idea, with
+some intensifying, and that chiefly in the description of the true
+character of the denial of sin. To make God a liar is worse than to lie
+or to deceive ourselves; and all ignoring of sin does that, because not
+only has God declared its universality by the words of revelation, but
+all His dealings with men are based upon the fact that they are all
+sinners, and we fly in the face of all His words and works if we deny
+that which we ourselves are. Therefore the Apostle further varies his
+expression, and says 'His word' instead of 'the truth,' thus bringing
+into prominence the thought that 'the truth' is made accessible to us
+because God has spoken.</p>
+
+<p>III. Chapter ii. 1-6 is in structure analogous to the preceding section.
+As there, so here, the 'message' is summed up in one great
+fact,&mdash;Christ's work as advocate for believers and as propitiation for
+the world. As there, so here, two practical consequences follow, which
+are drawn out on corresponding lines. Observe the repetition in verses 3
+and 5 <i>b</i>, of 'hereby know we,' and in verses 4 and 6 of 'He that
+saith.'</p>
+
+<p>Note, too, the reappearance of 'is a liar' and of 'the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_251" id="Page_2_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> truth is not in
+him' in verse 4. The drift of the section may be briefly put as follows.
+John's heart melts as he thinks of the possibilities of holiness open to
+believers, and of the sad actualities of their imperfect lives, and he
+addresses them by the tender name, 'my little children.' The impelling
+and guiding motive of his letter is that they may not sin. Practical
+righteousness is the end of revelation, and its complete attainment
+should be the aim of every believer.</p>
+
+<p>But the sad experience of 'saints' is that they are not yet wholly
+delivered from its power. Therefore 'the message' is not only 'God is
+light without blending of darkness,' but, 'we Christians have an
+Advocate with the Father.' Jesus is to-day carrying on His mighty work
+of prevalent intercession for all His servants, and that intercession
+secures forgiveness for their inconsistencies and lapses, because it
+rests upon Christ's finished work of 'propitiation,' which is for the
+whole world, even though it actually avails only for believers.</p>
+
+<p>Such being the power of Christ's work in its twofold aspect of
+propitiation and of intercession, the same practical issues as in the
+preceding section were shown to flow from the revealed nature of God are
+here, in somewhat different form, linked with that work. First, keeping
+his commandments (which is equivalent to 'walking in the light') is the
+test to ourselves, as well as to others, of our really knowing Him with
+a knowledge which is not mere head work, but the acquaintance of
+sympathy and friendship, or, in the words of the previous paragraph,
+having fellowship with Him.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, the scope of this section requires that 'His commandments'
+should here mean Christ's, not the Father's. All professions of knowing
+Jesus which are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_252" id="Page_2_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> not verified by obedience to Him are false. If we do
+keep His word&mdash;not merely the individual 'commandments,' but the word as
+one great whole&mdash;our love to God reaches its perfection, for it is no
+mere emotion of the heart, but the force which is to mould and actuate
+all our acts.</p>
+
+<p>Verse 5 <i>b</i> should be separated from the preceding words, for it is
+really the beginning of the second issue from the work of Christ, and is
+parallel with 'hereby know we,' etc., in verse 3. Observe the progress
+in thought from the assurance that we <i>know</i> (ver. 3) to the assurance
+that we <i>are in</i> Him. The Christian's relation to Jesus is not only that
+of acquaintance, however intimate, loving, and transforming, but that of
+actual dwelling in Him. That great truth shines on every page of the New
+Testament, and is not to be weakened down into metaphor or rhetoric. It
+is the very heart of the Christian life, and the test that we have
+attained to it, and that not merely as an occasional, but as a
+permanent, condition (note that '<i>are</i> in Him' is strengthened to
+'<i>abideth</i> in Him') is that our outward life, in its manifold
+activities, shall be conformed to the pattern of all holiness in the
+life of Jesus. To walk as He walked is to walk in the light. Profession
+is nothing, conduct is everything, and we shall only be clear of sin in
+the measure in which we have Him who is the light of men for the very
+life of our lives.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_253" id="Page_2_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="WALKING_IN_THE_LIGHT" id="WALKING_IN_THE_LIGHT"></a>WALKING IN THE LIGHT</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship
+one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth
+us from all sin.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">John</span> i. 7.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>John was the Apostle of love, but he was also a 'son of thunder.' His
+intense moral earnestness and his very love made him hate evil, and
+sternly condemn it; and his words flash and roll as no other words in
+Scripture, except the words of the Lord of love. In the immediate
+context he has been laying down what is to him the very heart of his
+message, that 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' There
+are spots in the sun, great tracts of blackness on its radiant disc; but
+in God is unmingled, perfect purity. That being so, it is clear that no
+man can be in sympathy or hold communion with Him, unless he, too, in
+his measure, is light.</p>
+
+<p>So, with fiery indignation, John turns to the people, of whom there were
+some, even in the primitive Church, who made claims to a lofty
+spirituality and communion with God, and all the while were manifestly
+living in the darkness of sin. He will not mince matters with them. He
+roundly says that they are lying, and the worst sort of lie&mdash;an acted
+lie: 'They do not the truth.' Then, with a quick turn, he opposes to
+these pretenders the men who really are in fellowship with God, and in
+my text lays down the principle that walking in the light is essential
+to fellowship with God. Only, in his usual fashion, he turns the
+antithesis into a somewhat different form, so as to suggest another
+aspect of the truth, and instead of saying, as we might expect for the
+verbal accuracy of the contrast, 'If we walk in the light, as He is in
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_254" id="Page_2_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> light, we have fellowship with God,' he says, 'we have fellowship
+one with another.' Then he adds a still further result of that walk,
+'the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin.'</p>
+
+<p>Now there are three things: walking in the light, which is the only
+Christian walk; the companions of those who walk in the light; and the
+progressive cleansing which is given.</p>
+
+<p>I. Note this 'Walking in the light,' which is the only Christian walk.</p>
+
+<p>In all languages, light is the natural symbol for three things:
+knowledge, joy, purity. The one ray is broken into its three constituent
+parts. But just as there are some surfaces which are sensitive to the
+violet rays, say, of the spectrum, and not to the others, so John's
+intense moral earnestness makes him mainly sensitive to the symbolism
+which makes light the expression, not so much of knowledge or of joy, as
+of moral purity. And although that is not exclusively his use of the
+emblem, it is predominately so, and it is so here. To 'walk in the
+light' then, is, speaking generally, to have purity, righteousness,
+goodness, as the very element and atmosphere in which our progressive
+and changeful life is carried on.</p>
+
+<p>Note, too, before I go further, that very significant antithesis: we
+'walk'; He <i>is</i>&mdash;God <i>is</i> in the light essentially, changelessly,
+undisturbedly, eternally; and the light in which He is, His 'own calm
+home, His habitation from eternity,' is light which has flowed out from
+Himself as a halo round the midnight moon. It is all one in substance to
+say God is in light, or, as the Psalmist has it, 'He covered Himself
+with light as with a garment,' and to say, 'God is light.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_255" id="Page_2_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But, side by side with that changeless abiding in the perfect purity,
+which is inaccessible, the Apostle ventures to put, not in contrast
+only, but in parallel (<i>as</i> He is), our changing, effortful, active,
+progressive life in the light (God is); we walk.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, the essential of a Christian character is that the light of
+purity and moral goodness shall be as the very orb, in the midst of
+which it stands and advances. That implies effort, and it implies
+activity, and it implies progress. And we are only Christians in the
+measure in which the conscious activities of our daily lives, and the
+deepest energies of our inward being, are bathed and saturated with this
+love of, and effort after, righteousness. It is vain, says John, to talk
+about fellowship with God, unless the fellowship is rooted in sympathy
+with Him in that which is the very heart of his Being, the perfect light
+of perfect holiness. Test your Christianity by that.</p>
+
+<p>Then, still further, there is implied in this great requirement of
+walking in the light, not only activity and effort, and progress and
+purity, but also that the whole of the life shall be brought into
+relation with, and shall be moulded after, the pattern of the God in
+whom we profess to believe. Religion, in its deepest meaning, is the
+aspiration after likeness to the god. You see it in heathenism. Men make
+their gods after their own image, and then the god makes the worshippers
+after his image. Mars is the god of the soldier, and Venus goddess of
+the profligate, and Apollo god of the musical and the wise, etc., and in
+Christianity the deepest thing in it is aspiration and effort after
+likeness to God. Love is imitation; admiration, especially when it is
+raised to the highest degree and becomes adoration, is imitation. And
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_256" id="Page_2_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> man that lies before God, like a mirror in the sunshine, receives
+on the still surface of his soul&mdash;but not, like the mirror, on the
+surface only, but down into its deepest depths&mdash;the reflected image of
+Him on Whom he gazes. 'We all with unveiled face, mirroring glory, are
+changed into the same image.' So to walk in the light is only possible
+when we are drawn into it, and our feeble feet made fit to tread upon
+the radiant glory, by the thought that He is in the light. To imitate
+Him is to be righteous. So do not let us forget that a correct creed,
+and devout emotions, ay! and a morality which has no connection with
+Him, are all imperfect, and that the end of all our religion, our
+orthodox creed and our sweet emotions and inward feelings of acceptance
+and favour and fellowship, are meant to converge on, and to produce
+this&mdash;a life and a character which lives and moves and has its being in
+a great orb of light and purity.</p>
+
+<p>But another thing is included in this grand metaphor of my text. Not
+only does it enjoin upon us effort and activity and progress in the
+light and the linking of all our purity with God, but also, it bids us
+shroud no part of our conduct or our character either from ourselves or
+from Him. Bring it all out into the light. And although with a penitent
+heart, and a face suffused with blushes, we have sometimes to say, 'See,
+Father, what I have done!' it is far better that the revealing light
+should shine down upon us, and like the sunshine on wet linen, melt away
+the foulness which it touches, than that we should huddle the ugly thing
+up in a corner, to be one day revealed and transfixed by the flash of
+the light turned into lightning. 'He that doeth the truth cometh to the
+light, that his deeds may be made manifest.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_257" id="Page_2_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II. So much, then, for my first point; the second is: The companions of
+the men that walk in the light.</p>
+
+<p>I have already pointed out that the accurate, perhaps pedantically
+accurate, form of the antithesis would have been: 'If we walk in the
+light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with God.' But John
+says, first, 'we have fellowship one with another.' Underlying that, as
+I shall have to say in a moment, there is the other thought: 'We have
+fellowship with God.' But he deals with the other side of the truth
+first. That just comes to this, that the only cement that perfectly
+knits men to each other is their common possession of that light, and
+the consequent fellowship with God. There are plenty of other bonds that
+draw us to one another; but these, if they are not strengthened by this
+deepest of all bonds, the affinity of souls, that are moving together in
+the realm of light and purity, are precarious, and apt to snap. Sin
+separates men quite as much as it separates each man from God. It is the
+wedge driven into the tree that rends it apart. Human society with its
+various bonds is like the iron hoop that may be put around the barrel
+staves, giving them a quasi-unity. The one thing that builds men
+together into a whole is that each shall be, as it were, embedded in the
+rock which is the foundation, and the building will rise into a holy
+temple in the Lord. Sin separates; as the prophet confessed, 'All we
+like sheep have gone astray, every one to <i>his own way</i>,' and the flock
+is broken up into a multitude of scattered sheep. Social enthusiasts may
+learn the lesson that the only way by which brotherhood among men can
+become anything else than a name, and probably end, as it did in the
+great French Revolution, in 'brothers' making hecatombs of their
+brethren under the guillotine, is that it shall be the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_258" id="Page_2_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> corollary from
+the Fatherhood of God. If we walk in the light, not otherwise, we have
+'fellowship one with another.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, still further, in this fellowship one with another, John
+presupposes the fellowship with God for each, which makes the
+possibility and the certainty of all being drawn into one family. He
+does not think it necessary to state, what is so plain and obvious,
+viz., that unless we are in sympathy with God, in our aspiration and
+effort after the light which is His home and ours, we have no real
+communion with Him. I said that sin separated man from man, and
+disrupted all the sweet bonds of amity, so that if men come into
+contact, being themselves in the darkness, they come into collision
+rather than into communion. A company of travellers in the night are
+isolated individuals. When the sun rises on their paths they are a
+company again. And in like manner, sin separates us from God, and if our
+hearts are turned towards, and denizens of, the darkness of impurity,
+then we have no communion with Him. He cannot come to us if we love the
+darkness. He</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Can but listen at the gate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;And hear the household jar within.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The tide of the Atlantic feels along the base of iron-bound cliffs on
+our western shores, and there is not a crevice into which it can come.
+So God moves about us, but is without us, so long as we walk in
+darkness. So let us remember that no union with Him is possible, except
+there be this common dwelling in the light. Two grains of quicksilver
+laid upon a polished surface will never unite if their surfaces be
+dusted over with minute impurities, or if the surface of one of them be.
+Clean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_259" id="Page_2_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> away the motes, and they will coalesce and be one. A film of sin
+separates men from God. And if the film be removed the man dwells in
+God, and God in him.</p>
+
+<p>III. That brings me to my last point: The progressive cleansing of those
+who dwell in the light.</p>
+
+<p>'The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.' Now if you will
+notice the whole context, and eminently the words a couple of verses
+after my text, you will see that the cleansing here meant is not the
+cleansing of forgiveness, but the cleansing of purifying. For the two
+things are articulately distinguished in the ninth verse: 'He is
+faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
+unrighteousness.' So, to use theological terms, it is not justification,
+but sanctification that is meant here.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another thing to be noticed, and that is that when the
+Apostle speaks here about the blood of Christ, he is not thinking of
+that blood as shed on the Cross, the atoning sacrifice, but of that
+blood as transfused into the veins, the source there of our new life.
+The Old Testament says that 'the blood is the life.' Never mind about
+the statement being scientifically correct; it conveys the idea of the
+time, which underlies a great deal of Old and New Testament teaching.
+And when John says the blood of Jesus cleanses from 'all sin,' he says
+just the same thing as his brother Paul said, 'the law of the spirit of
+life in Jesus Christ makes me free from the law of sin and death.' That
+is to say, a growing cleansing from the dominion and the power of sin is
+granted to us, if we have the life of Jesus Christ breathed into our
+lives. The metaphor is a very strong one. They tell us&mdash;I know nothing
+about the truth of it&mdash;that sometimes it has been possible to revive a
+mori<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_260" id="Page_2_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>bund man by transfusing into his veins blood from another. That is
+a picture of the only way by which you and I can become free from the
+tyranny that dominates us. We must have the life of Christ as the
+animating principle of our lives, the spirit of Jesus emancipating us
+from the power of sin and death.</p>
+
+<p>So you see, there are two aspects of Christ's great work set before us
+under that one metaphor of the blood in its two-fold form, first, as
+shed for us sinners on the Cross; second, as poured into our veins day
+by day. That works progressive cleansing. It covers the whole ground of
+all possible iniquity. Pardon is much, purifying is more. The sacrifice
+on the Cross is the basis of everything, but that sacrifice does not
+exhaust what Christ does for us. He died for our sins, and lives for our
+sanctifying. He died for us, He lives in us. Because He died, we are
+forgiven; because He lives, we are made pure. Only remember John's 'if.'
+The 'blood of Jesus will progressively cleanse us until it has cleansed
+us from <i>all</i> sin,' on condition that we 'walk in the light,' not
+otherwise. If the main direction of our lives is towards the light; if
+we seek, by aspiration and by effort, and by deliberate choice, to live
+in holiness, then, and not else, will the power of the life of Jesus
+Christ deliver us from the power of sin and death.</p>
+
+<p>Now, my text presupposes that the people to whom it is addressed, and
+whom it concerns, have already passed from darkness into light, if not
+wholly, yet in germ. But for those who have not so passed, there is
+something to be said before my text. And John says it immediately; here
+it is, 'If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
+the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for our
+sins only, but for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_261" id="Page_2_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> the whole world.' So we have to begin with the blood
+shed for us, the means of our pardon, and then we have the advance of
+the blood sprinkled on us, the means of our cleansing. If by humble
+faith we take the dying Lord for our Saviour, and the channel of our
+forgiveness, we shall have the pardon of our sins. If we listen to the
+voice that says, 'Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the
+Lord. Walk as children of the light,' we shall have fellowship with the
+living Lord, and daily know more and more of the power of His cleansing
+blood, making us 'meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints
+in light.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_COMMANDMENT_OLD_YET_NEW" id="THE_COMMANDMENT_OLD_YET_NEW"></a>THE COMMANDMENT, OLD YET NEW</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which
+ye had from the beginning.... Again, a new commandment I write unto
+you, which thing is true in him and in you.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">John</span> ii. 7, 8.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The simplest words may carry the deepest thoughts. Perhaps angels and
+little children speak very much alike. This letter, like all of John's
+writing, is pellucid in speech, profound in thought, clear and deep,
+like the abysses of mid-ocean. His terms are such as a child can
+understand; his sentences short and inartificial: he does not reason, he
+declares; he has neither argument nor rhetoric, but he teaches us the
+deepest truths, and shows us that we get nearer the centre by insight
+than by logic.</p>
+
+<p>Now the words that I have taken for my text are very characteristic of
+this Apostle's manner. He has a great, wide-reaching truth to proclaim,
+and he puts it in the simplest, most inartificial manner, laying side by
+side<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_262" id="Page_2_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> two artless sentences, and stimulates us by the juxtaposition,
+leading us to feel after, and so to make our own, the large lessons that
+are in them. Let me, then, try to bring these out.</p>
+
+<p>I. And the first one that strikes me is&mdash;'the word' is 'a commandment.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, by 'the word' here the Apostle obviously means, since he speaks
+about it as that which these Asiatic Christians 'heard from the
+beginning,' the initial truth which was presented for their acceptance
+in the story of the life and death of Jesus Christ. That was 'the word'
+and, says he, just because it was a history it is a commandment; just
+because it was the Revelation of God it is a law. God never tells us
+anything merely that we may be wise. The purpose of all divine speech,
+whether in His great works in nature, or in the voices of our own
+consciences, or in the syllables that we have to piece together from out
+of the complicated noises of the world's history, or in this book, or in
+the Incarnate Word, where all the wandering syllables are gathered
+together into one word&mdash;the purpose of all that God says to men is
+primarily that they may know, but in order that, knowing, they may do;
+and still more that they may be. And so, inasmuch as every piece of
+religious knowledge has in it the capacity of directing conduct, all
+God's word is a commandment.</p>
+
+<p>And, if that is true in regard to other revelations and manifestations
+that he has made of Himself, it is especially true in regard to the
+summing-up of all in the Incarnate Word, and in His words, and in the
+words that tell us of His life and of His death. So whatever truths
+there may be, and there are many, which, of course, have only the
+remotest, if any, bearing upon life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_263" id="Page_2_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> and conduct, every bit of Christian
+truth has a direct grip upon a man's life, and brings with it a
+stringent obligation.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ, 'the Word which ye heard
+from the beginning,' which, I suppose, would roughly correspond with
+what is told us in our four Gospels; the word which these Asiatic
+Christians heard at first, the good news that was brought to them in the
+midst of their gropings and peradventures, commanded, in the first
+place, absolute trust, the submission of the will as well as the assent
+of the understanding. But also it commanded imitation, for Jesus Christ
+was revealed to them, as He is revealed to us, as being the Incarnate
+realisation of the ideal of humanity; and what He is, the knowledge that
+He is that, binds us to try to be in our turn.</p>
+
+<p>And more than that, brethren, the Cross of Christ is a commandment. For
+we miserably mutilate it, and sinfully as well as foolishly limit its
+application and its power, if we recognise it only&mdash;I was going to say
+mainly&mdash;as being the ground of our hope and of what we call our
+salvation, and do not recognise it as being the obligatory example of
+our lives, which we are bound to translate into our daily practice.
+Jesus Christ Himself has told us that in many a fashion, never more
+touchingly and wondrously than when in response to the request of a
+handful of Greeks to see Him, He answered with the word which not only
+declared what was obligatory upon Him, but what was obligatory upon us
+all, and for the want of which all the great endowments of the Greek
+mind at last rotted down into sensuousness, when He said, 'Except a corn
+of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die
+it bringeth forth much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_264" id="Page_2_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> fruit' and then went on to say, 'he that loveth
+his life shall lose it,'</p>
+
+<p>So, then, brethren, 'the word which ye heard at the beginning,' the
+story of Christ, His life and His death, is a stringent commandment.
+Now, this is one of the blessings of Christianity, that all which was
+hard and hopeless, ministering to despair sometimes, as well as stirring
+to fierce effort at others, in the conception of law or duty as it
+stands outside us, is changed into the tender word, 'if ye love Me, keep
+My commandments.' If any man serve Me, let him ... 'follow Me.' It is a
+law; it is 'the law of liberty.' So you have not done all that is
+needful when you have accepted the teaching of Christ in the Scriptures
+and the teaching of the Scriptures concerning Christ. Nor have you done
+all that is needful when clasping Him, and clinging simply to His Cross,
+you recognise in it the means and the pledge of your acceptance with
+God, and the ground and anchor of all your hope. There is something more
+to be done. The Gospel is a commandment, and commandments require not
+only assent, not only trust, but practical obedience. The 'old
+commandment' is the 'word which ye heard from the beginning.'</p>
+
+<p>II. The old Christ is perpetually new.</p>
+
+<p>The Apostle goes on, in the last words of my text, to say, 'Which thing'
+(viz., this combination of the old and the new) 'is true in Him and in
+you.' 'True in Him'&mdash;that is to say, Christ, the old Christ that was
+declared to these Asiatic Christians as they were groping amidst the
+illusions of their heathenism, is perpetually becoming new as new
+circumstances emerge, and new duties are called for, and new days come
+with new burdens, hopes, possibilities, or dangers. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_265" id="Page_2_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> perpetual
+newness of the old Christ is what is taught here.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose one of these men in Ephesus heard for the first time the story
+that away in Judea there had lived the manifestation of God in the
+flesh, and that He, in His wonderful love, had died for men, that they
+might be saved from the grip of their sins. And suppose that man barely
+able to see, had yet seen that much, and clutched at it. He was a
+Christian, but the Christ that he discerned when he first discerned Him
+through the mists, and the Christ that he had in his life and in his
+heart, after, say, twenty years of Christian living, are very different.
+The old Christ remained, but the old Christ was becoming new day by day,
+according to the new necessities and positions. And that is what will be
+our experience if we have any real Christianity in us. The old Christ
+that we trusted at first was able to do for us all that we asked Him to
+do, but we did not ask Him at first for half enough, and we did not
+learn at first a tithe of what was in Him. Suppose, for instance, some
+great ship comes alongside a raft with ship-wrecked sailors upon it, and
+in the darkness of the night transfers them to the security of its deck.
+They know how safe they are, they know what has saved them, but what do
+they know compared with what they will know before the voyage ends of
+all the reservoirs of power and stores of supplies that are in her?
+Christ comes to us in the darkness, and delivers us. We know Him for our
+Deliverer from the first moment, if we truly have grasped Him. But it
+will take summering and wintering with Him, through many a long day and
+year, before we can ever have a partially adequate apprehension of all
+that lies in Him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_266" id="Page_2_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And what will teach us the depths of Christ, and how does He become new
+to us? Well, by trusting Him, by following Him, and by the ministry of
+life. Some of us, I have no doubt, can look back upon past days when
+sorrow fell upon us, blighting and all but crushing; and then things
+that we had read a thousand times in the Bible, and thought we had
+believed, blazed up into a new meaning, and we felt as if we had never
+understood anything about them before. The Christ that is with us in the
+darkness, and whom we find able to turn even it, if not into light, at
+least into a solemn twilight not unvisited by hopes, that Christ is more
+to us than the Christ that we first of all learnt so little to know. And
+life's new circumstances, its emerging duties, are like the strokes of
+the spade which clears away the soil, and discloses the treasure in all
+its extent which we purchased when we bought that field. We buy the
+treasure at once, but it takes a long time to count it. The old Christ
+is perpetually the new Christ.</p>
+
+<p>So, brethren, Christian progress consists not in getting away from the
+original facts, the elements of the Gospel, but it consists in
+penetrating more deeply into these, and feeling more of their power and
+their grasp. All Euclid is in the definitions and axioms and postulates
+at the beginning. All our books are the letters of the alphabet. And
+progress consists, not in advancing beyond, but in sinking into, that
+initial truth, 'God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.'</p>
+
+<p>I might say a word here as to another phase of this perpetual newness of
+the old Christ&mdash;viz., in His adaptation to deal with all the
+complications and perplexities and problems of each successive age. It
+has taken the Church a long, long time to find out and to formulate,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_267" id="Page_2_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+rightly or wrongly, what it has discovered in Jesus. The conclusions to
+be drawn from the simple Gospel truth, the presuppositions on which it
+rests, require all the efforts of all the Church through all the ages,
+and transcend them all. And I venture to say, though it may sound like
+unsupported dogma, that for this generation's questionings, social,
+moral, and political, the answer is to be found in Him. He, and He only,
+will interpret each generation to itself, and will meet its clamant
+needs. There is none other for the world to-day but the old Christ with
+the new aspect which the new conditions require.</p>
+
+<p>Did it ever strike you how remarkable it is, and, as it seems to me, of
+how great worth as an argument for the truth of Christianity it is, that
+Jesus Christ comes to this, as to every generation, with the air of
+belonging to it? Think of the difference between the aspect which a
+Plato or a Socrates presents to the world to-day, and the aspect which
+that Lord presents. You do not need to strip anything off Him. He
+committed Himself to no statements which the progress of thought or
+knowledge has exploded. He stands before the world to-day fitting its
+needs as closely as He did those of the men of His own generation. The
+old Christ is the new Christ.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, in the Christian life the old commandment is perpetually
+new.</p>
+
+<p>'Which thing is true ... in you.' That is to say, 'the commandment which
+ye received at the beginning,' when ye received Christ as Saviour, has
+in itself a power of adapting itself to all new conditions as they may
+emerge, and will be felt increasingly to grow stringent, and
+increasingly to demand more entire conformity, and increasingly to sweep
+its circle round the whole of human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_268" id="Page_2_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> life. For this is the result of all
+obedience, that the conception of duty becomes more clear and more
+stringent. 'If any man will do His will' the reward shall be that he
+will see more and more the altitude of that will, the length and breadth
+and depth and height of the possible conformity of the human spirit to
+the will of God. And so as we advance in obedience we shall see
+unreached advances before us, and each new step of progress will declare
+more fully how much still remains to be accomplished. In us the 'old
+commandment' will become ever new.</p>
+
+<p>And not only so, but perpetually with the increasing sweep and
+stringency of the obligation will be felt an increasing sense of our
+failure to fulfil it. Character is built up, for good or for evil, by
+slow degrees. Conscience is quickened by being listened to, and stifled
+by being neglected. A little speck of mud on a vestal virgin's robe, or
+on a swan's plumage, will be conspicuous, while a splash twenty times
+the size will pass unnoticed on the rags of some travel-stained
+wayfarer. The purer we become, the more we shall know ourselves to be
+impure.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, my brother, there opens out before us an endless course in which
+all the blessedness that belongs to the entertaining and preservation of
+ancient convictions, lifelong friends, and familiar truths, and all the
+antithetical blessedness that belongs to the joy of seeing, rising upon
+our horizon as some new planet with lustrous light, will be united in
+our experience. We shall at once be conservative and progressive;
+holding by the old Christ and the old commandment, and finding that both
+have in them endless novelty. The trunk is old; every summer brings
+fresh leaves. And at last we may hope to come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_269" id="Page_2_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> to the new Jerusalem, and
+drink the new wine of the Kingdom, and yet find that the old love
+remains, and that the new Christ, whose presence makes the new heavens
+and the new earth, is 'the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,' the
+old Christ whom, amid the shadows of earth, we tried to love and copy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="YOUTHFUL_STRENGTH" id="YOUTHFUL_STRENGTH"></a>YOUTHFUL STRENGTH</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the
+word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.'&mdash;1
+<span class="smcap">John</span> ii. 14.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>'What am I going to be?' is the question that presses upon young people
+stepping out of the irresponsibilities of childhood into youth. But,
+unfortunately, the question is generally supposed to be answered when
+they have fixed upon a trade or profession. It means, rightly taken, a
+great deal more than that. 'What am I going to make of myself?' 'What
+ideal have I before me, towards which I constantly press?' is a question
+that I would fain lay upon the hearts of all that now hear me. For the
+misery and the reason of the failure of so many lives is simply that
+people have never fairly looked that question in the face and tried to
+answer it, but drift and drift, and let circumstances determine them.
+And, of course, in a world like this, such people are sure to turn out
+what such an immense number of people do turn out, failures as far as
+all God's purposes with humanity are concerned. The absence of a clear
+ideal is the misery and the loss of all young people who do not possess
+it.</p>
+
+<p>So here in my text is an old man's notion of what young men ought to be
+and may be. 'Ye are strong,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_270" id="Page_2_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> and the word of God abideth in you, and ye
+have overcome the wicked one.'</p>
+
+<p>So said the aged John to some amongst his hearers in these corrupt
+Asiatic cities. It was not merely a fair ideal painted upon vacancy, but
+it was a portrait of actual young Christians in these little Asiatic
+churches. And I would fain have some of you take this realised ideal for
+yours and see to it that your lives be conformed to it.</p>
+
+<p>There are three points here. The Apostle, first of all, lays his finger
+upon the strength, which is something more than mere physical strength,
+proper to youth. Then he lets us see the secret source of that strength:
+'Ye have the word of God abiding in you.' And then he shows the field on
+which it should be exercised, and the victory which it secures: 'And ye
+have overcome the wicked one.' Now let me touch upon these three points
+briefly in succession.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, note here the strength which you young people ought to
+covet and to aim at.</p>
+
+<p>It is not merely the physical strength proper to their age, nor the mere
+unworn buoyancy and vigour which sorrows and care and responsibilities
+have not thinned and weakened. These are great and precious gifts. We
+never know how precious they are until they have slipped away from us.
+These are great and precious gifts, to be preserved as long as may be,
+by purity and by moderation, and to be used for high and great purposes.
+But the strength that is in thews and muscles is not the strength that
+the Apostle is speaking about here, nor anything that belongs simply to
+the natural stage of your development, whether it be purely physical or
+purely mental. Samson was a far weaker man than the poor little Jew
+'whose bodily presence was weak and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_271" id="Page_2_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> speech contemptible,' and who
+all his days carried about with him that 'thorn in the flesh.' It is not
+your body that is to be strong, but yourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Now the foundation of all true strength lies here, in a good, strong
+will. In this world, unless a man has learned to say 'No!' and to say it
+very decidedly, and to stick to it, he will never come to any good. Two
+words contain the secret of noble life: '<i>Resist!</i>' and '<i>Persist!</i>' And
+the true strength of manhood lies in this mainly, that, in spite of all
+antagonisms, hindrances, voices, and things that array themselves
+against you, having greatly resolved, you do greatly do what you have
+resolved, and having said 'I will!' let neither men nor devils lead you
+to say, 'I will not.' Depend upon it, that to be weak in this direction
+is to be weak all through. Strong passions make weak men. And a strong
+will is the foundation, in this wicked and antagonistic world in which
+we live, of all real strength.</p>
+
+<p>But then the strength that I would have you seek, and strive to
+cultivate, must be a strength of will founded upon strong reason.
+Determination unenlightened is obstinacy, and obstinacy is weakness. A
+mule can beat you at that: 'Be ye not as the mule, which have no
+understanding.' A determination which does not take into its view all
+the facts of the case, nor is influenced by these, has no right to call
+itself strength. It is only, to quote a modern saying&mdash;I know not
+whether true of the person to whom it was originally applied or no&mdash;is
+'only a lath painted to look like iron.' Unintelligent obstinacy is
+folly, like the conduct of some man who sticks to his pick and his task
+in a quarry after the bugle has warned him of an impending explosion,
+which will blow him to atoms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_272" id="Page_2_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But that is not all. A strong will, illuminated by a strong beam of
+light from the understanding, must be guided and governed by a strong
+hand put forth by Conscience. 'I should like' is the weakling's motto.
+'I will' may be an obstinate fool's motto. 'I ought, therefore, God
+helping me, and though the devil hinders me, I will,' is a man's.
+Conscience is king. To obey it is to be free; to neglect it is to be a
+slave.</p>
+
+<p>Is not this a better ideal for life than gathering any outward
+possessions, however you may succeed therein? A thousand things will
+have to be taken into account, and may help or may hinder outward
+prosperity and success. But nobody can hinder you working at your
+character and succeeding in making it what it ought to be; and to form
+character is the end of life. 'To be weak is miserable, doing or
+suffering.' Ay! that is true, though Milton put it into the devil's
+mouth. And there is only one strength that will last, 'for even the
+youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail.'
+But the strength of a fixed and illuminated and conscience-guided will,
+which governs the man and is governed by God, shall never faint or grow
+weak. This is the strength which we should seek, and which I ask you to
+make the conscious aim of your lives.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now note, secondly, how to get it.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you.' Those young Asiatic
+Christians, that John had in his eye, had learned the secret and the
+conditions of this strength; and not only in limb and sinew, or in
+springy and elastic buoyancy of youthful, mental, and spiritual vigour
+were they strong, but they were so because 'the Word of God abode in
+them.' Now, there are two significations of that great expression, both
+of them frequent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_273" id="Page_2_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> in John's Gospel, and both of them, I think,
+transferred to this Epistle, each of which may yield us a word of
+counsel. By 'the Word of God,' as I take it, is meant&mdash;perhaps I ought
+to say <i>both</i>, but, at all events, <i>either</i>&mdash;the revelation of God's
+truth in Holy Scripture, or the personal revelation of the will and
+nature of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Whichever of these two
+meanings&mdash;and at bottom they come to be one&mdash;we attach to this
+expression, we draw from them an exhortation. Let me put this very
+briefly.</p>
+
+<p>Let me say to you, then, if you want to be strong, let Scripture truth
+occupy and fill and be always present to your mind. There are powers to
+rule and to direct all conduct, motive powers of the strongest character
+in these great truths of God's revelation. They are meant to influence a
+man in all his doings, and it is for us to bring the greatest and
+solemnest of them to bear on the smallest things of our daily life.
+Suppose, now, that you go to your work, and some little difficulty
+starts up in your path, or some trivial annoyance ruffles your temper,
+or some lurking temptation is suddenly sprung upon you. Suppose your
+mind and heart were saturated with God's truth, with the great thoughts
+of His being, of His love, of His righteousness, of Christ's death for
+you, of Christ's presence with you, of Christ's guardianship over you,
+of Christ's present will that you should walk in His ways, of the bright
+hopes of the future, and the solemn vision of that great White Throne
+and the retribution that streams thence, do you think it would be
+possible for you to fall into sin, to yield to temptation, to be annoyed
+by any irritation or bother, or overweighted by any duty? No! Whosoever
+lives with the thoughts that God has given us in His Word familiar to
+His mind and within<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_274" id="Page_2_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> easy reach of His hand, has therein an armlet
+against all possible temptation, a test that will unveil the hidden
+corruption in the sweetest seductions, and a calming power that will
+keep his heart still and collected in the midst of agitations. If the
+Word of God in that lower sense of the principles involved in the gospel
+of Jesus Christ, dwell in your hearts, the fangs are taken out of the
+serpent. If you drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt you, and you
+will 'be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.'</p>
+
+<p>Bring the greatest truths you can find to bear on the smallest duties,
+and the small duties will grow great to match the principles by which
+they are done. Bring the laws of Jesus Christ down to the little things,
+for, in the name of common sense, if our religion is not meant to
+regulate trifles, what is it meant to regulate? Life is made up of
+trifles. There are half a dozen crises in the course of your life, but
+there are a thousand trivial things in the course of every day. It would
+be a poor kind of regulating principle that controlled the crises, and
+left us alone to manage with the trifles the best way we could.</p>
+
+<p>But in order that there shall be this continual operation of the motives
+and principles involved in the gospel upon our daily lives, we must have
+them very near our hand, ready to be laid hold of. The soldier that
+would march through an enemy's country, having left his gun in the hands
+of some camp follower, would be very likely to be shot before he got his
+gun. I remember going through the Red Sea; at the mouth of it where the
+entrance is narrow, and the currents run strong, when the ship
+approaches the dangerous place, the men take their stations at appointed
+places, and the ponderous anchors are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_275" id="Page_2_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> loosened and ready to be dropped
+in an instant if the swirl of the current sweeps the ship into dangerous
+proximity to the reef. It is no time to cut the lashings of the anchors
+when the keel is grating on the coral rocks. And it is no time to have
+to look about for our weapons when the sudden temptation leaps upon us
+like a strong man armed. You must have them familiar to you by devout
+meditation, by frequent reflection, prayer, study of God's Word, if they
+are to be of any use to you at all. And I am afraid that about the last
+book in the world that loads of young men and women think of sitting
+down to read, systematically and connectedly, is the Bible. You will
+read sermons and other religious books; you will read newspapers,
+pamphlets, novels; but the Scripture, in its entirety, is a strange book
+to myriads of men who call themselves Christians. And so they are weak.
+If you want to be strong, 'let the Word of God abide in your hearts.'</p>
+
+<p>And then if we take the other view, which at bottom is not another, of
+the meaning of this phrase, and apply it rather to the personal word,
+Jesus Christ Himself, that will yield us another exhortation, and that
+is, let Jesus Christ into your hearts and keep Him there, and He will
+make you strong. I believe that it is no piece of metaphor or an
+exaggerated way of putting the continuance of the influence of Christ's
+example and Christ's teaching upon men's hearts and minds, when He tells
+us that 'if any man open the door He will come in and sup with him.' I
+want to urge the one thought on you that it is possible, in simple
+literal fact, for that Divine Saviour, who was 'in Heaven' whilst He
+walked on earth, and walks on earth to-day when He has returned to His
+native Heaven, to enter into my spirit and yours, and really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_276" id="Page_2_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> to abide
+within us, the life of our lives, 'the strength of our hearts, and our
+portion for ever.' The rest of us can render help to one another by
+strength ministered from without; Jesus Christ will come into your
+hearts, if you let Him, in His very sweetness and omnipotence of power,
+and will breathe His own grace into your weakness, strengthening you as
+from within. Others can help you from without, as you put an iron band
+round some over-weighted, crumbling brick pillar in order to prevent it
+from collapsing, but He will pass into us as you may drive an iron rod
+up through the centre of the column, and make it strong inside, and we
+shall be strong if Jesus Christ dwells within us. Open the door, dear
+young friends; let Christ come into your hearts, which He will do if you
+do not hinder Him, and if you ask Him. Trust Him with simple reliance
+upon Him for everything. Faith is 'the door'; the door is nothing of
+itself, but when it is opened it admits the guest. So do you let that
+Master come and abide, and you will hear Him say to you, as He said of
+old, 'Child! My grace is sufficient.' How modest He is. Sufficient!&mdash;an
+ocean <i>enough</i> to fill a thimble! 'My grace is sufficient for thee; and
+My strength is made perfect in weakness.'</p>
+
+<p>III. Now, lastly, notice the field on which the strength is to be
+exercised, and the victory which it secures. 'Ye have overcome the
+wicked one.'</p>
+
+<p>There is a battle for us all, on which I need not dwell, the conflict
+with evil around and with evil within, and with the prince of the
+embattled legions of the darkness, whom the New Testament has more
+clearly revealed to us. You young people have many advantages in the
+conflict; you have some special disadvantages as well. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_277" id="Page_2_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> have strong
+passions, you have not much experience, you do not know how bitter the
+dregs are of the cup whose foaming bubbles look so attractive, and whose
+upper inch tastes so sweet. But on the other hand you have not yet
+contracted habits that it is misery to indulge in, and, as it would
+seem, impossible to break, and the world is yet before you.</p>
+
+<p>You cannot begin too soon to choose your side. And here is the side on
+which alone victory is possible for a man&mdash;the side of Jesus Christ, who
+will teach your hands to war and your fingers to fight.</p>
+
+<p>Notice that remarkable phrase, 'Ye have overcome the wicked one.' He is
+talking to young Christians before whom the battle may seem to lie, and
+yet He speaks of their conquest as an accomplished fact, and as a thing
+behind them. What does that mean? It means this, that if you will take
+service in Christ's army, and by His grace resolve to be His faithful
+soldier till your life's end, that act of faith, which enrols you as
+His, is itself the victory which guarantees, if it be continued, the
+whole conquest in time.</p>
+
+<p>There used to be an old superstition that&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Who sheds the foremost foeman's life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;His party conquers in the strife';<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and whosoever has exercised, however imperfectly and feebly, the faith
+in Jesus Christ the Lord has therein conquered the devil and all his
+works, and Satan is henceforth a beaten Satan, and the battle, in
+essence, is completed even in the act of its being begun.</p>
+
+<p>'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith'; not
+only because our confidence in Jesus Christ is the blowing of the bugle
+that summons to warfare and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_278" id="Page_2_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> shakes off the tyrant's yoke, but it is
+also the means by which we join ourselves to Him who has overcome, and
+make His victory ours. He has fought our antagonist in the wilderness
+once, in Gethsemane twice, on the Cross thrice; and the perfect conquest
+in which Jesus bound the strong man and spoiled his goods may become,
+and will become, your conquest, if you wed yourselves to that dear Lord
+by simple faith in Him.</p>
+
+<p>What a priceless thing it is that you may begin your independent manhood
+with a conquest that will draw after it ultimate and supreme victory.
+You will still have to fight, but you will have only to fight
+detachments. If you trust yourselves to Jesus Christ you have conquered
+the main body of the army, and it is only the stragglers that you will
+have to contend with hereafter. He that loves Jesus, and has given
+himself to Him, has pinned the dragon to the ground by its head, and
+though it may 'swinge the scaly horror of its folded tail,' and twine
+its loathly coils around him, yet he has conquered, and he is
+conquering, and he will conquer. Only let him hold fast by the hand
+which brings strength into him by its touch.</p>
+
+<p>Will you, dear young friends, take service in this army? Do you want to
+be weak or strong? Do you want your lives to be victorious whatever may
+happen to them in the way of outward prosperity or failure? Then give
+yourselves to this Lord. His voice calls you to be His soldiers. He will
+cover your heads in the day of battle. He will strengthen you 'with
+might by His Spirit in the inner man.' He will hide His Word in your
+heart that you offend not against Him. He will dwell Himself within you
+to make you strong in your extremest weakness and victorious over your
+mightiest foe; and in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_279" id="Page_2_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> sign you will conquer and 'be more than
+conquerors through Him that loved you.'</p>
+
+<p>Oh, I pray that you may ask yourselves the question, 'What am I going to
+be?' and may answer it, 'I am going to be strong in the Lord and in the
+power of His might'; and to overcome, as He also hath overcome, the
+world and the flesh and the devil.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="RIVER_AND_ROCK" id="RIVER_AND_ROCK"></a>RIVER AND ROCK</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth
+the will of God abideth for ever.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">John</span> ii. 17.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>John has been solemnly giving a charge not to love the world, nor the
+things that are in it. That charge was addressed to 'children,' 'young
+men,' 'fathers.' Whether these designations be taken as referring to
+growth and maturity of Christian experience, or of natural age, they
+equally carry the lesson that no age and no stage is beyond the danger
+of being drawn away by the world's love, or beyond the need of the
+solemn dehortation therefrom.</p>
+
+<p>My text is the second of the reasons which the Apostle gives for his
+earnest charge. We all, therefore, need it, and we always need it;
+though on the last Sunday of another year, it may be more than usually
+appropriate to turn our thoughts in its direction. 'The world passeth
+away, and the lust thereof.' Let us lay the handful of snow on our
+fevered foreheads and cool our desires.</p>
+
+<p>Now there are but two things set forth in this text, which is a great
+and wonderful antithesis between something which is in perpetual flux
+and passage and some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_280" id="Page_2_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>thing which is permanent. If I might venture to
+cast the two thoughts into metaphorical form, I should say that here are
+a river and a rock. The one, the sad truth of sense, universally
+believed and as universally forgotten; the other, the glad truth of
+faith, so little regarded or operative in men's lives.</p>
+
+<p>I ask you, then, to look with me for a few moments at each of these
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, the river, or the sad truth of sense.</p>
+
+<p>Now you observe that there are two things in my text of which this
+transiency is predicated, the one 'the world,' the other 'the lust
+thereof'; the one outside us, the other within us. As to the former, I
+need only, I suppose, remind you in a sentence that what John means by
+'the world' is not the material globe on which we dwell, but the whole
+aggregate of things visible and material, together with the lives of the
+men whose lives are directed to, and bounded by, that visible and
+material, and all considered as wrenched apart from God. That, and not
+the mere external physical creation, is what he means by 'the world,'
+and therefore the passing away of which he speaks is not only (although,
+of course, it includes) the decay and dissolution of material things,
+but the transiency of things which are or have to do with the visible,
+and are separated by us from God. Over all these, he says, there is
+written the sentence, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.'
+There is a continual flowing on of the stream. As the original implies
+even more strongly than in our translation, 'the world' is in the act of
+'passing away.' Like the slow travelling of the scenes of some moveable
+panorama which glide along, even as the eye looks upon them, and are
+concealed behind the side flats before the gazer has taken in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_281" id="Page_2_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> whole
+picture, so equably, constantly, silently, and therefore unnoticed by
+us, all is in a state of continual motion. There is no <i>present</i> time.
+Even whilst we name the moment it dies. The drop hangs for an instant on
+the verge, gleaming in the sunlight, and then falls into the gloomy
+abyss that silently sucks up years and centuries. There is no present,
+but all is movement.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, that has been the commonplace of moralists and poets and
+preachers from the beginning of time; and it would be folly for me to
+suppose that I can add anything to the impressiveness of the thought.
+All that I want to do is to wake you up to preach it to yourselves, for
+that is the only thing that is of any use.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So passeth, in the passing of an hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But besides this transiency external to us, John finds a corresponding
+transiency within us. 'The world passeth, and the lust thereof.' Of
+course the word 'lust' is employed by him in a much wider sense than in
+our use of it. With us it means one specific and very ugly form of
+earthly desire. With him it includes the whole genus&mdash;all desires of
+every sort, more or less noble or ignoble, which have this for their
+characteristic, that they are directed to, stimulated by, and fed or
+starved on, the fleeting things of this outward life. If thus a man has
+anchored himself to that which has no perpetual stay, so long as the
+cable holds he follows the fate of the thing to which he has pinned
+himself. And if it perish he perishes, in a very profound sense, with
+it. If you trust yourselves in the leaky vessel, when the water rises in
+<i>it</i> it will drown <i>you</i>, and you will go to the bottom with the craft
+to which you have trusted yourselves. If you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_282" id="Page_2_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> embark in the little ship
+that carries Christ and His fortunes, you will come with Him to the
+haven.</p>
+
+<p>But these fleeting desires, of which my text speaks, point to that sad
+feature of human experience, that we all outgrow and leave behind us,
+and think of very little value, the things that once to us were all but
+heaven. There was a time when toys and sweetmeats were our treasures,
+and since that day how many burnt-out hopes we all have had! How little
+we should know ourselves if we could go back to the fears and wishes and
+desires that used to agitate us ten, twenty, thirty years ago! They lie
+behind us, no longer part of ourselves; they have slipped away from us,
+and</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'We all are changed, by still degrees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;All but the basis of the soul.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The self-conscious same man abides, and yet how different the same man
+is! Our lives, then will zig-zag instead of keeping a straight course,
+if we let desires that are limited by anything that we can see guide and
+regulate us.</p>
+
+<p>But, brethren, though it be a digression from my text, I cannot help
+touching for a moment upon a yet sadder thought than that. There are
+desires that <i>remain</i>, when the gratification of them has become
+impossible. Sometimes the lust outlasts the world, sometimes the world
+outlasts the lust; and one knows not whether is the sadder. There is a
+hell upon earth for many of us who, having set our affections upon some
+creatural object, and having had that withdrawn from us, are ready to
+say, 'They have taken away my gods! And what shall I do?' And there is a
+hell of the same sort waiting beyond those dark gates through which we
+have all to pass, where men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_283" id="Page_2_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> who never desired anything, except what the
+world that has slipped out of their reluctant fingers could give them,
+are shut up with impossible longings after a for-ever-vanished good.
+'Father Abraham! a drop of water; for I am tormented in this flame.'
+That is what men come to, if the fire of their lust burn after its
+objects are withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>But let me remind you that this transiency of which I have been speaking
+receives very strange treatment from most of us. I do not know that it
+is altogether to be regretted that it so seldom comes to men's
+consciousness. Perhaps it is right that it should not be uppermost in
+our thoughts always; but yet there is no vindication for the entire
+oblivion to which we condemn it. The march of these fleeting things is
+like that of cavalry with their horses' feet wrapped in straw, in the
+night, across the snow, silent and unnoticed. We cannot realise the
+revolution of the earth, because everything partakes in it. We talk
+about standing still, and we are whirling through space with
+inconceivable rapidity. By a like illusion we deceive ourselves with the
+notion of stability, when everything about us is hastening away. Some of
+you do not like to be reminded of it, and think it a killjoy. You try to
+get rid of the thought, and hide your head in the sand, and fancy that
+the rest of your body presents no mark to the archer's arrow. Now surely
+common sense says to all, that if there be some fact certain and plain
+and applying to you, which, if accepted, would profoundly modify your
+life, you ought to take it into account. And what I want you to do, dear
+friends, now, is to look in the face this fact, which you all
+acknowledge so utterly that some of you are ready to say, 'What was the
+use of coming to a chapel to hear that threadbare old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_284" id="Page_2_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> thing dinned into
+my ears again?' and to take it into account in shaping your lives. Have
+you done so? Have you? Suppose a man that lived in a land habitually
+shaken by earthquakes were to say, 'I mean to ignore the fact; and I am
+going to build a house just as if there was not such a thing as an
+earthquake expected'; he would have it toppling about his ears very
+soon. Suppose a man upon the ice-slopes of the Alps was to say, 'I am
+going to ignore slipperiness and gravitation,' he would before long find
+himself, if there was any consciousness left in him, at the bottom of a
+precipice, bruised and bleeding. And suppose a man says, 'I am not going
+to take the fleetingness of the things of earth into account at all, but
+intend to live as if all things were to remain as they are'; what would
+become of him do you think? Is he a wise man or a fool? And is he <i>you</i>?
+He <i>is</i> some of you! 'So teach us to number our days that we may apply
+our hearts unto wisdom.'</p>
+
+<p>Then let me say to you, see that you take noble lessons out of these
+undeniable and all-important facts. There is one kind of lesson that I
+do not want you to take out of it. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
+we die,' or, to put it into a more vulgar formula, 'A short life and a
+merry one.' The mere contemplation of the transiency of earthly things
+may, and often does, lend itself to very ignoble conclusions, and men
+draw from it the thought that, as life is short, they had better crowd
+into it as much of sensual enjoyment as they can.</p>
+
+<p>'Gather ye roses while ye may' is a very common keynote, struck by poets
+of the baser sort. And it is a thought that influences some of us, I
+have little doubt. Or there may be another consideration. 'Make hay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_285" id="Page_2_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+whilst the sun shines.' 'Hurry on your getting rich, because you have
+not very long to do it in'; or the like.</p>
+
+<p>Now all that is supremely unworthy. The true lesson to be drawn is the
+plain, old one which it is never superfluous to shout into men's ears,
+until they have obeyed it&mdash;viz., 'Set not thine heart on that which is
+not; and which flieth away as an eagle towards heaven.' Do you, dear
+brother, see to it, that your roots go down through the gravel on the
+surface. Do you see to it that you dig deeper than that; and thrusting
+your hand, as it were, through the thin, silk-paper screen that stands
+between you and the Eternal, grasp the hand that you will find on the
+other side, waiting and ready to clasp you, and to hold you up.</p>
+
+<p>When they build a new house in Rome they have to dig down through
+sometimes sixty or a hundred feet of rubbish that runs like water, the
+ruins of old temples and palaces, once occupied by men in the same flush
+of life in which we are now. We too have to dig down through ruins,
+until we get to the Rock and build there, and build secure. Withdraw
+your affections and your thoughts and your desires from the fleeting,
+and fix them on the permanent. If a captain takes anything but the
+pole-star for his fixed point he will lose his reckoning, and his ship
+will be on the reefs. If we take anything but God for our supreme
+delight and desire we shall perish.</p>
+
+<p>Then let me say, too, let this thought stimulate us to crowd every
+moment, as full as it can be packed, with noble work and heavenly
+thoughts. These fleeting things are elastic, and you may put all but
+infinite treasure into them. Think of what the possibilities, for each
+of us, of this dying year were on the 1st of January; and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_286" id="Page_2_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> what the
+realisation has been by the 28th of December. So much that we could have
+done! so little that we have done! So many ripples of the river have
+passed, bearing no golden sand to pile upon the shore! 'We have been' is
+a sad word; but oh, the one sad word is, 'We might have been!' And, so,
+do you see to it that you fill time with that which is kindred to
+eternity, and make 'one day as a thousand years' in the elastic
+possibilities and realities of consecration and of service.</p>
+
+<p>Further, let the thought help us to the conviction of the relative
+insignificance of all that can change. That will not spoil nor shade any
+real joy; rather it will add to it poignancy that prevents it from
+cloying or from becoming the enemy of our souls. But the thought will
+wondrously lighten the burden that we have to carry, and the tasks which
+we have to perform. 'But for a moment,' makes all light. There was an
+old rabbi, long ago, whose real name was all but lost, because everybody
+nick-named him 'Rabbi Thisalso.' The reason was because he had
+perpetually on his lips the saying about everything as it came, 'This
+also will pass.' He was a wise man. Let us go to his school and learn
+his wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now let me say a word, and it can only be a word, about the second
+of the thoughts here, which I designated as the Rock, or the glad truth
+of Faith.</p>
+
+<p>We might have expected that John's antithesis to the world that passeth
+would have been the God that abides. But he does not so word his
+sentence, although the thought of the divine permanence underlies it.
+Rather over against the fleeting world he puts the abiding man who does
+the will of God.</p>
+
+<p>Of course there is a very solemn sense in which all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_287" id="Page_2_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> men, even they who
+have most exclusively lived for what they call the present, do last for
+ever, and in which their deeds do so too. After death is the judgment,
+and the issues of eternity depend upon the actions of time; and every
+fleeting thought comes back to the hand that projected it, like the
+Australian savage's boomerang that, flung out, returns and falls at the
+feet of the thrower. But that is not what John means by 'abiding for
+ever.' He means something very much more blessed and lofty than that;
+and the following is the course of his thought. There is only one
+permanent Reality in the universe, and that is God. All else is shadow
+and He is the substance. All else was, is, and is not. He is the One who
+was, is, and is to come, the timeless and only permanent Being. The will
+of God is the permanent element in all changeful material things. And
+consequently he who does the will of God links himself with the Divine
+Eternity, and becomes partaker of that solemn and blessed Being which
+lives above mutation.</p>
+
+<p>Obedience to God's will is the permanent element in human life.
+Whosoever humbly and trustfully seeks to mould his will after the divine
+will, and to bring God's will into practice in his doings, that man has
+pierced through the shadows and grasped the substance, and partakes of
+the Immortality which he adores and serves. Himself shall live for ever
+in the true life which is blessedness. His deeds shall live for ever
+when all that lifted itself in opposition to the Divine will shall be
+crushed and annihilated. They shall live in His own peaceful
+consciousness; they shall live in the blessed rewards which they shall
+bring to the doers. His habits will need no change.</p>
+
+<p>What will you do when you are dead? You have to go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_288" id="Page_2_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> into a world where
+there are no gossip and no housekeeping; no mills and no offices; no
+shops, no books; no colleges and no sciences to learn. What will you do
+there? 'He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.' If you have
+done your housekeeping, and your weaving and spinning, and your
+book-keeping, and your buying and selling, and your studying, and your
+experimenting with a conscious reference to God, it is all right. That
+has made the act capable of eternity, and there will be no need for such
+a man to change. The material on which he works will change, but the
+inner substance of his life will be unaffected by the trivial change
+from earth to heaven. Whilst the endless ages roll he will be doing just
+what he was doing down here; only here he was playing with counters, and
+yonder he will be trusted with gold, and dominion over ten cities. To
+all other men the change that comes when earth passes from them, or they
+from it, is as when a trench is dug across a railway, into which the
+express goes with a smash, and there is an end. To the man who, in the
+trifles of time, has been obeying the will of God, and therefore
+subserving eternity and his interests there, the trench is bridged, and
+he will go on after he crosses it just as he did before, with the same
+purpose, the same desires, the same submission, and the same drinking
+into himself of the fulness of immortal life.</p>
+
+<p>Brother, John tells us that obedience to the will of God brings
+permanence into our fleeting years. But how are we to obey the will of
+God? John tells us that the only way is by love. But how are we to love
+God? John tells us that the only way to love&mdash;which love is the only way
+to obedience&mdash;is by knowing and believing the love that God hath to us.
+But how are we to know that God hath<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_289" id="Page_2_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> love to us? John tells us that the
+only way to know the love of God, which is the only way of our loving
+Him, which in its turn is the only way to obedience, which again is the
+only way to permanence of life, is to believe in Jesus Christ and His
+propitiation for our sins. The river flows on for ever, but it sweeps
+round the base of the Rock of Ages. And in Him, by faith in His blood,
+we may find our sure refuge and eternal home.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_LOVE_THAT_CALLS_US_SONS" id="THE_LOVE_THAT_CALLS_US_SONS"></a>THE LOVE THAT CALLS US SONS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that
+we should be called the sons of God....'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">John</span> iii. 1.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>One or two points of an expository character will serve to introduce
+what else I have to say on these words.</p>
+
+<p>The text is, I suppose, generally understood as if it pointed to the
+fact that we are called the sons of God as the great exemplification of
+the wonderfulness of His love. That is a perfectly possible view of the
+connection and meaning of the text. But if we are to translate with
+perfect accuracy we must render, not 'that we should be called,' but
+'<i>in order that</i> we should be called the sons of God.' The meaning then
+is that the love bestowed is the means by which the design that we
+should be called His sons is accomplished. What John calls us to
+contemplate with wonder and gratitude is not only the fact of this
+marvellous love, but also the glorious end to which it has been given to
+us and works. There seems no reason for slurring over this meaning in
+favour of the more vague 'that' of our version. God gives His great and
+wonderful love in Jesus Christ, and all the gifts and powers which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_290" id="Page_2_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> live
+in Him like fragrance in the rose. All this lavish bestowal of love,
+unspeakable as it is, may be regarded as having one great end, which God
+deems worthy of even such expenditure, namely, that men should become,
+in the deepest sense, His children. It is not so much to the
+contemplation of our blessedness in being sons, as to the devout gaze on
+the love which, by its wonderful process, has made it possible for us to
+be sons, that we are summoned here.</p>
+
+<p>Again, you will find a remarkable addition to our text in the Revised
+Version&mdash;namely, 'and such we are.' Now these words come with a very
+great weight of manuscript authority, and of internal evidence. They are
+parenthetical, a kind of rapid 'aside' of the writer's, expressing his
+joyful confidence that he and his brethren are sons of God, not only in
+name, but in reality. They are the voice of personal assurance, the
+voice of the spirit 'by which we cry Abba, Father,' breaking in for a
+moment on the flow of the sentence, like an irrepressible, glad answer
+to the Father's call. With these explanations let us look at the words.</p>
+
+<p>I. The love that is given.</p>
+
+<p>We are called upon to come with our little vessels to measure the
+contents of the great ocean, to plumb with our short lines the infinite
+abyss, and not only to estimate the quantity but the quality of that
+love, which, in both respects, surpasses all our means of comparison and
+conception.</p>
+
+<p>Properly speaking, we can do neither the one nor the other, for we have
+no line long enough to sound its depths, and no experience which will
+give us a standard with which to compare its quality. But all that we
+can do, John would have us do&mdash;that is, look and ever look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_291" id="Page_2_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> at the
+working of that love till we form some not wholly inadequate idea of it.</p>
+
+<p>We can no more 'behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on
+us' than we can look with undimmed eyes right into the middle of the
+sun. But we can in some measure imagine the tremendous and beneficent
+forces that ride forth horsed on his beams to distances which the
+imagination faints in trying to grasp, and reach their journey's end
+unwearied and ready for their task as when it began. Here are we, ninety
+odd millions of miles from the centre of the system, yet warmed by its
+heat, lighted by its beams, and touched for good by its power in a
+thousand ways. All that has been going on for no one knows how many
+&aelig;ons. How mighty the Power which produces these effects! In like manner,
+who can gaze into the fiery depths of that infinite Godhead, into the
+ardours of that immeasurable, incomparable, inconceivable love? But we
+can look at and measure its activities. We can see what it does, and so
+can, in some degree, understand it, and feel that after all we have a
+measure for the Immeasurable, a comparison for the Incomparable, and can
+<i>thus</i> 'behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us.'</p>
+
+<p>So we have to turn to the work of Christ, and especially to His death,
+if we would estimate the love of God. According to John's constant
+teaching, that is the great proof that God loves us. The most wonderful
+revelation to every heart of man of the depths of that Divine heart lies
+in the gift of Jesus Christ. The Apostle bids me 'behold what manner of
+love.' I turn to the Cross, and I see there a love which shrinks from no
+sacrifice, but gives 'Him up to death for us all.' I turn to the Cross,
+and I see there a love which is evoked by no lovableness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_292" id="Page_2_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> on my part,
+but comes from the depth of His own Infinite Being, who loves because He
+must, and who must because He is God. I turn to the Cross, and I see
+there manifested a love which sighs for recognition, which desires
+nothing of me but the repayment of my poor affection, and longs to see
+its own likeness in me. And I see there a love that will not be put away
+by sinfulness, and shortcomings, and evil, but pours its treasures on
+the unworthy, like sunshine on a dunghill. So, streaming through the
+darkness of eclipse, and speaking to me even in the awful silence in
+which the Son of Man died there for sin, I 'behold,' and I hear, the
+'manner of love that the Father hath bestowed upon us,' stronger than
+death and sin, armed with all power, gentler than the fall of the dew,
+boundless and endless, in its measure measureless, in its quality
+transcendent&mdash;the love of God to me in Jesus Christ my Saviour.</p>
+
+<p>In like manner we have to think, if we would estimate the 'manner of
+this love,' that through and in the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ
+there comes to us the gift of a divine life like His own. Perhaps it may
+be too great a refinement of interpretation; but it certainly does seem
+to me that that expression 'to bestow His love upon' us, is not
+altogether the same as 'to love us,' but that there is a greater depth
+in it. There may be some idea of that love itself being as it were
+infused into us, and not merely of its consequences or tokens being
+given to us; as Paul speaks of 'the love of God shed abroad in our
+hearts' by the spirit which is given to us. At all events this
+communication of divine life, which is at bottom divine love&mdash;for God's
+life is God's love&mdash;is His great gift to men.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, these two are the great tokens,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_293" id="Page_2_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> consequences, and
+measures of God's love to us&mdash;the gift of Christ, and that which is the
+sequel and outcome thereof, the gift of the Spirit which is breathed
+into Christian spirits. These two gifts, which are one gift, embrace all
+that the world needs. Christ for us and Christ in us must both be taken
+into account if you would estimate the manner of the love that God has
+bestowed upon us.</p>
+
+<p>We may gain another measure of the greatness of this love if we put an
+emphasis&mdash;which I dare say the writer did not intend&mdash;on one word of
+this text, and think of the love given to '<i>us</i>,' such creatures as we
+are. Out of the depths we cry to Him. Not only by the voice of our
+supplications, but even when we raise no call of entreaty, our misery
+pleads with His merciful heart, and from the heights there comes upon
+our wretchedness and sin the rush of this great love, like a cataract,
+which sweeps away all our sins, and floods us with its own blessedness
+and joy. The more we know ourselves, the more wonderingly and thankfully
+shall we bow down our hearts before Him, as we measure His mercy by our
+unworthiness.</p>
+
+<p>From all His works the same summons echoes. They all call us to see
+mirrored in them His loving care. But the Cross of Christ and the gift
+of a Divine Spirit cry aloud to every ear in tones of more beseeching
+entreaty and of more imperative command to 'behold what manner of love
+the Father hath bestowed upon us.'</p>
+
+<p>II. Look next at the sonship which is the purpose of His given Love.</p>
+
+<p>It has often been noticed that the Apostle John uses for that expression
+'the sons of God,' another word from that which his brother Paul uses.
+John's phrase would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_294" id="Page_2_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> perhaps be a little more accurately translated
+'children of God,' whilst Paul, on the other hand, very seldom says
+'children,' but almost always says 'sons.' Of course the children are
+sons and the sons are children, but still, the slight distinction of
+phrase is characteristic of the men, and of the different points of view
+from which they speak about the same thing. John's word lays stress on
+the children's kindred nature with their father and on their immature
+condition.</p>
+
+<p>But without dwelling on that, let us consider this great gift and
+dignity of being children of God, which is the object that God has in
+view in all the lavish bestowment of His goodness upon us.</p>
+
+<p>That end is not reached by God's making us men. Over and above that He
+has to send this great gift of His love, in order that the men whom He
+has made may become His sons. If you take the context here you will see
+very clearly that the writer draws a broad distinction between 'the sons
+of God' and 'the world' of men who do not comprehend them, and so far
+from being themselves sons, do not even know God's sons when they see
+them. And there is a deeper and solemner word still in the context. John
+thinks that men (within the range of light and revelation, at all
+events) are divided into two families&mdash;'the children of God and the
+children of the devil.' There <i>are</i> two families amongst men.</p>
+
+<p>Thank God, the prodigal son in his rags amongst the swine, and lying by
+the swine-troughs in his filth and his husks, and his fever, <i>is</i> a son!
+No doubt about that! He has these three elements and marks of sonship
+that no man ever gets rid of: he is of a divine origin, he has a divine
+likeness in that he has got mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_295" id="Page_2_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> and will and spirit, and he is the
+object of a divine love.</p>
+
+<p>The doctrine of the New Testament about the Fatherhood of God and the
+sonship of man does not in the slightest degree interfere with these
+three great truths, that all men, though the features of the common
+humanity may be almost battered out of recognition in them, are all
+children of God because He made them; that they are children of God
+because still there lives in them something of the likeness of the
+creative Father; and, blessed be His name! that they are all children of
+God because He loves and provides and cares for every one of them.</p>
+
+<p>All that is blessedly and eternally true; but it is also true that there
+is a higher relation than that to which the name 'children of God' is
+more accurately given, and to which in the New Testament that name is
+confined. If you ask what that relation is, let me quote to you three
+passages in this Epistle which will answer the question. 'Whoever
+believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God,' that is the first;
+'Every one that doeth righteousness is born of God,' that is the second;
+'Every one that loveth is born of God,' that is the third. Or to put
+them all into one expression which holds them all, in the great words of
+his prologue in the first chapter of John's Gospel you find this: 'To as
+many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God.'
+Believing in Christ with loving trust produces, and doing righteousness
+and loving the brethren, as the result of that belief, prove the fact of
+sonship in its highest and its truest sense.</p>
+
+<p>What is implied in that great word by which the Almighty gives us a name
+and a place as of sons and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_296" id="Page_2_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> daughters? Clearly, first, a communicated
+life, therefore, second, a kindred nature which shall be 'pure as He is
+pure,' and, third, growth to full maturity.</p>
+
+<p>This sonship, which is no mere empty name, is the aim and purpose of
+God's dealings, of all the revelation of His love, and most especially
+of the great gift of His love in Christ. Has that purpose been
+accomplished in you? Have you ever looked at that great gift of love
+that God has given you on purpose to make you His child? If you have,
+has it made you one? Are you trusting to Jesus Christ, whom God has sent
+forth that we might receive the standing of sons in Him? Are you a child
+of God because a brother of that Saviour? Have you received the gift of
+a divine life through Him? My friend, remember the grim alternative! A
+child of God or a child of the devil! Bitter words, narrow words,
+uncharitable words&mdash;as people call them! And I believe, and therefore I
+am bound to say it, <i>true</i> words, which it concerns <i>you</i> to lay to
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>III. Now, still further, let me ask you to look at the glad recognition
+of this sonship by the child's heart.</p>
+
+<p>I have already referred to the clause added in the Revised Version, 'and
+such we are.' As I said, it is a kind of 'aside,' in which John adds the
+Amen for himself and for his poor brothers and sisters toiling and
+moiling obscure among the crowds of Ephesus, to the great truth. He
+asserts his and their glad consciousness of the reality of the fact of
+their sonship, which they know to be no empty title. He asserts, too,
+the present possession of that sonship, realising it as a fact, amid all
+the commonplace vulgarities and carking cares and petty aims of life's
+little day. 'Such we are' is the 'Here am I, Father,' of the child
+answering the Father's call, 'My Son.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_297" id="Page_2_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He turns doctrine into experience. He is not content with merely having
+the thought in his creed, but his heart clasps it, and his whole nature
+responds to the great truth. I ask you, do you do that? Do not be
+content with hearing the truth, or even with assenting to it, and
+believing it in your understandings. The truth is nothing to you, unless
+you have made it your very own by faith. Do not be satisfied with the
+orthodox confession. Unless it has touched your heart and made your
+whole soul thrill with thankful gladness and quiet triumph, it is
+nothing to you. The mere belief of thirty-nine or thirty-nine thousand
+Articles is nothing; but when a man has a true heart-faith in Him, whom
+all articles are meant to make us know and love, then dogma becomes
+life, and the doctrine feeds the soul. Does it do so with you, my
+brother? Can <i>you</i> say, 'And such we are?'</p>
+
+<p>Take another lesson. The Apostle was not afraid to say 'I know that I am
+a child of God.' There are many very good people, whose tremulous,
+timorous lips have never ventured to say 'I know.' They will say, 'Well,
+I hope,' or sometimes, as if that was not uncertain enough, they will
+put in an adverb or two, and say, 'I humbly hope that I am.' It is a far
+robuster kind of Christianity, a far truer one, ay, and a humbler one
+too, that throws all considerations of my own character and merits, and
+all the rest of that rubbish, clean behind me, and when God says, 'My
+son!' says 'My Father;' and when God calls us His children, leaps up and
+gladly answers, 'And we are!' Do not be afraid of being too confident,
+if your confidence is built on God, and not on yourselves; but be afraid
+of being too diffident, and be afraid of having a great deal of
+self-righteousness masquerad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_298" id="Page_2_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>ing under the guise of such a profound
+consciousness of your own unworthiness that you dare not call yourself a
+child of God. It is not a question of worthiness or unworthiness. It is
+a question, in the first place, and mainly, of the truth of Christ's
+promise and the sufficiency of Christ's Cross; and in a very subordinate
+degree of anything belonging to you.</p>
+
+<p>IV. We have here, finally, the loving and devout gaze upon this
+wonderful love. 'Behold,' at the beginning of my text, is not the mere
+exclamation which you often find both in the Old and in the New
+Testaments, which is simply intended to emphasise the importance of what
+follows, but it is a distinct command to do the thing, to look, and ever
+to look, and to look again, and live in the habitual and devout
+contemplation of that infinite and wondrous love of God.</p>
+
+<p>I have but two remarks to make about that, and the one is this, that
+such a habit of devout and thankful meditation upon the love of God, as
+manifested in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the consequent gift of
+the Divine Spirit, joined with the humble, thankful conviction that I am
+a child of God thereby, lies at the foundation of all vigorous and happy
+Christian life. How can a thing which you do not touch with your hands
+and see with your eyes produce any effect upon you, unless you think
+about it? How can a religion which can only influence through thought
+and emotion do anything in you, or for you, unless you occupy your
+thoughts and your feelings with it? It is sheer nonsense to suppose it
+possible. Things which do not appeal to sense are real to us, and indeed
+we may say, <i>are</i> at all for us, only as we think about them. If you had
+a dear friend in Australia, and never thought about him, he would even
+cease to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_299" id="Page_2_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> dear, and it would be all one to you as if he were dead. If
+he were really dear to you, you <i>would</i> think about him. We may say
+(though, of course, there are other ways of looking at the matter) that,
+in a very intelligible sense, the degree in which we think about Christ,
+and in Him behold the love of God, is a fairly accurate measure of our
+Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>Now will you apply that sharp test to yesterday, and the day before, and
+the day before that, and decide how much of your life was pagan, and how
+much of it was Christian? You will never make anything of your professed
+Christianity, you will never get a drop of happiness or any kind of good
+out of it; it will neither be a strength nor a joy nor a defence to you
+unless you make it your habitual occupation to 'behold the manner of
+love'; and look and look and look until it warms and fills your heart.</p>
+
+<p>The second remark is that we cannot keep that great sight before the eye
+of our minds without effort. You will have very resolutely to look away
+from something else if, amid all the dazzling gauds of earth, you are to
+see the far-off lustre of that heavenly love. Just as timorous people in
+a thunder-storm will light a candle that they may not see the lightning,
+so many Christians have their hearts filled with the twinkling light of
+some miserable tapers of earthly care and pursuits, which, though they
+be dim and smoky, are bright enough to make it hard to see the silent
+depths of Heaven, though it blaze with a myriad stars. If you hold a
+sixpence close enough up to the pupil of your eye, it will keep you from
+seeing the sun. And if you hold the world close to mind and heart, as
+many of you do, you will only see, round the rim of it, the least tiny
+ring of the overlapping love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_300" id="Page_2_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> of God. What the world lets you see you
+will see, and the world will take care that it will let you see very
+little&mdash;not enough to do you any good, not enough to deliver you from
+its chains. Wrench yourselves away, my brethren, from the absorbing
+contemplation of Birmingham jewellery and paste, and look at the true
+riches. If you have ever had some glimpses of that wondrous love, and
+have ever been drawn by it to cry, 'Abba, Father,' do not let the
+trifles which belong not to your true inheritance fill your thoughts,
+but renew the vision, and by determined turning away of your eyes from
+beholding vanity, look off from the things that are seen, that you may
+gaze upon the things that are not seen, and chiefest among them, upon
+the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.</p>
+
+<p>If you have never looked on that love, I beseech you now to turn aside
+and see this great sight. Do not let that brightness burn unnoticed
+while your eyes are fixed on the ground, like the gaze of men absorbed
+in gold digging, while a glorious sunshine is flushing the eastern sky.
+Look to the unspeakable, incomparable, immeasurable love of God, in
+giving up His Son to death for us all. Look and be saved. Look and live.
+'Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on you,' and,
+beholding, you will become the sons and daughters of the Lord God
+Almighty.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_301" id="Page_2_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_UNREVEALED_FUTURE_OF_THE_SONS_OF_GOD" id="THE_UNREVEALED_FUTURE_OF_THE_SONS_OF_GOD"></a>THE UNREVEALED FUTURE OF THE SONS OF GOD</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear
+what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall
+be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">John</span> iii. 2.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I have hesitated, as you may well believe, whether I should take these
+words for a text. They seem so far to surpass anything that can be said
+concerning them, and they cover such immense fields of dim thought, that
+one may well be afraid lest one should spoil them by even attempting to
+dilate on them. And yet they are so closely connected with the words of
+the previous verse, which formed the subject of my last sermon, that I
+felt as if my work were only half done unless I followed that sermon
+with this.</p>
+
+<p>The present is the prophet of the future, says my text: 'Now we are the
+sons of God, <i>and</i>' (not 'but') 'it doth not yet appear what we shall
+be.' Some men say, 'Ah! <i>now are</i> we, but we shall be&mdash;nothing!' John
+does not think so. John thinks that if a man is a son of God he will
+always be so. There are three things in this verse, how, if we are God's
+children, our sonship makes us quite sure of the future; how our sonship
+leaves us largely in ignorance of the future, but how our sonship flings
+one bright, all-penetrating beam of light on the only important thing
+about the future, the clear vision of and the perfect likeness to Him
+who is our life. 'Now are we the sons of God,' therefore we shall be. We
+are the sons; we do not know what we shall be. We are the sons, and
+therefore, though there be a great circumference of blank ignorance as
+to our future, yet, blessed be His name, there is a great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_302" id="Page_2_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> light burning
+in the middle of it! 'We know that when He shall appear we shall be like
+Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'</p>
+
+<p>I. The fact of sonship makes us quite sure of the future.</p>
+
+<p>I am not concerned to appraise the relative value of the various
+arguments and proofs, or, it may be, presumptions, which may recommend
+the doctrine of a future life to men, but it seems to me that the
+strongest reasons for believing in another world are these two:&mdash;first,
+that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and has gone up there; and,
+second, that a man here can pray, and trust, and love God, and feel that
+he is His child. As was noticed in the preceding sermon, the word
+rendered 'sons' might more accurately be translated 'children.' If so,
+we may fairly say, 'We are the <i>children</i> of God now&mdash;and if we are
+children now, we shall be grown up some time.' Childhood leads to
+maturity. The infant becomes a man.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, he that here, in an infantile way, is stammering with
+his poor, unskilled lips the name 'Abba! Father!' will one day come to
+speak it fully. He that dimly trusts, he that partially loves, he that
+can lift up his heart in some more or less unworthy prayer and
+aspiration after God, in all these emotions and exercises, has the great
+proof in himself that such emotions, such relationship, can never be put
+an end to. The roots have gone down through the temporal, and have laid
+hold of the Eternal. Anything seems to me to be more credible than that
+a man who can look up and say, 'My Father,' shall be crushed by what
+befalls the mere outside of him; anything seems to me to be more
+believable than to suppose that the nature which is capable of these
+elevating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_303" id="Page_2_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> emotions and aspirations of confidence and hope, which can
+know God and yearn after Him, and can love Him, is to be wiped out like
+a gnat by the finger of Death. The material has nothing to do with these
+feelings, and if I know myself, in however feeble and imperfect a
+degree, to be the son of God, I carry in the conviction the very pledge
+and seal of eternal life. That is a thought 'whose very sweetness
+yieldeth proof that it was born for immortality.' 'We are the sons of
+God,' therefore we shall always be so, in all worlds, and whatsoever may
+become of this poor wrappage in which the soul is shrouded.</p>
+
+<p>We may notice, also, that not only the fact of our sonship avails to
+assure us of immortal life, but that also the very form which our
+religious experience takes points in the same direction.</p>
+
+<p>As I said, infancy is the prophecy of maturity. 'The child is father of
+the man'; the bud foretells the flower. In the same way, the very
+imperfections of the Christian life, as it is seen here, argue the
+existence of another state, where all that is here in the germ shall be
+fully matured, and all that is here incomplete shall attain the
+perfection which alone will correspond to the power that works in us.
+Think of the ordinary Christian character. The beginning is there, and
+evidently no more than the beginning. As one looks at the crudity, the
+inconsistencies, the failings, the feebleness of the Christian life of
+others, or of oneself, and then thinks that such a poor, imperfect
+exhibition is all that so divine a principle has been able to achieve in
+this world, one feels that there must be a region and a time where we
+shall be all which the transforming power of God's spirit can make us.
+The very inconsistencies of Christians are as strong rea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_304" id="Page_2_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>sons for
+believing in the perfect life of Heaven as their purities and virtues
+are. We have a right to say mighty principles are at work upon Christian
+souls&mdash;the power of the Cross, the power of love issuing in obedience,
+the power of an indwelling Spirit; and is this all that these great
+forces are going to effect on human character? Surely a seed so precious
+and divine is somewhere, and at some time, to bring forth something
+better than these few poor, half-developed flowers, something with more
+lustrous petals and richer fragrance. The plant is clearly an exotic;
+does not its obviously struggling growth here tell of warmer suns and
+richer soil, where it will be at home?</p>
+
+<p>There is a great deal in every man, and most of all in Christian men and
+women, which does not fit this present. All other creatures correspond
+in their capacities to the place where they are set down; and the world
+in which the plant or the animal lives, the world of their surroundings,
+stimulates to activity all their powers. But that is not so with a man.
+'Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests.' They fit exactly, and
+correspond to their 'environment.' But a man!&mdash;there is an enormous
+amount of waste faculty about him if he is only to live in this world.
+There are large capacities in every nature, and most of all in a
+Christian nature, which are like the packages that emigrants take with
+them, marked 'Not wanted on the voyage.' These go down into the hold,
+and they are only of use after landing in the new world. If I am a son
+of God I have much in me that is 'not wanted on the voyage,' and the
+more I grow into His likeness, the more I am thrown out of harmony with
+the things round about me, in proportion as I am brought into harmony
+with the things beyond.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_305" id="Page_2_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That consciousness of belonging to another order of things, because I am
+God's child, will make me sure that when I have done with earth, the tie
+that binds me to my Father will not be broken, but that I shall go home,
+where I shall be fully and for ever all that I so imperfectly began to
+be here, where all gaps in my character shall be filled up, and the
+half-completed circle of my heavenly perfectness shall grow like the
+crescent moon, into full-orbed beauty. 'Neither life, nor death, nor
+things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
+creature' shall be able to break that tie, and banish the child from the
+conscious grasp of a Father's hand. Dear brother and sister, can you
+say, 'Now am I a child of God!' Then you may patiently and peacefully
+front that dim future.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now I come to the second point, namely, that we remain ignorant of
+much in that future.</p>
+
+<p>That happy assurance of the love of God resting upon me, and making me
+His child through Jesus Christ, does not dissipate all the darkness
+which lies on that beyond. 'We are the sons of God, <i>and</i>,' just because
+we are, 'it does not yet appear what we shall be.' Or, as the words are
+rendered in the Revised Version, 'it is not yet made manifest what we
+shall be.'</p>
+
+<p>The meaning of that expression, 'It doth not yet appear,' or, 'It is not
+made manifest,' may be put into very plain words. John would simply say
+to us, 'There has never been set forth before men's eyes in this earthly
+life of ours an example, or an instance, of what the sons of God are to
+be in another state of being.' And so, because men have never had the
+instance before them, they do not know much about that state.</p>
+
+<p>In some sense there has been a manifestation through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_306" id="Page_2_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> the life of Jesus
+Christ. Christ has died; Christ is risen again. Christ has gone about
+amongst men upon earth after Resurrection. Christ has been raised to the
+right hand of God, and sits there in the glory of the Father. So far it
+has been manifested what we shall be. But the risen Christ is not the
+glorified Christ, and although He has set forth before man's senses
+irrefragably the fact of another life, and to some extent given glimpses
+and gleams of knowledge with regard to certain portions of it, I suppose
+that the 'glorious body' of Jesus Christ was not assumed by Him till the
+cloud 'received Him out of their sight,' nor, indeed, could it be
+assumed while He moved among the material realities of this world, and
+did eat and drink before them. So that, while we thankfully recognise
+that Christ's Resurrection and Ascension have 'brought life and
+immortality to light,' we must remember that it is the fact, and not the
+manner of the fact, which they make plain; and that, even after His
+example, it has not been manifested what is the body of glory which He
+now wears, and therefore it has not yet been manifested what we shall be
+when we are fashioned after its likeness.</p>
+
+<p>There has been no manifestation, then, to sense, or to human experience,
+of that future, and, therefore, there is next to no knowledge about it.
+You can only know facts when the facts are communicated. You may
+speculate and argue and guess as much as you like, but that does not
+thin the darkness one bit. The unborn child has no more faculty or
+opportunity for knowing what the life upon earth is like than man here,
+in the world, has for knowing that life beyond. The chrysalis' dreams
+about what it would be when it was a butterfly would be as reliable as a
+man's imagination of what a future life will be.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_307" id="Page_2_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So let us feel two things:&mdash;Let us be thankful that we do not know, for
+the ignorance is the sign of the greatness; and then, let us be sure
+that just the very mixture of knowledge and ignorance which we have
+about another world is precisely the food which is most fitted to
+nourish imagination and hope. If we had more knowledge, supposing it
+could be given, of the conditions of that future life, it would lose
+some of its power to attract. Ignorance does not always prevent the
+occupation of the mind with a subject. Blank ignorance does; but
+ignorance, shot with knowledge like a tissue which, when you hold it one
+way seems all black, and when you tilt it another, seems golden,
+stimulates desire, hope, and imagination. So let us thankfully acquiesce
+in the limited knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Fools can ask questions which wise men cannot answer, and will not ask.
+There are questions which, sometimes, when we are thinking about our own
+future, and sometimes when we see dear ones go away into the mist,
+become to us almost torture. It is easy to put them; it is not so easy
+to say: 'Thank God, we cannot answer them yet!' If we could it would
+only be because the experience of earth was adequate to measure the
+experience of Heaven; and that would be to bring the future down to the
+low levels of this present. Let us be thankful then that so long as we
+can only speak in language derived from the experiences of earth, we
+have yet to learn the vocabulary of Heaven. Let us be thankful that our
+best help to know what we shall be is to reverse much of what we are,
+and that the loftiest and most positive declarations concerning the
+future lie in negatives like these:&mdash;'I saw no temple therein.' 'There
+shall be no night there.' 'There shall be no curse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_308" id="Page_2_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> there.' 'There shall
+be no more sighing nor weeping, for the former things are passed away.'</p>
+
+<p>The white mountains keep their secret well; not until we have passed
+through the black rocks that make the throat of the pass on the summit,
+shall we see the broad and shining plains beyond the hills. Let us be
+thankful for, and own the attractions of, the knowledge that is wrapt in
+ignorance, and thankfully say, 'Now are we the sons of God, and it doth
+not appear what we shall be!'</p>
+
+<p>III. Now I must be very brief with the last thought that is here, and I
+am the less unwilling to be so because we cannot travel one inch beyond
+the revelations of the Book in reference to the matter. The thought is
+this, that our sonship flings one all-penetrating beam of light on that
+future, in the knowledge of our perfect vision and perfect likeness. 'We
+know that when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for we
+shall see Him as He is.'</p>
+
+<p>'When He shall be manifested'&mdash;to what period does that refer? It seems
+most natural to take the manifestation here as being the same as that
+spoken of only a verse or two before. 'And now, little children, abide
+in Him, and when He shall <i>be manifested</i>, we may have confidence, and
+not be ashamed before Him at His coming' (ii. 28). That 'coming' then,
+is the 'manifestation' of Christ; and it is at the period of His coming
+in His glory that His servants 'shall be like Him, and see Him as He
+is.' Clearly then it is Christ whom we shall see and become like, and
+not the Father invisible.</p>
+
+<p>To behold Christ will be the condition and the means of growing like
+Him. That way of transformation by beholding, or of assimilation by the
+power of loving con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_309" id="Page_2_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>templation, is the blessed way of ennobling
+character, which even here, and in human relationships, has often made
+it easy to put off old vices and to clothe the soul with unwonted grace.
+Men have learned to love and gaze upon some fair character, till some
+image of its beauty has passed into their ruder natures. To love such
+and to look on them has been an education. The same process is
+exemplified in more sacred regions, when men here learn to love and look
+upon Christ by faith, and so become like Him, as the sun stamps a tiny
+copy of its blazing sphere on the eye that looks at it. But all these
+are but poor, far-off hints and low preludes of the energy with which
+that blessed vision of the glorified Christ shall work on the happy
+hearts that behold Him, and of the completeness of the likeness to Him
+which will be printed in light upon their faces.</p>
+
+<p>It matters not, though it doth not yet appear what we shall be, if to
+all the questionings of our own hearts we have this for our
+all-sufficient answer, 'We shall be like Him.' As good old Richard
+Baxter has it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'My knowledge of that life is small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">&nbsp;&nbsp;The eye of faith is dim;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;But, 'tis enough that Christ knows all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">&nbsp;&nbsp;And I shall be like Him!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'It is enough for the servant that he be as his Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>There is no need to go into the dark and difficult questions about the
+manner of that vision. He Himself prayed, in that great intercessory
+prayer, 'Father, I will that these whom Thou hast given Me be with Me
+where I am, that they may behold My glory.' That vision of the glorified
+manhood of Jesus Christ&mdash;certain, direct, clear, and worthy, whether it
+comes through sense or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_310" id="Page_2_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> through thought&mdash;to behold that vision is all
+the sight of God that men in Heaven ever will have. And through the
+millenniums of a growing glory, Christ as He is will be the manifested
+Deity. Likeness will clear sight, and clearer sight will increase
+likeness. So in blessed interchange these two will be cause and effect,
+and secure the endless progress of the redeemed spirit towards the
+vision of Christ which never can behold all His Infinite Fulness, and
+the likeness to Christ which can never reproduce all his Infinite
+Beauty.</p>
+
+<p>As a bit of glass when the light strikes it flashes into sunny glory, or
+as every poor little muddy pool on the pavement, when the sunbeams fall
+upon it, has the sun mirrored even in its shallow mud, so into your poor
+heart and mine the vision of Christ's glory will come, moulding and
+transforming us to its own beauty. With unveiled face reflecting as a
+mirror does, the glory of the Lord, we 'shall be changed into the same
+image.' 'We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'</p>
+
+<p>Dear brethren, all begins with this, love Christ and trust Him and you
+are a child of God! 'And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and
+joint heirs with Christ.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_PURIFYING_INFLUENCE_OF_HOPE" id="THE_PURIFYING_INFLUENCE_OF_HOPE"></a>THE PURIFYING INFLUENCE OF HOPE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even
+as He is pure.' 1 <span class="smcap">John</span> iii. 3.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>That is a very remarkable 'and' with which this verse begins. The
+Apostle has just been touching the very heights of devout contemplation,
+soaring away up into dim regions where it is very hard to follow,&mdash;'We
+shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_311" id="Page_2_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And now, without a pause, and linking his thoughts together by a simple
+'and,' he passes from the unimaginable splendours of the Beatific Vision
+to the plainest practical talk. Mysticism has often soared so high above
+the earth that it has forgotten to preach righteousness, and therein has
+been its weak point. But here is the most mystical teacher of the New
+Testament insisting on plain morality as vehemently as his friend James
+could have done.</p>
+
+<p>The combination is very remarkable. Like the eagle he rises, and like
+the eagle, with the impetus gained from his height, he drops right down
+on the earth beneath!</p>
+
+<p>And that is not only a characteristic of St. John's teaching, but it is
+a characteristic of all the New Testament morality&mdash;its highest
+revelations are intensely practical. Its light is at once set to work,
+like the sunshine that comes ninety millions of miles in order to make
+the little daisies open their crimson-tipped petals; so the profoundest
+things that the Bible has to say are said to you and me, not that we may
+know only, but that knowing we may <i>do</i>, and <i>do</i> because we <i>are</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So John, here: 'We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
+'And'&mdash;a simple coupling-iron for two such thoughts&mdash;'every man that
+hath this hope in Him'&mdash;that is, in Christ, not in himself, as we
+sometimes read it&mdash;'every man that hath this hope,' founded on Christ,
+'purifies himself even as He is pure.'</p>
+
+<p>The thought is a very simple one, though sometimes it is somewhat
+mistakenly apprehended. Put into its general form it is just this:&mdash;If
+you expect, and expecting, hope to be like Jesus Christ yonder, you will
+be trying your best to be like Him here. It is not the mere purify<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_312" id="Page_2_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>ing
+influence of hope that is talked about, but it is the specific influence
+of this one hope, the hope of ultimate assimilation to Christ leading to
+strenuous efforts, each a partial resemblance of Him, here and now. And
+that is the subject I want to say a word or two about now.</p>
+
+<p>I. First, then, notice the principle that is here, which is the main
+thing to be insisted upon, namely, If we are to be pure, we must purify
+<i>ourselves</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There are two ways of getting like Christ, spoken about in the context.
+One is the blessed way, that is more appropriate for the higher Heaven,
+the way of assimilation and transformation by beholding&mdash;'If we see Him'
+we shall be 'like Him.' That is the blessed method of the Heavens. Yes,
+but even here on earth it may to some extent be realised! Love always
+breeds likeness. And there is such a thing, here on earth and now, as
+gazing upon Christ with an intensity of affection, and simplicity of
+trust, and rapture of aspiration, and ardour of desire which shall
+transform us in some measure into His own likeness. John is an example
+of that for us. It was a true instinct that made the old painters always
+represent him as like the Master that he sat beside, even in face. Where
+did John get his style from? He got it by much meditating upon Christ's
+words. The disciple caught the method of the Master's speech, and to
+some extent the manner of the Master's vision.</p>
+
+<p>And so he himself stands before us as an instance of the possibility,
+even on earth, of this calm, almost passive process, and most blessed
+and holiest method of getting like the Master, by simple gazing, which
+is the gaze of love and longing.</p>
+
+<p>But, dear brethren, the law of our lives forbids that that should be the
+only way in which we grow like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_313" id="Page_2_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> Christ. 'First the blade, then the ear,
+then the full corn in the ear,' was never meant to be the exhaustive,
+all-comprehensive statement of the method of Christian progress. You and
+I are not vegetables; and the Parable of the Seed is only one side of
+the truth about the method of Christian growth. The very word 'purify'
+speaks to us of another condition; it implies impurity, it implies a
+process which is more than contemplation, it implies the reversal of
+existing conditions, and not merely the growth upwards to unattained
+conditions.</p>
+
+<p>And so growth is not all that Christian men need; they need excision,
+they need casting out of what is in them; they need change as well as
+growth. 'Purifying' they need because they are impure, and growth is
+only half the secret of Christian progress.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is the other consideration, viz., if there is to be this
+purifying it must be done by myself. 'Ah!' you say, 'done by yourself?
+That is not evangelical teaching.' Well, let us see. Take two or three
+verses out of this Epistle which at first sight seem to be contradictory
+of this. Take the very first that bears on the subject:&mdash;'The blood of
+Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin' (i. 7). 'If we confess
+our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse
+us from all unrighteousness' (i. 9). 'He that abideth in Him sinneth
+not' (iii. 6). 'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our
+faith' (v. 4).</p>
+
+<p>Now if you put all these passages together, and think about the general
+effect of them, it comes to this: that our best way of cleansing
+ourselves is by keeping firm hold of Jesus Christ and of the cleansing
+powers that lie in Him. To take a very homely illustration&mdash;soap and
+water wash your hands clean, and what you have to do is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_314" id="Page_2_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> simply to rub
+the soap and water on to the hand, and bring them into contact with the
+foulness. You cleanse yourselves. Yes! because without the friction
+there would not be the cleansing. But is it you, or is it the soap, that
+does the work? Is it you or the water that makes your hands clean? And
+so when God comes and says, 'Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil
+of your doings, your hands are full of blood,' He says in effect, 'Take
+the cleansing that I give you and rub it in, and apply it: and your
+flesh will become as the flesh of a little child, and you shall be
+clean.'</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, the very deepest word about Christian effort of
+self-purifying is this&mdash;keep close to Jesus Christ. You cannot sin as
+long as you hold His hand. To have Him with you;&mdash;I mean by that to have
+the thoughts directed to Him, the love turning to Him, the will
+submitted to Him, Him consciously with us in the day's work. To have
+communion with Jesus Christ is like bringing an atmosphere round about
+us in which all evil will die. If you take a fish out of water and bring
+it up into the upper air, it writhes and gasps, and is dead presently;
+and our evil tendencies and sins, drawn up out of the muddy depths in
+which they live, and brought up into that pure atmosphere of communion
+with Jesus Christ, are sure to shrivel and to die, and to disappear. We
+kill all evil by fellowship with the Master. His presence in our lives,
+by our communion with Him, is like the watchfire that the traveller
+lights at night&mdash;it keeps all the wild beasts of prey away from the
+fold.</p>
+
+<p>Christ's fellowship is our cleansing, and the first and main thing that
+we have to do in order to make ourselves pure is to keep ourselves in
+union with Him, in whom inhere and abide all the energies that cleanse
+men's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_315" id="Page_2_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> souls. Take the unbleached calico and spread it out on the green
+grass, and let the blessed sunshine come down upon it, and sprinkle it
+with fair water; and the grass and the moisture and the sunshine will do
+all the cleansing, and it will glitter in the light, 'so as no fuller on
+earth can white it.'</p>
+
+<p>So cleansing is keeping near Jesus Christ. But it is no use getting the
+mill-race from the stream into your works unless you put wheels in its
+way to drive. And our holding ourselves in fellowship with the Master in
+that fashion is not all that we have to do. There have to be distinct
+and specific efforts, constantly repeated, to subdue and suppress
+individual acts of transgression. We have to fight against evil, sin by
+sin. We have not the thing to do all at once; we have to do it in
+detail. It is a war of outposts, like the last agonies of that
+Franco-Prussian war, when the Emperor had abdicated, and the country was
+really conquered, and Paris had yielded, but yet all over the face of
+the land combats had to be carried on.</p>
+
+<p>So it is with us. Holiness is not feeling; it is character. You do not
+get rid of your sins by the act of divine amnesty only. You are not
+perfect because you say you are, and feel as if you were, and think you
+are. God does not make any man pure in his sleep. His cleansing does not
+dispense with fighting, but makes victory possible.</p>
+
+<p>Then, dear brethren, lay to heart this, as the upshot of the whole
+matter: First of all, let us turn to Him from whom all the cleansing
+comes; and then, moment by moment, remember that it is our work to
+purify ourselves by the strength and the power that is given to us by
+the Master.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_316" id="Page_2_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II. The second thought here is this: This purifying of ourselves is the
+link or bridge between the present and the future.&mdash;'Now are we the sons
+of God,' says John in the context. That is the pier upon the one side of
+the gulf. 'It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but when He is made
+manifest we shall be like Him.' That is the pier on the other. How are
+the two to be connected? There is only one way by which the present
+sonship will blossom and fruit into the future perfect likeness, and
+that is,&mdash;if we throw across the gulf, by God's help day by day here,
+that bridge of our effort after growing likeness to Himself, and purity
+therefrom.</p>
+
+<p>That is plain enough, I suppose. To speak in somewhat technical terms,
+the 'law of continuity' that we hear so much about, runs on between
+earth and Heaven; which, being translated into plain English, is but
+this&mdash;that the act of passing from the limitations and conditions of
+this transitory life into the solemnities and grandeurs of that future
+does not alter a man's character, though it may intensify it. It does
+not make him different from what he was, though it may make him more of
+what he was, whether its direction be good or bad.</p>
+
+<p>You take a stick and thrust it into water; and because the rays of light
+pass from one medium to another of a different density, they are
+refracted and the stick seems bent; but take the human life out of the
+thick, coarse medium of earth and lift it up into the pure rarefied air
+of Heaven, and there is no refraction; it runs straight on. Straight on!
+The given direction continues; and in whatever direction my face is
+turned when I die, thither my face will be turned when I live again.</p>
+
+<p>Do not you fancy that there is any magic in coffins and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_317" id="Page_2_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> graves and
+shrouds to make men different from their former selves. The continuity
+runs clean on, the rail goes without a break, though it goes through the
+Mont Cenis tunnel; and on the one side is the cold of the North, and on
+the other the sunny South. The man is the same man through death and
+beyond.</p>
+
+<p>So the one link between sonship here and likeness to Christ hereafter is
+this link of present, strenuous effort to become like Him day by day in
+personal purity. For there is another reason, on which I need not dwell,
+viz., unless there be this daily effort on our part to become like Jesus
+Christ by personal purity, we shall not be able to 'see Him as He is.'
+Death will take a great many veils off men's hearts. It will reveal to
+them a great deal that they do not know, but it will not give the
+faculty of beholding the glorified Christ in such fashion as that the
+beholding will mean transformation. 'Every eye shall see Him,' but it is
+conceivable that a spirit shall be so immersed in self-love and in
+godlessness that the vision of Christ shall be repellent and not
+attractive; shall have no transforming and no gladdening power. And I
+beseech you to remember that about that vision, as about the vision of
+God Himself, the principle stands true; it is 'the pure in heart that
+shall see God' in Christ. And the change from life to the life beyond
+will not necessarily transform into the image of His dear Son. You make
+a link between the present and the future by cleansing your hands and
+your hearts, through faith in the cleansing power of Christ, and direct
+effort at holiness.</p>
+
+<p>III. Now I must briefly add finally: that this self-cleansing of which I
+have been speaking is the offspring and outcome of that 'hope' in my
+text. It is the child of hope. Hope is by no means an active faculty
+gener<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_318" id="Page_2_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>ally. As the poets have it, she may 'smile and wave her golden
+hair'; but she is not in the way of doing much work in the world. And it
+is not the mere fact of hope that generates this effort; it is, as I
+have been trying to show you, a certain kind of hope&mdash;the hope of being
+like Jesus Christ when 'we see Him as He is.'</p>
+
+<p>I have only two things to say about this matter, and one of them is
+this: of course, such strenuous effort of purity will only be the result
+of such a hope as that, because such a hope will fight against one of
+the greatest of all the enemies of our efforts after purity. There is
+nothing that makes a man so down-hearted in his work of self-improvement
+as the constant and bitter experience that it seems to be all of no use;
+that he is making so little progress; that with immense pains, like a
+snail creeping up a wall, he gets up, perhaps, an inch or two, and then
+all at once he drops down, and further down than he was before he
+started.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly we manage some little, patient self-improvement; gradually, inch
+by inch and bit by bit, we may be growing better, and then there comes
+some gust and outburst of temptation; and the whole painfully reclaimed
+soil gets covered up by an avalanche of mud and stones, that we have to
+remove slowly, barrow-load by barrow-load. And then we feel that it is
+all of no use to strive, and we let circumstances shape us, and give up
+all thoughts of reformation.</p>
+
+<p>To such moods then there comes, like an angel from Heaven, that holy,
+blessed message, 'Cheer up, man! "We shall be like Him, for we shall see
+Him as He is."' Every inch that you make now will tell then, and it is
+not all of no use. Set your heart to the work, it is a work that will be
+blessed and will prosper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_319" id="Page_2_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Again, here is a test for all you Christian people, who say that you
+look to Heaven with hope as to your home and rest.</p>
+
+<p>A great deal of the religious contemplation of a future state is pure
+sentimentality, and like all pure sentimentality is either immoral or
+non-moral. But here the two things are brought into clear juxtaposition,
+the bright hope of Heaven and the hard work done here below. Now is that
+what the gleam and expectation of a future life does for you?</p>
+
+<p>This is the only time in John's Epistle that he speaks about hope. The
+good man, living so near Christ, finds that the present, with its
+'abiding in Him' is enough for his heart. And though he was the Seer of
+the Apocalypse, he has scarcely a word to say about the future in this
+letter of his, and when he does it is for a simple and intensely
+practical purpose, in order that he may enforce on us the teaching of
+labouring earnestly in purifying ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>My brother, is that your type of Christianity? Is that the kind of
+inspiration that comes to you from the hope that steals in upon you in
+your weary hours, when sorrows, and cares, and changes, and loss, and
+disappointments, and hard work weigh you down, and you say, 'It would be
+blessed to pass hence'? Does it set you harder at work than anything
+else can do? Is it all utilised? Or if I might use such an illustration,
+is it like the electricity of the Aurora Borealis, that paints your
+winter sky with vanishing, useless splendours of crimson and blue? or
+have you got it harnessed to your tramcars, lighting your houses,
+driving sewing-machines, doing practical work in your daily life? Is the
+hope of Heaven, and of being like Christ, a thing that stimulates and
+stirs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_320" id="Page_2_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> us every moment to heroisms of self-surrender and to strenuous
+martyrdom of self-cleansing?</p>
+
+<p>All is gathered up into the one lesson. First, let us go to that dear
+Lord whose blood cleanseth from all sin, and let us say to Him, 'Purge
+me and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.' And
+then, receiving into our hearts the powers that purify, in His love and
+His sacrifice and His life, 'having these promises' and these
+possessions, 'Dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all
+filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the
+Lord.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PRACTICAL_RIGHTEOUSNESS" id="PRACTICAL_RIGHTEOUSNESS"></a>PRACTICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth
+righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">John</span> iii.
+7.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The popular idea of the Apostle John is strangely unlike the real man.
+He is supposed to be the gentle Apostle of Love, the mystic amongst the
+Twelve. He <i>is</i> that, but he was the 'son of thunder' before he was the
+Apostle of Love, and he did not drop the first character when he
+attained the second. No doubt his central thought was, 'God is Love'; no
+doubt that thought had refined and assimilated his character, but the
+love which he believed and the love which he exercised were neither of
+them facile feebleness, but strong and radiant with an awful purity.
+None of the New Testament writers proclaims a more austere morality than
+does John. And just because he loved the Love and the Light, he hated
+and loathed the darkness. He can thunder and lighten when needful, and
+he shows us that the true divine love in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_321" id="Page_2_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> man recoils from its
+opposite as passionately as it cleaves to God and good.</p>
+
+<p>Again, John is, <i>par excellence</i>, the mystic of the New Testament,
+always insisting on the direct communion which every soul may have with
+God, which is the essence of wholesome mysticism. Now that type of
+thinking has often in its raptures forgotten plain, pedestrian morality;
+but John never commits that error. He never soars so high as to lose
+sight of the flat earth below; and whilst he is always inviting us and
+enjoining us to dwell in God and abide in Christ, with equal persistence
+and force he is preaching to us the plainest duties of elementary
+morality.</p>
+
+<p>He illustrates this moral earnestness in my text. The 'little children'
+for whom he was so affectionately solicitous were in danger, either from
+teachers or from the tendencies native in us all, to substitute
+something else for plain, righteous conduct; and the Apostle lovingly
+appeals to them with his urgent declaration, that the only thing which
+shows a man to be righteous&mdash;that is to say, a disciple of Christ&mdash;is
+his daily life, in conformity with Christ's commands. The errors of
+these ancient Asiatics live to-day in new forms, but still substantially
+the same. And they are as hard to kill amongst English Nonconformists
+like us as they were amongst Asiatic Christians nineteen centuries ago.</p>
+
+<p>I. So let me try just to insist, first of all, on that thought that
+doing righteousness is the one test of being a Christian.</p>
+
+<p>Now that word 'righteousness' is a theological word, and by much usage
+the lettering has got to be all but obliterated upon it; and it is worn
+smooth like sixpences that go from pocket to pocket. Therefore I want,
+before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_322" id="Page_2_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> I go further, to make this one distinct point, that the New
+Testament righteousness is no theological, cloistered, peculiar kind of
+excellence, but embraces within its scope, 'whatsoever things are
+lovely, whatsoever things are fair, whatsoever things are of good
+report'; all that the world calls virtue, all which the world has
+combined to praise. There are countries on the earth which are known by
+different names to their inhabitants and to foreigners. The
+'righteousness' of the New Testament, though it embraces a great deal
+more, includes within its map all the territories which belong to
+morality or to virtue. The three words cover the same ground, though one
+of them covers more than the other two. The New Testament
+'righteousness' differs from the moralist's morality, or the world's
+virtue, in its scope, inasmuch as it includes our relations to God as
+well as to men; it differs in its perspective, inasmuch as it exalts
+some types of excellence that the world pooh-poohs, and pulls down some
+that the world hallelujahs and adulates; it strips the fine feathers of
+approving words off some vices which masquerade as virtues. It casts
+round the notion of duty, of morality, of virtue, a halo, and it touches
+it with emotion. Christianity does with the dictates of the natural
+conscience what we might figure as being the leading out of some captive
+virgin in white, from the darkness into the sunshine, and the turning of
+her face up to heaven, which illuminates it with a new splendour, and
+invests her with a new attractiveness. But all that any man rightly
+includes in his notion of the things that are 'of good report' is
+included in this theological word, righteousness, which to some of you
+seems so wrapped in mists, and so far away from daily life.</p>
+
+<p>I freely confess that in very many instances the mo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_323" id="Page_2_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>rality of the
+moralist has outshone the righteousness of the Christian. Yes! and I
+have seen canoe-paddles carved by South Sea Islanders with no better
+tools than an oyster-shell and a sharp fish-bone, which in the
+minuteness and delicacy of their work, as well as in the truth and taste
+of their pattern, might put to shame the work of carvers with better
+tools. But that is not the fault of the tools; it is the fault of the
+carvers. And so, whilst we acknowledge that Christian people have but
+poorly represented to the world what Christ and Christ's apostles meant
+by righteousness, I reiterate that the righteousness of the gospel is
+the morality of the world <i>plus</i> a great deal more.</p>
+
+<p>That being understood, let me remind you of two or three ways in which
+this great truth of the text is obscured to us, and in some respects
+contradicted, in the practice of many professing Christians. First, let
+me say my text insists upon this, that the conduct, not the creed, makes
+the Christian. There is a continual tendency on our part, as there was
+with these believers in Asia Minor long ago, to substitute the mere
+acceptance, especially the orthodox acceptance, of certain great
+fundamental Christian truths for Christianity. A man may believe
+thirty-nine or thirty-nine thousand Articles without the smallest
+intellectual drawback, and not be one whit nearer being a Christian than
+if he did not believe one of them. For faith, which is the thing that
+makes a man a Christian to begin with, is not assent, but trust. And
+there is a whole gulf, wide enough to drown a world in, between the two
+attitudes of mind. On the one side of the gulf is salvation, on the
+other side of the gulf there may be loss. Of course, I know that it is
+hard, though I do not believe it is impossible, to erect the structure
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_324" id="Page_2_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> a saving faith on a very, very imperfect intellectual apprehension
+of Scripture truth. That has nothing to do with my present point. What I
+am saying is that, unless you erect that structure of a faith which is
+an act of your will and of your whole nature, and not the mere assent of
+your understanding, upon your belief, your belief is impotent, and is of
+no use at all, and you might as well not have it.</p>
+
+<p>What is the office of our creed in regard to our conduct? To give us
+principles, to give us motives, to give us guidance, to give us weapons.
+If it does these things then it does its work. If it lies in our heads a
+mere acceptance of certain propositions, it is just as useless and as
+dead as the withered seeds that rattle inside a dried poppy-head in the
+autumn winds. You are meant to begin with accepting truth, and then you
+are meant to take that truth as being a power in your lives that shall
+shape your conduct. To know, and there an end, is enough in matters of
+mere science, but in matters of religion and in matters of morality or
+righteousness knowing is only the first step in the process, and we are
+made to know in order that, knowing, we may do.</p>
+
+<p>But some professing Christians seem to have their natures built, like
+ocean-going steamers, with water-tight compartments, on the one side of
+which they keep their creed, and there is no kind of communication
+between that and the other side where their conduct is originated.
+'Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth righteousness is
+righteous.'</p>
+
+<p>Again, my text suggests conduct and not emotion.</p>
+
+<p>Now there is a type of Christian life which is more attractive in
+appearance than that of the hard, fossilised, orthodox believer&mdash;viz.,
+the warmly emotional and fer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_325" id="Page_2_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>vent Christian. But that type, all
+experience shows, has a pit dug close beside it into which it is apt to
+fall. For there is a strange connection between emotional Christianity
+and a want of straightforwardness in daily business life, and of
+self-control and government of the appetites and the senses. That has
+been sadly shown, over and again, and if we had time one could easily
+point to the reasons in human nature, and its strange contexture, why it
+should be so. Now I am not disparaging emotion&mdash;God forbid&mdash;for I
+believe that to a very large extent the peculiarity of Christian
+teaching is just this, that it does bring emotion to bear upon the hard
+grind of daily duty. But for all that, I am bound to say that this is a
+danger which, in this day, by reason of certain tendencies in our
+popular Christianity, is a very real one, and that you will find people
+gushing in religious enthusiasm, and then going away to live very
+questionable, and sometimes very mean, and sometimes even very gross and
+sensual lives. The emotion is meant to spring from the creed, and it is
+meant to be the middle term between the creed and the conduct. Why, we
+have learnt to harness electricity to our tramcars, and to make it run
+our messages, and light our homes, and that is like what we have to do
+with the emotion without which a man's Christianity will be a poor,
+scraggy thing. It is a good servant; it is a bad master. You do not show
+yourselves to be Christians because you gush. You do not show yourselves
+to be Christians because you can talk fervidly and feel deeply. Raptures
+are all very well, but what we want is the grind of daily righteousness,
+and doing little things because of the fear and the love of the Lord.</p>
+
+<p>May I say again, my text suggests conduct, and not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_326" id="Page_2_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> verbal worship. You
+and I, in our adherence to a simpler, less ornate and &aelig;sthetic form of
+devotion than prevails in the great Episcopal churches, are by no means
+free from the danger which, in a more acute form, besets them, of
+substituting participation in external acts of worship for daily
+righteousness of life <i>Laborare est orare</i>&mdash;to work is to pray. That is
+true with explanations, commentaries, and limitations. But I wonder how
+many people there are who sing hymns which breathe aspirations and
+wishes that their whole daily life contradicts. And I wonder how many of
+us there are who seem to be joining in prayers that we never expect to
+have answered, and would be very much astonished if the answers came,
+and should not know what to do with if they did come. We live in one
+line, and worship in exactly the opposite. Brethren, creed is necessary;
+emotion is necessary; worship is necessary! But that on which these
+three all converge, and for which they are, is daily life, plain,
+practical righteousness.</p>
+
+<p>II. Now let me say, secondly, that being righteous is the way to do
+righteousness.</p>
+
+<p>One of the great characteristics of New Testament teaching of morality,
+or rather let me say of Christ's teaching of morality, is that it
+shifts, if I may so put it, the centre of gravity from acts to being,
+that instead of repeating the parrot-cry, 'Do, do, do' or 'Do not, do
+not, do not,' it says, 'Be, and the doing will take care of itself. Be;
+do not trouble so much about outward acts, look after the inward
+nature.' Character makes conduct, though, of course, conduct reacts upon
+character. 'As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,' and the way to set
+actions right is to set the heart right.</p>
+
+<p>Some of us are trying to purify the stream by putting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_327" id="Page_2_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> in disinfectants
+half-way down, instead of going up to the source and dealing with the
+fountain. And the weakness of all the ordinary, commonplace morality of
+the world is that it puts its stress upon the deeds, and leaves
+comparatively uncared for the condition of the person, the inward self,
+from whom the deeds come. And so it is all superficial, and of small
+account.</p>
+
+<p>If that be so, then we are met by this experience: that when we honestly
+try to make the tree good that its fruit may be good we come full front
+up to this, that there is a streak in us, a stain, a twist&mdash;call it
+anything you like&mdash;like a black vein through a piece of Parian marble,
+or a scratch upon a mirror, which streak or twist baffles our effort to
+make ourselves righteous. I am not going, if I can help it, to
+exaggerate the facts of the case. The Christian teaching of what is
+unfortunately called total depravity is not that there is no good in
+anybody, but that there is a diffused evil in everybody which affects in
+different degrees and in different ways all a man's nature. And that is
+no mere doctrine of the New Testament, but it is a transcript from the
+experience of every one of us.</p>
+
+<p>What then? If I must be righteous in order that I may do righteousness,
+and if, as I have found out by experience (for the only way to know
+myself is to reflect upon what I have done)&mdash;if I have found out that I
+am not righteous, what then? You may say to me, 'Have you led me into a
+blind alley, out of which I cannot get? Here you are, insisting on an
+imperative necessity, and in the same breath saying that it is
+impossible. What is left for me?' I go on to tell you what is left.</p>
+
+<p>III. Union with Jesus Christ by faith makes us 'righteous even as He is
+righteous.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_328" id="Page_2_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is the pledge, there is the prophecy, there is the pattern; and
+there is the power to redeem the pledge, to fulfil the prophecy, to make
+the pattern copyable and copied by every one of us. Brethren, this is
+the very heart of John's teaching, that if we will, not by the mere
+assent of our intellect, but by the casting of ourselves on Jesus
+Christ, trust in Him, there comes about a union between us and Him so
+real, so deep, so vital, so energetic, that by the touch of His life we
+live, and by His righteousness breathed into us, we, too, may become
+righteous. The great vessel and the tiny pot by its side may have a
+connecting pipe, and from the great one there shall flow over into the
+little one as much as will fill it brim full. In Him we too may be
+righteous.</p>
+
+<p>My friend, there are men and women who are ready to set to their seals
+that that is true, and who can say, 'I have found it so. By union with
+Jesus Christ in faith, I have received new tastes, new inclinations, a
+new set to my whole life, and I have been able to overcome
+unrighteousnesses which were too many and too mighty for myself.' It is
+so; and some of us to our own consciences and consciousness are
+witnesses to it, however imperfectly. God forgive us! We may have
+manifested the renewing power of union with Christ in our daily lives.</p>
+
+<p>'Even as He is righteous'&mdash;the water in the great vessel and the little
+one are the same, but the vase is not the cistern. The beam comes from
+the sun, but the beam is not the sun. 'Even as' does not mean equality,
+but it does mean similarity. Christ is righteous, eternally,
+essentially, completely; we may be 'even as He is' derivatively,
+partially, and if we put our trust in Him we shall be so, and that
+growingly through our daily lives. And then, after earth is done with,
+'we know that, when He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_329" id="Page_2_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for
+we shall see Him as He is.'</p>
+
+<p>May we each, dear brethren, 'be found in Him, not having our own
+righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through faith in
+Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHRISTS_MISSION_THE_REVELATION_OF_GODS_LOVE" id="CHRISTS_MISSION_THE_REVELATION_OF_GODS_LOVE"></a>CHRIST'S MISSION THE REVELATION OF GOD'S LOVE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and
+sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">John</span> iv. 10.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This is the second of a pair of twin verses which deal with
+substantially the same subject under two slightly different aspects. The
+thought common to both is that Christ's mission is the great revelation
+of God's love. But in the preceding verse the point on which stress is
+laid is the manifestation of that love, and in our text the point mainly
+brought out is its essential nature. In the former we read, 'In this was
+<i>manifested</i> the love of God,' and in the present verse we read, 'Herein
+<i>is</i> love.' In the former verse John fixes on three things as setting
+forth the greatness of that manifestation&mdash;viz., that the Christ is the
+only begotten Son, that the manifestation is for the world, and that its
+end is the bestowment of everlasting love. In my text the points which
+are fixed on are that that Love in its nature is self-kindled&mdash;'not that
+we loved God, but that He loved us'&mdash;and that it lays hold of, and casts
+out of the way that which, unremoved, would be a barrier between God and
+us&mdash;viz., our sin: 'He hath sent His Son to be the propitiation for our
+sins.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_330" id="Page_2_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now it is interesting to notice that these twin verses, like a double
+star which reflects the light of a central sun, draw their brightness
+from the great word of the Master, 'God so loved the world, that He gave
+His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
+perish, but have everlasting life.' Do you not hear the echo of His
+voice in the three expressions in the verse before the text&mdash;'only
+begotten' 'world' 'live'? Here is one more of the innumerable links
+which bind together in indissoluble union the Gospel and the Epistle.
+So, then, the great thought suggested by the words before us is just
+this, that in the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ we have the
+great revelation of the love of God.</p>
+
+<p>I. Now there are three questions that suggest themselves to me, and the
+first is this, What, then, does Christ's mission say about God's love?</p>
+
+<p>I do not need to dwell on the previous question whether, apart from that
+mission, there is any solid revelation of the fact that there is love in
+Heaven, or whether we are left, apart from it, to gropings and
+probabilities. I need not refer you to the ambiguous oracles of nature
+or to the equally ambiguous oracles of life. I need not, I suppose, do
+more than just remind you that even the men whose faith grasps the
+thought of the love of God most intensely, know what it is to be brought
+to a stand before some of the dreadful problems which the facts of
+humanity and the facts of nature press upon us, nor need I remind you
+how, as we see around us to-day, in the drift of our English literature
+and that of other nations, when men turn their backs upon the Cross,
+they look upon a landscape all swathed in mists, and on which darkness
+is steadily settling. The reason why the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_331" id="Page_2_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> men of this generation, some
+of them very superficially, and for the sake of being 'in the swim' and
+some of them despairingly and with bleeding hearts, are turning
+themselves to a reasoned pessimism, is because they will not see what
+shines out from the Cross, that God is love.</p>
+
+<p>Nor need I do more than remind you, in a word, of the fact that, go
+where we will through this world, and consult all the conceptions that
+men have made to themselves of gods many and lords many, whilst we find
+the deification of power, and of vice, and of fragmentary goodnesses, of
+hopes and fears, of longings, of regrets, we find nowhere a god of whom
+the characteristic is love. And amidst that Pantheon of deities, some of
+them savage, some of them lustful, some of them embodiments of all
+vices, some of them indifferent and neutral, some of them radiant and
+fair, none reveals this secret, that the centre of the universe is a
+heart. So we have to turn away from hopes, from probability dashed with
+many a doubt, and find something that has more solid substance in it, if
+it is to be enough to bear up the man that grasps it and to yield before
+no tempests. For all that Bishop Butler says, probabilities are <i>not</i>
+the guide of life, in its deepest and noblest aspects. They may be the
+guide of practice, but for the anchorage of the soul we want no shifting
+sand-bank, but that to which we may make fast and be sure that, whatever
+shifts, it remains immovable. You can no more clothe the soul in
+'perhapses' than a man can make garments out of a spider's web. Religion
+consists of the things of which we are sure, and not of the things which
+are probable. 'Peradventure' is not the word on which a man can rest the
+weight of a crushed, or an agonising, or a sinking soul; he must have
+'Verily! verily!' and then he is at rest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_332" id="Page_2_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>How do we know what a man is? By seeing what a man does. How do we know
+what God is? By knowing what God does. So John does not argue with
+logic, either frosty or fiery, but he simply opens his mouth, and in
+calm, pellucid utterances sets forth the truths and leaves them to work.
+He says to us, 'I do not relegate you to your intuitions; I do not argue
+with you; I simply say, Look at Him; look, and see that God is love.'</p>
+
+<p>What, then, does the mission of Christ say to us about the love of God?
+It says, first, that it is a love independent of, and earlier than,
+ours. We love, as a rule, because we recognise in the object to which
+our heart goes out something that draws it, something that is loveable.
+But He whose name is 'I am that I am' has all the reasons of His actions
+within Himself, and just as He</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Sits on no precarious throne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor borrows leave to be,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>nor is dependent on any creature for existence, so He is His own motive,
+He is His own reason. Within that sacred circle of the Infinite Nature
+lie all the energies which bring that Infinite Nature into action; and
+like some clear fountain, more sparkling than crystal, there wells up
+for ever, from the depths of the Divine Nature, the love which is
+Himself. He loves, not because we love Him, but because He is God. The
+very sun itself, as some astronomers believe, owes its radiant
+brightness and ever-communicated warmth to the impact on, and reception
+into, it of myriads of meteors and of matter drawn from the surrounding
+system. So when the fuel fails, that fire will go out, and the sun will
+shrivel into a black ball. But this central Sun of the universe has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_333" id="Page_2_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> all
+His light within Himself, and the rays that pour out from Him owe their
+being and their motion to nothing but the force of that central fire,
+from which they rush with healing on their wings.</p>
+
+<p>If, then, God's love is not evoked by anything in His creatures, then it
+is universal, and we do not need anxiously to question ourselves whether
+we deserve that it shall fall upon us, and no conscious unworthiness
+need ever make us falter in the least in the firmness with which we
+grasp that great central thought. The sun, inferior emblem as it is of
+that Light of all that is, pours down its beams indiscriminately on
+dunghill and on jewel, though it be true that in the one its rays breed
+corruption and in the other draw out beauty. That great love wraps us
+all, is older than our sins, and is not deflected by them. So that is
+the first thing that Christ's mission tells us about God's love.</p>
+
+<p>The second is&mdash;it speaks to us of a love which gives its best. John
+says, 'God <i>sent</i> His Son,' and that word reposes, like the rest of the
+passage, on many words of Christ's&mdash;such as, for instance, when He
+speaks of Himself as 'sanctified and sent into the world,' and many
+another saying. But remember how, in the foundation passage to which I
+have already referred, and of which we have some reflection in the words
+before us, there is a tenderer expression&mdash;not merely 'sent,' but
+'gave.' Paul strengthens the word when he says, 'gave <i>up</i> for us all.'
+It is not for us to speculate about these deep things, but I would
+remind you of what I dare say I have had occasion often to point out,
+that Paul seems to intend to suggest to us a mysterious parallel, when
+he further says, 'He that <i>spared</i> not His own Son, but freely gave Him
+up to death for us all.' For that emphatic word 'spared' is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_334" id="Page_2_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> distinct
+allusion to, and quotation of, the story of Abraham's sacrifice of
+Isaac: 'Seeing thou hast not <i>withheld</i> from Me thine only son.' And so,
+mysterious as it is, we may venture to say that He not only sent, but He
+gave, and not only gave, but gave up. His love, like ours, delights to
+lavish its most precious gifts on its objects.</p>
+
+<p>Now there arises from this consideration a thought which I only mention,
+and it is this. Christian teaching about Christ's work has often, both
+by its friends and its foes, been so presented as to lead to the
+conception that it was the work of Christ which made God love men. The
+enemies of evangelical truth are never tired of talking in that sense;
+and some of its unwise friends have given reason for the caricature. But
+the true Christian teaching is, 'God so loved ... that He gave.' The
+love is the cause of the mission, and not the mission that which evokes
+the love. So let us be sure that, not because Christ died does God love
+us sinful creatures, but that, because God loves us, Christ died for us.</p>
+
+<p>The third thing which the mission of Christ teaches us about the love of
+God is that it is a love which takes note of and overcomes man's sin. I
+have said, as plainly as I can, that I reject the travesty of
+Christianity which implies that it was Christ's mission which originated
+God's love to men. But a love that does not in the slightest degree care
+whether its object is good or bad&mdash;what sort of a love do you call that?
+What do you name it when a father shows it to his children? Moral
+indifference; culpable and weak and fatal. And is it anything nobler, if
+you transfer it to God, and say that it is all the same to Him whether a
+man is living the life of a hog, and forgetting all that is high and
+noble, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_335" id="Page_2_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> whether he is pressing with all his strength towards light
+and truth and goodness? Surely, surely they who, in the name of their
+reverence for the supreme love of God, cover over the fact of His
+righteousness, are mutilating and killing the very attribute that they
+are trying to exalt. A love that cares nothing for the moral character
+of its object is not love, but hate; it is not kindness, but cruelty.
+Take away the background because it is so black, and you lower the
+brilliancy of whiteness of that which stands in front of it. There is
+such a property in God as is fittingly described by that tremendous word
+'wrath.' God cannot, being what He is, treat sin as if it were no sin;
+and therefore we read, 'He sent His son to be the <i>propitiation</i> for our
+sins.' The black dam, which we build up between ourselves and the river
+of the water of life, is to be swept away; and it is the death of Jesus
+Christ which makes it possible for the highest gift of God's love to
+pour over the ruined and partially removed barrier and to flood a man's
+soul. Brethren, no God that is worthy the name can give Himself to a
+sinful soul. No sinful soul that has not the habit, the guilt, the
+penalty of its sins swept away, is capable of receiving the life, which
+is the highest gift of the love. So our twin texts divide what I may
+call the process of redemption between them; and whilst the one says,
+'He sent His Son that we should have life through Him,' the other tells
+us of how the sins which bar the entrance of that life into our hearts,
+as our own consciences tell us they do, can be removed. There must first
+be the propitiation for our sins, and then that mighty love reaches its
+purpose and attains its end, and can give us the life of God to be the
+life of our souls. So much for my first and principle question.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_336" id="Page_2_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II. Now I have to ask, secondly, how comes it that Christ's mission says
+anything about God's love?</p>
+
+<p>That question is a very plain one, and I should like to press the answer
+to it very emphatically. Take any other of the great names of the
+world's history of poet, thinker, philosopher, moralist, practical
+benefactor; is it possible to apply such a thought as this to
+them&mdash;except with a hundred explanations and limitations&mdash;that they,
+however radiant, however wise, however beneficent, however fruitful
+their influence, make men sure that God loves them? The thing is
+ridiculous, unless you are using language in a very fantastic and
+artificial fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Christ's mission reveals God's love, because Christ is the Son of God.
+If it is true, as Jesus said, that 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
+Father,' then I can say, 'In Thy tenderness, in Thy patience, in Thy
+attracting of the publican and the harlot, in Thy sympathy with all the
+erring and the sorrowful, and, most of all, in Thy agony and passion, in
+Thy cross and death, I see the glory of God which is the love of God.'
+Brother, if you break that link, which binds the man Christ Jesus with
+the ever-living and the ever-loving God, I know not how you can draw
+from the record of His life and death a confidence, which nothing can
+shake, in the love of the Father.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is another point. Christ's mission speaks to us about God's
+love, if&mdash;and I was going to say <i>only</i> if&mdash;we regard it as His mission
+to be the propitiation for our sins. Strike out the death as the
+sacrifice for the world's sin, and what you have left is a maimed
+something, which may be, and I thankfully recognise often is, very
+strengthening, very helpful, very calming, very ennobling, even to men
+who do not sympathise with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_337" id="Page_2_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> view of that work which I am now setting
+forth, but which is all that to them, very largely, because of the
+unconscious influence of the truths which they have cast away. It seems
+to me that those who, in the name of the highest paternal love of God,
+reject the thought of Christ's sacrificial death, are kicking away the
+ladder by which they have climbed, and are better than their creeds, and
+happily illogical. It is the Cross that reveals the love, and it is the
+Cross as the means of propitiation that pours the light of that blessed
+conviction into men's hearts.</p>
+
+<p>III. My last question is this: what does Christ's mission say about
+God's love to me?</p>
+
+<p>We know what it ought to say. It ought to carry, as on the crest of a
+great wave, the conviction of that divine love into our hearts, to be
+fruitful there. It ought to sweep out, as on the crest of a great wave,
+our sins and evils. It ought to do this; does it? On some of us I fear
+it produces no effect at all. Some of you, dear friends, look at that
+light with lack-lustre eyes, or, rather, with blind eyes, that are dark
+as midnight in the blaze of noonday. The voice comes from the Cross,
+sweet as that of harpers harping with their harps, and mighty as the
+voice of many waters, and you hear nothing. Some of us it slightly moves
+now and then, and there an end.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, you have to turn the world-wide generality into a personal
+possession. You have to say, 'He loved <i>me</i>, and gave Himself for <i>me</i>.'
+It is of no use to believe in a universal Saviour; do you trust in your
+particular Saviour? It is of no use to have the most orthodox and clear
+conceptions of the relation between the Cross of Christ and the
+revelation to men of the love of God; have you made that revelation the
+means of bringing into your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_338" id="Page_2_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> own personal life the conviction that Jesus
+Christ is <i>your</i> Saviour, the propitiation for <i>your</i> sins, the Giver to
+<i>you</i> of life eternal? It is faith that does that. Note that, in the
+great foundation passage to which I have made frequent reference, there
+are two conditions put in between the beginning and the end. Some of us
+are disposed to say, 'God so loved the world that every man might have
+eternal life.' That is not what Christ said, 'God so loved the world
+that'&mdash;and here follows the first condition&mdash;'He <i>gave His Son</i>
+that'&mdash;and here follows the second&mdash;'he that <i>believeth on Him</i> should
+not perish, but have everlasting life.' God has done what it is needful
+for Him to do. His part of the conditions has been fulfilled. Fulfil
+yours&mdash;'He that believeth on Him.' And if you can say, not He is the
+propitiation for our sin, but for <i>my</i> sin, then you will live and move
+and have your being in a heaven of love, and will love Him back again
+with an echo and reflection of His own, and nothing shall be able to
+separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SERVANT_AS_HIS_LORD" id="THE_SERVANT_AS_HIS_LORD"></a>THE SERVANT AS HIS LORD</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'... As He is, so are we in this world.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">John</span> iv. 17.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Large truths may be spoken in little words. Profundity is often supposed
+to be obscurity, but the deepest depth is clear. John, in his gospel and
+epistles, deals with the deepest realities, and with all things in their
+eternal aspects, but his vocabulary is the simplest in the New
+Testament. God and the world, life and death, love and hate, light and
+darkness, these are the favourite words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_339" id="Page_2_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> round which his thoughts
+gather. Here are nine little monosyllables. What can be simpler than,
+'As He is, so are we in this world?' And what can go beyond the thought
+that lies in it, that a Christian is a living likeness of Christ?</p>
+
+<p>But the connection of my text is quite as striking as its substance.
+John has been dwelling upon his favourite thought that to abide in love
+is to abide in God, and God in us. And then he goes on to say that
+'Herein'&mdash;that is, in such mutual abiding in love&mdash;'is love made perfect
+with us'; and the perfection of that love, which is thus communion, is
+in order that, at the great solemn day of future trial, men may lift up
+their faces and meet His glance&mdash;which is <i>not</i> strange to them, nor met
+for the first time&mdash;with open-hearted and open-countenanced 'boldness.'
+But 'love' and 'abiding' are the source of confidence in the Day of
+Judgment, because love and abiding are the source of assimilation to
+Christ's life. We have boldness, 'because as He is, so are we in this
+world'; and we are as He is, because we love and abide in Him. So here
+are three thoughts, the assimilation of the Christian man to Christ; the
+frank confidence which it begets; and the process by which it is
+secured.</p>
+
+<p>I. A Christian is Christ's living likeness.</p>
+
+<p>That is a startling thing to say, and all the more startling if you
+notice that John does not say 'As He <i>was</i>,' in this earthly life of
+humiliation and filial obedience, but 'as He <i>is</i>,' in His heavenly life
+and reign and glory. That might well repel us from all thought of
+possible resemblance, but the light, however brilliant it may be, is not
+blinding, and it is the Christ as He <i>is</i>, and not only&mdash;true as that
+is&mdash;the Christ as He <i>was</i>, who is the original of which Christian men
+are copies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_340" id="Page_2_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now <i>there</i> is the difference between the teaching of such classes of
+religionists as represent Christ's humanity as all in all, and preach to
+us that He, in His earthly life is the pattern to whom we are to seek to
+conform our lives, and the true evangelical teaching. That dead Man is
+living, and His present life has in it elements which we can grasp, and
+to which every Christian life is to be conformed.</p>
+
+<p>Is there anything, then, within the glory to which I, in my poor,
+struggling, hampered, imperfect life here on earth, can feel that my
+character is being shaped? Yes, surely there is. I have no doubt that,
+in the words of my text, the Apostle is remembering the solemn ones of
+our Lord's high-priestly prayer as recorded in the seventeenth chapter
+of his gospel, where the same antithesis of our being in the world, and
+His not being there, recurs; and where the analogy and resemblance are
+distinctly stated&mdash;'I in Thee, and Thou in Me, that they also may be in
+us.'</p>
+
+<p>So, then, when we stand with our letter-writer in his Patmos island, and
+see the countenance 'as the sun shining in his strength, and the eyes as
+a flame of fire,' and the many crowns upon the head, and the many stars
+in the hand, though we may feel as if all resemblance was at an end, and
+aspiration after likeness could only fall at His feet and cover its
+face, yet there is within the glory something which may be repeated and
+reproduced in our lives, and that is, the indissoluble union of a Son
+with a Father, in all loving obedience, in all perfect harmony, in all
+mutual affection and outgoing of heart and thoughts. This is the centre
+of the life, alike of the Christ when He is glorified, and of the Christ
+when He was upon earth. So the very secret heart of the mysteri<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_341" id="Page_2_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>ous
+being of the Son is to be, and necessarily is, repeated in all those who
+in Him have received the adoption of sons.</p>
+
+<p>Or to put the whole thing into plainer words, it is the religious and
+the moral aspects of Christ's being, and not any one particular detail
+thereof; and these, as they live and reign on the Throne, just as truly
+as these, as they suffered and wept upon earth&mdash;it is these to which it
+is our destiny to be conformed. We are like Him, if we are His, in
+this,&mdash;that we are joined to God, that we hold fellowship with Him, that
+our lives are all permeated with the divine, that we are saturated with
+the presence of God, that we have submitted ourselves to Him and to His
+will, that 'not my will, but Thine, be done' is the very inmost meaning
+of our hearts and our lives. And thus 'we,' even here, 'bear the image
+of the heavenly, as we have borne the images of the earthly.' Now I am
+not going to dwell upon details; all these can be filled in by each of
+us for himself. The centre-point which I insist upon is this&mdash;the filial
+union with God, the filial submission to Him, and the consequent purity
+as Christ is pure, righteousness as Christ is righteous, and walking
+even as Christ walked, for ever in the light.</p>
+
+<p>But then there is another point that I desire to refer to. I have put an
+emphasis upon the 'is' instead of the 'was,' as it applies to Jesus
+Christ. I would further put an emphasis upon the 'are,' as it applies to
+us&mdash;'So <i>are</i> we.'</p>
+
+<p>John is not exhorting, he is affirming. He is not saying what Christian
+men ought to strive to be, but he is saying what all Christian men, by
+virtue of their Christian character, <i>are</i>. Or, to put it into other
+words, likeness to the Master is certain. It is inevitably involved in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_342" id="Page_2_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>
+the relation which a Christian man bears to the Lord. There may be
+degrees in the likeness, there may be differences of skill and
+earnestness in the artist. We have to labour like a portrait painter,
+slowly and tentatively approaching to the complete resemblance. It is 'a
+life-long task ere the lump be leavened.' This likeness does not reach
+its completeness by a leap. It is not struck, as the image of a king is,
+upon the blank metal disc, by one stroke, but it is wrought out by long,
+laborious, and, as I said, approximating and tentative touches. My text
+suggests that to us by its addition, 'So are we, <i>in this world</i>.' The
+'world'&mdash;or, to use modern phraseology, 'the environment'&mdash;conditions
+the resemblance. As far as it is possible for a thing encompassed with
+dust and ashes to resemble the radiant sun in the heavens, so far is the
+resemblance carried here. Some measure of it, and a growing measure, is
+inseparable from the reality of a Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>Now, you Christian people, does that plain statement touch you anywhere?
+'So <i>are</i> we.' Well! you would be quite easy if John had said: 'So <i>may</i>
+we be; so <i>should</i> we be; so <i>shall</i> we be.' But what about the 'so
+<i>are</i> we'? What a ghastly contradiction the lives of multitudes of
+professing Christians are to that plain statement! 'Like Jesus
+Christ'&mdash;would anybody say that about anything in me? 'So are we'&mdash;no
+words of mine, dear brethren, can make the statement more searching,
+more impressive; but, I pray you, lay this to heart: 'If any man have
+not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.' You may take sacraments
+and profess Christianity, or, as we Nonconformists have it, 'join
+churches,' and do all manner of outward work for ever and a day; but if
+you have not the likeness of Christ, at least in germ, and growing to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_343" id="Page_2_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>
+something more than a germ, in your characters, you had better revise
+your position, and ask whether, after all, you have not been walking in
+a vain show, and fancied yourselves the servants of Christ, while you
+bear the image of Christ's enemy.</p>
+
+<p>A very tiny gully on a hillside, made by showers of rain, may fall into
+the same slopes, and has been created by the very same forces, working
+according to the same laws, as have scooped out valleys miles broad,
+bordered by mountains thousands of feet high. And in my little life,
+poor as it is, limited as it is, environed as it is by the world, and
+therefore often hampered and stained, as well as helped and brightened,
+by its environment, there may be, and there will be, in some degree, if
+I am a Christian man, the very same power at work by which Jesus Christ,
+the Son of the Father shines as the sun on the throne of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>But then, notice further, how that limitation to which I have referred
+in this world carries with it another message. <i>There</i> is Christ in the
+heavens, veiled and unseen. Here are you on earth, his representative.
+There is a rage at present for putting pictures into all books, and folk
+will scarcely read unless they get illustrated literature. The world has
+for its illustrations of the gospel the lives of us Christian people. In
+the book there are principles and facts, and readers should be able to
+turn the page and see all pictured in us.</p>
+
+<p>That is what you are set to do in this world. 'As the Father sent Me,
+even so send I you.' 'As He is, so are we in this world.' It may be our
+antagonist, but it is our sphere, and its presence is necessary to evoke
+our characters. Christ has entrusted His reputation, His honour, to us,
+and many a man that never cares to look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_344" id="Page_2_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> at <i>Him</i> as He is revealed in
+Scripture, would be wooed and won to look at Him and love Him, if we
+Christian people were more true to our vocation, and bore more
+conspicuously on our faces and in our characters the image of the
+heavenly.</p>
+
+<p>II. Look for a moment at the second thought that is here: such a
+likeness to Jesus Christ is the only thing that will enable a man to
+lift up his head in the Day of Judgment.</p>
+
+<p>'We have boldness,' says John, <i>because</i> 'as He is, so are we.' Now that
+is a very strong statement of a truth that popular, evangelical theology
+has far too much obscured. People talk about being, at the last,
+'accepted in the beloved.' God be thanked, it is true. A sweet old hymn
+that a great many of us learned when we were children, though it is not
+so well known in these days, says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Bold shall I stand in that great day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;For who aught to my charge shall lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;While through Thy blood absolved I am<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;From sin's tremendous curse and shame?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I believe that, and I try to preach it. But do not let us forget the
+other side. My text is in full accordance with the principles of our
+Lord's own teaching; and who knows the principles of His own words so
+well as the judge, who tells us, in His pictures of that great day, that
+the question put to every man will be, not what you <i>believe</i>, but what
+did you <i>do</i>, and what <i>are</i> you?</p>
+
+<p>But this truth of my text has been not only wounded in the house of the
+friends of Christianity, but it has been overlooked by one of the very
+frequent objections that we hear made to evangelical teaching, that,
+according to it, a man is judged according to his belief and not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_345" id="Page_2_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>
+according to his deeds. A man is judged according to his&mdash;not
+<i>belief</i>&mdash;but according to his <i>faith</i>. But he is judged according also
+to&mdash;not his <i>work</i>&mdash;but according to his <i>character</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And I wish, dear friends, to lay this upon your hearts, because many of
+us are too apt to forget it, that whilst unquestionably the beginning of
+salvation, and the condition of forgiveness here, and of acceptance
+hereafter, are laid in trust in Jesus Christ, that trust is sure to work
+out a character which is in conformity with His requirements and moulded
+after the likeness of Himself. 'The judgment of God is according to
+truth,' and what a man is determines where a man shall be, and what he
+shall receive through all eternity. Remember Christ's own teaching.
+Remember the teaching of that other apostle than John, according to
+which the 'wood, hay, stubble,' built by a man upon the foundation shall
+be burned up, and the builder himself be saved, yet so as by fire. And
+lay this to heart, that it is only when faith works in us, through love
+and communion, characters like Jesus Christ's, that we shall be able to
+stand&mdash;though even then we shall have to trust to divine and infinite
+mercy, and to the sprinkling of His blood&mdash;before the Throne of God. Lay
+up in store for yourselves a good foundation unto eternal life. And take
+this as the preaching of my text; character, and character alone, will
+stand the judgment of that great day.</p>
+
+<p>There is no real antagonism between such truths and the widest preaching
+of salvation by faith. It is the same man who, in his gospel, says, as
+from the lips of the Lord Himself, 'He that believeth is not judged,'
+and in his letter says, 'We may have boldness in that day, because, as
+He is, so are we in this world.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_346" id="Page_2_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>III. One word about the last point; the process by which this likeness
+is secured.</p>
+
+<p>That is contained, as I tried to show in my introductory remarks, in the
+earlier part of the verse. Our love is made perfect by dwelling in God,
+and God in us; in order that we may be thus conformed to Christ's
+likeness, and so have boldness in that great day. To be like Jesus
+Christ, what is needed is that we love Him, and that we keep in touch
+with Him. What is it to 'abide' in Him?&mdash;to direct the continual flow of
+mind and love and will and practical obedience to Him, to bear Him ever
+in the secret place of my heart whilst my hands are occupied with daily
+business, and my feet are running the sometimes rough race that is set
+before me. Think of Him ever, love Him ever. Let His name be like a
+perfume breathed through the whole atmosphere of your lives. Keep your
+wills in the attitude of submission, of acceptance, of indecision when
+necessary, and of absolute dependence upon Him. Let your outward acts be
+such as shall not bring a film of separation between Him and you. When
+thus our whole being is steeped and drenched with Christ, then it cannot
+but be that we shall be like Him. Even 'clouds themselves as suns
+appear, when the sun pierces them with light.' 'Abide in Me, and I in
+you.' You cannot make yourselves like Christ, but you can fasten
+yourselves to Christ, and He will give you power which shall make you
+like Him.</p>
+
+<p>But, remember, such abiding is no idle waiting, no passive confidence.
+It is full of energy, full of suppression, when necessary, of what is
+contrary to your truest self, and full of strenuous cultivation of that
+which is in accord with the will of the Father, and with the likeness of
+the 'first-born among many brethren.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_347" id="Page_2_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dear friends, lie in the light and you will become light. Abide in
+Christ, and you will get like Christ; and, being like Him, you will be
+able to lift up your heads, and rejoice when you front Him on the
+Throne, and you are at the bar. Then, when you are no more in the world,
+the likeness will be perfected, because the communion is complete. 'We
+shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LOVE_AND_FEAR" id="LOVE_AND_FEAR"></a>LOVE AND FEAR</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear:
+because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in
+love.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">John</span> iv. 18.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>John has been speaking of boldness, and that naturally suggests its
+opposite&mdash;fear. He has been saying that perfect love produces courage in
+the day of judgment, because it produces likeness to Christ, who is the
+Judge. In my text he explains and enlarges that statement. For there is
+another way in which love produces boldness, and that is by its casting
+out fear. These two are mutually exclusive. The entrance of the one is
+for the other a notice to quit. We cannot both love and fear the same
+person or thing, and where love comes in, the darker form slips out at
+the door; and where Love comes in, it brings hand in hand with itself
+Courage with her radiant face. But boldness is the companion of love,
+only when love is perfect. For, inconsistent as the two emotions are,
+love, in its earlier stages and lower degrees, is often perturbed and
+dashed by apprehension and dread.</p>
+
+<p>Now John is speaking about the two emotions in themselves, irrespective,
+so far as his language goes, of the objects to which they are directed.
+What he is saying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_348" id="Page_2_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> is true about love and fear, whatever or whosoever
+may be loved or dreaded. But the context suggests the application in his
+mind, for it is 'boldness before him' about which he has been speaking;
+and so it is love and fear directed towards God which are meant in my
+text. The experience of hosts of professing Christians is only too
+forcible a comment upon the possibility of a partial Love lodging in the
+heart side by side with a fellow-lodger, Fear, whom it ought to have
+expelled. So there are three things here that I wish to notice&mdash;the
+empire of fear, the mission of fear, and the expulsion of fear.</p>
+
+<p>I. The empire of fear.</p>
+
+<p>Fear is a shrinking apprehension of evil as befalling us, from the
+person or thing which we dread. My text brings us face to face with that
+solemn thought that there are conditions of human nature, in which the
+God who ought to be our dearest joy and most ardent desire becomes our
+ghastliest dread. The root of such an unnatural perversion of all that a
+creature ought to feel towards its loving Creator lies in the simple
+consciousness of discordance between God and man, which is the shadow
+cast over the heart by the fact of sin. God is righteous; God
+righteously administers His universe. God enters into relations of
+approval or disapproval with His responsible creature. Therefore there
+lies, dormant for the most part, but present in every heart, and active
+in the measure in which that heart is informed as to itself, the
+slumbering, cold dread that between it and God things are <i>not</i> as they
+ought to be.</p>
+
+<p>I believe, for my part, that such a dumb, dim consciousness of discord
+attaches to all men, though it is often smothered, often ignored, and
+often denied. But there it is; the snake hibernates, but it is coiled in
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_349" id="Page_2_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> heart all the same; and warmth will awake it. Then it lifts its
+crested head, and shoots out its forked tongue, and venom passes into
+the veins. A dread of God is the ghastliest thing in the world, the most
+unnatural, but universal, unless expelled by perfect love.</p>
+
+<p>Arising from that discomforting consciousness of discord there come,
+likewise, other forms and objects of dread. For if I am out of harmony
+with Him, what will be my fate in the midst of a universe administered
+by Him, and in which all are His servants? Oh! I sometimes wonder how it
+is that godless men front the facts of human life and do not go mad. For
+here are we, naked, feeble, alone, plunged into a whirlpool, from the
+awful vortices of which we cannot extricate ourselves. There foam and
+swirl all manner of evils, some of them certain, some of them probable,
+any of them possible, since we are at discord with Him who wields all
+the forces of the universe, and wields them all with a righteous hand.
+'The stars in their courses fight against' the man that does not fight
+for God. Whilst all things serve the soul that serve Him, all are
+embattled against the man that is against, or not for, God and His will.</p>
+
+<p>Then there arises up another object of dread, which, in like manner,
+derives all its power to terrify and to hurt from the fact of our
+discordance with God; and that is 'the shadow feared of man,' that
+stands shrouded by the path, and waits for each of us.</p>
+
+<p>God; God's universe; God's messenger, Death&mdash;these are facts with which
+we stand in relation, and if our relations with Him are out of gear,
+then He and all of these are legitimate objects of dread to us.</p>
+
+<p>But now there is something else that casts out fear than perfect love,
+and that is&mdash;perfect levity. For it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_350" id="Page_2_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> the explanation of the fact that
+so many of us know nothing of this fear of which I speak, and fancy that
+I am exaggerating, or putting forward false views. There is a type of
+man, and I have no doubt there are some of its representatives among my
+hearers, who are below both fear and love as directed towards God; for
+they never think about Him, or trouble their heads concerning either Him
+or their relations to Him or anything that flows therefrom. It is a
+strange faculty that we all have, of forgetting unwelcome thoughts and
+shutting our eyes to the things that we do not want to see, like Nelson
+when he puts the telescope to his blind eye at Copenhagen, because he
+would not obey the signal of recall. But surely it is an ignoble thing
+that men should ignore or shuffle out of sight with inconsiderateness
+the real facts of their condition, like boys whistling in a churchyard
+to keep their spirits up, and saying, 'Who's afraid?' just because they
+are so very much afraid. Ah, dear friends, do not rest until you face
+the facts, and having faced them, have found the way to reverse them!
+Surely, surely it is not worthy of men to turn away from anything so
+certain as that between a sin-loving man and God there must exist such a
+relation as will bring evil and sorrow to that man, as surely as God is
+and he is. I beseech you, take to heart these things, and do not turn
+away from them with a shake of your shoulders, and say, 'He is preaching
+the narrow, old-fashioned doctrine of a religion of fear.' No! I am not.
+But I am preaching this plain fact, that a man who is in discord with
+God has reason to be afraid, and I come to you with the old exhortation
+of the prophet, 'Be troubled, ye careless ones.' For there is nothing
+more ignoble or irrational than security which is only made possible by
+covering over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_351" id="Page_2_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> unwelcome facts. 'Be troubled'; and let the trouble lead
+you to the Refuge.</p>
+
+<p>II. That brings me to the second point&mdash;viz., the mission of fear.</p>
+
+<p>John uses a rare word in my text when he says 'fear hath torment.'
+'Torment' does not convey the whole idea of the word. It means
+suffering, but suffering for a purpose; suffering which is correction;
+suffering which is disciplinary; suffering which is intended to lead to
+something beyond itself. Fear, the apprehension of personal evil, has
+the same function in the moral world as pain has in the physical. It is
+a symptom of disease, and is intended to bid us look for the remedy and
+the Physician. What is an alarm bell for but to rouse the sleepers, and
+to hurry them to the refuge? And so this wholesome, manly dread of the
+certain issue of discord with God is meant to do for us what the angels
+did for Lot&mdash;to lay a mercifully violent hand on the shoulder of the
+sleeper, and shake him into aroused wakefulness, and hasten him out of
+Sodom, before the fire bursts through the ground, and is met by the fire
+from above. The intention of fear is to lead to that which shall
+annihilate it by taking away its cause.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing more ridiculous, nothing more likely to destroy a man,
+than the indulgence in an idle fear which does nothing to prevent its
+own fulfilment. Horses in a burning stable are so paralysed by dread
+that they cannot stir, and get burnt to death. And for a man to be
+afraid&mdash;as every one ought to be who is conscious of unforgiven sin&mdash;for
+a man to be afraid and there an end, is absolute insanity. I fear; then
+what do I do? Nothing. That is true about hosts of us.</p>
+
+<p>What ought I to do? Let the dread direct me to its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_352" id="Page_2_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> source, my own
+sinfulness. Let the discovery of my own sinfulness direct me to its
+remedy, the righteousness and the Cross of Jesus Christ. He, and He
+alone, can deal with the disturbing element in my relation to God. He
+can 'deliver me from my enemies, for they are too strong for me.' It is
+Christ and His work, Christ and His sacrifice, Christ and His indwelling
+Spirit that will grapple with and overcome sin and all its consequences,
+in any man and in every man; taking away its penalty, lightening the
+heart of the burden of its guilt, delivering from its love and
+dominion&mdash;all three of which things are the barbs of the arrows with
+which fear riddles heart and conscience. So my fear should proclaim to
+me the merciful 'Name that is above every name,' and drive me as well as
+draw me to Christ, the Conqueror of sin, and the Antagonist of all
+dread.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, I said I was not preaching the religion of Fear. But I think
+we shall scarcely understand the religion of Love unless we recognise
+that dread is a legitimate part of an unforgiven man's attitude towards
+God. My fear should be to me like the misshapen guide that may lead me
+to the fortress where I shall be safe. Oh, do not tamper with the
+wholesome sense of dread! Do not let it lie, generally sleeping, and now
+and then waking in your hearts, and bringing about nothing. Sailors that
+crash on with all sails set&mdash;stunsails and all&mdash;whilst the barometer is
+rapidly falling, and boding clouds are on the horizon, and the line of
+the approaching gale is ruffling the sea yonder, have themselves to
+blame if they founder. Look to the falling barometer, and make ready for
+the coming storm, and remember that the mission of fear is to lead you
+to the Christ who will take it away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_353" id="Page_2_353">[Pg 353]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, the expulsion of fear.</p>
+
+<p>My text points out the natural antagonism, and mutual exclusiveness, of
+these two emotions. If I go to Jesus Christ as a sinful man, and get His
+love bestowed upon me, then, as the next verse to my text says, my love
+springs in response to His to me, and in the measure in which that love
+rises in my heart will it frustrate its antagonistic dread.</p>
+
+<p>As I said, you cannot love and fear the same person, unless the love is
+of a very rudimentary and imperfect character. But just as when you pour
+pure water into a bladder, the poisonous gases that it may have
+contained will be driven out before it, so when love comes in, dread
+goes out. The river, turned into the foul Augean stables of the heart,
+will sweep out all the filth and leave everything clean. The black,
+greasy smoke-wreath, touched by the fire of Christ's love, will flash
+out into ruddy flames, like that which has kindled them; and Christ's
+love will kindle in your hearts, if you accept it and apprehend it
+aright, a love which shall burn up and turn into fuel for itself the now
+useless dread.</p>
+
+<p>But, brethren, remember that it is '<i>perfect</i> love' which 'casts out
+fear.'</p>
+
+<p>Inconsistent as the two emotions are in themselves, in practice, they
+may be united, by reason of the imperfection of the nobler. And in the
+Christian life they are united with terrible frequency. There are many
+professing Christian people who live all their days with a burden of
+shivering dread upon their shoulders, and an icy cold fear in their
+hearts, just because they have not got close enough to Jesus Christ, nor
+kept their hearts with sufficient steadfastness under the quickening
+influences of His love, to have shaken off their dread as a sick man's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_354" id="Page_2_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>
+distempered fancies. A little love has not mass enough in it to drive
+out thick, clustering fears. There are hundreds of professing Christians
+who know very little indeed of that joyous love of God which swallows up
+and makes impossible all dread, who, because they have not a loving
+present consciousness of a loving Father's loving will, tremble when
+they front in imagination, and still more when they meet in reality, the
+evils that must come, and who cannot face the thought of death with
+anything but shrinking apprehension. There is far too much of the old
+leaven of selfish dread left in the experiences of many Christians. 'I
+feared thee, because thou wert an austere man, and so, because I was
+afraid, I went and hid my talent, and did nothing for thee' is a
+transcript of the experience of far too many of us. The one way to get
+deliverance is to go to Jesus Christ and keep close by Him.</p>
+
+<p>And my last word to you is, see that you resort only to the sane, sound
+way of getting rid of the wholesome, rational dread of which I have been
+speaking. You can ignore it; and buy immunity at the price of leaving in
+full operation the <i>causes</i> of your dread&mdash;and that is stupid. There is
+only one wise thing to do, and that is, to make sure work of getting rid
+of the occasion of dread, which is the fact of sin. Take all your sin to
+Jesus Christ; He will&mdash;and He only can&mdash;deal with it. He will lay His
+hand on you, as He did of old, with the characteristic word that was so
+often upon His lips, and which He alone is competent to speak in its
+deepest meaning. 'Fear not, it is I,' and He will give you the courage
+that He commands.</p>
+
+<p>'God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love,
+and of a sound mind.' 'Ye have not received<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_355" id="Page_2_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> the spirit of bondage again
+to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry
+Abba, Father,' and cling to Him, as a child who knows his father's heart
+too well to be afraid of anything in his father, or of anything that his
+father's hand can send.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_RAY_AND_THE_REFLECTION" id="THE_RAY_AND_THE_REFLECTION"></a>THE RAY AND THE REFLECTION</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'We love Him, because He first loved us.'&mdash;1 <span class="smcap">John</span> iv. 19.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Very simple words! but they go down into the depths of God, lifting
+burdens off the heart of humanity, turning duty into delight, and
+changing the aspect of all things. He who knows that God loves him needs
+little more for blessedness; he who loves God back again offers more
+than all burnt offering and sacrifices. But it is to be observed that
+the correct reading of my text, as you will find in the Revised Version,
+omits 'Him' in the first clause, and simply says 'we love,' without
+specifying the object. That is to say, for the moment John's thought is
+fixed rather on the inward transformation effected, from self-regard to
+love&mdash;than on considering the object on which the love is expended. When
+the heart is melted, the streams flow wherever there is a channel. The
+river, as he goes on to show us, parts into two heads, and love to God
+and love to man are, in their essence and root-principle, one thing.</p>
+
+<p>So my text is the summary of all revelation about God, the ultimate word
+about all our relations to Him, and the all-inclusive directory as to
+our conduct to one another. To know that God loves, and to love
+again&mdash;there is a little pocket encyclop&aelig;dia in two volumes, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_356" id="Page_2_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>
+contains the smelted-down essence of all theology and of all morality.
+Let us look at these three points.</p>
+
+<p>I. The ultimate word about God.</p>
+
+<p>'He first loved us.' Properly and strictly speaking, that 'first' only
+declares the priority of the divine love towards us over ours towards
+Him. But we may fairly give it a wider meaning, and say&mdash;first of all,
+ere Creation and Time, away back in the abysmal depths of an everlasting
+and changeless heart, changeless in the sense that its love was eternal,
+but not changeless in the sense that love could have no place within
+it&mdash;first of all things was God's love; last to be discovered because
+most ancient of all. The foundation is disclosed last when you come to
+dig, and the essence is grasped last in the process of analysis.</p>
+
+<p>So one of the old psalms, with wondrous depth of truth, traces up
+everything to this, 'For His mercy endureth for ever.' Therefore, there
+was time; therefore, there were creatures&mdash;'He made great lights, for
+His mercy endureth for ever.' Therefore, there were judgments&mdash;'He slew
+famous kings ... for His mercy endureth for ever.' And so we may pass
+through all the works of the divine energy, and say, 'He first loved
+us.'</p>
+
+<p>It is no accident that there are but foregleams of this great thought
+brightening the words and the thoughts of psalmist and prophet, saint
+and sage, from the beginning onwards, while the articulate utterance of
+the simple sentence was first heard from the lips of Him who declared
+the Father, and stands in that part of the Book which, both in its
+position there, and in its date of composition is the last of the
+Apostolic utterances. 'God is love';&mdash;that is in one aspect the
+foundation of His being, and in another aspect the shining ruby set on
+the very sky-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_357" id="Page_2_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>piercing summit of the completed process of the revelation
+of that Being to man. 'He first loved us'; and thence, from that centre
+and germinal point, streams out the whole train of consequences in the
+divine activity, and in the divine self-revelation.</p>
+
+<p>I need not ask you to contrast with this infinitely simple and
+infinitely deep utterance all other thoughts of a divine Being&mdash;the cold
+abstractions of Theism, the dim dreads of popular apprehension, the
+vague utterances of any mythology, the clouds that men's thoughts have
+covered over the face of this great truth&mdash;and then, to set by the side
+of all these groping, these peradventures, these fears, these narrow,
+unworthy ideas, the clear simplicity, the infinite depth of 'He first
+loved us.'</p>
+
+<p>But I may ask you to consider, but for a moment, the relation which all
+the other perfection of the divine nature have to this central and
+foundation one. There are all those pompous names, 'Omnipresence' and
+'Omniscience' and the like, which are but the negations of the
+limitations of humanity or of finite creatures. There are the more
+spiritual and moral thoughts of Wisdom and Righteousness and the like.
+These are but the fringes of the glory: I was going to venture to say
+that the divinest thing in God is love. There is the central blaze; the
+rest is but the brilliant periphery that encloses it. And that infinite
+love stands to all these other attributes in the relation of being their
+master and motive spring. They are Love's instrument, and in the divine
+nature Love is Lord of all. They give it majesty; it gives them
+tenderness. We may reverently say, in regard to the divine nature, what
+the Apostle says about our humanity, that love is the 'bond of
+perfectness'&mdash;the girdle which, braced round all the garments, keeps
+them in their place.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_358" id="Page_2_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> For round these infinite, innumerable, unnameable,
+and named divine perfections, is that which brings them all into
+symmetry and keeps them all in harmonious action&mdash;Love. He has wisdom,
+and power, and eternal being, but He is Love.</p>
+
+<p>But do not let us forget that whilst thus my text proclaims the ultimate
+truth, these other attributes, as they are called, are all smelted down,
+as it were, into, and present in, the love which is their crown. The
+same Apostle, who has thus the honour of ringing out to the world the
+good news that God is Love, declares that 'this is the message' which he
+has to tell, that 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' So
+the light of righteousness, as well as the lambent flame of love, burn
+together on that central fire of the universe. We must not so conceive
+of the love of God, as to darken the radiance of His righteousness, or
+to obscure the brilliancy of that pure light which tolerates no
+admixture of darkness.</p>
+
+<p>May I venture a step further, and ask whether we are not warranted in
+believing that in that which we call the love of God there do abide the
+same elements as characterise the thing that bears the same name in our
+human experience? The spectrum has told us that the constituents of the
+mighty sun in the heavens are the same as the constituents of this
+little darkened earth. And there are the same lines in the divine
+spectrum that there are in ours. So if we can venture to say of Him, He
+is Love, do not let us shrink from saying that then, like us, He
+delights in the companionship of His beloved; that, like us, He rejoices
+in giving Himself to His beloved; that, like us, but infinitely, He
+desires the good of His beloved; and that, like us, He seeks only for
+the requital of an answering love. All these things, the joy of the Lord
+in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_359" id="Page_2_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> man, the yielding of the Lord to man, the beneficent desire of the
+Lord for the good of man, and the hunger of the Lord for the response of
+love from man&mdash;all these things are affirmed when we affirm that God is
+Love.</p>
+
+<p>Our Apostle would concur heartily in the great text which was the theme
+of a recent sermon. Paul said, 'God establishes His love towards us, in
+that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' John says, 'Herein
+is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son
+to be the propitiation for our sins.'</p>
+
+<p>So the Cross of Christ is the one demonstration that God loved us.
+Looking to it we can say, with a great modern teacher:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So the All-great were the All-loving too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;So through the thunder comes a human voice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Saying "Oh! heart I made; a heart beats here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Face, My hands fashioned, see it in Myself;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Thou hast no power, nor mayest conceive of Mine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;But love I gave thee, with Myself to love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;And thou must love Me, who have died for thee."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>II. Here we have the ultimate word as to our religion.</p>
+
+<p>'We love Him, because He first loved us.' There is a bridge wanted
+between these two, and the bridge is supplied abundantly in this letter,
+in entire harmony with the teaching of the rest of the New Testament.
+Much has been said, and profitably said, with reference to the
+modification of the general type of Christian teaching in the writings
+respectively of Paul, Peter, James, and John. I thankfully recognise the
+diversities. They are not divergencies; they are perfectly
+complementary, and may all be made to harmonise. This Apostle of love
+has also declared to us how it comes that the love which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_360" id="Page_2_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> burns at the
+centre of things, where there is a heart, kindles a responding love away
+out on the circumference of things, where there are men with hearts; and
+the bridge is&mdash;'We have known and believed the love that God hath to
+us.' So says John. And Paul, the Apostle of faith, who sometimes seems
+as if his only conception of the link of union between God and man was,
+on the part of man, faith, responds when he speaks of a faith which
+worketh, comes to energetic operation, through the love which it has
+kindled.</p>
+
+<p>So we come to this, that a simple trust in the love of God, as
+manifested in Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the only thing which will so
+deal with man's natural self-regard and desire to make himself his own
+object and centre, as to substitute for that the victorious love to God.
+You cannot love God, unless you believe that He loves you. You will
+never be absolutely sure of that, unless you have learned it from the
+Cross of Christ. You will not respond with the love that He desires, but
+there will be a film between your ice and the fire that could melt it,
+until that is swept away by the simple act of confidence in God
+manifested to you in Jesus Christ. This is Christianity; this, nothing
+less, is religion&mdash;to love God, because I believe that in Jesus Christ
+God has loved me.</p>
+
+<p>And that is the only thing that He desires or accepts. The Religion of
+Fear; what is it? 'Thou wert an austere man ... and I was afraid.' Yes!
+and what did you do when you were afraid? 'I hid my talent in the
+ground,' and was utterly idle. Here rise, on either side of the valley,
+two mountains&mdash;Ebal and Gerazim. From the one were thundered the curses,
+from the other broke the benediction of the blessings; the one is
+barren, the other is verdant&mdash;'which thing is an allegory.' The Religion
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_361" id="Page_2_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> Fear does nothing, the Religion of Love does all. The Religion of
+Self-interest is narrow, poor, mostly inoperative of any lofty
+enthusiasm or high nobleness of character. The Religion of Duty; 'I
+ought to worship, I am bidden to do this, that, or the other thing,
+which I do not a bit like to do. I am forbidden to do this, that, and
+the other thing which I should very much like to do, if I durst'&mdash;that
+religion is the religion of a slave; and there are hosts of us that know
+nothing better. And so our Christianity is a feeble and an uncomfortable
+thing; and there are little joy, and little subjugation of the will, and
+little leaping up of the heart in glad obedience in it. I was talking to
+a good, aged man, not long ago, whose religion was of a very gloomy
+type. He said to me, 'As to love, I know next to nothing about it.' Ah!
+brethren, I am afraid that is true about a good many of us who call
+ourselves Christians.</p>
+
+<p>Then let me say, too, that if we love Him, it will be the motive power
+and spring of all manner of obediences and glad services. Love is the
+mother-tincture, so to speak, which you can colour, and to which you can
+add in various ways, and produce variously tinted and tasted and
+perfumed commixtures. Love lies at the foundation of all Christian
+goodness. It will lead to the subjugation of the will; and that is the
+thing that is most of all needed to make a man righteous and pure. So
+St. Augustine's paradox, rightly understood, is a magnificent truth,
+'Love! and do what you will.' For then you will be sure to will what God
+wills, and you ought.</p>
+
+<p>If this be the summing-up of all religion, a practical conclusion
+follows. When we feel ourselves defective in the glow and operative
+driving power of love to God, what is the right thing to do? When a man
+is cold, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_362" id="Page_2_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> will not warm himself by putting a clinical thermometer
+into his mouth, and taking his temperature, will he? Let him go into the
+sunshine and he will be warmed up. You can pound ice in a mortar, and
+except for the little heat generated by the impact of the pestle, it
+will keep ice still. But float the iceberg south into the tropics, and
+what has become of it? It has all run down into sweet, warm water, and
+mingled with the warm ocean that has dissolved it. So do not think about
+yourselves and your own loveless hearts so much, but think about God,
+and the infinite welling up of love in His heart to you, a great deal
+more. 'We love Him, because He first loved us'; therefore, to love Him
+more, we must feel more that He does love us.</p>
+
+<p>III. Lastly, here is the ultimate word about our conduct to men.</p>
+
+<p>I said that John, by leaving out any specification of the object of
+love, as well as by the verses that immediately follow, shows that he
+regards the emotion as one, though its direction is two-fold. That just
+comes to the plain truth, that the only victorious antagonist to the
+self-regarding temperament of average men, and the only power which will
+change philanthropy from a sentiment into a self-denying and active
+principle of conduct, is to be found in the belief of the love of God in
+Jesus Christ, and in answering love to Him.</p>
+
+<p>That is a lesson for many sorts of people to-day. What they call
+altruism is no discovery of Christianity, but its practice is. I freely
+admit that there is much honest and self-sacrificing beneficence and
+benevolence which are not connected, in the men who practice them, with
+faith in Jesus Christ. But I question very much whether these would have
+existed if the story of the Cross had been un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2_363" id="Page_2_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>known. And sure I am that
+the history of non-Christian attempts to promote the brotherhood of man,
+and to diffuse a wide and operative love of mankind, teaches us, on the
+one side, that the emotion is not strong enough to last, and to work,
+unless it is based on God's love in Jesus Christ. And the history of
+Christianity, on the other side, though with many defects and things to
+be ashamed of, teaches us, conversely, that wherever there is a genuine
+love of God, its exterior form, so to say, the outside of it which is
+presented to the world, will be true love to man.</p>
+
+<p>Christian people, lay this to heart; you are to be mirrors of the love
+to which you turn for all blessedness and peace. It is of no use to say,
+'My religion is the love of God' unless the love of God is manifested in
+the love of man. If you love God, you will love those that God loves,
+those for whom Christ died, those who are just like what <i>you</i> were when
+you learned that God loved you. The service of God is the service of
+man.</p>
+
+<p>One last word, 'We love Him, because He first loved us.' Do you? Or is
+it rather true of you: 'I do not love God, though He has loved me'? I
+saw not long since, up on the flank of a mountain, an obstinate patch of
+snow, that had fronted, in unmelted cold, months of the summer sun.
+There are some of us who lift a broad shield of thick-ribbed ice between
+ourselves and the radiance of the warm heart of God. Oh! brother; do not
+shut that love out of your heart; for if you do, you shut out peace and
+goodness, and shut in all manner of poisonous creatures and doleful
+shapes, whose companionship will be misery and death.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="trnote"><p><b>Transcriber's Note:</b> A number of typographical
+errors have been corrected,
+and two minor changes have been made to the book's formatting.
+See the list below. The book's inconsistent hyphenation
+has been preserved, with an educated guess made as to whether those hyphens
+appearing at the ends of the line were intended by the author, or just added
+because the word was broken at that point.</p>
+<p><b>Ephesians:</b></p>
+<ul>
+<li>Page 36: added closing quote after "the event of our inheritance" (line 3)</li>
+<li>102: "gentle words <i>ot</i>" to "<i>to</i>"</li>
+<li>154: "it" added in "what <i>it</i> is to hear"</li>
+<li>263: [Preached on Whitsunday] was a footnote in the original text.</li>
+<li>286: added full stop after (R.V.) to (R.V.). for consistency with usage elsewhere</li>
+<li>286: "please <i>to</i> understand" to "<i>do</i>"</li>
+<li>287: "we <i>shoud</i> be entitled" to "<i>should</i>"</li>
+<li>391: added &mdash; and changed <i>Ephes.</i> to <i>Eph.</i> for consistency with other
+     headings</li>
+<li>391: added colon after "Mark its simplicity" (for grammar, and there
+     was a large space in the book)</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><b>Peter and John:</b></p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>  8: Added space to <i>ordisaster</i>.</li>
+<li> 28: added close quote after "that which is another's"</li>
+<li> 34: added close quote after "My heavenly Father's Kingdom."</li>
+<li> 39: "to <i>y</i>" -> "to <i>you</i>" in poetry</li>
+<li> 66: added &mdash; after "especially to recreation" (for sense, and there
+     was a large space in the book)</li>
+<li> 86: "<i>Caesarae Philippi</i>" to "<i>Cæsarea Philippi</i>"</li>
+<li> 88: "bow <i>or</i> stubborn" to "bow <i>our</i> stubborn"</li>
+<li> 99: "<i>dicattes</i>" to "<i>dictates</i>"</li>
+<li>107: "<i>ever</i>" to "<i>even</i>" in quotation from 1 Peter ii. 21</li>
+<li>116: added opening quote before "Any man who"</li>
+<li>146: "<i>inadeqate</i>" to "<i>inadequate</i>"</li>
+<li>170: Duplicate word deleted from "It may be that <i>he he</i>".</li>
+<li>173: "<i>Whose</i> righteousness clothes" to "<i>whose</i>"</li>
+<li>210: added open quote before "sea of glass" (by reference to Rev 15:2)</li>
+<li>219: "slave has no <i>resource</i>" -> "<i>recourse</i>"</li>
+<li>219: added opening quote before "Take that man's child"</li>
+<li>242: added closing quote after "like Lebanon."</li>
+<li>260: added closing quote after "all sin" (end of 1 John 1:7)</li>
+<li>297: added closing quote after "My Father;"</li>
+<li>308: added closing quote after "at His coming"</li>
+<li>313: corrected 1 John <i>iv.</i> 9 to 1 John <i>i.</i> 9 (the verse being quoted)</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Expositions of Holy Scripture, by Alexander
+Maclaren
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture
+       Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John
+
+
+Author: Alexander Maclaren
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2008  [eBook #24674]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Colin Bell, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+   A number of typographical errors have been corrected, and two
+   minor changes have been made to the book's formatting. There
+   is a full list of emendations at the end. The book's inconsistent
+   hyphenation has been preserved, with an educated guess made as
+   to whether those hyphens appearing at ends of the line were
+   intended by the author, or just added because the word was broken
+   at that point.
+
+
+
+
+
+EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EPHESIANS
+EPISTLES OF ST. PETER AND ST. JOHN
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+George H. Doran Company
+
+
+
+
+_EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE_
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+EPHESIANS
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                               PAGE
+SAINTS AND FAITHFUL (Eph i. 1)                                   1
+
+'ALL SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS' (Eph. i. 3)                            8
+
+'ACCORDING TO'--I. (Eph. i. 5, 7)                               18
+
+'ACCORDING TO'--II. (Eph. i. 7)                                 26
+
+GOD'S INHERITANCE AND OURS (Eph. i. 11, 14)                     35
+
+THE EARNEST AND THE INHERITANCE (Eph. i. 14)                    43
+
+THE HOPE OF THE CALLING (Eph. i. 18)                            52
+
+GOD'S INHERITANCE IN THE SAINTS (Eph. i. 18)                    62
+
+THE MEASURE OF IMMEASURABLE POWER (Eph. i. 19, 20)              72
+
+THE RESURRECTION OF DEAD SOULS (Eph. ii. 4, 5)                  81
+
+'THE RICHES OF GRACE' (Eph. ii. 7)                              91
+
+SALVATION: GRACE: FAITH (Eph. ii. 8, R.V.)                      98
+
+GOD'S WORKMANSHIP AND OUR WORKS (Eph. ii. 10)                  108
+
+THE CHIEF CORNER-STONE (Eph. ii. 20, R.V.)                     118
+
+'THE WHOLE FAMILY' (Eph. iii. 15)                              128
+
+STRENGTHENED WITH MIGHT (Eph. iii. 10)                         132
+
+THE INDWELLING CHRIST (Eph. iii. 17)                           142
+
+LOVE UNKNOWABLE AND KNOWN (Eph. iii. 18, 19)                   151
+
+THE PARADOX OF LOVE'S MEASURE (Eph. iii. 18)                   162
+
+THE CLIMAX OF ALL PRAYER (Eph. iii. 19)                        171
+
+MEASURELESS POWER AND ENDLESS GLORY (Eph. iii. 20, 21)         180
+
+THE CALLING AND THE KINGDOM (Eph. iv. 1; Rev. iii. 4)          194
+
+'THE THREEFOLD UNITY' (Eph. iv. 5)                             203
+
+'THE MEASURE OF GRACE' (Eph. iv. 7, R.V.)                      207
+
+THE GOAL OF PROGRESS (Eph. iv. 13, R.V.)                       216
+
+CHRIST OUR LESSON AND OUR TEACHER (Eph. iv. 20, 21)            224
+
+A DARK PICTURE AND A BRIGHT HOPE (Eph. iv. 22)                 233
+
+THE NEW MAN (Eph. iv. 24)                                      247
+
+GRIEVING THE SPIRIT (Eph. iv. 30)                              262
+
+GOD'S IMITATORS (Eph. v. 1)                                    270
+
+WHAT CHILDREN OF LIGHT SHOULD BE (Eph. v. 8)                   277
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE LIGHT (Eph. v. 9, R.V.)                       286
+
+PLEASING CHRIST (Eph. v. 10)                                   295
+
+UNFRUITFUL WORKS OF DARKNESS (Eph. v. 11)                      303
+
+PAUL'S REASONS FOR TEMPERANCE (Eph. v. 11-21)                  313
+
+SLEEPERS AT NOONDAY (Eph. v. 14)                               318
+
+REDEEMING THE TIME (Eph. v. 15, 16)                            327
+
+'THE PANOPLY OF GOD' (Eph. vi. 13)                             337
+
+'THE GIRDLE OF TRUTH' (Eph. vi. 14, R.V.)                      343
+
+'THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS' (Eph. vi. 14)               350
+
+A SOLDIER'S SHOES (Eph. vi. 15)                                353
+
+THE SHIELD OF FAITH (Eph. vi. 16)                              361
+
+'THE HELMET OF SALVATION' (Eph. vi. 17)                        367
+
+'THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT' (Eph. vi. 17)                        373
+
+PEACE, LOVE, AND FAITH (Eph. vi. 23)                           381
+
+THE WIDE RANGE OF GOD'S GRACE (Eph. vi. 24)                    391
+
+
+
+
+SAINTS AND FAITHFUL
+
+     'The saints which are at Ephesus and the faithful in Christ
+      Jesus.'--Eph. i. 1.
+
+
+That is Paul's way of describing a church. There were plenty of very
+imperfect Christians in the community at Ephesus and in the other
+Asiatic churches to which this letter went. As we know, there were
+heretics amongst them, and many others to whom the designation of 'holy'
+seemed inapplicable. But Paul classes them all under one category, and
+describes the whole body of believing people by these two words, which
+must always go together if either of them is truly applied, 'saints' and
+'faithful.'
+
+Now I think that from this simple designation we may gather two or three
+very obvious indeed, and very familiar and old-fashioned, but also very
+important, thoughts.
+
+I. A Christian is a saint.
+
+We are accustomed to confine the word to persons who tower above their
+brethren in holiness and manifest godliness and devoutness. The New
+Testament never does anything like that. Some people fancy that nobody
+can be a saint unless he wears a special uniform of certain conventional
+sanctities. The New Testament does not take that point of view at all,
+but regards all true believers in Jesus Christ as being, therein and
+thereby, saints.
+
+Now, what does it mean by that? The word at bottom simply signifies
+separation. Whatever is told off from a mass for a specific purpose
+would be called, if it were a thing, 'holy.' But there is one special
+kind of separation which makes a person a saint, and that is separation
+to God, for His uses, in obedience to His commandment, that He may
+employ the man as He will. So in the Old Testament the designation
+'holy' was applied quite as much to the high priest's mitre or to the
+sacrificial vessels of the Temple as it was to the people who used them.
+It did not imply originally, and in the first place, moral qualities at
+all, but simply that this person or that thing belonged to God. But then
+you cannot belong to God unless you are like Him. There can be no
+consecration to God except the heart is being purified. So the ordinary
+meaning of holiness, as moral purity and cleanness from sin, necessarily
+comes from the original meaning, separation and devotion to the service
+of God.
+
+Thus we get the whole significance of Christian holiness. We are to
+belong to God, and to know that we do belong to Him. We are to be
+separated from the mass of people and things that have no consciousness
+of ownership and do not yield themselves up to Him for His use. But we
+cannot belong to Him, and be devoted to His service, unless we are being
+made day by day pure in heart, and like Him to whom we say that we
+belong. A human being can only be God's by the surrender of heart and
+will, and through the continual appropriation into his own character and
+life, of righteousness and purity like that which belongs to God.
+Holiness is God's stamp upon a man, His 'mark,' by which He says--This
+man belongs to Me. As you write your name in a book, so God writes His
+name on His property, and the name that He writes is the likeness of His
+own character.
+
+Note, again, that in God's church there is no aristocracy of sanctity,
+nor does the name of saint belong only to those who live high above the
+ordinary tumults of life and the secularities of daily duty. You may be
+as true a saint in a factory--ay! and a far truer one--than in a
+hermitage. You do not need to cultivate a mediaeval or Roman Catholic
+type of ascetic piety in order to be called saints. You do not need to
+be amongst the select few to whom it is given here upon earth, but not
+given without their own effort, to rise to the highest summits of holy
+conformity with the divine will. But down amongst all the troubles and
+difficulties and engrossing occupations of our secular work, you may be
+living saintly lives; for the one condition of being holy is that we
+should know whose we are and whom we serve, and we can carry the
+consciousness of belonging to Him into every corner of the poorest, most
+crowded, and most distracted life, recognising His presence and seeking
+to do His will. The saint is the man who says, 'O Lord, truly I am Thy
+servant; Thou hast loosed my bonds.' Because He has loosed my bonds, the
+bonds that held me to my sins, He has therein fastened me with far more
+stringent bonds of love to the sweet and free service of His redeeming
+love. All His children are His saints.
+
+The Old Testament ritual had one sacrifice which carried this truth in
+it. It is the first prescribed in the Book of Leviticus, the ceremonial
+book--namely, the burnt offering. Its especial meaning was this, that
+the whole man is to be laid upon God's altar and there consumed in the
+fire of a divine love. It began with expiation, as all sacrifices must,
+and on the footing of expiation there followed the transformation, by
+the fire of God, from gross earthliness into vapour and odour which
+went up in wreaths of fragrance acceptable to God. So _we_ are to be
+laid upon the divine altar. So, because we have been accepted in the
+Beloved, and have received the atonement for our sins through His great
+sacrifice, we are to be consecrated to His service and, touched by the
+fire which He sends down, we are to be changed into a sweet odour
+acceptable to Him as were 'the saints which are in Ephesus.'
+
+II. Further, Christian men are saints because they are believers.
+
+'The saints' and 'the faithful' are not two sets of people, but one. The
+Apostle starts, as it were, on the surface, and goes down; takes off the
+uppermost layer and lets us see what is below it; begins with the
+flowers or the fruit, and then carries us to the root. The saints are
+saints because they are first of all faithful. 'Faithful' here, of
+course, does not mean, as it usually does in our ordinary language,
+'true' and 'trusty,' 'reliable' and 'keeping our word,' but it means
+simply 'believing'; having faith, not in the sense of _fidelity_, but in
+the sense of _trust_.
+
+So, then, here is Paul's notion--and it is not only Paul's notion, it is
+God's truth--that the only way by which a man ever comes to realise that
+he belongs to God, and to yield himself in glad surrender to His uses,
+and so to become pure and holy like Him whom He loves and aspires to, is
+by humble faith in Jesus Christ. If you want to talk in theological
+terminology, sanctification follows upon faith. It is when we believe
+and trust in Jesus Christ that all the great motives begin to tell upon
+life and heart, which deliver us from our selfishness, which bind us to
+God, which make it a joy to do anything for His service, which kindle in
+our hearts the flame of fructifying and consecrating and transforming
+love. Faith, the simple reliance of a desperate and therefore trusting
+heart upon Jesus Christ for all that it needs, is the foundation of the
+loftiest elevation and attainment of the Christian character. We begin
+down there that we may set the shining topstone of 'Holiness to the
+Lord' upon the heaven-pointing summit of our lives.
+
+Note how here Paul sets forth the object of our faith and the
+blessedness of it. I do not think I am forcing too much meaning into his
+words when I ask you to notice with what distinct emphasis and
+intentional fulness he employs the double name of our Lord here to
+describe the object upon which our faith fixes, 'Faithful in _Christ
+Jesus_.' We must lay hold of the Manhood, and we must lay hold of the
+office. We must rest our soul's salvation on Him as our brother, Jesus
+who was incarnate in sinful flesh for us; and we must also rest it on
+Him as God's anointed, who came in human flesh to fulfil the divine
+loving-kindness and purposes, and in that flesh to die. A faith in a
+Jesus who was not a Christ would not sanctify; a faith in a Christ who
+is not Jesus would be impalpable and impotent. We must take the two
+together, believing and feeling that we lay hold upon a loving Man, 'bone
+of our bone and flesh of our flesh'; and also upon Him who in His very
+humanity is the Messenger and Angel of God's covenant; the Christ for
+whom the way has been being prepared from the beginning, and who has
+come to fulfil all the purposes of the divine heart.
+
+And notice, too, how there is suggested here also, the blessedness of
+that faith, inasmuch as it is a faith _in_ Christ. The New Testament
+speaks in diverse ways about the relation between the believing soul
+and Jesus Christ. It sometimes speaks of faith as being _towards_ Him,
+and that suggests the going out of a hand that, as it were, stretches
+towards what it would lay hold of. It sometimes speaks of faith as being
+_on_ Him, which suggests the idea of a building on its foundation, or a
+hand leaning on a support. And it sometimes speaks, as here, of faith
+being '_in_ Him,' which suggests the folded wings of the dove that has
+found its nest, the repose of faith, the quiet rest in the Lord, and
+'waiting patiently for Him.' Such trust so directed is the one condition
+of such tranquillity. Then, again, note a Christian is all that he is
+because he is 'in Christ.' That phrase 'in Him' is in some sense the
+keynote of this Epistle to the Ephesians. If you will look over the
+letter, and pick out all the connections in which the expression 'in
+Him' occurs, I think you will be astonished to see how rich and full are
+its uses, and how manifold the blessings of which it is the condition.
+But the use which Paul makes of it here is just this--everything in our
+Christian life depends upon our being rooted and grafted in Jesus. Dear
+brethren, the main weakness, I believe, of what is called Evangelical
+Christianity has been that it has not always kept true to the
+proportionate prominence which the New Testament gives to the two
+thoughts, 'Christ for us,' and 'Christ in us.' For one sermon that you
+have heard which has dwelt earnestly and believingly on the thought of
+the indwelling Christ and the Christian indwelling in Him, you have
+heard a hundred about the Sacrifice on the Cross for sins, and the great
+atonement that was made by it. Those of you, who have listened to me
+from Sunday to Sunday, know that I am not to be charged with minimising
+or neglecting that truth, but I want to lay upon all your hearts this
+earnest conviction, that a gospel which throws into enormous prominence
+'Christ for us,' and into very small prominence 'Christ in us,' is lame
+of one foot, is lopsided, untrue to the symmetry and proportion of the
+Gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament, and will never avail for
+the nourishment and maturity of Christian souls. 'Christ for us' by all
+means, and for evermore, but 'Christ _in_ us,' or else He will not be
+'_for_ us.'
+
+III. Lastly, a Christian may be a saint, and a believer, and in Christ
+Jesus, though he is in Ephesus.
+
+Many of you know that probably the words 'in Ephesus' are no part of the
+original text of this epistle, which was apparently a circular letter,
+in which the designation of the various churches to which it was sent
+was left blank, to be filled in with the name of each little community
+to which Paul's messenger from Rome carried it. The copy from which our
+text was taken had probably been delivered at Ephesus; and, at any rate,
+one of the copies would go there. What was Ephesus? Satan's very
+headquarters and seat in Asia Minor, a focus of idolatry, superstition,
+wealth, luxury springing from commerce, and moral corruption. 'Great is
+Diana of the Ephesians.' The books of Ephesus were a synonym for magical
+books. Many of us know how rotten to the core the society of that great
+city was. And there, on the dunghill, was this little garden of fragrant
+and flowering plants. They were 'saints in Christ Jesus,' though they
+were 'saints in Ephesus.'
+
+Never mind about surroundings. It is possible for us to keep ourselves
+in the love of God, and in the fellowship of His Son wherever we are,
+and whatever may lie around us. You and I have too to live in a big,
+wicked city, and to work out our religion in a society honeycombed with
+corruption, because of commerce and other influences. Do not let us
+forget that these people whom Paul called 'saints' and 'faithful' had a
+harder fight to wage than we have, with less to hearten and strengthen
+them in it. Only remember if the 'saints in Ephesus' are to be 'in
+Christ,' they need to keep themselves very straight up. The carbonic
+acid gas is heavy and goes down to the bottom of the cave, and if a man
+will walk bolt upright, he will keep his nostrils above it; but if he
+stoops, he will get down into it. Walk straight up, with your head
+erect, looking to the Master, and your respiratory organs will be above
+the poison. If we are to _be_ in Christ when we are in Ephesus, we need
+to keep ourselves separate and faithful, and to _keep ourselves_ in
+Christ. If the diver comes out of the diving-bell he is drowned. If he
+keeps inside its crystal walls he may be on the bottom of the ocean, but
+he is dry and safe. Keep in the fortress by loyal faith, by humble
+realisation of His presence, by continual effort, and 'nothing shall by
+any means harm you,' but 'your lives shall be holy, being hid with
+Christ in God.'
+
+
+
+
+'ALL SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS'
+
+     'Blessed be God ... who hath blessed us with all spiritual
+      blessings in heavenly places in Christ.'--Eph. i. 3.
+
+
+It is very characteristic of Paul's impetuous fervour and exuberant
+faith that he begins this letter with a doxology, and plunges at once
+into the very heart of his theme. Colder natures reach such heights by
+slow degrees. He gains them at a bound, or rather, he dwells there
+always. Put a pen into his hand, and it is like tapping a blast furnace;
+and out rushes a fiery stream at white heat. But there is a great deal
+more than fervour in the words. In the rush of his thoughts there is
+depth and method. We come slowly after, and try by analysing and
+meditation to recover some of the fervour and the fire of such
+utterances as this.
+
+Notice that buoyant, joyous, emphatic reiteration: 'Blessed,' 'blest,'
+'blessings.' That is more than the fascination exercised over a man's
+mind by a word; it covers very deep thoughts and goes very far into the
+centre of the Christian life. God blesses us by gifts; we bless Him by
+words. The aim of His act of blessing is to evoke in our hearts the love
+that praises. We receive first, and then, moved by His mercies, we give.
+Our highest response to His most precious gifts is that we shall 'take
+the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord,' and in the
+depth of thankful and recipient hearts shall say, 'Blessed be God who
+hath blessed us.'
+
+Now I think that I shall best bring out the deep meaning of these words
+if I simply follow them as they lie before us. I do not wish to say
+anything about our echo in blessing God. I wish to speak about the
+original sweet sound, His blessing to us.
+
+I. And I note, first of all, the character and the extent of these
+blessings which are the constituents of the Christian life.
+
+'All spiritual blessings,' says the Apostle. Now, I am not going to
+weary you with mere exegetical remarks, but I do want to lay stress upon
+this, that, when the Apostle speaks about 'spiritual blessings,' he does
+not merely use that word 'spiritual' as defining the region in us in
+which the blessings are given, though that is also implied; but rather
+as pointing to the medium by which they are conferred. That is to say,
+he calls them 'spiritual,' not because they are, unlike material and
+outward blessings, gifts for the inner man, the true self, but because
+they are imparted to the waiting spirit by that Divine Spirit who
+communicates to men all the most precious things of God. They are
+'spiritual' because the Holy Spirit is the medium of communication by
+which they reach men's spirits.
+
+And I may just pause for one moment--and it shall only be for a
+moment--to point out to you how in-woven into the very texture of the
+writer's thoughts, and all the more emphatic because quite incidental,
+and needing to be looked for to be found, is here the evidence of his
+believing that the name of God was God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
+For it is the Father who is the Giver, the Son who is the Reservoir, the
+Spirit who is the Communicator, of these spiritual gifts. And I do not
+think that any man could have written these words of my text, the main
+purpose of which is altogether different to setting forth the mystery of
+the divine nature, unless he had believed in God the Father, Son, and
+Holy Ghost.
+
+But, apart altogether from that, let me remind you in one sentence of
+how the gifts which thus come to men by that Divine Spirit derive their
+characteristic quality from their very medium of communication. There
+are many other blessings for which we have to say, 'Blessed be God'; for
+all the gifts that come from 'the Father of Lights' are light, and
+everything that the Fountain of sweetness bestows upon mankind is sweet,
+but earthly blessings are but the shadow of blessing. They remain
+without us, and they pass. And if they were all for which we had to
+praise God, our praises had need to be often checked by sobs and tears,
+and often very doubtful and questioning. If there were none other but
+such, and if this poor life were all, then I do not think it would be
+true that it is
+
+        'better to have loved and lost,
+    Than never to have loved at all.'
+
+It is but a quavering voice of praise, with many a sob between, that
+goes up to bless God for anything but spiritual blessings. Though it is
+true that all which comes from the Father of Lights is light, the
+sorrows and troubles that He sends have the light terribly muffled in
+darkness, and it needs strong faith and insight to pierce through the
+cloud to see the gleam of anything bright beneath. But when we turn to
+this other region, and think of what comes to every poor, tremulous,
+human heart, that likes to take it through that Divine Spirit--the
+forgiveness of sins, the rectification of errors, the purification of
+lusts and passions, the gleams of hope on the future, and the access
+with confidence into the standing and place of children; oh, then surely
+we can say, 'Blessed be God for spiritual blessings.'
+
+But if the word which defines may thus seem to limit, the other word
+which accompanies it sweeps away every limit; for it calls upon us to
+bless God for _all_ spiritual blessings. That is to say, there is no gap
+in His gift. It is rounded and complete and perfect. Whatever a man's
+needs may require, whatever his hopes can dream, whatever his wishes can
+stretch out towards, it is all here, compacted and complete. The
+spiritual gifts are encyclopaediacal and all-sufficient. They are not
+segments, but completed circles. When God gives He gives amply.
+
+II. So much, then, for the first point; now, in the second place, note
+the one divine act by which all these blessings have been bestowed.
+
+'Blessed be God who _has_ given'; or, still more definitely, pointing to
+some one specific moment and deed in which the benefaction was
+completed, 'Blessed be God who gave.'
+
+When? Well, ideally in the depths of His own eternal mind the gift was
+complete or ever the recipients were created to receive it, and
+historically the gift was complete in the act of redemption when He
+spared not His Own Son, but gave Him up unto the death for us all. A man
+may destine an estate for the benefit of some community which for
+generations long may continue to enjoy its benefits, but the gift is
+complete when he signs the deed that makes it over. Humphrey Chetham
+gave the boys in his school to-day their education when, centuries ago,
+he assigned his property to that beneficent purpose. So, away back in
+the mists of Eternity the gift was completed, and the signature was put
+to the deed when Jesus Christ was born, and the seal was added when
+Jesus Christ died. 'Blessed be God who _hath_ given.'
+
+So, then, we may not only draw the conclusion which the Apostle drew,
+'how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' but we can
+draw an even grander one, 'Has He not with Him also freely given us all
+things?' And we possess them all to-day if our hearts are resting on
+Jesus Christ. The limit of the gift is only in ourselves. All has been
+given, but the question remains how much has been taken.
+
+Oh, Christian men and women, there is nothing that we require more than
+to have what we have, to possess what is ours, to make our own what has
+been bestowed. You sometimes hear of some beggar, or private soldier, or
+farm labourer, who has come all at once into an estate that was his,
+years before he knew anything about it. There is such a boundless wealth
+belonging by right, and by the Giver's gift, to every Christian soul;
+and yet, here are we, many of us, like the paupers who sometimes turn up
+in workhouses, all in rags, and with deposit-receipts for L200 or L300
+stitched into the rags, that they get no good out of. Here are we, with
+all that wealth, paupers still. Be sure that you have what you have. Do
+you remember the exhortation to a valiant effort in one of the stories
+in the Old Testament--'Know ye that Ramoth-gilead is _ours_, and we take
+it not?' And that is exactly what is true about hosts of professing
+Christians who have not, in any real sense, the possession of what God
+has given them. It is well to ask, for our desires are the measures of
+our capacities. It is well to ask, but we very often ask when what is
+wanted is not that we should get more, but that we should utilise what
+we have. And we make mistakes therein, as if God needed to be besought
+to give, when all the while it is we who need to be stirred up to grasp
+and keep the things that are freely given to us of God.
+
+III. In the next place, notice the one place where all these blessings
+are kept.
+
+'Blessed be God who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in
+heavenly places.' 'In heavenly places.' Now that does not merely define
+the region of origin, the locality where they originated or whence they
+come. It does do that, but it does a great deal more. It does not
+merely tell us, as we often are disposed to think that it does, that
+'every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh
+down'--though that is perfectly true, but it means much rather that in
+order to get the gift we must go up. They are in the heavenly places,
+and they cannot live anywhere else. They have been sticking shrubs in
+tubs outside our public buildings this last week. How long will they
+keep their leaves and their freshness? How soon will they need to be
+shifted and taken back again to the sweeter air, where they can
+flourish? God's spiritual gifts cannot grow in smoke and dirt and a
+polluted atmosphere. And if a professing Christian man lives his life on
+the low levels he will have very few of the heavenly gifts coming down
+to him there. And that is the reason--_the_ reason above all
+others--why, with such a large provision made for all possible
+necessities and longings of all sorts, people who call themselves
+Christians go up and down the world feeble and poor, and with little
+enjoyment of their religion, and having verified scarcely anything of
+the great promises which God has given them.
+
+Brother, according to the old word with which the Mass used to begin,
+'_Sursum corda_'--up with your hearts! The blessings are in the heavens,
+and if we want them we must go where they are. It is not enough to drink
+sparing draughts from the stream as it flows through the plain. Travel
+up to the headwaters, where the great pure fountain is, that gushes out
+abundant and inexhaustible. The gifts are heavenly, and there they
+abide, and thither we must mount if we would possess them.
+
+Now that this understanding of the words is correct I think is clearly
+shown by a verse in the next chapter, where we find the very same
+phrase employed. In this connection the Apostle says that 'God hath
+raised us up together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' That is to
+say, the true ideal of the Christian life is that, even here and now, it
+is a life of such intimate union and incorporation with Jesus Christ as
+that where He is we are, and that even whilst we tabernacle upon earth
+and move about amongst its illusions and changing scenes, in the depth
+of our true being we may be fixed, and sit at rest with Christ where He
+is.
+
+Do not dismiss that as mere pulpit rhetoric. Do not say that it is
+mystical and incomprehensible, and cannot be reduced into practice
+amidst the distractions of daily life. Brethren, it is not so! Jesus
+Christ Himself said about Himself that He came down from heaven, and
+that though He did, even whilst He wore the likeness of the flesh, and
+was one of us, He was 'the Son of Man which _is_ in Heaven,' when He lay
+in the manger, when He worked at the carpenter's bench in Nazareth, when
+He walked with weary feet those blessed acres, when He hung, for our
+advantage, on the bitter Cross. And that was no incommunicable property
+of His mysterious nature, but it was the typical example of what it is
+possible for manhood to be. And you and I, if we are to possess in any
+measure corresponding with the gift of Christ the spiritual blessing
+which God bestows, must have our lives 'hid with Christ in God,' and sit
+together with Him in the heavenly places.
+
+IV. Lastly, note the one Person in whom all spiritual blessings are
+enshrined.
+
+'In the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' You cannot separate between
+Him and His gifts, neither in the way of getting Him without them, nor
+in the way of getting them without Him. They are Himself, and in the
+deepest analysis all spiritual blessings are reducible to one--viz. that
+the Spirit of Jesus Christ Himself shall dwell with us.
+
+Now, that union by which it is possible for poor, empty, sinful
+creatures to be filled with His fulness, animated with His life,
+strengthened with His omnipotence, and sanctified by His
+indwelling--that union is the very kernel of this Epistle to the
+Ephesians.
+
+I dare say I have often drawn your attention to the singular emphasis
+and repetition with which that phrase 'in Christ' occurs throughout the
+letter. Just take the two or three instances of it that I gather as I
+speak. In this first chapter we read, 'the faithful in Jesus Christ.'
+Then comes our text, 'blessings in heavenly places in Christ.' Then, in
+the very next verse, we read, 'chosen us in Him.' Then, a verse or two
+after, we have 'accepted in the Beloved,' which is immediately followed
+by, 'in whom we have redemption through His blood.' Then, again, 'that
+He might gather together in one all things in Christ, in whom also we
+have obtained the inheritance.' I need not make other quotations, but
+throughout the letter every blessing that can gladden or sanctify the
+human spirit is regarded by the Apostle as being stored and shrined in
+Jesus Christ: inseparable from Him, and therefore to be found by us only
+in union with Him.
+
+And that is the point of all which I want to say--viz. that, inasmuch as
+all spiritual blessings that a soul can need are hived in Him in whom is
+all sweetness, the way, and the only way, to get them is that we, too,
+should pass into Him and dwell in Jesus Christ. It is His own teaching:
+'I am the Vine, ye are the branches. Abide in Me. Separate from Me ye
+can do nothing,' and get nothing, and are nothing.
+
+Oh, brethren! it is well that all our treasures should be in one place.
+It is better that they should all be in One Person. And if only we will
+lay our poor emptiness by the side of His fulness there will pass over
+from that infinite abundance and sufficiency everything that we can
+require.
+
+We abide in Him by faith, by meditation, by love, by submission, by
+practical obedience, and, if we are wise, the effort of our lives will
+be to keep close to that Lord. As long as we keep touch with Him we have
+all and abound. Break the connection by wandering away, in thought and
+desire, by indulgence in sin, by letting earthly passions surge in and
+separate us from Him--break the connection by rebellion, by making
+ourselves our own ends and lords, and it is like switching off the
+electricity. Everything falls dead. You cannot have Christ's blessing
+unless you take Christ.
+
+And so, dear brethren, 'abide in Me and I in you.' There is nothing else
+that will make us blessed; there is nothing else that will meet all the
+circumference of our necessities; there is nothing else that will quiet
+our hearts, will sanctify our understandings. Christ is yours if 'ye are
+Christ's.' 'Of His fulness _have_ all we received,' for it all became
+ours when we became His, and Christian growth on earth and heaven is but
+the unfolding of the folded graces that are contained in Him. We possess
+the whole Christ, but eternity is needed to disclose all the
+unsearchable riches of our inheritance in Him.
+
+
+
+
+'ACCORDING TO'--I.
+
+     'According to the good pleasure of His will, ... According to the
+      riches of His grace.'--Eph. i. 5, 7.
+
+
+That phrase, 'according to,' is one of the key-words of this profound
+epistle, which occurs over and over again, like a refrain. I reckon
+twelve instances of it in three chapters of the letter, and they all
+introduce one or other of the two thoughts which appear in the two
+fragments that I have taken for my text. They either point out how the
+great blessings of Christ's mission have underlying them the divine
+purpose, or they point out how the process of the Christian life in the
+individual has for its source and measure the abundances, the wealth of
+the grace and the power of God. So in both aspects the facts of earth
+are traced up to, and declared to be, the outcome of the heavenly
+depths, and that gives solemnity, grandeur, elevation, to this epistle
+all its own. We are carried, as it were, away up into the recesses of
+the mountains of God, and we look down upon the unruffled, mysterious,
+deep lake, from which come the rivers that water all the plains beneath.
+
+Now of these two types of reference to the divine will and the divine
+wealth, I should like to gather together the instances, as they occur in
+this letter, in so far as I can, in the course of a sermon, touching
+them, it must be, very imperfectly. But I fear that it is impossible to
+deal with both the phases of this 'according to,' in one discourse. So I
+confine myself to that which is suggested by the first of our two texts,
+in the hope that some other day we may be able to overtake the other. So
+then, we have set before us here the Christian thought of the divine
+will which underlies, and therefore is manifest by, the work of Jesus
+Christ, in its whole sweep and breadth. And I just take up the various
+instances in which this expression occurs in a great variety of forms,
+but all retaining substantially the same meaning.
+
+I. Note that that divine will which underlies and is operative in, and
+therefore is certified to us by the whole work of Jesus Christ, in its
+facts and its consequences, is a 'good pleasure.'
+
+Now there are few thoughts which the history of the world has shown to
+be more productive of iron and steel in the human character than that of
+the sovereign will of God. That made Islam, and is the secret of its
+power to-day, amidst its many corruptions. Because these wild desert
+tribes were all stiffened, or I might say inflamed, by that profound
+conviction, the sovereign will of God, they came down like a hammer upon
+that corrupt so-called Christian Church, and swept it off the face of
+the earth, as it deserved to be swept. And the same thought of the
+sovereign will, of which we are but instruments--pawns on its
+chessboard--made the grand seventeenth century Puritanism in England,
+and its sister type of men and of religion in Holland. For this is a
+historically proved thesis, that there is nothing which so contributes
+to the formation, and valuation of, and the readiness to die for, civil
+liberty, as the firm grasp of that thought of the divine sovereignty.
+Just because a man realises that the will of God is supreme over all the
+earth, he rebels against all forms of human despotism.
+
+But with all the good that is in that great thought--and the
+Christianity of this day sorely wants the strength that might be given
+it by the exhibition of that steel medicine--it wants another, 'the
+good pleasure of His will.' And that word, 'good pleasure,' does not
+express, as I think, in Paul's usage of it, the simple notion of
+sovereignty, but always the notion of a benevolent sovereignty. It is
+'the good pleasure'--as it is put in another place by the same
+Apostle--'of His goodness.' And that thought, let in upon the solemnity
+and severity of the other one, is all that it needs in order to make the
+man who grasps it not only a hero in conflict, and a patient martyr in
+endurance, but a child in his Father's house, rejoicing in the love of
+his Father everywhere and always.
+
+Paul would have us believe that if we will take the work of Jesus Christ
+in the facts of His life, and its results upon humanity, as our
+horn-book and lesson, we shall draw from that some conceptions of the
+great thing that underlies it, 'the good pleasure of His will.' We stand
+in front of this complex universe, and some of us say: 'Law'; and some
+of us say: 'A Lawgiver behind the law; a Person at the heart of all
+things'; but unless we can say: 'And in the heart of the Person a will,
+which is the expression of a steadfast, omnipotent love,' then the world
+seems to me to be a place of unsolvable riddles and a torture-house.
+There goes the great steam-roller along the road. Everybody can see that
+it crushes down, and makes its own path. Who drives it? The steam in the
+boiler, or is there a hand on the lever? And what drives the hand?
+Christianity answers, and answers with unfaltering lip, rising clear
+above contradictions apparent and difficulties real, 'The good pleasure
+of His will,' and there men can rest.
+
+Then there is another step. Another form in which this 'according to'
+appears in this letter is, if we adopt the rendering, which I am
+disposed to do in the present case, of the Authorised Version rather
+than of the Revised, 'according to His good pleasure ... which He hath
+purposed in Himself.' The Revised Version says, 'Which He hath purposed
+in Him,' and that is a perfectly possible rendering. But to me the old
+one is not only more eloquent, but more in accordance with the
+connection. So I venture to accept it without further ado--'His good
+pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.'
+
+That brings us into the presence of that same great thought, which in
+another aspect is expressed in saying 'His name is Jehovah,' and in yet
+another aspect is expressed in saying 'God is love,' viz. the thought
+which sounds familiar, but which has in it depths of strength and
+illumination and joy, if we rightly ponder it, that, to use human words,
+the motive of the divine action is all found within the divine nature.
+
+We love one another because we discern, or think we discern, lovable
+qualities in the being on whom our love falls. God loves because He is
+God. That great artesian fountain wells up from the depths, by its own
+sweet impulse, and pours itself out; and 'the good pleasure of His
+goodness' has no other explanation than that it is His nature and
+property to be merciful. And so, dear brethren, we get clean past what
+has sometimes been the misapprehension of good people, and has oftener
+been the caricatured representation of Evangelical truth which its
+enemies have put forth--that God was made to love and pity by reason of
+the sacrifice of the Son, whereas the very opposite is the case. God
+loves, therefore He sent His Son, 'that whosoever believeth in Him
+should not perish but have everlasting life,' and the notion of the
+Cross of Christ as changing the divine heart is as far away from
+Evangelical truth as it is from the natural conceptions that men form of
+the divine nature. We shake hands with our so-called antagonists and
+say, 'Yes! we believe as much as you do that God does not love us
+because Christ died, but we believe what perhaps you do not, that Christ
+died because God loves us, and would save us.' 'The good pleasure which
+He hath purposed in Himself.'
+
+Then, still further, there is another aspect of this same divine will
+brought out in other parts of this letter, of which this is a specimen,
+'Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His
+good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself, that in the
+dispensation of the fulness of the times He might gather together in one
+all things in Christ,' which, being turned into more modern phraseology,
+is just this--that the great aim of that divine sovereign will,
+self-originated, full of loving-kindness to the world, is to manifest to
+all men what God is, that all men may know Him for what He is, and
+thereby be drawn back again, and grouped in peaceful unity round His
+Son, Jesus Christ. That is the intention which is deepest in the divine
+heart, the desire which God has most for every one of us. And when the
+Old Testament tells us that the great motive of the divine action is for
+'My own Name's sake,' that expression might be so regarded as to
+disclose an ugly despot, who only wants to be reverenced by abject and
+submissive subjects. But what it really means is this, that the divine
+love which hovers over its poor, prodigal children because it _is_ love,
+and, therefore, lovingly delights in a loving recognition and response,
+desires most of all that all the wanderers should see the light, and
+that every soul of man should be able to whisper, with loving heart, the
+name, 'Abba! Father!' Is not that an uplifting thought as being the
+dominant motive which puts in action the whole of the divine activity?
+God created in order that He might fling His light upon creatures, who
+should thereby be glad. And God has redeemed in order that in Jesus
+Christ we might see Him, and, seeing Him, be at rest, and begin to grow
+like Him. This is the aim, 'That they might know Thee, the only true God
+... whom to know is eternal life.' And so self-communication and
+self-revelation is the very central mystery of the will.
+
+But that is not all. Another of the forms in which this phrase occurs
+tells us that that great purpose, the eternal purpose which He purposed
+in Christ Jesus our Lord, was that, 'Now unto the principalities and
+powers in heavenly places might be known' by the Church 'the manifold
+wisdom of God.' And so we get another thought, that that whole work of
+redemption, operated by the Incarnation, and culminating in the
+Crucifixion and Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ, stands as
+being the means by which other orders of creatures, besides ourselves,
+learn to know 'the manifold wisdom of God.' According to the grand old
+saying, at Creation the 'morning stars sang together for joy.' All
+spiritual creatures, be they 'higher' or 'lower,' can only know God by
+the observation of His acts.
+
+    ''Twas great to speak a world from nought,
+     'Tis greater to redeem,'
+
+and the same angelic lips that sang these praises on the morning of
+Creation have learnt a new song that they sing; 'Glory and honour and
+dominion and power be unto the Lamb that was slain.'
+
+Thus to principalities and powers, a diviner height in the loftiness,
+and a diviner depth in the condescension, and a diviner tenderness in
+the love, and a diviner energy in the power, of the redeeming God have
+been made known, and this is the thought of His eternal purpose. And
+that brings me to another point which is involved in the words that I
+have just quoted, which stand in connection with those that I have
+previously referred to. The phrase 'eternal purpose' literally rendered
+is, 'the purpose of the ages,' and that, no doubt, may mean 'eternal' in
+the sense of running on through all the ages; or it may mean, perhaps,
+that which we usually attach to the word 'eternal,' viz. unbeginning and
+unending. I take the former meaning as the more probable one, that the
+Apostle contemplates that great will of God which culminates in Jesus
+Christ, as coming solemnly sweeping through all the epochs of time from
+the beginning. In a deeper sense than the poet meant it, 'Through the
+ages an increasing purpose runs,' and that binds the epochs of humanity
+together--'the purpose of God in Christ Jesus.' The philosophy of
+history lies there, and it is a true instinct that makes the cradle at
+Bethlehem the pivot around which the world's chronology revolves. For
+the deepest thing about all the ages on the further side of it is that
+they are 'Before Christ,' and the formative fact for all the ages after
+it is that they are _Anno Domini_.
+
+And now the last thing that is suggested by yet another of these
+eloquent expressions is deduced from another part of the same phrase.
+The purpose of the ages is described as that which 'He purposed in
+Christ Jesus our Lord.' Now the word 'purposed' literally is 'made.'
+And it may be a question whether 'purposed' or 'accomplished' is the
+special meaning to be attached to the general word 'made.' Either is
+legitimate. I take it that what the Apostle means here is that the
+purpose of God, which we have thus seen as sovereign, self-originated,
+having for its great aim the communication to all His creatures of the
+knowledge of Himself, and running through the ages, and binding them
+into a unity, reaches its entire accomplishment in the Cradle, and the
+Cross, and the Throne of Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+He fulfils the divine intention. There is that one life, and in that
+life alone of humanity you have a character which is in entire sympathy
+with the divine mind, which is in full possession of the divine truth,
+which never diverges or deviates by a hair's-breadth from the divine
+will, which is the complete and perfect exponent to man of the divine
+heart and character; and that Christ is the fulfilment of all that God
+desired in the depths of eternity, and the abysses of His being. Did He
+will that men should know Him? Christ has declared Him. Did He will that
+men should be drawn back to Him? Christ lifted on the Cross draws all
+men unto Him. Was it 'according to the good pleasure of His goodness'
+that we men should attain to the adoption of sons? By that Son we too
+became sons. Was it the purpose of His will that we should obtain an
+'inheritance'? We obtain it in Jesus Christ, 'being heirs of God, and
+joint-heirs with Christ.' All that God willed to do is done. And when we
+look, on the one hand, up to that infinite purpose, and on the other, to
+the Cross, we hear from the dying lips, 'It is finished!' The purpose
+of the ages is accomplished in Christ Jesus.
+
+Is it accomplished with you? I have been speaking about the divine
+counsel which is a 'good pleasure,' which runs through the whole history
+of mankind. But it is a divine purpose that you can thwart as far as you
+are concerned. 'How often would I have gathered ... and ye would not,'
+and your 'would not' neutralises His 'would.' Do not stand in the way of
+the steam-roller. You cannot stop it, but it can crush you. Do not have
+Him say about you, 'In vain have I smitten, in vain have I loved.' Bow,
+accept, recognise that all God's armoury is brought to bear upon each of
+us in that great Cross and Passion, in that great Incarnation and human
+life. And I beseech you, in your hearts, let the will of God be done
+even as for a world it has been done by the sacrifice of Calvary.
+
+
+
+
+'ACCORDING TO'--II.
+
+     'According to the riches of His grace.'--Eph. i. 7.
+
+
+We have seen, in a previous sermon, that a characteristic note of this
+letter is the frequent occurrence of that phrase 'according to.' I also
+then pointed out that it was employed in two different directions. One
+class of passages, with which I then tried to deal, used it to compare
+the divine purpose in our salvation with the historical process of the
+salvation. The type of that class of reference is found in a verse just
+before my text, 'according to the good pleasure of His will.' There is a
+second class of passages to which our text belongs, where the comparison
+is not between the purpose and its realisation, but between the stores
+of the divine riches and the experiences of the Christian life. The one
+set of passages suggests the ground of our salvation in the deep purpose
+of God; the other suggests the measure of the power which is working out
+that salvation.
+
+The instances of this second use of the phrase, besides the one in my
+text, 'according to the riches of His grace,' are such as these:
+'According to the riches of His glory'; 'According to the power that
+worketh in us'; 'According to the measure of the gift of Christ';
+'According to the energy of the might of His power, which He wrought in
+Christ when He raised Him from the dead.'
+
+Now it is clear that all these are varying forms of the same thing. They
+vary in form, they are identical in substance. What a Jew calls a
+'cubit' an Englishman calls a 'foot,' but the result is pretty nearly
+the same. Shillings, marks, francs, are various standards; they all come
+to substantially the same result. These varying measures of the divine
+gift which is at work in man's salvation, have this in common, that they
+all run out into God's immeasurable, unlimited power, boundless wealth.
+And so, if we gather them together, and try to focus them in a few
+words, they may help to widen our conceptions of what we ought to expect
+from God, to bow us in contrition as to the small use that we have made
+of it, and to open our desires wide, that they may be filled.
+
+I only aspire, then, to deal with these four forms which I have already
+suggested.
+
+I. The measure of our possible attainments is the whole wealth of God.
+
+'According to the riches of His grace.' Another angle at which the same
+thought is viewed appears in another part of the letter, where we have
+this variation in the expression, 'According to the riches of His
+glory.' 'Grace' and 'Glory' are generally opposed antithetically; in
+this epistle they are united, for in the verse before my text I read:
+'To the praise of the glory of His grace.' So the first thought is, the
+whole wealth of God is available for every Christian soul.
+
+Now it seems to me that there are very few things that the popular
+Christianity of this day needs more than a furnishing up of the familiar
+old Christian terminology, which has largely lost the freshness and the
+power that it once had. They tell us that these incandescent burners,
+that we are using nowadays, are very much more bright when they are
+first fixed than after the mantle gets a little worn. So it is with the
+terminology of Christianity. It needs to be re-stated, not in such a way
+as to take the pith out of it, which is what a great deal of the modern
+craze for re-statement means, but in such a way as to brighten it up
+again, and to invest it with something of the 'celestial light' with
+which it was 'apparelled' when it first came. Now that word 'grace,' I
+have no doubt, sounds to you hard, theological, remote. But what does it
+mean? It gathers into one burning point the whole of the rays of that
+conception of God, with which it is the glory of Christianity to have
+flooded and drenched the world. It tells us that at the heart of the
+universe there is a heart; that God is Love, that that love is the
+motive-spring of His activity, that it comes and bends over the lowliest
+with a smile of amity on its lips, with healing and help in its hands,
+with forgiveness for all sins against itself, with boundless wealth for
+the poorest, and that the wealth of His self-communicating love is the
+measure of the wealth that each of us may possess.
+
+God gives 'according to the riches of His grace.' You do not expect a
+millionaire to give half-a-crown to a subscription fund; and God gives
+royally, divinely, measuring His bestowments by the abundance of His
+treasures, and handing over with an open palm large gifts of coined
+money, because there are infinite chests of uncirculated bullion in the
+deep storehouses. 'How great is Thy goodness which Thou hast manifested
+before the sons of men for them that fear Thee. How much greater is Thy
+goodness which Thou hast laid up in store.' But whilst He gives all, the
+question comes to be: What do I receive? The measure of His gift is His
+measureless grace; the measure of my reception is my--alas!
+easily-measured faith. What about the unearned increment? What about the
+unrealised wealth? Too many of us are like some man who has a great
+estate in another land. He knows nothing about it, and is living in
+grimy poverty in a back street. For you have all God's riches waiting
+for you, and 'the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice'
+at your beck and call, and yet you are but poorly realising your
+possible riches. Alas, that when we might have so much we do have so
+little. 'According to the riches of His grace' He gives. But another
+'according to' comes in. 'According to thy faith be it unto thee.' So we
+have to take these two measures together, and the working limit of our
+possession of God's riches comes out of the combination of them both.
+
+Let me remind you, before I pass on, of what I have already suggested is
+but another phase of this same thought, Paul says in this epistle that
+God gives not only 'according to the riches of His grace,' but
+'according to the riches of His glory,' and that the latter expression
+is substantially identical with the former, is plain from the
+combination of the two in an earlier verse of this chapter: 'To the
+praise of the glory of His grace.' Thus we come to the blessed thought
+that the glory of God is essentially the revelation of that stooping,
+pitying, pardoning, enriching love. Not in the physical attributes, not
+in the characteristics of the divine nature which part Him off from men,
+and make Him remote, both from their conceptions and their affections,
+but in the love that bends to them is the true glory of God. All these
+other things are but the fringes; the centre of glory is the Love, which
+is the mightiest and the divinest thing in the Might Divine. The
+sunshine is far stronger than the lightning, and there is more force
+developed in the rain than in an earthquake. That truth is what
+Christianity has made the common possession of the world. It has thereby
+broken the chains of dread; it has bridged over the infinite distance.
+It has given us a God that can love and be loved, can stoop and can
+lift, can pardon and can purify. 'According to the good pleasure of His
+goodness,'--there is the foundation of our salvation. 'According to the
+riches of His grace,'--there is the measure of our salvation.
+
+II. We have another form of the same measure in another set of verses
+which speak of the present working of God's power.
+
+The Apostle speaks in regard to his own apostolic commission of its
+being given 'according to the working of His power'; and he speaks of
+all Christian men as receiving gifts 'according to the power that
+worketh in us.' So there we have a standard that comes, as it were, a
+little closer to ourselves. We do not need to travel up into the dim
+abysses above, or think of the sanctities and the secrecies of that
+divine heart in the light which is inaccessible, but we have the measure
+in ourselves.
+
+The standards of length are kept at Greenwich, the standards of capacity
+are kept in the Tower; but there are local standards distributed
+throughout the land to which men may go and have their measures
+corrected. And so besides all these lofty thoughts about the grace and
+the glory which measures His gift, we can turn within, if we are
+Christian people, and say, 'According to the power that worketh in us.'
+
+Ah, brethren! there are few things that we want more than to revive and
+deepen the conviction that in every Christian man, by virtue of his
+faith, and in proportion to his faith, there is in operation an actual,
+superhuman, divine power moulding his nature, guiding, quickening,
+ennobling, lifting, confirming, and hallowing and shaping him into
+conformity with Jesus Christ. I would that we all believed not as a
+dogma, but realised as a personal experience, that irrefragable truth,
+'Know ye not that the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in you, except ye be
+reprobate?' The life of self is evil; the life of Christ in self is
+good, and only good. And if you are Christian men, and in the
+proportion, as I have said, in which you are living by faith, you have
+working in your spirits the very Spirit of Christ Himself.
+
+And that power is the measure of your possibilities. Obviously 'the
+power that worketh in us' is able to do a great deal more than it is
+doing in any of us. And so with deep significance the Apostle, side by
+side with his adducing of this power as being the measure of our
+possible attainments, speaks about God as being 'able to do for us,
+exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.' 'The power
+that works in us' transcends in its possibilities our present
+experience, it transcends our conceptions, it transcends our desires. It
+is able to do everything; it actually does--well, you know what it does
+in you. And the responsibility of hampering and hindering that power
+from working out its only adequately corresponding results lies at our
+own doors. 'A rushing, mighty wind'--yes; and in myself a scarcely
+perceptible breathing, and often a dead calm, stagnant as in the
+latitudes on either side of the Equator, where, for long, dreary days,
+no freshening motion in the atmosphere is perceptible. 'A fire?'--yes;
+then why is my grate full of grey, cold ashes, and one little spark in
+the corner? 'A fountain springing into everlasting life?'--yes; then why
+in my basin is there so much scum and ooze, mud and defilement, and so
+little of the flashing and brilliant water? 'The power that works in us'
+is sorely hindered by the weakness in which it works.
+
+III. In the third place another form of this measure is stated by the
+Apostle, 'According to the measure of the gift of Christ.'
+
+That means, of course, the gift which Christ bestows. It is
+substantially the same idea as I have just been dealing with, only
+looked at from rather a different point of view. Therefore, I need not
+dwell upon its parallelism with what has just been occupying our
+attention, but rather ask you simply to consider one point in reference
+to it, and that is that, side by side with the reference to the gift of
+Christ as being the measure of our possible attainments, the Apostle
+enlarges on the Infinite variety of the shapes which that one gift
+takes in different people. 'He gave some apostles, some prophets,' etc.;
+one man receiving according to this fashion, and another according to
+that, and to each of us the distribution is made 'according to the
+measure of the gift of Christ.' That is to say, it takes us all, the
+collective goodness and beauty of the whole community of saints, to
+approximate to the fulness of that gift, and all are needed in their
+different types and forms of excellence, sanctity and beauty, in order
+to set forth, even imperfectly, the richness and the manifoldness of His
+great gift. And so 'we all come'--there is a multiplicity--'unto the
+perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ'--there
+is a unity in which the multiplicity inheres.
+
+So try to get a little more of some different type of excellence than
+that to which you are naturally inclined. Seek, and consciously
+endeavour, to appropriate into your character uncongenial excellences,
+and be very charitable in your judgments of the different types of
+Christian conformity to Christ our Lord. The crystals that are set round
+a light do not quarrel with each other as to whether green, or yellow,
+or blue, or red, or violet is the true colour to reflect. We need all
+the seven prismatic tints to make the perfect white light. The gift of
+Christ is many-sided; try not to be one-sided in your reception of it.
+
+IV. And now the last form of this measure is 'according to the energy of
+the might of His power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him
+from the dead.'
+
+When we gazed upon the riches of God's grace, they were high above us,
+when we looked upon 'the power that worketh in us,' we saw it working
+amidst many hindrances and hamperings, but here there is presented to
+us in a concrete example, close beside us, of what God can make of a man
+when the man is wholly pliable to His will, and the recipient of His
+influences. And so there stands before us the guarantee and the pattern
+of immortal life, the Christ whose Manhood died and lives, who is
+clothed with a spiritual body, who wields royal authority in the Kingdom
+of the Most High. And that is the measure of what God can do with me,
+and wishes to do with me, if I will let Him. Christ is my pattern, and
+the measure of my own possibilities.
+
+To be with Him, where and what He is, is the only adequate result of the
+power that works in us, and of the process that is already begun in us,
+if we are Christian people. You are sometimes--there is one eminent
+example of it in that great Medicean Chapel at Florence--a statue
+exquisitely finished in all its limbs, but one part left in the rough.
+That is the best that Christian people come to here. Shall it always be
+so? Do not the very imperfections prophesy completion, and is it not
+certain that the half-finished torso will be carried to the upper
+workshop, and be there disengaged from the dead marble and made to stand
+out in perfect beauty and fullest completeness? Christ is the object of
+our hopes, and no hopes of the Christian life are adequate to the power
+that works in us, or to the progress already made, which do not see in
+the 'energy of the might of the power' which wrought in Christ, the
+example and the guarantee of the exceeding greatness of 'His power which
+is to usward.'
+
+And now, one last word. Besides all these passages which have been
+occupying us, there is another use of this same phrase in this letter
+which presents a very solemn and grim contrast. I can do no better with
+it than simply read it: 'Ye were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein
+in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according
+to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now
+worketh'--mark the allusion to the other words that we have been
+referring to--'in the children of disobedience.' So there you have the
+alternative, either 'dead in trespasses and sins,' whilst living the
+physical and the intellectual life, or partaking of the life of Him 'who
+was dead, and is alive for ever more'; either 'walking according to the
+course of this world,' which is 'disobedience' and 'wrath,' or walking
+'according to the power that worketh in us'; either 'putting on,' or
+rather continuing to wear, 'the old man which is corrupt according to
+the lusts which deceive,' or 'putting on the new man, which according to
+God is created in righteousness and holiness and truth.' The choice is
+before us. May God help us to choose aright!
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S INHERITANCE AND OURS
+
+     'In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, ... the earnest of
+      our inheritance.'--Eph. i. 11, 14.
+
+
+A dewdrop twinkles into green and gold as the sunlight falls on it. A
+diamond flashes many colours as its facets catch the light. So, in this
+context, the Apostle seems to be haunted with that thought of
+'inheriting' and 'inheritance,' and he recurs to it several times, but
+sets it at different angles, and it flashes back different beauties of
+radiance. For the words, which I have wrenched from their context in the
+first of these two verses, are more accurately rendered, as in the
+Revised Version, in 'whom also we were made,' _not_ 'have
+obtained'--'an inheritance.' Whose inheritance? God's! The Christian
+community is God's possession. Then, in my second text, we have the
+converse thought--'the earnest of _our_ inheritance.' What is the
+Christian's possession? The same God whose possession is the Christian.
+So, then, there is a deep and a wonderful relation between the believing
+soul and God, and however different must be the two sides of that
+relation, the resemblance is greater than the difference. Surely that is
+the deepest, most blessed, and most strength-giving conception of the
+Christian life. Other notions of it lay stress, and that rightly, upon
+certain correspondence between us and God. My faith corresponds to His
+faithfulness and veracity. My obedience corresponds to His authority. My
+weakness lays hold on His strength. My emptiness is replenished by His
+fulness. But here we rise above the region of correspondences into that
+of similarity. In these other aspects the convexity fits the concavity;
+in this aspect the two hemispheres go together and make the complete
+globe. We possess God, and God possesses us, and it is the same set of
+facts which are set forth in the two thoughts, 'We were made an
+inheritance, ... the earnest of our inheritance.'
+
+I. Now, then, let me ask you to look first at this mutual possession.
+
+We possess God; God possesses us. What does that mean? Well, it means
+plainly and chiefly this, a mutual love. For we all know--and many of us
+thankfully can bear witness to the truth of it in our earthly
+relationships,--that the one way by which a human spirit can possess a
+spirit is by the sweet mutual love which abolishes 'mine' and 'thine,'
+and all but abolishes 'me' and 'thee.' And so God sets little store by
+the ownership which depends on divinity and creation, though, of
+course, that relation brings with it a duty. As the old psalm has it,
+'It is He that hath made us, and we are His'; still, such a relationship
+as this, based upon the connection that subsists between the Maker and
+the work of His hands, is so purely external, and harsh, and
+superficial, that God does not reckon it to be a possession at all.
+
+You perhaps remember how, in the great word which underlies all these
+New Testament conceptions of God's ownership of His people, viz. the
+charter that constituted Israel into a nation, He said, 'Ye shall be
+unto Me a people for a possession above all nations, for all the earth
+is Mine.' And yet, though that ownership and mastership extended over
+everything that His hands had made, He--if I might so say--contemned it,
+and relegated it to a secondary position, and told the people that His
+heart hungered for something deeper, more real, more vital than such a
+possession, and that therefore, just because all the earth was His, and
+that was not enough to satisfy His heart, He took them and made them a
+peculiar treasure above all nations. We have, then, to think of that
+great Divine Love which possesses us when He loves us, and when we love
+Him.
+
+But remember that of this sweet commerce and reverberation of love which
+constitutes possession, the origination must be in His heart. 'We love
+Him because He first loved us.' The mirrors are set all round the great
+hall, but their surfaces are cold and lifeless until the great
+candelabrum in the centre is lit, and then, from every polished sheet
+there flashes back an echoing, answering light, and they repeat and
+repeat, until you scarce can tell which is the original and which is
+the reflection. But quench the centre-light, and the daughter-radiances
+vanish into darkness. The love on either side is on one side spontaneous
+and underived, and on the other side is secondary and evoked, but it
+_is_ love on both sides. His possession of us is, as it were, the upper
+side, and our possession of Him is, as it were, the underside of the one
+golden bond. It matters not whether you look at the stream with your
+face to its source or with your face to its mouth, the silvery plain is
+the same; and the deepest tie that knits men to God is the same as the
+tie that knits God to men. There is mutual possession because there is
+mutual love.
+
+Then again, in this same thought of mutual possession there lies a
+mutual surrender. For to give is the life-breath of all true love, and
+there is nothing which the loving heart more desires than to be able to
+pour _itself_ out--much rather than any subordinate gifts--on its
+object. But that, if it is one-sided, is misery, and only when it is
+reciprocal, is it blessed. God gives Himself to us, as we know, most
+chiefly in that unspeakable gift of His Son, and we possess Him by
+virtue of His self-communication which depends upon His love. And then
+we possess Him, and He possesses us, not less by the answering surrender
+of ourselves, which is the expression of our love. No love subsists if
+it is only recipient; no love subsists if it is only communicated.
+Exports and imports must both be realised in this sweet commerce, and we
+enrich ourselves far more by what we give to the Beloved than by what we
+keep for ourselves.
+
+The last, the hardest thing to surrender, is our own wills. To give them
+up by constraint is slavery that degrades. To give them up because we
+love is a sacrifice which sanctifies, even in the lowest reaches of
+daily life. And the love that knits us to God is not invested with all
+its blessed possession of Him, until it has surrendered its will, and
+said, 'Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.' The traveller in the old fable
+gathered his cloak around him all the more closely, and held it the more
+tightly, because of the tempest that blew, but when the warm sunbeams
+fell he dropped it. He that would coerce my will, stiffens it into
+rebellion; but when a beloved one says, 'Though I might be much bold to
+enjoin thee, yet for love's sake I rather beseech,' then yielding is
+blessedness, and the giving ourselves away is the finding of God and
+ourselves.
+
+I need not touch, in more than a word, upon another aspect of this
+mutual possession, brought into view lovingly in many parts of
+Scripture, and that is that there is in it not only mutual love and
+mutual surrender, but mutual indwelling, 'He that dwelleth in love
+dwelleth in God, and God in him.' Jesus Christ has said the same thing
+to us, 'I am the Vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in Me
+bringeth forth much fruit.' We dwell in God, possessing Him; He dwells
+in us, possessing us. We dwell in God, being possessed by Him. He dwells
+in us, being possessed by us. And He moves in the heart that loves, as
+the Master walking through His house, as the divinity is present in the
+temple, and as the soul permeates the body, and is sight in the eye and
+colour in the cheek, and force in the arm, and deftness in the finger,
+and swiftness in the foot. So the indwelling God breathes through all
+the capacities, and all the desires, and all the needs of the soul which
+He inhabits, and makes them all blessed. The very same set of facts--the
+presence of a divine life in the life of the believing spirit--may
+either be looked at from the lower end, and then they are that I possess
+God, and find in Him the nutriment and the stimulus for all my being, or
+may be looked at from the upper end, that He possesses me and finds in
+me capacities and a nature the emptiness of which He fills, and organs
+which He uses. In both cases mutual love, mutual surrender, mutual
+inhabitation, make up God's possession of me and my possession of God.
+
+II. And now let me point you in a very few words to some of the plain,
+practical issues of this mutual possession. God's possession of us
+demands our consecration. 'Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a
+price,' therefore, to live for self is to fly in the face of the very
+purpose of Christ's mission and of God's communication of Himself to us.
+There are slaves who run away from their masters and 'deny the Lord that
+bought them.' _We_ do that whenever, being God's slaves, we set up
+anything else than His will as our law, or anything else than His glory
+as the aim of our lives. To live for self is to die, to die to self is
+to live. And the solemn obligations of that most blessed possession by
+God of us are as solemn as the possession is blessed, and can only be
+discharged when we turn to Him, and yield the whole control of our
+nature to His merciful hand, believing that He has not only the right to
+dispose of us, but that His disposition of us will always coincide with
+our sanest conceptions of good, and our wisest desires for happiness.
+Yield yourselves to God, for He has yielded Himself to you, and in the
+yielding we realise our largest and most blessed possession. It is a
+good bargain to give myself and to get God.
+
+God's possession of us not only demands consecration, but it ensures
+safety. Remember that great word, 'No man is able to pluck them out of
+My Father's hand.' God is not a careless owner who leaves His treasures
+to be blown by every wind, or filched by every petty robber. He is not
+like the king of some decrepit monarchy, slices of whose territory his
+neighbours are for ever paring off and annexing. What God has God
+preserves. 'He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him
+against that day.' 'They are Mine, saith the Lord, My jewels in the day
+which I make.' But our security depends on our consecration. 'No man is
+able to pluck them out of My Father's hand.' No! But you can wriggle
+yourself out of your Father's hand, if you will. And the security avails
+only so long as you realise that you belong to God, and are living not
+for yourself.
+
+Possessing God we are rich. There is nothing that is truly our wealth
+which remains outside of us, and can be separated from us. 'Shrouds have
+no pockets,' says the Spanish proverb. 'His glory shall not descend
+after him,' says the grim psalm. But if God possesses me He is not going
+to let His treasures be lost in the grave. And if I possess Him then I
+shall pass through death as a beam of light does through some denser
+medium--a little refracted indeed, but not broken up; and I shall carry
+with me all my wealth to begin another world with. And that is more than
+you can do with the money that you make here. If you have God, you have
+the capital to commence a new condition of things beyond the grave.
+
+And so that mutual possession is the real pledge of immortal life, for
+nothing can be more incredible than that a soul which has risen to have
+God for its very own, and has bowed itself to accept God's ownership of
+it, can be affected by such a transient and physical incident as what we
+call death. We rise to the assurance of immortality because we have an
+inheritance which is God Himself. And in that inexhaustible Inheritance
+there lies the guarantee that we shall live while He lives, because He
+lives, and until we have incorporated into our lives all the majesty and
+the purity and the wisdom and the power that belong to us because they
+are God's.
+
+But we have to notice the two words that lie at the beginning of our
+first text--'_In whom_ we were made an inheritance.' That opens up the
+whole question of the means by which this mutual possession becomes
+possible for us men. Jesus Christ has died. That breaks the bondage
+under which the whole world is held. For the true slavery which
+interferes with the free service and the full possession of God is the
+slavery of self and sin. Jesus Christ has died. 'If the Son make you
+free ye shall be free indeed.' That great sacrifice not only 'breaks the
+power of cancelled sin,' but it also moves the heart, in the measure in
+which we truly accept it, to the love and the surrender which make the
+mutual possession of which we have been speaking. And so it is in Him
+that we become an Inheritance, that God comes to His rights in regard to
+each of us. And it is in Him that we, trusting the Son, have the
+inheritance for ours, and 'are heirs with God, and joint heirs with
+Christ.' So, dear friends, if we would 'be meet for the inheritance of
+the saints in light,' we must unite ourselves to that Lord by faith, and
+through Him and faith in Him, we shall receive 'the remission of sins
+and inheritance among all them that are sanctified.'
+
+
+
+
+THE EARNEST AND THE INHERITANCE
+
+     'The earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the
+      purchased possession.'--Eph. i. 14.
+
+
+I have dealt with a portion of this verse in conjunction with the
+fragment of another in this chapter. I tried to show you how much the
+idea of the mutual possession of God by the believing soul, and of the
+believing soul by God, was present to the Apostle's thoughts in this
+context. These two ideas are brought into close juxtaposition in the
+verse before us, for, as you will see if you use the Revised Version,
+the latter clause is there rightly paraphrased by the addition of a
+supplement, and reads 'until the redemption of God's own possession.' So
+that in the first clause we have 'our inheritance,' and in the second we
+have 'God's possession.' This double idea, however, has appended to it
+in this verse some very striking and important thoughts. The possession
+of both sides is regarded as incomplete, for what _we_ have is the
+'earnest' of the 'inheritance,' and '_God's_ own possession' has yet to
+be 'redeemed,' in the fullest sense of that word, at some point in the
+future. An 'earnest' is a fraction of an inheritance, or of a sum
+hereafter to be paid, and is the guarantee and pledge that the whole
+shall one day be handed over to the man who has received the foretaste
+of it in the 'earnest.' The soldier's shilling, the ploughman's 'arles,'
+the clod of earth and tuft of grass which, in some forms of transfer,
+were handed over to the purchaser, were all the guarantee that the rest
+was going to come. So the great future is sealed to us by the small
+present and the experiences of the Christian life to-day, imperfect,
+fragmentary, defective as they are, are the best prophecy and the most
+glorious pledge of that great to-morrow. The same law of continuity
+which, in application to our characters, and our work, and our daily
+life, makes 'to-morrow as this day, and much more abundant,' in its
+application to the future life makes the life here its parent, and the
+life yonder the prolongation and the raising to its highest power, of
+what is the main though often impeded tendency and direction of the
+present. The earnest of the 'inheritance' is the pledge until the full
+redemption of 'God's own possession.' I wish, then, to draw attention to
+these additional thoughts which are here attached to the main idea with
+which we were dealing in the last sermon.
+
+I. And I ask you to look with me, first, at the incompleteness of the
+present possession.
+
+I tried to show in my last sermon how those great thoughts of God's
+having us, and our having God, rested upon the three ideas of mutual
+love, mutual communication, and mutual indwelling. On His side the love,
+the impartation, the indwelling, are all perfect. On our side they are
+incomplete, broken, defective; and, therefore, the incompleteness on our
+side hinders both God's possession of us, and our possession of Him; so
+that we have but the 'earnest' and not the 'inheritance.' That is to
+say, the ownership may be perfect in idea, but in realisation it is
+imperfect.
+
+And then, if we turn to the word in the other clause, 'the redemption of
+the purchased possession,' that suggests the incompleteness with which
+God as yet owns us. For though the initial act of redeeming is complete,
+yet redemption is a process, and not an act. And we 'are having' it, as
+the Apostle says in another place very emphatically, in continual and
+growing experience. The estate has been acquired, but has not yet been
+fully subdued. For there are tribes in the jungles and in the hills who
+still hold out against the reign of Him who has won it for Himself. And
+so seeing that the redemption in its fulness is relegated to some point
+in the future, towards which we are progressively approximating, and
+seeing that the best that can be said about the Christian experience
+here is that we have an 'earnest of the inheritance,' we must recognise
+the incompleteness to-day of our possession of God, and of God's
+possession of us.
+
+That is a matter of experience. We know that only too well. 'I have
+God'--have I? I have a drop at the bottom of a too often unsteadily held
+and spilling cup, and the great ocean rolls unfathomable and boundless
+at my feet. How partial, how fragmentary, how clouded with doubts and
+blank ignorance, how intermittent, and, alas! rare, is our knowledge of
+Him. We sometimes go down our streets between tall houses, walking in
+their shadow, and now and then there is a cross street down which a
+blaze of sunshine comes, and when we reach it, and the houses fall back,
+we see the blue beyond. But we go on, and we are in the shadow again.
+And so our earthly lives are passed, to a large extent, beneath the
+shade of the grimy buildings that we ourselves have put up, and which
+shut out heaven from us, and only now and then a slanting beam comes
+through some opening, and carries wistful thoughts and longings into the
+Empyrean beyond. And how feeble our faith, and how little of His power
+comes into our hearts, and how little of the joy of the Lord is realised
+in our daily experience we all know, and it is sometimes good for us to
+force ourselves to feel it is but an 'earnest' of the 'inheritance'
+that the best of us has.
+
+'God has us.' Has He? Has He my will, which submits itself, and finds
+joy in submitting itself, to Him? How many competitors are there for my
+love which come in in front of Him, and we 'cannot get at Him for the
+press'! How many other motives are dominant in our lives, and how often
+we wrench ourselves away from our submission to Him, and try to set up a
+little dominion of our own, and say, 'Our lives are ours; who is lord
+over us?' Oh, brethren! we have God if we are Christians at all, and God
+has us. But alas! surely all honest experience tells us that there are
+awful gaps in the circle, and that our possession of Him, and His
+possession of us, are wofully incomplete.
+
+Now, let me remind you that this incompleteness is mainly our own fault.
+Of course, I know that for the absolute completeness, either of my
+possession of God or of His of me, I must pass from out this world, and
+enter upon another stage and manner of being. But it is not being in the
+flesh, but it is being dominated by the flesh, that is the reason for
+the incompleteness of our mutual possession. And it is not being in the
+world, but it is being seduced and tyrannised over by the influx of
+worldly desires and thoughts, surging into our hearts, that drives God
+from out of our hearts, and draws us away from the sweet security of
+being possessed by, and living close to, Him. Death does a great deal
+for a man in advancing him in the scale of being, and in changing the
+centre of gravity, as it were, of this life. But there is no reason to
+believe that anything in death, or beyond it, will so alter the set and
+direction of his soul as that it will lead him into that possession of
+God, and being possessed by Him, which he has not here. There are many
+of us who, if we were to die this instant, would no more have God for
+ours, or belong to God, than we do now. It is our fault if the circle is
+broken into so many segments, if the moments of mutual love, communion,
+and indwelling are so rare and interrupted in our lives. The
+incompleteness which is due to our earthly condition is nothing as
+compared with the incompleteness which is due to our own sin.
+
+But this incompleteness is one which may be progressively diminished,
+and we may be tending moment by moment, and year by year, nearer and
+nearer, and ever nearer, to the unreachable ideal of the entire
+possession of, and being possessed by, our God. There is a continual
+process of redemption of 'God's own possession' going on if a Christian
+man is true to himself and to that Divine Spirit which is the 'earnest'
+of the 'inheritance.' Mark that in my text, as it stands in our Bibles,
+and reads 'until the redemption,' there seems to be merely a pointing
+onwards to a future epoch, but that, in the more accurate rendering
+which you will find in the Revised Version, instead of 'until' we have
+'_unto_,' and that teaches us that the Divine Spirit, which in one
+aspect is the 'earnest of the inheritance,' is also operating upon men's
+hearts and minds so as to bring about the gradual completion of the
+process of redemption.
+
+So, dear brethren, seeing that by our own faults the possession is
+incomplete, and seeing that in the incompleteness there is given to each
+of us, if we rightly use it, a mighty power which is working ever
+towards the completion, it becomes us day by day to draw into our
+spirits more and more of that divine influence, and to let it work more
+fully upon the sins and faults which, far more than the body of flesh,
+or the connection with the world which it brings about, are the reasons
+for the incompleteness of the possession. We have, if we are wise, the
+task to discharge of daily enclosing, so to speak, more and more of the
+broad land which is all given over to us for our inheritance, but of
+which only so much as we fence in and cultivate, and make our own, is
+our own.
+
+The incompleteness is progressively completed, and it is our work as
+much as God's work to complete it. For though in our text that
+redemption is conceived of as a divine act, it is not an act in which we
+are but passive. The air goes into the lungs, and that oxygenates the
+blood, but the lung has to inflate if the air is to penetrate all its
+vesicles. And so the Spirit which seals us unto the redemption of the
+possession has to be received, held, diffused throughout, and utilised
+by our own effort.
+
+II. Now, secondly, notice the certainty of the completion of the
+incompleteness.
+
+As I have already said, the clod of earth and the handful of grass, the
+servant's wages, the soldier's shilling, are all guarantees that the
+whole of the inheritance or of the pay will be forthcoming in due time.
+And so there emerges from this consideration of the Divine Spirit as the
+'earnest,' the thought that the present experiences of a Christian soul
+are the surest proofs, and the irrefragable guarantees, of that perfect
+future. We ask for proofs of a future life. They may be very useful in
+certain states of mind, and to certain phases of opinion, but as it
+seems to me, far deeper than the region of logical understanding, and
+far more conclusive than anything that can be cast into the form of a
+syllogism, is the experience of a soul which knows that God is its, and
+that it is God's. 'I think, therefore, I am,' said the philosopher. 'I
+have God; therefore I shall always be,' says the Christian. Whilst that
+evidence is available only for himself, it is absolutely conclusive for
+himself. And the fact that it does spring in the hearts which are
+purest, because nearest God, is no small matter to be considered by men
+who may be groping for proofs of a life to come. If the selected moments
+of the purest devotion here on earth bring with them inevitably the
+confidence of the unending continuance of that communion, then those who
+do not believe in that future have to account for the fact as best they
+may. As for us who do know, though brokenly, and by reason of our own
+faults very imperfectly, what it is to have God, and be had by Him, we
+do not need to travel out to dim and doubtful analogies, nor do we even
+depend entirely upon the fact of a risen Christ ascended to the heavens,
+and living evermore, but we can say, 'I am God's; God is mine, and death
+has no power over such a mutual possession.'
+
+The very incompleteness adds strength to the assurance, for the facts of
+the Christian life are such as to demand, both by its greatness and by
+its littleness, by its loftiness and by its lapses into lowliness, by
+the floodtide of devotion that sometimes sweeps rejoicingly over the
+mud-shoals and by the ebb that sometimes leaves them all black and
+festering, a future life wherein what was manifestly meant to be, and
+capable of being, dominant, supreme, but was hampered and hindered here,
+shall reach its full development, and where the plant that was dwarfed
+in this alien soil, transplanted into that higher house, shall blossom
+and bear immortal fruits. The new moon has a ragged edge, and each of
+the protrusions and concavities are the prophecy of the perfect orb
+which shall ere long fill the night with calm light from its silvery
+shield. The incompleteness prophesies completion.
+
+And if the incompleteness is so blessed, what will the completeness be?
+A shilling to a million pounds, Knowledge which is partial and
+intermittent, like the twilight, as contrasted with the blaze of
+noonday, Joy like winter sunshine as compared with the warmth and heat
+of the midday sun at the zenith on the Equator. The 'earnest' of the
+'inheritance' is wealth; the inheritance itself shall be unaccountable
+treasure.
+
+III. And so, lastly, a word about the completion of the possession.
+
+The 'earnest' is always of the same nature as, and a part of the
+'inheritance.' Therefore, since the Holy Spirit is the earnest, the
+conclusion is plain, that the inheritance is nothing less than God
+Himself. Heaven is to possess God, and to be possessed by Him. That is
+the highest conception that we can form of that future life. And it is
+sorely to be lamented that subsidiary conceptions, which are all useful
+in their subordinate places, have, by popular Christianity, been far too
+much elevated into being the central blessedness of that future heaven.
+It is all right that we should cast the things which it is 'impossible
+for men to utter' into the shape of symbols which may a little relieve
+the necessary inarticulateness; but golden streets, and crystal
+pavements, and white robes, and golden palms, and all such
+representations, are but the dimmest shadows of that which they intend
+to express, and do often, as is the vice of all symbols, obscure. We can
+only conceive of a condition of which we have had no experience, by the
+two ways of symbolism and of negation. We can say, 'There shall be no
+night there; there shall be no curse there; they need no candle, neither
+light of the sun; they rest not day nor night; there shall be no more
+death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain,
+for the former things are passed away.' But all these negations, like
+their sister symbols, are but surface work, and we have to go deeper
+than all of them.
+
+But to possess God, and to be possessed by Him, and in either case
+fully, perfectly in degree, progressively in measure, eternal in
+duration, is the Heaven of heaven.
+
+If that is the true conception of the inheritance, then it follows
+indubitably that such a Heaven is not for everybody. God would fain have
+us all for His there, as He would fain have each of us here and now, but
+it may not be. There are creatures which live beneath stones, and if you
+turn their coverings up, and let light fall on them, it kills them. And
+there are men who have refused to belong to God here, and refused to
+claim their portion in Him, and such cannot possess that true Heaven
+which is God Himself. Then, if its possession is not a mere matter of
+divine volition, giving a man what he is not capable of receiving, it
+plainly follows that the preparation must begin now and here by the
+incomplete possession of which my text is discoursing. And the way of
+such preparation is plain. The context says: 'In whom, after that ye
+believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.' Faith in
+Jesus Christ, and trust in Him and His work as my forgiveness, my
+acceptance, my changed nature and heart--is the condition of being
+'sealed' with that Spirit whose sealing of us is the condition of our
+love, our surrender, and mutual indwelling, which are our possession of
+God and being possessed by Him, and are the condition of our future
+complete possession of the 'inheritance.' We must begin with faith in
+Christ. Then comes the sealing, then comes the earnest, then comes the
+growing redemption, and in due time shall come the fulness of the
+possession. 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ' if thou wouldst have the
+earnest, whilst thou dost tabernacle in tents in the wilderness of Time,
+and if thou wouldst have the inheritance when thou crossest the flood
+into the goodly land.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOPE OF THE CALLING
+
+     'That ye may know what is the hope of His calling.'--Eph. i. 18.
+
+
+A man's prayers for others are a very fair thermometer of his own
+religious condition. What he asks for them will largely indicate what he
+thinks best for himself; and how he asks it will show the firmness of
+his own faith and the fervour of his own feeling. There is nothing
+colder than the intercession of a cold Christian; and, on the other
+hand, in no part of the fervid Apostle Paul's writings do his words come
+more winged and fast, or his spirit glow with greater fervour of
+affection and holy desire than in his petitions for his friends.
+
+In that great prayer, of which my text forms a part, we have his
+response to the good news that had reached him of the steadfastness in
+faith and abundance in love of these Ephesian Christians. As the best
+expression of his glad love he asks for them the knowledge of three
+things, of which my text is the first, and the other two are the
+'riches of the glory of the inheritance' and 'the exceeding greatness of
+God's power.'
+
+Now if we take the 'hope' in my text, as is often done, as meaning the
+thing hoped for, there seems to be but a shadowy difference between the
+first and the second of these subjects of the apostolic petition.
+Whereas, if we take it as meaning, not the object on which the emotion
+is fixed, but the emotion itself, then all the three stand in a natural
+gradation and connection. We have, first, the Christian emotion; then
+the object upon which it is fixed; 'the glory of the inheritance'; then
+the power by which the latter is brought and the former is realised. We
+shall consider the second and third of these petitions in following
+sermons. For the present I confine myself to this first, the Apostle's
+great desire for Christians who had already made considerable progress
+in the Christian life, 'that they may know,' by experiencing it, 'what
+is the hope of His calling.'
+
+I. Now the first thought that these words suggest to me is this, that
+the Christian hope is based upon the facts of Christian experience.
+
+What does the Apostle mean by naming it 'the hope of his calling'? He
+means this, that the great act of the divine mercy revealed to us in the
+Gospel, by which God summons and invites men to Himself, will naturally
+produce in those who have yielded to it a hope of immortal and perfect
+life. Because God has called men, therefore the man who has yielded to
+the call may legitimately, and must, if he is to do his duty, cherish
+such a hope. It is clear enough that this is so, inasmuch as, unless
+there be a heaven of completeness for us who have yielded to the summons
+and obeyed the invitation of God in His Gospel, His whole procedure is
+enigmatical and bewildering. The fact of the call is inexplicable; the
+cost of it is no less so. It was not worth while for God to make the
+world unless with respect to another which was to follow. It is still
+less worth His while to redeem the world if the results of that
+redemption, as they are exhibited here and now, and as they are capable
+of being exhibited in this present condition of things, are all that are
+to flow from it. It was not worth Christ's while to die, it was not
+worth God's while to send His Son, there was no sense or consistency in
+that great voice that echoes from heaven, calling us to love and serve
+Him, unless, beyond the jangling contradictions, and imperfect
+attainments, and foiled aspirations, and fragmentary faith, and broken
+services of earth, there be a region of completeness where all that was
+tendency here shall have become effect; and all that was but in germ
+here, and sorely frostbitten by the ungenial climate, and shrivelled by
+the foul vapours in the atmosphere, shall blossom and burgeon into
+eternal life. The Christian life, as it is to-day, in its attainments
+and imperfections, is at once the witness of the reality of the power
+that has produced it, and clamantly calls for a sphere and environment
+in which that power shall be able to produce the effects which it is
+capable of producing.
+
+God is 'not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should
+repent.' Men begin grand designs which never get further than the paper
+that they are drawn on; or they build a porch, and then they are
+bankrupt, or change their minds, or die, and the palace remains
+unrealised, and all that pass by mock and say, 'This man began to build
+and was not able to finish.' But God's designs are certain of
+accomplishment. Unless we are to be reduced to a state of utter
+intellectual bewilderment and confusion, and forgo our belief in His
+veracity and resources to execute His designs, the design that lies in
+the calling must needs lead on to the realm of perfectness. If we
+consider the agent by which it is effected, even the risen Christ; if we
+consider the cost at which it was accomplished, even the death on the
+Cross, the mission of His Son, and His assumption of the limitations of
+an incarnate life; if we consider the manifest potencies of the power
+that He has brought into operation in the present Christian life; and if
+we consider, side by side with these, the stark, staring contradictions
+and as manifest inevitable limitations of the effects of that power, His
+calling carries in its depths the assurance that what He means shall be
+done, that Jesus Christ has not died in vain, that He has not ascended
+to fill a solitary throne, but is the Firstfruits of a great harvest;
+and that we shall one day be all that it is in the gospel of our
+salvation to make us, unhindered by the limitations and unthwarted by
+the antagonisms of this poor human life of ours. Unless there be a
+heaven in which all desires shall be satisfied, all evils removed, all
+good perfected, all ragged trees made symmetrical and full-grown, and
+all souls that love Him radiant with His own perfect image, then the
+light that seemed a light from heaven is the most delusive of all the
+marsh-fires of earth, and nothing in the illusions of sense or of men's
+cunning is so cruel or so tragic as the calling that seemed to be the
+voice of God, and summoned us to a heaven which was only a dream.
+
+II. And so, secondly, notice how this hope of our text is in some sense
+the very topstone of the Christian life.
+
+Paul has heard, concerning these people in Ephesus, of their faith and
+love. And because he has heard of these, therefore he brings this
+prayer. These two--the faith which apprehends the manifestation of God
+in Jesus Christ, and the love which that faith produces in the heart
+that accepts the revelation of the infinite love--are crowned by, and
+are imperfect without, and naturally lead on to the brightness of this
+great hope, Faith--the reliance of the spirit upon the veracity of the
+revealing God--gives hope its contents; for the Christian hope is not
+spun out of your own imaginations, nor is it the mere making objective
+in a future life of the unfulfilled desires of this disappointing
+present, but it is the recognition by the trusting spirit of the great
+and starry truths that are flashed upon it by the Word of God. Faith
+draws back the curtain, and Hope gazes into the supernal abysses. My
+hope, if it be anything else than the veriest will-o'-the-wisp and
+delusion, is the answer of my heart to the revealed truth of God.
+
+Similarly the love which flows from faith not only necessarily leads on
+to the expectation of union being perfected with the object of its warm
+affection, but also so works upon the heart and character as that the
+false and seducing loves which draw away, like some sluice upon a river,
+the current of life from its true channel, are all sanctified and no
+more hinder hope. Loving, we hope for that which, unless we loved, would
+not draw desires nor yield foretastes of sweetness which, like perfumed
+oil, feed the pure flame of hope.
+
+The triad of Christian graces is completed by Hope. Without her fair
+presence something is wanting to the completeness of her elder sisters.
+The great Campanile at Florence, though it be inlaid with glowing
+marbles, and fair sculptures, and perfect in its beauty, wants the
+gilded, skyward-pointing pinnacle of its topmost pyramid; and so it
+stands incomplete. And thus faith and love need for their crowning and
+completion the topmost grace that looks up to the sky, and is sure of a
+mansion there.
+
+Brethren, our Christianity is wofully imperfect unless faith and love
+find their acme, their outstretching completion, in this Christian hope.
+Do you seek to complete your faith and love by a living hope full of
+immortality?
+
+III. Thirdly, notice how this hope is an all-important element in the
+Christian life.
+
+The Apostle asks for it as the best thing that can befall these Ephesian
+Christians, as the one thing that they need to make them strong and good
+and blessed. There are many other aspects of desire for them which
+appear in other parts of this letter. But here all Christian progress is
+regarded as being held in solution and included in vigorous hope.
+
+Why is the activity of hope thus important for Christian life? Because
+it stimulates effort, calms sorrows, takes the fascination out of
+temptations, supplies a new aim for life and a new measure for the
+things of time and sense.
+
+If we lived, as we ought to live, in the habitual apprehension of the
+great future awaiting all real Christians, would it not change the whole
+aspect of life? The world is very big when it is looked at from any
+point upon its surface; but suppose it could be looked at from the
+central sun, how large would it appear then? We can shift our station in
+like fashion, and then we get the true measure at once of the
+insignificance and of the greatness of life. This world means nothing
+worthy, except as an introduction to another. Not that thereby there
+will follow in any wise man contempt for the present, for the very same
+reference to the future which dwarfs the greatnesses and dwindles the
+sorrows, and almost extinguishes the dazzling lights of this present,
+does also lift it to its true significance and importance. It is the
+vestibule of that future, and that future is conditioned throughout by
+the results of the few years that we live here. An apprenticeship may be
+a very poor matter, looked at in itself; and the boy may say What is the
+use of my working at all these trivial things? but, since it is
+apprenticeship, it is worth while to attend to every trifle in its
+course, for attention to them will affect the standing of the man all
+his days.
+
+Here and now we are getting ready for the great workshop yonder;
+learning the trick of the tools, and how to use our fingers and our
+powers, and, when the schooling is done, we shall be set to nobler work,
+and receive ample wages for the years here. Because that great
+'to-morrow will be as this day' of earthly life, 'and much more
+abundant,' therefore it is no trifle to work amongst the trifles; and
+nothing is small which may tell on our condition yonder. The least
+deflection from the straight line, however acute may be the angle which
+the divergent lines enclose at the starting, and however small may seem
+to be the deviation from parallelism, will, if prolonged to infinity,
+have room between the two for all the stars, and the distance between
+them will be that the one is in heaven and the other is in hell. And so
+it is a great thing to live amongst the little things, and life gains
+its true significance when we dwarf and magnify it by linking it with
+the world to come.
+
+If we only kept that hope bright before us, how little discomforts and
+sorrows and troubles would matter! Life would become 'a solemn scorn of
+ills.' It does not matter much what kind of cabin accommodation we have
+if we are only going a short voyage; the main thing is to make the port.
+If we, as Christian people, cherish, as we ought to do, this great hope,
+then we shall be able to control, and not to despise but to exalt this
+fleeting and transient scene, because it is linked inseparably with the
+life that is to come.
+
+IV. Lastly, this hope needs enlightened eyes.
+
+The Apostle prays that God may give to these Ephesians 'the spirit of
+wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,' and then he adds, as the
+result of that gift, the desire that the Ephesian believers may have
+'the eyes of their hearts enlightened.' That is a remarkable expression.
+It does not mean, as an English reader might suppose it to mean, that
+the affections are the agents by which this knowledge reaches us; but
+'heart' is here used, as it often is in Scripture, as a general
+expression for the whole inward life, and all that the Apostle means is
+that, by the gift of the Divine Spirit of wisdom, a man's inner nature
+may be so touched as to be capable of perceiving and grasping the 'hope
+of the calling.'
+
+Observe, too, the language, 'that ye may know the hope.' How can you
+_know_ a hope? How do you know any kind of feeling? By having it. The
+only way of knowing what is the hope is to hope, and this is only
+possible by dint of these eyes of the understanding being enlightened.
+For our inward nature, as we have it, and as we use it, without the
+touch of that Divine Spirit, is so engrossed with this present that the
+far-off blessedness to which my text refers has no chance of entering
+there. No man can look at something beside him with one eye, and at
+something half a mile off with the other. You have to focus the eye
+according to the object; and he who is gazing upon the near is thereby
+made blind to that which is afar off. If we go crawling along the low
+levels with our eyes upon the dust, then of course we cannot see the
+crown above.
+
+We need more than the historical revelation of the light in order to
+enlighten the inward nature. There is many a man here now who knows all
+about the immortality that is brought to light by Jesus Christ just as
+well as the Christian man whose soul is full of the hope of it, and who
+yet, for all his knowledge, does not know the hope, because he has not
+felt it. You have to get further than to the acceptance intellectually
+of the historical facts of a risen and ascended Saviour before there can
+be, in your heart, any vital hope of immortality. The inward eye must be
+cleared and strengthened, cross lights must be shut out so that we may
+direct the single eye of our hearts towards the great objects which
+alone are worthy of its fixed contemplation. And we cannot do that
+without a divine help, that Spirit of wisdom which will fill our hearts
+if we ask for it, which will fix our affections, which will clear our
+eyesight, which will withdraw it from seeing vanity as well as give it
+reality to see.
+
+But we must observe the conditions. Since this clearness of hope comes
+not merely from the acceptance as a truth of the fact of Christ's
+Resurrection and Ascension, but comes through the gift of that Divine
+Spirit, then to have it you must ask for it. Christian people, do you
+ask for it? Do you ever pray--I do not mean in words, but in real
+desire--that God would help you to keep steadily before you that great
+future to which we are all going so fast? If you do you will get the
+answer. Seek for that Spirit; use it, and do not resist its touches. Do
+not fix your gaze on the world when God is trying to draw you to fix it
+upon Himself. Think more about Jesus Christ, more about God's high
+calling, live nearer to Him, and try more honestly, more earnestly, more
+prayerfully, more habitually, even amidst all the troubles and
+difficulties and trivialities of each day, to cultivate that great
+faculty of joyful and assured hope.
+
+Surely God did not endue us with the power of hoping that we might fling
+it all away on trivial, transient things. We are all far too
+short-sighted; our fault is not that we do not hope, but that we hope
+for such near things, for such small things, like the old mariners who
+had no compass nor sextant, and were obliged to creep timidly along the
+coasts, and steer from headland to headland. But we ought to launch
+boldly out into mid-ocean, knowing that we have before us that star that
+cannot guide us amiss. Do not set your hopes on the things that perish,
+for if you do, hopes fulfilled and hopes disappointed will be equally
+bitter in your mouths. And you older people who, like myself, are
+drawing near the end of your days, and have little else left to hope for
+in this world, do you see to it that your anticipations extend 'above
+the ruinable skies.' _There_ is an object beyond experience, above
+imagination, without example, for which the creation wants a comparison,
+we an apprehension, and the Word of God itself a sufficient revelation.
+'It doth not yet appear what we shall be.' God hath called us to His
+eternal kingdom and glory; let us seek to walk in the light of the 'hope
+of His calling.'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S INHERITANCE IN THE SAINTS
+
+     'That ye may know what is the riches of the glory of His
+      inheritance in the saints.'--Eph. i. 18.
+
+
+The misery of Hope is that it so often owes its materials to the
+strength of our desires or to the activity of our imagination. But when
+mere wishes or fancies spin the thread, Hope cannot weave a lasting
+fabric. And so one of the old prophets, in speaking of the delusive
+hopes of man, says that they are like 'spiders' webs,' and 'shall not
+become garments.' Paul, then, having been asking for these Ephesian
+Christians that they might have hopes lofty and worthy, and such as
+God's summons to them would inspire, passes on to ask that they might
+have the material out of which they could weave such hope, namely, a
+sure and clear knowledge of the future blessings. The language in which
+he describes that future is remarkable--'the riches of the glory of His
+inheritance in the saints.' He calls it God's inheritance, not as
+meaning that God is the Inheritor, but the Giver. He speaks of it as
+'in the saints,' meaning that, just as the land of Canaan was
+distributed amongst tribes and families, and each man got his own little
+plot, so that broad land is parted out amongst those who are 'partakers
+of the inheritance of the saints in light.'
+
+And so my text suggests to me three points to which I seek to call your
+attention. First, the inheritance; second, the heirs; and third, the
+heirs' present knowledge of their future possession.
+
+I. First, then, note the inheritance.
+
+Now we must discharge from the word some of its ordinary associations.
+There is no reference to the thought of succession in it, as the mere
+English reader is accustomed to think--to whom inheritance means
+possession by the death of another. The idea is simply that of
+possession. The figure which underlies the word is, of course, that of
+the ancient partition of the land of Canaan amongst the tribes, but we
+must go a great deal deeper than that in order to understand its whole
+sweep and fulness of meaning.
+
+What is the portion for a soul? God. God is Heaven, and Heaven is God.
+No interpretation of 'the inheritance,' however it may run into cheap
+and vulgar sensuous descriptions of a future glory, has come within
+sight of the meaning of the word, unless it has grasped this as the
+central thought: 'Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon
+earth that I desire beside Thee.' Only God can be the portion of a human
+spirit. And none else can fill the narrowest and the smallest of man's
+needs.
+
+So, then, if there were realised all the accumulated changes of progress
+in blessedness, and the withdrawal of all external causes of disquiet
+and weariness and weeping, still the heart would hunger and be empty of
+its true possession unless God Himself had flowed into it. It were but a
+poor advancement and the gain of a loss, if yearnings were made
+immortal, and the aching vacuity, which haunts every soul that is parted
+from God, were cursed with immortality. It would be so, if it be not
+true that the inheritance is nothing less than the fuller possession of
+God Himself.
+
+And how do men possess God? How do we possess one another, here and now?
+By precisely the same way, only indefinitely expanded and exalted, do we
+possess Him here, and shall we possess Him hereafter. Heart to heart is
+joined by love which is mutual and interpenetrating possession; where
+'mine' and 'thine' become blended, like the several portions of the one
+ray of white light, in the blessed word 'ours.' Contemplation makes us
+possessors of God. Assimilation to His character makes us own and have
+Him. They who love and gaze, and are being changed by still degrees into
+His likeness, possess Him. This is the central idea of man's future
+destiny and highest blessedness, a union with God closer and more
+intimate in degree, but yet essentially the same in kind, as is here
+possible amidst the shows and vanities and wearinesses of this mortal
+life. 'His servants shall serve Him, and see His face, and His name
+shall be on their foreheads.' Obedience, contemplation, transformation,
+these are the hands by which we here lay hold on God; and they in the
+heavens grasp Him just as we here on earth may do. The 'inheritance' is
+God Himself.
+
+Surely that is in accordance with the whole teaching of Scripture, and
+is but the expansion of plain words which tell us that we 'are heirs of
+God.' If that be so, then all the other subsidiary blessings which have
+been, to the sore detriment of Christian anticipation and of Christian
+life in a hundred ways, elevated into disproportionate importance, fall
+into their right places, and are more when they are looked upon as
+secondary than when they are looked upon as primary.
+
+Ah, brethren! neither the sensuous metaphors which, in accommodation to
+our weakness, Scripture has used to paint that future so that we may, in
+some measure, comprehend it, nor the translation of these, in so far as
+they refer to circumstances and externals, are enough for us. It is
+blessed to know that 'there shall be no night there'--blessed to grasp
+all those sweet negatives which contradict the miseries of the world,
+and to think of no sin, no curse, no tears, no sighing nor sorrow,
+neither any more pain, 'because the former things have passed away.' It
+is sweet and ennobling to think that, when we are discharged of the load
+of this cumbrous flesh, we shall be much more ourselves, and able to see
+where now is but darkness, and to feel where now is but vacancy. It is
+blessed to think of the recognising of lost and loved ones. But all
+these blessednesses, heaped together, as it seems to me, would become
+sickeningly the same if prolonged through eternity, unless we had God
+for our very own. _Eternal_ is an awful word, even when the noun that
+goes with it is _blessedness_. And I know not how even the redeemed
+could be saved, as the long ages rolled on, from the oppression of
+monotony, and the feeling, 'I would not live always,' unless God was
+'the strength of their hearts, and their portion for ever.' We must rise
+above everything that merely applies to changes in our own natures and
+in our relations to the external universe, and to other orders of
+creatures; and grasp, as the hidden sweetness that lies in the calyx of
+the gorgeous flower, the possession of God Himself as the rapture of
+our joy and the heaven of our heaven.
+
+And if that be so, then these accumulated words with which the Apostle,
+in his fiery, impetuous way, tries to set forth the greatness of what he
+is speaking about, receive a loftier meaning than they otherwise would
+have.
+
+'The riches of the glory of His inheritance'--now that word 'riches,' or
+'wealth,' is a favourite of Paul's; and in this single letter occurs, if
+I count rightly, five times. In addition to our text, it is used twice
+in connection with God's grace, 'the riches of His grace' once in
+connection with Jesus, 'the unsearchable riches of Christ'; and once in
+a similar connection to, though with a different application from, our
+text, 'the riches of His glory.' Always, you see, it is applied to
+something that is special and properly divine. And here, therefore, it
+applies, not to the abundance of any creatural good, however exuberant
+and inexhaustible the store of it may be, but simply and solely to that
+unwearying energy, that self-feeding and ever-burning and never-decaying
+light, which is God. Of Him alone it can be said that work does not
+exhaust, nor Being tend to its own extinction, nor expenditure of
+resources to their diminution. The guarantee for eternal blessedness is
+the 'riches' of the eternal God, and so we may be sure that no time can
+exhaust, nor any expenditure empty, either His storehouse or our wealth.
+
+And again, the 'glory' is not the lustrous light, however dazzling to
+our feeble eyes that may be, of any creature that reflects the light of
+God, but it is the far-flashing and never-dying radiance of His own
+manifestation of Himself to the hearts and souls of them that love Him.
+And so the 'inheritance is incorruptible and undefiled, and fadeth not
+away'; not merely by reason of the communicated will of God operating
+upon creatures whom He preserves untarnished by corruption, and ungnawed
+by decay, but because He Himself is the 'inheritance,' and on Him time
+hath no power. On His wealth all His creatures may hang for ever; and it
+shall be as it was in the sweet parable of the miracle of old, the
+fragments that remain will be more than when the meal began. 'The riches
+of the glory of His inheritance.'
+
+II. Now notice, secondly, the heirs.
+
+The words of my text receive, perhaps, their best commentary and
+explanation in those words which the writer of them heard, on the
+Damascus road, when the voice from heaven spoke to him about men
+'obtaining an inheritance among them that are sanctified.' It almost
+sounds like an echo of that long past, but never-to-be-forgotten voice,
+when our Apostle writes as he does in our text.
+
+Now what does he mean by 'saints'? Who are these amongst whom the broad
+acres of that infinite prairie are to be parted out? The word has
+attracted to itself contemptuous meanings and ascetical meanings, and
+meanings which really deny the true democracy of Christianity and the
+equality of all believers in the sight of God. But its scriptural use
+has none of these narrowing and confusing associations adhering to it,
+nor does it even directly and at first mean, as we generally take it to
+mean, pure men, holy in the sense of clean and righteous. But something
+goes before that phase of meaning, and it is this--a saint is a man
+separated and set apart for God, as His property. That is the true
+meaning of the word. It is its meaning as it is applied to the vessels
+of the Temple, the priests, the services, and the altar. It is its
+meaning, only with the necessary substitution of spirit for body, as it
+is applied in the New Testament as a designation co-extensive with that
+of believers.
+
+How does a man belong to God?
+
+We asked a minute or two ago how God belonged to men. The answer to the
+converse question is almost identical. A man belongs to God by the
+affection of his heart, by the submission of his will, by the reference
+of his actions to Him; and he who thus belongs to God, in the same act
+in which he gives himself to God, receives God as his possession. The
+thing must be reciprocal. 'All mine is Thine'; and God answers, 'And all
+Mine is thine.' He ever meets our 'O Lord, I yield myself to Thee,' with
+His 'And My child, I give Myself to thee.' It is so in regard of our
+earthly loves. It is so in regard of our relations to Him. And that
+being the case, purity, which is generally taken by careless readers as
+being the main idea of sanctity, will follow this self-surrender, which
+is the basis of all goodness, everywhere and always.
+
+If that be true, and I do not think it can be effectively denied, then
+the next step is a very plain one, and that is that for the perfect
+possession of God, which is heaven, the same thing is needed in its
+perfection which is required for the partial possession of Him that
+makes the Christian life of earth. And just as here we get Him for ours
+in proportion as we give up ourselves to be His, so yonder the
+inheritance belongs, and can only belong to, 'the saints.' So, then, one
+can see that there is nothing arbitrary in this limitation of a
+possession, which in its very nature cannot go beyond the bounds which
+are thus marked out for it. If heaven were the vulgar thing that some of
+you think it, if that future life were desirable simply because you
+escaped from some external punishment and got all sorts of outward
+blessings and joys, felicities and advantages, hung round the neck, or
+pinned upon the breast, as they do to successful fighters, why then, of
+course, there might be partiality in the distribution of the
+decorations. But if that possession hinges upon our yielding ourselves
+to Him, then there is not an arbitrary link in the whole chain. Faith is
+set forth as the condition of heaven, because faith is the means of
+union with Christ, by and from whom alone we draw the motives for
+self-surrender and the power for sanctity. You cannot have heaven unless
+you have God. That is step number one. You cannot have God unless you
+have 'holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.' That is step
+number two. You cannot have holiness without faith. That is step number
+three. 'An inheritance among them that are sanctified'; and then there
+is added, 'by faith which is in Me.'
+
+It is clear, too, what a fatal delusion some of us are under who think
+that we shall, and fancy that we should like to, as we say, 'go to
+heaven when we die.' Why, heaven is here, round about you, a present
+heaven in the imitation of God, in the practice of righteousness, in the
+cultivation of dependence upon Him, in the yielding of yourselves up to
+Him. Heaven is here, and by your own choice you stop outside of it.
+There must be a correspondence between environment and nature for
+blessedness. 'The mind is its own place,' as the great Puritan poet
+taught us, 'and makes a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' Fishes die on
+the shore, and the man that drew them out dies in the water. Gills
+cannot breathe where lungs are useful, and lungs cannot, where gills
+come into play. If you have not here and now the holiness which knits
+you to God, and gives you possession of Him, you would not like
+'heaven,' if it were possible to carry you to that place, in so far as
+it is a place. It is rather strange, if you hope to go to heaven when
+you die, that you should be very unwilling to spend a little time in it
+whilst you are alive, and that you should expect blessedness then from
+that presence of God which brings you no blessedness now.
+
+III. Lastly, we have here the heirs' present knowledge of their future
+blessedness.
+
+The Apostle asks that these men may know a thing that clearly seems
+unknowable. It is an impossible petition, we might be ready to say,
+because it is clear enough that there can be no true knowledge of the
+conditions and details of that future life. The dark mountains that lie
+between us and it hide their secret well, and few or no stray beams have
+reached us. An unborn babe, or a chrysalis in a hole in the ground or in
+a chink of a tree, might think as wisely about its future condition as
+we can do about that life beyond. There can be no knowledge until there
+is experience.
+
+What, then, does Paul mean by framing such a petition as this? The
+answer is found in noticing that the knowledge which he is imploring
+here is a consequence of a previous knowledge. For, in a former verse,
+he prays that these men may have 'the spirit of wisdom in the knowledge
+of God'; and when they have got the knowledge of God he thinks that they
+will have got the knowledge of 'the riches of the glory of His
+inheritance in the saints.' Now, turn that into other words, and it is
+just this, that the knowledge of God, which comes by faith and love
+here, is in kind so identical with the fullest and loftiest riches of
+the knowledge of Him hereafter, that, if we have the one, we are not
+without the other. The one is in germ, the other, no doubt, full blown;
+the one is the twinkling of the rushlight, as it were, the other is the
+blaze of the sunshine. The two states of being are so correspondent that
+from the one we draw our clearest knowledge of the other. There are
+telescopes, in using which you do not look up when you want to see the
+stars, but down on to a reflecting mirror, and there you see them. Such
+a reflecting mirror, though it be sometimes muddied and dimmed and
+always very small, are the experiences of the Christian soul here.
+
+So, dear friends, if we want to know as much as may be known of the
+blessedness of heaven, let us seek to possess as much as may be
+possessed of the knowledge and love of God on earth. Then we shall know
+the centre, at any rate; and that is light, though the circumference may
+be very dark. Much will remain obscure. That is of very small
+consequence to Hope, which does not need information half so much as it
+needs assurance. Like some flower in the cranny of the rock, it can
+spread a broad bright blossom on little soil, if only it be firmly
+rooted.
+
+The path for us all is plain. Come to Jesus Christ as sinful men, and
+take what He has given, who has given Himself for us. Touched by His
+love, let us love Him back again, and yield ourselves to Him, and He
+will give Himself to us. They who can say, 'O Lord! I am Thine,' are
+sure to hear from heaven, 'I am thine.' And they who possess, in being
+possessed by, God Himself, do not need to die in order to go to heaven,
+but are at least doorkeepers in the house of the Lord now, and stand
+where they can see into the inner sanctuary which they will one day
+tread. A life of faith brings Heaven to us, and thereby gives us the
+surest and the clearest knowledge of what we shall be, and have, when we
+are brought to heaven.
+
+
+
+
+THE MEASURE OF IMMEASURABLE POWER
+
+     'That ye may know ... what is the exceeding greatness of His power
+      to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty
+      power, which He wrought in Christ.'--Eph. i. 19, 20.
+
+
+'The riches of the glory of the inheritance' will sometimes quench
+rather than stimulate hope. He can have little depth of religion who has
+not often felt that the transcendent glory of that promised future
+sharpens the doubt--'and can _I_ ever hope to reach it?' Our paths are
+strewn with battlefields where we were defeated; how should we expect
+the victor's wreath? And so Paul does not think that he has asked all
+which his friends in Ephesus need when he has asked that they may know
+the hope and the inheritance. There is something more wanted, something
+more even for our knowledge of these, and that is the knowledge of the
+power which alone can fulfil the hope and bring the inheritance. His
+language swells and peals and becomes exuberant and noble with his
+theme. He catches fire, as it were, as he thinks about this power that
+worketh in us. It is 'exceeding.' Exceeding what? He does not tell us,
+but other words in this letter, in the other great prayer which it
+contains, may help us to supply the missing words. He speaks of the
+'love of Christ which passeth knowledge,' and of God being 'able to do
+exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.' The power
+which is really at work in Christian men to-day is in its nature
+properly transcendent and immeasurable, and passes thought and desire
+and knowledge.
+
+And yet it has a measure. 'According to the working of the strength of
+the might which He wrought in Christ.' Is that heaping together of
+synonyms or all but synonyms, mere tautology? Surely not. Commentators
+tell us that they can distinguish differences of meaning between the
+words, in that the first of them is the more active and outward, and the
+last of them is the more inward. And so they liken them to fruit and
+branch and root; but we need simply say that the gathering together of
+words so nearly co-extensive in their meaning is witness to the effort
+to condense the infinite within the bounds of human tongue, to speak the
+unspeakable; and that these reiterated expressions, like the blows of
+the billows that succeed one another on the beach, are hints of the
+force of the infinite ocean that lies behind.
+
+And then the Apostle, when he has once come in sight of his risen Lord,
+as is his wont, is swept away by the ardour of his faith and the
+clearness of his vision, and breaks from his purpose in order to dilate
+on the glories of his King. We do not need to follow him into that. I
+limit myself now to the words which I have read as my text, with only
+such reference to the magnificent passage which succeeds as may be
+necessary for the exposition of this.
+
+I. So, then, I ask you to look, first, at the measure and example of the
+immeasurable power that works in Christian men.
+
+'According to the working of the strength of the might which He wrought
+in Christ'--the Resurrection, the Ascension, the session at the right
+hand of God, the rule over all creatures, and the exaltation above all
+things on earth or in the heavens--these are the facts which the Apostle
+brings before us as the pattern-works, the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the
+power that is operating in all Christians. The present glories of the
+ascended Christ are glories possessed by a Man, and, that being so, they
+are available as evidences and measures of the power which works in
+believing souls. In them we see the possibilities of humanity, the ideal
+for man which God had when He created and breathed His blessing upon
+him. It is one of ourselves who has strength enough to bear the burden
+of the glory, one of ourselves who can stand within the blaze of
+encircling and indwelling Divinity and be unconsumed. The possibilities
+of human nature are manifest there. If we want to know what the Divine
+Power can make of us, let us turn to look with the eye of faith upon
+what it has made of Jesus Christ.
+
+But such a thought, glorious as it is, still leaves room for doubt as to
+my personal attainment of such an ideal. Possibility is much, but we
+need solid certainty. And we find it in the truth that the bond between
+Christ and those who truly love and trust Him is such as that the
+possibility must become a reality and be consolidated into a certainty.
+The Vine and its branches, their Head and the members, the Christ and
+His Church, are knit together by such closeness of union as that
+wheresoever and whatsoever the one is, there and that must the others
+also be. Therefore, when doubts and fears, and consciousness of our own
+weakness, creep across us, and all our hopes are dimmed, as some star in
+the heavens is, when a light mist floats between us and it, let us turn
+away to Him our brother, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and
+think that He, in His calm exaltation and regal authority and infinite
+blessedness, is not only the pattern of what humanity may be, but the
+pledge of what His Church must be. 'Where I am, there shall also My
+servant be.' 'The glory that Thou gavest Me I have given them.'
+
+Nor is that all. Not only a possibility and a certainty for the future
+are for us the measure of the power that worketh in us, but as this same
+letter teaches us, we have, as Christians, a present scale by which we
+may estimate the greatness of the power. For in the next chapter, after
+that glorious burst as to the dignity of his Lord, which we have not the
+heart to call a digression, the Apostle, recurring to the theme of my
+text, goes on to say, 'And you hath He quickened,' and then, catching it
+up again a verse or two afterwards, he reiterates, clause by clause,
+what had been done on Jesus as having been done on us Christians. If
+that Divine Spirit raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own
+right hand in the heavenly places, it is as true that the same power
+hath 'raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places
+in Christ Jesus.' And so not only the far-off, though real and
+brilliant, and eye and heart-filling glories of the ascended Christ give
+us the measure of the power, but also the limited experience of the
+present Christian life, the fact of the resurrection from the true
+death, the death of sin, the fact of union with Jesus Christ so real and
+close as that they who truly experience it do live, as far as the roots
+of their lives and the scope and the aim of them are concerned, 'in the
+heavens,' and 'sit with Him in heavenly places'--these things afford us
+the measure of the power that worketh in us.
+
+Then, because a Man is King of kings and Lord of lords; and because He
+who is our Life 'is exalted high above all principalities and powers';
+and because from His throne He has quickened us from the death of sin,
+and has drawn us so near to Himself that if we are His we truly live
+beside Him, even whilst we stumble here in the darkness, we may know the
+exceeding greatness of His power, according to the working of the
+strength of the might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from
+the dead.
+
+II. Secondly, notice the knowledge of the unknowable power.
+
+We have already come across the same apparent paradox, covering a deep
+truth, in the former sections of this series of petitions. I need only
+remind you, in reference to this matter, that the knowledge which is
+here in question is not the intellectual perception of a fact as
+revealed in Scripture, but is that knowledge to which alone the New
+Testament gives the noble name, being knowledge verified by inward
+experience, and the result of one's own personal acquaintance with its
+object.
+
+How do we know a power? By thrilling beneath its force. How are we to
+know the greatness of the power but because it comes surging and
+rejoicing into our aching emptiness, and lifts us buoyant above our
+temptations and weakness? Paul was not asking for these people
+theological conceptions. He was asking that their spirits might be so
+saturated with and immersed in that great ocean of force that pours from
+God as that they should never, henceforth, be able to doubt the
+greatness of that power which wrought in them. The knowledge that comes
+from experience is the knowledge that we all ought to seek. It is not
+merely to be desired that we should have right and just conceptions, but
+that we should have the vital knowledge which is, and which comes from,
+life eternal.
+
+And that power, which thus we may all know by feeling it working upon
+ourselves, though it be immeasurable, has its measure; though it be, in
+its depth and fulness, unknowable and inexhaustible, may yet be really
+and truly known. You do not need a thunderstorm to experience the
+electric shock; a battery that you can carry in your pocket will do that
+for you. You do not need to have traversed all the length and breadth
+and depth and height of some newly-discovered country to be sure of its
+existence, and to have a real, though it may be a vague, conception of
+the magnitude of its shores. And so, really, though boundedly, we have
+the knowledge of God, and can rely upon it as valid, though partial; and
+similarly, by experience we have such a certified acquaintance with Him
+and His power as needs no enlargement to be trusted, and to become the
+source of blessings untold. We may see but a strip of the sky through
+the narrow chinks of our prison windows, and many a grating may further
+intercept the view, and much dust that might be cleared away may dim the
+glass but yet it _is_ the sky that we see, and we can think of the great
+horizon circling round and round, and of the infinite depths above
+there, which neither eye nor thought can travel unwearied. Though all
+that we see be but an inch in breadth and a foot or two in height, yet
+we do see. We know the unknowable power that passeth knowledge.
+
+And let me remind you of how large importance this knowledge of and
+constant reference to the measureless power manifested in Christ is for
+us. I believe there can be no vigorous, happy Christian life without it.
+It is our only refuge from pessimism and despair for the world. The old
+psalm said, 'Thou hast crowned Him with glory and honour, and hast given
+Him dominion over the works of Thy hands,' and hundreds of years
+afterwards the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews commented on it
+thus, 'We see not yet all things put under Him.' Was the old vision a
+dream, was it never intended to be fulfilled? Apparently so, if we take
+the history of the past into account, and the centuries that have passed
+since have done nothing to make it more probable, apart from Jesus
+Christ, that man will rise to the height which the Psalmist dreamed of.
+When we look at the exploded Utopias that fill the past; when we think
+of the strange and apparently fatal necessity by which evil is developed
+from every stage of what men call progress, and how improvement is
+perverted, almost as soon as effected, into another fortress of weakness
+and misery; when we look on the world as it is to-day, I know not whence
+a man is to draw bright hopes, or what is to deliver him from pessimism
+as his last word about himself and his fellows, except the 'working of
+the strength of the might which He wrought in Christ.' 'We see not yet
+all things put under Him'--be it so, 'but we see Jesus,' and, looking to
+Him, hope is possible, reasonable, and imperative.
+
+The same knowledge is our refuge from our own consciousness of weakness.
+We look up, as a climber may do in some Alpine ravine, upon the smooth
+gleaming walls of the cliff that rises above us. It is marble, it is
+fair, there are lovely lands on the summit, but nothing that has not
+wings can get there. We try, but slip backwards almost as much as we
+rise. What is to be done? Are we to sit down at the foot of the cliff,
+and say, 'We cannot climb, let us be content with the luscious herbage
+and sheltered ease below?' Yes! That is what we are tempted to say. But
+look! a mighty hand reaches over, an arm is stretched down, the hand
+grasps us, and lifts us, and sets us there.
+
+'No man hath ascended up into heaven save He that came down from
+heaven,' and having returned thither stoops thence, and will lift us to
+Himself. I am a poor, weak creature. Yes! I am all full of sin and
+corruption. Yes! I am ashamed of myself every day. Yes! I am too heavy
+to climb, and have no wings to fly, and am bound here by chains
+manifold. Yes! But we know the exceeding greatness of the power, and we
+triumph in Him.
+
+That knowledge should shame us into contrition, when we think of such
+force at our disposal, and such poor results. That knowledge should
+widen our conceptions, enlarge our desires, breathe a brave confidence
+into our hopes, should teach us to expect great things of God, and to be
+intolerant of present attainments whilst anything remains unattained.
+And it should stimulate our vigorous effort, for no man will long seek
+to be better, if he is convinced that the effort is hopeless.
+
+Learn to realise the exceeding greatness of the power that will clothe
+your weakness. 'Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created
+these things, for that He is strong in might, not one faileth.' That is
+wonderful, but here is a far nobler operation of the divine power. It is
+great to 'preserve the ancient heavens' fresh and strong by His might,
+but it is greater to come down to my weakness, to 'give power to the
+faint,' and 'increase strength to them that have no might.' And that is
+what He will do with us.
+
+III. Lastly, notice the conditions for the operations of the power.
+
+'To usward who believe,' says Paul. He has been talking to these
+Ephesians, and saying 'ye,' but now, by that 'us,' he places himself
+beside them, identifies himself with them, and declares that all his
+gifts and strength come to him on precisely the same conditions on which
+theirs do to them; and that he, like them, is a waiter upon that grace
+which God bestows on them that trust Him.
+
+'To usward who believe.' Once more we are back at the old truth which we
+can never make too emphatic and plain, that the one condition of the
+weakest among us being strong with the strength of the Lord is simple
+trust in Him, verified, of course, by continuance and by effort.
+
+How did the water go into the Ship Canal at Eastham last week? First of
+all they cut a trench, and then they severed the little strip of land
+between the hole and the sea, and the sea did the rest. The wider and
+deeper the opening that we make in our natures by our simple trust in
+God, the fuller will be the rejoicing flood that pours into us. There is
+an old story about a Christian father, who, having been torturing
+himself with theological speculations about the nature of the Trinity,
+fell asleep and dreamed that he was emptying the ocean with a thimble!
+Well, you cannot empty it with a thimble, but you can go to it with one,
+and, if you have only a thimble in your hand, you will only bring away a
+thimbleful. The measure of your faith is the measure of God's power
+given to you.
+
+There are two measures of the immeasurable power--the one is that
+infinite limit, of 'the power which He wrought in Christ,' and the other
+the practical limit. The working measure of our spiritual life is our
+faith. In plain English, we can have as much of God as we want. We do
+have as much as we want. And if, in touch with the power that can
+shatter a universe, we only get a little thrill that is scarcely
+perceptible to ourselves, and all unnoticed by others, whose fault is
+that? If, coming to the fountain that laughs at drought, and can fill a
+universe with its waters, we scarcely bear away a straitened drop or
+two, that barely refreshes our parched lips, and does nothing to
+stimulate the growth of the plants of holiness in our gardens, whose
+fault is that? The practical measure of the power is for us the measure
+of our belief and desire. And if we only go to Him, as I pray we all
+may, and continue there, and ask from Him strength, according to the
+riches that are treasured in Jesus Christ, we shall get the old answer,
+'According to your faith be it unto you.'
+
+
+
+
+THE RESURRECTION OF DEAD SOULS
+
+     'God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved
+      us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with
+      Christ.'--Eph. ii. 4, 5.
+
+
+Scripture paints man as he is, in darker tints, and man as he may
+become, in brighter ones, than are elsewhere found. The range of this
+portrait painter's palette is from pitchiest black to most dazzling
+white, as of snow smitten by sunlight. Nowhere else are there such sad,
+stern words about the actualities of human nature; nowhere else such
+glowing and wonderful ones about its possibilities. This Physician
+knows that He can cure the worst cases, if they will take His medicine,
+and is under no temptation to minimise the severity of the symptoms or
+the fatality of the disease. We have got both sides in my text; man's
+actual condition, 'dead in trespasses'; man's possible condition, and
+the actual condition of thousands of men--made to live again in Jesus
+Christ, and with Him raised from the dead, and with Him gone up on high,
+and with Him sitting at God's right hand. That is what you and I may be
+if we will; if we will not, then we must be the other.
+
+So there are three things here to look at for a few moments--the dead
+souls; the pitying love that looks down upon them; and the resurrection
+of the dead.
+
+I. First, here is a picture, a dogmatic statement if you like, about the
+actual condition of human nature apart from Jesus Christ--'Dead in
+trespasses.'
+
+The Apostle looks upon the world--many-coloured, full of activity, full
+of intellectual stir, full of human emotions, affections, joys, sorrows,
+fluctuations--as if it were one great cemetery, and on every gravestone
+there were written the same inscription. They all died of the same
+disease--'dead _through_ sin,' as the original more properly means.
+
+Now, I dare say many who are listening to me are saying in their hearts,
+'Oh! Exaggeration! The old gloomy, narrow view of human nature cropping
+up again.' Well, I am not at all unwilling to acknowledge that truths
+like this have very often been preached both with a tone and in a manner
+that repels, and which is rightly chargeable with exaggeration and undue
+gloom and narrowness. But let me remind you that it is not the
+Evangelical preacher nor the Apostle only who have to bear the
+condemnation of exaggeration, if this representation of my text be not
+true to facts, but it is Jesus Christ too; for He says, 'Except ye eat
+the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have no life in
+you.' And I think that be He divine or not divine, His words about the
+religious condition of men go so surely to the mark that a man must be
+tolerably impregnable in his self-conceit who charges _Him_ with
+narrowness and exaggeration. At all events, I am content to say after
+Him, and I pray that you and I, when we accept Him as our Teacher, may
+take not only His gracious, but His stern, words, assured that a deep
+graciousness lies in these, too, if we rightly understand them.
+
+Let me remind you that the phrase of my text is by no means confined to
+Christian teachers, but that, in common speech, we hear from all high
+thinkers about the lower type of humanity being dead to the loftier
+thoughts in which they live and move and have their being. It has passed
+into a commonplace of language to speak of men being 'dead to honour,'
+'dead to shame,' 'dead' to this, that, and the other good and noble and
+gracious thing. And the same metaphor, if you like, lies here in my
+text--that men who have given their wills and inmost natures over to the
+dominion of self--and that is the definition of sin--that such men are,
+_ipso facto_, by reason of that very surrender of themselves to their
+worst selves, dead on what I may call the top side of their nature, and
+that all that is there is atrophied and dwindling away.
+
+Unconsciousness is one characteristic of death. And oh! as I look round
+I know that there are tens, and perhaps hundreds, of men and women who
+are all but utterly unconscious of a whole universe in which are the
+only realities, and to which it becomes them to have access. You live,
+in the physical sense, and move and have your being in God, and yet your
+inmost life would not be altered one hair's-breadth if there were no God
+at all. You pass the most resplendent instances and illustrations of His
+presence, His work, and you see nothing. You are blind on that side of
+your natures; or, as my text says, dead to the whole spiritual realm.
+Just as if there were a brick wall run against some man's windows so
+that he could see nothing out of them; so you, by your persistent
+adherence to the paltry present, the material, the visible, the selfish,
+have reared up a wall against the windows of your souls that look
+heavenwards; and of God, and all the lofty starry realities that cluster
+round Him, you are as unconscious as the corpse upon its bier is of the
+sunshine that plays upon its pallid features, or of the dew that falls
+on its stiffened limbs. Dead, because of sin--is that exaggeration? Is
+it exaggeration which charges all but absolute unconsciousness of
+spiritual realities upon worldly men like some of you?
+
+And, then, take another illustration. Another of the signatures of death
+is inactivity. And oh! what faculties in some of my friends listening to
+me now are shrivelled and all but extinct! They are dormant, at any
+rate, to use another word, for the death of my text is not so absolute a
+death but that a resurrection is possible, and so _dormant_ comes to
+express pretty nearly the same thing. Faculties of service, of
+enthusiasm, of life for God, of noble obedience to Him--what have you
+done with them? Left them there until they have stiffened like an unused
+lock, or rusted like the hinges of an unopened door; and you are as
+little active in all the noblest activities of spirit, which are
+activities in submission to and dependence upon Him, as if you were laid
+in your coffin with your idle hands crossed for evermore upon an
+unheaving breast.
+
+There is another illustration that I may suggest for a moment. Decay is
+another characteristic and signature of death. And your best self, in
+some of you, is rotting to corruption by sin.
+
+Ay! Dear brethren, when we think of these tragedies of suicide that are
+going on in thousands of men round about us to-day, it seems to me as if
+the metaphor and the reality were reversed; and instead of saying that
+my text is a violent metaphor, transferring the facts of material death
+and corruption to the spiritual realm, I am almost disposed to say it is
+the other way about, and the real death is the death of the spirit; and
+the outer dissolution and unconsciousness and inactivity of the material
+body is only a kind of parable to preach to men what are the awful
+invisible facts ever associated with the fact of transgression.
+
+There are three lives possible for each of us; two of them involuntary,
+the third requiring our consent and effort, but all of them sustained by
+the same cause. The first of them is that which we call life, the
+activity and the consciousness of the bodily frame; and that continues
+as long as the power of God keeps the body in life. When He withdraws
+His hand there comes what the senses call death. Then there is the
+natural life of thinking, loving, willing, enjoying, sorrowing, and the
+like, and that continues as long as He who is the life and light of men
+breathes into them the breath of that life. And these two are lived or
+died largely without the man's own consent or choice.
+
+But there is a third life, when all that lower is lifted to God, and
+thinking and willing and loving and enjoying and aspiring and trusting
+and obeying, and all these natural faculties find their home and their
+consecration and their immortality in Him. That life is only lived by
+our own will and it is the true life, and the others are, as I said, but
+parables, and envelopes, and vehicles, as it were, in which this life is
+carried, that is more precious than they. In the physical realm,
+separate the body from God, and it dies. In the natural conscious life,
+separate the soul, as we call it, from God, and it dies. And in the
+higher region, separate the spirit, which is the man grasping God, from
+God, and he dies; and that is the real death. Both the others are
+nothing in comparison with it.
+
+It may co-exist with a large amount of intellectual and other forms of
+activity, as we see all round about us, and that makes it only the more
+ghastly and the sadder. You are full of energy in regard to all other
+subjects, but smitten into torpor about the highest; ready to live, to
+work, to enjoy, to think, to will, in all other directions, and utterly
+unconscious and unconcerned, or all but utterly unconscious and
+unconcerned, in regard to God.
+
+Oh! a death which is co-existent with such feverish intensity of life as
+the most of you are expending all the week at your business and your
+daily pursuits is among the saddest of all the tragedies that angels are
+called upon to weep over, and that men are fools enough to enact.
+Brother! If the representation is a gloomy one, do not you think that it
+is better to ask the question--Is it a true one? than, Is it a cheerful
+one? I lay it upon your hearts that he that lives to God and with God is
+alive to the centre as well as out to the finger tips and circumference
+of his visible being. He that is dead to God is dead indeed whilst he
+lives.
+
+II. Now, notice, in the second place, the pitying love that looks down
+on the cemetery.
+
+'God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us.'
+Thus the great truth that is taught us here, first of all, is that that
+divine love of the Divine Father bends down over His dead children and
+cherishes them still. Oh! you can do much in separating yourselves from
+God through selfishness, selfwill, sensuality, or other forms of sin,
+but there is one thing you cannot do, you cannot prevent His loving you.
+If I might venture without seeming irreverent, I would point to that
+pathetic page in the Old Testament history where the king hears of the
+death, red-handed in treason, of his darling son, and careless of
+victory and forgetful of everything else, and oblivious that Absalom was
+a rebel, and only remembering that he was his boy, burst into that
+monotonous wail that has come down over all the centuries as the deepest
+expression of undying fatherly love. 'Oh! my son Absalom, my son, my son
+Absalom! Oh! Absalom, my son, my son!' The name and the relationship
+will well up out of the Father's heart, whatever the child's crime. We
+are all His Absaloms, and though we are dead in trespasses and in sins,
+God, who is rich in mercy, bends over us and loves us with His great
+love.
+
+The Apostle might well expatiate in these two varying forms of speech,
+both of them intended to express the same thing--'rich in mercy' and
+'great in love.' For surely a love which takes account of the sin that
+cannot repel it, and so shapes itself into mercy, sparing, and
+departing from the strict line of retribution and justice, is great. And
+surely a mercy which refuses to be provoked by seventy times seven
+transgressions in an hour, not to say a day, is rich. That mercy is
+wider than all humanity, deeper than all sin, was before all rebellion,
+and will last for ever. And it is open for every soul of man to receive
+if he will.
+
+But there is another point to be noticed in reference to this wonderful
+manifestation of the divine love looking down upon the myriads of men
+dead in sin, and that is that this love shapes the divine action. Mark
+the language of our text, in which the Apostle attributes a certain line
+of conduct in the divine dealings with us to the fact of His great love.
+Because 'He loved us' therefore He did so and so. Now about that I have
+only two remarks to make, and I will make them very briefly. The one is,
+here is a demonstration, for some of you people who do not believe in
+the Evangelical doctrine of an Atonement by the sacrifice of Jesus
+Christ, that the true scriptural representation of that doctrine is not
+that which caricaturists have represented it--viz. that the sacrifice of
+Jesus Christ changed in any manner the divine heart and disposition. It
+is not as unfriendly critics (who, perhaps, are not to be so much blamed
+for their unfriendliness as for their superficiality) would have us to
+believe, that the doctrine of Atonement says that God loves because
+Christ died. But the Apostle who preached that doctrine and looked upon
+it as the very heart and centre of his message to the world here puts as
+the true sequence--Christ died because God loves. Jesus Christ said the
+same thing, 'God so loved the world that He sent His Son, that whosoever
+believeth on Him should be saved.'
+
+And that brings me to the second of the remarks which I wish briefly to
+make--viz. this, that the Divine Love, great, patient, wonderful,
+unrepelled by men's sin, as it is, has to adopt a process to reach its
+end. God by His love does not, because He cannot, raise these dead souls
+into a life of righteousness without Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ
+comes to be the channel and the medium through which the love of God may
+attain its end. God's pitying love, because 'He is rich in mercy,' is
+not turned away by man's sin; and God's pitying love, because 'He is
+rich in mercy,' quickens men not by a bare will, but by the mission and
+work of His dear Son.
+
+III. And so that is the last thing on which I speak a word--viz. the
+resurrection of the dead souls.
+
+They died of sin. That was the disease that killed them. They cannot be
+quickened unless the disease be conquered. Dear brethren, I have to
+preach--not to argue, but to preach--and to press upon each soul the
+individual acceptance of the Death of Jesus Christ as being for each of
+us, if we will trust Him, the death of our death, and the death of our
+sin. By His great sacrifice and sufficient oblation He has borne the
+sins of the world and has taken away their guilt. And in Him the inmost
+reality of the spiritual death, and its outermost parable of corporeal
+dissolution, are equally and simultaneously overcome. If you will take
+Him for your Lord you will rise from the death of guilt, condemnation,
+selfishness, and sin into a new life of liberty, sonship, consecration,
+and righteousness, and will never see death.
+
+And, on the other hand, the life of Jesus Christ is available for all of
+us. If we will put our trust in Him, His life will pass into our
+deadness; He Himself will vitalise our being, dormant capacities will
+be quickened and brought into blessed activity, a new direction will be
+given to the old faculties, desires, aspirations, emotions of our
+nature. The will will tower into new power because it obeys. The heart
+will throb with a better life because it has grasped a love that cannot
+change and will never die. And the thinking power will be brought into
+living, personal contact with the personal Truth, so that whatsoever
+darknesses and problems may still be left, at the centre there will be
+light and satisfaction and peace. You will live if you trust Christ and
+let Him be your Life.
+
+And if thus, by simple faith in Him, knowing that the power of His
+atoning death has destroyed the burden of our guilt and condemnation,
+and knowing the quickening influences of His constraining love as
+drawing us to love new things and make us new creatures, we receive into
+our inmost spirits 'the law of the spirit of life' which was in Christ
+Jesus, and are thereby made 'free from the law of sin and death,' then
+it is only a question of time, when the vitalising force shall flow into
+all the cracks and crannies of our being and deliver us wholly from the
+bondage of corruption in the outer as well as in the inner life; for
+they who have learned that Christ is the life of their lives upon earth
+can never cease their appropriation of the fulness of His quickening
+power until He has 'changed the body of their humiliation into the
+likeness of the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He
+is able to subdue even all things unto Himself.'
+
+Brethren! He Himself has said, and His words I beseech you to remember
+though you forget all mine, 'He that believeth in Me, though he were
+dead, yet shall he live, and he that liveth and believeth in Me shall
+never die.' 'Believest thou this?'
+
+
+
+
+'THE RICHES OF GRACE'
+
+     'That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His
+      grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.'--Eph. ii. 7.
+
+
+One very striking characteristic of this epistle is its frequent
+reference to God's purposes, and what, for want of a better word, we
+must call His motives, in giving us Jesus Christ. The Apostle seems to
+rise even higher than his ordinary height, while he gazes up to the
+inaccessible light, and with calm certainty proclaims not only what God
+has done, but why He has done it. Through all the earlier portions of
+this letter, the things on earth are contemplated in the light of the
+things in heaven. The great work of redemption is illuminated by the
+thought of the will and meaning of God therein; for example, we read in
+Chapter i. that He 'hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in
+Christ, according as He hath chosen us in Him,' and immediately after we
+read that He 'has predestinated us unto the adoption of children by
+Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will.' Soon after, we
+hear that 'He hath revealed to us the mystery of His will, according to
+His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself'; and that our
+predestination to an inheritance in Christ is 'according to the purpose
+of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.'
+
+Not only so, but the motive or reason for the divine action in the gift
+of Christ is brought out in a rich variety of expression as being 'the
+praise of the glory of His grace' (1-6), or 'that He might gather
+together in one all things in Christ' (1-10), or that 'we should be to
+the praise of His glory' (1-12), or that 'unto the principalities and
+powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold
+wisdom of God.'
+
+In like manner our text follows a sublime statement of what has been
+bestowed upon men in Jesus, with an equally sublime insight into the
+divine purpose of thereby showing 'the exceeding riches of His grace.'
+Such heights are not for our unaided traversing; it is neither reverent
+nor safe to speculate, and still less to dogmatise, concerning the
+meaning of the divine acts, but here, at all events, we have, as I
+believe, not a man making unwarranted assertions about God's purposes,
+but God Himself by a man, letting us see so far into the depths of Deity
+as to know the very deepest meaning of His very greatest acts, and when
+God speaks, it is neither reverent nor safe to refuse to listen.
+
+I. The purpose of God in Christ is the display of His grace.
+
+Of course we cannot speak of motives in the divine mind as in ours; they
+imply a previous state of indecision and an act of choice, from which
+comes the slow emerging of a resolve like that of the moon from the sea.
+A given end being considered by us desirable, we then cast about for
+means to secure it, which again implies limitation of power. Still we
+can speak of God's motives, if only we understand, as this epistle puts
+it so profoundly, that His 'is an eternal purpose which He purposed in
+Himself,' which never began to be formed, and was not formed by reason
+of anything external.
+
+With that caution Paul would have us think that God's chiefest purpose
+in all the wondrous facts which make up the Gospel is the setting forth
+of Himself, and that the chiefest part of Himself, which He desires that
+all men should come to know, is the glory of His grace. Of course very
+many and various reasons for these acts may be alleged, but this is the
+deepest of them all. It has often been misunderstood and made into a
+very hard and horrible doctrine, which really means little else than
+all-mighty selfishness, but it is really a most blessed one; it is the
+proclamation in tenderest, most heart-melting fashion of the truth that
+God is Love, and therefore delights in imparting that which is His
+creatures' life and blessedness; it bids us think that He, too, amidst
+the blessedness of His infinite Being, knows the joy of communicating
+which makes so large a part of the blessedness of our finite selves, and
+that He, too, is capable of being touched and gladdened by the joy of
+expression. As an artist in his noblest work paints or chisels simply
+for love of pouring out his soul, so, but in infinitely loftier fashion,
+the great Artist delights to manifest Himself, and in manifesting to
+communicate somewhat of Himself. Creation is divine self-revelation, and
+we might say, with all reverence, that God acts as birds sing, and
+fountains leap, and stars shine.
+
+But our text leads us still farther into mysteries of glory, when it
+defines what it is in God that he most desires to set forth. It is the
+'exceeding riches of Grace,' in which wonderful expression we note the
+Apostle's passionate accumulation of epithets which he yet feels to be
+altogether inadequate to his theme. It would carry us too far to attempt
+to bring out the whole wealth contained in these words which glide so
+easily over unthinking lips, but we may lovingly dwell for a few moments
+upon them. Grace, in Paul's language, means love lavished upon the
+undeserving and sinful, a love which is not drawn forth by the
+perception of any excellence in its objects, but wells up and out like a
+fountain, by reason of the impulse in its subject, and which in itself
+contains and bestows all good and blessing. There may be, as this very
+letter shows, other aspects of the divine nature which God is glad that
+man should know. His power and His wisdom have their noblest
+illustration in the work of Jesus, and are less conspicuously manifested
+in all His work; but His grace is shrined in Christ alone, and from Him
+flows forth into a thirsty world. That love, 'unmerited and free,' holds
+in solution power, wisdom and all the other physical or metaphysical
+perfections belonging to God with all their energies. It is the elixir
+in which they are all contained, the molten splendour into which have
+been dissolved gold and jewels and all precious things. When we look at
+Christ, we see the divinest thing in God, and that is His grace. The
+Christ who shows us and certifies to us the grace of God must surely be
+more than man. Men look at Him and see it; He shows us that grace
+because He was full of grace and truth.
+
+But Paul is here not propounding theological dogmas, but pouring out a
+heart full of personal experience, and so adds yet other words to
+express what he himself has found in the Divine Grace, and speaks of its
+riches. He has learned fully to trust its fulness, and in his own daily
+life has had the witness of its inexhaustible abundance, which remains
+the same after all its gifts. It 'operates unspent.' That continually
+self-communicating love pours out in no narrower stream to its last
+recipient than to its first. All 'eat and are filled,' and after they
+are satisfied, twelve baskets full of fragments are taken up. These
+riches are exceeding; they surpass all human conception, all parallel,
+all human needs; they are properly transcendent.
+
+This, then, is what God would have us know of Himself. So His love is at
+once the motive of His great message to us in Jesus Christ, and is the
+whole contents of the message, like some fountain, the force of whose
+pellucid waters cleanses the earth, and rushes into the sunshine, being
+at once the reason for the flow and that which flows. God reveals
+because He loves, and His love is that which He reveals.
+
+II. The great manifestation of grace is God's kindness to us in Christ.
+
+All the revelation of God in Creation and Providence carries the same
+message, but it is often there hard to decipher, like some
+half-obliterated inscription in a strange tongue. In Jesus the writing
+is legible, continuous, and needs no elaborate commentary to make its
+meaning intelligible. But we may note that what the Apostle founds on
+here is not so much Christ in Himself, as that which men receive in
+Christ. As he puts it in another part of this epistle, it is 'through
+the Church' that 'principalities and powers in heavenly places' are made
+to 'know the manifold wisdom of God.' It is 'His kindness towards us' by
+which 'to the ages to come,' is made known the exceeding riches of
+grace, and that kindness can be best estimated by thinking what we were,
+namely, dead in trespasses and sins; what we are, namely, quickened
+together in Christ; raised up with Him, and with Him made to sit in
+heavenly places, as the immediately preceding clauses express it. All
+this marvellous transformation of conditions and of self is realised 'in
+Christ Jesus.' These three words recur over and over again in this
+profound epistle, and may be taken as its very keynote. It would carry
+us beyond all limits to deal with the various uses and profound meanings
+of this phrase in this letter, but we may at least point out how
+intimately and inseparably it is intertwined with the other aspect of
+our relations to Christ in which He is mainly regarded as dying for us,
+and may press upon you that these two are not, as they have sometimes
+been taken to be, antagonistic but complementary. We shall never
+understand the depths of the one Apostolic conception unless we bring it
+into closest connection with the other. Christ is for us only if we are
+in Christ; we are in Christ only because He died for us.
+
+God's kindness is all 'in Christ Jesus'; in Him is the great channel
+through which His love comes to men, the river of God which is full of
+water. And that kindness is realised by us when we are 'in Christ.'
+Separated from Him we do not possess it; joined to Him as we may be by
+true faith in Him, it is ours, and with it all the blessings which it
+brings into our else empty and thirsting hearts. Now all this sets in
+strong light the dignity and work of Christian men; the profundity and
+clearness of their religious character is the great sign to the world of
+the love of God. The message of Christ to man lacks one chief evidence
+of its worth if they who profess to have received it do not, in their
+lives, show its value. The characters of Christian people are in every
+age the clearest and most effectual witnesses of the power of the
+Gospel. God's honour is in their hands. The starry heavens are best seen
+by reflecting telescopes, which, in their field, mirror the brightness
+above.
+
+III. The manifestation of God through men 'in Christ' is for all ages.
+
+In our text the ages to come open up into a vista of undefined duration,
+and, just as in another place in this epistle, Paul regards the Church
+as witnessing to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, so
+here he regards it as the perennial evidence to all generations of the
+ever-flowing riches of God's grace. Whatever may have been the Apostle's
+earlier expectations of the speedy coming of the day of the Lord, here
+he obviously expects the world to last through a long stretch of
+undefined time, and for all its changing epochs to have an unchanging
+light. That standing witness, borne by men in Christ, of the grace which
+has been so kind to them, is not to be antiquated nor superseded, but is
+as valid to-day as when these words gushed from the heart of Paul. Eyes
+which cannot look upon the sun can see it as a golden glory, tinging the
+clouds which lie cradled around it. And as long as the world lasts, so
+long will Christian men be God's witnesses to it.
+
+There are then two questions of infinite importance to us--do we show in
+character and conduct the grace which we have received by reverently
+submitting ourselves to its transforming energy? We need to be very
+close to Him for ourselves if we would worthily witness to others of
+what we have found Him to be. We have but too sadly marred our witness,
+and have been like dim reflectors round a lamp which have received but
+little light from it, and have communicated even less than we have
+received. Do we see the grace that shines so brightly in Jesus Christ?
+God longs that we should so see; He calls us by all endearments and by
+loving threats to look to that Incarnation of Himself. And when we lift
+our eyes to behold, what is it that meets our gaze? Intolerable light?
+The blaze of the white throne? Power that crushes our puny might? No!
+the 'exceeding riches of grace.' The voice cries, 'Behold your God!' and
+what we see is, 'In the midst of the throne a lamb as it had been
+slain.'
+
+
+
+
+SALVATION: GRACE: FAITH
+
+     'By grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of
+      yourselves: it is the gift of God.'--Eph. ii. 8 (R.V.).
+
+
+Here are three of the key-words of the New Testament--'grace,' 'saved,'
+'faith.' Once these terms were strange and new; now they are old and
+threadbare. Once they were like lava, glowing and cast up from the
+central depths; but it is a long while since the eruption, and the
+blocks have got cold, and the corners have been rubbed off them. I am
+afraid that some people, when they read such a text, will shrug the
+shoulder of weariness, and think that they are in for a dreary sermon.
+
+But the more familiar a word is, the more likely are common ideas about
+it to be hazy. We substitute acquaintance with the sound for penetration
+into the sense. A frond of sea-weed, as long as it is in the ocean,
+unfolds its delicate films and glows with its subdued colours. Take it
+out, and it is hard and brown and ugly, and you have to plunge it into
+the water again before you see its beauty. So with these well-worn
+Christian terms; you have to put them back, by meditation and thought,
+especially as to their bearing on yourself, in order to understand their
+significance and to feel their power. And, although it is very hard, I
+want to try and do that for a few moments with this grand thought that
+lies in my text.
+
+I. Here we have the Christian view of man's deepest need, and God's
+greatest gift.
+
+'Ye have been saved.' Now, as I have said, 'saved,' and 'salvation,' and
+'Saviour,' are all threadbare words. Let us try to grasp the whole
+throbbing meaning that is in them. Well, to begin with, and in its
+original and lowest application, this whole set of expressions is
+applied to physical danger from which it delivers, and physical disease
+which it heals. So, in the Gospels, for instance, you find 'Thy faith
+hath made thee whole'--literally, '_saved thee_' And you hear one of the
+Apostles crying, in an excess of terror and collapse of faith, 'Save!
+Master! we perish!' The two notions that are conveyed in our familiar
+expression 'safe and sound,' both lie in the word--deliverance from
+danger, and healing of disease.
+
+Then, when you lift it up into the loftier region, into which
+Christianity buoyed it up, the same double meaning attaches to it. The
+Christian salvation is, on its negative side, a deliverance from
+something impending--peril--and a healing of something infecting us--the
+sickness of sin.
+
+It is a deliverance; what from? Take, in the briefest possible language,
+three sayings of Scripture to answer that question--what am I to be
+saved _from_? 'His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His
+people from their sins.' He 'delivers'--or saves--'us from the wrath to
+come.' He 'saves a soul from death.' Sin, wrath death, death spiritual
+as well as physical, these are the dangers which lie in wait; and the
+enemies which have laid their grip upon us. And from these, as the
+shepherd drags the kid from the claws of the lion or the bear's hug, the
+salvation of the Gospel wrenches and rescues men.
+
+The same general conceptions emerge, if we notice, on the other
+side--what are the things which the New Testament sets forth as the
+opposites of its salvation? Take, again, a brief reference to Scripture
+words: 'The Son of Man came _not to condemn_ the world, but that the
+world through Him might be saved.' So the antithesis is between judgment
+or condemnation on the one hand, and salvation on the other. That
+suggests thoughts substantially identical with the preceding but still
+more solemn, as bringing in the prospect a tribunal and a judge. The
+Gospel then reveals the Mighty Power that lifts itself between us and
+judgment, the Mighty Power that intervenes to prevent absolute
+destruction, the Power which saves from sin, from wrath, from death.
+
+Along with them we may take the other thought, that salvation, as the
+New Testament understands it, is not only the rescue and deliverance of
+a man from evils conceived to lie round about him, and to threaten his
+being from without, but that it is his healing from evils which have so
+wrought themselves into his very being, and infected his whole nature,
+as that the emblem for them is a sickness unto death for the healing
+from which this mighty Physician comes. These are the negative sides of
+this great Christian thought.
+
+But the New Testament salvation is more than a shelter, more than an
+escape. It not only trammels up evil possibilities, and prevents them
+from falling upon men's heads, but it introduces all good. It not only
+strips off the poisoned robe, but it invests with a royal garb. It is
+not only negatively the withdrawal from the power, and the setting above
+the reach, of all evil, in the widest sense of that word, physical and
+moral, but it is the endowment with every good, in the widest sense of
+that word, physical and moral, which man is capable of receiving, or God
+has wealth to bestow. And this positive significance of the Christian
+salvation, which includes not only pardon, and favour, and purity, and
+blessedness here in germ, and sure and certain hope of an overwhelming
+glory hereafter--this is all suggested to us by the fact that in
+Scripture, more than once, to 'have everlasting life,' and to 'enter
+into the Kingdom of God,' are employed as equivalent and alternative
+expressions for being saved with the salvation of God.
+
+And that leads me to another point--my text, as those of you who have
+used the Revised Version will observe, is there slightly modified in
+translation, and reads 'Ye _have been saved_,'--a past act, done once,
+and with abiding present consequences, which are realised progressively
+in the Christian life, and reach forward into infinitude. So the
+Scripture sometimes speaks of salvation as past, 'He saved us by His
+mercy': sometimes of it as present and progressive, 'The Lord added to
+the Church daily those that were (in process of) being saved': sometimes
+of it as future, 'now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.' In
+that future all that is involved in the word will be evolved from it in
+blessed experience onwards through eternity.
+
+I have said that we should try to make an effort to fathom the depth of
+meaning in this and other familiar commonplace terms of Scripture. But
+no effort prior to experience will ever fathom it. There was in the
+papers some time ago an account of some extraordinary deep-sea soundings
+that have been made away down in the South Pacific, 29,400 feet and no
+bottom, and the wire broke. The highest peak of the Himalayas might be
+put into that abyss, and there would be hundreds of feet between it and
+the surface. He 'casts all our sins,' mountainous as they are, behind
+His back 'into the depths of the sea'; and no plummet that man can drop
+will ever reach its profound abyss. 'Thy judgments are a great deep,'
+and deeper than the judgments is the depth of Thy salvation.
+
+And now, brethren, before I go further, notice the--I was going to say
+theory, but that is a cold word--the facts of man's condition and need
+that underlie this great Christian term of salvation--viz. we are all in
+deadly peril; we are all sick of a fatal disease. 'Ah!' you say, 'that
+is Paul.' Yes! it is Paul. But it is not Paul only; it is Paul's Master,
+and, I hope, your Master; for He not only spoke loving, gentle words to
+and about men, and not only was grace poured into His lips, but there is
+another side to His utterances. No one ever spoke sadder, sterner words
+about the real condition of men than Jesus Christ did. Lost sheep, lost
+coins, prodigal sons, builders of houses on the sand that are destined
+to be blown down and flooded away, men in danger of an undying worm and
+unquenchable fire--these are parts of Christ's representations of the
+condition of humanity, and these are the conceptions that underlie this
+great thought of salvation as being man's deepest need.
+
+It goes far deeper down than any of the superficial constructions of
+what humanity requires, which are found among non-Christian, social and
+economical, and intellectual and political reformers. It includes all
+that is true in the estimate of any of these people, and it supplies all
+that they aim at. But it goes far beyond them. And as they stand
+pottering round the patient, and administering--what shall I say? 'pills
+for the earthquake,' as we once heard--it comes and brushes them aside
+and says, 'Physicians of no value! here is _the_ thing that is
+wanted--salvation that comes from God.'
+
+Brother! it is what you need. Do not be led away by the notion that
+wealth, or culture, or anything less than Christ's gift to men will meet
+your necessities. If once we catch a glimpse of what we really are,
+there will be no words wanted to enforce the priceless value of the
+salvation that the Gospel offers. It is sure to be an uninteresting word
+and thing to a man who does not feel himself to be a sinner. It is sure
+to be of perennial worth to a man who does. Life-belts lie unnoticed on
+the cabin-shelf above the berth as long as the sun is bright, and the
+sea calm, and everything goes well; but when the ship gets on the rocks
+the passengers fight to get them. If you know yourself, you will know
+that salvation is what you need.
+
+II. Here we have the Christian unfolding of the source of salvation.
+
+'By grace ye have been saved.' There is another threadbare word. It is
+employed in the New Testament with a very considerable width of
+signification, which we do not need to attend to here. But, in regard of
+the present context, let me just point out that the main idea conveyed
+by the word is that of favour, or lovingkindness, or goodwill,
+especially when directed to inferiors, and most eminently when given to
+those who do not deserve it, but deserve its opposite. 'Grace' is love
+that stoops and that requites, not according to desert, but bestows
+upon those who deserve nothing of the kind; so when the Apostle declares
+that the source of salvation is 'grace.' he declares two things. One is
+that the fountain of all our deliverance from sin, and of our healing of
+our sicknesses, lies in the deep heart of God, from which it wells up
+undrawn, unmotived, uncaused by anything except His own infinite
+lovingkindness. People have often presented the New Testament teaching
+about salvation as if it implied that God's love was brought to man
+because Jesus Christ died, and turned the divine affections. That is not
+New Testament teaching. Christ's death is not the cause of God's love,
+but God's love is the cause of Christ's death. 'God so loved the world
+that He gave His only begotten Son.'
+
+When we hear in the Old Testament, 'I am that I am,' we may apply it to
+this great subject. For that declaration of the very inmost essence of
+the divine nature is not merely the declaration, in half metaphysical
+terms, of a self-substituting, self-determining Being, high above
+limitation and time and change, but it is a declaration that when He
+loves He loves freely and unmodified save by the constraint of His own
+Being. Just as the light, because it is light and must radiate, falls
+upon dunghills and diamonds, upon black rocks and white snow, upon
+ice-peaks and fertile fields, so the great fountain of the Divine Grace
+pours out upon men by reason only of its own continual tendency to
+communicate its own fulness and blessedness.
+
+There follows from that the other thought, on which the Apostle mainly
+dwells in our context, that the salvation which we need, and may have,
+is not won by desert, but is given as a gift. Mark the last words of my
+text--'that not of yourselves it is the gift of God.' They have often
+been misunderstood, as if they referred to the faith which is mentioned
+just before. But that is a plain misconception of the Apostle's meaning,
+and is contradicted by the whole context. It is not faith that is the
+gift of God, but it is salvation by grace. That is plain if you will
+read on to the next verse. 'By grace are ye saved through faith, and
+that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works lest any man
+should boast.' What is it that is 'not of works'? Faith? certainly not.
+Nobody would ever have thought it worth while to say, 'faith is _not_ of
+works,' because nobody would have said that it _was_. The two clauses
+necessarily refer to the same thing, and if the latter of them must
+refer to salvation by grace, so must the former. Thus, the Apostle's
+meaning is that we get salvation, not because we work for it but because
+God gives it as a free gift, for which we have nothing to render, and
+which we can never deserve.
+
+Now, I am sure that there are some of you who are saying to yourselves,
+'This is that old, threadbare, commonplace preaching again!' Well! shame
+on us preachers if we have made a living Gospel into a dead theology.
+And shame no less on you hearers if by you the words that should be good
+news that would make the tongue of the dumb sing, and the lame man leap
+as a hart, have been petrified and fossilised into a mere dogma.
+
+I know far better than you do how absolutely inadequate all my words
+are, but I want to bring it to you and to lay it not on your heads only
+but on your hearts, as the good news that we all need, that we have not
+to buy, that we have not to work to get salvation, but that having got
+it we have to work thereafter. 'What shall we do that we might work the
+works of God?' A whole series of diverse, long, protracted, painful
+toils? Christ swept away the question by striking out the 's' at the end
+of the word, and answered, 'This is the _work_' (not 'works') 'of God,'
+the one thing which will open out into all heroism and practical
+obedience, 'that ye believe on Him to whom He hath sent.'
+
+III. That leads me to the last point--viz. the Christian requirement of
+the condition of salvation.
+
+Note the precision of the Apostle's prepositions: 'Ye have been saved
+_by_ grace'; there is the source--'Ye have been saved by grace,
+_through_ faith'--there is the medium, the instrument, or, if I may so
+say, the channel; or, to put it into other words, the condition by which
+the salvation which has its source in the deep heart of God pours its
+waters into my empty heart. 'Through faith,' another threadbare word,
+which, withal, has been dreadfully darkened by many comments, and has
+unfortunately been so represented as that people fancy it is some kind
+of special attitude of mind and heart, which is only brought to bear in
+reference to Christ's Gospel. It is a thousand pities, one sometimes
+thinks, that the word was not translated 'trust' instead of 'faith,' and
+then we should have understood that it was not a theological virtue at
+all, but just the common thing that we all know so well, which is the
+cement of human society and the blessedness of human affection, and
+which only needs to be lifted, as a plant that had been running along
+the ground, and had its tendrils bruised and its fruit marred might be
+lifted, and twined round the pillar of God's throne, in order to grow up
+and bear fruit that shall be found after many days unto praise, and
+honour, and glory.
+
+Trust; that is the condition. The salvation rises from the heart of God.
+You cannot touch the stream at its source, but you can tap it away down
+in its flow. What do you want machinery and pumps for? Put a yard of
+wooden pipe into the river, and your house will have all the water it
+needs.
+
+So, dear brethren, here is the condition--it is a condition only, for
+there is no virtue in the act of trust, but only in that with which we
+are brought into living union when we do trust. When salvation comes,
+into my heart by faith it is not my faith but God's grace that puts
+salvation there.
+
+Faith is only the condition, ay! but it is the indispensable condition.
+How many ways are there of getting possession of a gift? One only, I
+should suppose, and that is, to put out a hand and take it. If salvation
+is _by_ grace it must be '_through_ faith.' If you will not accept you
+cannot have. That is the plain meaning of what theologians call
+justification by faith; that pardon is given on condition of taking it.
+If you do not take it you cannot have it. And so this is the upshot of
+the whole--trust, and you have.
+
+Oh, dear friends! open your eyes to see your dangers. Let your
+conscience tell you of your sickness. Do not try to deliver, or to heal
+yourselves. Self-reliance and self-help are very good things, but they
+leave their limitations, and they have no place here. 'Every man his own
+Redeemer' will not work. You can no more extricate yourself from the
+toils of sin than a man can release himself from the folds of a python.
+You can no more climb to heaven by your own effort than you can build a
+railway to the moon. You must sue _in forma pauperis_, and be content to
+accept as a boon an unmerited place in your Father's heart, an
+undeserved seat at His bountiful table, an unearned share in His wealth,
+from the hands of your Elder Brother, in whom is all His grace, and who
+gives salvation to every sinner if he will trust Him. 'By grace have ye
+been saved through faith.'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S WORKMANSHIP AND OUR WORKS
+
+     'We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
+      which God hath before ordained that we should walk in
+      them.'--Eph. ii. 10.
+
+
+The metal is molten as it runs out of the blast furnace, but it soon
+cools and hardens. Paul's teaching about salvation by grace and by faith
+came in a hot stream from his heart, but to this generation his words
+are apt to sound coldly, and hardly theological. But they only need to
+be reflected upon in connection with our own experience, to become vivid
+and vital again. The belief that a man may work towards salvation is a
+universal heresy. And the Apostle, in the context, summons all his force
+to destroy that error, and to substitute the great truth that we have to
+begin with an act of God's, and only after that can think about our
+acts. To work up towards salvation is, in the strict sense of the words,
+_preposterous_; it is inverting the order of things. It is beginning at
+the wrong end. It is saying X Y Z before you have learnt to say A B C.
+We are to work downwards from salvation because we have it, not that we
+may get it. And whatever 'good works' may mean, they are the
+consequences, not the causes, of 'salvation,' whatever that may mean.
+But they are consequences, and they are the very purpose of it. So says
+Paul in the archaic language of my text--which only wants a little
+steadfast looking at to be turned into up-to-date gospel--'We are His
+workmanship, created unto good works'; and the fact that we are is one
+great reason for the assertion which he brings it in to buttress, that
+we are saved by grace, not by works. Now, I wish, in the simplest
+possible way, to deal with these great words, and take them as they lie
+before us.
+
+I. We have, first, then, this as the root of everything, the divine
+creation.
+
+Now, you will find that in this profound letter of the Apostle there are
+two ideas cropping up over and over again, both of them representing the
+facts of the Christian life and of the transition from the unchristian
+to the Christian; and the one is Resurrection and the other is Creation.
+They have this in common, that they suggest the idea that the great gift
+which Christianity brings to men--no, do not let me use the abstract
+word 'Christianity'--the great gift which _Christ_ brings to men--is a
+new life. The low popular notion that salvation means mainly and
+primarily immunity from the ultimate, most lasting future consequences
+of transgression, a change of place or of condition, infects us all, and
+is far too dominant in our popular notions of Christianity and of
+salvation. And it is because people have such an unworthy, narrow,
+selfish idea of what 'salvation' is that they fall into the bog of
+misconception as to how it is to be attained. The ordinary man's way of
+looking at the whole matter is summed up in a sentence which I heard not
+long since about a recently deceased friend of the speaker's, and the
+like of which you have no doubt often heard and perhaps said, 'He is
+sure to be saved because he has lived so straight.' And at the
+foundation of that confident epitaph lay a tragical, profound
+misapprehension of what salvation was.
+
+For it is something done in you; it is _not_ something that you get, but
+it is something that you become. The teaching of this letter, and of the
+whole New Testament, is that the profoundest and most precious of all
+the gifts which come to us in Jesus Christ, and which in their totality
+are summed up in the one word that has so little power over us, because
+we understand it so little, and know it so well--'salvation'--is a
+change in a man's nature so deep, radical, vital, as that it may fairly
+be paralleled with a resurrection from the dead.
+
+Now, I venture to believe that it is something more than a strong
+rhetorical figure when that change is described as being the creation of
+a new man within us. The resurrection symbol for the same fact may be
+treated as but a symbol. You cannot treat the teaching of a new life in
+Christ as being a mere figure. It is something a great deal more than
+that, and when once a man's eye is opened to look for it in the New
+Testament it is wonderful how it flashes out from every page and
+underlies the whole teaching. The Gospel of John, for example, is but
+one long symphony which has for its dominant theme 'I am come that they
+might have life.' And that great teaching--which has been so vulgarised,
+narrowed, and mishandled by sacerdotal pretensions and sacramentarian
+superstitions--that great teaching of Regeneration, or the new birth,
+rests upon this as its very basis, that what takes place when a man
+turns to Jesus Christ, and is saved by Him, is that there is
+communicated to him not in symbol but in spiritual fact (and spiritual
+facts are far more true than external ones which are called real) a
+spark of Christ's own life, something of 'that spirit of life which was
+in Christ Jesus,' and by which, and by which alone, being transfused
+into us, we become 'free from the law of sin and death.' I beseech you,
+brethren, see that, in your perspective of Christian truth, the thought
+of a new life imparted to us has as prominent and as dominant a place as
+it obviously has in the teaching of the New Testament. It is not so
+dominant in the current notions of Christianity that prevail amongst
+average people, but it is so in all men who let themselves be guided by
+the plain teaching of Christ Himself and of all His servants. Salvation?
+Yes! And the very essence of the salvation is the breathing into me of a
+divine life, so that I become partaker of 'the divine nature.'
+
+Now, there is another step to be taken, and that is that this new life
+is realised in Christ Jesus. Now, this letter of the Apostle is
+distinguished even amongst his letters by the extraordinary frequency
+and emphasis with which he uses that expression 'in Christ Jesus.' If
+you will take up the epistle, and run your eye over it at your leisure,
+I think you will be surprised to find how, in all connections, and
+linked with every sort of blessing and good as its condition, there
+recurs that phrase. It is 'in Christ' that we obtain the inheritance; it
+is 'in Christ' that we receive 'redemption, even the forgiveness of
+sins'; it is in Him that we are 'builded together for a habitation of
+God'; it is in Him that all fulness of divine gifts, and all blessedness
+of spiritual capacities, is communicated to us; and unless, in our
+perspective of the Christian life, that expression has the same
+prominence as it has in this letter, we have yet to learn the sweetest
+sweetness, and have yet to receive the most mighty power, of the Gospel
+that we profess. 'In Christ'--a union which leaves the individuality of
+the Saviour and of the saint unimpaired, because without such
+individuality sweet love were slain, and there were no communion
+possible, but which is so close, so real, so vital, as that only the
+separating wall of personality and individual consciousness comes in
+between--that is the New Testament teaching of the relation of the
+Christian to Christ. Is it your experience, dear brother? Do not be
+frightened by talking about mysticism. If a Christianity has no
+mysticism it has no life. There is a wholesome mysticism and there is a
+morbid one, and the wholesome one is the very nerve of the Gospel as it
+is presented by Jesus Himself: 'I am the Vine, ye are the branches.
+Abide in Me, and I in you.' If our nineteenth century busy Christianity
+could only get hold of that truth as firmly as it grasps the
+representative and sacrificial character of Christ's work, I believe it
+would come like a breath of spring over 'the winter of our discontent,'
+and would change profoundly and blessedly the whole contexture of modern
+Christianity.
+
+And now there is another step to take, and that is that this union with
+Christ, which results in the communication of a new life, or, as my text
+puts it, a new creation, depends upon our faith. We are not passive in
+the matter. There is the condition on which the entrance of the life
+into our spirits is made possible. You must open the door, you must
+fling wide the casement, and the blessed warm morning air of the sun of
+righteousness, with healing in its beams, will rush in, scatter the
+darkness and raise the temperature. 'Faith' by which we simply mean the
+act of the mind in accepting and of the will and heart in casting one's
+self upon Christ as the Saviour--that act is the condition of this new
+life. And so each Christian is 'God's workmanship, created in Christ
+Jesus.'
+
+And now, says Paul--and here some of us will hesitate to follow
+him--that new creation has to go before what you call 'good works.' Now,
+do not let us exaggerate. There has seldom been a more disastrous and
+untrue thing said than what one of the Fathers dared to say, that the
+virtues of godless men were 'splendid vices.' That is not so, and that
+is not the New Testament teaching. Good is good, whoever does it. But,
+then, no man will say that actions, however they may meet the human
+conception of excellence, however bright, pure, lofty in motive and in
+aim they may be, reach their highest possible radiance and are as good
+as they ought to be, if they are done without any reference to God and
+His love. Dear brethren, we surely do not need to have the alphabet of
+morality repeated to us, that the worth of an action depends upon its
+motive, that no motive is correspondent to our capacities and our
+relation to God and our consequent responsibilities, except the motive
+of loving obedience to Him. Unless that be present, the brightest of
+human acts must be convicted of having dark shadows in it, and all the
+darker because of the brightness that may stream from it. And so I
+venture to assert that since the noblest systems of morality, apart from
+religion, will all coincide in saying that to be is more than to do, and
+that the worth of an action depends upon its motive, we are brought
+straight up to the 'narrow, bigoted' teaching of the New Testament, that
+unless a man is swayed by the love of God in what he does, you cannot,
+in the most searching analysis, say that his deed is as good as it ought
+to be, and as it might be. To be good is the first thing, to do good is
+the second. Make the tree good and its fruit good. And since, as we have
+made ourselves we are evil, there must come a re-creation before we can
+do the good deeds which our relation to God requires at our hands.
+
+II. I ask you to look at the purpose of this new creation brought out in
+our text.
+
+'Created in Christ Jesus unto good works.' That is what life is given to
+you for. That is why you are saved, says Paul. Instead of working
+upwards from works to salvation, take your stand at the received
+salvation, and understand what it is for, and work downwards from it.
+
+Now, do not let us take that phrase, 'good works,' which I have already
+said came hot from the Apostle's heart, and is now cold as a bar of
+iron, in the limited sense which it has come to bear in modern religious
+phraseology. It means something a great deal more than that. It covers
+the whole ground of what the Apostle, in another of his letters, speaks
+of when he says, 'Whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, if
+there be any virtue'--to use for a moment the world's word, which has
+such power to conjure in Greek ethics--'or if there be any praise'--to
+use for a moment the world's low motive, which has such power to sway
+men--'think of these things,' and these things do. That is the width of
+the conception of 'good works'; everything that is 'lovely and of good
+report.' That is what you receive the new life for.
+
+Contrast that with other notions of the purpose of revelation and
+redemption. Contrast it with what I have already referred to, and so
+need not enlarge upon now, the miserably inadequate and low notions of
+the essentials of salvation which one hears perpetually, and which many
+of us cherish. It is no mere immunity from a future hell. It is no mere
+entrance into a vague heaven. It is not escaping the penalty of the
+inexorable law, 'Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap,' that
+is meant by 'salvation,' any more than it is putting away the rod, which
+the child would be all the better for having administered to him, that
+is meant by 'forgiveness.' But just as forgiveness, in its essence,
+means not suspension nor abolition of penalty, but the uninterrupted
+flow of the Father's love, so salvation in its essence means, not the
+deliverance from any external evil or the alteration of anything in the
+external position, but the revolution and the re-creation of the man's
+nature. And the purpose of it is that the saved man may live in
+conformity with the will of God, and that on his character there may be
+embroidered all the fair things which God desires to see on His child's
+vesture.
+
+Contrast it with the notion that an orthodox belief is the purpose of
+revelation. I remember hearing once of a man that 'he was a very shady
+character, but sound on the Atonement.' What is the use of being 'sound
+on the Atonement' if the Atonement does not make you live the Christ
+life? And what is the good of all your orthodoxy unless the orthodoxy of
+creed issues in orthopraxy of conduct? There are far too many of us who
+half-consciously do still hold by the notion that if a man believes
+rightly then that makes him a Christian. My text shatters to pieces any
+such conception. You are saved that you may be good, and do good
+continually; and unless you are so doing you may be steeped to the
+eyebrows in the correctest of creeds, and it will only drown you.
+
+Contrast this conception of the purpose of Christianity with the far too
+common notion that we are saved, mainly in order that we may indulge in
+devout emotions, and in the outgoing of affection and confidence to
+Jesus Christ. Emotional Christianity is necessary, but Christianity,
+which is mainly or exclusively emotional, lives next door to hypocrisy,
+and there is a door of communication between them. For there is nothing
+more certain and more often illustrated in experience than that there is
+a strange underground connection between a Christianity which is mainly
+fervid and a very shady life. One sees it over and over again. And the
+cure of that is to apprehend the great truth of my text, that we are
+saved, not in order that we may know aright, nor in order that we may
+feel aright, but in order that we may be good and do 'good works.' In
+the order of things, right thought touches the springs of right feeling,
+and right feeling sets going the wheels of right action. Do not let the
+steam all go roaring out of the waste-pipe in however sacred and blessed
+emotions. See that it is guided so as to drive the spindles and the
+shuttles and make the web.
+
+III. And now, lastly, and only a word--here we have the field provided
+for the exercise of the 'good works.'
+
+'Created unto good works which God has before prepared'--before the
+re-creation--'that we should walk in them.' That is to say, the true way
+to look at the life is to regard it as the exercising-ground which God
+has prepared for the development of the life that, through Christ, is
+implanted in us. He cuts the channels that the stream may flow. That is
+the way to look at tasks, at difficulties. Difficulty is the parent of
+power, and God arranges our circumstances in order that, by wrestling
+with obstacles, we may gain the 'thews that throw the world,' and in
+order that in sorrows and in joys, in the rough places and the smooth,
+we may find occasions for the exercise of the goodness which is lodged
+potentially in us, when He creates us in Christ Jesus. So be sure that
+the path and the power will always correspond. God does not lead us on
+roads that are too steep for our weakness, and too long for our
+strength. What He bids us do He fits us for; what He fits us for He
+thereby bids us do.
+
+And so, dear brother, take heed that you are fulfilling the purpose for
+which you receive this new life. And let us all remember the order in
+which being and doing come. We must _be_ good first, and then, and only
+then, shall we _do_ good. We must have Christ for us first, our
+sacrifice and our means of receiving that new life, and then, Christ in
+us, the soul of our souls, the Life of our lives, the source of all our
+goodness.
+
+    'If any power we have, it is to ill,
+     And all the power is Thine to do and eke to will.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE CHIEF CORNER-STONE'
+
+     'Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ
+      Jesus Himself being the chief corner-stone.'--Eph. ii. 20 (R.V.).
+
+
+The Roman Empire had in Paul's time gathered into a great unity the
+Asiatics of Ephesus, the Greeks of Corinth, the Jews of Palestine, and
+men of many another race, but grand and imposing as that great unity
+was, it was to Paul a poor thing compared with the oneness of the
+Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Asiatics of Ephesus, Greeks of Corinth, Jews of
+Palestine and members of many another race could say, 'Our citizenship
+is in heaven.' The Roman Eagle swept over wide regions in her flight,
+but the Dove of Peace, sent forth from Christ's hand, travelled further
+than she. As Paul says in the context, the Ephesians had been strangers,
+'aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,' wandering like the remnants of
+some 'broken clans,' but now they are gathered in. That narrow community
+of the Jewish nation has expanded its bounds and become the
+mother-country of believing souls, the true 'island of saints.' It was
+not Rome which really made all peoples one, but it was the weakest and
+most despised of her subject races. 'Of Zion it shall be said,' 'Lo!
+this and that man was born in her.'
+
+To emphasise the thought of the great unity of the Church, the Apostle
+uses here his often-repeated metaphor of a temple, of which the Ephesian
+Christians are the stones, apostles and prophets the builders, and
+Christ Himself the chief corner-stone. Of course the representation of
+the foundation, as being laid by apostles and prophets, refers to them
+as proclaiming the Gospel. The real laying of the foundation is the
+work of the divine power and love which gave us Christ, and it is the
+Divine Voice which proclaims, 'Behold _I_ lay in Zion a foundation!' But
+that divine work has to be made known among men, and it is by the making
+of it known that the building rises course by course. There is no
+contradiction between the two statements, 'I have laid the foundation'
+and Paul's 'As a wise master-builder I have laid the foundation.'
+
+A question may here rise as to the meaning of 'prophets.' Unquestionably
+the expression in other places of the Epistle does mean New Testament
+prophets, but seeing that here Jesus is designated as the foundation
+stone which, standing beneath two walls, has a face into each, and binds
+them strongly together, it is more natural to see in the prophets the
+representatives of the great teachers of the old dispensation as the
+apostles were of the new. The remarkable order in which these two
+classes are named, the apostles being first, and the prophets who were
+first in time being last in order of mention, confirms this explanation,
+for the two co-operating classes are named in the order in which they
+lie in the foundation. Digging down you come to the more recent first,
+to the earlier second, and deep and massive, beneath all, to the
+corner-stone on whom all rests, in whom all are united together.
+Following the Apostle's order we may note the process of building;
+beneath that, the foundation on which the building rests; and beneath
+it, the corner-stone which underlies and unites the whole.
+
+I. The process of building.
+
+In the previous clauses the Apostle has represented the condition of the
+Ephesian Christians before their Christianity as being that of strangers
+and foreigners, lacking the rights of citizenship anywhere, a mob
+rather than in any sense a society. They had been like a confused heap
+of stones flung fortuitously together; they had become fellow-citizens
+with the saints. The stones had been piled up into an orderly building.
+He is not ignoring the facts of national, political, or civic
+relationships which existed independent of the new unity realised in a
+common faith. These relationships could not be ignored by one who had
+had Paul's experience of their formidable character as antagonists of
+him and of his message, but they seemed to him, in contrast with the
+still deeper and far more perfect union, which was being brought about
+in Christ, of men of all nationalities and belonging to mutually hostile
+races, to be little better than the fortuitous union of a pile of stones
+huddled together on the roadside. Measured against the architecture of
+the Church, as Paul saw it in his lofty idealism, the aggregations of
+men in the world do not deserve the name of buildings. His point of view
+is the exact opposite of that which is common around us, and which,
+alas! finds but too much support in the present aspects of the so-called
+churches of this day.
+
+It is to be observed that in our text these stones are, in accordance
+with the propriety of the metaphor, regarded as _being_ built, that is,
+as in some sense the subjects of a force brought to bear upon them,
+which results in their being laid together in orderly fashion and
+according to a plan, but it is not to be forgotten that, according to
+the teaching, not of this epistle alone, but of all Paul's letters, the
+living stones are active in the work of building, as well as beings
+subject to an influence. In another place of the New Testament we read
+the exhortation to 'build up yourselves on your most holy faith,' and
+the means of discharging that duty are set forth in the words which
+follow it; as being 'Praying in the Holy Spirit, keeping yourselves in
+the love of God, and looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.'
+
+Throughout the Pauline letters we have frequent references to
+_edifying_, a phrase which has been so vulgarised by much handling that
+its great meaning has been all but lost, but which still, rightly
+understood, presents the Christian life as one continuous effort after
+developing Christian character. Taking into view the whole of the
+apostolic references to this continuous process of building, we cannot
+but recognise that it all begins with the act of faith which brings men
+into immediate contact and vital union with Jesus Christ, and which is,
+if anything that a man does is, the act of his very inmost self passing
+out of its own isolation and resting itself on Jesus. It is by the vital
+and individual act of faith that any soul escapes from the dreary
+isolation of being a stranger and a foreigner, wandering, homeless and
+solitary, and finds through Jesus fellowship, an elder Brother, a
+Father, and a home populous with many brethren. But whilst faith is the
+condition of beginning the Christian life, which is the only real life,
+that life has to be continued and developed towards perfection by
+continuous effort. 'Tis a life-long toil till the lump be leavened.'
+
+One of the passages already referred to varies the metaphor of building,
+in so far as it seems to represent 'your most holy faith' as the
+foundation, and may be an instance of the doubtful New Testament usage
+of 'faith,' as meaning the believed Gospel, rather than the personal act
+of believing. But however that may be, context of the words clearly
+suggests the practical duties by which the Christian life is preserved
+and strengthened. They who build up themselves do so, mainly, by keeping
+themselves in the love of God with watchful oversight and continual
+preparedness for struggle against all foes who would drag them from that
+safe fortress, and subsidiarily, by like continuity in prayer, and in
+fixing their meek hope on the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto
+eternal life. If Christian character is ever to be made more Christian,
+it must be by a firmer grasp and a more vivid realisation of Christ and
+His truth. The more we feel ourselves to be lapped in the love of God,
+the more shall we be builded up on our most holy faith. There is no
+mystery about the means of Christian progress. That which, at the
+beginning, made a man a Christian shapes his whole future course; the
+measure of our faith is the measure of our advance.
+
+But the Apostle, in the immediately following words, goes on to pass
+beyond the bounds of his metaphor, and with complete indifference to the
+charge of mixing figures, speaks of the building as growing. That
+thought leads us into a higher region than that of effort. The process
+by which a great forest tree thickens its boles, expands the sweep of
+its branches and lifts them nearer the heavens, is very different from
+that by which a building rises slowly and toilsomely and with manifest
+incompleteness all the time, until the flag flies on the roof-tree. And
+if we had not this nobler thought of a possible advance by the
+increasing circulation within us of a mysterious life, there would be
+little gospel in a word which only enjoined effort as the condition of
+moral progress, and there would be little to choose between Paul and
+Plato. He goes on immediately to bring out more fully what he means by
+the growth of the building, when he says that if Christians are in
+Christ, they are 'built up for an habitation of God in the Spirit.'
+Union with Christ, and a consequent life in the Spirit, are sure to
+result in the growth of the individual soul and of the collective
+community. That divine Spirit dwells in and works through every
+believing soul, and while it is possible to grieve and to quench It, to
+resist and even to neutralise Its workings, these are the true sources
+of all our growth in grace and knowledge. The process of building may be
+and will be slow. Sometimes lurking enemies will pull down in a night
+what we have laboured at for many days. Often our hands will be slack
+and our hearts will droop. We shall often be tempted to think that our
+progress is so slow that it is doubtful if we have ever been on the
+foundation at all or have been building at all. But 'the Spirit helpeth
+our infirmities,' and the task is not ours alone but His in us. We have
+to recognise that effort is inseparable from building, but we have also
+to remember that growth depends on the free circulation of life, and
+that if we are, and abide in, Jesus, we cannot but be built 'for an
+habitation of God in the Spirit.' We may be sure that whatever may be
+the gaps and shortcomings in the structures that we rear here, none will
+be able to say of us at the last, 'This man began to build and was not
+able to finish.'
+
+II. The foundation on which the building rests.
+
+In the Greek, as in our version, there is no definite article before
+'prophets,' and its absence indicates that both sets of persons here
+mentioned come under the common _vinculum_ of the one definite article
+preceding the first named. So that apostles and prophets belong to one
+class. It may be a question whether the foundation is theirs in the
+sense that they constitute it, an explanation in favour of which can be
+quoted the vision in the Apocalypse of the new Jerusalem, in the twelve
+foundations of which were written the names of the twelve apostles of
+the Lamb, or whether, as is more probable, the foundation is conceived
+of as laid by them. In like manner the Apostle speaks to the Corinthians
+of having 'as a wise master-builder laid the foundation,' and to the
+Romans of making it his aim to preach especially where Christ was not
+already named, that he might 'not build upon another man's foundation.'
+Following these indications, it seems best to understand the preaching
+of the Gospel as being the laying of the foundation.
+
+Further, the question may be raised whether the prophets here mentioned
+belong to the Old Testament or to the New. The latter alternative has
+been preferred on the ground that the apostles are named first, but, as
+we have already noticed, the order here begins at the top and goes
+downwards, what was last in order of time being first in order of
+mention. We need only recall Peter's bold words that 'all the prophets,
+as many as have spoken, have told of the days' of Christ, or Paul's
+sermon in the synagogue of Antioch in which he passionately insisted on
+the Jewish crime of condemning Christ as being the fulfilment of the
+voices of the prophets, and of the Resurrection of Jesus as being God's
+fulfilment of the promise made unto the fathers to understand how here,
+as it were, beneath the foundation laid by the present preaching of the
+apostles, Paul rejoices to discern the ancient stones firmly laid by
+long dead hands.
+
+The Apostle's strongest conviction was that he himself had become more
+and not less of a Jew by becoming a Christian, and that the Gospel which
+he preached was nothing more than the perfecting of that Gospel before
+the Gospel, which had come from the lips of the prophets. We know a
+great deal more than he did as to the ways in which the progressive
+divine revelation was presented to Israel through the ages, and some of
+us are tempted to think that we know more than we do, but the true
+bearing of modern criticism, as applied to the Old Testament, is to
+confirm, even whilst it may to some extent modify, the conviction common
+to all the New Testament writers, and formulated by the last of the New
+Testament prophets, that 'the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of
+prophecy.' Whatever new light may shine on the questions of the origin
+and composition of the books of the Old Testament, it will never obscure
+the radiance of the majestic figure of the Messiah which shines from the
+prophetic page. The inner relation between the foundation of the
+apostles and that of the prophets is best set forth in the solemn
+colloquy on the Mount of Transfiguration between Moses and Elias and
+Jesus. They 'were with Him' as witnessing to Him to whom law and ritual
+and prophecy had pointed, and they 'spake of His decease which He should
+accomplish at Jerusalem' as being the vital centre of all His work which
+the lambs slain according to ritual had foreshadowed, and the prophetic
+figure of the Servant of the Lord 'wounded for our transgressions and
+bruised for our iniquities' had more distinctly foretold.
+
+III. The corner-stone which underlies and unites the whole.
+
+Of course the corner-stone here is the foundation-stone and not 'the
+head-stone of the corner.' Jesus Christ is both. He is the first and
+the last; the Alpha and Omega. In accordance with the whole context, in
+which the prevailing idea is that which always fired Paul's imagination,
+viz. that of reconciling Jew and Gentile in one new man, it is best to
+suppose a reference here to the union of Jew and Gentile. The stone laid
+beneath the two walls which diverge at right angles from each other
+binds both together and gives strength and cohesion to the whole. In the
+previous context the same idea is set forth that Christ 'preached peace
+to them that were afar off (Gentiles) and to them that were nigh
+(Jews).' By His death He broke down another wall, the middle wall of
+partition between them, and did so by abolishing 'the law of
+commandments contained in ordinances.' The old distinction between Jew
+and Gentile, which was accentuated by the Jew's rigid observance of
+ordinances and which often led to bitter hatred on both sides, was swept
+away in that strange new thing, a community of believers drawn together
+in Jesus Christ. The former antagonistic 'twain' had become one in a
+third order of man, the Christian man. The Jew Christian and the Gentile
+Christian became brethren because they had received one new life, and
+they who had common feelings of faith and love to the same Saviour, a
+common character drawn from Him, and a common destiny open to them by
+their common relation to Jesus, could never cherish the old emotions of
+racial hate.
+
+When we, in this day, try to picture to ourselves that strange new
+thing, the love which bound the early Christians together and buried as
+beneath a rushing flood the formidable walls of separation between them,
+we may well penitently ask ourselves how it comes that Jesus seems to
+have so much less power to triumph over the divisive forces that part us
+from those who should be our hearts' brothers. In our modern life there
+are no such gulfs of separation from one another as were filled up
+unconsciously in the experience of the first believers, but the narrower
+chinks seem to remain in their ugliness between those who profess a
+common faith in one Lord, and who are all ready to assert that they are
+built on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, and that Jesus
+Christ is from them the chief corner-stone.
+
+If in reality He is so to us, and He is so if we have been builded upon
+Him through our faith, the metaphor of corner-stone and building will
+fail to express the reality of our relation to Him, for our corner-stone
+has in it an infinite vitality which rises up through all the courses of
+the living stones, and moulds each 'into an immortal feature of
+loveliness and perfection.' So it shall be for each individual, though
+here the appropriation of the perfect gift is imperfect. So it shall be
+in reference to the history of the world. Christ is its centre and
+foundation-stone, and as His coming makes the date from which the
+nations reckon, and all before it was in the deepest sense preparatory
+to His incarnation, all which is after it is in the deepest sense the
+appropriating of Him and the developing of His work. The multitudes
+which went before and that followed cried, saying, 'Blessed is He that
+cometh in the name of the Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE WHOLE FAMILY'
+
+    'The whole family in heaven and earth.'--Eph. iii. 15.
+
+
+Grammatically, we are driven to recognise that the Revised Version is
+more correct than the Authorised, when it reads 'every family,' instead
+of 'the whole family.' There is in the expression no reference to the
+thought, however true it is in itself, that the redeemed in heaven and
+the believers on earth make up but one family. The thought rather is,
+that, as has been said, 'the father makes the family,' and if any
+community of intelligent beings, human, or angelic, bears the great name
+of family, the great reason for that lies 'in God's paternal
+relationship.'
+
+But my present purpose in selecting this text is not so much to speak of
+_it_ as to lay hold of the probably incorrect rendering in the
+Authorised Version, as suggesting, though here inaccurately, the thought
+that believers struggling here and saints and angels glorious above 'but
+one communion make,' and in the light of that thought, to consider the
+meaning of the Lord's Supper. I am, of course, fully conscious that in
+thus using the words, I am diverting them from their original purpose;
+but possibly in this case, open confession, _my_ open confession, may
+merit your forgiveness and at all events, it, in some degree, brings me
+my own.
+
+I. Consider the Lord's Supper as a sign that the Church on earth is a
+family.
+
+The Passover was essentially a family feast, and the Lord's Supper,
+which was grafted on it, was plainly meant to be the same. The domestic
+character of the rite shines clearly out in the precious simplicity of
+the arrangements in the upper room. When Christ and the twelve sat down
+there, it was a family meal at which they sat. He was the head of the
+household; they were members of His family. The early examples of the
+rite, when the disciples 'gathered together to break bread,' obviously
+preserved the same familiar character, and stand in extraordinary
+contrast to the splendours of high mass in a Roman Catholic Cathedral.
+The Church, as a whole, is a household, and the very form of the rite
+proclaims that 'we, being many, are one bread.' The conception of a
+family brings clearly into view the deepest ground of Christian unity.
+It is the possession of a common life, just as men are born into an
+earthly family, not of their own will, nor of their own working, and
+come without any action of their own into bonds of blood relationship
+with brothers and sisters. When we become sons of God and are born
+again, we become brethren of all His children. That which gives us life
+in Him makes us kindred with all through whose veins flows that same
+life. It is the common partaking in the one bread which makes us one.
+The same blood flows in the veins of all the children.
+
+Hence, the only ground on which the Church rests is this common
+possession of the life of Christ, and that ground makes, and ought to be
+felt to make, Christian union a far deeper, more blessed, and more
+imperative bond than can be found in any shallow similarities of aim--or
+identities of opinion or feeling. The deepest fact of Christian
+consciousness is the foundation fact of Christian brotherhood; each is
+nearer to every Christian than to any besides. A very solemn view of
+Christian duty arises from these thoughts, familiar as they are:
+
+    'No distance breaks the tie of blood,
+     Brothers are brothers ever more.'
+
+and every tongue is loud in condemnation of any man who is ashamed or
+afraid to recognise his brother and stand by him, whatever may be the
+difference in their worldly positions. 'Every one who loveth Him that
+begat, loveth Him also that is begotten of Him.'
+
+II. The Lord's Supper as a prophecy of the family at home above.
+
+The prophetic character was stamped on the first institution of the
+Lord's Supper by Christ's own words 'until it be fulfilled in the
+kingdom of God,' and by His declaration that He appointed unto them a
+kingdom, that they might eat and drink at His table in His kingdom. We
+may also recall the mysterious feast spread on the shore of the lake,
+where, with obvious allusion both to his earlier miracles and to the sad
+hour in the upper room, he came 'and taketh the bread and gave it to
+them.' Blending these two together we get most blessed, though dim,
+thoughts of that future; they speak to us of an eternal home, an eternal
+feast, and an eternal society. We have to reverse not a few of the
+characteristics of the upper room in order to reach those of the table
+in the kingdom. The Lord's Supper was followed for Him by Gethsemane and
+Calvary, and for them by going out to betray and to deny and to forsake
+Him. From that better table there is no more going out. The servant
+comes in from the field, spent with toil and stained with many a splash,
+but the Master Himself comes forth and serves His servant.
+
+In the eternal feast, which is spread above, the bread as well as the
+wine is new, even whilst it is old, for there will be disclosed new
+depths of blessing and power in the old Christ, and new draughts of joy
+and strength in the old wine which will make the feasters say, in
+rapture and astonishment, to the Master of the feast, 'Thou hast kept
+the good wine until now.' There and then all broken ties will be
+re-knit, all losses supplied, and no shadow of change, nor fear of
+exhaustion, pass across the calm hearts.
+
+III. The Lord's Supper is a token of the present union of the two.
+
+If it thus prophesies the perfectness of heaven, it also shows us how
+the two communities of earth and heaven are united. They, as we, live by
+derivation of the one life; they, as we, are fed and blessed by the one
+Lord. The occupations and thoughts of Christian life on earth and of the
+perfect life of Saints above are one. They look to Christ as we do, when
+we live as Christians, though the sun which is the light of both regions
+shows there a broader disc, and pours forth more fervid rays, and is
+never obscured by clouds, nor ever sets in night. Whether conscious of
+us or not, they are doing there, in perfect fashion, what we imperfectly
+attempt, and partially accomplish.
+
+    'The Saints on earth and all the Dead
+     But one communion make.'
+
+Heaven and earth are equally mansions in the Father's house.
+
+To the faith which realises this great truth, death dwindles to a small
+matter. The Lord's table has an upper and a lower level. Sitting at the
+lower, we may feel that those who have gone from our sides, and have
+left empty places which never can be filled, are gathered round Him in
+the upper half, and though a screen hangs between the two, yet the feast
+is one and the family is one. Singly our dear ones go, and singly we all
+shall go. The table spread in the presence of enemies will be left
+vacant to its last place, and the one spread above will be filled to
+its last place, and so shall we ever be with the Lord, and the unity
+which was always real be perfectly and permanently manifested at the
+last.
+
+
+
+
+STRENGTHENED WITH MIGHT
+
+     'That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory; to
+      be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner
+      man.'--Eph. iii. 16.
+
+
+In no part of Paul's letters does he rise to a higher level than in his
+prayers, and none of his prayers are fuller of fervour than this
+wonderful series of petitions. They open out one into the other like
+some majestic suite of apartments in a great palace-temple, each leading
+into a loftier and more spacious hall, each drawing nearer the
+presence-chamber, until at last we stand there.
+
+Roughly speaking, the prayer is divided into four petitions, of which
+each is the cause of the following and the result of the
+preceding--'That He would grant you, according to the riches of His
+glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner
+man'--that is the first. 'In order that Christ may dwell in your hearts
+by faith,' 'ye being rooted and grounded in love'--such is the second,
+the result of the first, and the preparation for the third. 'That ye may
+be able to comprehend with all saints ... and to know the love of Christ
+which passeth knowledge,' such is the third, and all lead up at last to
+that wonderful desire beyond which nothing is possible--'that ye might
+be filled with all the fulness of God.'
+
+I venture to contemplate dealing with these four petitions in successive
+sermons, in order, God helping me, that I may bring before you a fairer
+vision of the possibilities of your Christian life than you ordinarily
+entertain. For Paul's prayer is God's purpose, and what He means with
+all who profess His name is that these exuberant desires may be
+fulfilled in them. So let us now listen to that petition which is the
+foundation of all, and consider that great thought of the divine
+strength-giving power which may be bestowed upon every Christian soul.
+
+I. First, then, I remark that God means, and wishes, that all Christians
+should be strong by the possession of the Spirit of might.
+
+It is a miserably inadequate conception of Christianity, and of the
+gifts which it bestows, and the blessings which it intends for men, when
+it is limited, as it practically is, by a large number--I might almost
+say the majority--of professing Christians to a simple means of altering
+their relation to the past, and to the broken law of God and of
+righteousness. Thanks be to His name! His great gift to the world begins
+in each individual case with the assurance that all the past is
+cancelled. He gives that blessed sense of forgiveness, which can never
+be too highly estimated unless it is forced out of its true place as the
+introduction, and made to be the climax and the end, of His gifts. I do
+not know what Christianity means, unless it means that you and I are
+forgiven for a purpose; that the purpose, if I may so say, is something
+in advance of the means towards the purpose, the purpose being that we
+should be filled with all the strength and righteousness and
+supernatural life granted to us by the Spirit of God.
+
+It is well that we should enter into the vestibule. There is no other
+path to the throne but through the vestibule. But do not let us forget
+that the good news of forgiveness, though we need it day by day, and
+need it perpetually repeated, is but the introduction to and porch of
+the Temple, and that beyond it there towers, if I cannot say a loftier,
+yet I may say a further gift, even the gift of a divine life like His,
+from whom it comes, and of which it is in reality an effluence and a
+spark. The true characteristic blessing of the Gospel is the gift of a
+new power to a sinful weak world; a power which makes the feeble strong,
+and the strongest as an angel of God.
+
+Oh, brethren! we who know how, 'if any power we have, it is to ill'; we
+who understand the weakness, the unaptness of our spirits to any good,
+and our strength for every vagrant evil that comes upon them to tempt
+them, should surely recognise as a Gospel in very deed that which
+proclaims to us that the 'everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the
+ends of the earth,' who Himself 'fainteth not, neither is weary.' hath
+yet a loftier display of His strength-giving power than that which is
+visible in the heavens above, where, 'because He is strong in might not
+one faileth.' That heaven, the region of calm completeness, of law
+unbroken and therefore of power undiminished, affords a lesser and
+dimmer manifestation of His strength than the work that is done in the
+hell of a human heart that has wandered and is brought back, that is
+stricken with the weakness of the fever of sin, and is healed into the
+strength of obedience and the omnipotence of dependence. It is much to
+say 'for that He is strong in might, not one of these faileth;' it is
+more to say 'He giveth power to them that have failed; and to them that
+have no might He increaseth strength.' The Gospel is the gift of pardon
+for holiness, and its inmost and most characteristic bestowment is the
+bestowment of a new power for obedience and service.
+
+And that power, as I need not remind you, is given to us through the
+gift of the Divine Spirit. The very name of that Spirit is the 'Spirit
+of Might.' Christ spoke to us about being 'endued with power from on
+high.' The last of His promises that dropped from His lips upon earth
+was the promise that His followers should receive the power of the
+Spirit coming upon them. Wheresoever in the early histories we read of a
+man who was full of the Holy Ghost, we read that he was 'full of power.'
+According to the teaching of this Apostle, God hath given us the 'Spirit
+of power,' which is also the Spirit 'of love and of a sound mind.' So
+the strength that we must have, if we have strength at all, is the
+strength of a Divine Spirit, not our own, that dwells in us, and works
+through us.
+
+And there is nothing in that which need startle or surprise any man who
+believes in a living God at all, and in the possibility, therefore, of a
+connection between the Great Spirit and all the human spirits which are
+His children. I would maintain, in opposition to many modern
+conceptions, the actual supernatural character of the gift that is
+bestowed upon every Christian soul. My reading of the New Testament is
+that as distinctly above the order of material nature as is any miracle,
+is the gift that flows into a believing heart. There is a direct passage
+between God and my spirit. It lies open to His touch; all the paths of
+its deep things can be trodden by Him. You and I act upon one another
+from without, He acts upon us within. We wish one another blessings; He
+gives the blessings. We try to train, to educate, to incline, and
+dispose, by the presentation of motives and the urging of reasons; He
+can plant in a heart by His own divine husbandry the seed that shall
+blossom into immortal life. And so the Christian Church is a great,
+continuous, supernatural community in the midst of the material world;
+and every believing soul, because it possesses something of the life of
+Jesus Christ, has been the seat of a miracle as real and true as when He
+said 'Lazarus, come forth!' Precisely this teaching does our Lord
+Himself present for our acceptance when He sets side by side, as
+mutually illustrative, as belonging to the same order of supernatural
+phenomena, 'the hour is coming when the dead shall hear the voice of the
+Son of God and they that hear shall live,' which is the supernatural
+resurrection of souls dead in sin,--and 'the hour is coming in the which
+all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth,'
+which is the future resurrection of the body, in obedience to His will.
+
+So, Christian men and women, do you set clearly before you this: that
+God's purpose with you is but begun when He has forgiven you, that He
+forgives you for a design, that it is a means to an end, and that you
+have not reached the conception of the large things which He intends for
+you unless you have risen to this great thought--He means and wishes
+that you should be strong with the strength of His own Divine Spirit.
+
+II. Now notice, next, that this Divine Power has its seat in, and is
+intended to influence the whole of, the inner life.
+
+As my text puts it, we may be 'strengthened with might by His Spirit _in
+the inner man_.' By the 'inner man' I suppose, is not meant the new
+creation through faith in Jesus Christ which this Apostle calls 'the
+new man,' but simply what Peter calls the 'hidden man of the heart' the
+'soul,' or unseen self as distinguished from the visible material body
+which it animates and informs. It is this inner self, then, in which the
+Spirit of God is to dwell, and into which it is to breathe strength. The
+leaven is hid deep in three measures of meal until the whole be
+leavened. And the point to mark is that the whole inward region which
+makes up the true man is the field upon which this Divine Spirit is to
+work. It is not a bit of your inward life that is to be hallowed. It is
+not any one aspect of it that is to be strengthened, but it is the whole
+intellect, affections, desires, tastes, powers of attention, conscience,
+imagination, memory, will. The whole inner man in all its corners is to
+be filled, and to come under the influence of this power, 'until there
+be no part dark, as when the bright shining of a candle giveth thee
+light.'
+
+There is no part of my being that is not patent to the tread of this
+Divine Guest. There are no rooms of the house of my spirit into which He
+may not go. Let Him come with the master key in His hand into all the
+dim chambers of your feeble nature; and as the one life is light in the
+eye, and colour in the cheek, and deftness in the fingers, and strength
+in the arm, and pulsation in the heart, so He will come with the
+manifold results of the one gift to you. He will strengthen your
+understandings, and make you able for loftier tasks of intellect and of
+reason than you can face in your unaided power; He will dwell in your
+affections and make them vigorous to lay hold upon the holy things that
+are above their natural inclination, and will make it certain that their
+reach shall not be beyond their grasp, as, alas! it so often is in the
+sadness and disappointments of human love. He will come into that
+feeble, vacillating, wayward will of yours, that is only obstinate in
+its adherence to the low and the evil, as some foul creature, that one
+may try to wrench away, digs its claws into corruption and holds on by
+that. He will lift your will and make it fix upon the good and abominate
+the evil, and through the whole being He will pour a great tide of
+strength which shall cover all the weakness. He will be like some subtle
+elixir which, taken into the lips, steals through a pallid and wasted
+frame, and brings back a glow to the cheek and a lustre to the eye, and
+swiftness to the brain, and power to the whole nature. Or as some plant,
+drooping and flagging beneath the hot rays of the sun, when it has the
+scent of water given to it, will, in all its parts, stiffen and erect
+itself, so, when the Spirit is poured out on men, their whole nature is
+invigorated and helped.
+
+That indwelling Spirit will be a power for suffering. The parallel
+passage to this in the twin epistle to the Colossians is--'strengthened
+with all might unto all patience and long-suffering with gentleness.'
+Ah, brethren! unless this Divine Spirit were a power for patience and
+endurance it were no power suited to us poor men. So dark at times is
+every life; so full at times of discouragements, of dreariness, of
+sadness, of loneliness, of bitter memories, and of fading hopes does the
+human heart become, that if we are to be strong we must have a strength
+that will manifest itself most chiefly in this, that it teaches us how
+to bear, how to weep, how to submit.
+
+And it will be a power for conflict. We have all of us, in the discharge
+of duty and in the meeting of temptation, to face such tremendous
+antagonisms that unless we have grace given to us which will enable us
+to resist, we shall be overcome and swept away. God's power given by the
+Divine Spirit does not absolve us from the fight, but it fits us for the
+fight. It is not given in order that, holiness may be won without a
+struggle, as some people seem to think, but it is given to us in order
+that in the struggle for holiness we may never lose 'one jot of heart or
+hope,' but may be 'able to withstand in the evil day, and having done
+all to stand.'
+
+It is a power for service. 'Tarry ye in Jerusalem till ye be endued with
+power from on high.' There is no such force for the spreading of
+Christ's Kingdom, and the witness-bearing work of His Church, as the
+possession of this Divine Spirit. Plunged into that fiery baptism, the
+selfishness and the sloth, which stand in the way of so many of us, are
+all consumed and annihilated, and we are set free for service because
+the bonds that bound us are burnt up in the merciful furnace of His
+fiery power.
+
+'Ye shall be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man'--a
+power that will fill and flood all your nature if you will let it, and
+will make you strong to suffer, strong to combat, strong to serve, and
+to witness for your Lord.
+
+III. And now, lastly, let me point you still further to the measure of
+this power. It is limitless with the boundlessness of God Himself. 'That
+he would grant you' is the daring petition of the Apostle, 'according to
+the riches of His glory to be strengthened.'
+
+There is the measure. There is no limit except the uncounted wealth of
+His own self-manifestation, the flashing light of revealed divinity.
+Whatsoever there is of splendour in that, whatsoever there is of power
+there, in these and in nothing on this side of them, lies the limit of
+the possibilities of a Christian life. Of course there is a working
+limit at each moment, and that is our capacity to receive; but that
+capacity varies, may vary indefinitely, may become greater and greater
+beyond our count or measurement. Our hearts may be more and more capable
+of God; and in the measure in which they are capable of Him they shall
+be filled by Him. A limit which is always shifting is no limit at all. A
+kingdom, the boundaries of which are not the same from one year to
+another, by reason of its own inherent expansive power, may be said to
+have no fixed limit. And so we appropriate and enclose, as it were,
+within our own little fence, a tiny portion of the great prairie that
+rolls boundlessly to the horizon. But to-morrow we may enclose more, if
+we will, and more and more; and so ever onwards, for all that is God's
+is ours, and He has given us His whole self to use and to possess
+through our faith in His Son. A thimble can only take up a thimbleful of
+the ocean, but what if the thimble be endowed with a power of expansion
+which has no term known to men? May it not, then, be that some time or
+other it shall be able to hold so much of the infinite depth as now
+seems a dream too audacious to be realised?
+
+So it is with us and God. He lets us come into the vaults, as it were,
+where in piles and masses the ingots of uncoined and uncounted gold are
+stored and stacked; and He says, 'Take as much as you like to carry.'
+There is no limit except the riches of His glory.
+
+And now, dear friends, remember that this great gift, offered to each of
+us, is offered on conditions. To you professing Christians especially I
+speak. You will never get it unless you want it, and some of you do not
+want it. There are plenty of people who call themselves Christian men
+that would not for the life of them know what to do with this great gift
+if they had it. You will get it if you desire it. 'Ye have not because
+ye ask not.'
+
+Oh! when one contrasts the largeness of God's promises and the miserable
+contradiction to them which the average Christian life of this
+generation presents, what can we say? 'Hath His mercy clean gone for
+ever? Doth His promise fail for evermore?' Ye weak Christian people,
+born weakling and weak ever since, as so many of you are, open your
+mouths wide. Rise to the height of the expectations and the desires
+which it is our sin not to cherish; and be sure of this, as we ask so
+shall we receive. 'Ye are not straitened in God.' Alas! alas! 'ye are
+straitened in yourselves.'
+
+And mind, there must be self-suppression if there is to be the triumph
+of a divine power in you. You cannot fight with both classes of weapons.
+The human must die if the divine is to live. The life of nature,
+dependence on self, must be weakened and subdued if the life of God is
+to overcome and to fill you. You must be able to say 'Not I!' or you
+will never be able to say 'Christ liveth in me.' The patriarch who
+overcame halted on his thigh; and all the life of nature was lamed and
+made impotent that the life of grace might prevail. So crush self by the
+power and for the sake of the Christ, if you would that the Spirit
+should bear rule over you.
+
+See to it, too, that you use what you have of that Divine Spirit. 'To
+him that hath shall be given.' What is the use of more water being sent
+down the mill lade, if the water that does come in it all runs away at
+the bottom, and none of it goes over the wheel? Use the power you have,
+and power will come to the faithful steward of what he possesses. He
+that is faithful in a little shall get much to be faithful over. Ask and
+use, and the ancient thanksgiving may still come from your lips. 'In the
+day when I cried, Thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with
+strength in my soul.'
+
+
+
+
+THE INDWELLING CHRIST
+
+     'That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; ye being rooted and
+      grounded in love.'--Eph. iii. 17.
+
+
+We have here the second step of the great staircase by which Paul's
+fervent desires for his Ephesian friends climbed towards that wonderful
+summit of his prayers--which is ever approached, never reached,--'that
+ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.'
+
+Two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for the
+lessons of these verses. The first is as to the relation of this clause
+to the preceding. It might appear at first sight to be simply parallel
+with the former, expressing substantially the same ideas under a
+somewhat different aspect. The operation of the strength-giving Spirit
+in the inner man might very naturally be supposed to be equivalent to
+the dwelling of Christ in our hearts by faith. So many commentators do,
+in fact, take it; but I think that the two ideas may be distinguished,
+and that we are to see in the words of our text, as I have said, the
+second step in this prayer, which is in some sense a result of the
+'strengthening with might by the Spirit in the inner man.' I need not
+enter in detail into the reasons for taking this view of the connection
+of the clause, which is obviously in accordance with the climbing-up
+structure of the whole verse. It is enough to point it out as the basis
+of my further remarks.
+
+And now the second observation with which I will trouble you, before I
+come to deal with the thoughts of the verse, is as to the connection of
+the last words of it. You may observe that in reading the words of my
+text I omitted the 'that' which stands in the centre of the verse. I did
+so because the words, 'Ye being rooted and grounded in love,' in the
+original, do stand before the '_that_,' and are distinctly separated by
+it from the subsequent clause. They ought not, therefore, to be shifted
+forward into it, as our translators and the Revised Version have, I
+think, unfortunately done, unless there were some absolute necessity
+either from meaning or from construction. I do not think that this is
+the case; but on the contrary, if they are carried forward into the next
+clause, which describes the result of Christ's dwelling in our hearts by
+faith, they break the logical flow of the sentence by mixing together
+result and occasion. And so I attach them to the first part of this
+verse, and take them to express at once the consequence of Christ's
+dwelling in the heart by faith, and the preparation or occasion for our
+being able to comprehend and know the love of Christ which passeth
+knowledge. Now that is all with which I need trouble you in the way of
+explanation of the meaning of the words. Let us come now to deal with
+their substance.
+
+I. Consider the Indwelling of Christ, as desired by the Apostle for all
+Christians.
+
+To begin with, let me say in the plainest, simplest, strongest way that
+I can, that that dwelling of Christ in the believing heart is to be
+regarded as being a plain literal fact.
+
+To a man who does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, of course
+that is nonsense, but to those of us who do see in Him the manifested
+incarnate God, there ought to be no difficulty in accepting this as the
+simple literal force of the words before us, that in every soul where
+faith, howsoever feeble, has been exercised, there Jesus Christ does
+verily abide.
+
+It is not to be weakened down into any notion of participation in His
+likeness, sympathy with His character, submission to His influence,
+following His example, listening to His instruction, or the like. A dead
+Plato may so influence his followers, but that is not how a living
+Christ influences His disciples. What is meant is no mere influence
+derived but separable from Him, however blessed and gracious that
+influence might be, but it is the presence of His own self, exercising
+influences which are inseparable from His presence, and only to be
+realised when He dwells in us.
+
+I think that Christian people as a rule do far too little turn their
+attention to this aspect of the Gospel teaching, and concentrate their
+thoughts far too much upon that which is unspeakably precious in itself,
+but does not exhaust all that Christ is to us, viz. the work that He
+wrought for us upon Calvary; or to take a step further, the work that He
+is now carrying on for us as our Intercessor and Advocate in the
+heavens. You who listen to me Sunday after Sunday will not suspect me of
+seeking to minimise either of these two aspects of our Lord's mission
+and operation, but I do believe that very largely the glad thought of an
+indwelling Christ, who actually abides and works in our hearts, and is
+not only for us in the heavens, or with us by some kind of impalpable
+and metaphorical presence, but in simple, that is to say, in spiritual
+reality is in our spirits, has faded away from the consciousness of the
+Christian Church.
+
+And so we are called 'mystics' when we preach Christ in the heart. Ah,
+brother! unless your Christianity be in the good deep sense of the word
+'mystical,' it is mechanical, which is worse. I preach, and rejoice that
+I have to preach, a 'Christ that died, yea! rather that is risen again;
+who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for
+us.' Nor do I stop there, but I preach a Christ that is in us, dwelling
+in our hearts if we be His at all.
+
+Well, then, further observe that the special emphasis of the prayer here
+is that this 'indwelling' may be an unbroken and permanent one. Any of
+you who can consult the original for yourselves will see that the
+Apostle here uses a compound word which conveys the idea of intensity
+and continuity. What he desires, then, is not merely that these Ephesian
+Christians may have occasional visits of the indwelling Lord, or that at
+some lofty moments of spiritual enthusiasm they may be conscious that He
+is with them, but that always, in an unbroken line of deep, calm
+receptiveness, they may possess, and know that they possess, an
+indwelling Saviour.
+
+And this, I think, is one of the reasons why we may and must distinguish
+between the apparently very similar petition in the previous verse,
+about which we spoke in the last sermon, and the petition which is now
+occupying us; for, as I shall have to show you, it is only as
+'strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man' that we are
+capable of the continuous abiding of that Lord within us.
+
+Oh! what a contrast to that idea of a perpetual unbroken inhabitation of
+Jesus in our spirits and to our consciousness is presented by our
+ordinary life! 'Why shouldst Thou be as a wayfaring man that turneth
+aside to tarry for a night?' may well be the utterance of the average
+Christian. We might, with unbroken blessedness, possess Him in our
+hearts, and instead, we have only 'visits short and far between' Alas,
+alas, how often do we drive away that indwelling Christ, because our
+hearts are 'foul with sin,' so that He
+
+    'Can but listen at the gate
+     And hear the household jar within.'
+
+Christian men and women! here is the ideal of our lives, capable of
+being approximated to (if not absolutely in its entirety reached) with
+far more perfection than it ever has yet been by us. There might be a
+line of light never interrupted running all through our religious
+experience. Instead of that there is a light point here, and a great gap
+of darkness there, like the straggling lamps by the wayside in the
+half-lighted squalid suburbs of some great city. Is that your Christian
+life, broken by many interruptions, and having often sounding through it
+the solemn words of the retreating divinity which the old profound
+legend tells us were heard the night before the Temple on Zion was
+burnt:--'Let us depart?' 'I will arise and return unto My place till
+they acknowledge their offences.' God means and wishes that Christ may
+continuously dwell in our hearts. Does He to your own consciousness
+dwell in yours?
+
+And then the last thought connected with this first part of my subject
+is that the heart, strengthened by the Spirit, is fitted to be the
+Temple of the indwelling Christ. How shall we prepare the chamber for
+such a guest? How shall some poor occupant of some wretched hut by the
+wayside fit it up for the abode of a prince? The answer lies in these
+words that precede my text. You cannot strengthen the rafters and lift
+the roof and adorn the halls and furnish the floor in a manner befitting
+the coming of the King; but you can turn to that Divine Spirit who will
+expand and embellish and invigorate your whole spirit, and make it
+capable of receiving the indwelling Christ.
+
+That these two things which are here considered as cause and effect may,
+in another aspects be considered as but varying phases of the same
+truth, is only part of the depth and felicity of the teaching that is
+here; for if you come to look more deeply into it, the Spirit that
+strengtheneth with might is the Spirit of Christ; and He dwells in men's
+hearts by His own Spirit. So that the apparent confusion, arising from
+what in other places are regarded as identical being here conceived as
+cause and effect, is no confusion at all, but is explained and
+vindicated by the deep truth that nothing but the indwelling of the
+Christ can fit for the indwelling of the Christ. The lesser gift of His
+presence prepares for the greater measure of it; the transitory
+inhabitation for the more permanent. Where He comes in smaller measure
+He opens the door and makes the heart capable of His own more entire
+indwelling. 'Unto him that hath shall be given.' It is Christ in the
+heart that makes the heart fit for Christ to dwell in the heart. You
+cannot do it by your own power; turn to Him and let Him make you temples
+meet for Himself.
+
+II. So now, in the second place, notice the open door through which the
+Christ comes in to dwell--'that He may dwell in your hearts by faith.'
+
+More accurately we may render 'through faith' and might even venture to
+suppose that the thought of faith as an open door through which Christ
+passes into the heart, floated half distinctly before the Apostle's
+mind. Be that as it may, at all events faith is here represented as the
+means or condition through which this dwelling takes effect. You have
+but to believe in Him and He comes, drawn from heaven, floating down on
+a sunbeam, as it were, and enters into the heart and abides there.
+
+Trust, which is faith, is self-distrust. 'I dwell in the high and holy
+place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.' Rivers do
+not run on the mountain tops, but down in the valleys. So the heart that
+is lifted up and self-complacent has no dew of His blessing resting upon
+it, but has the curse of Gilboa adhering to its barrenness; but the low
+lands, the humble and the lowly hearts, are they in which the waters
+that go softly scoop their course and diffuse their blessings. Faith is
+self-distrust. Self-distrust brings the Christ.
+
+Faith is desire. Never, never in the history of the world has it been or
+can it be that a longing towards Him shall be a longing thrown back
+unsatisfied upon itself. You have but to trust, and you possess. We open
+the door for the entrance of Christ by the simple act of faith, and
+blessed be His name! He can squeeze Himself through a very little chink,
+and He does not require that the gates should be flung wide open in
+order that, with some of His blessings, He may come in.
+
+Mystical Christianity of the false sort has much to say about the
+indwelling of God in the soul, but it spoils all its teaching by
+insisting upon it that the condition on which God dwells in the soul is
+the soul's purifying itself to receive Him. But you cannot cleanse your
+hearts so as to bring Christ into them, you must let Him come and
+cleanse them by the process of His coming, and fit them thereby for His
+own indwelling. And, assuredly, He will so come, purging us from our
+evil and abiding in our hearts.
+
+But do not forget that the faith which brings Christ into the spirit
+must be a faith which works by love, if it is to keep Christ in the
+spirit. You cannot bring that Lord into your hearts by anything that you
+do. The man who cleanses his own soul by his own strength, and so
+expects to draw God into it, has made the mistake which Christ pointed
+out when He told us that when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man he
+leaves his house empty, though it be swept and garnished. Moral
+reformation may turn out the devils, it will never bring in God, and in
+the emptiness of the swept and garnished heart there is an invitation to
+the seven to come back again and fill it.
+
+And whilst that is true, remember, on the other hand, that a Christian
+man can drive away his Master by evil works. The sweet song-birds and
+the honey-making bees are said always to desert a neighbourhood before a
+pestilence breaks out in it. And if I may so say, similarly quick to
+feel the first breath of the pestilence is the presence of the Christ
+which cannot dwell with evil. You bring Christ into your heart by faith,
+without any work at all; you keep Him there by a faith which produces
+holiness.
+
+III. And the last point is the gifts of this indwelling Christ,--'ye
+being,' or as the words might more accurately be translated, 'Ye having
+been rooted and grounded in love.'
+
+Where He comes He comes not empty-handed. He brings His own love, and
+that, consciously received, produces a corresponding and answering love
+in our hearts to Him. So there is no need to ask the question here
+whether 'love' means Christ's love to me, or my love to Christ. From the
+nature of the case both are included--the recognition of His love and
+the response by mine are the result of His entering into the heart. This
+love, the recognition of His and the response by mine, is represented in
+a lovely double metaphor in these words as being at once the soil in
+which our lives are rooted and grow, and the foundation on which our
+lives are built and are steadfast.
+
+There is no need to enlarge upon these two things, but let me just touch
+them for a moment. Where Christ abides in a man's heart, love will be
+the very soil in which his life will be rooted and grow. That love will
+be the motive of all service, it will underlie, as its productive cause,
+all fruitfulness. All goodness and all beauty will be its fruit. The
+whole life will be as a tree planted in this rich soil. And so the life
+will grow not by effort only, but as by an inherent power drawing its
+nourishment from the soil. This is blessedness. It is heaven upon earth
+that love should be the soil in which our obedience is rooted, and from
+which we draw all the nutriment that turns to flowers and fruit.
+
+Where Christ dwells in the heart, love will be the foundation upon which
+our lives are builded steadfast and sure. The blessed consciousness of
+His love, and the joyful answer of my heart to it, may become the basis
+upon which my whole being shall repose, the underlying thought that
+gives security, serenity, steadfastness to my else fluctuating life. I
+may so plant myself upon Him, as that in Him I shall be strong, and
+then my life will not only grow like a tree and have its leaf green and
+broad, and its fruit the natural outcome of its vitality, but it will
+rise like some stately building, course by course, pillar by pillar,
+until at last the shining topstone is set there. He that buildeth on
+that foundation shall never be confounded.
+
+For, remember that, deepest of all, the words of my text may mean that
+the Incarnate Personal Love becomes the very soil in which my life is
+set and blossoms, on which my life is founded.
+
+    'Thou, my Life, O let me be
+     Rooted, grafted, built in Thee.'
+
+Christ is Love, and Love is Christ. He that is rooted and grounded in
+love has the roots of his being, and the foundation of his life fixed
+and fastened in that Lord.
+
+So, dear brethren, go to Christ like those two on the road to Emmaus;
+and as Fra Angelico has painted them on his convent wall, put out your
+hands and lay them on His, and say, 'Abide with us. Abide with us!' And
+the answer will come:--'This is my rest for ever; here'--mystery of
+love!--'will I dwell, for I have desired it,' even the narrow room of
+your poor heart.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE UNKNOWABLE AND KNOWN
+
+     'That ye ... may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the
+      breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of
+      Christ, which passeth knowledge.'--Eph. iii. 18, 19.
+
+
+This constitutes the third of the petitions in this great prayer of
+Paul's, each of which, as we have had occasion to see in former sermons,
+rises above, and is a consequence of the preceding, and leads on to,
+and is a cause or occasion of the subsequent one.
+
+The two former petitions have been for inward strength communicated by a
+Divine Spirit, in order that Christ may dwell in our hearts, and so we
+may be rooted and grounded in love. The result of these desires being
+realised in our hearts is here set forth in two clauses which are
+substantially equivalent in meaning. 'To comprehend' may be taken as
+meaning nearly the same as 'to know,' only that perhaps the former
+expresses an act more purely intellectual. And, as we shall see in our
+next sermon, 'the breadth and length and depth and height' are the
+unmeasurable dimensions of the love which in the second clause is
+described as 'passing knowledge.' I purpose to deal with these measures
+in a separate discourse, and, therefore, omit them from consideration
+now.
+
+We have, then, mainly two thoughts here, the one, that only the loving
+heart in which Christ dwells can know the love of Christ; and the other
+that even that heart can _not_ know the love of Christ. The paradox is
+intentional, but it is intelligible. Let me deal then, as well as I can,
+with these two great thoughts.
+
+I. First, we have this thought that only the loving heart can know
+Christ's love.
+
+Now the Bible uses that word _know_ to express two different things; one
+which we call mere intellectual perception; or to put it into plainer
+words, mere head knowledge such as a man may have about any subject of
+study, and the other a deep and living experience which is possession
+before it is knowledge, and knowledge because it is possession.
+
+Now the former of these two, the knowledge which is merely the work of
+the understanding, is, of course, independent of love. A man may know
+all about Christ and His love without one spark of love in his heart.
+And there are thousands of people who, as far as the mere intellectual
+understanding is concerned, know as much about Jesus Christ and His love
+as the saint who is closest to the Throne, and yet have not one trace of
+love to Christ in them. That is the kind of people that a widely
+diffused Christianity and a habit of hearing sermons produce. There are
+plenty of them, and some of us among them, who, as far as their heads
+are concerned, know quite as much of Jesus Christ and His love as any of
+us do, and could talk about it and argue about it, and draw inferences
+from it, and have the whole system of evangelical Christianity at their
+fingers' ends. Ay! It is at their fingers' _ends_, it never gets any
+nearer them than that.
+
+There is a knowledge with which love has nothing to do, and it is a
+knowledge that for many people is quite sufficient. 'Knowledge puffeth
+up,' says the Apostle; into an unwholesome bubble of self-complacency
+that will one day be pricked and disappear, but 'love buildeth up'--a
+steadfast, slowly-rising, solid fabric. There be two kinds of knowledge:
+the mere rattle of notions in a man's brain, like the seeds of a
+withered poppy-head; very many, very dry, very hard; that will make a
+noise when you shake them. And there is another kind of knowledge which
+goes deep down into the heart, and is the only knowledge worth calling
+by the name; and that knowledge is the child, as my text has it, of
+love.
+
+Now let us think about that for a moment. Love, says Paul, is the parent
+of all knowledge. Well, now, can we find any illustrations from similar
+facts in other regions? Yes! I think so. How do we know, really know,
+any emotions of any sort whatever? Only by experience. You may talk for
+ever about feelings, and you teach nothing about them to those who have
+not experienced them. The poets of the world have been singing about
+love ever since the world began. But no heart has learned what love is
+from even the sweetest and deepest songs. Who that is not a father can
+be taught paternal love by words, or can come to a perception of it by
+an effort of mind? And so with all other emotions. Only the lips that
+have drunk the cup of sweetness or of bitterness can tell how sweet or
+how bitter it is, and even when they, made wise by experience, speak out
+their deepest hearts, the listeners are but little the wiser, unless
+they too have been scholars in the same school. Experience is our only
+teacher in matters of feeling and emotion, as in the lower regions of
+taste and appetite. A man must be hungry to know what hunger is; he must
+taste honey or wormwood in order to know the taste of honey or wormwood,
+and in like manner he cannot know sorrow but by feeling its ache, and
+must love if he would know love. Experience is our only teacher, and her
+school-fees are heavy.
+
+Just as a blind man can never be made to understand the glories of
+sunrise, or the light upon the far-off mountains; just as a deaf man may
+read books about acoustics, but they will not give him a notion of what
+it is to hear Beethoven, so we must have love to Christ before we know
+what love to Christ is, and we must consciously experience the love of
+Christ ere we know what the love of Christ is. We must have love to
+Christ in order to have a deep and living possession of love of Christ,
+though reciprocally it is also true that we must have the love of Christ
+known and felt by our answering hearts, if we are ever to love Him back
+again.
+
+So in all the play and counterplay of love between Christ and us, and in
+all the reaction of knowledge and love this remains true, that we must
+be rooted and grounded in love ere we can know love, and must have
+Christ dwelling in our hearts, in order to that deep and living
+possession which, when it is conscious of itself, is knowledge, and is
+for ever alien to the loveless heart.
+
+    'He must be loved, ere that to you
+     He will seem worthy of your love.'
+
+If you want to know the blessedness of the love of Christ, love Him, and
+open your hearts for the entrance of His love to you. Love is the parent
+of deep, true knowledge.
+
+Of course, before we can love an unseen person and believe in his love,
+we must know about him by the ordinary means by which we learn about all
+persons outside the circle of our sight. So before the love which is
+thus the parent of deep, true knowledge, there must be the knowledge by
+study and credence of the record concerning Christ, which supplies the
+facts on which alone love can be nourished. The understanding has its
+part to play in leading the heart to love, and then the heart becomes
+the true teacher. He that loveth, knoweth God, for God is love. He that
+is rooted and grounded in love because Christ dwells in his heart, will
+be strengthened to know the love in which he is rooted. The Christ
+within us will know the love of Christ. We must first 'taste,' and then
+we shall 'see' that the Lord is good, as the Psalmist puts it with deep
+truth. First, the appropriation and feeding upon God, then the clear
+perception by the mind of the sweetness in the taste. First the
+enjoyment; then the reflection on the enjoyment. First the love; and
+then the consciousness of the love of Christ possessed and the love to
+Christ experienced. The heart must be grounded in love that the man may
+know the love which passeth knowledge.
+
+Then notice that there is also here another condition for this deep and
+blessed knowledge laid down in these words, 'That ye may be able to
+comprehend _with all saints_.' That is to say, our knowledge of the love
+of Jesus Christ depends largely on our sanctity. If we are pure we shall
+know. If we were wholly devoted to Him we should wholly know His love to
+us, and in the measure in which we are pure and holy we shall know it.
+This heart of ours is like a reflecting telescope, the least breath upon
+the mirror of which will cause all the starry sublimities that it should
+shadow forth to fade and become dim. The slightest moisture in the
+atmosphere, though it be quite imperceptible where we stand, will be
+dense enough to shut out the fair, shining, snowy summits that girdle
+the horizon and to leave nothing visible but the lowliness and
+commonplaceness of the prosaic plain.
+
+If you want to know the love of Christ, first of all, that love must
+purify your souls. But then you must keep your souls pure, assured of
+this, that only the single eye is full of light, and that they who are
+not 'saints' grope in the dark even at midday, and whilst drenched by
+the sunshine of His love, are unconscious of it altogether. And so we
+get that miserable and mysterious tragedy of men and women walking
+through life, as many of you are doing, in the very blaze and focus of
+Christ's love, and never beholding it nor knowing anything about it.
+
+Observe again the beginning of this path of knowledge, which we have
+thus traced. There must be, says my text, an indwelling Christ, and so
+an experience, deep and stable, of His love, and then we shall know the
+love which we thus experience. But how comes that indwelling? That is
+the question for us. The knowledge of His love is blessedness, is peace,
+is love, is everything; as we shall see in considering the last stage of
+this prayer. That knowledge arises from our fellowship with and our
+possession of the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ. How does that
+fellowship with, and possession of the love of God in Jesus Christ,
+come? That is the all-important question. What is the beginning of
+everything? 'That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.' There is
+the gate through which you and I may come, and by which we must come if
+we are to come at all into the possession and perception of Christ's
+great love. Here is the path of knowledge. First of all, there must be
+the simple historical knowledge of the facts of Christ's life and death
+for us, with the Scripture teaching of their meaning and power. And then
+we must turn these truths from mere notions into life. It is not enough
+to know the love that God has to us, in that lower sense of the word
+'knowledge.' Many of you know that, who never got any blessing out of it
+all your days, and never will, unless you change. Besides the 'knowing'
+there must be the 'believing' of the love. You must translate the notion
+into a living fact in your experience. You must pass from the simple
+work of understanding the Gospel to the higher act of faith. You must
+not be contented with knowing, you must trust. And if you have done that
+all the rest will follow, and the little, narrow, low doorway of humble
+self-distrusting faith, through which a man creeps on his knees,
+leaving outside all his sin and his burden, opens out into the temple
+palace--the large place in which Christ's love is imparted to the soul.
+
+Brethren, this doctrine of my text ought to be for every one of us a joy
+and a gospel. There is no royal road into the sweetness and the depth of
+Christ's love, for the wise or the prudent. The understanding is no more
+the organ for apprehending the love of Christ than the ear is the organ
+for perceiving light, or the heart the organ for learning mathematics.
+Blessed be God! the highest gifts are not bestowed upon the clever
+people, on the men of genius and the gifted ones, the cultivated and the
+refined, but they are open for all men; and when we say that love is the
+parent of knowledge, and that the condition of knowing the depths of
+Christ's heart is simple love which is the child of faith, we are only
+saying in other words what the Master embodied in His thanksgiving
+prayer, 'I thank Thee, Father! Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou
+hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them
+unto babes.'
+
+And that is so, not because Christianity, being a foolish system, can
+only address itself to fools; not because Christianity, contradicting
+wisdom, cannot expect to be received by the wise and the cultured, but
+because a man's brains have as little to do with his trustful acceptance
+of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a man's eyes have to do with his
+capacity of hearing a voice. Therefore, seeing that the wise and
+prudent, and the cultured, and the clever, and the men of genius are
+always the minority of the race, let us vulgar folk that are neither
+wise, nor clever, nor cultured, nor geniuses, be thankful that all that
+has nothing to do with our power of knowing and possessing the best
+wisdom and the highest treasures, but that upon this path the wayfaring
+man though a fool shall not err, and all narrow foreheads and limited
+understandings, and poor, simple uneducated people as well as
+philosophers and geniuses have to learn love by their hearts and not by
+their heads, and by a sense of need and a humble trust and a daily
+experience have to appropriate and suck out the blessing that lies in
+the love of Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name! The end of all
+aristocracies of culture and superciliousness of intellect lies in that
+great truth that we possess the deepest knowledge and highest wisdom
+when we love and by our love.
+
+II. Now a word in the next place as to the other thought here, that not
+even the loving heart can know the love of Christ.
+
+'It passeth knowledge,' says my text. Now I do not suppose that the
+paradox here of knowing the love of Christ which 'passeth knowledge' is
+to be explained by taking 'know' and 'knowledge' in the two different
+senses which I have already referred to, so as that we may experience,
+and know by conscious experience, that love which the mere understanding
+is incapable of grasping. That of course is an explanation which might
+be defended, but I take it that it is much truer to the Apostle's
+meaning to suppose that he uses the words 'know' and 'knowledge' both
+times in the same sense. And so we get familiar thoughts which I touch
+upon very briefly.
+
+Our knowledge of Christ's love, though real, is incomplete, and must
+always be so. You and I believe, I hope, that Christ's love is not a
+man's love, or at least that it is more than a man's love. We believe
+that it is the flowing out to us of the love of God, that all the
+fulness of the divine heart pours itself through that narrow channel of
+the human nature of our Lord, and therefore that the flow is endless and
+the Fountain infinite.
+
+I suppose I do not need to show you that it is possible for people to
+have, and that in fact we do possess a real, a valid, a reliable
+knowledge of that which is infinite; although we possess, as a matter of
+course, no adequate and complete knowledge of it. But I only remind you
+that we have before us in Christ's love something which, though the
+understanding is not by itself able to grasp it, yet the understanding
+led by the heart can lay hold of, and can find in it infinite treasures.
+We can lay our poor hands on His love as a child might lay its tiny palm
+upon the base of some great cliff, and hold that love in a real grasp of
+a real knowledge and certitude, but we cannot put our hands round it and
+feel that we _com_prehend as well as _ap_prehend. Let us be thankful
+that we cannot.
+
+His love can only become to us a subject of knowledge as it reveals
+itself in its manifestations. Yet after even these manifestations it
+remains unuttered and unutterable even by the Cross and grave, even by
+the glory and the throne. 'It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do?
+deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer
+than the earth, and broader than the sea.'
+
+We have no measure by which we can translate into the terms of our
+experience, and so bring within the grasp of our minds, what was the
+depth of the step, which Christ took at the impulse of His love, from
+the Throne to the Cross. We know not what He forewent; we know not, nor
+ever shall know, what depths of darkness and soul-agony He passed
+through at the bidding of His all-enduring love to us. Nor do we know
+the consequences of that great work of emptying Himself of His glory. We
+have no means by which we can estimate the darkness and the depth of the
+misery from which we have been delivered, nor the height and the
+radiance of the glory to which we are to be lifted. And until we can
+tell and measure by our compasses both of these two extremes of possible
+human fate, till we have gone down into the deepest abyss of a
+bottomless pit of growing alienation and misery, and up above the
+highest reach of all unending progress into light and glory and
+God-likeness, we have not stretched our compasses wide enough to touch
+the two poles of this great sphere, the infinite love of Jesus Christ.
+So we bow before it, we know that we possess it with a knowledge more
+sure and certain, more deep and valid, than our knowledge of ought but
+ourselves; but yet it is beyond our grasp, and towers above us
+inaccessible in the altitude of its glory, and stretches deep beneath us
+in the profundity of its condescension.
+
+And, in like manner, we may say that this known love passes knowledge,
+inasmuch as our experience of it can never exhaust it. We are like the
+settlers on some great island continent--as, for instance, on the
+Australian continent for many years after its first discovery--a thin
+fringe of population round the seaboard here and there, and all the
+bosom of the land untraversed and unknown. So after all experiences of
+and all blessed participation in the love of Jesus Christ which come to
+each of us by our faith, we have but skimmed the surface, but touched
+the edges, but received a drop of what, if it should come upon us in
+fulness of flood like a Niagara of love, would overwhelm our spirits.
+
+So we have within our reach not only the treasure of creatural
+affections which bring gladness into life when they come, and darkness
+over it when they depart; we have not only human love which, if I may so
+say, is always lifting its finger to its lips in the act of bidding us
+adieu; but we may possess a love which will abide with us for ever. Men
+die, Christ lives. We can exhaust men, we cannot exhaust Christ. We can
+follow other objects of pursuit, all of which have limitation to their
+power of satisfying and pall upon the jaded sense sooner or later, or
+sooner or later are wrenched away from the aching heart. But here is a
+love into which we can penetrate very deep and fear no exhaustion; a sea
+into which we can cast ourselves, nor dread that like some rash diver
+flinging himself into shallow water where he thought there was depth, we
+may be bruised and wounded. We may find in Christ the endless love that
+an immortal heart requires. Enter by the low door of faith, and your
+finite heart will have the joy of an infinite love for its possession,
+and your mortal life will rise transfigured into an immortal and growing
+participation in the immortal Love of the indwelling and inexhaustible
+Christ.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARADOX OF LOVE'S MEASURE
+
+     'The breadth, and length, and depth, and height.'--Eph. iii. 18.
+
+
+Of what? There can, I think, be no doubt as to the answer. The next
+clause is evidently the continuation of the idea begun in that of our
+text, and it runs: 'And to know the _love of Christ_ which passeth
+knowledge.' It is the immeasurable measure, then; the boundless bounds
+and dimensions of the love of Christ which fire the Apostle's thoughts
+here. Of course, he had no separate idea in his mind attaching to each
+of these measures of magnitude, but he gathered them together simply to
+express the one thought of the greatness of Christ's love. Depth and
+height are the same dimension measured from opposite ends. The one
+begins at the top and goes down, the other begins at the bottom and goes
+up, but the distance is the same in either case. So we have the three
+dimensions of a solid here--breadth, length, and depth.
+
+I suppose that I may venture to use these expressions with a somewhat
+different purpose from that for which the Apostle employs them; and to
+see in each of them a separate and blessed aspect of the love of God in
+Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+I. What, then, is the breadth of that love?
+
+It is as broad as humanity. As all the stars lie in the firmament, so
+all creatures rest in the heaven of His love. Mankind has many common
+characteristics. We all suffer, we all sin, we all hunger, we all
+aspire, hope, and die; and, blessed be God! we all occupy precisely the
+same relation to the divine love which lies in Jesus Christ. There are
+no step-children in God's great family, and none of them receives a more
+grudging or a less ample share of His love and goodness than every
+other. Far-stretching as the race, and curtaining it over as some great
+tent may enclose on a festal day a whole tribe, the breadth of Christ's
+love is the breadth of humanity.
+
+And it is universal because it is divine. No human mind can be stretched
+so as to comprehend the whole of the members of mankind, and no human
+heart can be so emptied of self as to be capable of this absolute
+universality and impartiality of affection. But the intellectual
+difficulties which stand in the way of the width of our affections, and
+the moral difficulties which stand still more frowningly and
+forbiddingly in the way, have no power over that love of Christ's which
+is close and tender, and clinging with all the tenderness and closeness
+and clingingness of a human affection and lofty and universal and
+passionless and perpetual, with all the height and breadth and calmness
+and eternity of a divine heart.
+
+And this broad love, broad as humanity, is not shallow because it is
+broad. Our love is too often like the estuary of some great stream which
+runs deep and mighty as long as it is held within narrow banks, but as
+soon as it widens becomes slow and powerless and shallow. The intensity
+of human affection varies inversely as its extension. A universal
+philanthropy is a passionless sentiment. But Christ's love is deep
+though it is wide, and suffers no diminution because it is shared
+amongst a multitude. It is like the great feast that He Himself spread
+for five thousand men, women, and children, all seated on the grass,
+'and they did all eat and were filled.'
+
+The whole love is the property of each recipient of it. He does not love
+as we do, who give a part of our heart to this one and a part to that
+one, and share the treasure of our affections amongst a multitude. All
+this gift belongs to every one, just as all the sunshine comes to every
+eye, and as every beholder sees the moon's path across the dark waters,
+stretching from the place where He stands to the centre of light.
+
+This broad love, universal as humanity, and deep as it is broad, is
+universal because it is individual. You and I have to generalise, as we
+say, when we try to extend our affections beyond the limits of
+household and family and personal friends, and the generalising is a
+sign of weakness and limitation. Nobody can love an abstraction, but
+God's love and Christ's love do not proceed in that fashion. He
+individualises, loving each and therefore loving all. It is because
+every man has a space in His heart singly and separately and
+conspicuously, that all men have a place there. So our task is to
+individualise this broad, universal love, and to say, in the simplicity
+of a glad faith, 'He loved me and gave Himself for me.' The breadth is
+world-wide, and the whole breadth is condensed into, if I may so say, a
+shaft of light which may find its way through the narrowest chink of a
+single soul. There are two ways of arguing about the love of Christ,
+both of them valid, and both of them needing to be employed by us. We
+have a right to say, 'He loves all, therefore He loves me.' And we have
+a right to say, 'He loves me, therefore He loves all.' For surely the
+love that has stooped to me can never pass by any human soul.
+
+What is the breadth of the love of Christ? It is broad as mankind, it is
+narrow as myself.
+
+II. Then, in the next place, what is the length of the love of Christ?
+
+If we are to think of Him only as a man, however exalted and however
+perfect, you and I have nothing in the world to do with His love. When
+He was here on earth it may have been sent down through the ages in some
+vague way, as the shadowy ghost of love may rise in the heart of a great
+statesman or philanthropist for generations yet unborn, which He dimly
+sees will be affected by His sacrifice and service. But we do not call
+that love. Such a poor, pale, shadowy thing has no right to the warm
+throbbing name; has no right to demand from us any answering thrill of
+affection. Unless you think of Jesus Christ as something more and other
+than the purest and the loftiest benevolence that ever dwelt in human
+form, I know of no intelligible sense in which the length of His love
+can be stretched to touch you.
+
+If we content ourselves with that altogether inadequate and lame
+conception of Him and of His nature, of course there is no present bond
+between any man upon earth and Him, and it is absurd to talk about His
+present love as extending in any way to me. But we have to believe,
+rising to the full height of the Christian conception of the nature and
+person of Christ, that when He was here on earth the divine that dwelt
+in Him so informed and inspired the human as that the love of His man's
+heart was able to grasp the whole, and to separate the individuals who
+should make up the race till the end of time; so as that you and I,
+looking back over all the centuries, and asking ourselves what is the
+length of the love of Christ, can say, 'It stretches over all the years,
+and it reached then, as it reaches now, to touch me, upon whom the ends
+of the earth have come.' Its length is conterminous with the duration of
+humanity here or yonder.
+
+That thought of eternal being, when we refer it to God, towers above us
+and repels us; and when we turn it to ourselves and think of our own
+life as unending, there come a strangeness and an awe that is almost
+shrinking, over the thoughtful spirit. But when we transmute it into the
+thought of a love whose length is unending, then over all the shoreless,
+misty, melancholy sea of eternity, there gleams a light, and every
+wavelet flashes up into glory. It is a dreadful thing to think, 'For
+ever, Thou art God.' It is a solemn thing to think, 'For ever I am to
+be'; but it is life to say: 'O Christ! Thy love endureth from
+everlasting to everlasting; and because it lives, I shall live
+also'--'Oh! give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy
+endureth for ever.'
+
+There is another measure of the length of the love of Christ. 'Master!
+How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?--I say not
+unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.' So said the
+Christ, multiplying perfection into itself twice--two sevens and a
+ten--in order to express the idea of boundlessness. And the law that He
+laid down for His servant is the law that binds Himself. What is the
+length of the love of Christ? Here is one measure of it--howsoever long
+drawn out my sin may be, this is longer; and the white line of His love
+runs out into infinity, far beyond the point where the black line of my
+sin stops. Anything short of eternal patience would have been long ago
+exhausted by your sins and mine, and our brethren's. But the pitying
+Christ, the eternal Lover of all wandering souls, looks down from heaven
+upon every one of us; goes with us in all our wanderings, bears with us
+in all our sins, in all our transgressions still is gracious. His
+pleadings sound on, like some stop in an organ continuously persistent
+through all the other notes. And round His throne are written the divine
+words which have been spoken about our human love modelled after His:
+'Charity suffereth long and is kind; is not easily provoked, is not soon
+angry, beareth all things.' The length of the love of Christ is the
+length of eternity, and outmeasures all human sin.
+
+III. Then again, what is the depth of that love?
+
+Depth and height, as I said at the beginning of these remarks, are but
+two ways of expressing the same dimension. For the one we begin at the
+top and measure down, for the other we begin at the bottom and measure
+up. The top is the Throne; and the downward measure, how is it to be
+stated? In what terms of distance are we to express it? How far is it
+from the Throne of the Universe to the manger of Bethlehem, and the
+Cross of Calvary, and the sepulchre in the garden? That is the depth of
+the love of Christ. Howsoever far may be the distance from that
+loftiness of co-equal divinity in the bosom of the Father, and radiant
+with glory, to the lowliness of the form of a servant, and the sorrows,
+limitations, rejections, pains and death--that is the measure of the
+depth of Christ's love. We can estimate the depth of the love of Christ
+by saying, 'He came from above, He tabernacled with us,' as if some
+planet were to burst from its track and plunge downwards in amongst the
+mist and the narrowness of our earthly atmosphere.
+
+A well-known modern scientist has hazarded the speculation that the
+origin of life on this planet has been the falling upon it of the
+fragments of a meteor, or an aerolite from some other system, with a
+speck of organic life upon it, from which all has developed. Whatever
+may be the case in regard to physical life, that is absolutely true in
+the case of spiritual life. It all originates because this
+heaven-descended Christ has come down the long staircase of Incarnation,
+and has brought with Him into the clouds and oppressions of our
+terrestrial atmosphere a germ of life which He has planted in the heart
+of the race, there to spread for ever. That is the measure of the depth
+of the love of Christ.
+
+And there is another way to measure it. My sins are deep, my helpless
+miseries are deep, but they are shallow as compared with the love that
+goes down beneath all sin, that is deeper than all sorrow, that is
+deeper than all necessity, that shrinks from no degradation, that turns
+away from no squalor, that abhors no wickedness so as to avert its face
+from it. The purest passion of human benevolence cannot but sometimes be
+aware of disgust mingling with its pity and its efforts, but Christ's
+love comes down to the most sunken. However far in the abyss of
+degradation any human soul has descended, beneath it are the everlasting
+arms, and beneath it is Christ's love. When a coalpit gets blocked up by
+some explosion, no brave rescuing party will venture to descend into the
+lowest depths of the poisonous darkness until some ventilation has been
+restored. But this loving Christ goes down, down, down into the
+thickest, most pestilential atmosphere, reeking with sin and corruption,
+and stretches out a rescuing hand to the most abject and undermost of
+all the victims. How deep is the love of Christ! The deep mines of sin
+and of alienation are all undermined and countermined by His love. Sin
+is an abyss, a mystery, how deep only they know who have fought against
+it; but
+
+    'O love! thou bottomless abyss,
+     My sins are swallowed up in thee.'
+
+'I will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.' The depths of
+Christ's love go down beneath all human necessity, sorrow, suffering,
+and sin.
+
+IV. And lastly, what is the height of the love of Christ?
+
+We found that the way to measure the depth was to begin at the Throne,
+and go down to the Cross, and to the foul abysses of evil. The way to
+measure the height is to begin at the Cross and the foul abysses of
+evil, and to go up to the Throne. That is to say, the topmost thing in
+the Universe, the shining apex and pinnacle, glittering away up there in
+the radiant unsetting light, is the love of God in Jesus Christ. Other
+conceptions of that divine nature spring high above us and tower beyond
+our thoughts, but the summit of them all, the very topmost as it is the
+very bottommost, outside of everything, and therefore high above
+everything, is the love of God which has been revealed to us all, and
+brought close to us sinful men in the manhood and passion of our dear
+Christ.
+
+And that love which thus towers above us, and gleams like the shining
+cross on the top of some lofty cathedral spire, does not flash up there
+inaccessible, nor lie before us like some pathless precipice, up which
+nothing that has not wings can ever hope to rise, but the height of the
+love of Christ is an hospitable height, which can be scaled by us. Nay,
+rather, that heaven of love which is 'higher than our thoughts,' bends
+down, as by a kind of optical delusion the physical heaven seems to do
+towards each of us, only with this blessed difference, that in the
+natural world the place where heaven touches earth is always the
+furthest point of distance from us: and in the spiritual world the place
+where heaven stoops to me is always right over my head, and the nearest
+possible point to me. He has come to lift us to Himself, and this is the
+height of His love, that it bears us, if we will, up and up to sit upon
+that throne where He Himself is enthroned.
+
+So, brethren, Christ's love is round about us all, as some sunny
+tropical sea may embosom in its violet waves a multitude of luxuriant
+and happy islets. So all of us, islanded on our little individual lives,
+lie in that great ocean of love, all the dimensions of which are
+immeasurable, and which stretches above, beneath, around, shoreless,
+tideless, bottomless, endless.
+
+But, remember, this ocean of love you can shut out of your lives. It is
+possible to plunge a jar into mid-Atlantic, further than soundings have
+ever descended, and to bring it up on deck as dry inside as if it had
+been lying on an oven. It is possible for men and women--and I have them
+listening to me at this moment--to live and move and have their being in
+that sea of love, and never to have let one drop of its richest gifts
+into their hearts or their lives. Open your hearts for Him to come in,
+by humble faith in His great sacrifice for you. For if Christ dwell in
+your heart by faith, then and only then will experience be your guide;
+and you will be able to comprehend the boundless greatness, the endless
+duration, and absolute perfection, and to know the love of Christ which
+passeth knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+THE CLIMAX OF ALL PRAYER
+
+     'That ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.'--Eph.
+     iii. 19.
+
+
+The Apostle's many-linked prayer, which we have been considering in
+successive sermons, has reached its height. It soars to the very Throne
+of God. There can be nothing above or beyond this wonderful petition.
+Rather, it might seem as if it were too much to ask, and as if, in the
+ecstasy of prayer, Paul had forgotten the limits that separate the
+creature from the Creator, as well as the experience of sinful and
+imperfect men, and had sought to 'wind himself too high for mortal life
+beneath the sky.' And yet Paul's prayers are God's promises; and we are
+justified in taking these rapturous petitions as being distinct
+declarations of God's desire and purpose for each of us; as being the
+end which He had in view in the unspeakable gift of His Son; and as
+being the certain outcome of His gracious working on all believing
+hearts.
+
+It seems at first a paradoxical impossibility; looked at more deeply and
+carefully it becomes a possibility for each of us, and therefore a duty;
+a certainty for all the redeemed in fullest measure hereafter; and,
+alas! a rebuke to our low lives and feeble expectations. Let us look,
+then, at the petition, with the desire of sounding, as we may, its
+depths and realising its preciousness.
+
+I. First of all, think with me of the significance of this prayer.
+
+'The fulness of God' is another expression for the whole sum and
+aggregate of all the energies, powers, and attributes of the divine
+nature, the total Godhead in its plenitude and abundance.
+
+'God is love,' we say. What does that mean, but that God desires to
+impart His whole self to the creatures whom He loves? What is love in
+its lofty and purest forms, even as we see them here on earth; what is
+love except the infinite longing to bestow one's self? And when we
+proclaim that which is the summit and climax of the revelation of our
+Father in the person of His Son, and say with the last utterances of
+Scripture that 'God is love,' we do in other words proclaim that the
+very nature and deepest desire and purpose of the divine heart is to
+pour itself on the emptiness and need of His lowly creatures in floods
+that keep back nothing. Lofty, wonderful, incomprehensible to the mere
+understanding as this thought may be, clearly it is the inmost meaning
+of all that Scripture tells us about God as being the 'portion of His
+people,' and about us, as being by Christ and in Christ 'heirs of God,'
+and possessors of Himself.
+
+We have, then, as the promise that gleams from these great words, this
+wonderful prospect, that the divine love, truth, holiness, joy, in all
+their rich plenitude of all-sufficient abundance, may be showered upon
+us. The whole Godhead is our possession; for the fulness of God is no
+far-off remote treasure that lies beyond human grasp and outside of
+human experience. Do not we believe that, to use the words of this
+Apostle in another letter, 'it pleased the Father that in Him should all
+the fulness dwell'? Do we not believe that, to use the words of the same
+epistle, 'In Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily'? Is
+not that abundance of the resources of the whole Deity insphered and
+incarnated in Jesus Christ our Lord, that it may be near us, and that we
+may put out our hand and touch it? This may be a paradox for the
+understanding, full of metaphysical puzzles and cobwebs, but for the
+heart that knows Christ, most true and precious. God is gathered into
+Jesus Christ, and all the fulness of God, whatever that may mean, is
+embodied in the Man Christ Jesus, that from Him it may be communicated
+to every soul that will.
+
+For, to quote other words of another of the New Testament teachers, 'Of
+His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace,' and to quote
+words in another part of the same epistle, we may 'all come to a perfect
+man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.' High
+above us, then, and inaccessible though that awful thought, 'the fulness
+of God,' may seem, as the zenith of the unscaleable heavens seems to us
+poor creatures creeping here upon the flat earth, it comes near, near,
+near, ever nearer, and at last tabernacles among us, when we think that
+in Him all the fulness dwells, and it comes nearer yet and enters into
+our hearts when we think that 'of His fulness have we all received.'
+
+Then, still further, observe another of the words in this
+petition:--'That ye may be filled.' That is to say, Paul's prayer and
+God's purpose and desire concerning us is, that our whole being may be
+so saturated and charged with an indwelling divinity as that there shall
+be no room in our present stature and capacity for more, and no sense of
+want or aching emptiness.
+
+Ah, brethren! when we think of how eagerly we have drunk at the stinking
+puddles of earth, and how after every draught there has yet been left a
+thirst that was pain, it is something for us to hear Him say:--'The
+water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up
+into everlasting life,'--and 'he that drinketh of this water shall never
+thirst.' Our empty hearts, with their experiences of the insufficiency
+and the vanity of all earthly satisfaction, stand there like the
+water-pots at the rustic marriage, and the Master says, 'Fill them to
+the brim.' And then, by His touch, the water of our poor savourless,
+earthly enjoyments is transmuted and elevated into the new wine of His
+Kingdom. We may be filled, satisfied with the fulness of God.
+
+There is another point as to the significance of this prayer, on which I
+must briefly touch. As our Revised Version will tell you, the literal
+rendering of my text is, 'filled _unto_' (not exactly _with_) 'all the
+fulness of God'; which suggests the idea not of a completed work but of
+a process, and of a growing process, as if more and more of that great
+fulness might pass into a man. Suppose a number of vessels, according to
+the old illustration about degrees of glory in heaven; they are each
+full, but the quantity that one contains is much less than that which
+the other may hold. Add to the illustration that the vessels can grow,
+and that filling makes them grow; as a shrunken bladder when you pass
+gas into it will expand and round itself out, and all the creases will
+be smoothed away. Such is the Apostle's idea here, that a process of
+filling goes on which may satisfy the then desires, because it fills us
+up to the then capacities of our spirits; but in the very process of so
+filling and satisfying makes those spirits capable of containing larger
+measures of His fulness, which therefore flow into it. Such, as I take
+it, in rude and faint outline, is the significance of this great prayer.
+
+II. Now turn, in the next place, to consider briefly the possibility of
+the accomplishments of this petition.
+
+As I said, it sounds as if it were too much to desire. Certainly no wish
+can go beyond this wish. The question is, can a sane and humble wish go
+as far as this; and can a man pray such a prayer with any real belief
+that he will get it answered here and now? I say yes!
+
+There are two difficulties that at once start up.
+
+People will say, does such a prayer as this upon man's lips not forget
+the limits that bound the creature's capacity? Can the finite contain
+the Infinite?
+
+Well, that is a verbal puzzle, and I answer, yes! The finite can contain
+the Infinite, if you are talking about two hearts that love, one of them
+God's and one of them mine. We have got to keep very clear and distinct
+before our minds the broad, firm line of demarcation between the
+creature and the Creator, or else we get into a pantheistic region where
+both creature and Creator expire. But there is a Christian as well as an
+atheistic pantheism, and as long as we retain clearly in our minds the
+consciousness of the personal distinction between God and His child, so
+as that the child can turn round and say, 'I love Thee' and God can look
+down and say, 'I bless thee'; then all identification and mutual
+indwelling and impartation from Him of Himself are possible, and are
+held forth as the aim and end of Christian life.
+
+Of course in a mere abstract and philosophical sense the Infinite cannot
+be contained by the finite; and attributes which express infinity, like
+omnipresence and omniscience and omnipotence and so on, indicate things
+in God that we can know but little about, and that cannot be
+communicated. But those are not the divinest things in God. 'God is
+love.' Do you believe that that saying unveils the deepest things in
+Him? God is light, 'and in Him is no darkness at all.' Do you believe
+that His light and His love are nearer the centre than these attributes
+of power and infinitude? If we believe that, then we can come back to my
+text and say, 'The love, which is Thee, can come into me; the light,
+which is Thee, can pour itself into my darkness; the holiness, which is
+Thee, can enter into my impurity. The heaven of heavens cannot contain
+Thee. Thou dwellest in the humble and in the contrite heart.'
+
+So, dear brethren, the old legends about mighty forms that contracted
+their stature and bowed their divine heads to enter into some poor man's
+hut, and sit there, are simple Christian realities. And instead of
+puzzling ourselves with metaphysical difficulties which are mere
+shadows, and the work of the understanding or the spawn of words, let us
+listen to the Christ when He says, 'We will come unto him and make our
+abode with him' and believe that it was no impossibility which fired the
+Apostle's hope when he prayed, and in praying prophesied, that we might
+be filled with all the fulness of God.
+
+Then there is another difficulty that rises before our minds; and
+Christian men say, 'How is it possible, in this region of imperfection,
+compassed with infirmity and sin as we are, that such hopes should be
+realised for us here?' Well, I would rather answer that question by
+retorting and saying: 'How is it possible that such a prayer should have
+come from inspired lips unless the thing that Paul was asking might be?'
+Did he waste his breath when he thus prayed? Are we not as Christian men
+bound, instead of measuring our expectations by our attainments, to try
+to stretch our attainments to what are our legitimate expectations, and
+to hear in these words the answer to the faithless and unbelieving doubt
+whether such a thing is possible, and the assurance that it is possible.
+
+An impossibility can never be a duty, and yet we are commanded: 'Be ye
+perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.' An impossibility can
+never be a duty, and yet we are commanded to let Christ abide in our
+hearts.
+
+Oh! if we believed less in the power of our sin it would have less power
+upon us. If we believed more in the power of an indwelling Christ He
+would have more power within us. If we said to ourselves, 'It is
+possible,' we should make it possible. The impossibility arises only
+from our own weakness, from our own sinful weakness; and though it may
+be true, and is true, that none of us will live without sin as long as
+we abide here, it is also true that each moment of interruption of our
+communion with Christ and therefore each moment of interruption of that
+being 'filled with the fulness of God,' might have been avoided. We know
+about every such time that we could have helped it if we had liked, and
+it is no use bringing any general principles about sin cleaving to men
+in order to break the force of that conviction. But if that conviction
+be a real one, and if whenever a Christian man loses the consciousness
+of God in his heart, making him blessed, he is obliged to say: 'It was
+my own fault and Thou wouldst have stayed if I had chosen,' then there
+follows from this, that it is possible, notwithstanding all the
+imperfection and sin of earth, that we may be 'filled with all the
+fulness of God.'
+
+So, dear brethren, take you this prayer as the standard of your
+expectations; and oh! take it as we must all take it, as the sharpest of
+rebukes to our actual attainments in holiness and in likeness to our
+Master. Set by the side of these wondrous and solemn words--'filled with
+the fulness of God,' the facts of the lives of the average professing
+Christians of this generation, and of this congregation; their
+emptiness, their ignorance of the divine indwelling, their want of
+anything in their experience that corresponds in the least degree to
+such words as these. Judge whether a man is not more likely to be bowed
+down in wholesome sense of his own sinfulness and unworthiness, if he
+has before him such an ideal as this of my text, than if it, too, has
+faded out of his life. I believe, for my part, that one great cause of
+the worldliness and the sinfulness and mechanical formalities that are
+eating the life out of the Christianity of this generation is the fact
+of the Church having largely lost any real belief in the possibility
+that Christian men may possess the fulness of God as their present
+experience. And so, when they do not find it in themselves they say:
+'Oh! it is all right; it is the necessary result of our imperfect
+fleshly condition.' No! It is all wrong; and His purpose is that we
+should possess Him in the fulness of His gladdening and hallowing power,
+at every moment in our happy lives.
+
+III. One word to close with, as to the means by which this prayer may be
+fulfilled.
+
+Remember, it comes as the last link in a chain. I shall have wasted my
+breath for a month, as far as you are concerned, if you do not feel that
+the preceding links are needful before this can be attained.
+
+But I only touch upon the nearest of them and remind you that it must be
+Christ dwelling in our hearts, that fills them with the fulness of God.
+Where He comes God comes. And where does He come? He comes where faith
+opens the door for Him. If you will trust Jesus Christ, if you will
+distrust yourselves, if you will turn your thoughts and your hearts to
+Him, if you will let Him come into your souls, and not shut Him out
+because your souls are so full that there is no room for Him there, then
+when He comes He will not come empty-handed, but will bring the full
+Godhead with Him.
+
+There must be the emptying of self, if there is to be the filling with
+God. And the emptying of self is realised in that faith which forsakes
+self-confidence, self-righteousness, self-dependence, self-control,
+self-pleasing, and yields itself wholly to the dear Lord.
+
+There is another condition that is required, and that is the previous
+link in this braided chain. The conscious experience of the love which
+is in Christ will bring to us 'the fulness of God.' Love is power; love
+is God; and when we live in the sense and experience of God's love to us
+then we have the power and we have the God. It is as in some of these
+petrifying streams, the water is charged with particles which it
+deposits upon everything that is laid in its course. So, if we plunge
+our hearts into that fountain of the love of Christ, as it flows it will
+clothe us with all the divine energies which are held in solution in the
+divinest thing in God--His own love. Plunged into the love we are filled
+with the fulness.
+
+Then keep near your Master. It all comes to that. Meditate upon Him; do
+not let days pass, as they do pass, without a thought being turned to
+Him. Do not go about your daily work without a remembrance of Him. Keep
+yourselves in Christ. Seek to experience His love, that love which
+passeth knowledge, and is only known by them who possess it. And then,
+as the old painters with deep truth used to paint the Apostle of Love
+with a face like his Master, living near Christ and looking upon Him you
+will receive of His fulness, and 'we all, with open face, beholding the
+glory, shall be changed into the glory.'
+
+
+
+
+MEASURELESS POWER AND ENDLESS GLORY
+
+     'Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all
+     that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
+     21. Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all
+     ages, world without end. Amen.'--Eph. iii. 20, 21.
+
+
+One purpose and blessing of faithful prayer is to enlarge the desires
+which it expresses, and to make us think more loftily of the grace to
+which we appeal. So the Apostle, in the wonderful series of
+supplications which precedes the text, has found his thought of what he
+may hope for his brethren at Ephesus grow greater with every clause. His
+prayer rises like some songbird, in ever-widening sweeps, each higher in
+the blue, and nearer the throne; and at each a sweeter, fuller note.
+
+'Strengthened with might by His Spirit'; 'that Christ may dwell in your
+hearts by faith'; 'that ye may be able to know the love of Christ';
+'that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.' Here he touches
+the very throne. Beyond that nothing can be conceived. But though that
+sublime petition may be the end of thought, it is not the end of faith.
+Though God can give us nothing more than it is, He can give us more than
+we think it to be, and more than we ask, when we ask this. Therefore the
+grand doxology of our text crowns and surpasses even this great prayer.
+The higher true prayer climbs, the wider is its view; and the wider is
+its view, the more conscious is it that the horizon of its vision is far
+within the borders of the goodly land. And as we gaze into what we can
+discern of the fulness of God, prayer will melt into thanksgiving and
+the doxology for the swift answer will follow close upon the last words
+of supplication. So is it here; so it may be always.
+
+The form of our text then marks the confidence of Paul's prayer. The
+exuberant fervour of his faith, as well as his natural impetuosity and
+ardour, comes out in the heaped-up words expressive of immensity and
+duration. He is like some archer watching, with parted lips, the flight
+of his arrow to the mark. He is gazing on God confident that he has not
+asked in vain. Let us look with him, that we, too, may be heartened to
+expect great things of God. Notice then--
+
+I. The measure of the power to which we trust.
+
+This epistle is remarkable for its frequent references to the divine
+rule, or standard, or measure, in accordance with which the great facts
+of redemption take place. The 'things on the earth'--the historical
+processes by which salvation is brought to men and works in men--are
+ever traced up to the 'things in heaven'; the divine counsels from which
+they have come forth. That phrase, 'according to,' is perpetually
+occurring in this connection in the epistle. It is applied mainly in two
+directions. It serves sometimes to bring into view the ground, or
+reason, of the redemptive facts, as, for instance, in the expression
+that these take place 'according to His good pleasure which He hath
+purposed in Himself' It serves sometimes to bring into view the measure
+by which the working of these redemptive facts is determined; as in our
+text, and in many other places.
+
+Now there are three main forms under which this standard, or measure, of
+the Redeeming Power is set forth in this epistle, and it will help us to
+grasp the greatness of the Apostle's thought if we consider these.
+
+Take, then, first, that clause in the earlier portion of the preceding
+prayer, 'that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory.'
+The measure, then, of the gift that we may hope to receive is the
+measure of God's own fulness. The 'riches of His glory' can be nothing
+less than the whole uncounted abundance of that majestic and far-shining
+Nature, as it pours itself forth in the dazzling perfectness of its own
+Self-manifestation. And nothing less than this great treasure is to be
+the limit and standard of His gift to us. We are the sons of the King,
+and the allowance which He makes us even before we come to our
+inheritance is proportionate to our Father's wealth. The same stupendous
+thought is given us in that prayer, heavy with the blessed weight of
+unspeakable gifts, 'that ye might be filled with all the fulness of
+God.' This, then, is the measure of the grace that we may possess. This
+limitless limit alone bounds the possibilities for every man, the
+certainties for every Christian.
+
+The effect must be proportioned to the cause. And what effect will be
+adequate as the outcome of such a cause as 'the riches of His glory'?
+Nothing short of absolute perfectness, the full transmutation of our
+dark, cold being into the reflected image of His own burning brightness,
+the ceaseless replenishing of our own spirits with all graces and
+gladnesses akin to His, the eternal growth of the soul upward and
+Godward. Perfection is the sign manual of God in all His works, just as
+imperfection and the falling below our thought and wish is our 'token in
+every epistle' and deed of ours. Take the finest needle, and put it
+below a microscope, and it will be all ragged and irregular, the fine,
+tapering lines will be broken by many a bulge and bend, and the point
+blunt and clumsy. Put the blade of grass to the same test, and see how
+regular its outline, how delicate and true the spear-head of its point.
+God's work is perfect, man's is clumsy and incomplete. God does not
+leave off till He has finished. When He rests, it is because, looking on
+His work, He sees it all 'very good.' His Sabbath is the Sabbath of an
+achieved purpose, of a fulfilled counsel. The palaces which we build
+are ever like that one in the story, where one window remains dark and
+unjewelled, while the rest blaze in beauty. But when God builds, none
+can say, 'He was not able to finish.' In His great palace He makes her
+'windows of agates' and _all_ her 'borders of pleasant stones.'
+
+So we have a right to enlarge our desires and stretch our confidence of
+what we may possess and become to this, His boundless bound--'The riches
+of glory.'
+
+But another form in which the standard, or measure, is stated in this
+letter is: 'The working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ,
+when He raised Him from the dead' (i. 19, 20); or, as it is put with a
+modification, 'grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ'
+(iv. 7). That is to say, we have not only the whole riches of the divine
+glory as the measure to which we may lift our hopes, but lest that
+celestial brightness should seem too high above us, and too far from us,
+we have Christ in His human-divine manifestation, and especially in the
+great fact of the Resurrection, set before us, that by Him we may learn
+what God wills we should become. The former phase of the standard may
+sound abstract, cloudy, hard to connect with any definite anticipations;
+and so this form of it is concrete, historical, and gives human features
+to the fair ideal. His Resurrection is the high-water mark of the divine
+power, and to the same level it will rise again in regard to every
+Christian. The Lord, in the glory of His risen life, and in the riches
+of the gifts which He received when He ascended up on high, is the
+pattern for us, and the power which fulfils its own pattern. In Him we
+see what man may become, and what His followers must become. The limits
+of that power will not be reached until every Christian soul is
+perfectly assimilated to that likeness, and bears all its beauty in its
+face, nor till every Christian soul is raised to participation in
+Christ's dignity and sits on His throne. Then, and not till then, shall
+the purpose of God be fulfilled and the gift which is measured by the
+riches of the Father's glory, and the fulness of the Son's grace, be
+possessed or conceived in its measureless measure.
+
+But there is a third form in which this same standard is represented.
+That is the form which is found in our text, and in other places of the
+epistle: 'According to the power that worketh in us.'
+
+What power is that but the power of the Spirit of God dwelling in us?
+And thus we have the measure, or standard, set forth in terms
+respectively applying to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. For
+the first, the riches of His glory; for the second, His Resurrection and
+Ascension; for the third, His energy working in Christian souls. The
+first carries us up into the mysteries of God, where the air is almost
+too subtle for our gross lungs; the second draws nearer to earth and
+points us to an historical fact that happened in this everyday world;
+the third comes still nearer to us, and bids us look within, and see
+whether what we are conscious of there, if we interpret it by the light
+of these other measures, will not yield results as great as theirs, and
+open before us the same fair prospect of perfect holiness and conformity
+to the divine nature.
+
+There is already a Power at work within us, if we be Christians, of
+whose workings we may be aware, and from them forecast the measure of
+the gifts which it can bestow upon us. We may estimate what will be by
+what we know has been, and by what we feel is. That is to say, in other
+words, the effects already produced, and the experiences we have already
+had, carry in them the pledge of completeness.
+
+I suppose that if the mediaeval dream had ever come true, and an
+alchemist had ever turned a grain of lead into gold, he could have
+turned all the lead in the world in time, and with crucibles and
+furnaces enough. The first step is all the difficulty, and if you and I
+have been changed from enemies into sons, and had one spark of love to
+God kindled in our hearts, that is a mightier change than any that
+remains to be effected in order to make us perfect. One grain has been
+changed, the whole mass will be so in due time.
+
+The present operations of that power carry in them the pledge of their
+own completion. The strange mingling of good and evil in our present
+nature, our aspirations so crossed and contradicted, our resolution so
+broken and falsified, the gleams of light, and the eclipses that
+follow--all these in their opposition to each other, are plainly
+transitory, and the workings of that Power within us, though they be
+often overborne, are as plainly the stronger in their nature, and meant
+to conquer and to endure. Like some half-hewn block, such as travellers
+find in long abandoned quarries, whence Egyptian temples, that were
+destined never to be completed, were built, our spirits are but partly
+'polished after the similitude of a palace,' while much remains in the
+rough. The builders of these temples have mouldered away and their
+unfinished handiwork will lie as it was when the last chisel touched it
+centuries ago, till the crack of doom; but stones for God's temple will
+be wrought to completeness and set in their places. The whole threefold
+divine cause of our salvation supplies the measure, and lays the
+foundation for our hopes, in the glory of the Father, the grace of the
+Son, the power of the Holy Ghost. Let us lift up our cry: 'Perfect that
+which concerneth me, forsake not the works of thine own hands,' and we
+shall have for answer the ancient word, fresh as when it sounded long
+ago from among the stars to the sleeper at the ladder's foot, 'I will
+not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.'
+
+II. Notice the relation of the divine working to our thoughts and
+desires.
+
+The Apostle in his fervid way strains language to express how far the
+possibility of the divine working extends. He is able, not only to do
+all things, but 'beyond all things'--a vehement way of putting the
+boundless reach of that gracious power. And what he means by this
+'beyond all things' is more fully expressed in the next words, in which
+he labours by accumulating synonyms to convey his sense of the
+transcendent energy which waits to bless: 'exceeding abundantly above
+what we ask.' And as, alas! our desires are but shrunken and narrow
+beside our thoughts, he sweeps a wider orbit when he adds 'above what we
+_think_.' He has been asking wonderful things, and yet even his
+farthest-reaching petitions fall far on this side of the greatness of
+God's power. One might think that even it could go no further than
+filling us 'with all the fulness of God.' Nor can it; but it may far
+transcend our conceptions of what that is, and astonish us by its
+surpassing our thoughts, no less than it shames us by exceeding our
+prayers.
+
+Of course, all this is true, and is meant to apply, only about the
+inward gifts of God's grace. I need not remind you that, in the outer
+world of Providence and earthly gifts, prayers and wishes often surpass
+the answers; that there a deeper wisdom often contradicts our thoughts
+and a truer kindness refuses our petitions, and that so the rapturous
+words of our text are only true in a very modified and partial sense
+about God's working _for_ us in the world. It is His work _in_ us
+concerning which they are absolutely true.
+
+Of course we know that in all regions of His working He is _able_ to
+surpass our poor human conceptions, and that, properly speaking, the
+most familiar, and, as we insolently call them, 'smallest' of His works
+holds in it a mystery--were it none other than the mystery of
+Being--against which Thought has been breaking its teeth ever since men
+began to think at all.
+
+But as regards the working of God on our spiritual lives, this passing
+beyond the bounds of thought and desire is but the necessary result of
+the fact already dealt with, that the only measure of the power is God
+Himself, in that Threefold Being. That being so, no plummet of our
+making can reach to the bottom of the abyss; no strong-winged thought
+can fly to the outermost bound of the encircling heaven. Widely as we
+stretch our reverent conceptions, there is ever something beyond. After
+we have resolved many a dim nebula in the starry sky, and found it all
+ablaze with suns and worlds, there will still hang, faint and far before
+us, hazy magnificences which we have not apprehended. Confidently and
+boldly as we may offer our prayers, and largely as we may expect, the
+answer is ever more than the petition. For indeed, in every act of His
+quickening grace, in every God-given increase of our knowledge of God,
+in every bestowment of His fulness, there is always more bestowed than
+we receive, more than we know even while we possess it. Like some gift
+given in the dark, its true preciousness is not discerned when it is
+first received. The gleam of the gold does not strike our eye all at
+once. There is ever an unknown margin felt by us to be over after our
+capacity of receiving is exhausted. 'And they took up of the fragments
+that remained, twelve baskets full.'
+
+So, then, let us remember that while our thoughts and prayers can never
+reach to the full perception, or reception either, of the gift, the
+exuberant amplitude with which it reaches far beyond both is meant to
+draw both after it. And let us not forget either that, while the grace
+which we receive has no limit or measure but the fulness of God, the
+working limit, which determines what we receive of the grace, is these
+very thoughts and wishes which it surpasses. We may have as much of God
+as we can hold, as much as we wish. All Niagara may roar past a man's
+door, but only as much as he diverts through his own sluice will drive
+his mill, or quench his thirst. God's grace is like the figures in the
+Eastern tales, that will creep into a narrow room no bigger than a
+nutshell, or will tower heaven high. Our spirits are like the magic tent
+whose walls expanded or contracted at the owner's wish--we may enlarge
+them to enclose far more of the grace than we have ever possessed. We
+are not straitened in God, but in ourselves. He is 'able to do exceeding
+abundantly above what we ask or think.' Therefore let us stretch desires
+and thoughts to their utmost, remembering that, while they can never
+reach the measure of His grace in itself, they make the practical
+measure of our possession of it. 'According to thy faith' is the real
+measure of the gift received, even though 'according to the riches of
+His glory' be the measure of the gift bestowed. Note, again,
+
+III. The glory that springs from the divine work.
+
+'The glory of God' is the lustre of His own perfect character, the
+bright sum total of all the blended brilliances that compose His name.
+When that light is welcomed and adored by men, they are said to 'give
+glory to God,' and this doxology is at once a prophecy that the working
+of God's power on His redeemed children will issue in setting forth the
+radiance of His Name yet more, and a prayer that it may. So we have here
+the great thought expressed in many places of Scripture, that the
+highest exhibition of the divine character for the reverence and
+love--of the whole universe, shall we say?--lies in His work on
+Christian souls, and the effect produced thereby on them. God takes His
+stand, so to speak, on this great fact in His dealings, and will have
+His creatures estimate Him by it. He reckons it His highest praise that
+He has redeemed men, and by His dwelling in them fills them with His own
+fulness. And this chiefest praise and brightest glory accrues to Him 'in
+the Church in Christ Jesus.' The weakening of the latter word into _by_
+Christ Jesus,' as in the English version, is to be regretted, as
+substituting another thought, Scriptural no doubt and precious, for the
+precise shade of meaning in the Apostle's mind here. As has been well
+said, 'the first words denote the outward province; the second, the
+inward and spiritual sphere in which God was to be praised.' His glory
+is to shine in the Church, the theatre of His power, the standing
+demonstration of the might of redeeming love. By this He will be judged,
+and this He will point to if any ask what is His divinest work, which
+bears the clearest imprint of His divinest self. His glory is to be set
+forth by men on condition that they are 'in Christ,' living and moving
+in Him, in that mysterious but most real union without which no fruit
+grows on the dead branches, nor any music of praise breaks from the dead
+lips.
+
+So, then, think of that wonder that God sets His glory in His dealings
+with us. Amid all the majesty of His works and all the blaze of His
+creation, this is what He presents as the highest specimen of His
+power--the Church of Jesus Christ, the company of poor men, wearied and
+conscious of many evils, who follow afar off the footsteps of their
+Lord. How dusty and toil-worn the little group of Christians that landed
+at Puteoli must have looked as they toiled along the Appian Way and
+entered Rome! How contemptuously emperor and philosopher and priest and
+patrician would have curled their lips, if they had been told that in
+that little knot of Jewish prisoners lay a power before which theirs
+would cower and finally fade! Even so is it still. Among all the
+splendours of this great universe, and the mere obtrusive tawdrinesses
+of earth, men look upon us Christians as poor enough; and yet it is to
+His redeemed children that God has entrusted His praise, and in their
+hands that He has lodged the sacred deposit of His own glory.
+
+Think loftily of that office and honour, lowly of yourselves who have it
+laid upon you as a crown. His honour is in our hands. We are the
+'secretaries of His praise.' This is the highest function that any
+creature can discharge. The Rabbis have a beautiful bit of teaching
+buried among their rubbish about angels. They say that there are two
+kinds of angels--the angels of service and the angels of praise, of
+which two orders the latter is the higher, and that no angel in it
+praises God twice, but having once lifted up his voice in the psalm of
+heaven, then perishes and ceases to be. He has perfected his being, he
+has reached the height of his greatness, he has done what he was made
+for, let him fade away. The garb of legend is mean enough, but the
+thought it embodies is that ever true and solemn one, without which life
+is nought--'Man's chief end is to glorify God.'
+
+And we can only fulfil that high purpose in the measure of our union
+with Christ. 'In Him' abiding, we manifest God's glory, for in Him
+abiding we receive God's grace. So long as we are joined to Him, we
+partake of His life, and our lives become music and praise. The electric
+current flows from Him through all souls that are 'in Him' and they glow
+with fair colours which they owe to their contact with Jesus. Interrupt
+the communication, and all is darkness. So, brethren, let us seek to
+abide in Him, severed from whom we are nothing. Then shall we fulfil the
+purpose of His love, who 'hath shined in our hearts' that we might give
+to others 'the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
+Jesus Christ' Notice, lastly,
+
+IV. The eternity of the work and of the praise.
+
+As in the former clauses the idea of the transcendent greatness of the
+power of God was expressed by accumulated synonyms, so here the kindred
+thought of its eternity, and consequently of the ceaseless duration of
+the resulting glory, is sought to be set forth by a similar aggregation.
+The language creaks and labours, as it were, under the weight of the
+great conception. Literally rendered, the words are--'to all
+generations of the age of the ages'--a remarkable fusing together of two
+expressions for unbounded duration, which are scarcely congruous. We can
+understand 'to all generations' as expressive of duration as long as
+birth and death shall last. We can understand 'the age of the ages' as
+pointing to that endless epoch whose moments are 'ages'; but the
+blending of the two is but an unconscious acknowledgment that the speech
+of earth, saturated, as it is, with the colouring of time, breaks down
+in the attempt to express the thought of eternity. Undoubtedly that
+solemn conception is the one intended by this strange phrase.
+
+The work is to go on for ever and ever, and with it the praise. As the
+ages which are the beats of the pendulum of eternity come and go, more
+and more of God's power will flow out to us, and more and more of God's
+glory will be manifested in us. It must be so; for God's gift is
+infinite, and man's capacity of reception is indefinitely capable of
+increase. Therefore eternity will be needful in order that redeemed
+souls may absorb all of God which He can give or they can take. The
+process has no limits, for there is no bound to be set to the possible
+approaches of the human spirit to the divine, and none to the exuberant
+abundance of the beauty and glory which God will give to His child.
+Therefore we shall live for ever: and for ever show forth His praise and
+blaze out like the sun with the irradiation of His glory. We cannot die
+till we have exhausted God. Till we comprehend all His nature in our
+thoughts, and reflect all His beauty in our character; till we have
+attained all the bliss that we can think, and received all the good that
+we can ask; till Hope has nothing before her to reach towards, and God
+is left behind: we 'shall not die, but live, and declare the works of
+the Lord.'
+
+Let His grace work on you, and yield yourselves to Him, that His fulness
+may fill your emptiness. So on earth we shall be delivered from hopes
+which mock and wishes that are never fulfilled. So in heaven, after
+'ages of ages' of growing glory, we shall have to say, as each new wave
+of the shoreless, sunlit sea bears us onward, 'It doth not yet appear
+what we shall be.'
+
+
+
+
+THE CALLING AND THE KINGDOM
+
+     'I beseech you, that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye
+      are called.'--Eph. iv. 1.
+
+     'They shall walk with Me in white; for they are worthy.'--Rev.
+      iii. 4.
+
+
+The estimate formed of a centurion by the elders of the Jews was, 'He is
+worthy for whom Thou shouldst do this' and in contrast therewith the
+estimate formed by himself was, 'I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come
+under my roof.' From these two statements we deduce the thought that
+merit has no place in the Christian's salvation, but all is to be traced
+to undeserved, gracious love. But that principle, true and all-important
+as it is, like every other great truth, may be exaggerated, and may be
+so isolated as to become untrue and a source of much evil. And so I
+desire to turn to the other side of the shield, and to emphasise the
+place that worthiness has in the Christian life, and its personal
+results both here and hereafter. To say that character has nothing to do
+with blessedness is untrue, both to conscience and to the Christian
+revelation; and however we trace all things to grace, we must also
+remember that we get what we have fitted ourselves for.
+
+Now, my two texts bring out two aspects which have to be taken in
+conjunction. The one of them speaks about the present life, and lays it
+as an imperative obligation on all Christian people to be worthy of
+their Christianity, and the other carries us into the future and shows
+us that there it is they who are 'worthy' who attain to the Kingdom. So
+I think I shall best bring out what I desire to emphasise if I just take
+these two points--the Christian calling and the life that is worthy of
+it, and the Christian heaven and the life that is worthy of it.
+
+I. The Christian calling and the life that is worthy of it.
+
+'I beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are
+called.' Now, that thought recurs in other places in the Apostle's
+writings, somewhat modified in expression. For instance, in one passage
+he speaks of 'walking worthily of the God who has called us to His
+kingdom and glory,' and in another of the Christian man's duty to 'walk
+worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing.' There is a certain vocation to
+which a Christian man is bound to make his life correspond, and his
+conduct should be in some measure worthy of the ideal that is set before
+it. Now, we shall best understand what is involved in such worthiness if
+we make clear to ourselves what the Apostle means by this 'calling' to
+which he appeals as containing in itself a standard to which our lives
+are to be conformed.
+
+Suppose we try to put away the technical word 'calling' and instead of
+'calling' say 'summons,' which is nearer the idea, because it conveys
+the notions more fully of the urgency of the voice, and of the
+authority of the voice, which speaks to us. And what is that summons?
+How do we hear it? One of the other Apostles speaks of God as calling us
+'by His own glory and virtue,' that is to say, wherever God reveals
+Himself in any fashion, and by any medium, to a man, the man fails to
+understand the deepest meaning of the revelation unless his purged ear
+hears in it the great voice saying, 'Come up hither.' For all God's
+self-manifestation, in the creatures around us, in the deep voice of our
+own souls, in the mysteries of our own personal lives, and in the slow
+evolution of His purpose through the history of the world, all these
+revelations of God bear in them the summons to us that hear and see them
+to draw near to Him, and to mould ourselves into His likeness. And thus,
+just as the sun by the effluence of its beams gathers all the
+ministering planets, as it were, round its feet, and draws them to
+itself, so God, raying Himself out into the waste, fills the waste with
+magnetic influences which are meant to draw men to nobleness, goodness,
+God-pleasingness, and God-likeness.
+
+But in another place in this Apostle's writings we read of 'the high
+calling of God in Christ Jesus.' Yes, there, as focussed into one strong
+voice, all the summonses are concentrated and gathered. For in Jesus
+Christ we see the possibilities of humanity realised, and we have the
+pattern of what we ought to be, and are called thereby to be. And in
+Christ we get the great motives which make this summons, as it comes
+mended from His lips, no longer the mere harsh voice of an authoritative
+legislator, but the gentle invitation, 'Come unto Me, ... and ye shall
+find rest unto your souls.' The summons is honeyed, sweetened, and made
+infinitely mightier when we hear it from His gracious lips. It is the
+blessed peculiarity of the Christian ideal, that the manifestation of
+the ideal carries with it the power to realise it. And just as the
+increasing strength of the spring sunshine summons the buds from out of
+their folds, and the snowdrops hear the call and force themselves
+through the frozen soil, so when Christ summons He inclines the ears
+that hear, and enables the men that own them to obey the summons, and to
+be what they are commanded. And thus we have 'the high calling of God in
+Christ Jesus.'
+
+Now, if that is the call, if the life of Christ is that to which we are
+summoned, and the death of Christ is that by which we are inclined to
+obey the summons, and the Spirit of Christ is that by which we are
+enabled to do so, what sort of a life will be worthy of these? Well, the
+context supplies part of the answer. 'I beseech you that ye walk worthy
+of the vocation ... with all meekness and lowliness, with
+long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.' That is one side of the
+vocation, and the life that is worthy of it will be a life emancipated
+from the meanness of selfishness, and delivered from the tumidities of
+pride and arrogance, and changed into the sweetness of gentleness and
+the royalties of love.
+
+And then, on the other side, in one of the other texts where the same
+general set of ideas is involved, we get a yet more wondrous exhibition
+of the life which the Apostle considered to be worthy. I simply
+signalise its points of detail without venturing to dwell upon them.
+'Unto all pleasing'; the first characteristic of life that is 'worthy of
+our calling' and to which, therefore, every one of us Christian people
+is imperatively bound, is that it shall, in all its parts, please God,
+and that is a large demand. Then follow details: 'Fruitful in every good
+work'--a many-sided fruitfulness, an encyclopaediacal beneficent
+activity, covering all the ground of possible excellence; and that is
+not all; 'increasing in the knowledge of God,'--a life of progressive
+acquaintance with Him; and that is not all:--'strengthened with all
+might unto all patience and long-suffering'; nor is that all, for the
+crown of the whole is 'giving thanks unto the Father.' So, then, 'ye see
+your calling, brethren.' A life that is 'worthy of the vocation
+wherewith ye are called' is a life that conforms to the divine will,
+that is 'fruitful in all good,' that is progressive in its acquaintance
+with God, that is strengthened for all patience and long-suffering, and
+that in everything is thankful to Him. That is what we are summoned to
+be, and unless we are in some measure obeying the summons, and bringing
+out such a life in our conduct, then, notwithstanding all that we have
+to say about unmerited mercy, and free grace, and undeserved love, and
+salvation being not by works but by faith, we have no right to claim the
+mercy to which we say we trust.
+
+Now, this necessity of a worthy life is perfectly harmonious with the
+great truth that, after all, every man owes all to the undeserved mercy
+of God. The more nearly we come to realise the purpose of our calling,
+the more 'worthy' of it we are, the deeper will be our consciousness of
+our unworthiness. The more we approximate to the ideal, and come closer
+up to it, and so see its features the better, the more we shall feel how
+unlike we are to it. The law for Christian progress is that the sense of
+unworthiness increases in the precise degree in which the worthiness
+increases. The same man that said, 'Of whom (sinners) I am chief,' said
+to the same reader, 'I have kept the faith, henceforth there is laid up
+for me a crown of righteousness.' And so the two things are not
+contradictory but complementary. On the one side 'worthy' has nothing to
+do with the outflow of Christ's love to us; on the other side we are to
+'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called.'
+
+II. And now, let us turn to the other thought, the Christian heaven and
+the life that is worthy of it.
+
+Some of you, I have no doubt, would think that that was a tremendous
+heresy if there were not Scriptural words to buttress it. Let us see
+what it means. My text out of the Revelation says, 'They shall walk with
+Me in white, for they are worthy.' And the same voice that spake these,
+to some of us, astounding, words, said, when He was here on earth, 'They
+which shall be counted worthy to attain to the life of the resurrection
+from the dead,' etc. The text brings out very clearly the continuity and
+congruity between the life on earth and the life in heaven. Who is it of
+whom it is said that 'they are worthy' to 'walk in white'? It is the
+'few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments.' You
+see the connection; clean robes here and shining robes hereafter; the
+two go together, and you cannot separate them. And no belief that
+salvation, in its incipient germ here, and salvation in its fulness
+hereafter, are the results 'not of works of righteousness which we have
+done, but of His mercy,' is to be allowed to interfere with that other
+truth that they who are worthy attain to the Kingdom.
+
+I must not be diverted from my main purpose, tempting as the theme would
+be, to say more than just a sentence about what is included in that
+great promise, 'They shall walk with Me in white' And if I do touch
+upon it at all, it is only in order to bring out more clearly that the
+very nature of the heavenly reward demands this worthiness which the
+text lays down as the condition of possessing it. 'They shall
+walk'--activity on an external world. That opens a great door, but
+perhaps we had better be contented just with looking in. 'They shall
+walk'--progress; 'with me'--union with Jesus Christ; 'in
+white'--resplendent purity of character. Now take these four
+things--activity on an outward universe, progress, union with Christ,
+resplendent purity of character, and you have almost all that we know of
+the future; the rest is partly doubtful and is mostly symbolical or
+negative, and in any case subordinate. Never mind about 'physical
+theories of another life'; never mind about all the questions--to some
+of us how torturing they sometimes are!--concerning that future life.
+The more we keep ourselves within the broad limits of these promises
+that are intertwined and folded up together in that one saying, 'They
+shall walk with Me in white,' the better, I think, for the sanity and
+the spirituality of our conception of a future life.
+
+That being understood, the next thing clearly follows, that only those
+who in the sense of the word as it is used here, are 'worthy,' can enter
+upon the possession of such a heaven. From the nature of the gift it is
+clear that there must be a moral and religious congruity between the
+gift and the recipient, or, to put it into plainer words, you cannot get
+heaven unless your nature is capable of receiving these great gifts
+which constitute heaven. People talk about the future state as being 'a
+state of retribution.' Well! that is not altogether a satisfactory form
+of expression, for retribution may convey the idea, such as is
+presented in earthly rewards and punishments, of there being no natural
+correspondence between the crime and its punishment, or the virtue and
+its reward. A bit of bronze shaped into the form of a cross may be the
+retribution 'For Valour,' and a prison cell may be the retribution by
+legal appointment for a certain crime. But that is not the way that God
+deals out rewards and punishments in the life which is to come. It is
+not a case of retribution, meaning thereby the arbitrary bestowment of a
+certain fixed gift in response to certain virtues, but it is a case of
+_outcome_, and the old metaphor of sowing and reaping is the true one.
+We sow here and we reap yonder. We pass into that future, 'bringing our
+sheaves with us,' and we have to grind the corn and make bread of it,
+and we have to eat the work of our own hands. They drink as they have
+brewed. 'Their works do follow them,' or they go before them and
+'receive them into everlasting habitations.' Outcome, the necessary
+result, and not a mere arbitrary retribution, is the relation which
+heaven bears to earth.
+
+That is plain, too, from our own nature. We carry ourselves with us
+wherever we go. The persistence of character, the continuity of personal
+being, the continuity of memory, the _unobliterable_--if I may coin a
+word--results upon ourselves of our actions, all these things make it
+certain that what looks to us a cleft, deep and broad, between the
+present life and the next, is to those that have passed it, and see it
+from the other side, but a little crack in the soil scarcely observable,
+and that we carry on into another world the selves that we have made
+here. Whatever death does--and it does a great deal that we do not know
+of--it does not alter, it only brings out, and, as I suppose,
+intensifies, the main drift and set of a character. And so they who
+'have not defiled their garments shall walk with Me in white, for they
+are worthy.'
+
+Ah, brethren! how solemn that makes life; the fleeting moment carries
+Eternity in its bosom. It passes, and the works pass, but nothing human
+ever dies, and we bear with us the net results of all the yesterdays
+into that eternal to-day. You write upon a thin film of paper and there
+is a black leaf below it. Yes, and below the black leaf there is another
+sheet, and all that you write on the top one goes through the dark
+interposed page, and is recorded on the third, and one day that will be
+taken out of the book, and you will have to read it and say, 'What I
+have written I have written.'
+
+So, dear friends, whilst we begin with that unmerited love, and that
+same unmerited love is the sole ground on which the gates of the kingdom
+of heaven are by the Death and Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus
+Christ opened to believers, their place there depends not only on faith
+but on the work which is the fruit of faith. There is such a thing as
+being 'saved yet so as by fire,' and there is such a thing as 'having an
+entrance ministered abundantly unto us'; we have to make the choice.
+There is such a thing as the sore punishment of which they are thought
+worthy who have rejected the Son of God, and counted the blood of the
+Covenant an unholy thing; and there is such a thing as a man saying, 'I
+am not worthy that Thou shouldest come unto me,' and Christ answering,
+'He shall walk with Me in white, for he is worthy' and we have to make
+that choice also.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREEFOLD UNITY
+
+     'One Lord, one faith, one baptism.'--Eph. iv. 5.
+
+
+The thought of the unity of the Church is very prominent in this
+epistle. It is difficult for us, amidst our present divisions, to
+realise how strange and wonderful it then was that a bond should have
+been found which drew together men of all nations, ranks, and
+characters. Pharisee and philosopher, high-born women and slaves, Roman
+patricians and gladiators, Asiatic Greeks and Syrian Jews forgot their
+feuds and sat together as one in Christ. It is no wonder that Paul in
+this letter dwells so long and earnestly on that strange fact. He is
+exhorting here to a unity of spirit corresponding to it, and he names a
+seven-fold oneness--one body and one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one
+faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. The outward institution
+of the Church, as a manifest visible fact, comes first in the catalogue.
+One Father is last, and between these there lie the mention of the one
+Spirit and the one Lord. The 'body' is the Church. 'Spirit, Lord, God,'
+are the triune divine personality. Hope and faith are human acts by
+which men are joined to God; Baptism is the visible symbol of their
+incorporation into the one body. These three clauses of our text may be
+considered as substantially including all the members of the series. We
+deal with them quite simply now, and consider them in the order in which
+they stand here.
+
+I. The one Lord.
+
+The deep foundation of Christian unity is laid in the divine Christ.
+Here, as generally in the New Testament, the name 'Lord' designates
+Christ in His authority as ruler of men and in His divinity as
+Incarnation of God. It would not be going too far to suggest that we
+have in the name, standing as it does, for the most part, in majestic
+simplicity, a reference to the Old Testament name of Jehovah, which in
+the Greek translation familiar to Paul is generally rendered by this
+same word. Nor can we ignore the fact that in this great catalogue of
+the Christian unities the Lord stands in the centre of the three
+personalities named, and is regarded as being at once the source of the
+Spirit and the manifestation of the Father. The place which this name
+occupies in relation to the Faith which is next named suggests that the
+living personal Christ is the true uniting principle amongst men. The
+one body realises its oneness in its common relation to the one Lord. It
+is one, not because of identity in doctrine, not because of any of the
+bonds which hold men together in human associations, precious and sacred
+as many of these are, but 'we being many are one bread, for we are all
+partakers of that one bread.' The magnet draws all the particles to
+itself and holds them in a mysterious unity.
+
+II. One faith.
+
+The former clause set forth in one great name all the objective elements
+of the Church's oneness; this clause sets forth, with equally
+all-comprehending simplicity, the subjective element which makes a
+Christian. The one Lord, in the fulness of His nature and the
+perfectness of His work, is the all-inclusive object of faith. He, in
+His own living person, and not any dogmas about Him, is regarded as the
+strong support round which the tendrils of faith cling and twine and
+grow. True, He is made known to us as possessing certain attributes and
+as doing certain things which, when stated in words, become doctrines,
+and a Christ without these will never be the object of faith. The
+antithesis which is so often drawn between Christ's person and Christian
+doctrines is by no means sound, though the warning not to substitute the
+latter for the former is only too necessary at all times.
+
+The subjective act which lays hold of Christ is faith, which in our text
+has its usual meaning of saving trust, and is entirely misconceived if
+it is taken, as it sometimes is, to mean the whole body of beliefs which
+make up the Christian creed. That which unites us to Jesus Christ is an
+infinitely deeper thing than the acceptance of any creed. A man may
+believe thirty-nine or thirty-nine hundred articles without having any
+real or vital connection with the one Lord. The faith which saves is the
+outgoing of the whole self towards Christ. In it the understanding, the
+emotions, and the will are all in action. The New Testament _faith_ is
+absolutely identical with the Old Testament _trust_, and the prophet who
+exhorted Israel, 'Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah
+is everlasting strength,' was preaching the very same message as the
+Apostle who cried, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be
+saved.'
+
+That 'saving faith' is the same in all Christians, however different
+they may be in condition and character and general outlook and opinion
+upon many points of Christian knowledge. The things on which they differ
+are on the surface, and sometimes by reason of their divergencies
+Christians stand like frowning cliffs that look threateningly at one
+another across a narrow gorge, but deep below ground they are continuous
+and the rock is unbroken. In many and melancholy ways 'the unity of
+faith and knowledge' is contradicted in the existing organisations of
+the Church, and we are tempted to postpone its coming to the day of the
+new Jerusalem which is compact together; but the clarion note of this
+great text may encourage us to hope, and to labour in our measure for
+the fulfilment of the hope, that all, who by one faith have been joined
+to the one Lord, may yet know themselves to be one in Him, and present
+to the world the fair picture of one body animated by one spirit.
+
+III. One baptism.
+
+Obviously in Paul's mind baptism here means, not the baptism with the
+Spirit, but the rite, one and the same for all, by which believers in
+Christ enter into the fellowship of the Church. It was then a perpetual
+rite administered as a matter of course to all who professed to have
+been joined to the one Lord by their one faith. The sequence in the
+three clauses of our text is perfectly clear. Baptism is the expression
+and consequence of the faith which precedes it. Surely there is here a
+most distinct implication that it is a declaration of personal faith.
+Without enlarging on the subject, I venture to think that the order of
+the Apostle's thought negatives other conceptions of Christian baptism,
+such as, that it is a communication of Grace, or an expression of the
+feelings and desires of parents, or a declaration of some truth about
+redeemed humanity. Paul's order is Christ's when He said, 'He that
+believeth and is baptized shall be saved.'
+
+It is very remarkable and instructive that whilst thus our text shows
+that baptism was a matter of course and universally practised, the
+references to it in the epistles are so few. The inference is not that
+it was neglected, but that, as being a rite, it could not be as
+important as were Christian truths and Christian character. May we, in a
+word, suggest the contrast between the frequency and tone of the
+Apostolic references to baptism and those which we find in many quarters
+to-day?
+
+It is remarkable that here the Lord's Supper is not mentioned, and all
+the more so, that in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the passage which
+we have already quoted does put emphasis upon it as a token of Christian
+unity. The explanation of the omission may be found in the fact that, in
+these early days, the Lord's Supper was not a separate rite, but was
+combined with ordinary meals, or perhaps more probably in the
+consideration that baptism was what the Lord's Supper was not--an
+initial rite which incorporated the possessors of one faith into the one
+body.
+
+
+
+
+'THE MEASURE OF GRACE'
+
+     'But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the
+      measure of the gift of Christ.'--Eph. iv. 7 (R.V.).
+
+
+The Apostle here makes a swift transition from the thought of the unity
+of the Church to the variety of gifts to the individual. 'Each' is
+contrasted with 'all.' The Father who stands in so blessed and gracious
+a relationship to the united whole also sustains an equally gracious and
+blessed relationship to each individual in that whole. It is because
+each receives His individual gift that God works in all. The Christian
+community is the perfection of individualism and of collectivism, and
+this rich variety of the gifts of grace is here urged as a reason
+additional to the unity of the one body, for the exhortation to the
+endeavour to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
+
+I. Each Christian soul receives grace through Christ.
+
+The more accurate rendering of the Revised Version reads '_the_ grace,'
+and the definite article points to it as a definite and familiar fact in
+the Ephesian believers to which the Apostle could point with the
+certainty that their own consciousness would confirm his statement. The
+wording of the Greek further implies that the grace was given at a
+definite point in the past, which is most naturally taken to have been
+the moment in which each believer laid hold on Jesus by faith. It is
+further to be noted that the content of the gift is the grace itself and
+not the graces which are its product and manifestation in the Christian
+life. And this distinction, which is in accordance with Paul's habitual
+teaching, leads us to the conclusion, that the essential character of
+the grace given through the act of our individual faith is that of a new
+vital force, flowing into and transforming the individual life. From
+that unspeakable gift which Paul supposed to be verifiable by the
+individual experience of every Christian, there would follow the graces
+of Christian character in which would be included the deepening and
+purifying of all the natural capacities of the individual self, and the
+casting out from thence of all that was contrary to the transforming
+power of the new life.
+
+Such an utterance as this, so quietly and confidently taking for granted
+that the experience of every believer verifies it in his own case, may
+well drive us all to look more earnestly into our own hearts, to see
+whether in them are any traces of a similar experience. If it be true,
+that to every one of us is given _the_ grace, how comes it that so many
+of us dare not profess to have any vivid remembrance of possessing it,
+of having possessed it, or of any clear consciousness of possessing it
+now? There may be gifts bestowed upon unconscious receivers, but surely
+this is not one of these. If we do not know that we have it, it must at
+least remain very questionable whether we do have it at all, and very
+certain that we have it in scant and shrivelled fashion.
+
+The universality of the gift was a startling thing in a world which, as
+far as cultivated heathenism was concerned, might rightly be called
+aristocratic, and by the side of a religion of privilege into which
+Judaism had degenerated. The supercilious sarcasm in the lips of
+Pharisees, 'This people which knoweth not the law are cursed,' but too
+truly expresses the gulf between the Rabbis and the 'folk of the earth'
+as the masses were commonly and contemptuously designated by the former.
+Into the midst of a society in which such distinctions prevailed, the
+proclamation that the greatest gift was bestowed upon all must have come
+with revolutionary force, and been hailed as emancipation. Peter had
+penetrated to grasp the full meaning and wondrous novelty of that
+universality, when on Pentecost he pointed to 'that which had been
+spoken by the prophet Joel' as fulfilled on that day, 'I will pour forth
+of my Spirit upon all flesh ... Yea, and on my servants and handmaidens
+... will I pour forth of my Spirit.' The rushing, mighty wind of that
+day soon dropped. The fiery tongues ceased to quiver on the disciples'
+heads, and the many voices that spoke were silenced, but the gift was
+permanent, and is poured out now as it was then, and now, as then, it is
+true that the whole company of believers receive the Spirit, though
+alas! by their own faults it is not true that 'they are all _filled_
+with the Holy Spirit.'
+
+Christ is the giver. He has 'power over the Spirit of Holiness' and as
+the Evangelist has said in his comment on our Lord's great words, when
+'He stood and cried,' 'If any man thirst let him come unto Me and
+drink,' 'This spake He of the Spirit which they that believed on Him
+were to receive.' We cannot pierce into the depth of the mutual
+relations of the three divine Persons mentioned in the context, but we
+can discern that Christ is for us the self-revealing activity of the
+divine nature, the right arm of the Father, or, to use another metaphor,
+the channel through which the else 'closed sea' of God flows into the
+world of creatures. Through that channel is poured into believing hearts
+the river of the water of life, which proceeds out of the one 'throne of
+God and of the Lamb.' This gift of the Spirit of Holiness to all
+believers is the deepest and truest conception of Christ's gifts to His
+Church. His past work of sacrifice for the sins of the world was
+finished, as with a parting cry He proclaimed on Calvary, and the power
+of that sacrifice will never be exhausted, but the taking away of the
+sins of the world is but the initial stage of the work of Christ, and
+its further stages are carried on through all the ages. He 'worketh
+hitherto,' and His present work, in so far as believers are concerned,
+is not only the forthputting of divine energy in regard to outward
+circumstances, but the imparting to them of the Divine Spirit to be the
+very life of their lives and the Lord of their spirits. Christian people
+are but too apt to give undue prominence to what Christ did for them
+when He died, and to lose sight, in the overwhelming lustre of His
+unspeakable sacrifice, of what He is doing for them whilst He lives. It
+would tend to restore the proportions of Christian truth and to touch
+our hearts into a deeper and more continuous love to Him, if we more
+habitually thought of Him, not only as the Christ who died, but also as
+the Christ who rather is risen again, who is even at the right hand of
+God, who also maketh intercession for us.
+
+II. The gift of this grace is in itself unlimited.
+
+Our text speaks of it as being according to the measure of the gift of
+Christ, and that phrase may either mean the gift which Christ receives
+or that which He gives. Probably the latter is the Apostle's meaning
+here, as seems to be indicated by the following words that 'when He
+ascended on high, He gave gifts unto men,' but what He gives is what He
+possesses, and the Apostle goes on to point out that the ultimate issue
+of His giving to the Church is that it attains to the measure of the
+stature of the fulness of Christ.
+
+It may cast some light on this point if we note the remarkable variety
+of expressions in this epistle for the norm or standard or limit of the
+gift. In one place the Apostle speaks of the gift bestowed upon
+believers as being according to the riches of the Father's glory; then
+it has no limit short of a participation in the divine fulness. God's
+glory is the transcendent lustre of His own infinite character in its
+self-manifestation. The Apostle labours to flash through the dim medium
+of words the glory of that light by blending incongruously, but
+effectively, the other metaphor of riches, and the two together suggest
+a wonderful, though vague thought of the infinite wealth and the
+exhaustless brightness which we call Abba, Father. The humblest child
+may lift longing and confident eyes and believe that he has received in
+very deed, through his faith in Jesus Christ, a gift which will increase
+in riches and in light until it makes him perfect as his Father in
+heaven was perfect. It was an old faith, based upon insight far inferior
+to ours, which proclaimed with triumph over the frowns of death. 'I
+shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.' Would that those
+who have so much more for faith to build on, built as nobly as did
+these!
+
+The gift has in itself no limit short of participation in the likeness
+of Christ. In another place in this letter the measure of that might
+which is the guarantee of Christian hope is set forth with an abundance
+of expression which might almost sound as an unmeaning accumulation of
+synonyms, as being 'according to the working of the strength of His
+might which He wrought in Christ'; and what is the range of the working
+of that might is disclosed to our faith in the Resurrection of Jesus,
+and the setting of Him high above all rule and authority and power and
+lordship and every creature in the present or in any future. Paul's
+continual teaching is that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was wrought
+in Him, not as a mere human individual but as our head and
+representative. Through Him we rise, not only from an ethical death of
+sin and separation from God, but we shall rise from physical death, and
+in Him the humblest believer possessing a vital union with the Lord of
+life has a share in His dominion, and, as His own faithful word has
+promised, sits with Him on His throne, even as He is set down with the
+Father on His throne.
+
+That gift has in itself no limit short of its own energy. In another
+part of this epistle the Apostle indicates the measure up to which our
+being filled is to take effect, as being 'all the fulness of God' and in
+such an overwhelming vision breaks forth into fervent praise of Him who
+is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, and
+then supplies us with a measure which may widen and heighten our
+petitions and expectations when He tells us that we are to find the
+measure of God's working for us, not in the impoverishment of our
+present possessions, but in the exceeding riches of the power that
+worketh in us--that is to say, that we are to look for the limit of the
+limitless gift in nothing short of the boundless energy of God Himself.
+In the Epistle to the Colossians Paul uses the same illustration with an
+individual reference to his own labours. In our text he associates with
+himself all believers, as being conscious of a power working in them,
+which is really the limitless power of God, and heartens them to
+anticipate that whatever limitless power can effect in them will
+certainly be theirs. God does not leave off till He has done and till He
+can look upon His completed work and pronounce it very good.
+
+III. This boundless grace is in each individual case bounded for the
+time by our own faith.
+
+When I lived near the New Forest I used to hear much of what they called
+'rolling fences.' A man received or took a little piece of Crown land on
+which he built a house and put round it a fence which could be
+judiciously and silently pushed outwards by slow degrees and enclosed,
+year by year, a wider area. We Christian people have, as it were, our
+own small, cultivated plot on the boundless prairie, the extent of which
+we measure for ourselves and which we can enlarge as we will. We have
+been speaking of the various aspects under which the boundlessness of
+the gift is presented by the Apostle, but there is another 'according
+to' in Christ's own words, 'According to your faith be it unto you,' and
+that statement lays down the practical limits of our present possession
+of the boundless gift. We have as much as we desire; we have as much as
+we take; we have as much as we use; we have as much as we can hold. We
+are admitted into the treasure house, and all around us lie ingots of
+gold and vessels full of coins; we ourselves determine how much of the
+treasure should be ours, and if at any time we feel like empty-handed
+paupers rather than like possible millionaires, the reason lies in our
+own slowness to take that which is freely given to us of God. His word
+to us all is, 'Ye are not straitened in Me, ye are straitened in
+yourselves.' It is well for us to keep ever before us the boundlessness
+of the gift in itself and the working limit in ourselves which
+conditions our actual possession of the riches. For so, on the one hand,
+should we be encouraged to expect great things from God, and, on the
+other hand, be humbled by the contrast between what we might be and what
+we are. The river that rushes full of water from the throne can send but
+a narrow and shallow trickle through the narrow channel choked with much
+rubbish, which we provide for it. It is of little avail that the sun in
+the heavens pours down its flood of light and warmth if the windows of
+our hearts are by our own faults so darkened that but a stray beam,
+shorn of its brightness and warmth, can find its way into our darkness.
+The first lesson which we have to draw from the contrast between the
+boundlessness of the gift and the narrow limits of our individual
+possession and experience of it, is the lesson of penitent recognition
+and confession of the unbelief which lurks in our strongest faith. 'Lord
+I believe, help Thou mine unbelief,' should be the prayer of every
+Christian soul.
+
+Not less surely will the recognition that the form and amount of the
+grace of God, which is possessed by each, is determined by the faith of
+each, lead to tolerance of the diversity of gifts. We have received our
+own proper gift of God, that which the strength and purity of our faith
+is capable of possessing, and it is not for us to carp at our brethren,
+either at those in advance of us or at those behind us. We have to
+remember that as it takes all sorts of people to make up a world, so it
+takes all varieties of Christian character to make a church. It is the
+body and not the individual members which represents Christ to the
+world. The firmest adherence to our own form of the universal gift will
+combine with the widest toleration of the gifts of others. The white
+light appears when red, green, and blue blend together, not when each
+tries to be the other. 'Every man hath his own proper gift of God, one
+after this fashion and another after that,' and we shall be true to the
+boundlessness of the gift and to the limitations of our own possession
+of it, in the measure of which we combine obedience to the light which
+shines in us, with thankful recognition of that which is granted to
+others.
+
+The contrast between these two must be kept vivid if we would live in
+the freedom of the hope of the glory of God, for in the contrast lies
+the assurance of endless growth. A process is begun in every Christian
+soul of which the only natural end is the full possession of God in
+Christ, and that full possession can never be reached by a finite
+creature, but that does not mean that the ideal mocks us and retreats
+before us like the pot of gold, which the children fancy is at the end
+of the rainbow. Rather it means a continuous succession of our
+realisations of the ideal in ever fuller and more blessed reality. In
+this life we may, on condition of our growth in faith, grow in the
+possession of the fulness of God, and yet at each moment that possession
+will be greater, though at all moments we may be filled. In the
+Christian life to-morrow may be safely reckoned as destined to be 'as
+yesterday and much more abundant,' and when we pass from the
+imperfections of the most perfect earthly life, there will still remain
+ever before us the glory, which, according to the measure of our
+capacity, is also in us, and we shall draw nearer and nearer to it, and
+be for ever receiving into our expanding spirits more and more of the
+infinite fulness of God.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOAL OF PROGRESS
+
+     'Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the
+      knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown man, unto the
+      measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.'--Eph. iv. 13
+      (R.V.).
+
+
+The thought of the unity of the Church is much in the Apostle's mind in
+this epistle. It is set forth in many places by his two favourite
+metaphors of the body and the temple, by the relation of husband and
+wife and by the family. It is contemplated in its great historical
+realisation by the union of Jew and Gentile in one whole. In the
+preceding context it is set forth as already existing, but also as lying
+far-off in the future. The chapter begins with an earnest exhortation to
+preserve this unity and with an exhibition of the oneness which does
+really exist in body, spirit, hope, lord, faith, baptism. But the
+Apostle swiftly passes to the corresponding thought of diversity. There
+are varieties in the gifts of the one Spirit; whilst each individual in
+the one whole receives his due portion, there are broad differences in
+spiritual gifts. These differences do not break the oneness, but they
+may tend to do so; they are not causes of separation and do not
+necessarily interfere with unity, but they may be made so. Their
+existence leaves room for brotherly helpfulness, and creates a
+necessity for it. The wiser are to teach; the more advanced are to lead;
+the more largely gifted are to encourage and stimulate the less richly
+endowed. Such outward helps and brotherly impartations of gifts is, on
+the one hand, a result of the one gift to the whole body, and is on the
+other a sign of, because a necessity arising from, the imperfect degree
+in which each individual has received of Christ's fulness; and these
+helps of teaching and guidance have for their sole object to make
+Christian men able to do without them, and are, as the text tells us, to
+cease when, and to last till, we all attain to the fulness of Christ. To
+Paul, then, the manifest unity of the Church was to be the end of its
+earthly course, but it also was real, though incomplete, in the present,
+and the emphasis of our text is not so much laid on telling us when this
+oneness was to be manifested as in showing us in what it consists. We
+have here a threefold expression of the true unity, as consisting in a
+oneness of relation to Christ, a consequent maturity of manhood and a
+perfect possession of all which is in Christ.
+
+I. The true unity is oneness of relation to Christ.
+
+The Revised Version is here to be preferred, and its 'attain unto'
+brings out the idea which the Authorised Version fails to express, that
+the text is intended to point to the period at which Christ's provision
+of helpful gifts to the growing Church is to cease, when the individuals
+composing it have come to their destined unity and maturity in Him. The
+three clauses of our text are each introduced by the same preposition,
+and there is no reason why in the second and third it should be rendered
+'unto' and in the first should be watered down to 'in.'
+
+There are then two regions in which this unity is to be realised. These
+are expressed by the great words, 'the unity of the faith and knowledge
+of the Son of God.' These words are open to a misunderstanding, as if
+they referred to a unity as between faith and knowledge; but it is
+obvious to the slightest reflection that what is meant is the unity of
+all believers in regard to their faith, and in regard to their
+knowledge. It is to be noted that the Apostle has just said that there
+is one faith, now he points to the realisation of that oneness as the
+very end and goal of all discipline and growth. I suppose that we have
+to think here of the manifold and sad differences existing in Christian
+men, in regard to the depth and constancy and formative power of their
+faith. There are some who have it so strong and vigorous that it is a
+vision rather than a faith, a trust, deep and firm and settled, to which
+the present is but the fleeting shadow, and the unseen the eternal and
+only reality; but, alas! there are others in whom the light of faith
+burns feebly and flickers. Nor are these differences the attributes of
+different men, but the same man varies in the power of his faith, and we
+all of us know what it is to have it sometimes dominant over our whole
+selves, and sometimes weak and crushed under the weight of earthly
+passions. To-day we may be all flame, to-morrow all ice. Our faith may
+seem to us to be strong enough to move mountains, and before an hour is
+past we may find it, by experience, to be less than a grain of mustard
+seed. 'Action and reaction are always equal and contrary,' and that law
+is as true in reference to our present spiritual life as it is true in
+regard to physical objects. We have, then, the encouragement of such a
+word as that of our text for looking forward to and straining towards
+the reversal of these sad alterations in a fixed and continuous faith
+which should grasp the whole Christ and should always hold Him. There
+may still be diversities and degrees, but each should have his measure
+always full. 'Thy Sun shall no more go down'; there will no longer be
+the contrast between the flashing waters of a flood-tide and the dreary
+mud-banks disclosed at low water. We shall stand at different points,
+but the faces of all will be turned to Him who is the Light of all, and
+every face will shine with the likeness of His, when we see Him as He
+is.
+
+But our text points us to another form of unity--the oneness of the
+knowledge of the Son of God.
+
+The Apostle uses an emphatic term which is very familiar on his lips to
+designate this knowledge. It means not a mere intellectual apprehension,
+but a profound and vital acquaintance, dependent indeed upon faith, and
+realised in experience. It is the knowledge for which Paul was ready to
+'count all things but loss' that he might know Jesus, and winning which
+he would count himself to 'have apprehended.' The unity in this deep and
+blessed knowledge has nothing to do with identity of opinion on the
+points which have separated Christians. It is not to be sought by
+outward unanimity, nor by aggregation in external communities. The
+Apostle's great thought is made small and the truth of it is falsified
+when it is over-hastily embodied in institutions. It has been sought in
+a uniformity which resembles unity as much as a bundle of faggots, all
+cut to the same length, and tied together with a rope, resemble the tree
+from which they were chopped, waving in the wind and living one life to
+the tips of its furthest branches. Men have made out of the Apostle's
+divine vision of a unity in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God 'a
+staunch and solid piece of framework as any January could freeze
+together,' and few things have stood more in the way of the realisation
+of his glowing anticipations than the formation of the great
+Corporation, imposing from its bulk and antiquity, to part from which
+was branded as breaking the unity of the spirit.
+
+Paul gives no clear definition here of the time when the one body of
+Christian believers should have attained to the unity of the faith and
+knowledge of the Son of God, and the question may not have presented
+itself to him. It may appear that in view of the immediate context he
+regards the goal as one to be reached in our present life, or it may be
+that he is thinking rather of the Future, when the Master 'should bring
+together every joint and member and mould them into an immortal feature
+of loveliness and perfection.' But the time at which this great ideal
+should be attained is altogether apart from the obligation pressing upon
+us all, at all times, to work towards it. Whensoever it is reached it
+will only be by our drawing 'nearer, day by day, each to his brethren,
+all to God,' or rather, each to God and so all to his brethren. Take
+twenty points in a great circle and let each be advanced by one half of
+its distance to the centre, how much nearer will each be to each? Christ
+is our unity, not dogmas, not polities, not rituals: our oneness is a
+oneness of life. We need for our centre no tower with a top reaching to
+heaven, we have a living Lord who is with us, and in Him, we being many,
+are one.
+
+II. Oneness in faith and knowledge knits all into a 'perfect man.'
+
+'Perfect,' the Apostle here uses in opposition to the immediately
+following expression in the next verse, of 'children.' It therefore
+means not so much moral perfection as maturity or fulness of growth. So
+long as we fall short of the state of unity we are in the stage of
+immaturity. When we come to be one in faith and knowledge we have
+reached full-grown manhood. The existence of differences belongs to the
+infancy and boyhood of the Church, and as we grow one we are putting
+away childish things. What a contrast there is between Paul's vision
+here and the tendency which has been too common among Christians to
+magnify their differences, and to regard their obstinate adherence to
+these as being 'steadfastness in the faith'! How different would be the
+relations between the various communities into which the one body has
+been severed, if they all fully believed that their respective
+shibboleths were signs that they had not yet attained, neither were
+already perfect! When we began to be ashamed of these instead of
+glorying in them we should be beginning to grow into the maturity of our
+Christian life.
+
+But the Apostle speaks of 'a perfect man' in the singular and not of
+'men' in the plural, as he has already described the result of the union
+of Jew and Gentile as being the making 'of twain one new man.' This
+remarkable expression sets forth, in the strongest terms, the vital
+unity which connects all members of the one body so closely that there
+is but one life in them all. There are many members, but one body. Their
+functions differ, but the life in them all is identical. The eye cannot
+say to the hand, 'I have no need of thee,' nor again the head to the
+feet, 'I have no need of you.' Each is necessary to the completeness of
+the whole, and all are necessary to make up the one body of Christ. It
+is His life which manifests itself in every member and which gives
+clearness of vision to the eye, strength and deftness to the hand. He
+needs us all for His work on the world and for His revelation to the
+world of the fulness of His life. In some parts of England there are
+bell-ringers who stand at a table on which are set bells, each tuned to
+one note, and they can perform most elaborate pieces of music by swiftly
+catching up and sounding each of these in the right place. All Christian
+souls are needed for the Master's hand to bring out the note of each in
+its place. In the lowest forms of life all vital functions are performed
+by one simple sac, and the higher the creature is in the scale the more
+are its organs differentiated. In the highest form of all, 'as the body
+is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being
+many, are one body, so also is Christ.'
+
+III. This perfect manhood is the possession of all who are in Christ.
+
+The fulness of Christ is the fulness which belongs to Him, or that of
+which He is full. All which He is and has is to be poured into His
+servants, and when all this is communicated to them the goal will be
+reached. We shall be full-grown men, and more wonderful still, we all
+shall make one perfect man, and individual completenesses will blend
+into that which is more complete than any of these, the one body, which
+corresponds to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
+
+This is the goal of humanity in which, and in which alone, the dreams of
+thinkers about perfectibility will become facts, and the longings that
+are deeply rooted in every soul will find their fulfilment. By our
+personal union with Jesus Christ through faith, our individual
+perfection, both in the sense of maturity and in that of the realisation
+of ideal manhood, is assured, and in Him the race, as well as the
+individual, is redeemed, and will one day be glorified. The Utopias of
+many thinkers are but partial and distorted copies of the kingdom of
+Christ. The reality which He brings and imparts is greater than all
+these, and when the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven, and is
+planted on the common earth, it will outvie in lustre and outlast in
+permanence all forms of human association. The city of wisdom which was
+Athens, the city of power which was Rome, the city of commerce which is
+London, the city of pleasure which is Paris, 'pale their ineffectual
+fires' before the city in the light whereof the nations should walk.
+
+The beginning of the process, of which the end is this inconceivable
+participation in the glory of Jesus, is simple trust in Him. 'He that is
+joined to the Lord is one spirit,' and he who trusts in Him, loves Him,
+and obeys Him, is joined to Him, and thereby is started on a course
+which never halts nor stays so long as the faith which started him
+abides, till he 'grows up into Him in all things which is the head, even
+Christ.' The experience of the Christian life as God means it to be, and
+by the communication of His grace makes it possible for it to become, is
+like that of men embarked on some sun-lit ocean, sailing past shining
+headlands, and ever onwards, over the boundless blue, beneath a calm sky
+and happy stars. The blissful voyagers are in full possession at every
+moment of all which they need and of all of His fulness which they can
+contain, but the full possession at every moment increases as they, by
+it, become capable of fuller possession. Increasing capacity brings
+with it increasing participation in the boundless fulness of Him who
+filleth all in all.
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST OUR LESSON AND OUR TEACHER
+
+     'But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard
+      Him, and have been taught in Him.'--Eph. iv. 20, 21.
+
+
+The Apostle has been describing in very severe terms the godlessness and
+corruption of heathenism. He reckons on the assent of the Ephesian
+Christians when he paints the society in which they lived as alienated
+from God, insensible to the restraints of conscience, and foul with all
+uncleanness. That was a picture of heathenism drawn from the life and
+submitted to the judgment of those who knew the original only too well.
+It has been reserved for modern eulogists to regard such statements as
+exaggerations. Those who knew heathenism from the inside knew that they
+were sober truth. The colonnades of the stately temple of Ephesus stank
+with proofs of their correctness.
+
+Out of that mass of moral putridity these Ephesian Christians had been
+dragged. But its effects still lingered in them, and it was all about
+them with its pestilential miasma. So the first thing that they needed
+was to be guarded against it. The Apostle, in the subsequent context,
+with great earnestness gives a series of moral injunctions of the most
+elementary kind. Their very simplicity is eloquent. What sort of people
+must they have formerly been who needed to be bade not to steal and not
+to lie?
+
+But before he comes to the specific duties, he lays down the broad
+general principle of which all these are to be but manifestations--viz.
+that they and we need, as the foundation of all noble conduct and of
+all theoretical ethics, the suppression and crucifixion of the old self
+and the investiture with a new self. And this double necessity, says the
+Apostle in my text, is the plain teaching of Jesus Christ to all His
+disciples.
+
+Now the words which I have selected as my text are but a fragment of a
+closely concatenated whole, but I may deal with them separately at this
+time. They are very remarkable. They lay, as it seems to me, the basis
+for all Christian conduct; and they teach us how there is no real
+knowledge of Jesus Christ which does not effloresce into the practice of
+these virtues and graces which the Apostle goes on to describe.
+
+I. First, Christ our Lesson and Christ our Teacher.
+
+Mark the singular expression with which this text begins. 'Ye have not
+so learned _Christ_.' Now, we generally talk about learning a subject, a
+language, a science, or an art; but we do not talk about learning
+people. But Paul says we are Christ's disciples, not only in the sense
+that we learn of Him as Teacher--which follows in the next clause--but
+that we learn Him as the theme of our study.
+
+That is to say, the relation of the person of Jesus Christ to all that
+He has to teach and reveal to the world is altogether different from
+that of all other teachers of all sorts of truth, to the truth which
+they proclaim. You can accept the truths and dismiss into oblivion the
+men from whom you got them. But you cannot reject Christ and take
+Christianity. The two are inseparably united. For, in regard to all
+spiritual and to all moral truth--truth about conduct and
+character--Jesus Christ _is_ what He teaches. So we may say, turning
+well-known words of a poet in another direction: 'My lesson is in
+Thee.'
+
+But that is not all. My text goes on to speak about another thing: 'Ye
+have learned Christ if so be that ye have _heard Him_ and been taught.'
+Now that 'If so be' is not the 'if' of uncertainty or doubt, but it is
+equivalent to 'if, as I know to be the case,' or '_since_ ye have heard
+Him.' Away there in Ephesus, years and years after the crucifixion,
+these people who had never seen Christ in the flesh, nor heard a word
+from the lips 'into which grace was poured,' are yet addressed by the
+Apostle as those who had listened to Him and heard Him speak. They had
+'heard Him and been taught.' So He was Lesson and He was Teacher. And
+that is as true about us as it was about them. Let me say only a word or
+two about each of these two thoughts.
+
+I have already suggested that the underlying truth which warrants the
+first of them is that Jesus Christ's relation to His message and
+revelation is altogether different from that of other teachers to what
+they have to communicate to the world. Of course we all know that, in
+regard to the wider sphere of religious and Christian truth, it is not
+only what Christ said, but even more what He did and was, that makes His
+revelation of the Father's heart. Precious as are the words which drop
+from His lips, which are spirit and are life, His life itself is more
+than all His teachings; and it is when we learn, not _from_ Him, but
+when we _learn_ Him, that we see the Father. But my text has solely
+reference to conduct, and in that aspect it just implies this thought,
+that the sum of all duty, the height of all moral perfectness, the
+realised ideal of humanity, is in Christ, and that the true way to know
+what a man or a nation ought to do is to study Him.
+
+How strange it is, when one comes to consider it, that the impression
+of absolute perfection, free from all limitations of race or country or
+epoch or individual character--and yet not a vague abstraction but a
+true living Person--has been printed upon the minds and hearts of the
+world by these four little pamphlets which we call gospels! I do not
+think that there is anything in the whole history of literature to
+compare with the impression of veracity and historical reality and
+individual personality which is made by these fragmentary narratives.
+And although it has nothing to do with my present subject, I may just
+say in a sentence that it seems to me that the character of Jesus Christ
+as painted in the Gospels, in its incomparable vividness and vitality,
+is one of the strongest evidences for the simple faithfulness as
+biographies, of these books. Nothing else but the Man seen could have
+resulted in such compositions.
+
+But apart altogether from that, how blessed it is that we have not to
+enter upon any lengthened investigations, far beyond the power of
+average minds, in order to get hold of the fundamental laws of moral
+conduct! How blessed it is that all the harshness of 'Obey this law or
+die' is by His life changed into 'Look at Me, and, for My love's sake,
+study Me and be like Me!' This is the blessed peculiarity which gives
+all its power and distinctive characteristic to the morality of the
+Gospel, that law is changed from a statuesque white ideal, pure as
+marble and cold and lifeless as it, into a living Person with a
+throbbing heart of love, and an outstretched hand of help, whose word
+is, 'If ye love Me, keep My commandments, and be like Me.'
+
+Christian men and women! study Jesus Christ. That is the Alpha and Omega
+of all right knowledge of duty and of all right practice of it. Learn
+Him, His self-suppression, His self-command, His untroubled calmness,
+His immovable patience, His continual gentleness, His constant reference
+of all things to the Father's will. Study these. To imitate Him is
+blessedness; to resemble Him is perfection. 'Ye have learned Christ' if
+you are Christians at all. You have at least begun the alphabet, but oh!
+in Him 'are hid all the treasures,' not only 'of wisdom and knowledge,'
+but of 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report'; and 'if there
+is any virtue, and if there is any praise,' we shall find them in Him
+who is our Lesson, our perfect Lesson.
+
+But that is not all. Lessons are very well, but--dear me!--the world
+wants something besides lessons. It has had plenty of teaching. The
+trouble is not that we are not instructed, but that we do not take the
+lessons that are laid before us. And so my text suggests another thing
+besides the wholly inadequate conception, as it would be if it stood
+alone, of a mere exhibition of what we ought to be.
+
+'If so be that ye have _heard_ Him.' As I said, these Ephesian
+Christians, far away in Asia Minor, with seas and years between them and
+the plains of Galilee and the Cross of Calvary, are yet regarded by the
+Apostle as having listened to Jesus Christ. We, far away down the ages,
+and in another corner of the world, as really, without metaphor, in
+plain fact, may have Jesus Christ speaking to us, and may hear His
+voice. These Ephesians had heard Him, not only because they had heard
+about Him, nor because they had heard Him speaking through His servant
+Paul and others, but because, as Paul believed, that Lord, who had
+spoken with human lips words which it was possible for a man to utter
+when He was here on earth, when caught up into the third heaven was
+still speaking to men, even according to His own promise, which He gave
+at the very close of His career, 'I have declared Thy name unto My
+brethren, and _will_ declare it.' So, though 'He began both to do and to
+teach' before He was taken up, after His Ascension He continues both the
+doing and the tuition. And, in verity, we all may hear His voice
+speaking in the depths of our hearts; speaking through the renewed
+conscience; speaking by that Spirit who will guide us into all the truth
+that we need; speaking through the ages to all who will listen to His
+voice.
+
+The conception of Christ as a Teacher, which is held by many who deny
+His redeeming work and dismiss as incredible His divinity, seems to me
+altogether inadequate, unless it be supplemented by the belief that He
+now has and exercises the power of communicating wisdom and knowledge
+and warning and stimulus to waiting hearts; and that when we hear within
+the depth of our souls the voice saying to us, 'This is the way, walk ye
+in it,' or saying to us, 'Pass not by, enter not into it,' if we have
+waited for Him, and studied His example and character, and sought, not
+to please ourselves, but to be led by His wisdom, we may be sure that it
+is Christ Himself who speaks. Reverence the inward monitor, and when He
+within thy heart, by His Spirit, calls thee, do thou answer, 'Speak,
+Lord! Thy servant heareth.' 'Ye have learned Christ if so be that ye
+have hearkened to Him.'
+
+II. Secondly, mark the condition of learning the Lesson and hearing the
+Teacher.
+
+Our Authorised Version, in accordance with its very frequent practice,
+has evacuated the last words of my text of their true force by the
+substitution of the more intelligible '_by_ Him' for what the Apostle
+writes--'_in_ Him.' The true rendering gives us the condition on which
+we learn our Lesson and hear our Teacher. '_In_ Him,' is no mere
+surplusage, and is not to be weakened down, as this translation of ours
+does, into a mere '_by_ Him' but it declares that, unless we keep
+ourselves in union with Jesus Christ, His voice will not be heard in our
+hearts, and the lesson will pass unlearned.
+
+You know, dear brother, how emphatically and continually in the New
+Testament this doctrine of the dwelling of the believing soul in Christ,
+and the reciprocal dwelling of Christ in the believing soul, is insisted
+upon. And I, for my part, believe that one great cause of the
+unsatisfactory condition of the average Christianity of this day is the
+slurring over and minimising of these twin great and solemn truths. I
+would fain bring you back to the Master's words, as declaring the
+deepest truths in relation to the connection between the believing soul
+and the Christ in whom it believes:--'Abide in Me, and I in you.' I wish
+you would go home and take this Epistle to the Ephesians and read it
+over, putting a pencil mark below each place in which occurs the words
+'in Christ Jesus.' I think you would learn something if you would do it.
+
+But all that I have to say at present is that, if we would keep
+ourselves, by faith, by love, by meditation, by aspiration, by the
+submission of the will, and by practical obedience, in Jesus Christ,
+enclosed in Him as it were--then, and then only, should we learn His
+lesson, and then, and then only, should we hear Him speak. Why! if you
+never think about Him, how can you learn Him? If you seldom, or
+sleepily, take up your Bibles and read the Gospels, of what good is His
+example to you? If you wander away into all manner of regions of thought
+and enjoyment instead of keeping near to Him, how can you expect that He
+will communicate Himself to you? If we keep ourselves in touch with that
+Lord, if we bring all our actions to Him, and measure our conduct by His
+pattern, then we shall learn His lesson. What does a student in a school
+of design do? He puts his feeble copy of some great picture beside the
+original, and compares it touch for touch, line for line, shade for
+shade, and so corrects its errors. Take your lives to the Exemplar in
+that fashion, and go over them bit by bit. Is _this_ like Jesus Christ;
+is _that_ what He would have done? Then '_in_ Him,' thus in contact with
+Him, thus correcting our daubs by the perfect picture, we shall learn
+our lesson and listen to our Teacher.
+
+Still your passions, muzzle your inclinations, clap a bridle on your
+will, and, as some tumultuous crowd would be hushed into silence that
+they might listen to the king speaking to them, make a great silence in
+your hearts, and you will 'hear Him' and be taught 'in Him'.
+
+III. Lastly, the test and result of having learned the Lesson and
+listened to the Teacher is unlikeness to surrounding corruption.
+
+'Ye have _not so_ learned Christ.' Of course the hideous immoralities of
+Ephesus are largely, but by no means altogether, gone from Manchester.
+Of course, nineteen centuries of Christianity have to a very large
+extent changed the tone of society and influenced the moral judgments
+and practices even of persons who are not Christians. But there still
+remains a _world_, and there still remains unfilled up the gulf between
+the worldly and the godly life. And I believe it is just as needful as
+ever it was, though in different ways, for Christians to exhibit
+unlikeness to the world. 'Not so,' must be our motto; or, as the Jewish
+patriot said, 'So did not I, because of the fear of the Lord.'
+
+I do not wish you to make yourselves singular; I do not wish you to wear
+conventional badges of unlikeness to certain selected evil habits. A
+Christian man's unlikeness to the world consists a great deal more in
+doing or being what it does not do and is not than in not doing or being
+what it does and is. It is easy to abstain from conventional things; it
+is a great deal harder to put in practice the unworldly virtues of the
+Christian character.
+
+There are wide regions of life in which all men must act alike, be they
+saints or sinners, be they believers, Agnostics, Mohammedans, Turks,
+Jews, or anything else. There are two ways of doing the same thing. If
+two women were sitting at a grindstone, one of them a Christian and the
+other not, the one that pushed her handle half round the circle for
+Christ's sake would do it in a different fashion from the other one who
+took it from her hand and brought it round to the other side of the
+stone, and did it without reference to God.
+
+Brethren, be sure of this, that if you and I do not find in ourselves
+the impulse to abstain from coarse enjoyments, to put our feet upon
+passions and desires, appetites and aims, which godless men recognise
+and obey without qualm or restraint, we need to ask ourselves: 'In what
+sense am I a Christian, or in what sense have I heard Christ?' It is a
+poor affair to fling away our faithful protest against the world's evils
+for the sake of receiving the world's smile. Modern Christianity is
+often not vital enough to be hated by a godless world; and it is not
+hated because it only deserves to be scorned. Keep near Jesus Christ,
+live in the light of His face, drink in the inspiration and instruction
+of His example, and the unlikeness will come, and no mistake. Dwell near
+Him, keep in Him, and the likeness will come, as it always comes to
+lovers, who grow to resemble that or those whom they love. 'It is enough
+for the disciple to be as his Teacher, and for the slave to be like his
+Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+A DARK PICTURE AND A BRIGHT HOPE
+
+     'That ye put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man,
+      which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.'--Eph. iv. 22.
+
+
+If a doctor knows that he can cure a disease he can afford to give full
+weight to its gravest symptoms. If he knows he cannot he is sorely
+tempted to say it is of slight importance, and, though it cannot be
+cured, can be endured without much discomfort.
+
+And so the Scripture teachings about man's real moral condition are
+characterised by two peculiarities which, at first sight, seem somewhat
+opposed, but are really harmonious and closely connected. There is no
+book and no system in the whole world that takes such a dark view of
+what you and I are; there is none animated with so bright and confident
+a hope of what you and I may become. And, on the other hand, the common
+run of thought amongst men minimises the fact of sin, but when you say,
+'Well, be it big or little, can I get rid of it anyhow?' there is no
+answer to give that is worth listening to. Christ alone can venture to
+tell men what they are, because Christ alone can radically change their
+whole nature and being. There are certain diseases of which a constant
+symptom is unconsciousness that there is anything the matter. A
+deep-seated wound does not hurt much. The question is not whether
+Christian thoughts about a man's condition are gloomy or not, but
+whether they are true. As to their being gloomy, it seems to me that the
+people who complain of our doctrine of human nature, as giving a
+melancholy view of men, do really take a far more melancholy one. We
+believe in a fall, and we believe in a possible and actual restoration.
+The man to whom evil is not an intrusive usurper can have no confidence
+that it will ever be expelled. Which is the gloomy system--that which
+paints in undisguised blackness the facts of life, and over against
+their blackest darkness, the radiant light of a great hope shining
+bright and glorious, or one that paints humanity in a uniform monotone
+of indistinguishable grey involving the past, the present, and the
+future--which, believing in no disease, hopes for no cure? My text,
+taken in conjunction with the grand words which follow, about 'The new
+man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness,'
+brings before us some very solemn views (which the men that want them
+most realise the least) with regard to what we are, what we ought to be
+and cannot be, and what, by God's help, we may become. The old man is
+'corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,' says Paul. _There_ are a set
+of characteristics, then, of the universal sinful human self. Then there
+comes a hopeless commandment--a mockery--if we are to stop with it, 'put
+it off.' And then there dawns on us the blessed hope and possibility of
+the fulfilment of the injunction, when we learn that 'the truth in
+Jesus' is, that we put off the old man with his deeds. Such is a
+general outline of the few thoughts I have to suggest to you.
+
+I. I wish to fix, first of all, upon the very significant, though brief,
+outline sketch of the facts of universal sinful human nature which the
+Apostle gives here.
+
+These are three, upon which I dilate for a moment or two. 'The old man'
+is a Pauline expression, about which I need only say here that we may
+take it as meaning that form of character and life which is common to us
+all, apart from the great change operated through faith in Jesus Christ.
+It is universal, it is sinful. There is a very remarkable contrast,
+which you will notice, between the verse upon which I am now commenting
+and the following one. The old man is set over against the new. One is
+created, the other is corrupted, as the word might be properly rendered.
+The one is created after God, the other is rotting to pieces under the
+influence of its lusts. The one consists of righteousness and holiness,
+which have their root in truth; the other is under the dominion of
+passions and desires, which, in themselves evil, are the instruments of
+and are characterised by deceit.
+
+The first of the characteristics, then, of this sinful self, to which I
+wish to point for a moment is, that every Christless life, whatsoever
+the superficial differences in it, is really a life shaped according to
+and under the influence of _passionate desires_. You see I venture to
+alter one word of my text, and that for this simple reason; the word
+'lusts' has, in modern English, assumed a very much narrower
+signification than either that of the original has, or than itself had
+in English when this translation was made. It is a very remarkable
+testimony, by the by, to the weak point in the bulk of men--to the side
+of their nature which is most exposed to assaults--that this word,
+which originally meant strong desire of any kind, should, by the
+observation of the desires that are strongest in the mass of people,
+have come to be restricted and confined to the one specific meaning of
+strong animal, fleshly, sensuous desires. It may point a lesson to some
+of my congregation, and especially to the younger portion of the men in
+it. Remember, my brother, that the part of your nature which is closest
+to the material is likewise closest to the animal, and is least under
+dominion (without a strong and constant effort) of the power which will
+save the flesh from corruption, and make the material the vehicle of the
+spiritual and divine. Many a young man comes into Manchester with the
+atmosphere of a mother's prayers and a father's teaching round about
+him; with holy thoughts and good resolutions beginning to sway his heart
+and spirit; and flaunting profligacy and seducing tongues beside him in
+the counting-house, in the warehouse, and at the shop counter, lead him
+away into excesses that banish all these, and, after a year or two of
+riot and sowing to the flesh, he 'of the flesh reaps corruption,' and
+that very literally--in sunken eye, and trembling hand, and hacking
+cough, and a grave opened for him before his time. Ah, my dear young
+friends! 'they promise them liberty.' It is a fine thing to get out of
+your father's house, and away from the restrictions of the society where
+you are known, and loving eyes--or unloving ones--are watching you. It
+is a fine thing to get into the freedom and irresponsibility of a big
+city! 'They promise them liberty,' and 'they themselves become the bond
+slaves of corruption.'
+
+But, then, that is only the grossest and the lowest form of the truth
+that is here. Paul's indictment against us is not anything so
+exaggerated and extreme as that the animal nature predominates in all
+who are not Christ's. That is not true, and is not what my text says.
+But what it says is just this: that, given the immense varieties of
+tastes and likings and desires which men have, the point and
+characteristic feature of every godless life is that, be these what they
+may, they become the dominant power in that life. Paul does not, of
+course, deny that the sway and tyranny of such lusts and desires are
+sometimes broken by remonstrances of conscience; sometimes suppressed by
+considerations of prudence; sometimes by habit, by business, by
+circumstances that force people into channels into which they would not
+naturally let their lives run. He does not deny that often and often in
+such a life there will be a dim desire for something better--that high
+above the black and tumbling ocean of that life of corruption and
+disorder, there lies a calm heaven with great stars of duty shining in
+it. He does not deny that men are a law to themselves, as well as a
+bundle of desires which they obey; but what he charges upon us, and what
+I venture to bring as an indictment against you, and myself too, is
+this: that apart from Christ it is not conscience that rules our lives;
+that apart from Christ it is not sense of duty that is strongest; that
+apart from Christ the real directing impulse to which the inward
+proclivities, if not the outward activities, do yield in the main and on
+the whole, is, as this text says, the things that we like, the
+passionate desires of nature, the sensuous and godless heart.
+
+And you say, 'Well, if it is so, what harm is it? Did not God make me
+with these desires, and am not I meant to gratify them?' Yes, certainly.
+The harm of it is, first of all, this, that it is an inversion of the
+true order. The passionate desires about which I am speaking, be they
+for money, be they for fame, or be they for any other of the gilded
+baits of worldly joys--these passionate dislikes and likings, as well as
+the purely animal ones--the longing for food, for drink, for any other
+physical gratification--these were never meant to be men's guides. They
+are meant to be impulses. They have motive power, but no directing
+power. Do you start engines out of a railway station without drivers or
+rails to run upon? It would be as reasonable as that course of life
+which men pursue who say, 'Thus I wish; thus I command; let my desire
+stand in the place of other argumentation and reason.' They take that
+part of their nature that is meant to be under the guidance of reason
+and conscience looking up to God, and put it in the supreme place, and
+so, setting a beggar on horseback, ride where we know such equestrians
+are said in the end to go! The desires are meant to be impelling powers.
+It is absurdity and the destruction of true manhood to make them, as we
+so often do, directing powers, and to put the reins into their hand.
+They are the wind, not the helm; the steam, not the driver. Let us keep
+things in their right places. Remember that the constitution of human
+nature, as God has meant it, is this: down there, under hatches, under
+control, the strong impulses; above them, the enlightened understanding;
+above that, the conscience, which has a loftier region than that of
+thought to move in, the moral region; and above that, the God, whose
+face, shining down upon the apex of the nature thus constituted,
+irradiates it with light which filters through all the darkness, down to
+the very base of the being; and sanctifies the animal, and subdues the
+impulses, and enlightens the understanding, and calms and quickens the
+conscience, and makes ductile and pliable the will, and fills the heart
+with fruition and tranquillity, and orders the life after the image of
+Him that created it.
+
+I cannot dwell any longer on this first point; but I hope that I have
+said enough, not to show that the words are true--that is a very poor
+thing to do, if that were all that I aimed at--but to bring them home to
+some of our hearts and consciences. I pray God to impress the conviction
+that, although there be in us all the voice of conscience, which all of
+us more or less have tried at intervals to follow; yet in the main it
+abides for ever true--and it is true, my dear brethren, about you--a
+Christless life is a life under the dominion of tyrannous desires. Ask
+yourself what I cannot ask for you, Is it I? My hand fumbles about the
+hinges and handle of the door of the heart. You yourself must open it
+and let conviction come in!
+
+Still further, the words before us add another touch to this picture.
+They not only represent the various passionate desires as being the real
+guides of 'the old man' but they give this other characteristic--that
+these desires are in their very nature the instruments of deceit and
+lies.
+
+The words of my text are, perhaps, rather enfeebled by the form of
+rendering which our translators have here, as in many cases, thought
+proper to adopt. If, instead of reading 'corrupt according to the
+deceitful lusts,' we read 'corrupt according to the desires of deceit,'
+we should have got not only the contrast between the old man and the new
+man, 'created in righteousness and holiness of truth'--but we should
+have had, perhaps, a clearer notion of the characteristic of these
+lusts, which the Apostle meant to bring into prominence. These desires
+are, as it were, the tools and instruments by which deceit betrays and
+mocks men; the weapons used by illusions and lies to corrupt and mar the
+soul. They are strong, and their nature is to pursue after their objects
+without regard to any consequences beyond their own gratification; but,
+strong as they are, they are like the blinded Samson, and will pull the
+house down on themselves if they be not watched. Their strength is
+excited on false pretences. They are stirred to grasp what is after all
+a lie. They are 'desires of deceit.'
+
+That just points to the truth of all such life being hollow and
+profitless. If regard be had to the whole scope of our nature and
+necessities, and to the true aim of life as deduced therefrom, nothing
+is more certain than that no man will get the satisfaction that his
+ruling passions promise him, by indulging them. It is very sure that the
+way never to get what you need and desire is always to do what you like.
+
+And that for very plain reasons. Because, for one thing, the object only
+satisfies for a time. Yesterday's food appeased our hunger for the day,
+but we wake hungry again. And the desires which are not so purely animal
+have the same characteristic of being stilled for the moment, and of
+waking more ravenous than ever. 'He that drinketh of this water shall
+thirst again.' Because, further, the desire grows and the object of it
+does not. The fierce longing increases, and, of course, the power of the
+thing that we pursue to satisfy it decreases in the same proportion. It
+is a fixed quantity; the appetite is indefinitely expansible. And so,
+the longer I go on feeding my desire, the more I long for the food; and
+the more I long for it, the less taste it has when I get it. It must be
+more strongly spiced to titillate a jaded palate. And there soon comes
+to be an end of the possibilities in that direction. A man scarcely
+tastes his brandy, and has little pleasure in drinking it, but he cannot
+do without it, and so he gulps it down in bigger and bigger draughts
+till delirium tremens comes in to finish all. Because, for another
+thing, after all, these desires are each but a fragment of one's whole
+nature, and when one is satisfied another is baying to be fed. The grim
+brute, like the watchdog of the old mythology, has three heads, and each
+gaping for honey cakes. And if they were all gorged, there are other
+longings in men's nature that will not let them rest, and for which all
+the leeks and onions of Egypt are not food. So long as these are unmet,
+you 'spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for
+that which satisfieth not.'
+
+So we may lay it down as a universal truth, that whoever takes it for
+his law to do as he likes will not for long like what he does; or, as
+George Herbert says,
+
+    'Shadows well mounted, dreams in a career,
+     Embroider'd lies, nothing between two dishes--
+            These are the pleasures here.'
+
+Do any of you remember the mournful words with which one of our greatest
+modern writers of fiction closes his saddest, truest book: 'Ah! _vanitas
+vanitatum_! Which of us is happy in this world? which of us has his
+desire? or, having it, is satisfied?' No wonder that with such a view of
+human life as that the next and last sentence should be, 'Come,
+children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for the play is played
+out.' Yes! if there be nothing more to follow than the desires which
+deceive, man's life, with all its bustle and emotion, is a subject for
+cynical and yet sad regard, and all the men and women that toil and fret
+are 'merely players.'
+
+Then, again, one more point in this portraiture of 'the old man,' is
+that these _deceiving desires corrupt_. The language of our text conveys
+a delicate shade of meaning which is somewhat blurred in our version.
+Properly, it speaks of 'the old man which is _growing_ corrupt,' rather
+than 'which is corrupt,' and expresses the steady advance of that inward
+process of decay and deterioration which is ever the fate of a life
+subordinated to these desires. And this growing evil, or rather inward
+eating corruption which disintegrates and destroys a soul, is contrasted
+in the subsequent verse with the 'new man which is _created_ in
+righteousness.' There is in the one the working of life, in the other
+the working of death. The one is formed and fashioned by the loving
+hands and quickening breath of God; the other is gradually and surely
+rotting away by the eating leprosy of sin. For the former the end is
+eternal life; for the latter, the second death.
+
+And the truth that underlies that awful representation is the familiar
+one to which I have already referred in another connection, that, by the
+very laws of our nature, by the plain necessities of the case, all our
+moral qualities, be they good or bad, tend to increase by exercise. In
+whatever direction we move, the rate of progress tends to accelerate
+itself. And this is preeminently the case when the motion is downwards.
+Every day that a bad man lives he is a worse man. My friend! you are on
+a sloping descent. Imperceptibly--because you will not look at the
+landmarks--but really, and not so very slowly either; convictions are
+dying out, impulses to good are becoming feeble, habits of neglect of
+conscience are becoming fixed, special forms of sin--avarice, or pride,
+or lust--are striking their claws deeper into your soul, and holding
+their bleeding booty firmer. In all regions of life exercise strengthens
+capacity. The wrestler, according to the old Greek parable, who began by
+carrying a calf on his shoulders, got to carry an ox by and by.
+
+It is a solemn thought this of the steady continuous aggravation of sin
+in the individual character. Surely nothing can be small which goes to
+make up that rapidly growing total. Beware of the little beginnings
+which 'eat as doth a canker.' Beware of the slightest deflection from
+the straight line of right. If there be two lines, one straight and the
+other going off at the sharpest angle, you have only to produce both far
+enough, and there will be room between them for all the space that
+separates hell from heaven! Beware of lading your souls with the weight
+of small single sins. We heap upon ourselves, by slow, steady accretion
+through a lifetime, the weight that, though it is gathered by grains,
+crushes the soul. There is nothing heavier than sand. You may lift it by
+particles. It drifts in atoms, but heaped upon a man it will break his
+bones, and blown over the land it buries pyramid and sphynx, the temples
+of gods and the homes of men beneath its barren solid waves. The leprosy
+gnaws the flesh off a man's bones, and joints and limbs drop off--he is
+a living death. So with every soul that is under the dominion of these
+lying desires--it is slowly rotting away piecemeal, 'waxing corrupt
+according to the lusts of deceit.'
+
+II. Note how, this being so, we have here the hopeless command to put
+off the old man.
+
+That command 'put it off' is the plain dictate of conscience and of
+common sense. But it seems as hopeless as it is imperative. I suppose
+everybody feels sometimes, more or less distinctly, that they ought to
+make an effort and get rid of these beggarly usurpers that tyrannise
+over will, and conscience, and life. Attempts enough are made to shake
+off the yoke. We have all tried some time or other. Our days are full of
+foiled resolutions, attempts that have broken down, unsuccessful
+rebellions, ending like the struggles of some snared wild creature, in
+wrapping the meshes tighter round us. How many times, since you were a
+boy or a girl, have you said--'Now I am _determined_ that I will never
+do that again. I have flung away opportunities. I have played the fool
+and erred exceedingly--but I now turn over a new leaf!' Yes, and you
+have turned it--and, if I might go on with the metaphor, the first gust
+of passion or temptation has blown the leaf back again, and the old page
+has been spread before you once more just as it used to be. The history
+of individual souls and the tragedy of the world's history recurring in
+every age, in which the noblest beginnings lead to disastrous ends, and
+each new star of promise that rises on the horizon leads men into
+quagmires and sets in blood, sufficiently show how futile the attempt in
+our own strength to overcome and expel the evils that are rooted in our
+nature.
+
+Moralists may preach, 'Unless above himself he can erect himself, how
+mean a thing is man'; but all the preaching in the world is of no avail.
+The task is an impossibility. The stream cannot rise above its source,
+nor be purified in its flow if bitter waters come from the fountain.
+'Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?' There is no power in
+human nature to cast off this clinging self. As in the awful vision of
+the poet, the serpent is grown into the man. The will is feeble for
+good, the conscience sits like a discrowned king issuing empty mandates,
+while all his realm is up in rebellion and treats his proclamations as
+so much waste paper. How can a man re-make himself? how cast off his own
+nature? The means at his disposal themselves need to be cleansed, for
+themselves are tainted. It is the old story--who will keep the
+keepers?--who will heal the sick physicians? You will sometimes see a
+wounded animal licking its wounds with its own tongue. How much more
+hopeless still is our effort by our own power to stanch and heal the
+gashes which sin has made! 'Put off the old man'--yes--and if it but
+clung to the limbs like the hero's poisoned vest, it might be possible.
+But it is not a case of throwing aside clothing, it is stripping oneself
+of the very skin and flesh--and if there is nothing more to be said than
+such vain commonplaces of impossible duty, then we must needs abandon
+hope, and wear the rotting evil till we die.
+
+But that is not all. 'What the law could not do, in that it was weak
+through the flesh,' God sending His own Son did--He condemned sin in the
+flesh. So we come to
+
+III. The possibility of fulfilling the command.
+
+The context tells us how this is possible. The law, the pattern, and the
+power for complete victory over the old sinful self, are to be found,
+'as the truth is--in Jesus.' Union with Christ gives us a real
+possession of a new principle of life, derived from Him, and like His
+own. That real, perfect, immortal life, which hath no kindred with evil,
+and flings off pollution and decay from its pure surface, will wrestle
+with and finally overcome the living death of obedience to the
+deceitful lusts. Our weakness will be made rigorous by His inbreathed
+power. Our gravitation to earth and sin will be overcome by the yearning
+of that life to its source. An all-constraining motive will be found in
+love to Him who has given Himself for us. A new hope will spring as to
+what may be possible for us, when we see Jesus, and in Him recognise the
+true Man, whose image we may bear. We shall die with Him to sin, when,
+resting by faith on Him who has died for sin, we are made conformable to
+His death, that we may walk in newness of life. Faith in Jesus gives us
+a share in the working of that mighty power by which He makes all things
+new. The renovation blots out the past, and changes the direction of the
+future. The fountain in our hearts sends forth bitter waters that cannot
+be healed. 'And the Lord showed him a tree,' even that Cross whereon
+Christ was crucified for us, 'which, when he had cast into the waters,
+the waters were made sweet.'
+
+I remember a rough parable of Luther's, grafted on an older legend, on
+this matter, which runs somewhat in this fashion: A man's heart is like
+a foul stable. Wheelbarrows and shovels are of little use, except to
+remove some of the surface filth, and to litter all the passages in the
+process. What is to be done with it? 'Turn the Elbe into it,' says he.
+The flood will sweep away all the pollution. Not my own efforts, but the
+influx of that pardoning, cleansing grace which is in Christ will wash
+away the accumulations of years, and the ingrained evil which has
+stained every part of my being. We cannot cleanse ourselves, we cannot
+'put off' this old nature which has struck its roots so deep into our
+being; but if we turn to Him with faith and say--Forgive me, and
+cleanse, and strip from me the foul and ragged robe fit only for the
+swine-troughs in the far-off land of disobedience, He will receive us
+and answer all our desires, and cast around us the pure garment of His
+own righteousness. 'The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus shall
+make us free from the law of sin and death.'
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW MAN
+
+     'And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in
+      righteousness and true holiness.'--Eph. iv. 24.
+
+
+We had occasion to remark in a former sermon that Paul regards this and
+the preceding clauses as the summing up of 'the truth in Jesus'; or, in
+other words, he considers the radical transformation and renovation of
+the whole moral nature as being the purpose of the revelation of God in
+Christ. To this end they have 'heard Him.' To this end they have
+'learned Him.' To this end they have been 'taught in Him,' receiving, by
+union with Him, all the various processes of His patient discipline.
+This is the inmost meaning of all the lessons in that great school in
+which all Christians are scholars, and Christ is the teacher and the
+theme, and union to Him the condition of entrance, and the manifold
+workings of His providence and His grace the instruments of training,
+and heaven the home when school time is over--that we should become new
+men in Christ Jesus.
+
+This great practical issue is set forth here under three aspects--one
+negative, two positive. The negative process is single and simple--'put
+off the old man.' The positive is double--a spiritual 'renewal' effected
+in our spirits, in the deep centre of our personal being, by that
+Divine Spirit who, dwelling in us, is 'the spirit of our minds'; and
+then, consequent upon that inward renewal, a renovation of life and
+character, which is described as being the 'putting on,' as if it were a
+garment, of 'the new man,' created by a divine act, and consisting in
+moral and spiritual likeness to God. It is not necessary to deal, except
+incidentally, with the two former, but I desire to consider the last of
+these--the putting on of the new man--a little more closely, and to try
+to bring out the wealth and depth of the Apostle's words in this
+wonderful text.
+
+The ideas contained seem to me in brief to be these--the great purpose
+of the Gospel is our moral renewal; that moral renewal is a creation
+after God's image; that new creation has to be put on or appropriated by
+us; the great means of appropriating it is contact with God's truth. Let
+us consider these points in order.
+
+I. The great purpose of the Gospel is our moral renewal; 'the new man
+... created in righteousness and ... holiness.'
+
+Now, of course, there are other ways of stating the end of the Gospel.
+This is by no means an exhaustive setting forth of its purpose. We may
+say that Christ has come in order that men may know God. We may say that
+He comes in order that the Divine Love, which ever delights to
+communicate, may bestow itself, and may conceive of the whole majestic
+series of acts of self-revelation from the beginning as being--if I may
+so say--for the gratification of that impulse to impart itself, which is
+the characteristic of love in God and man. We may say that the purpose
+of the whole is the deliverance of men from the burden and guilt of sin.
+But whether we speak of the end of the Gospel as the glory of God, or
+the blessedness of man, or as here, as being the moral perfection of
+the individual or of the race, they are all but various phrases of the
+one complete truth. The Gospel is the consequence and the manifestation
+of the love of God, which delights to be known and possessed by loving
+souls, and being known, changes them into its own likeness, which to
+know is to be happy, which to resemble is to be pure.
+
+The first thing that strikes me about this representation of our text is
+the profound sense of human sinfulness which underlies it.
+
+The language is utterly unmeaning--or at all events grossly
+exaggerated--unless all have sinned, and the nature which belongs to men
+universally, apart from the transforming power of Christ's Spirit, be
+corrupt and evil. And that it is so is the constant view of Scripture.
+The Bible notion of what men need in order to be pure and good is very
+different from the superficial notions of worldly moralists and
+philanthropists. We hear a great deal about 'culture,' as if all that
+were needed were the training and strengthening of the nature, as if
+what was mainly needed was the development of the understanding. We hear
+about 'reformation' from some who look rather deeper than the
+superficial apostles of culture. And how singularly the very word
+proclaims the insufficiency of the remedy which it suggests!
+'Re-formation' affects form and not substance. It puts the old materials
+into a new shape. Exactly so--and much good may be expected from that!
+They are the old materials still, and it matters comparatively little
+how they are arranged. It is not re-formation, but re-novation, or, to
+go deeper still, re-generation, that the world needs; not new forms, but
+a new life; not the culture and development of what it has in itself,
+but extirpation of the old by the infusion of something now and pure
+that has no taint of corruption, nor any contact with evil. 'Verily, I
+say unto you, ye must be born again.'
+
+All slighter notions of the need and more superficial diagnoses of the
+disease lead to a treatment with palliatives which never touch the true
+seat of the mischief, The poison flowers may be plucked, but the roots
+live on. It is useless to build dykes to keep out the wild waters.
+Somewhere or other they will find a way through. The only real cure is
+that which only the Creating hand can effect, who, by slow operation of
+some inward agency, can raise the level of the low lands, and lift them
+above the threatening waves. What is needed is a radical transformation,
+going down to the very roots of the being; and that necessity is clearly
+implied in the language of this text, which declares that a nature
+possessing righteousness and holiness is 'a new man' to be 'put on' as
+from without, not to be evolved as from within.
+
+It is to be further noticed what the Apostle specifies as the elements,
+or characteristics of this new nature--righteousness and holiness.
+
+The proclamation of a new nature in Christ Jesus, great and precious
+truth as it is, has often been connected with teaching which has been
+mystical in the bad sense of that word, and has been made the stalking
+horse of practical immorality. But here we have it distinctly defined in
+what that new nature consists. There is no vague mystery about it, no
+tampering with the idea of personality. The people who put on the new
+man are the same people after as before. The newness consists in moral
+and spiritual characteristics. And these are all summed up in the
+two--righteousness and holiness. To which is added in the substantially
+parallel passage in Colossians, 'Renewed in knowledge after the image of
+Him that created Him,' where, I suppose, we must regard the 'knowledge'
+as meaning that personal knowledge and acquaintance which has its
+condition in love, and is the foundation of the more purely moral
+qualities of which our text speaks.
+
+Is there, then, any distinction between these two? I think there is very
+obviously so. 'Righteousness' is, I suppose, to be understood here in
+its narrower meaning of observance of what is right, the squaring of
+conduct according to a solemn sovereign law of duty. Substantially it is
+equivalent to the somewhat heathenish word 'morality,' and refers human
+conduct and character to a law or standard. What, then, is 'holiness'?
+It is the same general conduct and character, considered, however, under
+another aspect, and in another relation. It involves the reference of
+life and self to God, consecration to, and service of Him. It is not a
+mere equivalent of purity, but distinctly carries the higher reference.
+The obedience now is not to a law but to a Lord. The perfection now does
+not consist in conformity to an ideal standard, but in likeness and
+devotion to God. That which I ought to do is that which my Father in
+heaven wills. Or, if the one word may roughly represent the more secular
+word 'morality,' the other may roughly represent the less devout phrase,
+'practical religion.'
+
+These are 'new,' as actually realised in human nature. Paul thinks that
+we shall not possess them except as a consequence of renovation. But
+they are not 'new' in the sense that the contents of Christian morality
+are different from the contents of the law written on men's hearts. The
+Gospel proclaims and produces no fantastic ethics of its own. The
+actions which it stamps in its mint are those which pass current in all
+lands--not a provincial coinage, but recognised as true in ring, and of
+full weight everywhere. Do not fancy that Christian righteousness is
+different from ordinary 'goodness,' except as being broader and deeper,
+more thorough-going, more imperative. Divergences there are, for our law
+is more than a republication of the law written on men's hearts. Though
+the one agrees with the other, yet the area which they cover is not the
+same. The precepts of the one, like some rock-hewn inscriptions by
+forgotten kings, are weathered and indistinct, often illegible, often
+misread, often neglected. The other is written in living characters in a
+perfect life. It includes all that the former attempts to enjoin, and
+much more besides. It alters the perspective, so to speak, of heathen
+morals, and brings into prominence graces overlooked or despised by
+them. It breathes a deeper meaning and a tenderer beauty into the words
+which express human conceptions of virtue, but it does take up these
+into itself. And instead of setting up a 'righteousness' which is
+peculiar to itself, and has nothing to do with the world's morality,
+Christianity says, as Christ has taught us, 'Except your righteousness
+_exceed_ the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not
+enter into the kingdom of God.' The same apostle who here declares that
+actual righteousness and holiness are new things on the earth, allows
+full force to whatsoever weight may be in the heathen notion of
+'virtue,' and adopts the words and ideas which he found ready made to
+his hands, in that notion--as fitly describing the Christian graces
+which he enjoined. Grecian moralists supplied him with the names true,
+honest, just, and pure. His 'righteousness' accepted these as included
+within its scope. And we have to remember that we are not invested with
+that new nature, unless we are living in the exercise of these common
+and familiar graces which the consciences and hearts of all the world
+recognise for 'lovely' and 'of good report,' hail as 'virtue,' and crown
+with 'praise.'
+
+So, then, let me pause here for a moment to urge you to take these
+thoughts as a very sharp and salutary test. You call yourselves
+Christian people. The purpose of your Christianity is your growth and
+perfecting in simple purity, and devotion to, and dependence on, our
+loving Father. Our religion is nothing unless it leads to these.
+Otherwise it is like a plant that never seeds, but may bear some feeble
+blossoms that drop shrunken to the ground before they mature. To very
+many of us the old solemn remonstrance should come with awakening
+force--'Ye did run well, what did hinder you?' You have apprehended
+Christ as the revealer and bringer of the great mercy of God, and have
+so been led in some measure to put your confidence in Him for your
+salvation and deliverance. But have you apprehended Him as the mould
+into which your life is to be poured, that life having been made fluent
+and plastic by the warmth of His love? You have apprehended Him as your
+refuge; have you apprehended Him as your inward sanctity? You have gone
+to Him as the source of salvation from the guilt and penalties of sin;
+have you gone to Him, and are you daily growing in the conscious
+possession of Him, as the means of salvation from the corruption and
+evil of sin? He comes to make us good. What has He made you? Anything
+different from what you were twenty years ago? Then, if not, and in so
+far as you are unchanged and unbettered, the Gospel is a failure for
+you, and you are untrue to it. The great purpose of all the work of
+Christ--His life, His sorrows, His passion, His resurrection, His glory,
+His continuous operation by the Spirit and the word is to make new men
+who shall be just and devout, righteous and holy.
+
+II. A second principle contained in these words, is that this moral
+Renewal is a Creation in the image of God.
+
+The new man is 'created after the image of God'--that is, of course,
+according to or in the likeness of God. There is evident reference here
+to the account of man's creation in Genesis, and the idea is involved
+that this new man is the restoration and completion of that earlier
+likeness, which, in some sense, has faded out of the features and form
+of our sinful souls. It is to be remembered, however, that there is an
+image of God inseparable from human nature, and not effaceable by any
+obscuring or disturbance caused by sin. Man's likeness to God consists
+in his being a person, possessed of a will and self-consciousness, and
+that mysterious gift of personality abides whatever perishes. But beyond
+that natural image of God, as we may call it, there is something else
+which fades wholly with the first breath of evil, like the reflexion of
+the sky on some windless sea. The natural likeness remains, and without
+it no comparison would be possible. We should not think of saying that a
+stone or an eagle were unlike God. But while the personal being makes
+comparison fitting, what makes the true contrast? In what respect is man
+unlike God? In moral antagonism. What is the true likeness? Moral
+harmony. What separates men from their Father in heaven? Is it that His
+'years are throughout all generations,' and 'my days are as an
+handbreadth'? Is it that His power is infinite, and mine all thwarted by
+other might and over tending to weakness and extinction? Is it that His
+wisdom, sunlike, waxes not nor wanes, and there is nothing hid from its
+beams, while my knowledge, like the lesser light, shines by reflected
+radiance, serves but to make the night visible, and is crescent and
+decaying, changeful and wandering? No. All such distinctions based upon
+what people call the sovereign attributes of God--the distinctions of
+creator and created, infinite and finite, omnipotent and weak, eternal
+and transient--make no real gulf between God and man. If we have only to
+say, 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are' His 'ways higher
+than' our 'ways,' that difference is not unlikeness, and establishes no
+separation; for low and flat though the dull earth be, does not heaven
+bend down round it, and send rain and sun, dew and blessing? But it is
+because 'your ways are not _as_ my ways'--because there is actual
+opposition, because the _directions_ are different--that there is
+unlikeness. The image of God lies not only in that personality which the
+'Father of Lies' too possesses, but in 'righteousness and holiness.'
+
+But besides this reference to the original creation of man, there is
+another reason for the representation of the new nature as being a work
+of divine creative power. It is in order to give the most emphatic
+expression possible to the truth that we do not make our righteousness
+for ourselves, but receive it as from Him. The new man is not our work,
+it is God's creation. As at the beginning, the first human life is
+represented as not originated in the line of natural cause and effect,
+but as a new and supernatural commencement, so in every Christian soul
+the life which is derived from God, and will unfold itself in His
+likeness, comes from His own breath inbreathed into the nostrils. It too
+is out of the line of natural causes. It too is a direct gift from God.
+It too is a true supernatural being--a real and new creation.
+
+May I venture a step further? 'The new man' is spoken of here as if it
+had existence ere we 'put it on.' I do not press that, as if it
+necessarily involved the idea which I am going to suggest, for the
+peculiar form of expression is probably only due to the exigencies of
+the metaphor. Still it may not be altogether foreign to the whole scope
+of the passage, if I remind you that the new man, the true likeness of
+God, has, indeed, a real existence apart from our assumption of it. Of
+course, the righteousness and holiness which make that new nature in me
+have no being till they become mine. But we believe that the
+righteousness and holiness which we make ours come from another, who
+bestows them on us. 'The new man' is not a mere ideal, but has a
+historical and a present existence. The ideal has lived and lives, is a
+human person, even Jesus Christ the express image of the Father, who is
+the beginning of the new creation, who of God is made unto us wisdom and
+righteousness. That fair vision of a humanity detached from all
+consequences of sin, renewed in perfect beauty, stainless and Godlike,
+is no unsubstantial dream, but a simple fact. He ever liveth. His word
+to us is, 'I counsel thee to buy of me--white raiment.' And a full
+parallel to the words of our text, which bid us 'put on the new man,
+created after God in righteousness and holiness,' is found in the other
+words of the same Apostle--'Let us cast off the works of darkness, and
+let us put on the armour of light. Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.'
+
+In accordance with this--
+
+III. It is further to be noticed that this new creation has to be put on
+and appropriated by us.
+
+The same idea which, as I have already remarked, is conveyed by the
+image of a new creation, is reiterated in this metaphor of putting on
+the new nature, as if it were a garment. Our task is not to weave it,
+but to wear it. It is made and ready.
+
+And that process of assumption or putting on has two parts. We are
+clothed upon with Christ in a double way, or rather in a double sense.
+We are 'found in Him not having our own righteousness,' but invested
+with His for our pardon and acceptance. We are clothed with His
+righteousness for our purifying and sanctifying.
+
+Both are the conditions of our being like God. Both are the gifts of
+God. The one, however, is an act; the other a process. Both are
+received. The one is received on condition of simple faith; the other is
+received by the medium of faithful effort. Both are included in the wide
+conception of salvation, but the law for the one is 'Not by works of
+righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us'; and the
+law for the other is--'Work out your own salvation with fear and
+trembling.' Both come from Christ, but for the one we have the
+invitation, 'Buy of Me white raiment that thou mayest be clothed'; and
+for the other we have the command, 'Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
+make not provision for the flesh.' There is the assumption of His
+righteousness which makes a man a Christian, and has for its condition
+simple faith. There is the assumption of His righteousness sanctifying
+and transforming us which follows in a Christian course, as its
+indispensable accompaniment and characteristic, and that is realised by
+daily and continuous effort.
+
+And one word about the manner, the effort as set forth here; twofold, as
+I have already pointed out--a negative and positive. We are not
+concerned here with the relations of these amongst themselves, but I may
+remark that there is no growth in holiness possible without the constant
+accompanying process of excision and crucifixion of the old. If you want
+to grow purer and liker Christ, you must slay yourselves. You cannot
+gird on 'righteousness' above the old self, as some beggar might buckle
+to himself royal velvet with its ermine over his filthy tatters. There
+must be a putting off in order to and accompanying the putting on. Strip
+yourselves of yourselves, and then you 'shall not be found naked,' but
+clothed with the garments of salvation, as the bride with the robe which
+is the token of the bridegroom's love, and the pledge of her espousals
+to him.
+
+And let nobody wonder that the Apostle here commands us, as by our own
+efforts, to put on and make ours what is in many other places of
+Scripture treated as God's gift. These earnest exhortations are
+perfectly consistent with the belief that all comes from God. Our
+faithful adherence to our Lord and Master, our honest efforts in His
+strength to secure more and more of His likeness, determine the extent
+to which we shall possess that likeness. The new nature is God's gift,
+and it is given to us according to His own fulness indeed, but also
+according to the measure of our faith. Blessed be His name! we have
+nothing to do but to accept His gift. The garment with which He clothes
+our nakedness and hides our filth is woven in no earthly looms. As with
+the first sinful pair, so with all their children since, 'the Lord God
+made them' the covering which they cannot make for themselves. But we
+have to accept it, and we have by daily toil, all our lives long, to
+gather it more and more closely around us, to wrap ourselves more and
+more completely in its ample folds. We have by effort and longing, by
+self-abnegation and aspiration, by prayer and work, by communion and
+service, to increase our possession of that likeness to God which lives
+in Jesus Christ, and from Him is stamped ever more and more deeply on
+the heart. For the strengthening of our confidence and our gratitude, we
+have to remember with lowly trust that it is true of us, 'If any man be
+in Christ he is a new creature.' For the quickening of our energy and
+faithful efforts we have to give heed to the command, and fulfil it in
+ourselves--'Be ye renewed in the Spirit of your minds, and put on the
+new man.'
+
+IV. And, finally, the text contains the principle that the means of
+appropriating this new nature is contact with the truth.
+
+If you will look at the margins of some Bibles you will see that our
+translators have placed there a rendering, which, as is not unfrequently
+the case, is decidedly better than that adopted by them in the text.
+Instead of 'true holiness,' the literal rendering is 'holiness of
+truth'--and the Apostle's purpose in the expression is not to
+particularise the quality, but the origin of the 'holiness.' It is 'of
+truth,' that is, produced by the holiness which flows from the truth as
+it is in Jesus, of which he has been speaking a moment before.
+
+And we come, therefore, to this practical conclusion, that whilst the
+agent of renovation is the Divine Spirit, and the condition of
+renovation is our cleaving to Christ, the medium of renovation and the
+weapon which transforming grace employs is 'the word of the truth of the
+Gospel' whereby we are sanctified. There we get the law, and there we
+get the motive and the impulse. There we get the encouragement and the
+hope. In it, in the grand simple message--'God was in Christ,
+reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto
+them,' lie the germs of all moral progress. And in proportion as we
+believe that--not with the cold belief of our understandings, but with
+the loving affiance of our hearts and our whole spiritual being--in
+proportion as we believe that, in that proportion shall we grow in
+'knowledge,' shall we grow in 'righteousness,' in the 'image of Him that
+created us.' The Gospel is the great means of this change, because it is
+the great means by which He who works the change comes near to our
+understandings and our hearts.
+
+So let us learn how impossible are righteousness and holiness, morality
+and religion in men, unless they flow from this source. It is the truth
+that sanctifies. It is the Spirit who wields that truth who sanctifies.
+It is Christ who sends the Spirit who sanctifies. But, brethren, beyond
+the range of this light is only darkness, and that nature which is not
+cleansed by His priestly hand laid upon it remains leprous, and he who
+is clothed with any other garment than His righteousness will find 'the
+covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.' And let us
+learn, on the other hand, the incompleteness and monstrosity of a
+professed belief in 'the truth' which does not produce this
+righteousness and holiness. It may be real--God forbid that we should
+step into His place and assume His office of discerning the thoughts of
+the heart, and the genuineness of Christian professions! But, at any
+rate, it is no exaggeration nor presumption to say that a professed
+faith which is not making us daily better, gentler, simpler, purer, more
+truthful, more tender, more brave, more self-oblivious, more loving,
+more strong--more like Christ--is wofully deficient either in reality or
+in power--is, if genuine, ready to perish--if lit at all, smouldering to
+extinction. Christian men and women! is 'the truth' moulding you into
+Christ's likeness? If not, see to it whether it be the truth which you
+are holding, and whether you are holding the truth or have unconsciously
+let it slip from a grasp numbed by the freezing coldness of the world.
+
+And for us all, let us see that we lay to heart the large truths of this
+text, and give them that personal bearing without which they are of no
+avail. _I_ need renovation in my inmost nature. Nothing can renew _my_
+soul but the power of Christ, who is _my_ life. _I_ am naked and foul.
+Nothing can cleanse and clothe _me_ but He. The blessed truth which
+reveals Him calls for _my_ individual faith. And if _I_ put _my_
+confidence in that Lord, He will dwell in _my_ inmost spirit, and so
+sway _my_ affections and mould _my_ will that _I_ shall be transformed
+unto His perfect likeness. He begins with each one of us by bringing the
+best robe to cast over the rags of the returning prodigal. He ends not
+with any who trust Him, until they stand amid the hosts of the heavens
+who follow Him, clothed with fine linen clean and white, which is the
+righteousness of His Holy ones.
+
+
+
+
+GRIEVING THE SPIRIT
+
+     'Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the
+      day of redemption.'--Eph. iv. 30.
+
+
+The miracle of Christianity is the Incarnation. It is not a link in a
+chain, but a new beginning, the entrance into the cosmic order of a
+Divine Power. The sequel of Bethlehem and Calvary and Olivet is the
+upper room and the Pentecost. There is the issue of the whole mission
+and work of Christ--the planting in the heart of humanity of a new and
+divine life. All Christendom is professing to commemorate that fact
+to-day, [Preached on Whitsunday] but a large portion of us forget that
+it was but a transient sign of a perpetual reality. The rushing mighty
+wind has died down into a calm; the fiery tongues have ceased to flicker
+on the disciples' heads, but the miracle, which is permanent, and is
+being repeated from day to day, in the experience of every believing
+soul, is the inrush of the very breath of God into their lives, and the
+plunging of them into a fiery baptism which melts their coldness and
+refines away their dross. Now, my text brings before us some very
+remarkable thoughts as to the permanent working of the Divine Spirit
+upon Christian souls, and upon this it bases a very tender and
+persuasive exhortation to conduct. And I desire simply to try to bring
+out the fourfold aspect in those words. There is, first, a wondrous
+revelation; second, a plain lesson as to what that Divine Spirit chiefly
+does; third, a solemn warning as to man's power and freedom to thwart
+it; and, lastly, a tender motive for conduct. 'Grieve not the Holy
+Spirit, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.'
+
+Now let us look briefly at these four thoughts: Here we have--
+
+I. A wonderful revelation.
+
+Wonderful to all, startling to some. If you can speak of grief, you must
+be speaking of a person. An influence cannot be sorry, whatever may
+happen to it. And that word of my text is no more violent metaphor or
+exaggeratedly strong way of suggesting a motive, but it keeps rigidly
+within the New Testament limits, in reference to that Divine Spirit,
+when to Him it attributes this personal emotion of sorrow with its
+correlation of possible joy.
+
+Now, I do not need to dwell upon the thought here, but I do desire to
+emphasise it, especially in view of the strangely hazy and defective
+conceptions which so many Christian people have upon this matter. And I
+desire to remind you that the implied assumption of a personal Spirit,
+capable of being 'grieved,' which is in this text, is in accordance with
+all the rest of the New Testament teaching.
+
+What did Jesus Christ mean when He spoke of one who 'will guide you into
+all truth'; of one who 'whatsoever He shall hear, those things shall He
+speak'? What does the book of the Acts mean when it says that the Spirit
+said to the believers in Antioch, 'Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the
+work whereunto I have called them'? What did Paul mean when he said, 'In
+every city the Holy Ghost testifieth that bonds and afflictions await
+me'? What does the minister officiating in baptism mean when he says, 'I
+baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
+Ghost'? That form presents, according to many interpretations, a Divine
+Person, a Man, and an Influence. Why are these bracketed together? And
+what do we mean when, at the end of every Christian service, we invoke
+'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and
+the fellowship of the Holy Spirit'? A Man, and God, and an Influence--is
+that the interpretation? You cannot get rid from the New Testament
+teaching, whether you accept it or not--you cannot eliminate from it
+this, that the divine causality of our salvation is threefold and one,
+the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
+
+Now, brethren, I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that
+practically the average orthodox believer believes in a duality, and not
+a Trinity, in the divine nature. I do not care about the scholastic
+words, but what I would insist upon is that the course of Christian
+thinking has been roughly this. First of all, in the early Church, the
+question of the Divine nature came into play, mainly in reference to the
+relation of the Eternal Word to the Eternal Father, and of the
+Incarnation to both. And then, when that was roughly settled, there came
+down through many ages, and there still subsists, the endeavour to cast
+into complete and intelligible forms the doctrine, if I must use the
+word, of Christ's nature and work. And now, as I believe, to a very
+large extent, the foremost and best thinking of the Christian Church is
+being occupied with that last problem, the nature and work of that
+Divine Spirit. I believe that we stand on the verge of a far clearer
+perception of, and of a far more fervent and realising faith in, the
+Spirit of God, than ever the Churches have seen before. And I pray you
+to remember that however much your Christian thought and Christian
+faith may be centred upon, and may be drawing its nourishment and its
+joy from, the work of Jesus Christ who died on the Cross for our
+salvation, and lives to be our King and Defender, there is a gap--not
+only in your Christian Creed, but also in your Christian experiences and
+joys and power, unless you have risen to this thought, that the Divine
+Spirit is not only an influence, a wind, a fire, an oil, a dove, a dew,
+but a Divine Person. We have to go back to the old creed--'I believe in
+God the Father Almighty ... and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord
+... I believe in the Holy Ghost.'
+
+But further, this same revelation carries with it another, and to some
+of us a startling thought. 'Grieve not the Holy Spirit': that Divine
+Person is capable of grief. I do not believe that is rhetorical
+exaggeration. Of course I know that we should think of God as the
+ever-blessed God, but we also in these last days begin to think more
+boldly, and I believe more truly, that if man is in the image of God,
+and there is a divine element in humanity, there must be a human element
+in divinity. And though I know that it is perilous to make affirmations
+about a matter so far beyond our possibility of verification by
+experience, I venture to think that perhaps the doctrine that God is
+lifted up high above all human weaknesses and emotions does not mean
+that there can be no shadow cast on the divine blessedness by the dark
+substance of human sin. I do not venture to assert: I only suggest; and
+this I know, that He who said to us, 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
+Father,' had His eyes filled with tears, even in His hour of triumph, as
+He looked across the valley and saw the city sparkling in the rays of
+the morning sun. May we venture to see there an unveiling of the divine
+heart? Love has an infinite capacity of sorrow as of joy. But I leave
+these perhaps too presumptuous and lofty thoughts, to turn to the other
+points involved in the words before us.
+
+I said, in the second place, there was--
+
+II. A plain lesson here, as to the great purpose for which the Divine
+Spirit has been lodged in the heart of humanity.
+
+I find that in the two words of my text, 'the Holy Spirit,' and 'ye were
+thereby sealed unto the day of redemption.' If the central
+characteristic which it imports us to know and to keep in mind is that
+implied by the name, 'the Holy Spirit' then, of course, the great work
+that He has to perform upon earth is to make men like Himself. And that
+is further confirmed by the emblem of the seal which is here; for the
+seal comes in contact with the thing sealed, and leaves the impression
+of its own likeness there. And whatever else--and there is a great deal
+else that I cannot touch now--may be included in that great thought of
+the sealing by the Divine Spirit, these things are inseparably connected
+with, and suggested by it, viz. the actual contact of the Spirit of God
+with our spirits, which is expressed, as you may remember, in the other
+metaphors of being baptized in and anointed with, and yet more
+important, the result purposed by that contact being mainly to make us
+holy.
+
+Now, I pray you to think of how different that is from all other notions
+of inspiration that the world has ever known, and how different it is
+from a great many ideas that have had influence within the Christian
+Church. People say there are not any miracles now, and say we are worse
+off than when there used to be. That Divine Spirit does not come to give
+gifts of healing, interpretations of tongues, and all the other abnormal
+and temporary results which attended the first manifestations. These,
+when they were given, were but means to an end, and the end subsists
+whilst the means are swept away. It is better to be made good than to be
+filled with all manner of miraculous power. 'In this rejoice, not that
+the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names
+are written in heaven.' All the rest is transient. It is gone; let it
+go, we are not a bit the poorer for want of it. This remains--not
+tongues, nor gifts of healing, nor any other of these miraculous and
+extraordinary and external powers--but the continual operation of a
+divine influence, moulding men into its own likeness.
+
+Christianity is intensely ethical, and it sets forth, as the ultimate
+result of all its machinery, changing men into the likeness of God.
+Holiness is that for which Christ died, that for which the Divine Spirit
+works. Unless we Christian people recognise the true perspective of the
+Spirit's gifts, and put at the base the extraordinary, and higher than
+these, but still subordinate, the intellectual, and on top of all the
+spiritual and moral, we do not understand the meaning of the central
+gift and possible blessing of Christianity, to make us holy, or, if you
+do not like the theological word, let us put it into still plainer and
+more modern English, to make you and me good men and women, like God.
+That is the mightiest work of that Divine Spirit.
+
+We have here--
+
+III. A plain warning as to the possibility of thwarting these
+influences.
+
+Nothing here about irresistible grace; nothing here about a power that
+lays hold upon a man, and makes him good, he lying passive in its hands
+like clay in the hands of the potter! You will not be made holy without
+the Divine Spirit, but you will not be made holy without your working
+along with it. There is a possibility of resisting, and there is a
+possibility of co-operating. Man is left free. God does not lay hold of
+any one by the hair of his head, and drag him into paths of
+righteousness whether he will or no. But whilst there is the necessity
+for co-operation, which involves the possibility of resistance, we must
+also remember that that new life which comes into a man, and moulds his
+will as well as the rest of his nature, is itself the gift of God. We do
+not get into a contradiction when we thus speak, we only touch the edge
+of a great ocean in which our plummets can find no bottom. The same
+unravellable knot as to the co-operation of the divine and the creatural
+is found in the natural world, as in the experiences of the Christian
+soul. You have to work, and your work largely consists in yielding
+yourselves to the work of God upon you. 'Work out your own salvation
+with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you.' Brethren!
+If you and I are Christian people, we have put into our hearts and
+spirits the talent. It depends on us whether we wrap it in a napkin, and
+stow it away underground somewhere, or whether we use it, and fructify
+and increase it. If you wrap it in a napkin and put it away underground,
+when you come to take it out, and want to say, 'Lo! there Thou hast that
+is Thine,' you will find that it was not solid gold, which could not
+rust or diminish, but that it has been like some volatile essence, put
+away in an unventilated place, and imperfectly secured: the napkin is
+there, but the talent has vanished. We have to work with God, and we can
+resist. Ay, and there is a deeper and a sadder word than that applied by
+the same Apostle in another letter to the same subject. We can 'quench'
+the light and extinguish the fire.
+
+What extinguishes it? Look at the catalogue of sins that lie side by
+side with this exhortation of my text! They are all small
+matters--bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil-speaking, malice,
+stealing, lying, and the like; very 'homely' transgressions, if I may so
+say. Yes, and if you pile enough of them upon the spark that is in your
+hearts you will smother it out. Sin, the wrenching of myself away from
+the influences, not attending to the whispers and suggestions, being
+blind to the teaching of the Spirit through the Word and through
+Providence: these are the things that 'grieve the Holy Spirit of God.'
+
+And so, lastly, we have here--
+
+IV. A Tender Motive, a dissuasive from sin, a persuasive to yielding and
+to righteousness.
+
+Many a man has been kept from doing wrong things by thinking of a sad
+pale face sitting at home waiting for him. Many a boy has been kept from
+youthful transgressions which war against his soul here, on the streets
+of Manchester, full as they are of temptations, by thinking that it
+would grieve the poor old mother in her cottage, away down in the
+country somewhere. We can bring that same motive to bear, with
+infinitely increased force, in regard to our conduct as Christian
+people. 'Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.' A father feels a pang if he
+sees that his child makes no account of some precious gift that he has
+bestowed upon him, and leaves it lying about anywhere. A loving friend,
+standing on the margin of the stream, and calling to his friends in a
+boat when they are drifting to the rapids, turns away sad if they do not
+attend to his voice. That Divine Spirit pleads with us, and proffers its
+gifts to us, and turns away--I was going to use too strong a word,
+perhaps--sick at heart, not because of wounded authority, but because of
+wounded love and baffled desire to help, when we, in spite of It, will
+take our own way, neglect the call that warns us of our peril, and leave
+untouched the gifts that would have made us safe.
+
+Dear brethren, surely such a dissuasive from evil, and such a persuasive
+to good, is mightier than all abstractions about duty and conscience and
+right, and the like. 'Do it rightly' says Paul, 'and you will please Him
+that hath called you'; leave the evil thing undone, 'and my heart shall
+be glad, even mine.' You and I can grieve the Christ whose Spirit is
+given to us. You and I can add something to 'the joy of our Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S IMITATORS
+
+     'Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children'--Eph. v. 1.
+
+
+The Revised Version gives a more literal and more energetic rendering of
+this verse by reading, 'Be ye, therefore, _imitators_ of God, _as
+beloved_ children.' It is the only place in the Bible where that bold
+word 'imitate' is applied to the Christian relation to God. But, though
+the expression is unique, the idea underlies the whole teaching of the
+New Testament on the subject of Christian character and conduct. To be
+like God, and to set ourselves to resemble Him, is the sum of all duty;
+and in the measure in which we approximate thereto, we come to
+perfection. So, then, there are here just two points that I would
+briefly touch upon now--the one is the sublime precept of the text, and
+the other the all-sufficient motive enforcing it. 'Be ye imitators of
+God as'--because you are, and know yourselves to be--'beloved children,'
+and it therefore behoves you to be like your Father.
+
+I. First, then, this sublime precept.
+
+Now notice that, broad as this precept is, and all-inclusive of every
+kind of excellence and duty as it may be, the Apostle has a very
+definite and specific meaning in it. There is one feature, and only one,
+in which, accurately speaking, a man may be like God. Our limited
+knowledge can never be like the ungrowing perfect wisdom of God. Our
+holiness cannot be like His, for there are many points in our nature and
+character which have no relation or correspondence to anything in the
+divine nature. But what is left? Love is left. Our other graces are not
+like the God to whom they cleave. My faith is not like His faithfulness.
+My obedience is not like His authority. My submission is not like His
+autocratic power. My emptiness is not like His fulness. My aspirations
+are not like His gratifying of them. They correspond to God, but
+correspondence is not similarity; rather it presupposes unlikeness. Just
+as a concavity will fit into a convexity, for the very reason that it is
+concave and not convex, so the human unlikenesses, which are
+correspondent to God, are the characteristics by which it becomes
+possible that we should cleave to Him and inhere in Him. But whilst
+there is much in which He stands alone and incomparable, and whilst we
+have all to say, 'Who is like unto Thee, O Lord?' or what likeness shall
+we compare unto Him? we yet can obey in reference to one thing,--and to
+one thing only, as it seems to me--the commandment of my text, 'Be ye
+imitators of God.' We can be _like_ Him in nothing else, but our love
+not only corresponds to His, but is of the same quality and nature as
+His, howsoever different it may be in sweep and in fervour and in
+degree. The tiniest drop that hangs upon the tip of a thorn will be as
+perfect a sphere as the sun, and it will have its little rainbow on its
+round, with all the prismatic colours, the same in tint and order and
+loveliness, as when the bow spans the heavens. The dew-drop may imitate
+the sun, and we are to be imitators of God; knit to Him by the one thing
+in us which is kindred to Him in the deepest sense--the love that is the
+life of God and the perfecting of man.
+
+Well, then, notice how the Apostle in the context fastens upon a certain
+characteristic of that divine love which we are to imitate in our lives;
+and thereby makes the precept a very practical and a very difficult one.
+Godlike love will be love that gives as liberally as His does. What is
+the very essence of all love? Longing to be like. And the purest and
+deepest love is love which desires to impart itself, and that is God's
+love. The Bible seems to teach us that in a very mysterious sense, about
+which the less we say the less likely we are to err, there is a quality
+of giving up, as well as of giving, in God's love; for we read of the
+Father that 'spared not His Son,' by which is meant, not that He did not
+shrink from inflicting something upon the Son, but that He did not
+grudgingly keep that Son for Himself. 'He spared not His own Son, but
+delivered Him up to the death for us all.' And if we can say but little
+about that surrender on the part of the infinite Fountain of all love,
+we can say that Jesus Christ, who is the activity of the Father's love,
+spared not Himself, but, as the context puts it, 'gave Himself _up_ for
+us.'
+
+And that is the pattern for us. That thought is not a subject to be
+decorated with tawdry finery of eloquence, or to be dealt with as if it
+were a sentimental prettiness very fit to be spoken of, but impossible
+to be practised. It is the duty of every Christian man and woman, and
+they have not done their duty unless they have learned that the bond
+which unites them to men is, in its nature, the very same as the bond
+which unites men to God; and that they will not have lived righteously
+unless they learn to be 'imitators of God,' in the surrender of
+themselves for their brother's good.
+
+Ah, friend, that grips us very tight--and if there were a little more
+reality and prose brought into our sentimental talk about Christian
+love, and that love were more often shown in action, in all the
+self-suppression and taking a lift of a world's burdens, which its great
+Pattern demands, the world would be less likely to curl a scornful lip
+at the Church's talk about brotherly love.
+
+You say that you are a Christian--that is to say a child of God. Do you
+know anything, and would anybody looking at you see that you knew
+anything, about the love which counts no cost and no sacrifice too great
+to be lavished on the unworthy and the sinful?
+
+But that brings me to another point. The Apostle here, in the context,
+not for the sake of saying pretty things, but for the sake of putting
+sharp points on Christian duty, emphasises another thought, that Godlike
+love will be a forgiving love. Why should we be always waiting for the
+other man to determine our relations to him, and consider that if he
+does not like us we are absolved from the duty of loving him? Why should
+we leave him to settle the terms upon which we are to stand? God has
+love, as the Sermon on the Mount puts it, 'to the unthankful and the
+evil,' and we shall not be imitating His example unless we carry the
+same temper into all our relationships with our fellows.
+
+People sit complacently and hear all that I am now trying to enforce,
+and think it is the right thing for me to say, but do you think it is
+the right thing for you to do? When a man obviously does not like you,
+or perhaps tries to harm you, what then? How do you meet him? 'He maketh
+His sun to shine, and sendeth His rain, on the unthankful and the evil.'
+'Be ye imitators of God, as beloved children.'
+
+Now note the all-sufficient motive for this great precept.
+
+The sense of being loved will make loving, and nothing else will. The
+only power that will eradicate, or break without eradicating, our
+natural tendency to make ourselves our centres, is the recognition that
+there, at the heart, and on the central throne of the universe, and the
+divinest thing in it, there sits perfect and self-sacrificing Love,
+whose beams warm even us. The only flame that kindles love in a man's
+heart, whether it be to God or to man, is the recognition that he
+himself stands in the full sunshine of that blaze from above, and that
+God has loved him. Our hearts are like reverberating furnaces, and when
+the fire of the consciousness of the divine love is lit in them, then
+from sides and roof the genial heat is reflected back again to intensify
+the central flame. Love begets love, and according to Paul, and
+according to John, and according to the Master of both of them, if a man
+loves God, then that glowing beam will glow whether it is turned to
+earth or turned to heaven.
+
+The Bible does not cut love into two, and keep love to God in one
+division of the heart and love to man in another, but regards them as
+one and the same; the same sentiment, the same temper, the same attitude
+of heart and mind, only that in the one case the love soars, and in the
+other it lives along the level. The two are indissolubly tied together.
+
+It is because a man knows himself to be beloved that therefore he is
+stimulated and encouraged to be an 'imitator of God' and, on the other
+hand, the sense of being God's child underlies all real imitation of
+Him. Imitation is natural to the child. It is a miserable home where a
+boy does not imitate his father, and it is the father's fault in nine
+cases out of ten if he does not. Whoever feels himself to be a beloved
+child is thereby necessarily drawn to model himself on the Father that
+he loves, because he knows that the Father loves him.
+
+So I come to the blessed truth that Christian morality does not say to
+us, 'Now begin, and work, and tinker away at yourselves, and try to get
+up some kind of excellence of character, and then come to God, and pray
+Him to accept you.' That is putting the cart before the horse. The order
+is reversed. We are to begin with taking our personal salvation and
+God's love to us for granted, and to work from that. Realise that you
+are beloved children, and then set to work to live accordingly. If we
+are ever to do what is our bounden duty to do, in all the various
+relations of life, we must begin with recognising, with faithful and
+grateful hearts, the love wherewith God has loved us. We are to think
+much and confidently of ourselves as beloved of God, and that, and only
+that, will make us loving to men.
+
+The Nile floods the fields of Egypt and brings greenness and abundance
+wherever its waters are carried, because thousands of miles away, close
+up to the Equator, the snows have melted and filled the watercourses in
+the far-off wilderness. And so, if we are to go out into life, living
+illustrations and messengers of a love that has redeemed even us, we
+must, in many a solitary moment, and in the depths of our quiet hearts,
+realise and keep fast the conviction that God hath loved us, and Christ
+hath died for us.
+
+But a solemn consideration has to be pressed on all our consciences, and
+that is that there is something wrong with a man's Christian confidence
+whose assurance that he himself possesses a share in the love of God in
+Christ, is not ever moving him to imitation of the love in which he
+trusts. It is a shame that any one without Christian faith and love
+should be as charitable, as open to pity and to help, as earnest in any
+sort of philanthropic work, as Christian men and women are. But godless
+and perfectly secular philanthropy treads hard on the heels of Christian
+charity to-day. The more shame to us if we have been eating our morsels
+alone, and hugging ourselves in the possession of the love which has
+redeemed us; and if it has not quickened us to the necessity of copying
+it in our relations to our fellows. There is something dreadfully wrong
+about such a Christian character. 'He that loveth not his brother whom
+he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?'
+
+Take these plain principles, and honestly fit them to your characters
+and lives, and you will revolutionise both.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT CHILDREN OF LIGHT SHOULD BE
+
+     'Walk as children of light.'--Eph. v. 8.
+
+
+It was our Lord who coined this great name for His disciples. Paul's use
+of it is probably a reminiscence of the Master's, and so is a hint of
+the existence of the same teachings as we now find in the existing
+Gospels, long before their day. Jesus Christ said, 'Believe in the
+light, that ye may be the children of light'; and Paul gives
+substantially the same account of the way by which a man becomes a Son
+of the Light when he says, in the words preceding my text, 'Ye were
+sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.'
+
+Union with Him makes light, just as the bit of carbon will glow as long
+as it is in contact with the electric force, and subsides again into
+darkness when that is switched off. To be in Christ is to be a child of
+light, and to believe in Christ is to be in Him.
+
+But the intense moral earnestness of our Apostle is indicated by the
+fact that on both occasions in which he uses this designation he does
+so, not for the purpose of heightening the sense of the honour and
+prerogative attached to it, but for the sake of deducing from it plain
+and stringent moral duties, and heightening the sense of obligation to
+holy living.
+
+'Walk as children of light.' Be true to your truest, deepest self.
+Manifest what you are. Let the sweet, sacred secrets of inward communion
+come out in the trivialities of ordinary conduct; make of your every
+thought a deed, and see to it that every deed be vitalised and purified
+by its contact with the great truths and thoughts that lie in this name.
+These are various ways of putting this one all-sufficient directory of
+conduct.
+
+Now, in the context, the Apostle expands this concentrated exhortation
+in three or four different directions, and perhaps we may best set forth
+its meaning if we shape our remarks by these, I venture to cast them,
+for the sake of emphasis, into a hortatory form.
+
+I. Aim at an all-round productiveness of the natural fruits of the
+light.
+
+The true reading is, 'Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the
+light' (not _spirit_, as the Authorised Version reads it) 'is in all
+goodness and righteousness and truth.' Now, it is obvious that the
+alteration of 'light' instead of 'spirit' brings the words into
+connection with the preceding and the following. The reference to the
+'fruits of the spirit' would be entirely irrelevant in this place; a
+reference to the 'fruit of the _light_,' as being every form of goodness
+and righteousness and truth, is altogether in place.
+
+There is, then, a natural tendency in the light to blossom out into all
+forms and types of goodness. 'Fruit' suggests the idea of natural,
+silent, spontaneous, effortless growth. And, although that is by no
+means a sufficient account of the process by which bad men become good
+men, it is an inseparable element, in all true moral renovation, that it
+be the natural outcome and manifestation of an inward principle;
+otherwise it is mere hypocritical adornment, or superficial appearance.
+If we are to do good we must first of all _be_ good. If from us there
+are to come righteousness and truth, and all other graces of character,
+there must, first of all, be the radical change which is involved in
+passing from separateness in the darkness to union with Jesus Christ in
+the light. The Apostle's theory of moral renovation is that you must
+begin with the implantation in the spirit of the source of all moral
+goodness--viz. Jesus Christ--brought into the heart by the uniting power
+of humble faith. And then there will be lodged in our being a vital
+power, of which the natural outcome will be all manner of fair and pure
+things. Effort is needed, as I shall have to say; but prior to effort
+there must be union with Jesus Christ.
+
+This wide, general commandment of our text is sufficiently definite,
+thinks Paul; for if the light be in you it will naturally effloresce
+into all forms of beauty. Light is the condition of fruitfulness.
+Everywhere the vital germ is only acted upon by the light. No sunshine,
+no flowers; darkness produces thin, etiolated, whitened, and feeble
+shoots at the best. Let the light blaze in, and the blanched feebleness
+becomes vigorous and unfolds itself. How much more will light be the
+condition of fruitfulness when the very light itself is the seed from
+which all fruit is developed.
+
+But, still further, mark how there must be an all-round completeness in
+order that we shall fairly set forth the glory and power of the light of
+which our faith makes us children and partakers. The fruit 'is in all
+goodness and righteousness and truth.' These three aspects--the good,
+the right, the true--may not be a scientific, ethical classification,
+but they give a sufficiently plain and practical distinction. Goodness,
+in which the prevailing idea is beneficence and the kindlier virtues;
+righteousness, which refers to the sterner graces of justice; truth, in
+which the prevalent idea is conformity in action with facts and the
+conditions of man's life and entire sincerity--these three do cover,
+with sufficient completeness, the whole ground of possible human
+excellence. But the Apostle widens them still further by that little
+word _all_.
+
+We all tend to cultivate those virtues which are in accordance with our
+natural dispositions, or are made most easy to us by our circumstances.
+And there is nothing in which we more need to seek comprehensiveness
+than in the effort to educate ourselves into, and to educe from
+ourselves, kinds of goodness and forms of excellence which are not
+naturally in accordance with our dispositions, or facilitated by our
+circumstances. The tree planted in the shrubbery will grow all lopsided;
+the bushes on the edge of the cliff will be shorn away on the windward
+side by the teeth of the south-western gale, and will lean over
+northwards, on the side of least resistance. And so we all are apt to
+content ourselves with doing the good things that are easiest for us, or
+that fit into our temperament and character. Jesus Christ would have us
+to be all-round men, and would that we should seek to aim after and
+possess the kinds of excellence that are least cognate to our
+characters. Are you strong, and do you pride yourself upon your
+firmness? Cultivate gentleness. Are you amiable, and pride yourself,
+perhaps, upon your sympathetic tenderness? Try to get a little iron and
+quinine into your constitution. Seek to be the man that you are least
+likely to be, and aim at a comprehensive development of '_all_
+righteousness and goodness and truth.'
+
+Further, remember that this all-round completeness is not attained as
+the result of an effortless growth. True, these things are the fruits of
+the light, but also true, they are the prizes of struggle and the
+trophies of warfare. No man will ever attain to the comprehensive moral
+excellence which it is in his own power to win; no Christian will ever
+be as all-round a good man as he has the opportunities of being, unless
+he makes it his business, day by day, to aim after the conscious
+increase of gifts that he possesses, and the conscious appropriation and
+possession of those of which he is still lacking. 'Nothing of itself
+will come,' or very little. True, the light will shine out in variously
+tinted ray if it be in a man, as surely as from the seed come the blade
+and the ear and the full corn in the ear, but you will not have nor keep
+the light which thus will unfold itself unless you put forth appropriate
+effort. Christ comes into our hearts, but we have to bring Him there.
+Christ dwells in our hearts, but we have to work into our nature, and
+work out in action, the gifts that He bestows. They will advance but
+little in the divine life who trust to the natural unfolding of the
+supernatural life within them, and do not help its unfolding by their
+own resolute activity. 'Walk as children of the light.' There is your
+duty, for 'the fruit of the light is all righteousness.' One might have
+supposed that the commandments would be, 'Be passive as children of the
+light, for the light will grow.' But the Apostle binds together, as
+always, the two things, the divine working and the human effort at
+reception, retention, and application of that divine work, just as he
+does in the great classical passage, 'Work out your own salvation, for
+it is God that worketh in you.'
+
+II. Secondly, the general exhortation of my text widens out itself into
+this--test all things by Christ's approval of them.
+
+'Proving what is well pleasing unto the Lord.' That, according to the
+natural construction of the Greek, is the main way by which the Apostle
+conceives that his general commandment of 'walking as children of the
+light' is to be carried out. You do it if, step by step, and moment by
+moment, and to every action of life, you apply this standard--Does
+Christ like it? Does it please Him? When that test is rigidly applied,
+then, and only then, will you walk as becomes the children of the light.
+
+So, then, there is a standard--not what men approve, not what my
+conscience, partially illuminated, may say is permissible, not what is
+recognised as allowable by the common maxims of the world round about
+us, but Christ's approval. How different the hard, stern, and often
+unwelcome prescriptions of law and rigidity of some standards of right
+become when they are changed into that which pleases the Divine Lord and
+Lover! Surely it is something blessed that the hard, cold, and to such a
+large extent powerless conceptions of duty or obligation shall be
+changed into pleasing Jesus Christ; and that so our hearts shall be
+enlisted in the service of our consciences, and love shall be glad to do
+the Beloved's will. There are many ways by which the burden of life's
+obligations is lightened to the Christian. I do not know that any of
+them is more precious than the fact that law is changed into His will,
+and that we seek to do what is right because it pleases the Master.
+There is the standard.
+
+It will be easy for us to come to the right appreciation of individual
+actions when we are living in the light. Union with Jesus Christ will
+make us quick to discern His will. We have a conscience;--well, that
+needs educating and enlightening, and very often correcting. We have the
+Word of God;--well, that needs explanation, and needs to be brought
+close to our hearts. If we have Christ dwelling in us, in the measure
+in which we are in sympathy with Him, we shall be gifted with clear
+eyes, not indeed to discern the expedient--that belongs to another
+region altogether--but we shall be gifted with very clear eyes to
+discern right from wrong, and there will be an instinctive recoil from
+the evil, and an instinctive attachment of ourselves to the good. If we
+are in the Lord we shall easily be able to prove what is acceptable and
+well-pleasing to Him.
+
+We shall never walk as the children of the light, unless we have the
+habit of referring everything, trifles and great things, to His
+arbitrament, and seeking in them all to do what is pleasing in His
+sight. The smallest deed may be brought under the operation of the
+largest principles. Gravitation influences the microscopic grain of sand
+as well as planets and sun. There is nothing so small but you can bring
+it into this category--it either pleases or displeases Jesus Christ. And
+the faults into which Christian men fall and in which they continue are
+very largely owing to their carelessness in applying this standard to
+the small things of their daily lives. The sleepy Custom House officers
+let the contraband article in because it seems to be of small bulk.
+There are old stories about how strong castles were taken by armed men
+hidden in an innocent-looking cart of forage. Do you keep up a rigid
+inspection at the frontier, and see to it that everything vindicates its
+right to enter because it is pleasing to Jesus Christ.
+
+III. Thirdly, we have here another expansion of the general command, and
+that is--keep well separate from the darkness.
+
+Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather
+reprove them.' Now, your time will not allow me to dwell, as I had hoped
+to do, upon the considerations to be suggested here. The very briefest
+possible mention of them is all that I can afford.
+
+'The unfruitful works of darkness';--well, then, the darkness has its
+works, but though they be works they are not worth calling fruit. That
+is to say, nothing except the conduct which flows from union with Jesus
+Christ so corresponds to the man's nature and relations, or has any such
+permanence about it as to entitle it to be called fruit. Other acts may
+be 'works' but Paul will not dishonour the great word 'fruit' by
+applying it to such rubbish as these, and so he brands them as
+'unfruitful works of darkness.'
+
+Keep well clear of them, says the Apostle. He is not talking here about
+the relations between Christians and others, but about the relations
+between Christian men and the _works_ of darkness. Only, of course, in
+order to avoid fellowship with the works you will sometimes have to keep
+yourselves well separate from their doers. Much association with such
+men is forced upon us by circumstances, and much is the imperative duty
+of Christian beneficence and charity. But I venture to express the
+strong and growing conviction that there are few exhortations that the
+secularised Church of this generation needs more than this commandment
+of my text: 'Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness'
+'What communion hath light with darkness?' Ah! we see plenty of it,
+unnatural as it is, in the so-called Church of to-day. 'What concord
+hath Christ with Belial? What part hath he that believeth with an
+infidel? Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate.'
+
+And, brethren, remember, a part of the separation is that your light
+shall be a constant condemnation of the darkness. 'But rather reprove
+them,' says my text; that is a work that devolves upon all Christians.
+It is to be done, no doubt, by the silent condemnation of evil which
+ever comes from the quiet doing of good. As an old preacher has it, 'The
+presence of a saint hinders the devil of elbow-room for doing his
+tricks.' The old legend told us that the fire-darting Apollo shot his
+radiant arrows against the pythons and 'dragons of the slime.' The sons
+of light have the same office--by their light of life to make the
+darkness aware of itself, and ashamed of itself; and to change it into
+light.
+
+But silent reproving is not all our duty. The Christian Church has
+wofully fallen beneath its duty, not only in regard to its complicity
+with the social crimes of each generation, but in regard to its cowardly
+silence towards them; especially when they flaunt and boast themselves
+in high places. What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to
+war? What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to impurity?
+What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to drunkenness? What
+has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to the social vices that
+are honeycombing society and this city to-day? If you are the sons of
+light, walk as the sons of light, and have 'no fellowship with the
+unfruitful works of darkness'; but set the trumpet to your lips, and
+'declare unto My people their transgressions, and to the house of Israel
+their sin.'
+
+
+
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE LIGHT
+
+     'The fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and
+      truth.'--Eph. v. 9 (R.V.).
+
+
+This is one of the cases in which the Revised Version has done service
+by giving currency to an unmistakably accurate and improved reading.
+That which stands in our Authorised Version, 'the fruit of the Spirit'
+seems to have been a correction made by some one who took offence at the
+violent metaphor, as he conceived it, that 'light' should bear 'fruit'
+and desired to tinker the text so as to bring it into verbal
+correspondence with another passage in the Epistle to the Galatians,
+where 'the fruits of the Spirit' are enumerated. But the reading, 'the
+fruit of the _light_,' has not only the preponderance of manuscript
+authority in its favour, but is preferable because it preserves a
+striking image, and is in harmony with the whole context.
+
+The Apostle has just been exhorting his Ephesian friends to walk as
+'children of the light' and before he goes on to expand and explain that
+injunction he interjects this parenthetical remark, as if he would say,
+To be true to the light that is in you is the sum of duty, and the
+condition of perfectness, '_for_ the fruit of the light is in all
+goodness and righteousness and truth' That connection is entirely
+destroyed by the substitution of 'spirit.' The whole context, both
+before and after my text, is full of references to the light as working
+in the life; and a couple of verses after it we read about 'the
+unfruitful works of darkness' an expression which evidently looks back
+to my text.
+
+So please do understand that our text in this sermon is--'The fruit of
+the _light_ consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth.'
+
+I. Now, first of all, I have just a word to say about this light which
+is fruitful.
+
+Note--for it is, I think, not without significance--a minute variation
+in the Apostle's language in this verse and in the context. He has been
+speaking of 'light,' now he speaks of '_the_ light'; and that, I think,
+is not accidental. The expression, 'walk as children of light,' is more
+general and vague. The expression, 'the fruit of _the_ light,' points to
+some specific source from which all light flows. And observe, also, that
+we have in the previous context, 'Ye were sometime darkness, but now are
+ye light _in the Lord_,' which evidently implies that the light of which
+my text speaks is not natural to men, but is the result of the entrance
+into their darkness of a new element.
+
+Now I do not suppose that we should be entitled to say that Paul here is
+formally anticipating the deep teaching of the Apostle John that Jesus
+Christ is '_the_ Light of men,' and especially of Christian men. But he
+is distinctly asserting, I think, that the light which blesses and
+hallows humanity is no diffused glow, but is all gathered and
+concentrated into one blazing centre, from which it floods the hearts of
+men. Or, to put away the metaphor, he is here asserting that the only
+way by which any man can cease to be, in the doleful depths of his
+nature, darkness in its saddest sense is by opening his heart through
+faith, that into it there may rush, as the light ever does where an
+opening--be it only a single tiny cranny--is made, the light which is
+Christ, and without whom is darkness.
+
+I know, of course, that, apart altogether from the exercise of faith in
+Jesus Christ, there do shine in men's hearts rays of the light of
+knowledge and of purity; but if we believe the teaching of Scripture,
+these, too, are from Christ, in His universally-diffused work, by which,
+apart altogether from individual faith, or from a knowledge of
+revelation, He is 'the light that lighteth every man coming into the
+world.' And I hold that, wheresoever there is conscience, wheresoever
+there is judgment and reason, wheresoever there are sensitive desires
+after excellence and nobleness, _there_ is a flickering of a light which
+I believe to be from Christ Himself. But that light, as widely diffused
+as humanity, fights with, and is immersed in, darkness. In the physical
+world, light and darkness are mutually exclusive: where the one is the
+other comes not; but in the spiritual world the paradox is true that the
+two co-exist. Apart from revelation and the acceptance of Jesus Christ's
+person and work by our humble faith, the light struggles with the
+darkness, and the darkness obstinately refuses to admit its entrance,
+and 'comprehendeth it not.' And so, ineffectual but to make restless and
+to urge to vain efforts and to lay up material for righteous judgment,
+is the light that shines in men whose hearts are shut against Christ.
+The fruitful light is Christ within us, and, unless we know and possess
+it by the opening of heart and mind and will, the solemn words preceding
+my text are true of us: 'Ye were sometime darkness.' Oh, brother! do you
+see to it that the subsequent words are true of you: 'Now are ye light
+in the Lord.' Only if you are in Christ are you truly light.
+
+II. Now, secondly, notice the fruitfulness of this indwelling light.
+
+Of course the metaphor that light, like a tree, grows and blossoms and
+puts forth fruit, is a very strong one. And its very violence and
+incongruity help its force. Fruit is generally used in Scripture in a
+good sense. It conveys the notion of something which is the natural
+outcome of a vital power, and so, when we talk about the light being
+fruitful, we are setting, in a striking image, the great Christian
+thought that, if you want to get right conduct, you must have renewed
+character; and that if you have renewed character you will get right
+conduct. This is the principle of my text. The light has in it a
+productive power; and the true way to adorn a life with all things
+beautiful, solemn, lovely, is to open the heart to the entrance of Jesus
+Christ.
+
+God's way is--first, new life, then better conduct. Men's way is,
+'cultivate morality, seek after purity, try to be good.' And surely
+conscience and experience alike tell us that that is a hopeless effort.
+To begin with what should be second is an anachronism in morals, and
+will be sure to result in failure in practice. He is not a wise man that
+tries to build a house from the chimneys downwards. And to talk about
+making a man's doings good before you have secured a radical change in
+the doer, by the infusion into him of the very life of Jesus Christ
+Himself, is to begin at the top story, instead of at the foundation.
+Many of us are trying to put the cart before the horse in that fashion.
+Many of us have made the attempt over and over again, and the attempt
+always has failed and always will fail. You may do much for the mending
+of your characters and for the incorporation in your lives of virtues
+and graces which do not grow there naturally and without effort. I do
+not want to cut the nerves of any man's stragglings, I do not want to
+darken the brightness of any man's aspirations, but I do say that the
+people who, apart from Jesus Christ, and the entrance into their souls
+by faith of His quickening power, are seeking, some of them nobly, some
+of them sadly, and all of them vainly, to cure their faults of
+character, will never attain anything but a superficial and fragmentary
+goodness, because they have begun at the wrong end.
+
+But 'make the tree good' and its fruit will be good. Get Christ into
+your heart, and all fair things will grow as the natural outcome of His
+indwelling. The fruitfulness of the light is not put upon its right
+basis until we come to understand that the light is Christ Himself, who,
+dwelling in our hearts by faith, is made _in_ us as well as '_unto_ us
+wisdom, and righteousness, and salvation, and redemption.' The beam that
+is reflected from the mirror is the very beam that falls on the mirror,
+and the fair things in life and conduct which Christian people bring
+forth are in very deed the outcome of the vital power of Jesus Christ
+which has entered into them. 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in
+me,' is the Apostle's declaration in the midst of his struggles; and the
+perfected saints before the throne cast their crowns at His feet, and
+say, 'Not unto us! not unto us, but unto Thy name be the glory.' The
+talent is the Lord's, only the spending of it is the servant's. And so
+the order of the Divine appointment is, first, the entrance of the
+light, and then the conduct that flows from it.
+
+Note, too, how this same principle of the fruitfulness of the light
+gives instruction as to the true place of effort in the Christian life.
+The main effort ought to be to get more of the light into ourselves.
+'Abide in Me, and I in you.' And so, and only so, will fruit come.
+
+And such an effort has to take in hand all the circumference of our
+being, and to fix thoughts that wander, and to still wishes that
+clamour, and to empty hearts that are full of earthly loves, and to
+clear a space in minds that are crammed with thoughts about the
+transient and the near, in order that the mind may keep in steadfast
+contemplation of Jesus, and the heart may be bound to Him by cords of
+love that are not capable of being snapped, and scarcely of being
+stretched, and the will may in patience stand saying, 'Speak, Lord! for
+Thy servant heareth'; and the whole tremulous nature may be rooted and
+built up in and on Him. Ah, brother! if we understand all that goes to
+the fulfilment of that one sweet and merciful injunction, 'Abide in Me,'
+we shall recognise that there is the field on which Christian effort is
+mainly to be occupied.
+
+But that is not all. For there must be likewise the effort to
+appropriate, and still more to manifest in conduct, the fruit-bringing
+properties of that indwelling light. 'Giving all diligence add to your
+faith.' 'Having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all
+filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the
+Lord.' We are often told that just as we trust Christ for our
+forgiveness and acceptance, so we are to trust Him for our sanctifying
+and perfecting. It is true, and yet it is not true. We are to trust Him
+for our sanctifying and our perfecting. But the faith which trusts Him
+for these is not a substitute for effort, but it is the foundation of
+effort. And the more we rely on His power to cleanse us from all evil,
+the more are we bound to make the effort in His power and in dependence
+on Him, to cleanse ourselves from all evil, and to secure as our own the
+natural outcomes of His dwelling within us, which are 'the fruits of the
+light.'
+
+III. And so, lastly, notice the specific fruits which the Apostle here
+dwells upon.
+
+They consist, says he, in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Now
+'goodness' here seems to me to be used in its narrower sense, just as
+the same Apostle uses it in the Epistle to the Romans, in contrast with
+'righteousness,' where he says, 'for a good man some would even dare to
+die.' There he means by 'good,' as he does here by 'goodness,' not the
+general expression for all forms of virtue and gracious conduct, but the
+specific excellence of kindliness, amiability, or the like.
+'Righteousness' again, is that which rigidly adheres to the strict law
+of duty, and carefully desires to give to every man what belongs to him,
+and to every relation of life what it requires. And 'truth' is rather
+the truth of sincerity, as opposed to hypocrisy and lies and shams, than
+the intellectual truth as opposed to error.
+
+Now, all these three types of excellence--kindliness, righteousness,
+truthfulness--are apt to be separated. For the first of
+them--amiability, kindliness, gentleness--is apt to become too soft, to
+lose its grip of righteousness, and it needs the tonic of the addition
+of those other graces, just as you need lime in water if it is to make
+bone. Righteousness, on the other hand, is apt to become stern, and
+needs the softening of goodness to make it human and attractive. The
+rock is grim when it is bare; it wants verdure to drape it if it is to
+be lovely. Truth needs kindliness and righteousness, and they need
+truth. For there are men who pride themselves on 'speaking out,' and
+take rudeness and want of regard for other people's sensitive feelings
+to be sincerity. And, on the other hand, it is possible that amiability
+may be sweeter than truth is, and that righteousness may be hypocritical
+and insincere. So Paul says, 'Let this white light be resolved in the
+prism of your characters into the threefold rays of kindliness,
+righteousness, truthfulness.'
+
+And then, again, he desires that each of us should try to make our own a
+fully developed, all-round perfection--_all_ goodness and righteousness
+and truth; of every sort, that is, and in every degree. We are all apt
+to cultivate graces of character which correspond to our natural
+disposition and make. We are all apt to become _torsos_, fragmentary,
+one-sided, like the trees that grow against a brick wall, or those which
+stand exposed to the prevailing blasts from one quarter of the sky. But
+we should seek to appropriate types of excellence to which we are least
+inclined, as well as those which are most in harmony with our natural
+dispositions. If you incline to kindliness, try to brace yourselves with
+righteousness; if you incline to righteousness, to take the stern,
+strict view of duty, and to give to every man what he deserves, remember
+that you do not give men their dues unless you give them a great deal
+more than their deserts, and that righteousness does not perfectly allot
+to our fellows what they ought to receive from us, unless we give them
+pity and indulgence and forbearance and forgiveness when it is needed.
+The one light breaks into all colours--green in the grass, purple and
+red in the flowers, flame-coloured in the morning sky, blue in the deep
+sea. The light that is in us ought, in like manner, to be analysed
+into, and manifested in, 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good
+report.'
+
+And so, dear friends, here is a test for us all. Devout emotion,
+orthodox creed, practical diligence in certain forms of benevolence and
+philanthropic work, are all very well; but Jesus Christ came to make us
+like Himself, and to turn our darkness into light that betrays its
+source by its resemblance, though it be a weakened one, to the sun from
+which it came. We have no right to call ourselves Christ's followers
+unless we are, in some measure, Christ's pictures.
+
+Here is a message of cheer and hope for us all. We have all tried, and
+tried, and tried, over and over again, to purge and mend these poor
+characters of ours. How long the toil, how miserable and poor the
+results! A million candles will not light the night; but when God's
+mercy of sunrise comes above the hills, beasts of prey slink to their
+dens and birds begin to sing, and flowers open, and growth resumes
+again. We cannot mend ourselves except partially and superficially; but
+we can open will, heart, and mind, by faith, for His entrance; and where
+He comes, there He slays the evil creatures that live in and love the
+dark, and all gracious things will blossom into beauty. If we are in the
+Lord we shall be light; and if the Lord, who is the Light, is in us, we,
+too, shall bear fruits of 'all righteousness and goodness and truth.'
+
+
+
+
+PLEASING CHRIST
+
+     'Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.'--Eph. v. 10.
+
+
+These words are closely connected with those which precede them in the
+8th verse--'Walk as children of light.' They further explain the mode by
+which that commandment is to be fulfilled. They who, as children of
+light, mindful of their obligations and penetrated by its brightness,
+seek to conform their active life to the light to which they belong, are
+to do so by making experiment of, or investigating and determining, what
+is 'acceptable to the Lord.' It is the sum of all Christian duty, a
+brief compendium of conduct, an all-sufficient directory of life.
+
+There need only be two remarks made by way of explanation of my text.
+One is that the expression rendered 'acceptable' is more accurately and
+forcibly given, as in the Revised Version, by the plainer word
+'well-pleasing.' And the other is that 'the Lord' here, as always in the
+New Testament--unless the context distinctly forbids it--means Jesus
+Christ. Here the context distinctly demands it. For only a sentence or
+two before, the Apostle has been speaking about 'those who were sometime
+darkness having been made light in the Lord'--which is obviously in
+Jesus Christ.
+
+And here, therefore, what pleases _Christ_ is the Christian's highest
+duty, and the one prescription which is required to be obeyed in order
+to walk in the light is, to do that which pleases Him.
+
+I. So, then, in these brief words, so comprehensive, and going so deep
+into the secrets of holy and noble living, I want you to notice that we
+have, first, the only attitude which corresponds to our relations to
+Christ.
+
+How remarkable it is that this Apostle should go on the presumption that
+our conduct affects Him, that it is possible for us to please, or to
+displease Jesus Christ now. We often wonder whether the beloved dead are
+cognisant of what we do; and whether any emotions of something like
+either our earthly complacency or displeasure, can pass across the
+undisturbed calm of their hearts, if they are aware of what their loved
+ones here are doing. That question has to be left very much in the dark,
+however our hearts may sometimes seek to enforce answers. But this we
+know, that that loving Lord, not merely by the omniscience of His
+divinity, but by the perpetual knowledge and sympathy of His perfect
+manhood, is not only cognizant of, but is affected by, the conduct of
+His professed followers here on earth. And since it is true that He now
+is not swept away into some oblivious region where the dead are, but is
+close beside us all, cognizant of every act, watching every thought, and
+capable of having something like a shadow of a pang passing across the
+Divine depth of His eternal joy and repose at the right hand of God,
+then, surely, the only thing that corresponds to such a relationship as
+at present subsists between the Christian soul and the Lord is that we
+should take as our supreme and continual aim that, 'whether present or
+absent, we should be well-pleasing to Him.' Nor does that demand rest
+only upon the realities of our present relation to that Lord, but it
+goes back to the past facts on which our present relation rests. And the
+only fitting response to what He has been and done for us is that we
+should, each of us, in the depth of our hearts, and in the widest
+circumference of the surface of our lives, enthrone Him as absolute
+Lord, and take His good pleasure as our supreme law. Jesus Christ is
+King because He is Redeemer. The only adequate response to what He has
+done for me is that I should absolutely submit myself to Him, and say to
+Him, 'O Lord! truly I am Thy servant! Thou hast loosed my bonds.' The
+one fitting return to make for that Cross and Passion is to enthrone His
+will upon my will, and to set Him as absolute Monarch over the whole of
+my nature. Thoughts, affections, purposes, efforts, and all should crown
+Him King, because He has died for me. The conduct which corresponds to
+the relations which we bear to Christ as the present Judge of our work,
+and the Redeemer of our souls by His mighty deed in the past, is this of
+my text, to make my one law His will, and to please Him that hath called
+me to be His soldier.
+
+The meaning of being a Christian is that, in return for the gift of a
+whole Christ, I give my whole self to Him. 'Why call ye me Lord! Lord!
+and do not the things which I say?' If He is what He assuredly is to
+every one of us, nothing can be plainer than that we are thereby bound
+by obligations which are not iron, but are more binding than if they
+were, because they were woven out of the cords of love and the bands of
+a man, bound to serve Him supremely, Him only, Him always, Him by the
+suppression of self, and the making His pleasure our law.
+
+II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to notice that we have here the
+all-sufficient guide for practical life.
+
+It sounds very mystical, and a trifle vague, to say, Do everything to
+please Jesus Christ. It is all-comprehensive; it is mystical in the
+sense that it goes down below the mere surface of prescriptions about
+conduct. But it is not vague, and it is capable of immediate application
+to every part, and to every act, of every man's life.
+
+For what is it that pleases Jesus Christ? His own likeness; as,
+according to the old figure--which is, I suppose, true to spiritual
+facts, whether to external facts or not--the refiner knows that the
+metal is ready to flow when he can see his own face in it. Jesus Christ
+desires most that we should all be like Him. That we are to bear His
+image is as comprehensive, and at the same time as specific, a way of
+setting forth the sum of Christian duty, as are the words of my text.
+The two phrases mean the same thing.
+
+And what is the likeness to Jesus Christ which it is thus our supreme
+obligation and our truest wisdom and perfection to bear? Well! we can
+put it all into two words--self-suppression and continual consciousness
+of obedience to the Divine will. The life of Jesus Christ, in its brief
+records in Scripture, is felt by every thoughtful man to contain within
+its narrow compass adequate direction for, and to set forth the ideal
+of, human life. That is not because He went through all varieties of
+earthly experience, for He did not. The life of a Jewish peasant
+nineteen centuries ago was extremely unlike the life of a Manchester
+merchant, of a college professor, of a successful barrister, of a
+struggling mother, in this present day. But in the narrow compass of
+that life there are set forth these two things, which are the basis of
+all human perfection--the absolute annihilation of self-regard, and the
+perpetual recognition of a Divine will. These are the things which every
+Christian man and woman is bound by the power of Christ's Cross to
+translate into the actions correspondent with their particular
+circumstances. And so the student at his desk and the sailor on his
+deck, the miner in his pit, the merchant on 'Change, the worker in
+various handicrafts, may each be sure that they are doing what is
+pleasing to Christ if, in their widely different ways, they seek to do
+what they can do in all the varieties of life--crucify self, and commune
+with God.
+
+That is not easy. Whatever may be the objections to be brought against
+this summary of Christian duty, the objection that it is vague is the
+last that can be sustained. Try it, and you will find out that it is
+anything but vague. It will grip tight enough, depend upon it. It will
+go deep enough down into all the complexities of our varying
+circumstances. If it has a fault (which it has not) it is in the
+direction of too great stringency for unaided human nature. But the
+stringency is not too great when we depend upon Him to help us, and an
+impossible ideal is a certain prophet of its own fulfilment some day.
+
+So, brethren, here is the sufficient guide, not because it cumbers us
+with a mass of wretched little prescriptions such as a martinet might
+give, about all sorts of details of conduct. That is left to profitless
+casuists like the ancient rabbis. But the broad principles will
+effloresce into all manner of perfectnesses and all fruits. He that has
+in his heart these thoughts, that the definition of virtue is pleasing
+Jesus Christ, that the concrete form of goodness is likeness to Him, and
+that the elements of likeness to Him are these two, that I should never
+think about myself, and always think about God, needs no other guide or
+instructor to fill his life with 'whatsoever things are lovely and of
+good report,' and to make his own all that the world calls virtue, and
+all which the consciences of good men have conspired to praise.
+
+But not only does this guide prove its sufficiency by reason of its
+comprehensiveness, but also because there is no difficulty in
+ascertaining what at each moment it prescribes. Of course, I know that
+such a precept as this cannot contain in itself guidance in matters of
+mere practical expediency. But, apart from these--which are to be
+determined by the ordinary exercise of prudence and common sense--in
+regard to the right and the wrong of our actions, I believe that if a
+man wants to know Christ's will, and takes the way of knowing it which
+Christ has appointed, he shall not be left in darkness, but shall have
+the light of life.
+
+For love has a strange power of divining love's wishes, as we all know,
+and as many a sweetness in the hearts and lives of many of us has shown
+us. If we cherish sympathy with Jesus Christ we shall look on things as
+He looks on them, and we shall not be left without the knowledge of what
+His pleasure is. If we keep near enough to Him the glance of His eye
+will do for guidance, as the old psalm has it. They are rough animal
+natures that do not understand how to go, unless their instructors be
+the crack of the whip or the tug of the bridle. 'I will guide thee with
+Mine eye.' A glance is enough where there are mutual understanding and
+love. Two musical instruments in adjoining rooms, tuned to the same
+pitch, have a singular affinity, and if a note be struck on the one the
+other will vibrate to the sound. And so hearts here that love Jesus
+Christ and keep in unison with Him, and are sympathetic with His
+desires, will learn to know His will, and will re-echo the music that
+comes from Him. And if our supreme desire is to know what pleases Jesus
+Christ, depend upon it the desire will not be in vain, 'If any man wills
+to do His will he shall know of the doctrine.' Ninety per cent. of all
+our perplexities as to conduct come from our not having a pure and
+simple wish to do what is right in His sight, clearly supreme above all
+others. When we have that wish it is never left unsatisfied.
+
+And even if sometimes we do make a mistake as to what is Christ's
+pleasure, if our supreme wish and honest aim in the mistake have been to
+do His pleasure, we may be sure that He will be pleased with the deed.
+Even though its body is not that which He willed us to do, its spirit is
+that which He does desire. And if we do a wrong thing, a thing in itself
+displeasing to Him, whilst all the while we desired to please Him, we
+shall please Him in the deed which would otherwise have displeased Him.
+And so two Christian men, for instance, who take opposite sides in a
+controversy, may both of them be doing what is well-pleasing in His
+sight, whilst they are contradicting one another, if they are doing it
+for His sake. And it is possible that the inquisitor and his victim may
+both have been serving Christ. At all events, let us be sure of this,
+that whensoever we desire to please Him, He will help us to do it, and
+ordinarily will help us by making clear to us the path on which His
+smile rests.
+
+III. Again, notice that we have here an all-powerful motive for
+Christian life.
+
+The one thing which all other summaries of duty lack is motive power to
+get themselves carried into practice. But we all know, from our own
+happy human experience, that no motive which can be brought to bear upon
+men is stronger, when there are loving hearts concerned, than this
+simple one, 'Do it to please me.' And that is what Jesus Christ really
+says. That is no piece of mere sentiment, brethren, nor of mere pulpit
+rhetoric. That is the deepest thought of Christian morality, and is the
+distinctive peculiarity which gives the morality of the New Testament
+its clear supremacy over all other. There are precepts in it far nobler
+and loftier than can be found elsewhere. The perspective of virtues and
+graces in it is different from that which ordinarily prevails amongst
+men. But I do not think that it is in the details of its precepts so
+much as in the communication of power to obey them, and in the
+suggestion of the motive which makes them all easy, that the difference
+of Christ's ethics from all the teaching of the world beside is most
+truly to be found.
+
+And here lies the excellence thereof. It is a poor, cold thing to say to
+a man, 'Do this because it is right.' It is a still more powerless thing
+to say to him, 'Do this because it is expedient' 'Do this because, in
+the long run, it leads to happiness.' It is all different when you say,
+'Do this to please Jesus Christ, to please that Christ who pleased not
+Himself but gave Himself for you.' That is the fire that melts the ore.
+That is the heat that makes flexible the hard, stiff material. That is
+the motive which makes duty delight, which makes 'the rough places
+plain' and 'the crooked things straight.' It does not abolish natural
+tastes, it does not supersede natural disinclinations, but it does
+smooth and soften unwelcome and hard tasks, and it invests service with
+a halo of glory, and changes the coldness of duty into rosy light; as
+when the sunrise strikes on the peaks of the frozen mountains. The one
+motive which impels men, and can be trusted to secure in them whatsoever
+things are noble, is to please Him.
+
+So we have the secret of blessedness in these words. For self-submission
+and suppression are blessedness. Our miseries come from our unbridled
+wills, far more than from our sensitive organisations. It is because we
+do not accept providences that providences hurt. It is because we do not
+accept the commandments that the commandments are burdensome. Those who
+have no will, except as it is vitalised by God's will, have found the
+secret of blessedness, and have entered into rest. In the measure in
+which we approximate to that condition, our wills will be strengthened
+as well as our hearts set at ease.
+
+And blessedness comes, too, because the approbation of the Master, which
+is the aim of the servant, is reflected in the satisfaction of an
+approving conscience, which points onwards to the time when the Master's
+approval shall be revealed in the servant's glory.
+
+I was reading the other day about a religious reformer who arose in
+Eastern lands a few years since, and gathered many disciples. He and his
+principal follower were seized and about to be martyred. They were
+suspended by cords from a gibbet, to be fired at by a platoon of
+soldiers. And as they hung there, the disciple turned to his teacher,
+and as his last word on earth said, 'Master! are you satisfied with me?'
+His answer was a silent smile; and the next minute a bullet was in his
+heart. Dear brethren, do you turn to Jesus Christ with the same
+question, 'Master! art Thou satisfied with me?' and you will get His
+smile here; and hereafter, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'
+
+
+
+
+UNFRUITFUL WORKS OF DARKNESS
+
+     'And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but
+      rather reprove them.'--Eph. v. 11.
+
+
+We have seen in a former sermon that 'the fruit,' or outcome, 'of the
+Light' is a comprehensive perfection, consisting in all sorts and
+degrees of goodness and righteousness and truth. Therefore, the
+commandment, 'Walk as children of the light,' sums up all Christian
+morality. Is there need, then, for any additional precept? Yes; for
+Christian people do not live in an empty world. If there were no evil
+round them, and no proclivity to evil within them, it would be amply
+sufficient to say to them, 'Be true to the light which you behold.' But
+since both these things are, the commandment of my text is further
+necessary. We do not work _in vacuo_, and therefore friction and
+atmosphere have to be taken account of; and an essential part of
+'walking as children of the light' is to know how to behave ourselves
+when confronted with 'the works of darkness.'
+
+These Ephesian Christians lived in a state of society honeycombed with
+hideous immorality, the centre of which was the temple, which was their
+city's glory and shame. It was all but impossible for them to have
+nothing to do with the works of evil, unless, indeed, they went out of
+the world. But the difficulty of obedience does not affect the duty of
+obedience, nor slacken in the smallest degree the stringency of a
+command. This obligation lies upon us as fully as it did upon them, and
+the discharge of it by professing Christians would bring new life to
+moribund churches.
+
+I. Let me ask you to note with me, first, the fruitlessness inherent in
+all the works of darkness.
+
+You may remember that I pointed out, in a former discourse on the
+context, that the Apostle, here and elsewhere, draws a very significant
+distinction between 'works' and 'fruit,' and that distinction is put
+very strikingly in the words of my text. There are works which are
+barren. It is a grim thought that there may be abundant activity which,
+in the eyes of God, comes to just nothing; and that pages and pages of
+laborious calculations, when all summed up, have for result a great
+round 0. Men are busy, and hosts of them are doing what the old fairy
+stories tell us that evil spirits were condemned to do--spinning ropes
+out of sea-sand; and their life-work is nought when they come to reckon
+it up.
+
+I have no time to dwell upon this thought, but I wish, just for a moment
+or two, to illustrate it.
+
+All godless life is fruitless, inasmuch as it has no permanent results.
+Permanent results of a sort, indeed, follow everything that men do, for
+all our actions tend to make character, and they all have a share in
+fixing that which depends upon character--viz. destiny, both here and
+yonder. And thus the most fleeting of our deeds, which in one aspect is
+as transitory as the snow upon the great plains when the sun rises,
+leaves everlasting traces upon ourselves and upon our condition. But yet
+acts concerned with transitory things may have permanent fruit, or may
+be as transient as the things with which they are concerned. And the
+difference depends on the spirit in which they are done. If the roots
+are only in the surface-skin of soil, when that is pared off the plant
+goes. A life that is to be eternal must strike its roots through all the
+superficial _humus_ down to the very heart of things. When its roots
+twine themselves round God then the deeds which blossom from them will
+blossom unfading for ever.
+
+Think of men going empty-handed into another world, and saying, 'O Lord!
+I made a big fortune in Manchester when I lived there, and I left it all
+behind me'; or, 'I mastered a science, and one gleam of the light of
+eternity has antiquated it'; or, 'I gained prizes, won my aims, and they
+have all dropped from my hands, and here I stand, having to say in the
+most tragic sense: Nothing in my hands I bring.' And another man dies in
+the Lord, and his 'works do follow' him. It is not every vintage that
+bears exportation. Some wines are mellowed by crossing the ocean; some
+are turned into vinegar. The works of darkness are unfruitful because
+they are transient.
+
+And they are unfruitful because, whilst they last, they yield no real
+satisfaction. The Apostle could say to another Church with a certainty
+as to what the answer would be, 'What fruit had ye _then_'--when ye were
+doing them--'in the things whereof ye are now ashamed?' And the answer
+is 'None!' Of course, it is true that men do bad things because they
+like them better than good. Of course, it is true that the misery of
+mankind is that they have no appetite in the general for the only real
+satisfaction. But it is also true that no man who feeds his heart and
+mind on anything short of God is really at rest in anything that he does
+or possesses. Occasional twinges of conscience, dim perceptions that
+after all they are walking in a vain show; glimpses of nobler
+possibilities, a vague unrest, an unwillingness to reflect and look the
+facts of their condition in the face, like men that will not take stock
+because they half suspect that they are insolvent--these are the
+conditions that attach to all godless men's lives. There is no real
+fruit for their thirsty lips to feed upon. The smallest man is too large
+to be satisfied with anything short of Infinity, The human heart is like
+some narrow opening on a hill-side, so narrow that it looks as if a
+glassful of water would fill it. But it goes away down, down, down into
+the depths of the mountain, and you may pour in hogsheads and no effect
+is visible. God, and God alone, brings to the thirsty heart the fruit
+that it needs.
+
+Another solemn thought illustrates the unfruitfulness of a godless life.
+There is no correspondence between what such a man does and what he is
+intended to do. Think of what the most degraded and sensuous wretch that
+shambles about the slums of a city, sodden with beer and rotten with
+profligacy, could be. Think of the raptures of devout contemplation and
+the energies of holy work which are possible for that soul, and then
+say--though it is an extreme case, the principle holds in less extreme
+cases--Are these things that men do apart from God, however shining,
+noble, illustrious they may be in the eyes of the world, and trumpeted
+forth by the mouthpieces of popular opinion, are these things worth
+calling fruits fit to be borne by such a tree? No more than the cankers
+on a rose-bush or the galls on an oak-tree are worthy of being called
+fruit are these works that some of you have as the only products of a
+life's activity. 'Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth
+grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?'
+
+II. And now, secondly, notice the plain Christian duty of abstinence.
+
+'Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.' Now, the
+text, as it stands in our version, seems to suggest that these dark
+works are personified as companions whom a good man ought to avoid; and
+that, therefore, the bearing of the exhortation is, 'Have nothing to do,
+in your own individual lives, with evil things that one man can commit.'
+But I take it that, important as that injunction and prohibition is,
+the Apostle's meaning is somewhat different, and that my text would
+perhaps be more accurately translated if another word were substituted
+for 'have no fellowship with.' The original expression seems rather to
+mean, 'Do not go partners with other people in works of darkness, which
+it takes more than one to commit.' Or, to put it into another language,
+the Apostle is regarding Christian people here as members of society,
+and exhorting them to a certain course of conduct in reference to plain
+and palpable existing evils around them. And such an exhortation to the
+duty of plain abstinence from things that the opinion of the world
+around us has no objection to, but which are contrary to the light, is
+addressed to all Christian people.
+
+The need of it I do not require to illustrate at any length. But let me
+remind you that the devil has no more cunning way of securing a long
+lease of life for any evil than getting Christian people and Christian
+Churches to give it their sanction. What was it that kept slavery alive
+for centuries? Largely, that Christian men solemnly declared that it was
+a divine institution. What is it that has kept war alive for all these
+centuries? Largely, that bishops and preachers have always been ready to
+bless colours, and to read a Christening service over a man-of-war--and,
+I suppose, to ask God that an eighty-ton gun might be blessed to smash
+our enemies to pieces, and not to blow our sailors to bits. And what is
+it that preserves the crying evils of our community, the immoralities,
+the drunkenness, the trade dishonesty, and all the other things that I
+do not need to remind you of in the pulpit? Largely this, that
+professing Christians are mixed up with them. If only the whole body of
+those who profess and call themselves Christians would shake their hands
+clear of all complicity with such things, they could not last.
+Individual responsibility for collective action needs to be far more
+solemnly laid to heart by professing Christians than ever it has been.
+
+Nor need I remind you, I suppose, with what fatal effects on the Gospel
+and the Church itself all such complicity is attended. Even the
+companions of wrongdoers despise, whilst they fraternise with, the
+professing Christian who has no higher standard than their own. What was
+it that made the Church victorious over the combined forces of imperial
+persecution, pagan superstition, and philosophic speculation? I believe
+that among all the causes that a well-known historian has laid down for
+the triumph of Christianity, what was as powerful as--I was going to say
+even more than--the Gospel of peace and love which the Church proclaimed
+was the standard of austere morality which it held up to a world rotting
+in its own filth. And sure I am that wherever the Church says, 'So do
+not I, because of the fear of the Lord,' it will gain a power, and will
+be regarded with a possibly reluctant, but a very real, respect which no
+easy-going coming down to the level of popular moralities will ever
+secure for a silver-slippered Christianity. And so, brethren, I would
+say to you, Do not be afraid of the old name _Puritan_. Ignorant people
+use it as a scoff. It should be a crown of glory. 'Have no fellowship
+with the unfruitful works of darkness.'
+
+But how is this to be done? Well, of course, there is only one way of
+abstaining, and that is, to abstain. But there are a great many
+different ways of abstaining. Light is not fire. And the more that
+Christian people feel themselves bound to stand aloof from common evils,
+the more are they bound to see that they do it in the spirit of the
+Master, which is meekness. It is always an invidious position to take
+up. And if we take it up with any heat and temper, with any lack of
+moderation, with any look of ostentation of superior righteousness, or
+with any trace of the Boanerges spirit which says, 'Let us call down
+fire from heaven and consume them,' our testimony will be weakened, and
+the world will have a right to say to us, 'Jesus we know, and Paul we
+know; but who are ye?' 'Who made this man a judge and a divider over
+us?' 'In meekness instructing them that oppose themselves.'
+
+III. Lastly, note the still harder Christian duty of vigorous protest.
+
+The further duty beyond abstinence which the text enjoins is
+inadequately represented by our version, 'but rather reprove them.' For
+the word rendered in our version 'reprove' is the same which our Lord
+employed when He spoke of the mission of the Comforter as being to
+'convince (or convict) the world of sin.' And it does not merely mean
+'reprove,' but so to reprove as to produce the conviction which is the
+object of the reproof.
+
+This task is laid on the shoulders of all professing Christians. A
+_silent_ abstinence is not enough. No doubt, the best way, in some
+circumstances, to convict the darkness is to shine. Our holiness will
+convict sin of its ugliness. Our light will reveal the gloom. The
+presentation of a Christian life is the Christian man's mightiest weapon
+in his conflict with the world's evil. But that is not all. And if
+Christian people think that they have done all their duty, in regard to
+clamant and common iniquities, by simply abstaining from them and
+presenting a nobler example, they have yet to learn one very important
+chapter of their duty. A dumb Church is a dying Church, and it ought to
+be; for Christ has sent us here in order, amongst other things, that we
+may bring Christian principles to bear upon the actions of the
+community; and not be afraid to speak when we are called upon by
+conscience to do so.
+
+Now I am not going to dwell upon this matter, but I want just to point
+out to you how, in the context here, there are two or three very
+important principles glanced at which bear upon it. And one of them is
+this, that one reason for speaking out is the very fact that the evils
+are so evil that a man is ashamed to speak about them. Did you ever
+notice this context, in which the Apostle, in the next verse to my text,
+gives the reason for his commandment to 'reprove' thus--'_For_ it is a
+shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret'?
+Did you ever hear of a fantastic tenderness for morality so very
+sensitive that it is not at all shocked when the immoral things are
+_done_, but glows with virtuous indignation when a Christian man speaks
+out about them? There are plenty of people nowadays who tell us that it
+is 'indelicate' and 'indecent' and 'improper,' and I do not know how
+much else, for a Christian teacher or minister to say a word about
+certain moral scandals. But they do not say anything about the
+immorality and the indelicacy and the indecency of doing them. Let us
+have done with that hypocrisy, brethren. I am arguing for no disregard
+for proprieties; I want all fitting reticence observed, and I do not
+wish indiscriminate rebukes to be flung at foul things; but it is too
+much to require that, by reason of the very inky cloud of filth that
+they fling up like cuttlefish, they should escape censure. Let us
+remember Paul's exhortation, and reprove _because_ the things are too
+bad to be spoken about.
+
+Further, note in the context the thought that the conviction of the
+darkness comes from the flashing upon it of the light. 'All things when
+they are reproved are made manifest by the light.' Which, being
+translated into other words, is this:--Be strong in your brave protest,
+because it only needs that the thing should be seen as it is, and called
+by its right name, in order to be condemned.
+
+The Assyrians had a belief that if ever, by any chance, a demon saw
+himself in a mirror, he was frightened at his own ugliness and
+incontinently fled. And if Christian people would only hold up the
+mirror of Christian principle to the hosts of evil things that afflict
+our city and our country, they would vanish like ghosts at sunrise. They
+cannot stand the light, therefore let us cast the light upon them.
+
+And do not forget the other final principle here, which is imperfectly
+represented by our translation. We ought to read, 'Whatever is made
+manifest is light.' Yes. In the physical world when light falls upon a
+thing, you see it because there is on it a surface of light. And in the
+moral world the intention of all this conviction is that the thing
+disclosed to be darkness should, in the very disclosure, cease to be
+dark, should forsake its nature and be transformed into light. Such
+transformation is not always the case. Alas! There are evil deeds on
+which the light falls, and it does nothing. But the purpose in all cases
+should be, and the issue in many will be, that the merciful conviction
+by the light will be followed by the conversion of darkness into light.
+
+And so, dear brethren, I bring this text to your hearts, and lay it upon
+your consciences. We may not all be called upon to speak; we are all
+called upon to _be_. You can shine, and by shining show how dark the
+darkness is. The obligation is laid upon us all; the commandment still
+comes to every Christian which was given to the old prophet, 'Declare
+unto My people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their
+sin.' A quaint old writer says that the presence of a saint 'hinders the
+devil of elbow room to do his tricks.' We can all rebuke sin by our
+righteousness, and by our shining reveal the darkness to itself. We do
+not walk as children of the light unless we keep ourselves from all
+connivance with works of darkness, and by all means at our disposal
+reprove and convict them. 'Come out from among them, and be ye separate,
+and touch no unclean thing, saith the Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+PAUL'S REASONS FOR TEMPERANCE
+
+     'And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but
+      rather reprove them. 12. For it is a shame even to speak of those
+      things which are done of them in secret. 13. But all things that
+      are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth
+      make manifest is light. 14. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that
+      sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee
+      light. 15. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but
+      as wise, 16. Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. 17.
+      Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the
+      Lord is. 18. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be
+      filled with the Spirit; 19. Speaking to yourselves in psalms, and
+      hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart
+      to the Lord; 20. Giving thanks always for all things unto God and
+      the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; 21. Submitting
+      yourselves one to another in the fear of God.'--Eph. v. 11-21.
+
+
+There are three groups of practical exhortations in this passage, of
+which the first deals with the Christian as a reproving light in
+darkness; the second, with the Christian life as wisdom in the midst of
+folly; and the third with Christian sobriety and inspiration as the true
+exhilaration in contrast with riotous drunkenness. Probably such
+intoxication was prevalent in Ephesus in connection with the worship of
+'Diana of the Ephesians,' for Paul was not the man to preach vague
+warnings against vices to which his hearers were not tempted. An
+under-current of allusion to such orgies accompanying the popular cult
+may be discerned in his words.
+
+These two preceding sets of precepts can only be briefly touched on now.
+They lead up to the third, and the second is built on the first by a
+'therefore' (ver. 15). The Apostle has just been saying that Christians
+were 'darkness, but are now light in the Lord,' and thence drawing the
+law for their life, to walk as 'children of light.' A very important
+part of such walk is recoiling from all share in 'the unfruitful works
+of darkness,'--a significant expression branding such deeds as being
+both bad in their source and in their results. Dark doings have
+consequences tragic enough and certain enough, but they are barren of
+all such issues as correspond to men's obligations and capacities. Their
+outcome is like the growths on a tree, which are not fruit, but products
+of disease. There is no fruit grown in the dark; there is no worthy
+product from us unless Christ is our light. If He is, and we are
+therefore 'light in the Lord,' we shall 'reprove' or 'convict' the
+Christless life. Its sinfulness will be shown by the contrast with the
+Christ-life. A thunder-cloud never looks so lividly black as when
+smitten by sunshine.
+
+Our lives ought to make evil things ashamed to show their ugly faces.
+Christians should be, as it were, the incarnate conscience of a
+community. The Apostle is not thinking so much of words as of deeds,
+though words are not to be withheld when needful. The agent of reproof
+is 'the light,' which here is the designation of character as
+transformed by Jesus, and the process of reproof or conviction is simply
+the manifestation of the evil in its true nature, which comes from
+setting it in the beams of the light. To show sin as it is, is to
+condemn it; 'for everything that is made manifest is light.' Observe
+that Paul here speaks of 'light,' not 'the light,'--that is, he is
+speaking now not of Christian character, which he had likened to light,
+but of physical light to which he had likened it, and is backing up his
+figurative statement as to the reproving and manifesting effects of the
+former, by the plain fact as to the latter, that, when daylight shines
+on anything, it is revealed, and, as it were, becomes light. He clenches
+his exhortation by quoting probably an early Christian hymn, which
+regards Christ as the great illuminator, ready to shine on all drowsy,
+dark souls as soon as they stir and rouse themselves from drugged and
+fatal sleep.
+
+The second set of exhortations here is connected with the former by a
+'therefore,' which refers to the whole preceding precept. Because the
+Christian is to shake himself free from complicity with works of
+darkness, and to be their living condemnation, he must take heed to his
+goings. A climber on a glacier has to look to his feet, or he will slip
+and fall down a crevasse, perhaps, from which he will never be drawn up.
+Heedlessness is folly in such a world as this. '"Don't care" comes to
+the gallows.' The temptation to 'go as you please' is strong in youth,
+and it is easy to scoff at 'cold-blooded folks who live by rule,' but
+they are the wise people, after all. A great element in that heedfulness
+is a quick insight into the special duty and opportunity of the moment,
+for life is not merely made up of hours, but each has its own particular
+errand for us, and has some possibility in it which, neglected, may be
+lost for ever.
+
+The mystic solemnity of time is that it is made up of 'seasons.' We
+shall walk heedfully in the degree in which we are awake to the moment's
+meaning, and grasp opportunity by the forelock, or, as Paul says, 'buy
+up the opportunity.' But wise heed to our walk is not enough, unless we
+have a sure standard by which to regulate it. A man may take great care
+of his watch, but unless he can compare it with a chronometer, or, as
+they do in Edinburgh, pull out their watches when the one o'clock gun is
+fired on a signal from Greenwich, he may be far out and not know it. So
+the Apostle adds the one way to keep our lives right, and the one source
+of true, practical wisdom--the 'understanding what the will of the Lord
+is.' He will not go far wrong whose instinctive question, as each new
+moment, with its solemn, animating possibilities, meets him, is, 'What
+wilt Thou have me to do?' He will not be nearly right who does not first
+of all ask that.
+
+Then Paul comes to his precept of temperance. It naturally flows from
+the preceding, inasmuch as a drunken man is as sure to be incapable of
+taking heed to his conduct as of walking straight. He reels in both. He
+is stone-blind to the meaning of the moments. He hears no call, though
+the 'voice of the trumpet' may be 'exceeding loud,' and as for
+understanding what the will of the Lord is, that is far beyond him. The
+intoxication of an hour or the habit of drinking makes obedience to the
+foregoing precepts impossible. This master vice carries all other vices
+in its pocket.
+
+Paul makes a daring, and, as some would think, an irreverent,
+comparison, when he proposes being 'filled with the Spirit' as the
+Christian alternative or substitute to being 'drunken with wine.' But
+the daring comparison suggests deep truth. The spurious exhilaration,
+the loosening of the bonds of care, the elevation above the pettiness
+and monotony of daily life, which the drunkard seeks, and is degraded
+and deceived in proportion as he momentarily finds, are all ours,
+genuinely, nobly, and to our infinite profit, if we have our empty
+spirits filled with that Divine Life. That exhilaration does not froth
+away, leaving bitter dregs in the cup. That loosening of the bonds of
+care, and elevation above life's sorrows, does not flow from foolish
+oblivion of facts, nor end in their being again roughly forced on us.
+'Riot' bellows itself hoarse, and is succeeded by corresponding
+depression; but the calm joys of the Spirit-filled spirit last, grow,
+and become calmer and more joyful every day.
+
+The boisterous songs of boon companions are set in contrast with the
+Christian 'psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,' which were already in
+use, and a snatch from one of which Paul has just quoted.
+Good-fellowship tempts men to drink together, and a song is a
+shoeing-horn for a glass; but the _camaraderie_ is apt to end in blows,
+and is a poor caricature of the bond knitting all who are filled with
+the Spirit to one another, and making them willing to serve one another.
+The roystering or maudlin geniality cemented by drink generally ends in
+quarrels, as everybody knows that the truculent stage of intoxication
+succeeds the effusively affectionate one. But they who have the Spirit
+in them, and not only 'live in the Spirit,' but 'walk in the Spirit,'
+esteem each the other better than themselves. In a word, to be filled
+with the Spirit is the way to possess all the highest forms of the good
+which men are tempted to intoxication to secure, and which in it they
+find only for a moment, and which is coarse and unreal.
+
+
+
+
+SLEEPERS AT NOONDAY
+
+     'Wherefore He saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the
+      dead, and Christ shall give thee light,'--Eph. v. 14.
+
+
+This is the close of a short digression about 'light.' The 'wherefore'
+at the beginning of my text seems to refer to the whole of the verses
+that deal with that subject. It is as if the Apostle had said, 'I have
+been telling you about light and its blessed effects. Now I tell you how
+you may win it for yours. The condition on which it is to be received by
+men is that they awake and arise from the dead.'
+
+'_He saith._' Who? The speaker whose words are quoted is not named, but
+this is the common formula of quotation from the _Old Testament_. It is,
+therefore, probable that the word 'Creator' or 'God' is to be supplied.
+But there is no Old Testament passage which exactly corresponds to the
+words before us; the nearest approach to such being the ringing
+exhortation of the prophet to the Messianic Church, 'Arise! Shine, for
+thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.' And it
+is probable that the Apostle is here quoting, without much regard either
+to the original connection or the primary purpose of the word, a
+well-known old saying which seemed to him appropriately to fall in with
+the trend of his thoughts. Like other writers he often adorns his own
+words with the citation of those of others without being very careful
+as to whether he, in some measure, diverts these from their original
+intention. But the words of my text fairly represent the prophetic
+utterance, in so far as they echo the call to the sleepers to wake, and
+share the prophet's confidence that light is streaming out for all those
+whose eyes are opened.
+
+The want of precise correspondence between our text and the prophetic
+passage has led some to suppose that we have here the earliest recorded
+fragment of a Christian hymn. It would be interesting if that were so,
+but the formula of citation seems to oblige us to look to Scripture for
+the source from which my text is taken. However, let us leave these
+thoughts, and come to the text itself. It is an earnest call from God.
+It describes a condition, peals forth a summons, and gives a promise.
+Let us listen to what 'He saith' in all these regards.
+
+I. First of all, then, the condition of the persons addressed.
+
+The two sad metaphors, _slumberers_ and _dead_, are applied to the same
+persons. There must, therefore, be some latitude in the application of
+the figures and they must be confined in their interpretation to some
+one or more points in which sleep and death are alike.
+
+Now we all know that, as the proverb says, 'sleep is the image of
+death.' And what is the point of comparison? Mainly this, that the
+sleeper and the corpse are alike unconscious of an external world,
+unable to receive impressions from it, or to put forth action on it; and
+there, as I take it, is especially the point which is in the Apostle's
+view.
+
+The sleeper and the dead man alike are in the midst of an order of
+things of which they are all unaware. And you and I live in two worlds,
+one, this low, fleeting, material one; and the other the white, snowy
+peaks that girdle it as do the Alps the Lombard plains; and men live all
+unconscious of that which lies on their horizon. But the metaphor of a
+level ground encircled by mountains does not fully represent the
+closeness of the connection between these two worlds, of both of which
+every one of us is a denizen. For on all sides, pressing in upon us,
+enfolding us like an atmosphere, penetrating into all the material,
+underlying all which is visible, all of which has its roots in the
+unseen, is that world which the mass of men are in a conspiracy to
+ignore and forget. And just as the sleeper is unconscious of all around
+him in his chamber, and of all the stir and beauty of the world in which
+he lives, so the bulk of us go blind and darkling through life, absorbed
+in the things seen, and never lift even a momentary and lack-lustre
+glance to the august realities which lie behind these, and give them all
+their significance and beauty.
+
+Yes; and just as in a dream men are busy with baseless phantoms that
+vanish and are forgotten, and seem to themselves to be occupied, whilst
+all the while they are lying prone and passive, so the mass of us are
+sleep-walkers. What are many men who will be hurrying on to the
+Manchester Exchange on Tuesday? What are they but men who are dreaming
+that they are at work, but are only at work on dreams which will vanish
+when the eyes are opened? Practical men, who are busy and absorbed with
+affairs and with the things of this present, curl their lips about
+'idealists' of all sorts, be they idealists of thought, or of art, or of
+benevolence, or of religion, and call them dreamers. The boot is on the
+other leg. It is the idealists that are awake, and it is you people that
+live for to-day, and have not learned that to-day is a little fragment
+and sliver of eternity--it is you who are dreamers, and all these things
+round about us--the solid-seeming realities--are illusions, and
+
+    'Like the bubbles on a river,
+     Sparkling, bursting, borne away,'
+
+they will disappear. There is only one reality, and that is God, and the
+only lives that lay hold of the substance are those which grasp Him. The
+rest of you are shadows hunting for shadows.
+
+The two metaphors of my text coincide in suggesting another thing, and
+that is the awful contrast in the average life between what is in a man
+and what comes out of him. 'Dormant power,' we talk about. Ah, how
+tragically the true man is dormant in all the work of worldly hearts!
+God has made a great mistake in making you what you are, if there is no
+place for you to exercise your powers in but this present world, and
+nothing to exercise them on except the things that pass and perish.
+Travellers in lands where civilisation used to be, and barbarism now is,
+find sculptured stones from temples turned into fences for cattle-sheds
+and walls round pigstyes. And that is something like what men do with
+the faculties that God has given them. Why, the best part of you,
+brother, if you are not a Christian, and living a Christian life--the
+best part of you is asleep, and it is only the lower nature of you that
+is awake! Sometimes the sleepers stir uneasily. It used to be said that
+earthquakes were caused by a giant rolling himself from side to side in
+his troubled slumber. And there are earthquakes in your heart and
+spirit caused by the half-waking of the dormant self, the true man, who
+is immersed and embruted in sense and the things of time. Some of you by
+earthly lusts, some of you by over-indulgence in fleshly appetites,
+eating and drinking and the like; some of you by absorption in the mere
+externals of trade and profession and occupation to the entire neglect
+of the inward thing which would glorify and exalt these--but all of us
+somehow, unless we are living for God, have lulled our best, true,
+central self into slumber, and lie as if dead.
+
+Now, brethren, do not forget that this exhortation of my text, and
+therefore this description, is addressed to a community of professing
+Christians. I hope you will not misunderstand me as if I thought that
+such a picture as I have been trying to draw applies only to men that
+have no religion in them at all. It applies in varying degrees to men
+that have, as--I was going to say the bulk, but perhaps that is
+exaggeration, let me say a tragically large number--of professing
+Christians, and a proportionate number of the professing Christians in
+this audience have, a little life and a great circumference of death.
+Dear brethren, you may call yourselves, and may be Christian people, and
+have somewhat shaken off the torpor, and roused yourself from the
+slumbering death of which I have been speaking. Remember that it still
+hangs to you, and that it was of Christians that the Master said:
+'Whilst the Lord was away they all slumbered and slept'; and that it was
+of a Christian Church, and not of a pagan world, that the same voice
+from heaven said: 'Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.' And
+so I beseech you, bear with me, and do not think I am scolding, or
+flinging about wild words at random, when I make a very earnest appeal
+to each individual professing, and real, Christian in this congregation,
+and ask them to consider, each for themselves, how much of sleep is
+still in their drowsy eyes, and how far it is true that the quickening
+life of Jesus Christ has penetrated, as the sunbeams into the darkness,
+into the heavy mass of their natural death.
+
+II. Secondly, let me ask you to look at the summons to awake.
+
+It comes like the morning bugle to an army, 'Awake, thou that sleepest,
+and arise from the dead.' Now, I am not going to waste your time by
+talking about the old, well-worn, interminable, and unprofitable
+controversy as to God's part and man's in this awaking, but I do wish to
+insist upon this plain fact, that the command here presupposes upon our
+parts, whether we be Christian people or not, the ability to obey. God
+would not mock a man by telling him to do what he cannot do. And it is
+perfectly clear that the one attitude in which we may be sure of God's
+help to keep any of His commandments, and this amongst the rest, is when
+we are trying to keep them. 'Stretch out thy hand,' said Christ to the
+man whose disease was that he could not stretch it out. 'Arise and
+walk,' said Christ to the man whose lifelong sadness it was that his
+limbs had no power. 'Lazarus, come forth,' said Christ unto the dull,
+cold ear of death. And Lazarus heard, wherever he was, and, though his
+feet were tangled with the graveclothes, he came stumbling out, because
+the power to do what he was bid had come wrapped in the command to do
+it. And if these other two men had turned to Jesus and said, 'What is
+the use of telling me to stretch out my hand, or me to move my limbs?
+Thou knowest that I can not,' they would have lain there paralysed till
+they died. But when they heard the command there came a tingling sense
+of new ability into the withered limb. 'And he stretched forth his hand,
+and it was restored whole as the other.' Ay, but the process of
+restoration began when he willed to stretch it out in obedience to the
+command, which was a promise as much as a command. So we need not
+trouble ourselves with the question how the dead man can arise, or how
+the sleeper can wake himself.
+
+This, at all events, is clear, that if what I have been saying is true
+as to the main point in view in both the metaphors, viz. the
+unconsciousness of the unseen world, and the slumbering powers that we
+have within us, then the remedy for that _is_ in our own hands. There
+are scarcely any limits to be put to a man's capacity of determining for
+himself what shall be the object of his thought, his interest, his
+affection, or his pursuits. You can withdraw your desires and
+contemplations from the intrusive and absorbing present. You can coerce
+yourselves to concentrate more thought than you do, more interest,
+affection, and effort than you have ever done, upon the things that are
+unseen. You can turn your gaze thither. You cannot directly and
+immediately regulate your feelings, but you can settle the thoughts
+which shall guide the feelings, and you can, and you _do_, fix for
+yourselves, though not consciously, the things which shall be uppermost
+in your regard, and supreme in the ordering of your life.
+
+And so the commandment of my text is but this, 'Wake from the illusions;
+rouse yourselves to the contemplation of the things unseen and eternal.
+Let the Lord always be before your face.' And you will be awake and
+alive.
+
+III. And so my last point is the promise of the morning light which
+gladdens the wakeful eye. 'Christ shall give thee light.'
+
+Now, if the words of my text are an allusion to the prophecy to which I
+have already referred, it is striking to observe, though I cannot dwell
+upon the thought, that Paul here unhesitatingly ascribes to Jesus Christ
+an action which, in the source of his quotation, is ascribed to Jehovah.
+'Arise, shine, for thy light has come, and the glory of _Jehovah_ is
+risen upon thee,' says the prophet. 'Arise! thou that sleepest,' says
+Paul, 'and _Christ_ shall give thee light.' As always, he regards his
+Lord as possessed of fully divine attributes; and he has learned the
+depth of the Master's own saying, 'Whatsoever things the Father doeth,
+these also doeth the Son _likewise_.' But I turn from that to the main
+point to be insisted upon here, that the Apostle is setting forth this
+as a certainty, that if a man will open his eyes he will have light
+enough. The sunshine is flooding the world. It falls upon the closed
+eyelids of the sleepers, and would fain gently lift them, that it might
+enter. A man needs nothing more than to shake off the slumber, and bring
+himself into the conscious presence of the unseen glories that surround
+us, in order to get light enough and to spare--whether you mean by light
+knowledge for guidance on the path of life, or whether you mean by it
+purity that shall scatter the darkness of evil from the heart, or
+whether you mean by it the joy that comes in the morning, radiant and
+fresh as the sunrise over the Eastern hills. 'Awake, and Christ _shall_
+give thee light.'
+
+The miracle of Goshen is reversed, in the case of many of us, the land
+is flashing in the sunshine, but within our houses there is midnight
+darkness, not because there is not light around, but because the
+shutters are shut. Oh, brethren, it is a solemn thing to choose the
+darkness rather than the light. And you do that--though not consciously,
+and in so many words, making your election--by indifference, by neglect,
+by the direction of the main current of your thoughts and desires and
+aims to perishable things, and by the deeds that follow from such a
+disposition. These choose for you, and you, in effect, choose by them.
+
+I beseech you, do not let Christ's own trumpet-call fall upon your ears,
+as if faint and far away, like the unwelcome summons that comes to a
+drowsy man in the morning. You know that if, having been called, he
+makes up his mind to lie a little longer, he is almost sure to fall more
+dead asleep than he was before. And if you hear, however dim, distantly,
+and through my poor words, Christ's voice saying to you, 'Awake! thou
+that sleepest,' do not neglect it. The only safe course is to spring up
+at once. If thou dost, 'Christ shall give thee light,' never fear. The
+light is all about you. You only need to open your eyes, and it will
+pour in. If you do not, you surround yourself with darkness that may be
+felt here, and ensures for yourself a horror of great darkness in the
+death hereafter.
+
+
+
+
+REDEEMING THE TIME
+
+     'See, then, that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
+      redeeming the time, because the days are evil.'--Eph. v. 15, 16.
+
+
+Some of us have, in all probability, very little more 'time' to
+'redeem.' Some of us have, in all probability, the prospect of many
+years yet to live. For both classes my text presents the best motto for
+another year. The most frivolous among us, I suppose, have some thoughts
+when we step across the conventional boundary that seems to separate the
+unbroken sequence of moments into periods; and as you in your business
+take stock and see how your accounts stand, so I would fain, for you and
+myself, make this a moment in which we may see where we are going, what
+we are doing, and how we are using this great gift of life.
+
+My text gives us the true Christian view of time. It tells us what to do
+with it, and urges by implication certain motives for the conduct.
+
+I. We have, first, what we ought to think about 'the time.'
+
+There are two words in the New Testament, both of which are translated
+_time_, but they mean very different things. One of them, the more
+common, simply implies the succession of moments or periods; the other,
+which is employed here, means rather a definite portion of time to which
+some definite work or occurrence belongs. It is translated sometimes
+_season_, sometimes _opportunity_. Both these renderings occur in
+immediate proximity in the Epistle to the Galatians, where the Apostle
+says: 'As we have therefore opportunity let us do good to all men, for
+in due season we shall reap, if we faint not....' And, again, it is
+employed side by side with the other word to which I have referred, in
+the Acts of the Apostles, where we read, 'It is not for you to know the
+times or the seasons'--the former word simply indicating the succession
+of moments, the latter word indicating epochs or crises to which special
+work or events belong.
+
+And so here 'redeeming the _time_' does not merely mean making the most
+of moments, but means laying hold of, and understanding the special
+significance of, life as a whole, and of each succeeding instant of it
+as the season for some specific duty. It is not merely 'time,' it is
+'_the_ time'; not merely the empty succession of beats of the pendulum,
+but these moralised, as it were, heightened, and having significance,
+because each is apprehended as having a special mission, and affording
+an opportunity for a special work.
+
+Now, there are two aspects of that general thought, on each of which I
+would touch. The Apostle here uses the singular number, and speaks not
+of the times, but of 'the time'; as if the whole of life were an
+opportunity, a season for some one clear duty which manifestly belongs
+to it, and is meant to be done in it.
+
+What is that? There are a great many ways of answering that question,
+but even more important perhaps than the way of answering is the mood of
+mind which asks it. If we could only get into this, as our habitual
+temper and disposition, asking ourselves what life is for, then we
+should have conquered nine-tenths of our temptations, and all but
+secured that we shall aim at the purpose which thus clearly and
+constantly shines before us. Oh! if I could get some of my friends here
+this morning, who have never really looked this solemn question in the
+face, to rise above the mere accidents of their daily occupations, and
+to take their orders, not from circumstances, or from the people whom
+they admire and imitate, but at first hand from considering what they
+really are here for, and why their days in their whole sweep are given
+them, I should not have spoken in vain. The sensualist answers the
+question in one way, the busy Manchester man in another, the careful,
+burdened mother in another, the student in another, the moralist in
+another. But all that is good in each answer is included in the wider
+one, that the end of life, the purpose for which 'the season' is granted
+us, is that 'we should glorify God and enjoy Him for ever.'
+
+I do not care whether you say that the end for which we live is the
+salvation of our souls, or whether you put it in other words, and say
+that it is the cultivation and perfecting of a Christ-like and
+God-pleasing character, or whether you admit still another aspect, and
+say that it is the intention of time to prepare us for that which lies
+beyond time. Time is the lackey of eternity, and the chamberlain that
+opens the gates of the Kingdom of God. All these various answers are at
+bottom one. Life is ours mainly in order that, by faith in Jesus Christ,
+we should struggle, and do, and by struggles, by sorrows, and by all
+that befalls us, should grow liker Him, and so fitter for the calm joys
+of that place where the throb of the pendulum has ceased, and the hours
+are stable and eternal. We live here in order to get ready for living
+yonder. And we get ready for living yonder, when here we understand that
+every moment of life is granted us for the one purpose, which can be
+pursued through all life--viz. the becoming liker our dear Lord, and the
+drinking in to our own hearts more of His Spirit, and moulding our
+characters more in conformity with His image. That is what my life and
+yours are given us for. If we succeed in that, we succeed all round. If
+we fail in that, whatever else we succeed in, we have failed altogether.
+
+But then, remember, still further, the other aspect in which we can look
+at this thought. That ultimate, all-embracing end is reached through a
+multitude of nearer and intermediate ones. Whilst life, as a whole, is
+the season for learning to know and for possessing God, life is broken
+up into smaller portions and periods, each of which has some special
+duty appropriate to it and a 'lesson for the day.'
+
+Now many of us, who entirely agree, theoretically, in saying that all
+life is granted for this highest purpose, go wrong here and fail to
+discern the significance of single moments. To-day is always
+commonplace; it is yesterday that is beautiful, and to-morrow that is
+full of possibilities, to the vulgar mind. But to-day is common and low.
+There are mountains ahead and mountains behind, purple with distance and
+radiant with sunshine, and the sky bends over them and seems to touch
+their crests. But here, on the spot where we stand, life seems flat and
+mean, and far away from the heavens. We admit the meaning of life taken
+altogether, but it is very hard to break up that recognition into
+fragments, and to feel the worth of these fleeting moments which, just
+because they are here, seem to be of small account. So we forget that
+life is only the aggregate of small present instants, and that the hour
+is sixty times sixty insignificant seconds, and the day twenty-four
+brief hours, and the year 365 commonplace days, and the life threescore
+years and ten. Brethren, carry your theoretical recognition of the
+greatness and solemnity of the purposes for which life has been given
+here into each of the moments of the passing day, and you will find that
+there is nothing so elastic as time; and that you can crowd into a day
+as much as a languid thousand years do sometimes hold, of sacrifice and
+service, of holy joys, and of likeness to Jesus Christ. He who has
+learned that all the moments are heavy with significance, and pregnant
+with immortal issues, he, too, in some measure may share in the
+prerogative of the timeless God, and to Him 'one day may be as a
+thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' It is not the beat of
+the pendulum or the tick of the clock that measure time, but it is the
+deeds which we crowd into it, and the feelings and thoughts which it
+ministers to us. This passing life draws all its importance from the
+boundless eternal issues to which it leads. Every little puddle on the
+paving-stones this morning, a quarter of an inch broad and a film deep,
+will be mirroring bright sunshine, and blue with the reflected heaven.
+And so we may make the little drop of our lives radiant with the image
+of God, and bright with the certainties of immortality.
+
+II. Now, note secondly, how to make the most of the season.
+
+'Redeeming the time,' says the Apostle. The figure is very simple and
+natural, and has only been felt to be difficult and obscure, because
+people have tried to ride the metaphor further than it was meant. The
+questions of who is the seller and what is the price do not enter into
+the Apostle's mind at all. Metaphors are not to be driven so far as
+that. We have to confine ourselves to the simple thought that there is a
+need for making the opportunity which is given truly our own; and that
+that can only be done by giving something in exchange for it. That is
+the notion of purchase, is it not? Acquisition, by giving something
+else. Thus, says Paul, you have to buy the opportunity which time
+affords us.
+
+That is to say, to begin with, life gives us opportunities and no more.
+We _may_, in and through it, become wise, good, pure, happy, noble,
+Christ-like, or we may not. The opportunity is there, swinging, as it
+were, _in vacuo_. Lay hold of it, says he, and turn it into more than an
+opportunity--even an actuality and a fact.
+
+And how is that to be done? We have to give something away, if we get
+the opportunity for our very own. What have we to give away? Well,
+mainly the lower ends for which the moment might serve. These have to be
+surrendered--sometimes abandoned altogether, always rigidly restricted
+and kept in utter subordination to the highest purposes. To-day is given
+us mainly that we may learn to know God better, and to love Him more,
+and to serve Him more joyfully. Our daily duties are given us for the
+same purpose. But if we go about them without thinking of God or the
+highest ends which life is meant to serve, then we shall certainly lose
+the highest ends, and an opportunity will go past us unimproved. But if,
+on the other hand, whilst we follow our daily business for the sake of
+legitimate temporal gain, we see, above that, the aspect of daily life
+as educating in all Christian nobleness and lofty thoughts and purposes,
+then we shall have given away the lower ends for the sake of attaining
+the higher. You live, suppose, to found a business, to become masters of
+your trade, to gain wisdom and knowledge, to establish for yourselves a
+position amongst your fellow-men, to cultivate your character so as to
+grow in wisdom and purity, apart from God. Or you live in order to win
+affection and move thankfully in the heaven of loving associations in
+your home, amongst your children. Or you live for the sake of carrying
+some lower but real good amongst men. Many of these ends are beautiful
+and noble, and necessary for the cultivation and discharge of the
+various duties and relationships of life; but unless they are all kept
+secondary, and there towers above them this other, life is wasted. If
+life is not to be wasted, they must be bartered for the higher, and we
+must recognise that to give all things for the sake of Christ and His
+love is wise merchandise and good exchange. 'What things were gain to
+me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea! doubtless, and I count all
+things but loss that I may win Him and be found of Him.' You must barter
+the lower if you are to secure the higher ends for which life is the
+appointed season.
+
+And then, still more minutely, my text gives us another suggestion about
+this 'redeeming the time.' 'See, then,' says the Apostle, 'that ye walk
+circumspectly.' The word rendered circumspectly might better, perhaps,
+be translated in some such way as 'strictly,' 'rigidly,' 'accurately,'
+'punctiliously.' As I take it, it is to be connected with the 'walk,'
+and not with the 'see, then,' as the Revised Version does.
+
+So here is a practical direction, walk strictly, accurately, looking to
+your feet; as a man would do who was upon what they call in the Alps an
+_arrete_. Suppose a narrow ridge of snow piled on the top of a ledge of
+rock, with a precipice of 5000 feet on either side, and a cornice of
+snow hanging over empty space. The climber puts his alpenstock before
+his foot, he tests with his foot before he rests his weight, for a false
+step and down he goes!
+
+'See that you walk circumspectly,' rigidly, accurately, punctiliously.
+Live by law--that is to say, live by principles which imply duties; for
+to live by inclination is ruin. The only safety is, look to your feet
+and look to your road, and restrain yourselves, 'and so redeem the
+time.'
+
+There is something else to look to. Feet? Yes! Road? Yes! But also look
+to your guide. Tread in Christ's footsteps, 'follow the Lamb
+whithersoever He goeth.' Make Him the pattern and example, and then you
+shall walk safely; and the path will carry you right into 'His presence
+where there is fulness of joy.' No great, noble, right, blessed life is
+lived without rigid self-control, self-denial, and self-crucifixion. Do
+not fancy that that means the absence of joy and spontaneity. 'I will
+walk at liberty for I keep Thy precepts.' Hedges are blessings when, on
+the other side, there are bottomless swamps of poisonous miasma, into
+which if a man ventures he will either drown or be plague-stricken. The
+narrow way that leads to life is the way of peace, just because it is a
+way of restrictions. Better to walk on the narrowest path that leads to
+the City than to be chartered libertines, wandering anywhere at our own
+bitter wills, and finding 'no end, in devious mazes lost.' Freedom
+consists in obeying from the heart the restriction of love; and walking
+punctiliously.
+
+III. Lastly, note the motives for this course.
+
+The Apostle says, 'see that ye walk strictly, not as fools but as wise.'
+That is to say, such limitation, which buys the opportunity and uses it
+for the highest purposes, is the only true wisdom. If you take the mean,
+miserable, partial, fleeting purposes for which some of us, alas, are
+squandering our lives, and contrast these with the great, perfect,
+all-satisfying, blessed, and eternal end for which it was given us, how
+can we escape being convicted of folly? One day, dear friends, it will
+be found out that the virgins that were not ready when the Lord came
+were the foolish ones. One day it will be asked of you and of me, 'What
+did you do with the life which I gave you, that you might know Me?' And
+if we have only the answer, 'O Lord! I founded a big business in
+Manchester--I made a fortune--I wrote a clever book, that was most
+favourably reviewed--I brought up a family'--the only thing fit to be
+said to us is, 'Thou fool!' The only wisdom is the wisdom that secures
+the end for which life was given.
+
+Then there is another motive here. 'Redeeming the time _because_ the
+days are evil.' That is singular. 'The days' are 'the time,' and yet
+they are 'evil' days, which being translated into other words is just
+this--we are to make a definite effort to keep in view, and to effect,
+the purposes for which all the days of our lives are given us, because
+these days have in themselves a tendency to draw us away from the true
+path and to blind us as to their real meaning. The world is full of
+possibilities of good and evil, and the same day which, in one aspect,
+is the 'season' for serving God is, in another aspect, an 'evil' day
+which may draw us away from Him. And if we do not put out manly effort,
+it certainly will do so. The ocean is meant to bear the sailor to his
+port, but from the waves rise up fair forms, siren voices, with sweet
+harps and bright eyes that tempt the weary mariner to his destruction.
+And the days which may be occasions for our getting nearer God, if we
+let them work their will upon us, will be evil days which draw us away
+from Him.
+
+Let me add one last motive which is not stated in my text, but is
+involved in the very idea of _opportunity_ or _season_--viz. that the
+time for the high and noble purposes of which I have been speaking is
+rigidly limited and bounded; and once past is irrevocable. The old, wise
+mythological story tells us that Occasion is bald behind, and is to be
+grasped by the forelock. The moment that is past had in it wonderful
+possibilities for us. If we did not grasp them with promptitude and
+decision they have gone for ever. You may as well try to bring back the
+water that has been sucked over Niagara, and churned into white foam at
+its base, as to recall the wasted opportunities. They stand all along
+the course of our years, solemn monuments of our unfaithfulness, and
+none of them can ever return again. Life is full of too-lates; that sad
+sound that moans through the roofless ruins of the past, like the wind
+through some deserted temple. 'Too late, too late; ye cannot enter now.'
+'The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore he shall
+beg in harvest and have nothing.' Oh! let us see to it that we wring out
+of the passing moments their highest possibilities of noblest good. Let
+us begin to live; for only he who lives to God really lives. Life is
+given to us that we may know Jesus Christ--trust Him, love Him, serve
+Him, be like Him. That is the pearl which, if we bring up from the sea
+of time, we shall not have been cast in vain into its stormy waves. Do
+you take care that this new year which is dawning upon us go not to join
+the many wasted years that lie desolate behind us, but let us all see to
+it that the flood which sweeps us and it away bears us straight to God,
+Who is our home. 'Now is the accepted time, now is the day of
+salvation.'
+
+
+
+
+THE PANOPLY OF GOD
+
+     'Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+      withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to
+      stand.'--Eph. vi. 13.
+
+
+The military metaphor of which this verse is the beginning was obviously
+deeply imprinted on Paul's mind. It is found in a comparatively
+incomplete form in his earliest epistle, the first to the Thessalonians,
+in which the children of the day are exhorted to put on the breastplate
+of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. It reappears,
+in a slightly varied form, in the Epistle to the Romans, where those
+whose salvation is nearer than when they believed, are exhorted, because
+the day is at hand, to cast off, as it were, their night-gear, and to
+put on the 'armour of light'; and here, in this Epistle of the
+Captivity, it is most fully developed. The Roman legionary, to whom Paul
+was chained, here sits all unconsciously for his portrait, every detail
+of which is pressed by Paul into the service of his vivid imagination;
+the virtues and graces of the Christian character, which are 'the armour
+of light,' are suggested to the Apostle by the weapon which the soldier
+by his side wore. The vulgarest and most murderous implements assume a
+new character when looked upon with the eyes of a poet and a Christian.
+Our present text constitutes the general introduction to the great
+picture which follows, of 'the panoply of God.'
+
+I. We must be ready for times of special assaults from evil.
+
+Most of us feel but little the stern reality underlying the metaphor,
+that the whole Christian life is warfare, but that in that warfare there
+are crises, seasons of special danger. The interpretation which makes
+the 'evil day' co-extensive with the time of life destroys the whole
+emphasis of the passage: whilst all days are days of warfare, there will
+be, as in some prolonged siege, periods of comparative quiet; and again,
+days when all the cannon belch at once, and scaling ladders are reared
+on every side of the fortress. In a long winter there are days sunny and
+calm followed, as they were preceded, by days when all the winds are let
+loose at once. For us, such times of special danger to Christian
+character may arise from temporal vicissitudes. Joy and prosperity are
+as sure to occasion them as are sorrows, for to Paul the 'evil day' is
+that which especially threatens moral and spiritual character, and these
+may be as much damaged by the bright sunshine of prosperity as by the
+midwinter of adversity, just as fierce sunshine may be as fatal as
+killing frost. They may also arise, without any such change in
+circumstances, from some temptation coming with more than ordinary
+force, and directed with terrible accuracy to our weakest point.
+
+These evil days are ever wont to come on us suddenly; they are heralded
+by no storm signals and no falling barometer. We may be like soldiers
+sitting securely round their camp fire, till all at once bullets begin
+to fall among them. The tiger's roar is the first signal of its leap
+from the jungle. Our position in the world, our ignorance of the future,
+the heaped-up magazines of combustibles within, needing only a spark,
+all lay us open to unexpected assaults, and the temptation comes
+stealthily, 'as a thief in the night.' Nothing is so certain as the
+unexpected. For these reasons, then, because the 'evil day' will
+certainly come, because it may come at any time, and because it is most
+likely to come 'when we look not for it,' it is the dictate of plain
+common sense to be prepared. If the good man of the house had known at
+what hour the thief would have come, he would have watched; but he would
+have been a wiser man if he had watched all the more, because he did
+_not_ know at what hour the thief would come.
+
+II. To withstand these we must be armed against them before they come.
+
+The main point of the exhortation is this previous preparation. It is
+clear enough that it is no time to fly to our weapons when the enemy is
+upon us. Aldershot, not the battlefield, is the place for learning
+strategy. Belshazzar was sitting at his drunken feast while the Persians
+were marching on Babylon, and in the night he was slain. When great
+crises arise in a nation's history, some man whose whole life has been
+preparing him for the hour starts to the front and does the needed work.
+If a sailor put off learning navigation till the wind was howling and a
+reef lay ahead, his corpse would be cast on the cruel rocks. It is well
+not to be 'over-exquisite,' to cast the fashion of 'uncertain evils,'
+but certain ones cannot be too carefully anticipated, nor too sedulously
+prepared for.
+
+The manner in which this preparation is to be carried out is distinctly
+marked here. The armour is to be put on before the conflict begins. Now,
+without anticipating what will more properly come in considering
+subsequent details, we may notice that such a previous assumption
+implies mainly two things--a previous familiarity with God's truth, and
+a previous exercise of Christian virtues. As to the former, the
+subsequent context speaks of taking the sword of the Spirit, which is
+the word of God, and of having the loins girt with truth, which may be
+objective truth. As to the latter, we need not elaborate the Apostle's
+main thought that resistance to sudden temptations is most vigorous when
+a man is accustomed to goodness. One of the prophets treats it as being
+all but impossible that they who have been accustomed to evil shall
+learn to do well, and it is at least not less impossible that they who
+have been accustomed to do well shall learn to do evil. Souls which
+habitually walk in the clear spaces of the bracing air on the mountains
+of God will less easily be tempted down to the shut-in valleys where
+malaria reigns. The positive exercise of Christian graces tends to
+weaken the force of temptation. A mind occupied with these has no room
+for it. Higher tastes are developed which makes the poison sweetness of
+evil unsavoury, and just as the Israelites hungered for the strong,
+coarse-smelling leeks and garlic of Egypt, and therefore loathed 'this
+light bread,' so they whose palates have been accustomed to manna will
+have little taste for leeks and garlic. The mental and spiritual
+activity involved in the habitual exercise of Christian virtues will go
+far to make the soul unassailable by evil. A man, busily occupied, as
+the Apostle would have us to be, may be tempted by the devil, though
+less frequently the more he is thus occupied; but one who has no such
+occupations and interests tempts the devil. If our lives are inwardly
+and secretly honeycombed with evil, only a breath will be needed to
+throw down the structure. It is possible to become so accustomed to the
+calm delights of goodness, that it would need a moral miracle to make a
+man fall into sin.
+
+III. To be armed with this armour, we must get it from God.
+
+Though it consists mainly of habitudes and dispositions of our own
+minds, none the less have we to receive these from above. It is 'the
+panoply of God,' therefore we are to be endued with it, not by exercises
+in our own strength, but by dependence on Him. In old days, before a
+squire was knighted, he had to keep a vigil in the chapel of the castle,
+and through the hours of darkness to watch his armour and lift his soul
+to God, and we shall never put on the armour of light unless in silence
+we draw near to Him who teaches our hands to war and our fingers to
+fight. Communion with Christ, and only communion with Christ, receives
+from Him the life which enables us to repel the diseases of our spirits.
+What He imparts to those who thus wait upon Him, and to them only, is
+the Spirit which helps their infirmities and clothes their undefended
+nakedness with a coat of mail. If we go forth to war with evil, clothed
+and armed only with what we can provide, we shall surely be worsted in
+the fray. If we go forth into the world of struggle from the secret
+place of the Most High, 'no weapon that is formed against us shall
+prosper,' and we shall be more than conquerors through Him that loved
+us.
+
+But waiting on God to receive our weapons from Him is but part of what
+is needful for our equipment. It is we who have to gird our loins and
+put on the breastplate, and shoe our feet, and take the shield of faith,
+and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. The cumbrous
+armour of old days could only be put on by the help of another pulling
+straps, and fixing buckles, and lifting and bracing heavy shields on
+arms, and fastening helmets upon heads; but we have, by our own effort,
+to clothe ourselves with God's great gift, which is of no use to us, and
+is in no real sense ours, unless we do. It takes no small effort to
+keep ourselves in the attitude of dependence and receptivity, without
+which none of the great gifts of God come to us, and, least of all, the
+habitual practice of Christian virtues. The soldier who rushed into the
+fight, leaving armour and arms huddled together on the ground, would
+soon fall, and God's giving avails nothing for our defence unless there
+is also our taking. It is the woful want of taking the things that are
+freely given to us of God, and of making our own what by His gift is our
+own, that is mainly responsible for the defeats of which we are all
+conscious. Looking back on our own evil days, we must all be aware that
+our defeats have mainly come from one or other of the two errors which
+lie so near us all, and which are intimately connected with each
+other--the one being that of fighting in our own strength, and the other
+being that of leaving unused our God-given power.
+
+IV. The issue of successful resistance is increased firmness of footing.
+
+If we are able to 'withstand in the evil day,' we shall 'stand' more
+securely when the evil day has stormed itself away. If we keep erect in
+the shock of battle, we shall stand more secure when the wild charge has
+been beaten back. The sea hurls tons of water against the slender
+lighthouse on the rock, and if it stands, the smashing of the waves
+consolidates it. The reward of firm resistance is increased firmness. As
+the Red Indians used to believe that the strength of the slain enemies
+whom they had scalped passed into their arms, so we may have power
+developed by conflict, and we shall more fully understand, and more
+passionately believe in, the principles and truths which have served us
+in past fights. David would not wear Saul's armour because, as he said,
+'I have not proved it,' and the Christian who has come victoriously
+through one struggle should be ready to say, 'I have proved it'; we have
+the word of the Lord, which is _tried_, to trust to, and not we only,
+but generations, have tested it, and it has stood the tests. Therefore,
+it is not for us to hesitate as to the worth of our weapons, or to doubt
+that they are more than sufficient for every conflict which we may be
+called upon to wage.
+
+The text plainly implies that all our life long we shall be in danger of
+sudden assaults. It does contemplate victory in the evil day, but it
+also contemplates that after we have withstood, we have still to stand
+and be ready for another attack to-morrow. Our life here is, and must
+still be, a continual warfare. Peace is not bought by any victories;
+'There is no discharge in that war.' Like the ten thousand Greeks who
+fought their way home through clouds of enemies from the heart of Asia,
+we are never safe till we come to the mountain-top, where we can cry,
+'The Sea!' But though all our paths lead us through enemies, we have
+Jesus, who has conquered them all, with us, and our hearts should not
+fail so long as we can hear His brave voice encouraging us: 'In the
+world ye have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the
+world.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE GIRDLE OF TRUTH'
+
+     'Stand, therefore, having girded your loins with truth.'--Eph.
+      vi. 14 (R.V.).
+
+
+The general exhortation here points to the habitual attitude of the
+Christian soldier. However many conflicts he may have waged, he is still
+to be ever ready for fresh assaults, for in regard to them he may be
+quite sure that to-morrow will bring its own share of them, and that the
+evil day is never left behind so long as days still last. That general
+exhortation is followed by clauses which are sometimes said to be
+cotemporaneous with it, and to be definitions of the way in which it is
+to be accomplished, but they are much rather statements of what is to be
+done before the soldier takes his stand. He is to be fully equipped
+first: he is to take up his position second. We may note that, in all
+the list of his equipment, there is but one weapon of offence--the sword
+of the Spirit; all the rest are defensive weapons. The girdle, which is
+the first specified, is not properly a weapon at all, but it comes first
+because the belt keeps all the other parts of the armour in place, and
+gives agility to the wearer. Having girded your loins (R.V.) is better
+than having your loins girded (A.V.), as bringing out more fully that
+the assumption of the belt is the soldier's own doing.
+
+I. We must be braced up if we are to fight.
+
+Concentration and tension of power is an absolute necessity for any
+effort, no matter how poor may be the aims to which it is directed, and
+what is needed for the successful prosecution of the lowest transient
+successes will surely not be less indispensable in the highest forms of
+life. If a poor runner for a wreath of parsley or of laurel cannot hope
+to win the fading prize unless all his powers are strained to the
+uttermost, the Christian athlete has still more certainly to run, so as
+the racer has to do, 'that he may obtain.' Loose-flowing robes are
+caught by every thorn by the way, and a soul which is not girded up is
+sure to be hindered in its course. 'This one thing I do' is the secret
+of all successful doing, and obedience to the command of Jesus, 'let
+your loins be girded about,' is indispensable, if we would avoid
+polluting contact with evil. His other command associated with it will
+never be accomplished without it. The lamps will not be burning unless
+the loins are girt. The men who scatter their loves and thoughts over a
+wide space, and to whom the discipline which confines their energies
+within definite channels is distasteful, are destined to be failures in
+the struggle of life. It is better to have our lives running between
+narrow banks, and so to have a scour in the stream, than to have them
+spreading wide and shallow, with no driving force in all the useless
+expanse. Such concentration and bracing of oneself up is needful, if any
+of the rest of the great exhortations which follow are to be fulfilled.
+
+It may be that Paul here has haunting his memory our Lord's words which
+we have just quoted; and, in any case, he is in beautiful accord with
+his brother Peter, who begins all the exhortations of his epistle with
+the words, 'Wherefore, girding up the loins of your mind, be sober, and
+set your minds perfectly upon the grace that is to be brought unto you
+at the revelation of Jesus Christ.' Peter, indeed, is not thinking of
+the soldier's belt, but he is, no doubt, remembering many a time when,
+in the toils of the fishing-boat, he had to tighten his robes round his
+waist to prepare for tugging at the oar, and he feels that such
+concentration is needful if a Christian life is ever to be sober, and to
+have its hope set perfectly on Christ and His grace.
+
+II. The girdle is to be truth.
+
+The question immediately arises as to whether truth here means objective
+truth--the truth of the Gospel, or subjective truth, or, as we are
+accustomed to say, truthfulness. It would seem that the former
+signification is rather included in the sword of the Spirit, which is
+the word of God, and it is best to regard the phrase 'with (literally
+"in") truth' here as having its ordinary meaning, of which we may take
+as examples the phrases, 'the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth';
+'love rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth';
+'whom I love in truth.' Absolute sincerity and transparent truthfulness
+may well be regarded as the girdle which encloses and keeps secure every
+other Christian grace and virtue.
+
+We do not need to go far to find a slight tinge of unreality marring the
+Christian life: we have only to scrutinise our own experiences to detect
+some tendency to affectation, to saying a little more than is quite
+true, even in our sincerest worship. And we cannot but recognise that in
+all Christian communities there is present an element of conventionalism
+in their prayers, and that often the public expression of religious
+emotions goes far beyond the realities of feeling in the worshippers. In
+fact, terrible as the acknowledgment may be, we shall be blind if we do
+not recognise that the average Christianity of this day suffers from
+nothing more than it does from the lack of this transparent sincerity,
+and of absolute correspondence between inward fact and outward
+expression. Types of Christianity which make much of emotion are, of
+course, specially exposed to such a danger, but those which make least
+of it are not exempt, and we all need to lay to heart, far more
+seriously than we ordinarily do, that God 'desires truth in the outward
+parts.' The sturdy English moralist who proclaimed 'Clear your mind of
+cant' as the first condition of attaining wisdom, was not so very far
+from Paul's point of view in our text, but his exhortation covered but
+a small section of the Apostle's.
+
+This absolute sincerity is hard to attain, and still harder to retain.
+Hideous as the fact of posing or attitudinising in our religion may be,
+it is one that comes very easily to us all, and, when it comes, spreads
+fast and spoils everything. Just as the legionary's armour was held in
+its place by the girdle, and if that worked loose or was carelessly
+fastened, the breastplate would be sure to get out of position, so all
+the subsequent graces largely depend for their vigorous exercise on the
+prime virtue of truthfulness. Righteousness and faith will be weakened
+by the fatal taint of insincerity, and, on the other hand, conscious
+truthfulness will give strength to the whole man. Braced up and
+concentrated, our powers for all service and for all conflict will be
+increased. 'The bond of perfectness' is, no doubt, 'Love,' but that
+perfect bond will not be worn by us, unless we have girded our loins
+with truthfulness.
+
+It may be that in Paul's memory there is floating Isaiah's great vision
+of the 'Branch' out of the stock of Jesse, on whom the Spirit of the
+Lord was to rest, and on whom it was proclaimed that faithfulness (or as
+it is rendered in the Septuagint, by the same phrase which the Apostle
+here employs, 'in truth') was to be the girdle of his reins; but, at all
+events, that which the prophet saw to be in the ideal Messiah, the
+Apostle sees as essential to all the subjects of that King.
+
+III. Our truthfulness is the work of God's truth.
+
+We have already pointed out that the expression in the text may either
+be taken as referring to the subjective quality of truthfulness, or to
+the objective truth of God as contained in the Gospel, but these two
+interpretations may be united, for the main factor in producing the
+former is the faithful use of the latter and an honest submission to its
+operation. The Psalmist of old had learned that the great safeguard
+against sin was the resolve, 'Thy word have I hid in my heart.' That
+word brings to bear the mightiest motives that can sway life. It moves
+by love, by fear, by hope: it proposes the loftiest aim, even to imitate
+God as dear children; it gives clear directions, and draws straight and
+plain the pilgrim's path; it holds out the largest promises, and in a
+measure fulfils them, even in the narrowest and most troubled lives. If
+we have made God's truth our own, and are faithfully applying it to the
+details of daily life and submitting our whole selves to its operation,
+we shall be truthful and shall instinctively shrink from all unreality.
+If we know the truth as it is in Jesus, and walk in it, that 'truth will
+make us free,' and if thus 'we are in Him that is true, even in His Son,
+Jesus Christ,' that truth abiding in us, and with us, for ever, will
+make us truthful. In a heart so occupied and filled there is no room for
+the make-believes which are but too apt to creep into religious
+experience. Such a soul will recoil with an instinct of abhorrence from
+all that savours of ostentation, and will feel that its truest treasure
+cannot be shown. It is our duty not to hide God's righteousness within
+our hearts, but it is equally our duty to hide His word there. We have
+to seek to make manifest the 'savour of His knowledge in every place,'
+but we have also to remember that in our hearts there is a secret place,
+and that 'not easily forgiven are they who draw back the curtains,' and
+let a careless world look in. It is not for others to pry into the
+hidden mysteries of the fellowship of a soul with the indwelling
+Christ, however it may be the Christian duty to show to all and sundry
+the blessed and transforming effects of that fellowship.
+
+But God's truth must be received and its power submitted to, if it is to
+implant in us the supreme grace of perfect truthfulness. Our minds and
+hearts must be saturated with it by many an hour of solitary reflection,
+by meditation which will diffuse its aroma like a fragrant perfume
+through our characters, and by the habit of bringing all circumstances,
+moods, and desires to be tested by its infallible criterion, and by the
+unreluctant acceptance of its guidance at every moment of our lives.
+There are many of us who, in a real though terribly imperfect sense,
+hold the truth, but who know nothing, or next to nothing, of its power
+to make us truthful. If it is to be of any use to us, we must make it
+ours in a far deeper sense than it is ours now; for many of us the
+girdle has been but carelessly fastened and has worked loose, and
+because, by our own faults, we have not 'abode in the truth,' it has
+come to pass that there is 'no truth in us.' We have set before us in
+the text the one condition on which all Christian progress depends, and
+if by any slackness we loosen the girdle of truthfulness, and admit into
+our religious life any taint of unreality, if our prayers say just a
+little more than is quite true, and our penitence a little less, we
+shall speedily find that hypocrisy and trivial insincerity are separated
+by very narrow limits. God's truth in the Gospel cleanses the inner man,
+but not without his own effort, and, therefore, we are commanded to
+'cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting
+holiness, in the fear of the Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS'
+
+     'Having put on the breastplate of righteousness.'--Eph. vi. 14.
+
+
+There can be no doubt that in this whole context the Apostle has in mind
+the great passage in Isaiah lix. where the prophet, in a figure of
+extreme boldness, describes the Lord as arming Himself to deliver the
+oppressed faithful, and coming as a Redeemer to Zion. In that passage
+the Lord puts on righteousness as a breastplate--that is to say, God, in
+His manifestation of Himself for the deliverance of His people, comes
+forth as if arrayed in the glittering armour of righteousness. Paul does
+not shrink from applying the same metaphor to those who are to be
+'imitators of God as beloved children,' and from urging upon them that,
+in their humble degree and lowly measure, they too are to be clothed in
+the bright armour of moral rectitude. This righteousness is manifested
+in character and in conduct, and as the breastplate guards the vital
+organs from assault, it will keep the heart unwounded.
+
+We must note that Paul here gathers up the whole sum of Christian
+character and conduct into one word. All can be expressed, however
+diversified may be the manifestations, by the one sovereign term
+'righteousness,' and that is not merely a hasty generalisation, or a too
+rapid synthesis. As all sin has one root and is genetically one, so all
+goodness is at bottom one. The germ of sin is living to oneself: the
+germ of goodness is living to God. Though the degrees of development of
+either opposite are infinite, and the forms of its expression
+innumerable, yet the root of each is one.
+
+Paul thinks of righteousness as existent before the Christian soldier
+puts it on. In this thought we are not merely relying on the metaphor of
+our text, but bringing it into accord with the whole tone of New
+Testament teaching, which knows of only one way in which any soul that
+has been living to self, and therefore to sin, can attain to living to
+God, and therefore can be righteous. We must receive, if we are ever to
+possess, the righteousness which is of God, and which becomes ours
+through Jesus Christ. The righteousness which shines as a fair but
+unattainable vision before sinful men, has a real existence, and may be
+theirs. It is not to be self-elaborated, but to be received.
+
+That existent righteousness is to be put on. Other places of Scripture
+figure it as the robe of righteousness; here it is conceived of as the
+breastplate, but the idea of assumption is the same. It is to be put on,
+primarily, by faith. It is given in Christ to simple belief. He that
+hath faith thereby has the righteousness which is through faith in
+Christ, for in his faith he has the one formative principle of reliance
+on God, which will gradually refine character and mould conduct into
+whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. That righteousness
+which faith receives is no mere forensic treating of the unjust as just,
+but whilst it does bring with it pardon and oblivion from past
+transgressions, it makes a man in the depths of his being righteous,
+however slowly it may afterwards transform his conduct. The faith which
+is a departure from all reliance on works of righteousness which we have
+done, and is a single-eyed reliance on the work of Jesus Christ, opens
+the heart in which it is planted to all the influences of that life
+which was in Jesus, that from Him it may be in us. If Christ be in us
+(and if He is not, we are none of His), 'the spirit is life because of
+righteousness,' however the body may still be 'dead because of sin.'
+
+But the putting on of the breastplate requires effort as well as faith,
+and effort will be vigorous in the measure in which faith is vivid, but
+it should follow, not precede or supplant, faith. There is no more
+hopeless and weary advice than would be the exhortation of our text if
+it stood alone. It is a counsel of despair to tell a man to put on that
+breastplate, and to leave him in doubt where he is to find it, or
+whether he has to hammer it together by his own efforts before he can
+put it on. There is no more unprofitable expenditure of breath than the
+cry to men, Be good! Be good! Moral teaching without Gospel preaching is
+little better than a waste of breath.
+
+This injunction is continuously imperative upon all Christian soldiers.
+They are on the march through the enemy's country, and can never safely
+lay aside their armour. After all successes, and no less after all
+failures, we have still to arm ourselves for the fight, and it is to be
+remembered that the righteousness of which Paul speaks differs from
+common earthly moralities only as including and transcending them all.
+It is, alas, too true that Christian righteousness has been by
+Christians set forth as something fantastic and unreal, remote from
+ordinary life, and far too heavenly-minded to care for common virtues.
+Let us never forget that Jesus Himself has warned us, that except our
+righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, we
+shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The greater orbit encloses
+the lesser within itself.
+
+The breastplate of righteousness is our defence against evil. The
+opposition to temptation is best carried on by the positive cultivation
+of good. A habit of righteous conduct is itself a defence against
+temptation. Untilled fields bear abundant weeds. The used tool does not
+rust, nor the running water gather scum. The robe of righteousness will
+guard the heart as effectually as a coat of mail. The positive
+employment with good weakens temptation, and arms us against evil. But
+so long as we are here our righteousness must be militant, and we must
+be content to live ever armed to meet the enemy which is always hanging
+round us, and watching for an opportunity to strike. The time will come
+when we shall put off the breastplate and put on the fine linen 'clean
+and white,' which is the heavenly and final form of the righteousness of
+Saints.
+
+
+
+
+A SOLDIER'S SHOES
+
+     'Your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.'--Eph.
+      vi. 15.
+
+
+Paul drew the first draft of this picture of the Christian armour in his
+first letter. It is a finished picture here. One can fancy that the
+Roman soldier to whom he was chained in his captivity, whilst this
+letter was being written, unconsciously sat for his likeness, and that
+each piece of his accoutrements was seized in succession by the
+Apostle's imagination and turned to a Christian use. It is worth
+noticing that there is only one offensive weapon mentioned--'the sword
+of the Spirit.' All the rest are defensive--helmet, breastplate, shield,
+girdle, and shoes. That is to say, the main part of our warfare consists
+in defence, in resistance, and in keeping what we have, in spite of
+everybody, men and devils, who attempt to take it from us. 'Hold fast
+that thou hast; let no man take thy crown.'
+
+Now, it seems to me that the ordinary reader does not quite grasp the
+meaning of our text, and that it would be more intelligible if, instead
+of 'preparation,' which means the process of getting a thing ready, we
+read 'preparedness,' which means the state of mind of the man who is
+ready. Then we have to notice that the little word 'of' does duty to
+express two different relations, in the two instances of its use here.
+In the first case--'the preparedness of the Gospel'--it states the
+origin of the thing in question. That condition of being ready comes
+from the good news of Christ. In the second case--'the Gospel of
+peace'--it states the result of the thing in question. The good news of
+Christ gives peace. So, taking the whole clause, we may paraphrase it by
+saying that the preparedness of spirit, the alacrity which comes from
+the possession of a Gospel that sheds a calm over the heart and brings a
+man into peace with God, is what the Apostle thinks is like the heavy
+hob-nailed boots that the legionaries wore, by which they could stand
+firm, whatever came against them.
+
+I. The first thing that I would notice here is that the Gospel brings
+peace.
+
+I suppose that there was ringing in Paul's head some echoes of the music
+of Isaiah's words, 'How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him
+that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good
+tidings of good!' But there is a great deal more than an unconscious
+quotation of ancient words here; for in Paul's thought, the one power
+which brings a man into harmony with the universe and to peace with
+himself, is the power which proclaims that God is at peace with him. And
+Jesus Christ is our peace, because He has swept away the root and bitter
+fountain of all the disquiet of men's hearts, and all their chafing at
+providences--the consciousness that there is discord between themselves
+and God. The Gospel brings peace in the deepest sense of that word, and,
+primarily, peace with God, from out of which all other kinds of
+tranquillity and heart-repose do come--and they come from nothing
+besides.
+
+But what strikes me most here is not so much the allusion to the blessed
+truth that was believed and experienced by these Ephesian Christians,
+that the Gospel brought peace, and was the only thing that did, as the
+singular emergence of that idea that the Gospel was a peace-bringing
+power, in the midst of this picture of fighting. Yes, it brings both. It
+brings us peace first, and then it says to us, 'Now, having got peace in
+your heart, because peace with God, go out and fight to keep it.' For,
+if we are warring with the devil we are at peace with God; and if we are
+at peace with the devil we are warring with God. So the two states of
+peace and war go together. There is no real peace which has not conflict
+in it, and the Gospel _is_ 'the Gospel of peace,' precisely because it
+enlists us in Christ's army and sends us out to fight Christ's battles.
+
+So, then, dear brother, the only way to realise and preserve 'the peace
+of God which passes understanding' is to fling ourselves manfully into
+the fight to which all Christ's soldiers are pledged and bound. The two
+conditions, though they seem to be opposite, will unite; for this is the
+paradox of the Christian life, that in all regions it makes compatible
+apparently incompatible and contradictory emotions. 'As sorrowful'--and
+Paul might have said 'therefore' instead of 'yet'--'as sorrowful yet
+always rejoicing; as having nothing yet'--therefore--'possessing all
+things'; as in the thick of the fight, and yet kept in perfect peace,
+because the soul is stayed on God. The peace that comes from friendship
+with Him, the peace that fills a heart tranquil because satisfied, the
+peace that soothes a conscience emptied of all poison and robbed of all
+its sting, the peace that abides because, on all the horizon in front of
+us nothing can be seen that we need to be afraid of--that peace is the
+peace which the Gospel brings, and it is realised in warfare and is
+consistent with it. All the armies of the world may camp round the
+fortress, and the hurtling noise of battle may be loud in the plains,
+but up upon the impregnable cliff crowned by its battlements there is a
+central citadel, with a chapel in the heart of it; and to the
+worshippers there none of the noise ever penetrates. The Gospel which
+laps us in peace and puts it in our hearts makes us soldiers.
+
+II. Further, this Gospel of peace will prepare us for the march.
+
+A wise general looks after his soldiers' boots. If they give out,
+nothing else is of much use. The roads are very rough and very long, and
+there need to be strong soles and well-sewed uppers, and they will be
+none the worse for a bit of iron on the heels and the toes, in order
+that they may not wear out in the midst of the campaign. 'Thy shoes
+shall be iron and brass,' and these metals are harder than any of the
+rock that you will have to clamber over. Which being translated into
+plain fact is just this--a tranquil heart in amity with God is ready for
+all the road, is likely to make progress, and is fit for anything that
+it may be called to do.
+
+A calm heart makes a light foot; and he who is living at peace with God,
+and with all disturbance within hushed to rest, will, for one thing, be
+able to see what his duty is. He will see his way as far as is needful
+for the moment. That is more than a good many of us can do when our eyes
+get confused, because our hearts are beating so loudly and fast, and our
+own wishes come in to hide from us God's will. But if we are weaned from
+ourselves, as we shall be if we are living in possession of the peace of
+God which passes understanding, the atmosphere will be transparent, as
+it is on some of the calm last days of autumn, and we shall see far
+ahead and know where we ought to go.
+
+The quiet heart will be able to fling its whole strength into its work.
+And that is what troubled hearts never can do, for half their energy is
+taken up in steadying or quieting themselves, or is dissipated in going
+after a hundred other things. But when we are wholly engaged in quiet
+fellowship with Jesus Christ we have the whole of our energies at our
+command, and can fling ourselves wholly into our work for Him. The
+steam-engine is said to be a very imperfect machine which wastes more
+power than it utilises. That is true of a great many Christian people;
+they have the power, but they are so far away from that deep sense of
+tranquillity with God, of which my text speaks, that they waste much of
+the power that they have. And if we are to have for our motto 'Always
+Ready.' as an old Scottish family has, the only way to secure that is by
+having 'our feet shod with the preparedness' that comes from the Gospel
+that brings us peace. Brethren, duty that is done reluctantly, with
+hesitation, is not done. We must fling ourselves into the work gladly
+and be always 'ready for all Thy perfect will.'
+
+There was an English commander, who died some years ago, who was sent
+for to the Horse Guards one day and asked, 'How long will it take for
+you to be ready to go to Scinde?' 'Half an hour,' said he; and in
+three-quarters he was in the train, on his road to reconquer a kingdom.
+That is how we ought to be; but we never shall be, unless we live
+habitually in tranquil communion with God, and in the full faith that we
+are at peace with Him through the blood of His Son. A quiet heart makes
+us ready for duty.
+
+III. Again, the Gospel of peace prepares us for combat.
+
+In ancient warfare battles were lost or won very largely according to
+the weight of the masses of men that were hurled against each other; and
+the heavier men, with the firmer footing, were likely to be the victors.
+Our modern scientific way of fighting is different from that. But in the
+old time the one thing needful was that a man should stand firm and
+resist the shock of the enemies as they rushed upon him. Unless our
+footing is good we shall be tumbled over by the onset of some unexpected
+antagonist. And for good footing there are two things necessary. One is
+a good, solid piece of ground to stand on, that is not slippery nor
+muddy, and the other is a good, strong pair of soldier's boots, that
+will take hold on the ground and help the wearer to steady himself.
+Christ has set our feet on the rock, and so the first requisite is
+secured. If we, for our part, will keep near to that Gospel which brings
+peace into our hearts, the peace that it brings will make us able to
+stand and bear unmoved any force that may be hurled against us. If we
+are to be 'steadfast, unmovable,' we can only be so when our feet are
+shod with the preparedness of the Gospel of peace.
+
+The most of your temptations, most of the things that would pluck you
+away from Jesus Christ, and upset you in your standing will come down
+upon you unexpectedly. Nothing happens in this world except the
+unexpected; and it is the sudden assaults that we were not looking for
+that work most disastrously against us. A man may be aware of some
+special weakness in his character, and have given himself carefully and
+patiently to try to fortify himself against it, and, lo! all at once a
+temptation springs up from the opposite side; the enemy was lying in
+hiding there, and whilst his face was turned to fight with one foe, a
+foe that he knew nothing about came storming behind him. There is only
+one way to stand, and that is not merely by cultivating careful
+watchfulness against our own weaknesses, but by keeping fast hold of
+Jesus Christ manifested to us in His Gospel. Then the peace that comes
+from that communion will itself guard us.
+
+You remember what Paul says in one of his other letters, where he has
+the same beautiful blending together of the two ideas of peace and
+warfare: 'The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall
+garrison your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.' It will be, as it were,
+an armed force within your heart which will repel all antagonism, and
+will enable you to abide in that Christ, through whom and in whom alone
+all peace comes. So, because we are thus liable to be overwhelmed by a
+sudden rush of unexpected temptation, and surprised into a sin before we
+know where we are, let us keep fast hold by that Gospel which brings
+peace, which will give us steadfastness, however suddenly the masked
+battery may begin to play upon us, and the foe may steal out of his
+ambush and make a rush against our unprotectedness. That is the only
+way, as I think, by which we can walk scatheless through the world.
+
+Now, dear brethren, remember that this text is part of a commandment. We
+are to put on the shoes. How is that to be done? By a very simple way: a
+way which, I am afraid, a great many Christian people do not practise
+with anything like the constancy that they ought. For it is the Gospel
+that brings the peace, and if its peace brings the preparedness, then
+the way to get the preparedness is by soaking our minds and hearts in
+the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
+
+You hear a good deal nowadays about deepening the spiritual life, and
+people hold conventions for the purpose. All right; I have not a word to
+say against that. But, conventions or no conventions, there is only one
+thing that deepens the spiritual life, and that is keeping near the
+Christ from whom all the fulness of the spiritual life flows. If we will
+hold fast by our Gospel, and let its peace lie upon our minds, as the
+negative of a photograph lies upon the paper that it is to be printed
+upon, until the image of Jesus Christ Himself is reproduced in us, then
+we may laugh at temptation. For there will be no temptation when the
+heart is full of Him, and there will be no sense of surrendering
+anything that we wish to keep when the superior sweetness of His grace
+fills our souls. It is empty vessels into which poison can be poured. If
+the vessel is full there will be no room for it. Get your hearts and
+minds filled with the wine of the kingdom, and the devil's venom of
+temptation will have no space to get in. It is well to resist
+temptation; it is better to be lifted above it, so that it ceases to
+tempt. And the one way to secure that is to live near Jesus Christ, and
+let the Gospel of His grace take up more of our thoughts and more of
+our affections than it has done in the past. Then we shall realise the
+fulfilment of the promise: 'He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SHIELD OF FAITH
+
+     'Above all, taking the shield of faith, whereby ye shall be able to
+      quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.'--Eph. vi. 16.
+
+
+There were two kinds of shields in use in ancient warfare--one smaller,
+carried upon the arm, and which could be used, by a movement of the arm,
+for the defence of threatened parts of the body in detail; the other
+large, planted in front of the soldier, fixed in the ground, and all but
+covering his whole person. It is the latter which is referred to in the
+text, as the word which describes it clearly shows. That word is
+connected with the Greek word meaning 'door,' and gives a rough notion
+of the look of the instrument of defence--a great rectangular oblong,
+behind which a man could stand untouched and untouchable. And that is
+the kind of shield, says Paul, which we are to have--no little defence
+which may protect some part of the nature, but a great wall, behind
+which he who crouches is safe.
+
+'Above all' does not mean here, as superficial readers take it to mean,
+most especially and primarily, as most important, but it simply means
+_in addition to_ all these other things. Perhaps with some allusion to
+the fact that the shield protected the breastplate, as well as the
+breastplate protected the man, there may be a reference to the kind of
+double defence which comes to him who wears that breastplate and lies
+behind the shelter of a strong and resolute faith.
+
+I. Now, looking at this metaphor from a practical point of view, the
+first thing to note is the missiles, 'the fiery darts of the wicked.'
+
+Archaeologists tell us that there were in use in ancient warfare javelins
+tipped with some kind of combustible, which were set on fire, and flung,
+so that they had not only the power of wounding but also of burning; and
+that there were others with a hollow head, which was in like manner
+filled, kindled, and thrown into the ranks of the enemy. I suppose that
+the Apostle's reason for specifying these fiery darts was simply that
+they were the most formidable offensive weapons that he had ever heard
+of. Probably, if he had lived to-day, he would have spoken of
+rifle-bullets or explosive shells, instead of fiery darts. But, though
+probably the Apostle had no further meaning in the metaphor than to
+suggest that faith was mightier than the mightiest assaults that can be
+hurled against it, we may venture to draw attention to two particulars
+in which this figure is specially instructive and warning. The one is
+the action of certain temptations in setting the soul on fire; the other
+is the suddenness with which they assail us.
+
+'The fiery darts.' Now, I do not wish to confine that metaphor too
+narrowly to any one department of human nature, for our whole being is
+capable of being set on fire, and 'set on fire of hell,' as James says.
+But there are things in us all to which the fiery darts do especially
+appeal: desires, appetites, passions; or--to use the word which refined
+people are so afraid of, although the Bible is not, '_lusts_--which war
+against the soul,' and which need only a touch of fire to flare up like
+a tar-barrel, in thick foul smoke darkening the heavens. There are fiery
+darts that strike these animal natures of ours, and set them all aflame.
+
+But, there are other fiery darts than these. There are plenty of other
+desires in us: wishes, cowardices, weaknesses of all sorts, that, once
+touched with the devil's dart, will burn fiercely enough. We all know
+that.
+
+Then there is the other characteristic of suddenness. The dart comes
+without any warning. The arrow is invisible until it is buried in the
+man's breast. The pestilence walks in darkness, and the victim does not
+know until its poison fang is in him. Ah! yes! brethren, the most
+dangerous of our temptations are those that are sprung upon us unawares.
+We are going quietly along the course of our daily lives, occupied with
+quite other thoughts, and all at once, as if a door had opened, not out
+of heaven but out of hell, we are confronted with some evil thing that,
+unless we are instantaneously on our guard, will conquer us almost
+before we know. Evil tempts us because it comes to us, for the most
+part, without any beat of drum or blast of trumpet to say that it is
+coming, and to put us upon our guard. The batteries that do most harm to
+the advancing force are masked until the word of command is given, and
+then there is a flash from every cannon's throat and a withering hail of
+shot that confounds by its unexpectedness as well as kills by its blow.
+The fiery darts that light up the infernal furnace in a man's heart, and
+that smite him all unawares and unsuspecting, these are the weapons that
+we have to fear most.
+
+II. Consider next, the defence: 'the shield of faith.'
+
+Now, the Old Testament says things like this: 'Fear not, Abraham; I am
+thy Shield.' The psalmist invoked God, in a rapturous exuberance of
+adoring invocations, as his fortress, and his buckler, and the horn of
+his salvation, and his high tower. The same psalm says, 'The Lord is a
+shield to all them that put their trust in Him'; and the Book of
+Proverbs, which is not given to quoting psalms, quotes that verse.
+Another psalm says, 'The Lord God is a sun and shield.'
+
+And then Paul comes speaking of 'the shield of _faith_.' What has become
+of the other one? The answer is plain enough. My faith is nothing except
+for what it puts in front of me, and it is God who is truly my shield;
+my faith is only called a shield, because it brings me behind the bosses
+of the Almighty's buckler, against which no man can run a tilt, or into
+which no man can strike his lance, nor any devil either. God is a
+defence; and my trust, which is nothing in itself, is everything because
+of that with which it brings me into connection. Faith is the condition,
+and the only condition, of God's power flowing into me, and working in
+me. And when that power flows into me, and works in me, then I can laugh
+at the fiery darts, because 'greater is He that is with us than all they
+that are with them.'
+
+So all the glorification which the New Testament pours out upon the act
+of faith properly belongs, not to the act itself, but to that with which
+the act brings us into connection. Wherefore, in the first Epistle of
+John, the Apostle, who recorded Christ's saying, 'Be of good cheer; I
+have overcome the world,' translates it into, 'This is the victory that
+overcometh the world'--_not_, our Christ, but--'even our faith.' And it
+overcomes because it binds us in deep, vital union with Him who has
+overcome; and then all His conquering power comes into us.
+
+That is the explanation and vindication of the turn which Paul gives to
+the Old Testament metaphor here, when he makes our shield to be faith.
+Suppose a man was exercising trust in one that was unworthy of it, would
+that trust defend him from anything? Suppose you were in peril of some
+great pecuniary loss, and were saying to yourself, 'Oh! I do not care.
+So-and-so has guaranteed me against any loss, and I trust to him,' and
+suppose he was a bankrupt, what would be the good of your trust? It
+would not bring the money back into your pocket. Suppose a man is
+leaning upon a rotten support; the harder he leans the sooner it will
+crumble. So there is no defence in the act of trust except what comes
+into it from the object of trust; and my faith is a shield only because
+it grasps the God who is the shield.
+
+But, then, there is another side to that thought. My faith will quench,
+as nothing else will, these sudden impulses of fiery desires, because my
+faith brings me into the conscious presence of God, and of the unseen
+realities where He dwells. How can a man sin when God's eye is felt to
+be upon him? Suppose conspirators plotting some dark deed in a corner,
+shrouded by the night, as they think; and suppose, all at once, the day
+were to blaze in upon them, they would scatter, and drop their designs.
+Faith draws back the curtain which screens off that unseen world from so
+many of us, and lets in the light that shines down from above and shows
+us that we are compassed about by a cloud of witnesses, and the Captain
+of our Salvation in the midst of them. Then the fiery darts fizzle out,
+and the points drop off them. No temptation continues to flame when we
+see God.
+
+They have contrivances in mills that they call 'automatic sprinklers.'
+When the fire touches them it melts away a covering, and a gas is set
+free that puts the fire out. And if we let in the thought of God, it
+will extinguish any flame. 'The sun puts out the fire in our grates,'
+the old women say. Let God's sun shine into your heart, and you will
+find that the infernal light has gone out. The shield of faith quenches
+the fiery darts of the 'wicked.'
+
+Yes! and it does it in another way. For, according to the Epistle to the
+Hebrews, faith realises 'the things hoped for,' as well as 'unseen.' And
+if a man is walking in the light of the great promises of Heaven, and
+the great threatenings of a hell, he will not be in much danger of being
+set on fire, even by 'the fiery darts of the wicked.' He that receives
+into his heart God's strength; he that by faith is conscious of the
+divine presence in communion with him; he that by faith walks in the
+light of eternal retribution, will triumph over the most sudden, the
+sharpest, and the most fiery of the darts that can be launched against
+him.
+
+III. The Grasp of the Shield.
+
+'_Taking_ the shield,' then, there is something to be done in order to
+get the benefit of that defence. Now, there are a great many very good
+people at present who tell Christian men that they ought to exercise
+faith for sanctifying, as they exercise it for justifying and
+acceptance. And some of them--I do not say all--forget that there is
+effort needed to exercise faith for sanctifying; and that our energy has
+to be put forth in order that a man may, in spite of all resistance,
+keep himself in the attitude of dependence. So my text, whilst it
+proclaims that we are to trust for defence against, and victory over,
+recurring temptations, just as we trusted for forgiveness and
+acceptance at the beginning, proclaims also that there must be effort to
+grasp the shield, and to realise the defence which the shield gives to
+us.
+
+For to trust is an act of the heart and will far more than of the head,
+and there are a great many hindrances that rise in the way of it; and to
+keep behind the shield, and not depend at all upon our own wit, our
+wisdom, or our strength, but wholly upon the Christ who gives us wit and
+wisdom, and strengthens our fingers to fight--that will take work! To
+occupy heart and mind with the object of faith is not an easy thing.
+
+So, brethren, effort to compel the will and the heart to trust; effort
+to keep the mind in touch with the verities and the Person who are the
+objects of our faith; and effort to keep ourselves utterly and wholly
+ensconced behind the Shield, and never to venture out into the open,
+where our own arm has to keep our own heads, but to hang wholly upon
+Him--these things go to 'taking' the shield of faith. And it is because
+we fail in these, and not because there are any holes or weak places in
+the shield, that so many of the fiery darts find their way through, and
+set on fire and wound us. The Shield is impregnable, beaten as we have
+often been. 'This is the victory that overcometh the world'--and the
+devil and his darts--'even our faith.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE HELMET OF SALVATION'
+
+     'Take the helmet of salvation.'--Eph. vi. 17.
+
+
+We may, perhaps, trace a certain progress in the enumeration of the
+various pieces of the Christian armour in this context. Roughly
+speaking, they are in three divisions. There are first our graces of
+truth, righteousness, preparedness, which, though they are all conceived
+as given by God, are yet the exercises of our own powers. There is next,
+standing alone, as befits its all-comprehensive character, faith which
+is able to ward against and overcome not merely this and that
+temptation, but all forms of evil. That faith is the root of the three
+preceding graces, and makes the transition to the two which follow,
+because it is the hand by which we lay hold of God's gifts. The two
+final parts of the Christian armour are God's gifts, pure and
+simple--salvation and the word of God. So the progress is from
+circumference to centre, from man to God. From the central faith we have
+on the one hand that which it produces in us; on the other, that which
+it lays hold of from God. And these two last pieces of armour, being
+wholly God's gift, we are bidden with especial emphasis which is shown
+by a change in construction, to take or receive these.
+
+I. The Salvation.
+
+Once more Old Testament prophecy suggests the words of this exhortation.
+In Isaiah's grand vision of God, arising to execute judgment which is
+also redemption, we have a wonderful picture of His arraying Himself in
+armour. Righteousness is His flashing breastplate: on His head is an
+helmet of salvation. The gleaming steel is draped by garments of
+retributive judgment, and over all is cast, like a cloak, the ample
+folds of that 'zeal' which expresses the inexhaustible energy and
+intensity of the divine nature and action. Thus arrayed He comes forth
+to avenge and save. His redeeming work is the manifestation and issue of
+all these characteristics of His nature. It flames with divine fervour:
+it manifests the justice which repays, but its inmost character is
+righteousness, and its chief purpose is to save. His helmet is
+salvation; the plain, prose meaning of which would appear to be that His
+great purpose of saving men is its own guarantee that His purpose should
+be effected, and is the armour by which His work is defended.
+
+The Apostle uses the old picture with perfect freedom, quoting the words
+indeed, but employing them quite differently. God's helmet of salvation
+is His own purpose; man's helmet of salvation is God's gift. He is
+strong to save because He wills to save; we are strong and safe when we
+take the salvation which He gives.
+
+It is to be further noticed that the same image appears in Paul's rough
+draft of the Christian armour in Thessalonians, with the significant
+difference that there the helmet is 'the hope of salvation,' and here it
+is the salvation itself. This double representation is in full accord
+with all Scripture teaching, according to which we both possess and hope
+for salvation, and our possession determines the measure of our hope.
+That great word negatively implies deliverance from evil of any kind,
+and in its lower application, from sickness or peril of any sort. In its
+higher meaning in Scripture the evil from which we are saved is most
+frequently left unexpressed, but sometimes a little glimpse is given, as
+when we read that 'we are saved from wrath through Him' or 'saved from
+sin.' What Christ saves us from is, first and chiefly, from sin in all
+aspects, its guilt, its power, and its penalty; but His salvation
+reaches much further than any mere deliverance from threatening evil,
+and positively means the communication to our weakness and emptiness of
+all blessings and graces possible for men. It is inward and properly
+spiritual, but it is also outward, and it is not fully possessed until
+we are clothed with 'salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.'
+
+Hence, in Scripture our salvation is presented as past, as present, and
+as future. As past it is once for all received by initial faith in
+Christ; and, in view of their faith, Paul has no scruples as to saying
+to the imperfect Christians whose imperfections he scourges, 'Ye have
+been saved,' or in building upon that past fact his earnest exhortations
+and his scathing rebukes. The salvation is present if in any true sense
+it is past. There will be a daily growing deliverance from evil and a
+daily growing appropriation and manifestation of the salvation which we
+have received. And so Paul more than once speaks of Christians as 'being
+saved.' The process begun in the past is continued throughout the
+present, and the more a Christian man is conscious of its reality even
+amidst flaws, failures, stagnation, and lapses, the more assured will be
+his hope of the perfect salvation in the future, when all that is here,
+tendency often thwarted, and aspirations often balked, and sometimes
+sadly contradicted, will be completely, uninterruptedly, and eternally
+realised. If that hope flickers and is sometimes all but dead, the
+reason mainly lies in its flame not being fed by present experience.
+
+II. The helmet of salvation.
+
+This salvation in its present form will keep our heads in the day of
+battle. Its very characteristic is that it delivers us from evil, and
+all the graces with which Paul equips his ideal warrior are parts of the
+positive blessings which our salvation brings us. The more assured we
+are in our own happy consciousness of possessing the salvation of God,
+the more shall we be defended from all the temptations that seek to stir
+into action our lower selves. There will be no power in our fears to
+draw us into sin, and the possible evils that appeal to earthly passions
+of whatever sort will lose their power to disturb us, in the precise
+measure in which we know that we are saved in Christ. The consciousness
+of salvation will tend to damp down the magazine of combustibles that we
+all carry within us, and the sparks that fall will be as innocuous as
+those that light on wet gunpowder. If our thoughts are occupied with the
+blessings which we possess they will be guarded against the assaults of
+evil. The full cup has no room for poison. The eye that is gazing on the
+far-off white mountains does not see the filth and frivolities around.
+If we are living in conscious possession and enjoyment of what God gives
+us, we shall pass scatheless through the temptations which would
+otherwise fall on us and rend us. A future eagerly longed for, and
+already possessed in germ, will kill a present that would otherwise
+appeal to us with irresistible force.
+
+III. Take the helmet.
+
+We might perhaps more accurately read _receive_ salvation, for that
+salvation is not won by any efforts of our own, but if we ever possess
+it, our possession is the result of our accepting it as a gift from God.
+The first word which the Gospel speaks to men and which makes it a
+Gospel, is not Do this or that, but Take this from the hands that were
+nailed to the Cross. The beginning of all true life, of all peace, of
+all self-control, of all hope, lies in the humble and penitent
+acceptance by faith of the salvation which Christ brings, and with which
+we have nothing to do but to accept it.
+
+But Paul is here speaking to those whom he believes to have already
+exercised the initial faith which united them to Christ, and made His
+salvation theirs, and to these the exhortation comes with special
+force. To such it says, 'See to it that your faith ever grasps and feeds
+upon the great facts on which your salvation reposes--God's changeless
+love, Christ's all-sufficient sacrifice and ascended life, which He
+imparts to us if we abide in Him. Hold fast and prolong by continual
+repetition the initial act by which you received that salvation. It is
+said that on his death-bed Oliver Cromwell asked the Puritan divine who
+was standing by it whether a man who had once been in the covenant could
+be lost, and on being assured that he could not, answered, 'I know that
+I was once in it'; but such a building on past experiences is a building
+on sand, and nothing but continuous faith will secure a continuous
+salvation. A melancholy number of so-called Christians in this day have
+to travel far back through the years before they reach the period when
+they took the helmet of salvation. They know that they were far better
+men, and possessed a far deeper apprehension of Christ and His power in
+the old days than is theirs now, and they need not wonder if God's great
+gift has unnoticed slipped from their relaxed grasp. A hand that clings
+to a rock while a swollen flood rushes past needs to perpetually be
+tightening its grip, else the man will be swept away; and the present
+salvation, and, still more, the hope of a future salvation, are not ours
+on any other terms than a continual repetition of the initial act by
+which we first received them. But there must also be a continually
+increased appropriation and manifestation in our lives of a progressive
+salvation that will come as a result of a constantly renewed faith; but
+it will not come unless there be continuous effort to work into our
+characters, and to work out in our lives, the transforming and
+vitalising power of the life given to us in Jesus Christ. If our
+present experience yields no sign of growing conformity to the image of
+our Saviour, there is only too abundant reason for doubting whether we
+have experienced a past salvation or have any right to anticipate a
+perfect future salvation.
+
+The last word to be said is, Live in frequent anticipation of that
+perfect future. If that anticipation is built on memory of the past and
+experience of the present, it cannot be too confident. That hope maketh
+not ashamed. In the region of Christian experience alone the weakest of
+us has a right to reckon on the future, and to be sure that when that
+great to-morrow dawns for us, it 'shall be as this day and much more
+abundant.' With this salvation in its imperfect form brightening the
+present, and in its completeness filling the future with unimaginable
+glory, we can go into all the conflicts of this fighting world and feel
+that we are safe because God covers our heads in the day of battle.
+Unless so defended we shall go into the fight as the naked Indians did
+with the Spanish invaders, and be defeated as they were. The plumes may
+be shorn off the helmet, and it may be easily dinted, but the head that
+wore it will be unharmed. And when the battle and the noise of battle
+are past, the helmet will be laid aside, and we shall be able to say, 'I
+have fought a good fight, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
+righteousness.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT'
+
+     'The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.'--Eph. vi. 17.
+
+
+We reach here the last and only offensive weapon in the panoply. The
+'of' here does not indicate apposition, as in the 'shield of faith,' or
+'the helmet of salvation,' nor is it the 'of' of possession, so that
+the meaning is to be taken as being the sword which the Spirit wields,
+but it is the 'of' expressing origin, as in the 'armour of God'; it is
+the sword which the Spirit supplies. The progress noted in the last
+sermon from subjective graces to objective divine facts, is completed
+here, for the sword which is put into the Christian soldier's hand is
+the gift of God, even more markedly than is the helmet which guards his
+head in the day of battle.
+
+I. Note what the word of God is.
+
+The answer which would most commonly and almost unthinkingly be given
+is, I suppose, the Scriptures; but while this is on the whole true, it
+is to be noted that the expression employed here properly means a word
+spoken, and not the written record. Both in the Old and in the New
+Testaments the word of God means more than the Bible; it is the
+authentic utterance of His will in all shapes and applying to all the
+facts of His creation. In the Old Testament 'God said' is the expression
+in the first chapter of Genesis for the forthputting of the divine
+energy in the act of creation, and long ages after that divine poem of
+creation was written a psalmist re-echoed the thought when he said 'For
+ever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in the heavens. Thou hast established
+the earth and it abideth.'
+
+But, further, the expression designates the specific messages which
+prophets and others received. These are not in the Old Testament spoken
+of as a unity: they are individual words rather than a word. Each of
+them is a manifestation of the divine will and purpose; many of them are
+commandments; some of them are warnings; and all, in some measure,
+reveal the divine nature.
+
+That self-revelation of God reaches for us in this life its permanent
+climax, when He who 'at sundry times and in divers manner spake unto the
+fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by a
+Son.' Jesus is the personal 'word of God' though that name by which He
+is designated in the New Testament is a different expression from that
+employed in our text, and connotes a whole series of different ideas.
+
+The early Christian teachers and apostles had no hesitation in taking
+that sacred name--the word of the Lord--to describe the message which
+they spoke. One of their earliest prayers when they were left alone was,
+that with all boldness they might speak Thy word; and throughout the
+whole of the Acts of the Apostles the preached Gospel is designated as
+the word of God, even as Peter in his epistle quotes one of the noblest
+of the Old Testament sayings, and declares that the 'word of the Lord'
+which 'abideth for ever' is 'the word which by the gospel is preached
+unto you.'
+
+Clearly, then, Paul here is exhorting the Ephesian Christians, most of
+whom probably were entirely ignorant of the Old Testament, to use the
+spoken words which they had heard from him and other preachers of the
+Gospel as the sword of the Spirit. Since he is evidently referring to
+Christian teaching, it is obvious that he regards the old and the new as
+one whole, that to him the proclamation of Jesus was the perfection of
+what had been spoken by prophets and psalmists. He claims for his
+message and his brethren's the same place and dignity that belonged to
+the former messengers of the divine will. He asserts, and all the more
+strongly, because it is an assertion by implication only, that the same
+Spirit which moved in the prophets and saints of former days is moving
+in the preachers of the Gospel, and that their message has a wider
+sweep, a deeper content, and a more radiant light than that which had
+been delivered in the past. The word of the Lord had of old partially
+declared God's nature and His will: the word of God which Paul preached
+was in his judgment the complete revelation of God's loving heart, the
+complete exhibition to men of God's commandments of old; longing eyes
+had seen a coming day and been glad and confidently foretold it, now the
+message was 'the coming one has come.'
+
+It is as the record and vehicle of that spoken Gospel, as well as of its
+earlier premonitions, that the Bible has come to be called the word of
+God, and the name is true in that He speaks in this book. But much harm
+has resulted from the appropriation of the name exclusively to the book,
+and the forgetfulness that a vehicle is one thing and that which it
+carries quite another.
+
+II. The purpose and power of the word.
+
+The sword is the only offensive weapon in the list. The spear which
+played so great a part in ancient warfare is not named. It may well be
+noted that only a couple of verses before our text we read of the Gospel
+of peace, and that here with remarkable freedom of use of his metaphors,
+Paul makes the word of God, which as we have seen is substantially
+equivalent to the preached Gospel, the one weapon with which Christian
+men are to cut and thrust. Jesus said 'I come not to send peace, but a
+sword,' but Paul makes the apparent contradiction still more acute when
+he makes the very Gospel itself the sword. We may recall as a parallel,
+and possibly a copy of our text, the great words of the Epistle to the
+Hebrews which speak of the word of God as 'living and active and sharper
+than any two-edged sword.' And we cannot forget the magnificent
+symbolism of the Book of Revelation which saw in the midst of the
+candlestick one like unto a Son of Man, and 'out of His mouth proceeded
+a sharp, two-edged sword.' That image is the poetic embodiment of our
+Lord's own words which we have just quoted, and implies the penetrating
+power of the word which Christ's gentle lips have uttered. Gracious and
+healing as it is, a Gospel of peace, it has an edge and a point which
+cut down through all sophistications of human error, and lay bare the
+'thoughts and intents of the heart.' The revelation made by Christ has
+other purposes which are not less important than its ministering of
+consolation and hope. It is intended to help us in our fight with evil,
+and the solemn old utterance, 'with the breath of His mouth He will slay
+the wicked,' is true in reference to the effect of the word of Christ on
+moral evil. Such slaying is but the other side of the life-giving power
+which the word exercises on a heart subject to its influence. For the
+Christian soldier's conflict with evil as threatening the health of his
+own Christian life, or as tyrannising over the lives of others, the
+sword of the Spirit is the best weapon.
+
+We are not to take the rough-and-ready method, which is so common among
+good people, of identifying this spirit-given sword with the Bible. If
+for no other reason, yet because it is the Spirit which supplies it to
+the grasp of the Christian soldier, our possession of it is therefore a
+result of the action of that Spirit on the individual Christian spirit;
+and what He gives, and we are to wield, is 'the _engrafted_ word which
+is able to save our souls.' That word, lodged in our hearts, brings to
+us a revelation of duty and a chart of life, because it brings a loving
+recognition of the character of our Father, and a glad obedience to His
+will. If that word dwell in us richly, in all wisdom, and if we do not
+dull the edge of the sword by our own unworthy handling of it, we shall
+find it pierce to the 'dividing asunder of joints and marrow,' and the
+evil within us will either be cast out from us, or will shrivel itself
+up, and bury itself deep in dark corners.
+
+Love to Christ will be so strong, and the things that are not seen will
+so overwhelmingly outweigh the things that are seen, that the solemn
+majesty of the eternal will make the temporal look to our awed eyes the
+contemptible unreality which it really is. They who humbly receive and
+faithfully use that engrafted word, have in it a sure touchstone against
+which their own sins and errors are shivered. It is for the Christian
+consciousness the true Ithuriel's spear, at the touch of which 'upstarts
+in his own shape the fiend' who has been pouring his whispered poison
+into an unsuspicious ear. The standard weights and measures are kept in
+government custody, and traders have to send their yard measures and
+scales thither if they wish them tested; but the engrafted word,
+faithfully used and submitted to, is always at hand, and ready to
+pronounce its decrees, and to cut to the quick the evil by which the
+understanding is darkened and conscience sophisticated.
+
+III. The manner of its use.
+
+Here that is briefly but sufficiently expressed by the one commandment,
+'take,' or perhaps more accurately, 'receive.' Of course, properly
+speaking, that exhortation does not refer to our manner of fighting with
+the sword, but to the previous act by which our hand grasps it. But it
+is profoundly true that if we take it in the deepest sense, the
+possession of it will teach the use of it. No instruction will impart
+the last, and little instruction is needed for the first. What is needed
+is the simple act of yielding ourselves to Jesus Christ, and looking to
+Him only, as our guide and strength. Before all Christian warfare must
+come the possession of the Christian armour, and the commandment that
+here lies at the beginning of all Paul's description of it is '_Take_.'
+Our fitness for the conflict all depends on our receiving God's gift,
+and that reception is no mere passive thing, as if God's grace could be
+poured into a human spirit as water is into a bucket. Hence, the
+translation of this commandment of Paul's by 'take' is better than that
+by 'receive,' inasmuch as it brings into prominence man's activity,
+though it gives too exclusive importance to that, to the detriment of
+the far deeper and more essential element of the divine action. The two
+words are, in fact, both needed to cover the whole ground of what takes
+place when the giving God and the taking man concur in the great act by
+which the Spirit of God takes up its abode in a human spirit. God's gift
+is to be received as purely His gift, undeserved, unearned by us. But
+undeserved and unearned as it is, and given 'without money and without
+price,' it is not ours unless our hand is stretched out to take, and our
+fingers closed tightly over the free gift of God. There is a dead lift
+of effort in the reception; there is a still greater effort needed for
+the continued possession, and there is a life-long discipline and effort
+needed for the effective use in the struggle of daily life of the sword
+of the Spirit.
+
+If that engrafted word is ever to become sovereign in our lives, there
+must be a life-long attempt to bring the tremendous truths as to God's
+will for human conduct which it plants in our minds into practice, and
+to bring all our practice under their influence. The motives which it
+brings to bear on our evils will be powerless to smite them, unless
+these motives are made sovereign in us by many an hour of patient
+meditation and of submission to their sweet and strong constraint. One
+sometimes sees on a wild briar a graft which has been carefully inserted
+and bandaged up, but which has failed to strike, and so the strain of
+the briar goes on and no rosebuds come. Are there not some of us who
+profess to have received the engrafted word and whose daily experience
+has proved, by our own continual sinfulness, that it is unable to 'save
+our souls'?
+
+There are in the Christian ranks some soldiers whose hands are too
+nerveless or too full of worldly trash to grasp the sword which they
+have received, much less to strike home with it at any of the evils that
+are devastating their own lives or darkening the world. The feebleness
+of the Christian conflict with evil, in all its forms, whether
+individual or social, whether intellectual or moral, whether heretical
+or grossly and frankly sensual, is mainly due to the feebleness with
+which the average professing Christians grasp the sword of the Spirit.
+When David asked the priests for weapons, and they told him that
+Goliath's sword was lying wrapt in a cloth behind the ephod, and that
+they had none other, he said, 'There is none like that, give it me.' If
+we are wise, we will take the sword that lies in the secret place, and,
+armed with it, we shall not need to fear in any day of battle.
+
+We do well that we take heed to the word of God, 'as unto a lamp shining
+in a dark place until the day dawn,' when swords will be no more needed,
+and the Word will no longer shine in darkness but be the Light that
+makes the Sun needless for the brightness of the New Jerusalem.
+
+
+
+
+PEACE, LOVE, AND FAITH
+
+     'Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith.'--Eph. vi. 23.
+
+
+The numerous personal greetings usually found at the close of Paul's
+letters are entirely absent from this Epistle. All which we have in
+their place is this entirely general good wish, and the still more
+general and wider one in the subsequent verse.
+
+There is but one other of the Apostle's letters similarly devoid of
+personal messages, viz. the Epistle to the Galatians, and their absence
+there is sufficiently accounted for by the severe and stern tone of that
+letter. But it is very difficult to understand how they should not
+appear in a letter to a church with which the Apostle had such prolonged
+and cordial relations as he had with the church at Ephesus. And hence
+the absence of these personal greetings is a strong confirmation of the
+opinion that this Epistle was not originally addressed to the church at
+Ephesus, but was a kind of circular intended to go round the various
+churches in Asia Minor, and only sent first to that at Ephesus. That
+opinion is further confirmed by the fact known to many of you that in
+some good ancient manuscripts the words 'at Ephesus' are omitted from
+the first verse of the letter; which thus stands without any specific
+address.
+
+Be that as it may, this trinity of inward graces is Paul's highest and
+best wish for his friends. He has no earthly prosperity to wish for
+them. His ambition soars higher than that; he desires for them peace,
+love, faith.
+
+Now, will you take the lesson? There is no better test of a man than the
+things that he wishes for the people that he loves most. He desires for
+them, of course, his own ideal of happiness. What do you desire most for
+those that are dearest to you? You parents, do you train up your
+children, for instance, so as to secure, or to do your best to secure,
+not outward prosperity, but these loftier gifts; and for yourselves,
+when you are forming your wishes, are these the things that you want
+most? 'Set your affections on things above,' and remember that whoso has
+that trinity of graces, peace, love, faith, is rich and blessed,
+whatsoever else he has or needs. And whoso has them not is miserable and
+poor.
+
+But I wish especially to look a little more closely at these three
+things in themselves and in their relation to one another. I take it
+that the Apostle is here tracking the stream to its fountain; that he is
+beginning with effects and working backwards and downwards to causes; so
+that to get the order of nature and of time we must reverse the order
+here, and begin where he ends and end where he begins. The Christian
+life in its higher vigour and excellence is rooted in faith. That faith
+associates to itself, and is inseparably connected with love, and the
+faith and love together issue in a deep restful tranquillity which
+nothing can break.
+
+Now, let us look at these three things as the three greatest blessings
+that any can bear in their hearts, and wring out of time, sorrow, and
+change.
+
+I. First, the root of everything is a continuous and growing trust.
+
+Remember that this prayer or wish of my text was spoken in reference to
+brethren; that is to say, to those who, by the hypothesis, already
+possessed Christian faith. And Paul wishes for them, and can wish for
+them, nothing better and more than the increase and continuousness of
+that which they already possess. The highest blessing that the brethren
+can receive is the enlargement and the strengthening of their faith.
+
+Now we talk so much in Christian teaching about this 'faith' that, I
+fancy, like a worn sixpence in a man's pocket, its very circulation from
+hand to hand has worn off the lettering. And many of us, from the very
+familiarity of the word, have only a dim conception of what it means. It
+may not be profitless, then, to remind you, first of all, that this
+faith is neither more nor less than a very familiar thing which you are
+constantly exercising in reference to one another--that is to say,
+simple confidence. You trust your husband, your wife, your child, your
+parent, your friend, your guide, your lawyer, your doctor, your banker.
+Take that very same emotion and attitude of the mind by which you put
+your well-being, in different aspects and provinces, into the hands of
+men and women round about you; lift the trailing flowers that go all
+straggling along the ground, and twine them round the pillars of God's
+throne, and you get the confidence, the trust, of the praises and
+glories of which the New Testament is full. There is nothing mysterious
+in it, it is simply the exercise of confidence, the familiar cement that
+binds all human relationship together, and makes men brotherly and
+kindred with their kind. Faith is trust, and trust saves a man's soul.
+
+Then, remember further that the faith which is the foundation of
+everything is essentially personal trust reposing upon a person, upon
+Jesus Christ. You cannot get hold of a man in any other way than by
+that. The only real bond that binds people together is the personal bond
+of confidence, manifesting itself in love. And it is no mere doctrine
+that we present for a man's faith, but it is the person about whom the
+doctrine speaks. We say, indeed, that we can only know the person on
+whom we must trust by the revelation of the truths concerning Him which
+make the Christian doctrines; but a man may believe the whole of them,
+and have no faith. And what is the step in advance which is needed in
+order to turn credence into faith--belief in a doctrine into trust? In
+one view it is the step from the doctrine to the person. When you grasp
+Christ, the living Christ, and not merely the doctrine, for yours, then
+you have faith.
+
+Only remember, my brother, if you say you trust Christ, the question has
+immediately to be asked: What Christ is it that you are trusting? Is it
+the Christ that died for your sins on the Cross, or is it a Christ that
+taught you some great moral truths and set you a lovely example of life
+and conduct? Which of the two is it? for these two Christs are very
+different, and the faith that grasps the one is extremely unlike the
+faith that grasps the other. And so I press upon you this question: What
+Christ is it to Whom your confidence turns, and for what is it that you
+are looking to Him? Is it for help and guidance of some vague kind; is
+it for pattern or example, or is it for the salvation of your sinful
+souls, by the might of His great sacrifice?
+
+Then, remember still further, that this personal outgoing of confidence,
+which is the action both of a man's will and of a man's intellect, to
+the person revealed to us in the great doctrines of the Gospel--that
+this faith, if it is to be worth anything, must be continuous. Paul
+could desire nothing better for his Ephesian friends than that they
+should have that which they had--faith; that they should continue to
+have it, and that it should be perennial and increasing all through
+their lives. You can no more get present good from past faith than the
+breath you drew yesterday into your lungs will be sufficient to
+oxygenate your blood at this moment. As soon as you break the electric
+contact, the electric light goes out, and no matter how long a man has
+been living a life of faith, that past life will not in the smallest
+degree help him at the present moment unless the faith is continuous.
+Remember this, then, a broken faith is a broken peace; a broken faith is
+a broken salvation; and so long, and only so long, as you are knit to
+Jesus Christ by the conscious exercise of a faith realised at the
+moment, are you in the reception of blessing from Him at the moment.
+
+And, still further, this faith ought to be progressive. So Paul desired
+it to be with these people. If there is no growth, do you think there is
+much life? I know I am speaking to plenty of people who call themselves
+Christians, whose faith is not one inch better to-day than it was when
+it was born--perhaps a little less rather than more. Oh! the hundreds
+and thousands of professing Christians, average Christians, that clog
+and weaken all churches, whose faith has no progressive element in it,
+and is not a bit stronger by all the discipline of life and by their
+experience of its power. Brethren! is it so with us? Let us ask
+ourselves that; and let us ask very solemnly this other question: If my
+faith has no growth, how do I know that it has got any life?
+
+And so let me remind you further that this faith, the personal outgoing
+of a man's intellect and will to the personal Saviour revealed in the
+Scriptures as the sacrifice for our sins, and the life of our spirits,
+which ought to be continuous and progressive, is the foundation of all
+strength, blessedness, goodness, in a human character; and if we have it
+we have the germ of all possible excellence and growth, not because of
+what it is in itself, for in itself it is nothing more than the opening
+of the heart to the reception of the celestial influences of grace and
+righteousness that He pours down. And, therefore, this is the thing that
+a wise man will most desire for himself, and for those that are dearest
+to him.
+
+Depend upon it, whether it is what we want most or not, it is what God
+wants most for us. He does not care nearly so much that our lives should
+be joyful as that they should be righteous and full of faith; and He
+subjects us to many a sorrow and loss and disappointment in order that
+the life of nature may be broken and the life of faith may be strong. If
+we rightly understand the relative value of outward and of inward
+things, we shall be thankful for the storms that drive us nearer to Him;
+for the darkening earth that may make the pillar of cloud glow at the
+heart into a pillar of fire, and for all the discipline, painful though
+it may be, with which God answers the prayer, 'Lord, increase our
+faith.'
+
+II. And now, next, notice how inseparably associated with a true faith
+is love.
+
+The one is effect that never is found without its cause; the other is
+cause which never but produces its effect. These two are braided
+together by the Apostle as inseparable in reality and inseparable in
+thought. And that it is so is plain enough, and there follow from it
+some practical lessons that I desire to lay upon your hearts and my own.
+
+There are, then, here two principles, or rather two sides of one
+thought; no faith without love, no love without faith.
+
+No faith is genuine and deep which does not at once produce in the heart
+where it is lodged an answering love to God. That is clear enough. Faith
+is, as I have said, the recognition and the reception of the divine love
+into the heart; and we are so constituted as that if a man once knows
+and believes in any real sense the love that God has to him, he answers
+it back again with his love as certainly as an echo which gives back the
+sound that reaches it.
+
+Our faith is, if I may so say, like a burning-glass, which concentrates
+the rays of the divine love upon our hearts, and focuses them into a
+point that kindles our hearts into flame. If we have the confidence that
+God loves us, in any real depth, we shall answer by the gush of our love
+to Him.
+
+And so here is a test for men's faith. You call yourselves Christians.
+If I were to come to you and ask you, 'Do you believe in the Lord Jesus
+Christ?' most of you would say, 'Yes!' Try your faith, my friend, by
+this test: Does it make you love Him at all? If it does not, it is more
+words than anything else; and it needs a wonderful deepening before it
+can have any real power in your hearts. There is no faith worthy the
+name unless its child, all but as old as itself, be the answer of the
+heart to Him, pouring itself out in thankful gratitude.
+
+No love without faith; 'we love Him because He first loved us.' God must
+begin, we can only come second. Man's natural selfishness is only
+overcome by the clearest demonstration of the love of God to him; and
+until that love, in its superbest because its lowliest form, the form of
+the sacrifice on the Cross, has penetrated into a man's heart through
+his faith, there will be no love.
+
+So then, dear friends, there is a test for your love. We hear a great
+deal said nowadays, as there has always been a great deal said, about
+the essence of all religion consisting in love to God; and about men
+'rejecting the cumbrous dogmas of the New Testament, and falling back
+upon the great and simple truths, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
+all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with
+all thy strength; and thy neighbour as thyself,' and saying 'that is
+their religion.' Well, I venture to say that without the faith of the
+heart in, not the cumbrous dogmas, but the central fact of the New
+Testament, that Christ died on the Cross for me, you will never get the
+old commandment of love to God with heart and soul and strength and mind
+really kept and carried out; and that if you want men to have their
+hearts and wills bound into loving fellowship with God, it is only by
+the path of faith in Him who is the sacrifice for sin that such
+fellowship is reached. Hence there follows a very plain, practical
+advice. Do you want your heart's love to be increased? Learn the way to
+do it. You cannot work yourselves into a fervour of religious emotion of
+any valuable kind. A man cannot get to love more by saying, 'I am
+determined I will.' We have no direct control over our affections in
+that fashion. You cannot make water boil except by one way, and that is
+by putting plenty of fire under it; and you cannot make your affections
+melt and flow except by heating them by the contemplation of the truth
+which is intended to bring them out. That is to say, the more we
+exercise our minds on the contemplation of Christ's great love to us,
+and the more we put forth the energies of our souls in the act of
+simple self-distrust and reliance upon Him, the more will our love be
+fervent and strong. You can only increase love by increasing the faith
+from which it comes. So do you see to it, if you call yourselves
+Christians, that you try to deepen all your Christian affections by an
+honest, meditative, prayerful contemplation and grasp of the great love
+of God in Jesus Christ. And do not wonder if your Christian life be, as
+it is in so many of us, stunted, not progressive, bringing no blessing
+to ourselves and little good to anybody else. The explanation is easy
+enough. You do not look at the Cross of Christ, nor live in the
+contemplation and reception of His great grace.
+
+III. And now, lastly, these two inseparably associated graces of faith
+and love bring with them, and lead to, the third--peace.
+
+It seems to be but a very modest, sober-tinted wish which the Apostle
+here has for his brethren that the highest and best thing he can ask for
+them is only quiet. Very modest by the side of joy and excitement, in
+their coats of many colours, and yet the deepest and truest blessing
+that any of us can have--peace. It comes to us by one path, and that is
+by the path of faith and love.
+
+These two bring peace with God, peace in our inmost spirits, the peace
+of self-annihilation and submission, the peace of obedience, the peace
+of ceasing from our own works, and entering, therefore, into the rest of
+God. Trust is peace. There is no tranquillity like that of feeling 'I am
+not responsible for this: He is; and I rest myself on Him.'
+
+Love is peace. There is no rest for our hearts but on the bosom of some
+one that is dear to us, and in whom we can confide. But ah, brother!
+every tree in which the dove nestles is felled down sooner or later, and
+the nest torn to pieces, and the bird flies away. But if we turn
+ourselves to the undying Christ, the perpetual revelation of the eternal
+God, then, then our love and our faith will bring us rest. There will be
+peace in trusting Him whom we never can trust and be put to shame. There
+will be peace in loving Him who is more than worthy of and able to repay
+the deep and perennial love of all hearts.
+
+Self-surrender is peace. It is our wills that trouble us. Disturbance
+comes, not from without, but from within. When the will bows, when I
+say, 'Be it then as Thou wilt,' when in faith and love I cease to
+strive, to murmur, to rebel, to repine, and enter into His loving
+purposes, then there is peace.
+
+Obedience is peace. To recognise a great will that is sovereign, and to
+bow myself to it, not because it is sovereign, but because it is sweet,
+and sweet because I love it, and love Him whose it is--that is peace.
+And then, whatever may be outward circumstances, there shall be 'peace
+subsisting at the heart of endless agitation'; and deep in my soul I may
+be tranquil, though all about me may be the hurly-burly of the storm.
+
+The Christian peace is an armed peace, paradoxical as it appears; and
+according to the great word of the Apostle, is a sentry which garrisons
+the beleaguered heart and mind, surrounded by many foes, and keeps them
+in Christ Jesus.
+
+'There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked,' he is 'as a troubled
+sea which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt'; but over the
+wildest commotion one Voice, low, gentle, omnipotent, says: 'Peace! be
+still!' and the heart quiets itself, though there may be a ground
+swell, and the weather clears. He is your peace, trust Him, love Him,
+and you cannot but possess the 'peace of God which passeth
+understanding.'
+
+
+
+
+THE WIDE RANGE OF GOD'S GRACE
+
+     'Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in
+      sincerity.'--Eph. vi. 24.
+
+
+In turning to the great words which I have read as a text, I ask you to
+mark their width and their simplicity. They are wide; they follow a very
+comprehensive benediction, with which, so to speak, they are concentric.
+But they sweep a wider circle. The former verse says, 'Peace be to the
+brethren.' But beyond the brethren in these Asiatic churches (as a kind
+of circular letter to whom this epistle was probably sent) there rises
+before the mind of the Apostle a great multitude, in every nation, and
+they share in his love, and in the promise and the prayer of my text.
+Mark its simplicity: everything is brought down to its most general
+expression. All the qualifications for receiving the divine gift are
+gathered up in one--love. All the variety of the divine gifts is summed
+up in that one comprehensive expression--'grace.'
+
+I. So then, note, first, the comprehensive designation of the recipients
+of grace.
+
+They are 'all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption.' Little
+need be said explanatory of the force of this general expression. We
+usually find that where Scripture reduces the whole qualification for
+the reception of the divine gift, and the conditions which unite to
+Jesus Christ, to one, it is faith, not love, that is chosen. But here
+the Apostle takes the process at the second stage, and instead of
+emphasising the faith which is the first step, he dwells upon the love
+which is its uniform consequence. This love rests upon the faith in
+Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+Then note the solemn fulness of the designations of the object of this
+faith-born love. 'Jesus Christ our Lord'--the name of His humanity; the
+name of His office; the designation of His dominion. He is Jesus the
+Man. Jesus is the Christ, the Fulfiller of all prophecy; the flower of
+all previous revelation; the Anointed of God with the fulness of His
+Divine Spirit as Prophet, Priest, and King. Jesus Christ is the
+Lord--which, at the lowest, expresses sovereignty, and if regard be had
+to the Apostolic usage, expresses something more, even participation in
+Deity. And it is this whole Christ, the Jesus, the Christ, the Lord; the
+love to whom, built upon the faith in Him in all these aspects and
+characteristics, constitutes the true unity of the true Church.
+
+That Church is not built upon a creed, but it is built upon a whole
+Christ, and not a maimed one. And so we must have a love which answers
+to all those sides of that great revealed character, and is warm with
+human love to Jesus; and is trustful with confiding love to the Christ;
+and is lowly with obedient love to the Lord. And I venture to go a step
+further, and say,--and is devout with adoring love to the eternal Son of
+the Father. This is the Apostle's definition of what makes a Christian:
+Faith that grasps the whole Christ and love that therefore flows to Him.
+It binds all who possess it into one great unity. As against a spurious
+liberalism which calls them Christians who lay hold of a fragment of the
+one entire and perfect chrysolite, we must insist that a Christian is
+one who knows Jesus, who knows Christ, who knows the Lord, and who
+loves Him in all these aspects. Only we must remember, too, that many a
+time a man's heart outruns his creed, and that many a soul glows with
+truer, deeper, more saving devotion and trust to a Christ whom the
+intellect imperfectly apprehends, than are realised by unloving hearts
+that are associated with clearer heads. Orchids grow in rich men's
+greenhouses, fastened to a bit of stick, and they spread a fairer
+blossom that lasts longer than many a plant that is rooted in a more
+fertile soil. Let us be thankful for the blessed inconsistencies which
+knit some to the Christ who is more to them than they know.
+
+There is also here laid down for us the great principle, as against all
+narrowness and all externalism, and all so-called ecclesiasticism, that
+to be joined to Jesus Christ is the one condition which brings a man
+into the blessed unity of the Church. Now it seems to me that, however
+they may be to be lamented on other grounds, and they are to be lamented
+on many, the existence of diverse Churches does not necessarily
+interfere with this deep-seated and central unity. There is a great deal
+said to-day about the reunion of Christendom, by which is meant the
+destruction of existing communions and the formation of a wider one. I
+do not believe, and I suppose you do not, that our existing
+ecclesiastical organisations are the final form of the Church of the
+living God. But let us remember that the two things are by no means
+contradictory, the belief in, and the realising of, the essential unity
+of the Church, and the existence of diverse communions. You will see on
+the side of many a Cumberland hill a great stretch of limestone with
+clefts a foot or two deep in it--there are flowers in the clefts, by the
+bye--but go down a couple of yards and the divisions have all
+disappeared, and the base-rock stretches continuously. The separations
+are superficial; the unity is fundamental. Do not let us play into the
+hands of people whose only notion of unity is that of a mechanical
+juxtaposition held together by some formula or orders; but let us
+recognise that the true unity is in the presence of Jesus Christ in the
+midst, and in the common grasp of Him by us all.
+
+There is a well-known hymn which was originally intended as a High
+Church manifesto, which thrusts at us Nonconformists when it sings:
+
+    '_We_ are not divided,
+     All one body _we_.'
+
+And oddly enough, but significantly too, it has found its way into all
+our Nonconformist hymn-books, and we, 'the sects,' are singing it, with
+perhaps a nobler conception of what the oneness of the body, and the
+unity of the Church is, than the writer of the words had. 'We are not
+divided,' though we be organised apart. 'All one body we,' for we all
+partake of that one bread, and the unifying principle is a common love
+to the one Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+II. Mark the impartial sweep of the divine gifts.
+
+My text is a benediction, or a prayer; but it is also a prophecy, or a
+statement, of the inevitable and uniform results of love to Jesus
+Christ. The grace will follow that love, necessarily and certainly, and
+the lovers will get the gift of God because their love has brought them
+into living contact with Jesus Christ; and His life will flow over into
+theirs. I need not remind you that the word 'grace' in Scripture means,
+first of all, the condescending love of God to inferiors, to sinners, to
+those who deserved something else; and, secondly, the whole fulness of
+blessing and gift that follow upon that love. And, says Paul, these
+great gifts from heaven, the one gift in which all are comprised, will
+surely follow the opening of the heart in love to Jesus Christ.
+
+Ah, brethren! God's grace makes uncommonly short work of ecclesiastical
+distinctions. The great river flows through territories that upon men's
+maps are painted in different colours, and of which the inhabitants
+speak in different tongues. The Rhine laves the pine-trees of
+Switzerland, and the vines of Germany, and the willows of Holland; and
+God's grace flows through all places where the men that love Him do
+dwell. It rises, as it were, right over the barriers that they have
+built between each other. The little pools on the sea-shore are separate
+when the tide is out, but when it comes up it fills all the pot-holes
+that the pebbles have made, and unifies them in one great flashing,
+dancing mass; and so God's grace comes to all that love Him, and
+confirms their unity.
+
+Surely that is the true test of a living Church. 'When Barnabas came,
+and saw the grace of God, he was glad.' It was not what he had expected,
+but he was open to conviction. The Church where he saw it had been very
+irregularly constituted; it had no orders and no sacraments, and had
+been set a-going by the spontaneous efforts of private Christians, and
+he came to look into the facts. He asked for nothing more when he saw
+that the converts had the life within them. And so we, with all our
+faults--and God forbid that I should seem to minimise these--with all
+our faults, we poor Nonconformists, left to the uncovenanted mercies,
+have our share of that gift of grace as truly, and, if our love be
+deeper, more abundantly, than the Churches that are blessed with orders
+and sacraments, and an 'unbroken historical continuity.' And when we
+are unchurched for our lack of these, let us fall back upon St.
+Augustine's 'Where Christ is, there the Church is'; and believe that to
+us, even to us also, the promise is fulfilled, 'Lo! I am with you
+always, even to the end of the world.'
+
+III. Lastly, note the width to which our sympathies should go.
+
+The Apostle sends out his desires and prayers so as to encircle the same
+area as the grace of God covers and as His love enfolds. And we are
+bound to do the same.
+
+I am not going to talk about organic unity. The age for making new
+denominations is, I suppose, about over. I do not think that any sane
+man would contemplate starting a new Church nowadays. The rebound from
+the iron rigidity of a mechanical unity that took place at the
+Reformation naturally led to the multiplication of communities, each of
+which laid hold of something that to it seemed important. The folly of
+ecclesiastical rulers who insisted upon non-essentials lays the guilt of
+the schism at _their_ doors, and not at the doors of the minority who
+could not, in conscience, accept that which never should have been
+insisted upon as a condition. But whilst we must all feel that power is
+lost, and much evil ensues from the isolation, such as it is, of the
+various Churches, yet we must remember that re-union is a slow process;
+that an atmosphere springs up round each body which is a very subtle,
+but none the less a very powerful, force, and that it will take a very,
+very long time to overcome the difficulties and to bring about any
+reconstruction on a large scale. But why should there be three
+Presbyterian Churches in Scotland, with the same creed, confessions of
+faith, and ecclesiastical constitution? Why should there be half a dozen
+Methodist bodies in England, of whom substantially the same thing may
+be said? Will it always pass the wit of man for Congregationalists and
+Baptists to be one body, without the sacrifice of conviction upon either
+side? Surely no! You young men may see these fair days; men like me can
+only hope that they will come and do a little, such as may be possible
+in a brief space, to help them on.
+
+Putting aside, then, all these larger questions, I want, in a sentence
+or two, to insist with you upon the duty that lies on us all, and which
+every one of us may bear a share in discharging. There ought to be a far
+deeper consciousness of our fundamental unity. They talk a great deal
+about 'the rivalries of jarring sects.' I believe that is such an
+enormous exaggeration that it is an untruth. There is rivalry, but you
+know as well as I do that, shabby and shameful as it is, it is a kind of
+commercial rivalry between contiguous places of worship, be they chapels
+or churches, be they buildings belonging to the same or to different
+denominations. I, for my part, after a pretty long experience now, have
+seen so little of that said bitter rivalry between the Nonconformist
+sects, _as sects_, that to me it is all but non-existent. And I believe
+the most of us ministers, going about amongst the various communities,
+could say the same thing. But in the face of a cultivated England
+laughing at your creed of Jesus, the Christ, the Lord; and in the face
+of a strange and puerile recrudescence of sacerdotalism and
+sacramentarianism, which shoves a priest and a rite into the place where
+Christ should stand, it becomes us Nonconformists who believe that we
+know a more excellent way to stand shoulder to shoulder, and show that
+the unities that bind us are far more than the diversities that
+separate.
+
+It becomes us, too, to further conjoint action in social matters. Thank
+God we are beginning to stir in that direction in Manchester--not before
+it was time. And I beseech you professing Christians, of all Evangelical
+communions, to help in bringing Christian motives and principles to bear
+on the discussion of social and municipal and economical conditions in
+this great city of ours.
+
+And there surely ought to be more concert than we have had in aggressive
+work; that we should a little more take account of each other's action
+in regulating our own; and that we should not have the scandal, which we
+too often have allowed to exist, of overlapping one another in such a
+fashion as that rivalry and mere trade competition is almost inevitable.
+
+These are very humble, prosaic suggestions, but they would go a long
+way, if they were observed, to sweeten our own tempers, and to make
+visible to the world our true unity. Let us all seek to widen our
+sympathies as widely as Christ's grace flows; to count none strangers
+whom He counts friends; to discipline ourselves to feel that we are
+girded with that electric chain which makes all who grasp it one, and
+sends the same keen thrill through them all. If a circle were a mile in
+diameter, and its circumference were dotted with many separate points,
+how much nearer each of these would be if it were moved inwards, on a
+straight line, closer to the centre, so as to make a circle a foot
+across. The nearer we come to the One Lord, in love, communion, and
+likeness, the nearer shall we be to one another.
+
+
+
+
+        _EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE_
+
+        ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+        FIRST AND SECOND PETER
+        AND FIRST JOHN
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER
+
+                                                                PAGE
+SOJOURNERS OF THE DISPERSION (1 Peter i. 1)                       1
+
+BY, THROUGH, UNTO (1 Peter i. 5)                                  7
+
+SORROWFUL, YET ALWAYS REJOICING (1 Peter i. 6)                   17
+
+THE TRUE GOLD AND ITS TESTING (1 Peter i. 7)                     27
+
+JOY IN BELIEVING (1 Peter i. 8)                                  34
+
+CHRIST AND HIS CROSS THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE
+    (1 Peter i. 10, 11, 12)                                      41
+
+HOPE PERFECTLY (1 Peter i. 13)                                   51
+
+THE FAMILY LIKENESS (1 Peter i. 15)                              61
+
+FATHER AND JUDGE (1 Peter i. 17)                                 69
+
+PURIFYING THE SOUL (1 Peter i. 22)                               76
+
+LIVING STONES ON THE LIVING FOUNDATION STONE (1 Peter ii. 4, 5)  86
+
+SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES (1 Peter ii. 5)                             92
+
+MIRRORS OF GOD (1 Peter ii. 9)                                  101
+
+CHRIST THE EXEMPLAR (1 Peter ii. 21)                            107
+
+HALLOWING CHRIST (1 Peter iii. 14, 15)                          116
+
+CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM (1 Peter iv. 1-8)                          123
+
+THE SLAVE'S GIRDLE (1 Peter v. 5)                               130
+
+SYLVANUS (1 Peter v. 12, R.V.)                                  138
+
+AN APOSTOLIC TESTIMONY AND EXHORTATION (1 Peter v. 12)          146
+
+THE CHURCH IN BABYLON (1 Peter v. 13)                           154
+
+MARCUS, MY SON (1 Peter v. 13)                                  161
+
+
+THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER
+
+LIKE PRECIOUS FAITH (2 Peter i. 1)                              170
+
+MAN SUMMONED BY GOD'S GLORY AND ENERGY (2 Peter i. 3)           178
+
+PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE (2 Peter i. 4)                   189
+
+THE POWER OF DILIGENCE (2 Peter i. 5)                           198
+
+GOING OUT AND GOING IN (2 Peter i. 11, 15)                      206
+
+THE OWNER AND HIS SLAVES (2 Peter ii. 1)                        215
+
+BE DILIGENT (2 Peter iii. 14)                                   224
+
+GROWTH (2 Peter iii. 18)                                        234
+
+
+THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN
+
+THE MESSAGE AND ITS PRACTICAL RESULTS (1 John i. 5-ii. 6)      247
+
+WALKING IN THE LIGHT (1 John i. 7)                             253
+
+THE COMMANDMENT, OLD YET NEW (1 John ii. 7, 8)                 261
+
+YOUTHFUL STRENGTH (1 John ii. 14)                              269
+
+RIVER AND ROCK (1 John ii. 17)                                 279
+
+THE LOVE THAT CALLS US SONS (1 John iii. 1)                    289
+
+THE UNREVEALED FUTURE OF THE SONS OF GOD (1 John iii. 2)       301
+
+THE PURIFYING INFLUENCE OF HOPE (1 John iii. 3)                310
+
+PRACTICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS (1 John iii. 7)                        320
+
+CHRIST'S MISSION THE REVELATION OF GOD'S LOVE (1 John iv. 10)  329
+
+THE SERVANT AS HIS LORD (1 John iv. 17)                        338
+
+LOVE AND FEAR (1 John iv. 18)                                  347
+
+THE RAY AND THE REFLECTION (1 John iv. 19)                     355
+
+
+
+
+I. PETER
+
+
+
+
+SOJOURNERS OF THE DISPERSION
+
+     'Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers
+      scattered ...'--1 Peter i. 1.
+
+
+The words rendered 'strangers scattered' are literally 'sojourners of
+the Dispersion,' and are so rendered in the Revised Version. The
+Dispersion was the recognised name for the Jews dwelling in Gentile
+countries; as, for instance, it is employed in John's Gospel, when the
+people in Jerusalem say, 'Whither will this man go that we shall not
+find Him? Will he go to the Dispersion amongst the Greeks?' Obviously,
+therefore the word here may refer to the scattered Jewish people, but
+the question arises whether the letter corresponds to its apparent
+address, or whether the language which is employed in it does not almost
+oblige us to see here a reference, not to the Jew, but to the whole body
+of Christian people, who, whatever may be their outward circumstances,
+are, in the deepest sense, in the foundations of their life, if they be
+Christ's, 'strangers of the Dispersion.'
+
+Now if we look at the letter we find such words as these--'The times of
+your ignorance'--'your vain manner of life handed down from your
+fathers'--'in time past were not a people'--'the time past may suffice
+to have wrought the will of the Gentiles'--all of which, as you see, can
+only be accommodated to Jewish believers by a little gentle violence,
+but all of which find a proper significance if we suppose them
+addressed to Gentiles, to whom they are only applicable in the higher
+sense of the words to which I have referred. If we understand them so,
+we have here an instance of what runs all through the letter; the taking
+hold of Jewish ideas for the purpose of lifting them into a loftier
+region, and transfiguring them into the expression of Christian truth.
+For example, we read in it: 'Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a
+holy nation'; and again: 'Ye are built up a spiritual house, to be a
+holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices.' These and other
+similar passages are instances of precisely the same transference of
+Jewish ideas as I find, in accordance with many good commentators, in
+the words of my text.
+
+So, then, here is Peter's notion of--
+
+I. What the Christian Life is.
+
+All those who really have faith in Jesus Christ are 'strangers of the
+Dispersion'; scattered throughout the world, and dwelling dispersedly in
+an order of things to which they do not belong, 'seeking a city which
+hath foundations.' The word 'strangers' means, originally, persons for a
+time living in an alien city. And that is the idea that the Apostle
+would impress upon us as true for each of us, in the measure in which
+our Christianity is real. For, remember, although all men may be truly
+spoken of as being 'pilgrims and sojourners upon the earth' by reason of
+both the shortness of the duration of their earthly course and the
+disproportion between their immortal part and the material things
+amongst which they dwell, Peter is thinking of something very different
+from either the brevity of earthly life or the infinite necessities of
+an immortal spirit when he calls his Christian brethren strangers. Not
+because we are men, not because we are to die soon, and the world is to
+outlast us; not because other people will one day live in our houses and
+read our books and sit upon our chairs, and we shall be forgotten, but
+because we are Christ's people are we here sojourners, and must regard
+this as not our rest. Not because our immortal soul cannot satisfy
+itself, however it tries, upon the trivialities of earth any more than a
+human appetite can on the husks that the swine do eat, but because new
+desires, tastes, aspirations, affinities, have been kindled in us by the
+new life that has flowed into us; therefore the connection that other
+men have with the world, which makes some of them altogether 'men of the
+world, whose portion is in this life,' is for us broken, and we are
+strangers, scattered abroad, solitary, not by reason of the inevitable
+loneliness in which, after all love and companionship, every soul lives;
+not by reason of losses or deaths, but by reason of the contrariety
+between the foundation of our lives, and the foundation of the lives of
+the men round us; therefore we stand lonely in the midst of crowds;
+strangers in the ordered communities of the world.
+
+Ah, there is no solitude so utter as the solitude of being the only man
+in a crowd that has a faith in his heart, and there is no isolating
+power like the power of rending all ties that true attachment with Jesus
+Christ has. 'Think not that I am come to bring peace on earth, but a
+sword'--to set a man against his own household, if they be not of the
+household of faith. These things are the inevitable issues of
+religion--to make us strangers, isolated in the midst of this world.
+
+And now let us think of--
+
+II. Some of the plain consequent duties that arise from this
+characteristic of the Christian Life.
+
+Let me put them in the shape of one or two practical counsels. First let
+us try to keep up, vivid and sharp, a sense of separation. I do not mean
+that we should withdraw ourselves from sympathies, nor from services,
+nor from the large area of common ground which we have with our fellows,
+whether they be Christians or no--with our fellow-citizens; with those
+who are related to us by various bonds, by community of purpose, of aim,
+of opinion, or of affection. But just as Abraham was willing to go down
+into the plain and fight for Lot, though he would not go down and live
+in Sodom, and just as he would enter into relations of amity with the
+men of the land, and yet would not abandon his black camels'-hair tent,
+pitched beneath the terebinth tree, in order to go into their city and
+abide with them, so one great part of the wisdom of a Christian man is
+to draw the line of separation decisively, and yet to keep true to the
+bond of union. Unless Christian people do make a distinct effort to keep
+themselves apart from the world and its ways, they will get confounded
+with these, and when the end comes they will be destroyed with them.
+
+Sometimes voyagers find upon some lonely island an English castaway, who
+has forgotten home, and duty, and everything else, to luxuriate in an
+easy life beneath tropical skies, and has degraded himself to the level
+of the savage islanders round him. There are professing
+Christians--perhaps in my audience--who, like that poor castaway, have
+'forgotten the imperial palace whence they came,' and have gone down and
+down and down, to live the fat, contented, low lives of the men who
+find their good upon earth and not in heaven. Do you, dear brethren, try
+to keep vivid the sense that you belong to another community. As Paul
+puts it, with a metaphor drawn from Gentile instead of from Jewish life,
+as in our text, 'Our citizenship is in heaven.' Philippi, to the
+Christian Church of which that was said, was a Roman colony; and the
+characteristics of a Roman colony were that the inhabitants were
+enrolled as members of the Roman tribes, and had their names on the
+register of Rome, and were governed by its laws. So we, living here in
+an outlying province, have our names written in the 'Golden Book' of the
+citizens of the new Jerusalem. Do not forget, if I might use a very
+homely illustration, what parish your settlement is in; remember what
+kingdom you belong to.
+
+Again, if we are strangers of the Dispersion, let us live by our own
+country's laws, and not by the codes that are current in this foreign
+land where we are settled for a time. You remember what was the
+complaint of the people in Persia to Esther's king? 'There is a people
+whose laws are different from all the peoples that be upon the earth.'
+That was an offence that could not be tolerated in a despotism that
+ground everything down to the one level of a slavish uniformity. It will
+be well for us Christian people if men look at us, and say, 'Ah, that
+man has another rule of conduct from the one that prevails generally. I
+wonder what is the underlying principle of his life; it evidently is not
+the same as mine.'
+
+Live by our King's law. People in our colonies, at least the officials,
+set wonderful store by the approbation of the Colonial Office at home.
+It does not matter what the colonial newspapers say, it is 'what will
+they say in Downing Street?' And if a despatch goes out approving of
+their conduct, neighbours may censure and sneer as they list. So we
+Christians have to report to Home, and have so to live 'that whether
+present or absent'--in a colony or in the mother country--'we may be
+well pleasing unto Him.'
+
+Keep up the honour and advance the interests of your own country. You
+are here, among other reasons, to represent your King, and people take
+their notions of Him very considerably from their experience of you. So
+see to it that you live like the Master whom you say you serve.
+
+The Russian Government sends out what are called military colonies,
+studded along the frontier, with the one mission of extending the
+empire. We are set along the frontier with the same mission. The
+strangers are scattered. Congested, they would be less useful;
+dispersed, they may push forward the frontiers. Seed in a seed-basket is
+not in its right place; but sown broadcast over the field, it will be
+waving wheat in a month or two. 'Ye are the salt of the earth'--salt is
+_sprinkled_ over what it is intended to preserve. You are the strangers
+of the Dispersion, that you may be the messengers of the Evangelisation.
+
+Lastly, let us be glad when we think, and let us often think, of--
+
+III. The Home in Glory.
+
+That is a beautiful phrase which pairs off with the one in my text, in
+which another Apostle speaks of the ultimate end as 'our gathering
+together in Christ.' All the scattered ones, like chips of wood in a
+whirlpool, drift gradually closer and closer, until they unite in a
+solid mass in the centre. So at the last the 'strangers' are to be
+brought and settled in their own land, and their lonely lives are to be
+filled with happy companionship, and they to be in a more blessed unity
+than now. 'Fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God.'
+If we, dwelling in this far-off land, were habitually to talk, as
+Australians do of coming to England of 'going home,' though born in the
+colony, it would be a glad day for us when we set out on the journey. If
+Christian people lived more by faith, as they profess to do, and less by
+sight, they would oftener think of the home-coming and the union; and
+would be happy when they thought that they were here but for awhile, and
+when they realised these two blessed elements of permanence and of
+companionship, which another Apostle packs into one sentence, along with
+that which is greater than them both, 'so shall we ever be with the
+Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+BY, THROUGH, UNTO
+
+     '... Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to
+     be revealed in the last time.'--1 Peter i. 5.
+
+
+The Revised Version substitutes 'guarded' for 'kept,' and the
+alteration, though slight, is important, for it not only more accurately
+preserves the meaning of the word employed, but it retains the military
+metaphor which is in it. The force of the expression will appear if I
+refer, in a sentence, to other cases in which it is employed in the New
+Testament. For instance, we read that the governor of Damascus '_kept_
+the city with a garrison,' which is the same word, and in its purely
+metaphorical usage Paul employs it when he says that 'the peace of God
+shall keep'--guard, garrison--'your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.'
+We have to think of some defenceless position, some unwalled village out
+in the open, with a strong force round it, through which no assailant
+can break, and in the midst of which the weakest can sit secure. Peter
+thinks that every Christian has assailants whom no Christian by himself
+can repel, but that he may, if he likes, have an impregnable ring of
+defence drawn round him, which shall fling back in idle spray the
+wildest onset of the waves, as a breakwater or a cliff might do.
+
+Then there is another very beautiful and striking point to be made, and
+that is the connection between the words of my text and those
+immediately preceding. The Apostle has been speaking about 'the
+inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away,' and
+he says 'it is reserved in Heaven for you who are kept.' So, then, the
+same power is working on both sides of the veil, preserving the
+inheritance for the heirs, and preserving the heirs for the inheritance.
+It will not fail them, and they will not miss it. It were of little
+avail to care for either of the two members separately, but the same
+hand that is preparing the inheritance and making it ready for the
+owners is round about the pilgrims, and taking care of them till they
+get home.
+
+So, then, our Apostle is looking at this keeping in three aspects,
+suggested by his three words 'by,' 'through,' 'unto,' which respectively
+express the real cause or power, the condition or occasion on which that
+power works, and the end or purpose to which it works. So these three
+little words will do for lines on which to run our thoughts now--'by,'
+'through,' 'for.'
+
+I. In the first place, what are we guarded for?
+
+'Guarded ... unto salvation.' Now that great word 'salvation' was a new
+and strange one to Peter's readers--so new and strange that probably
+they did not understand it in its full nobleness and sweep. Our
+understanding of it, or, at least, our impression of it, is weakened by
+precisely the opposite cause. It has become so tarnished and
+smooth-rubbed that it creates very little definite impression. Like a
+bit of seaweed lifted out of the sunny waves which opened its fronds and
+brightened its delicate colours, it has become dry and hard and sapless
+and dim. But let me try for one moment to freshen it for our conceptions
+and our hearts. Salvation has in it the double idea of being made safe,
+and being made sound. Peril threatening to slay, and sickness unto
+death, are the implications of the conditions which this great word
+presupposes. The man that needs to be saved needs to be rescued from
+peril and needs to be healed of a disease. And if you do not know and
+feel that that is _you_, then you have not learned the first letters of
+the alphabet which are necessary to spell 'salvation.' You, I, every
+man, we are all sick unto death, because the poison of self-will and sin
+is running hot through all our veins, and we are all in deadly peril
+because of that poison-peril of death, peril arising from the weight of
+guilt that presses upon us, peril from our inevitable collision with the
+Divine law and government which make for righteousness.
+
+And so salvation means, negatively, the deliverance from all the evils,
+whether they be evils of sorrow or evils of sin, which can affect a man,
+and which do affect us all in some measure. But it means far more than
+that, for God's salvation is no half-and-half thing, contented, as some
+benevolent man might be, in a widespread flood or disaster, with
+rescuing the victims and putting them high up enough for the water not
+to reach them, and leaving them there shivering cold and starving. But
+when God begins by taking away evils, it is in order that He may clear a
+path for flooding us with good. And so salvation is not merely what some
+of you think it is, the escape from a hell, nor only what some of you
+more nobly take it to be, a deliverance from the power of sin in your
+hearts; but it is the investiture of each of us with every good and
+glory, whether of happiness or of purity, which it is possible for a man
+to receive and for God to give. It is the great word of the New
+Testament, and they do a very questionable service to humanity who
+weaken the grandeur and the greatness of the Scriptural conception of
+salvation, by weakening the darkness and the terribleness of the
+Scriptural conception of the dangers and the sicknesses from which it
+delivers.
+
+But, then, there is another point that I would suggest raised by the
+words of my text in their connection. Peter is here evidently speaking
+about a future manifestation of absolute exemption from all the ills
+that flesh and spirit are heir to, and radiant investure with all the
+good that humanity can put on, which lies beyond the great barrier of
+this mortal life. And that complete salvation, in its double aspect, is
+obviously the end for which all that guarding of life is lavished upon
+us, as it is the end for which all the discipline of life is given to
+us, and as it is the end for which the bitter agony and pain of the
+Christ on the Cross were freely rendered. But that ultimate and
+superlative perfection has its roots and its beginning here. And so in
+Scripture you find salvation sometimes regarded as a thing in the past
+experience of every Christian man which he received at the very
+beginning of his course, and sometimes you have it treated as being
+progressive, running on continually through all his days; and sometimes
+you have it treated, as in my text, as laid up yonder, and only to be
+reached when life is done with. But just a verse or two after my text we
+read that the Christian man here, on condition of his loving Jesus
+Christ and believing in Him, rejoices because he here and now 'receives
+the end of his faith, even the salvation of his soul.' And so there are
+the two things--the incipient germ to-day, the full-foliaged
+fruit-bearing tree planted in the higher house of the Lord.
+
+These two things are inseparably intertwined. The Christian life in its
+imperfection here, the partial salvation of to-day demands, unless the
+universe is a chaos and there is no personal God the centre of it, a
+future life, in which all that is here tendency shall be realised
+possession, and in which all that here but puts up a pale and feeble
+shoot above the ground, shall grow and blossom and bear fruit unto life
+eternal. 'Like the new moon with a ragged edge, e'en in its
+imperfections beautiful,' all the characteristics of Christian life on
+earth prophesy that the orb is crescent, and will one day round itself
+into its pure silvery completeness. If you see a great wall in some
+palace, with slabs of polished marble for most of its length, and here
+and there stretches of course rubble shoved in, you would know that that
+was not the final condition, that the rubble had to be cased over, or
+taken out and replaced by the lucent slab that reflected the light, and
+showed, by its reflecting, its own mottled beauty. Thus the very
+inconsistencies, the thwarted desires, the broken resolutions, the
+aspiration that never can clothe themselves in the flesh of reality,
+which belong to the Christian life, declare that this is but the first
+stage of the structure, and point onwards to the time when the
+imperfections shall be swept away, 'and for brass He will bring gold,
+for iron He will bring silver,' and then the windows shall be set 'in
+agates, and the gates in carbuncles, and all the borders in pleasant
+stones.' Perfect salvation is obviously the only issue of the present
+imperfect salvation.
+
+That is what you are 'kept' for. That is what Christ died to bring you.
+That is what God, like a patient workman bringing out the pattern in his
+loom by many a throw of a sharp-pointed shuttle, and much twisting of
+the threads into patterns, is trying to make of you, and that is what
+Christ on the Cross has died to effect. Brethren, let us think more than
+we do, not only of the partial beginnings here, but of that perfect
+salvation for which Christian men are being 'kept' and guarded, and
+which, if you and I will observe the conditions, is as sure to come as
+that X, Y, Z follow A, B, C. That is what we are kept for.
+
+II. Notice what we are guarded by.
+
+'The _power_ of God,' says Peter, laying hold of the most general
+expression that he can find, not caring to define ways and means, but
+pointing to the one great force that is sure to do it.
+
+Now if we were to translate with perfect literality, we should read, not
+_by_ the power of God, but _in_ the power of God. And whilst it is quite
+probable that what Peter meant was 'by,' I think it adds great force and
+beauty to the passage, and is entirely accordant with the military
+metaphor, which I have already pointed out, if we keep the simple local
+sense of the word, and read, 'guarded _in_ the power of God.' And that
+suggests a whole stream of Scriptural representations, both in the Old
+and in the New Testament. Let me recall one or two. 'The name of the
+Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe.' 'He
+that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the
+shadow of the Almighty.' 'Israel shall dwell safely,' says one of the
+old prophets, 'in unwalled villages, for I will be a wall of fire round
+about her.' The psalmist said, 'The Angel of the Lord encampeth round
+about them that fear Him.' And all these representations concur in this
+one thought, that we are safe, enclosed in God, and that He, by His
+power, compasses us about. And so no foe can get at us who cannot break
+down or climb over the encircling wall of defence. An army in an enemy's
+country will march in hollow square, and put its most precious
+treasures, or its weaker members, its sick, its women, its children, its
+footsore, into the middle there, and with a line of lances on either
+side, and stalwart arms to wield them, the feeblest need fear no foe. We
+'are kept in the power of God unto salvation.'
+
+But do not forget how, far beyond the psalmist and prophet, and in
+something far more sublime and wonderful than a poetic figure, the New
+Testament catches up the same phrase, and gives us, as the condition of
+vitality, as the condition of fertility, as the condition of
+tranquillity, as the condition of security, the same thing--'in Christ.'
+Remember His very last words prior to His great intercessory prayer, in
+which He spoke about keeping those that were given Him in His name. And
+just before that He said to them, 'In the world ye shall have
+tribulation, but in Me ye shall have peace.' Kept, guarded as behind the
+battlements of some great fort, which has in its centre a quiet,
+armoured chamber into which no noise of battle, nor shout of foeman, can
+ever come. 'In Christ,' though the world is all in arms without, 'ye
+shall have peace.' 'Guarded in the power of God unto salvation.'
+
+III. Lastly, what we are kept through.
+
+'Through faith.' Now there we come across another of the words which we
+know so well that we do not understand them. You all think that it is
+the right thing for me to preach about 'faith.' I daresay some of you
+have never tried to apprehend what it means. And I daresay there are a
+great many of you to whom the utterance of the word suggests that I am
+plunging into the bathos and commonplaces of the pulpit. Perhaps, if you
+would try to understand it, you would find it was a bigger thing than
+you fancied. What is faith? I will give you another expression that has
+not so many theological accretions sticking to it, and which means
+precisely the same thing--trust. And we all know that we do not trust
+with our heads, but with our hearts and wills. You may believe
+undoubtedly, and have no faith at all, for it is the heart and the will
+that go forth, and clutch at the thing trusted; or, as I should rather
+say, at the person trusted; for, at bottom, what we trust is always a
+person, and even when we 'trust to nature,' it is because, more or less
+clearly, we feel that somehow or other at the back of nature there is a
+Will and an Intelligence that are working and trustworthy. However, that
+is a subject that I do not need to touch upon here. Faith is trust,
+trust in a Person, trust that, like the fabled goddess rising, radiant
+and aspiring to the heavens, out of the roll of the tempestuous ocean,
+springs from the depths of absolute self-distrust and diffidence. There
+is a spurious kind of faith which has no good in it, just because it
+did not begin with going down into the depths of one's own heart, and
+finding out how rotten and hopeless everything was there. My friend, no
+man has a vigorous Christian faith who has not been very near utter
+despair. 'Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee.' The zenith, which
+is the highest point in the sky above us, is always just as far aloft as
+the nadir, which is the lowest point in the sky at the Antipodes, is
+beneath us. Your faith is measured by your self-despair.
+
+Further, why is it that I must have faith in order to get God's power at
+work in me? Many people seem to think that faith is appointed by God as
+the condition of salvation out of mere arbitrary selection and caprice.
+Not at all. If God could save you without your faith, He would do it. He
+does not, because He cannot. Why must I have faith in order that God's
+power may keep me? Why must you open your window in order to let the
+fresh air in? Why must you pull up the blind in order to let the light
+in? Why must you take your medicine or your food if you want to be cured
+or nourished? Why must you pull the trigger if your revolver is to go
+off? Unless I trust God, distrusting myself, and the spark of faith is
+struck out of the rock of my heart by the sharp steel in the midst of
+the darkness of despair, God cannot pour out upon me His power. There is
+nothing arbitrary about it. It is inseparable from the very nature of
+the case. If you do not want Him, you cannot have Him. If you do not
+know that you need Him, you cannot have Him. If you do not trust that He
+will come to you and help you, you will not have Him.
+
+So then, brother, your faith, my faith, anybody's faith is nothing of
+itself. It is only the valve that opens and lets the steam rush in. It
+is only the tap you turn to let Thirlmere come into your basins. It is
+not you that saves yourself. It is not your faith that keeps you, any
+more than it is the outstretched hand with which a man, ready to
+stumble, grasps the hand of a stalwart, steadfast man on the pavement by
+his side that keeps him up. It is the other man's hand that holds you
+up, but it is your hand that lays hold of him. It is God that saves, it
+is God that guards, it is God that is able to keep us from falling, and
+to give us an inheritance among all them that are sanctified. He will do
+it if we turn to Him, and ask and expect Him to do it. If you will
+comply with the conditions and not else, He will fulfil His promise and
+accomplish His purpose. But my unbelief can thwart Omnipotence, and
+hinder Christ's all-loving purpose, just as on earth we read that 'He
+could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief.' I am sure
+that there are people here who all their lives long have been thus
+hampering Omnipotence and neutralising the love of Christ, and making
+His sacrifice impotent and His wish to save them vain. Stretch out your
+hands as this very Peter once did, crying, 'Lord, save, or I perish';
+and He will answer, not by word only, but by act: 'According to thy
+faith be it unto thee.' Salvation, here and hereafter, is God's work
+alone. It cannot be exercised towards a man who has not faith. It will
+certainly be exercised towards any man who has.
+
+Help us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, to live the lives which we live in the
+flesh by the faith of the Son of God. And may we know what it is to be
+in him, strengthened within the might of His spirit.
+
+
+
+
+SORROWFUL, YET ALWAYS REJOICING
+
+     'Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be,
+      ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.'--1 Peter i. 6.
+
+
+You will remember the great saying of our Lord's in the Sermon on the
+Mount, in which He makes the last of the beatitudes, that which He
+pronounces upon His disciples, when men shall revile them and persecute
+them, and speak all manner of evil falsely against them for His sake,
+and bids them rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is their reward
+in Heaven.
+
+Now it seems to me that in the words of my text there is a distinct echo
+of that saying of Christ's. For not only is the whole context the same,
+but a somewhat unusual and very strong word which our Lord employs is
+also employed here by Peter. 'Rejoice and be _exceeding glad_,' said
+Christ. 'Ye _rejoice greatly_,' said the Apostle, and he is echoing his
+Master's word. Then with regard to the context; Christ proposes to His
+followers this exceeding gladness as evoked in their hearts by the very
+thing that might seem to militate against it--viz., men's antagonism.
+Similarly, Peter, throughout this whole letter, and in my text, is
+heartening the disciples against impending persecution, and, like his
+Lord, he bids them face it, if not 'with frolic welcome' at all events
+with undiminished and undimmed serenity and cheerfulness. Christ based
+the exhortation on the thought that great would be their reward in
+Heaven. Peter points to the salvation ready to be revealed as being the
+ground of the joy that he enjoined. So in the words and in the whole
+strain and structure of the exhortation the servant is copying his
+Master.
+
+But, of course, although the immediate application of these words is to
+Churches fronting the possibility and probability of actual persecution
+and affliction for the sake of Jesus Christ, the principle involved
+applies to us all. And the worries and the sorrows of our daily life
+need the exhortation here, quite as much as did the martyr's pains.
+White ants will pick a carcass clean as soon as a lion will, and there
+is quite as much wear and tear of Christian gladness arising from the
+small frictions of our daily life as from the great strain and stress of
+persecution.
+
+So our Apostle has a word for us all. Now it seems to me that in this
+text there are three things to be noticed: a paradox, a possibility, a
+duty. 'In which ye rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are
+in heaviness through manifold temptations.' Look at these three points.
+
+I. This paradox.
+
+Two emotions diametrically opposed are to be contained within the narrow
+room of one disposition and temper. 'Ye greatly rejoice.... Ye are in
+heaviness.' Can such a thing be? Well! let us think for a moment. The
+sources of the two conflicting emotions are laid out before us; they may
+be constantly operative in every life. On the one hand, 'in which ye
+greatly rejoice.' Now that 'in which' does not point back only to the
+words that immediately precede, but to the whole complex clause that
+goes before. And what is the 'which' that is there? These things; the
+possession of a new life--'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
+Jesus Christ who hath begotten us again!'--the springing up in a man's
+heart of a strange new hope, like a new star that swims into the sky,
+and sheds a radiance all about it--'Begotten unto a lively hope by the
+resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead'; a new wealth--an
+'inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away; a new
+security--guarded by the power of God through faith unto salvation.'
+These things belong, _ipso facto_, and in the measure of his faith, to
+every Christian man, a new life, a new hope, a new wealth, and a new
+security; and in their conjoint action, all four of them brought to bear
+upon a man's temper and spirit, will, if he is realising them, make him
+glad.
+
+Then, on the other hand, we have other fountains pouring their streams
+into the same reservoir. And just as the deep fountains which are open
+to us by faith will, if we continue to exercise that faith, flood our
+spirits with sweet waters, so these other fountains will pour their
+bitter floods over every heart more or less abundantly and continually.
+'Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold
+temptations.' There are confluent streams that one has sometimes seen,
+where a clear river joins, and flows in the same bed with, one all foul
+with half-melted ice, and the two run side by side for a space, scarcely
+mingling their waters. Thus the paradox of the Christian life is that
+within the same narrow banks may flow the sunny and the turbid, the
+clear and the dark, the sorrow that springs from earthly fountains, the
+joy that pours from the heavenly heights.
+
+Now notice that this is only one case of the paradox of the whole
+Christian life. For the peculiarity of it is that it owns two;--it
+belongs to, and is exposed to, all the influences of the forces and
+things of time, whilst in regard to its depths, it belongs to, and is
+under the influence of, 'the things that are unseen and eternal'; so
+that you have the external life common to the Christian and to all
+other people, and then you have the life 'hid with Christ in God,' the
+roots of it going down through all the superficial soil, and grappling
+the central rock of all things. Thus a series of paradoxes and perennial
+contradictions describes the twofold life that every believing spirit
+lives, 'as unknown and yet well known, as dying and, behold we live, as
+sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making rich, as having
+nothing and yet possessing all things.'
+
+Remember, too, that according to Peter's conception neither of these two
+sources pours out a flood which obliterates or dams back the other. They
+are to co-exist. The joy is not to deprive the heaviness of its weight,
+nor the sorrow of its sting. There is no artificial stoicism about
+Christianity, no attempt to sophisticate one's self out of believing in
+the reality of the evils that assail us, or to forbid that we shall feel
+their pain and their burden. Many good people fail to get the good of
+life's discipline, because they have somehow come to think that it is
+wrong to weep when Christ sends sorrows, and wrong to feel, as other men
+feel, the grip and bite of the manifold trials of our earthly lives.
+'Weep for yourselves,' for the feeling of the sorrow is the precedent
+condition to the benefit from the sorrow, and it yields 'the peaceable
+fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.'
+
+But, on the other hand, the black stream is not to bank up the sunny
+one, or prevent it from flowing into the heart, ay! and flowing over,
+the other. And so the co-existence of the joys that come from above, and
+the sorrows that spring from around, and some of them from beneath, is
+the very secret of the Christian life.
+
+II. Further, consider the blessed possibility of this paradox.
+
+Can two conflicting emotions live in a man's heart at once? Rather, we
+might ask, are there ever emotions in a man's heart that are not hemmed
+in by conflicting ones? Is there ever such a thing in the world's
+experience as a pure joy, or as a confidence which has no trace of fear
+in it? Are there any pictures without shadows? They are only daubs if
+they are. Instead of wondering at this co-existence of joy and sorrow,
+we must recognise that it is in full accord with all our experience,
+which never brings a joy, but, like the old story of the magic palace,
+there is one window unlighted, and which never brings a sorrow so black
+and over-arching so completely the whole sky, but that somewhere, if the
+eye would look for it, there is a bit of blue. The possibility of the
+paradox is in accordance with all human experience.
+
+But then, you say, 'my feelings of joy or sorrow are very largely a
+matter of temperament, and still more largely a matter of responding to
+the facts round about me. And I cannot pump up emotions to order; and if
+I could they would be factitious, artificial, insincere, and do me more
+harm than good.' Perfectly true. There are a great many ugly names for
+manufactured emotions, and none of them a bit too ugly. Peter does not
+wish you to try to get up feeling to order. It is the bane of some type
+of Christianity that that is done. You cannot thus manufacture emotion.
+No; but I will tell you what you can do. You can determine what you will
+think about most, and what you will look at most, and if you settle
+that, that will settle what you feel. And so, though it is by a
+roundabout way, we can regulate our emotions. A man travelling in a
+railway train can choose which side of the carriage he will look out
+at, either the one where the sunshine is falling full on the front of
+each grass-blade and tree, or the side where it is the shadowed side of
+each that is turned to him. If he will look out of the one window, he
+will see everything verdant and bright, and if he will look out at the
+other, there will be a certain sobriety and dulness over the landscape.
+You can settle which window you are going to look out at. If the
+one--'in which ye greatly rejoice.' If the other--'ye are in heaviness
+through manifold temptations.' You have seen patterns wrought in black
+and white, you may focus your eye so as to get white on a black ground,
+or black on a white ground, just as you like. You can do that with your
+life, and either fix upon the temptations and the heaviness as the main
+thing, or you can fix upon the new life, and the new wealth, and the new
+hope, and the new security as the main things. If you do the one, down
+you will go into the depths of gloom, and if you do the other, up you
+will spring into the ethereal heights of sober and Christian gladness.
+
+So then, brethren, this possibility depends on these things, the choice
+of our main object of contemplation, and that breaks up into two
+thoughts about which I wish to say a word. The reason why so many
+Christian people have only religion enough to make them gloomy, or to
+weight them with a sense of burdens and unfulfilled aspirations and
+broken resolutions, and have not enough to make them glad, is mainly
+because they do not think enough about the four things in which they
+might 'greatly rejoice.' I believe that most of us would be altogether
+different people, as professing Christians, if we honestly tried to keep
+the mightiest things uppermost, and to fill heart and mind far more than
+we do with the contemplation of these great facts and truths which,
+when once they are beheld and cleaved to, are certain to minister
+gladness to men's souls. These great truths which you and I say we
+believe, and which we profess to live by, will only work their effect
+upon us, so long as they are present to our minds and hearts. You can no
+more expect Christian verities to keep you from falling, or to
+strengthen you in weakness, or to gladden you in sorrow, if you are not
+thinking about them, than you can expect the most succulent or most
+nutritive food to nourish you if you do not eat it. As long as Christ
+and His grace are present in our hearts and minds by thought, so long,
+and not one moment longer, do they minister to us the joy of the Lord.
+You switch off from the main current, and out go all the lights, and
+when you switch off from Christ out goes the gladness.
+
+Then another thing I would point out is that the possibility of this
+co-existence of joy and of heaviness depends further on our taking the
+right point of view from which to look at the sources of the heaviness.
+Notice how beautifully, although entirely incidentally, and without
+calling attention to it, Peter here minimises the 'manifold temptations'
+which he does expect, however minimised, will make men heavy. He calls
+them 'temptations.' Now that is rather an unfortunate word, because it
+suggests the idea of something that desires to drag a man into sin. But
+suppose, instead of 'temptations,' with its unfortunate associations,
+you were to substitute a word that means the same thing, and is free
+from that association--viz.,'trial,'--you would get the right point of
+view. As long as I look at my sorrows mainly in regard to their power to
+sadden me, I have not got to the right point of view for them. They
+_are_ meant to sadden me, they are meant to pain, they are meant to
+bring the tears, they are meant to weight the heart and press down the
+spirits, but what for? To test what I am made of, and by testing to
+bring out and strengthen what is good, and to cast out and destroy what
+is evil. We shall never understand, even so much as it is possible for
+us to understand, and that is not very much, of the mystery of pain
+until we come to recognise that its main purpose is to help in making
+character. And when you think of your sorrows, disappointments, losses,
+when you think of your pains and sickness, and all the ills that flesh
+is heir to, principally as being 'trials,' in the deep sense of that
+word--viz., a means of testing you, and thereby helping you, bettering
+you, and building up character--then it is more possible to blend the
+sorrow that they produce with the joy to which they may lead. The
+Apostle adds the other thought of the transitoriness of sorrow, and yet
+further, the other of its necessity for the growth of humanity. So they
+are not only to be felt, not only to be wept over, not only to make us
+sad, but they are to be accepted, and used as means by which we may be
+perfected. And when once you get occupied in trying to get all the good
+that is in it out of a grief, you will be astonished to find how the
+bitterness that was in it was diminished.
+
+We may have the oil on the water, calming, though not ending, its
+agitation. We may carry our own atmosphere with us, and like the diver
+that goes down into depths of the sea, and cannot be reached by the
+hungry water around his crystal bell, and has communication with the
+upper air, where the light of the sun is, so you and I, down at the
+slimy bottom, and with the waste of water all around us, which if it
+could get at us would choke us, may walk at liberty, in peace and
+gladness. And so, 'though the labour of the olive shall fail and the fig
+tree not blossom, though the flocks be cut off from the folds and the
+herd from the stalls,' we may joy in the Lord, and 'rejoice in the God
+of our salvation.'
+
+III. Now lastly, we have here a duty.
+
+Peter takes it for granted that these good people, who had persecution
+hanging over them, were still rejoicing greatly in the Lord. He does not
+feel it necessary to enjoin it upon them. It is a matter of course in
+their Christian life. And you will find that all through the New
+Testament this same tone is adopted which recognises gladness as being,
+on the one hand, an inseparable characteristic of the Christian
+experience, and on the other hand as being a thing that is a Christian
+man's duty to cultivate. Now I do not believe that the most of Christian
+people have ever looked at the thing in that light at all. If joy has
+come to them, they have been thankful for it, but they have very, very
+seldom felt that, if they are not glad, there is something wrong. And a
+great many of us, I am sure, have never recognised the fact that it is
+our duty to 'rejoice in the Lord always.' Have you realised it? I do not
+mean have you tried to get up, as I have been saying, factitious
+emotions, but have you felt that if you are doing what, as Christian men
+or women, it is your plain duty to do, there will come into your hearts
+this joy of the Lord. I have told you why you are not happier
+Christians, why so many of us have, as I said, only got religion enough
+to make you gloomy and burdened. It is because you do not think enough
+about Jesus Christ, and what He has given you, and what He is doing for
+you and in you. It is because you have not the new life in strong
+experience and possession, and because you have not the new hope
+springing in your hearts, and because you have not the new wealth
+realised often in present possession, and because you have not the new
+security which He is ready to give you. It is your duty, Christian man
+and woman, to be a joyful Christian, and if you are not, then the
+negligence is sin.
+
+It is a hard duty. It is not easy to turn away from that which is
+torturing flesh or sense or natural desires or human affections, and to
+realise the unseen. It is not easy, but it is possible. And, like all
+other difficult things, it is worth doing. For there is nothing more
+helpful, more recommendatory, of our Christianity to other people, and
+more certain to tell on the vigour and efficiency of our Christian
+service, than that we should be rejoicing in the Lord, and living in the
+possession of the experience of Christ's joy which He has left for us.
+
+There is one other thing I must say. I have been talking about the
+co-existence of joy and sorrows. In one form or another that
+co-existence is universal. The difference is this. A Christian man has
+superficial sorrows and central gladness, and other men have superficial
+gladness and central sorrow. 'Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful.'
+Many of you know what that means--the black aching centre, full of
+unrest, grimly unparticipant of the dancing delights going on about it,
+like some black rock that stands up in the midst of a field flooded with
+sunshine, and gay with flowers. 'The end of that mirth is heaviness.'
+Better a surface sadness and a core of joy than the opposite, a skin of
+verdure over the scarcely cold lava. Better a transient sorrow with an
+eternal joy than the opposite, mirth, 'like the crackling of thorns
+under a pot,' which dies down into a doleful ring of black ashes in the
+pathless desert. Choose whether you will have joy dwelling with and
+conquering sorrow, or unrest and sorrow, darkening and finally
+shattering your partial and fleeting joys.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRUE GOLD AND ITS TESTING
+
+     'That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of
+      gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found
+      unto praise and honour and glory ...'--1 Peter i. 7.
+
+
+The Apostle is fond of that word 'precious.' In both his letters he uses
+it as an epithet for diverse things. According to one translation, he
+speaks of Christ as 'precious to you which believe.' He certainly speaks
+of 'the precious blood of Christ,' and of 'exceeding great and precious
+promises,' and here in my text, as well as in the Second Epistle, he
+speaks about 'precious faith.' It is a very wide general term, not
+expressing anything very characteristic beyond the one notion of value.
+But in the text, according to our Authorised Version, it looks at first
+sight as if it were not the faith, but the _trial_ of the faith that the
+Apostle regards as thus valuable. There are difficulties of rendering
+which I need not trouble you with. Suffice it to say that, speaking
+roughly and popularly, the 'trial of your faith' here seems to mean
+rather the _result of_ that trial, and might be fairly represented by
+the slightly varied expression, 'your faith having been tried, might be
+found,' etc.
+
+I must not be tempted to discourse about the reasons why such a
+rendering seems to express the Apostle's meaning more fully, but, taking
+it for granted, there are just three things to notice--the true wealth,
+the testing of the wealth, and the discovery at last of the preciousness
+of the wealth.
+
+I. Peter pits against each other faith that has been tried, and 'gold
+that perisheth'; he puts away all the other points of comparison and
+picks out one, and that is that the one lasts and the other does not.
+Now I must not be seduced into going beyond the limits of my text to
+dilate upon the other points of contrast and pre-eminence; but I would
+just notice in a sentence that everybody admits, yet next to nobody acts
+upon, the admission that inward good is far more valuable than outward
+good. 'Wisdom is more precious than rubies,' say people, and yet they
+will choose the rubies, and take no trouble to get the wisdom. Now the
+very same principles of estimating value which set cultivated
+understandings and noble hearts above great possessions and large
+balances at the bankers, set the life of faith high above all others.
+And the one thought which Peter wishes to drive into our heads and
+hearts is that there is only one kind of wealth that will never be
+separated from its possessor. Nothing is truly ours that remains outside
+of us.
+
+     ''Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands.'
+
+Nothing that is there whilst I am here is really mine. I do not own it
+if it is possible that I shall lose it. And so with profound meaning our
+Lord speaks about 'that which is another's' in comparison with 'that
+which is your own.' It is another's because it passes, like quicksilver
+under pressure, from hand to hand, and no man really holds it, but it
+leaps away from his grasp. And if a man retains it all his days, still,
+according to the grim old proverb, 'shrouds have no pockets,' and when
+he dies his hands open, or sometimes they clutch together, but there is
+nothing inside the palms, and they only close upon themselves. Dear
+brethren, if there is anything that can be filched away from us,
+anything about which it is true that, on the one hand, 'moth and
+rust'--natural processes--'do corrupt' it, on the other hand, 'thieves
+break through and steal'--accidents of human conduct can deprive us of
+it, then we may _call_ it ours, but it is not ours. It possesses us, if
+we are devoted to it as our best good, and fighting and toiling, and
+sometimes lying and cheating, and flinging the whole fierce energy of
+our nature into first gripping and then holding it; it possesses us; we
+do not possess it. But if there is anything that can become so
+interwoven and interlaced with the very fibres of a man's heart that
+they and it cannot be parted, if there is anything that empty hands will
+clasp the closer, because they _are_ emptied of earth's vanities, then
+that is truly possessed by its possessor. And our faith, which will not
+be trodden in the grave, but will go with us into the world beyond, and
+though it be lost in one aspect, in sight, it will be eternal as trust,
+will be ours, imperishable as ourselves, and as God. Therefore, do not
+give all the energy of your lives to amassing the second-best riches.
+Seek the highest things most. 'Covet earnestly the best gifts,' and let
+the coveting regulate your conduct. And do not be put off with wealth
+that will fail you sooner or later.
+
+II. Note, again, the testing of the wealth.
+
+I need not dwell upon that very familiar metaphor of the furnace for
+gold, and the fining-pot for silver, only remember that there are two
+purposes for which metallurgists apply fire to metals. The one is to
+test them, and the other is to cleanse them, or, to use technical words,
+one is for the purpose of assaying them, and the other is for the
+purpose of refining them. And so, linking the words of my text with the
+words of the previous verse, we find that the Apostle lays it down that
+the purpose of all the diverse trials, or 'temptations' as he calls
+them, that come to us, is this one thing, that our faith should be
+'tried,' and 'found, unto praise and honour and glory.' The fire carries
+away the dross; it makes the pure metal glow in its lustre. It burns up
+the 'wood, hay, stubble'; it makes the gold gleam and the precious
+stones coruscate and flash.
+
+And so note this general notion here of the intention of all life's
+various aspects being to test character is specialised into this, that
+it is meant to test faith, first of all. Of course it is meant to test
+many other things. A man's whole character is tested by the experiences
+of his daily life, all that is good and all that is evil in him, and we
+might speak about the effect of life's discipline upon a great many
+different sides of our nature. But here the whole stress is put upon the
+effect of life in testing and clarifying and strengthening one part of a
+Christian's character, and that is his faith. Why does Peter pick out
+faith? Why does he not say 'trial of your hope,' of your 'love,' of your
+'courage,' of half a dozen other graces? Why 'the trial of your
+_faith_?' For this reason, because as the man's faith is, so is the man.
+Because faith is the tap-root, in the view of the New Testament, of all
+that is good and strong and noble in humanity. Because if you strengthen
+a man's trust you strengthen everything that comes from it. Reinforce
+the centre and all is reinforced. Your faith is the vital point from
+which your whole life as Christians is developed, and whatever
+strengthens that strengthens you. And, therefore, although everything
+that befalls you calls for the exercise of, and therefore tests, and
+therefore, rightly undergone, strengthens a great many various virtues
+and powers and beauties in a human character, the main good of it all is
+that it deepens, if the man is right, his simple trust in God manifested
+by his trust in and love to Jesus Christ: and so it reinforces the faith
+which works by love, and thus tends to make all things in life good and
+fair.
+
+Now if thus the main end of life is to strengthen faith, let us remember
+that we have to give a wider meaning to the word 'trials' than
+'afflictions.' Ah! there is as sharp a trial of my faith in prosperity
+as in any adversity. People say, 'It is easy to trust God when things
+are going well with us.' That is quite true. But it is a great deal
+easier to stop trusting God, or thinking about Him, when things are
+going well with us, and we do not seem to need Him so much, as in the
+hours of darkness. You remember the old story about the traveller, when
+the sun and the wind tried which could make him take off his cloak; and
+the sun did it. Some of us, I daresay, have found out that the faith
+which gripped God when we felt we needed Him, because we had not
+anything else but Him, is but too apt to lose hold of Him when fleeting
+delights and apparent treasures come and whisper invitations in our
+hearts. There are diseases that are proper to the northern, dark,
+ice-bound regions of the earth. Yes! and there are a great many more
+that belong to the tropics; as there is such a thing as sunstroke, which
+is, perhaps, as dangerous as the cramping cold from the icebergs of the
+north. Some of us should understand what that Scripture means: 'Because
+they have no changes, therefore they fear not God.' Prosperity,
+untroubled lives, lives even as the lives of those of the majority of
+mankind now, have their own most searching trials of faith.
+
+But on the other hand, if there are 'ships that have gone down at sea,
+when heaven was all tranquillity,' there come also dark and nights of
+wild tempest when we have to lay to and ride out the gale with a
+tremendous strain on the cable. Our sorrows, our disappointments, our
+petty annoyances, and the great irrevocable griefs that sooner or later
+darken the very earth, are all to be classified under this same purpose,
+'that the trial of your faith ... might be found unto praise and honour
+and glory.' And so, I beseech you, open your eyes to the meaning of
+life, and do not suppose that you have found the last word to say about
+it when you say 'I am afflicted,' or 'I am at ease.' The affliction and
+the ease, like two wheels in some great machine working in opposite
+directions, fit with their cogs into one another and move something
+beyond them in one uniform direction. And affliction and ease cooperate
+to this end, that we might be partakers of His holiness.
+
+I believe experience teaches the most of us, if we will lay its lessons
+to heart, that the times when Christian people grow most in the divine
+life is in their times of sorrow. One of the old divines says, 'Grace
+grows best in winter'; and there are edible plants which need a touch of
+frost before they are good to eat. So it is with our faith. Only let us
+take care that the fire does not burn it up, as 'wood, hay, stubble,'
+but irradiates it and glorifies it, as 'gold, silver, and precious
+stones.'
+
+III. Now a word, lastly, about the ultimate discovery.
+
+'Might be found unto praise and honour and glory.' Note these three
+words, which I think are often neglected, and sometimes
+misunderstood--'praise, honour, glory.' Whose? People sometimes say
+'God's,' since His people's ultimate salvation redounds to His praise;
+but it is much better to understand the praise as given to the
+Christians whose faith has stood the testing fires. 'Well done, good and
+faithful servant'--is not that praise from lips, praise from which is
+praise indeed? As Paul says, 'then shall every man have praise of God.'
+We are far too much afraid of recognising the fact that Jesus Christ in
+Heaven, like Jesus Christ on earth, will praise the deeds that come from
+love to Him, though the deeds themselves may be very imperfect. Do you
+remember 'She hath wrought a good work on Me,' said about a woman that
+had done a perfectly useless thing, which was open to a great many very
+shrewd objections? But Jesus Christ accepted it. Why? Because it was the
+pure utterance of a loving heart. And, depend upon it, though we have to
+say 'Unclean! unclean! We are unprofitable servants,' He will say 'Come!
+ye blessed of My Father.' Praise from Christ is praise indeed.
+
+'Honour.' That suggests bystanders, a public opinion, if I may so say;
+it suggests 'have thou authority over ten cities,' and that men will
+have their deeds round them as a halo, in that other world. As 'praise'
+suggests the redeemed man's relation to his Lord, so 'honour' suggests
+the redeemed man's relation to the fellow-citizens of the New Jerusalem.
+'Glory' speaks of the man himself as transfigured and lifted up into
+the light and lustre of communion with, and conformity to, the image of
+the Lord. 'Then shall we appear with Him in glory. Then shall the
+righteous blaze forth like the sun in My heavenly Father's Kingdom.'
+
+'Shall be found.' Ah! there will be many surprises yonder. Do you
+remember that profound revelation of our Master when He represents those
+on whom He lavishes His eulogies as the Judge, as turning to Him and
+saying, 'Lord! when saw we Thee in ... prison and visited thee?' They do
+not recognise themselves or their acts in Christ's account of them. They
+have found that their lives were diviner than they knew. There will be
+surprises there. As one of the prophets represents the ransomed Israel,
+to her amazement, surrounded by clinging troops of children, and asking,
+'These! Where have they been? I was left alone,' so many a poor, humble
+soul, fighting along in this world, having no recognition on earth, and
+the lowliest estimate of all its own actions, will be astonished at the
+last when it receives 'praise, and honour, and glory, at the appearing
+of Jesus Christ.'
+
+
+
+
+JOY IN BELIEVING
+
+     'In Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with
+      joy unspeakable and full of glory.'--1 Peter i. 8.
+
+
+The Apostle has just previously been speaking about the great and
+glorious things which are to come to Christians on the appearing of
+Jesus Christ, and that naturally suggests to him the thought of the
+condition of believing souls during the period of the Lord's absence and
+comparative concealment. Having lifted his readers' hopes to that great
+Future, when they would attain to 'praise and honour and glory' at
+Christ's appearing, he drops to the present and to earth, and recalls
+the disadvantages and deprivations of the present Christian experience
+as well as its privileges and blessings. 'Whom having not seen, ye
+love,' that is a very natural thought in the mind of one whose love to
+Jesus rested on the ever-remembered blessed experience of years of happy
+companionship, when addressing those who had no such memories. It points
+to an entirely unique fact. There is nothing else in the world parallel
+to that strange, deep personal attachment which fills millions of hearts
+to this Man who died nineteen centuries ago, and which is utterly unlike
+the feelings that any men have to any other of the great names of the
+past. To love one unseen is a paradox, which is realised only in the
+relation of the Christian soul to Jesus Christ.
+
+Then the Apostle goes on with what might at first seem a mere repetition
+of the preceding thought, but really brings to view another strange
+anomaly. 'In Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice
+with joy unspeakable and full of glory.' Love longs for the presence of
+the beloved, and is restless and defrauded of its gladness so long as
+absence continues. But this strange love, which is kindled by an unseen
+Man, does not need His visible presence in order to be a fountain of joy
+unspeakable and full of glory. Thus the Apostle takes it for granted
+that every one who believes knows what this joy is. It is a large
+assumption, contradicted, I am afraid, by the average experience of the
+people that at this day call themselves Christians.
+
+We notice--
+
+I. The All-sufficient Ground or Source of this Glad Emotion.
+
+'In whom,' with all the disabilities and pains and absence, 'yet
+believing,' you can put out a long arm of faith across the gulf that
+lies, not only between to-day and eighteen centuries ago, but the deeper
+and more impassible gulf that lies between earth and heaven, and clasp
+Christ with a really firm grasp, which will fill the hand, and which we
+shall feel has laid hold of something, or rather has laid hold of a
+living person and a loving heart. That is faith. The Apostle uses a very
+strong form of expression here, which is only very partially represented
+by our English version. He does not say only '_in_ whom believing,' but
+'_towards_ whom'; putting emphasis upon the effort and direction of the
+faith, rather than upon the repose of the heart when it has found its
+object and rests upon Him. And so the conception of the true Christian
+attitude is that of a continual outgoing of Trust and its child Love; of
+Desire and its child Possession; and of Expectation and its child
+Fruition towards that unseen Christ. It is much to believe Him, it is
+more to believe in Him; it is--I was going to say--most of all to
+believe towards Him. For in this region, quite as much as, and I think
+more than, in the one to which the saying was originally applied,
+'search is better than attainment.' Our condition must always be that of
+'forgetting the things that are behind'; and however much we may realise
+the union with the unseen Christ in the act of resting upon Him, that
+must never be suffered to interfere with the longing for the larger
+possession of myself, and fuller consequent likeness to Him, which is
+expressed in that great though simple phrase of my text 'believing
+towards Him.' Such a continual outgoing of effort, as well as the rest
+and blessedness of reposing on Him, is indispensable for all true
+gladness. For the intensest activity of our whole being is essential to
+the real joy of any part of it, and we shall never know the rapture of
+which humanity, even here and now, is capable until we gather our whole
+selves, heart, will, and all our practical, as well as our intellectual,
+powers in the effort to make more of Christ our own, and to minimise the
+distance between us to a mere vanishing point, 'Believing towards whom
+ye rejoice.'
+
+That act of trust, however inadequate the object upon which it rests,
+and however mistaken may be our conceptions of that on which we lean,
+always brings a gladness which is real, until disappointment
+disillusionises and saddens us. There is nothing that so sheds peace
+over the heart as reliance, absolute and quiet, upon some object worthy
+of trust. It is blessed to trust one another until, as is too often the
+case, we find that what we thought to be an oak against which we leaned
+is but a broken reed that has no pith in it, and no possibility of
+support. So far as it goes, all trust is blessed, but the most blessed
+is simple reliance upon, and aspiration after, Jesus Christ. Ever to
+yearn for Him, not with the yearning of those who have no possession,
+but with that of those who, having a little, desire to have more, is to
+bring into our lives the one solid and sufficient good without which
+there is no gladness, and with which there can be no unmingled sorrow,
+wrapping the whole man in its ebon folds. For this Christ is enough for
+all my nature and for the satisfaction of every desire. In Him my mind
+finds the truth; my will the law; my love the answering love; my hope
+its object; my fears their dissipation; my sins their forgiveness; my
+weaknesses their strength; and, to all that I am, what He is answers, as
+fulness to emptiness, and as supply to need. So, 'believing towards Him,
+we rejoice.'
+
+But note that the joy is strictly contemporaneous with the faith. Tear
+away electric wire from the source of energy, and the light goes out
+instantly. It is as another Apostle says, '_in believing_' that we have
+'joy and peace.' And that is why so many of us know little of it.
+Yesterday's faith will not contribute to to-day's gladness, any more
+than yesterday's meals will satisfy to-day's hunger. Present joy depends
+upon present faith, and the measure of the one is the measure of the
+other.
+
+Notice again--
+
+II. The Characteristics of the Christian Gladness.
+
+'Unspeakable,' and, as the word ought to be rendered, not 'full of
+glory' but 'glorified.' Unspeakable. Still waters run deep. It is poor
+wealth that can be counted; it is shallow emotion that can be crammed
+into the narrow limits of any human vocabulary. Fathers and mothers,
+parents and children, husbands and wives, know that. And the depths of
+the joy that a believing soul has in Jesus Christ are not to be spoken.
+Perhaps it is better that it should not be attempted to speak them.
+
+                'Not easily forgiven
+    Are those, who, setting wide the doors that bar
+    The secret bridal chambers of the heart,
+    Let in the day.'
+
+It is in shallow streams that the sunlight gleams on the pebbles at the
+bottom. The abysses of ocean are dark, and have never been searched by
+its light. I suspect the depth of the emotion which bubbles over into
+words, and finds no difficulty in expressing itself. The joy which can
+be manifested in all its extent has a very small extent. Christian joy
+is unspeakable, too, because just as you cannot teach a blind man what
+colour is like, and cannot impart to anybody the blessedness of wedded
+love, or parental affection, by ever so much talking--and, therefore,
+the poetry of the world is never exhausted--so there is only one way of
+conveying to a man what is the actual joy of trusting in Christ, and
+that is, that he himself should trust Him. We may talk till Doomsday,
+and then, as the Queen of Sheba said, when she came to Solomon, 'the
+half hath not been told.'
+
+    'He must be loved ere that to you
+     He will seem worthy of your love.'
+
+It is unspeakable gladness springing from the possession of an
+unspeakable gift.
+
+'Glorified.' There is nothing more ignoble than the ordinary joys of
+men. They are too often like the iridescent scum on a stagnant pond,
+fruit and proof of corruption. They are fragile and hollow, for all the
+play of colour on them, like a soap bubble that breaks of its own
+tenuity, and is only a drop of dirty water. Joy is too often ignoble,
+and yet, although it is by no means the highest conception of what
+Christ's Gospel can do for us, it is blessed to think that it can take
+that emotion, so often shameful, so often frivolous, so often lowering
+rather than elevating, and can lift it into loftiness, and transfigure
+it, and glorify it and make it a power, a power for good and for
+righteousness, and for 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report'
+in our lives. And that is what trusting towards Christ will do for our
+gladnesses.
+
+Lastly, in one word, let me lay upon your consciences, as Christian
+people
+
+III. The Obligation of Gladness.
+
+Peter takes it for granted that all these brethren to whom he is writing
+have experience of this deep and ennobled joy. He does not say, 'You
+ought to rejoice,' but he says, 'You do rejoice.' And yet a verse or two
+before he said, 'Ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.' So,
+then, he was not blinking the hard, painful facts of anybody's troubled
+life. He was not away upon the heights serenely contemptuous of the grim
+possibilities that lurk down in the dark valleys. He took in all the
+burdens and the pains and the anxieties and the harassments, and the
+losses, and the bleeding hearts and the cares that can burden any of us.
+And he said, in spite of them all, 'Ye rejoice.'
+
+Do you? I am afraid there is no more irrefragable proof of the unreality
+of an enormous proportion of the Christian profession of this day than
+the joyless lives--in so far as their religion contributes to their
+joy--of hosts of us. We have religion enough to make us miserable, we
+have religion enough to make us uncomfortable about doing things that we
+would like to do. We are always haunted by the feeling that we are
+falling so far below our professions, and we are either miserable when
+we bethink ourselves, or, more frequently, indifferent, accordingly. And
+the whole reason of such experience lies here, we have not an adequately
+strong and continued trust in Jesus Christ working righteousness in our
+lives, nobleness in our characters, and so lifting us above the regions
+where mists and malaria lie. Let us get high enough up, and we shall
+find clear sky.
+
+You call yourselves Christians. Does your religion bring any gladness
+to you? Does it burn brightest in the dark, like the pillar of cloud
+before the Israelites? 'Greek fire' burned below the water, and so was
+in high repute. Our gladness is a poor affair if it is at the mercy of
+temperaments or of circumstances. Jesus Christ comes to cure
+temperaments, and to enable us to resist circumstances. So I venture to
+say that, whatever may be our condition in regard to externals, or
+whatever may be our tendencies of disposition, we are bound, as a piece
+of Christian duty, to try to cultivate this joyful spirit, and to do it
+in the only right way, by cultivating the increase of our faith in Jesus
+Christ. 'Rejoice in the Lord always'; the man who said that was a
+prisoner, with death looking into his eyeballs. As he said it, he felt
+that his friends in Philippi might think the exhortation overstrained,
+and so he repeated it, to show that he recognised the apparent
+impossibility of obeying it, and yet deliberately enjoined it; 'and
+again I say, rejoice.'
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST AND HIS CROSS THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE
+
+     'Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched
+      diligently ... the things which are now reported unto you ... which
+      things the angels desire to look into.'--1 Peter i. 10, 11, 12.
+
+
+I have detached these three clauses from their surroundings, not because
+I desire to treat them fragmentarily, but because we thereby throw into
+stronger relief the writer's purpose to bring out the identity of the
+Old and the New Revelation, the fact that Christ and His sufferings are
+the centre of the world's history, to which all that went before points,
+from which all that follows after flows; and that not only thus does He
+stand in the midst of humanity, but that from Him there ran out
+influences into other orders of beings, and angels learn from Him
+mysteries hitherto unknown to them. The prophets prophesy of the grace
+which comes in the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
+follow, and the same Spirit which taught them teaches the preachers of
+the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They that went before had for their deepest
+message the proclamation, 'He will come'; they that follow after have
+for their deepest message, 'He has come.' And angels listen to, and
+echo, the chorus, from all the files that march in front, and all that
+bring up the rear, 'Hosanna! Blessed be Him that cometh in the name of
+the Lord.'
+
+My purpose, then, is just to try to bring before you the magnificent
+unity into which these texts bind all ages, and all worlds, planting
+Jesus Christ and His Cross in the centre of them all. There are four
+aspects here in which the writer teaches us to regard this unity: Jesus
+and the Cross are the substance of prophecy, the theme of Gospel
+preaching, the study of angels, and presented to each of us for our
+individual acceptance. Now, let us look briefly at these four points.
+
+I. First, then, Christ and His Cross is the substance of prophecy.
+
+Now, of course, we have to remember that general statements have to be
+interpreted widely, and without punctilious adherence to the words; and
+we have also to remember that great mischief has been done, and great
+discredit cast, on the whole conception of ancient revelation by the
+well-meaning, but altogether mistaken, attempts of good people to read
+the fully developed doctrine of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice into
+every corner of the ancient revelation. But whilst I admit all that,
+and would desire to emphasise the fact, I think that in this
+generation, and to-day, there is a great deal more need to insist upon
+the truth that the inmost essence and deepest purpose of the whole Old
+Testament system is to create an attitude of expectance, and to point
+onwards, with ever-growing distinctness, to one colossal and mysterious
+figure in which the longings of generations shall be fulfilled, and the
+promises of God shall be accomplished. The prophet was more than a
+foreteller, as is being continually insisted upon nowadays. There were
+prophets who never uttered a single prediction. Their place in Israel
+was to be the champions of righteousness, and--I was going to say--the
+knights of God, as against law and ceremonial and externalism. But,
+beyond that, there underlie the whole system of prophecy, and there come
+sparkling and flashing up to the surface every now and then, bright
+anticipations, not only of a future kingdom, but of a personal King, and
+not only of a King, but a sufferer. All the sacrifices, almost all the
+institutions, the priesthood and the monarchy included, had this
+onward-looking aspect, and Israel as a whole, in the proportion in which
+it was true to the spirit of its calling, stood a-tiptoe, as it were,
+looking down the ages for the coming of the Hope of the Covenant that
+had been promised to the fathers. The prophets, I might say, were like
+an advance-guard sent before some great monarch in his progress towards
+his capital, who rode through the slumbering villages and called, 'He
+comes! He comes! The King cometh meek and having salvation,' and then
+passed on.
+
+Now, all that is to be held fast to-day. I would give all freedom to
+critical research, and loyally accept the results of it, so far as these
+are established, and are not mere hypotheses, with regard to the date
+and the circumstances of the construction of the various elements of
+that Old Testament. But what I desire especially to mark is that, with
+the widest freedom, there must be these two things conserved which Peter
+here emphasises, the real inspiration of the prophetic order, and its
+function to point onwards to Jesus. And so long as you keep these
+truths, as long as you believe that God spoke through prophets, as long
+as you believe that the very heart of their message was the proclamation
+of Jesus Christ, and that to bear witness to Him was the function, not
+only of prophet, but of priest and king and nation, then you are at
+liberty to deal as you like with mere questions of origin and of date.
+But if, in the eagerness of the chase after the literary facts of the
+origin of the Old Testament, we forget that it is a unity, that it is a
+divine unity, that it is a progressive revelation, and that 'the
+testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy' then I venture to say that
+the most uncritical, old-fashioned reader of the Old Testament that
+found Jesus Christ in the Song of Solomon, and in the details of the
+Tabernacle, and in all the _minutiae_ of worship and sacrifice, was
+nearer to the living heart of the thing than the most learned scholar
+that has been so absorbed in the inquiries as to how and when this,
+that, and the other bit of the Book was written, that he fails to see
+the one august figure that shines out, now more and now less dimly, and
+gives unity to the whole. 'To Him gave all the prophets witness.' And
+when Peter declared, as he did in my text, that ancient Israel, by its
+spokesmen and its organs, testified beforehand of the sufferings of
+Christ, he is but echoing what he had learned from his Master, who turns
+to some of us with the same rebuke with which He met His disciples
+after the Resurrection: 'O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that
+the prophets have spoken.' The Old and the New are a unity, and Christ
+and His Cross are the substance and the centre of both.
+
+II. Note here Christ and His Cross, the theme of Gospel preaching.
+
+If you will glance at your leisure over the whole context from which I
+have picked these clauses as containing its essence, you will find that
+the Apostle speaks of the things which the prophets foretold as being
+the same as 'those which are now reported unto you by them that have
+preached the Gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from
+heaven.' I must not take for granted that you are all referring to your
+Bibles, but I should like to point out, as the basis of one or two
+things that I wish to say, the remarkable variety of phrase employed in
+the text to describe the one thing. First, Peter speaks of it as
+'salvation,' then he speaks of it in the next clause as 'the grace that
+should come unto you.' Then, in the next phrase, he designates it more
+particularly as 'the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
+follow.' Now, if we put these designations together--salvation, grace,
+Christ's sufferings, the subsequent glory--we come to this, that the
+facts of Christ's life, death, resurrection, and ascension are the great
+vehicle which brings to men God's grace, that that grace has for its
+purpose and its effect man's salvation, and that these facts are the
+Gospel which Christian preachers have to proclaim.
+
+Now notice what follows from such thoughts as these. To begin with, the
+Gospel is not a speculation, is not a theology, still less a morality,
+not a declaration of principles, but a history of fact, things that were
+done on this earth of ours, and that the Apostle's Creed which is
+worked into the service of the Anglican Church is far nearer the
+primitive conception of the Gospel than are any of the more elaborate
+and doctrinal ones which have followed. For we have to begin with the
+facts that Christ lived, died, was buried, rose again from the dead ...
+ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God. Whatever
+else the Gospel is, that is the kernel and the basis of it all. Out of
+these facts will come all manner of doctrines, philosophies of religion,
+theologies, revelations about God and man. Out of them will come all
+ethics, the teaching of duty, the exhibition of a pattern of conduct,
+inspiration to follow the model that is set before us. Out of them will
+come, as I believe, guidance and light for social and economical and
+political questions and difficulties. But what we have to lay hold of,
+and what we preachers have to proclaim, is the story of the life, and
+eminently the story of the death.
+
+Why does Peter put in the very centre here 'the sufferings of Christ'?
+That suggests another thought, that amongst these facts which, taken
+together, make the Gospel, the vital part, the central and the
+indispensable part, is the story of the Cross. Now what Christ said, not
+what Christ did, not what Christ was, beautiful and helpful as all that
+is, but to begin with what Christ bore, is the fact that makes the life
+of the Gospel. And just as He is the centre of humanity, so the Cross is
+the centre of His work. Why is that? Because the deepest need of all of
+us is the need to have our sins dealt with, both as guilt and as power,
+and because nothing else in the whole story of Christ's manifestation
+deals with men's sins as the fact of His death on the Cross does,
+therefore the sacrifice and sufferings are the heart of the Gospel.
+
+And so, brethren, we have to mark that the presentation of Christian
+truth which slurs over that fact of the Sacrifice and Atonement of Jesus
+Christ, has parted with the vital power which makes the story into a
+gospel. It is no gospel to tell a man that Jesus Christ died, unless you
+go on to say He 'died for our sins according to the Scriptures.' And it
+is no gospel to talk about the beauty of His life, and the perfectness
+of His example, and the sweetness of His nature, and the depth, the
+wisdom, and the tenderness of His words, unless you can say this is 'the
+Lamb of God,' 'the Word made flesh,' 'who bare our sins, and carried our
+sicknesses and our sorrows.' Strike out from the gospel that you preach
+'the sufferings of Christ,' and you have struck out the one thing that
+will draw men's hearts, that will satisfy men's needs, that will bind
+men to Him with cords of love. 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men
+unto Me.' So, wherever you get what they call an ethical gospel which
+deals with moralities, and does not impart the power that will vitalise
+moralities, and make them into thankful service and sacrifices, in
+return for the great Sacrifice; wherever you get a gospel that falters
+in its enunciation of the sufferings of Christ, and wherever you get a
+gospel that secularises the Christian service of the Sabbath, and will
+rather discuss the things that the newspapers discuss, and the new books
+that the reviewers are talking about, and odds and ends of that sort
+that are thought to be popular and attractive, you get a gospel _minus_
+the thing that, in the Old Testament and in the New alike, stands forth
+in the centre of all. 'We preach Christ crucified'; it is not enough to
+preach Christ. Many a man does that, and might as well hold his tongue.
+'We preach Christ crucified.' And the same august Figure which loomed
+before the vision of prophets, and shines through many a weary age,
+stands before us of this generation; ay! and will stand till the end of
+the world, as the centre, the pivot of human history, the Christ who has
+died for men. The Christ that will stand in the centre of the
+development of humanity is the Christ that died on the Cross. If your
+gospel is not that, you have yet to learn the deepest secret of His
+power.
+
+III. Once more, here we have Christ and His Cross as the study of
+angels.
+
+'Which things the angels desire to look into.' Now, the word that Peter
+employs there is an unusual one in Scripture. Its force may, perhaps, be
+best conveyed by referring to one of the few instances in which it is
+employed. It is used to describe the attitude of Peter and John when
+they stooped down and looked into the sepulchre. Perhaps there may be a
+reference in Peter's mind to that incident, when he saw the 'two angels
+... sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the
+body of Jesus had lain.' Perhaps, also, there floats in his mind some
+kind of reference to the outspread wings and bended heads of the
+brooding cherubim who sat above the Mercy-seat, gazing down upon the
+miracle of love that was manifested beneath them there. But be that as
+it may, the idea conveyed is that of eager desire and fixed attention.
+
+Now I am not going to enlarge at all upon the thought that is here
+conveyed, except just to make the one remark that people have often
+said, 'Why should a race of insignificant creatures on this little globe
+of ours be so dignified in the divine procedure as that there should be
+the stupendous mystery of the Incarnation, and the Death for their
+sakes?' _Not_ for their sakes only, for the New Testament commits itself
+to the thought that whilst sinful men are the only subjects of the
+redeeming grace of Jesus Christ, other orders of creatures do benefit
+thereby, and do learn from it what else they would not have known, of
+the mystery and the miracle and the majesty of the Divine love. 'To the
+principalities and the powers in heavenly places He hath made known by
+the Church the manifold wisdom of God.' And we can understand how these
+other orders--what we call higher orders, which they may be or they may
+not--of being, learn to know God as we learn to know Him, by the
+manifestation of Himself in His acts, and how the crown of all
+manifestations consists in this, that He visits the sinful sons of men,
+and by His own dear Son brings them back again. The elder brethren in
+the Father's house do not grudge the ring and the robe given to the
+prodigals; rather they learn therein more than they knew before of the
+loving-kindness of God.
+
+Now all that is nowadays ignored, and it is not fashionable to speak
+about the interest of angels in the success of Redemption, and a good
+many 'advanced' Christians do not believe in angels at all, because they
+'cannot verify' the doctrine. I, for my part, accept the teaching, which
+seems to me to be a great deal more reasonable than to suppose that the
+rest of the universe is void of creatures that can praise and love and
+know God. I accept the teaching, and think that Peter was, perhaps, not
+a dreamer when he said, 'The angels desire to look into these things.'
+They do not share in the blessings of redemption, but they can behold
+what they do not themselves experience. The Seer in the Revelation was
+not mistaken, when he believed that he heard redeemed men leading the
+chorus to Him that had redeemed them by His blood out of all nations,
+and then heard the thunderous echo from an innumerable host of angels
+who could not say 'Thou hast redeemed us,' but who could bring praise
+and glory to Him because He had redeemed men.
+
+IV. And now my last point is that Christ and His Cross is, by the
+Gospel, offered to each of us.
+
+Notice how emphatically in this context the Apostle gathers together his
+wider thoughts, and focusses them into a point. 'The prophets have
+inquired and searched diligently ... of the grace that should come to
+_you_.... To them it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but _unto
+us_ they did minister the things, which are now reported _unto you_ by
+them that have preached the Gospel _unto you_.' And so he would take his
+wide thoughts, as it were, and gather all together, to a point, and
+press the point against each man's heart.
+
+Dear brethren, these wide views are of no avail to us unless we realise
+the individual relation which Christ bears to each one of us. He bears a
+relation, as I have been saying, to all humanity. All the ages belong to
+Him. 'He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.' From His
+Cross there flash up rays of light into the heavens above, and out over
+the whole rolling series of the centuries, from the beginning to the
+end. Yes; but from His Cross there comes a beam straight to your heart,
+and the Christ whom angels desire to look into, of whom prophets
+prophesy and Apostles proclaim His advent, who is the Lord of all the
+ages, and the Lover of mankind, comes to thee and says 'I am thy
+Saviour,' and to thee this wide message is brought. Every eye has the
+whole sunshine, and each soul may have the whole Christ. His universal
+relations in time and space matter little to you, unless He has a
+particular relation to yourself.
+
+And He will never have that in its atoning power, unless you do for
+yourself and by yourself the most individual and solitary act that a
+human soul can do, and that is, lay your hand on the head of 'the Lamb
+... that takes away the sin of the world,' and put your sins there. You
+must begin with 'my Christ,' which you can do only by personal faith.
+And then afterwards you can come to 'our Christ,' the Christ of all the
+worlds, the Christ of all the ages. Go to Him by yourself. You must do
+it as if there were not any other beings in the whole universe but you
+two, Jesus and you. And when you have so gone, then you will find that
+you have 'come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of
+angels, to the general assembly, and Church of the first born.' Christ
+and His Cross are the substance of prophecy, the theme of the Gospel,
+the study of the angels. What are they to me?
+
+
+
+
+HOPE PERFECTLY
+
+     'Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to
+      the end, for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the
+      revelation of Jesus Christ.'--1 Peter i. 13.
+
+
+Christianity has transformed hope, and given it a new importance, by
+opening to it a new world to move in, and supplying to it new guarantees
+to rest on. There is something very remarkable in the prominence given
+to hope in the New Testament, and in the power ascribed to it to order a
+noble life. Paul goes so far as to say that we are saved by it. To a
+Christian it is no longer a pleasant dream, which may be all an
+illusion, indulgence in which is pretty sure to sap a man's force, but
+it is a certain anticipation of certainties, the effect of which will be
+increased energy and purity. So our Apostle, having in the preceding
+context in effect summed up the whole Gospel, bases upon that summary a
+series of exhortations, the transition to which is marked by the
+'wherefore' at the beginning of my text. The application of that word is
+to be extended, so as to include all that has preceded in the letter,
+and there follows a series of practical advices, the first of which, the
+grace or virtue which he puts in the forefront of everything, is not
+what you might have expected, but it is 'hope perfectly.'
+
+I may just remark, before going further, in reference to the language of
+my text, that, accurately translated, the two exhortations which precede
+that to hope are subsidiary to it, for we ought to read, 'Wherefore,
+girding up the loins of your mind, and being sober, hope.' That is to
+say, these two are preliminaries, or conditions, or means by which the
+desired perfecting of the Christian hope is to be sought and attained.
+
+Another preliminary remark which I must make is that what is enjoined
+here has not reference to the duration but to the quality of the
+Christian hope. It is not 'to the end,' but, as the Margin of the
+Authorised and the Revised Version concurs in saying, it is 'hope
+perfectly.'
+
+So, then, there are three things here--the object, the duty, and the
+cultivation of Christian hope. Let us take these three things in order.
+
+I. The object of the Christian hope.
+
+Now, that is stated, in somewhat remarkable language, as 'the grace that
+is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.' We
+generally use that word 'grace' with a restricted signification to the
+gifts of God to men here on earth. It is the earnest of the inheritance,
+rather than its fulness. But here it is quite obvious that by the
+expression the Apostle means the very same thing as he has previously
+designated in the preceding context by three different phrases--'an
+inheritance incorruptible and undefiled,' 'praise and honour and glory
+at the revelation of Jesus Christ,' and 'the end of your faith, even the
+salvation of your souls.' The 'grace' is not contrasted with the
+'glory,' but is another name for the glory. It is not the earnest of the
+inheritance, but it is the inheritance itself. It is not the means
+towards attaining the progressive and finally complete 'salvation of
+your souls,' but it is that complete salvation in all its fulness.
+
+Now, that is an unusual use of the word, but that it should be employed
+here, as describing the future great object of the Christian hope,
+suggests two or three thoughts. One is that that ultimate blessedness,
+with all its dim, nebulous glories, which can only be resolved into
+their separate stars, when we are millions of leagues nearer to its
+lustre, is like the faintest glimmer of a new and better life in a soul
+here on earth, purely and solely the result of the undeserved,
+condescending love of God that stoops to sinful men, and instead of
+retribution bestows upon them a heaven. The grace that saved us at
+first, the grace that comes to us, filtered in drops during our earthly
+experience, is poured upon us in a flood at last. And the brightest
+glory of heaven is as much a manifestation of the Divine grace as the
+first rudimentary germs of a better life now and here. The foundation,
+the courses of the building, the glittering pinnacle on the summit,
+with its golden spire reaching still higher into the blue, is all the
+work of the same unmerited, stooping, pardoning love. Glory is grace,
+and Heaven is the result of God's pardoning mercy.
+
+There is another suggestion here to be made, springing from this
+eloquent use of this term, and that is not merely the identity of the
+source of the Christian experience upon earth and in the future, but the
+identity of that Christian experience itself in regard of its essential
+character. If I may so say, it is all of a piece, homogeneous, and of
+one web. The robe is without seam, woven throughout of the same thread.
+The life of the humblest Christian, the most imperfect Christian, the
+most infantile Christian, the most ignorant Christian here on earth, has
+for its essential characteristics the very same things as the lives of
+the strong spirits that move in light around the Throne, and receive
+into their expanding nature the ever-increasing fulness of the glory of
+the Lord. Grace here is glory in the bud; glory yonder is grace in the
+fruit.
+
+But there is still further to be noticed another great thought that
+comes out of this remarkable language. The words of my text, literally
+rendered, are 'the grace that is being brought unto you.' Now, there
+have been many explanations of that remarkable phrase, which I think is
+not altogether exhausted by, nor quite equivalent to, that which
+represents it in our version--viz. 'to be brought unto you.' That
+relegates it all into the future; but in Peter's conception it is, in
+some sense, in the present. It is 'being brought.' What does that mean?
+There are far-off stars in the sky, the beams from which have set out
+from their home of light millenniums since, and have been rushing
+through the waste places of the universe since long before men were,
+and they have not reached our eyes yet. But they are on the road. And so
+in Peter's conception, the apocalypse of glory, which is the crowning
+manifestation of grace, is rushing towards us through the ages, through
+the spheres, and it will be here some day, and the beams will strike
+upon our faces, and make them glow with its light. So certain is the
+arrival of the grace that the Apostle deals with it as already on its
+way. The great thing on which the Christian hope fastens is no
+'peradventure,' but a good which has already begun to journey towards
+us.
+
+Again, there is another thought still to be suggested, and that is, the
+revelation of Jesus Christ is the coming to His children of this grace
+which is glory, of this glory which is grace. For mark how the Apostle
+says, 'the grace which is being brought to you in the revelation of
+Jesus Christ.' And that revelation to which he here refers is not the
+past one, in His incarnate life upon earth, but it is the future one, to
+which the hope of the faithful Church ought ever to be steadfastly
+turned, the correlated truth to that other one on which its faith rests.
+On these two great pillars, rising like columns on either side of the
+gulf of Time, 'He has come,' 'He will come,' the bridge is suspended by
+which we may safely pass over the foaming torrent that else would
+swallow us up. The revelation in the past cries out for the revelation
+in the future. The Cross demands the Throne. That He has come once, a
+sacrifice for sin, stands incomplete, like some building left unfinished
+with rugged stones protruding which prophesy an addition at a future
+day; unless you can add 'unto them that look for Him will He appear the
+second time without sin unto salvation.' In that revelation of Jesus
+Christ His children shall find the glory-grace which is the object of
+their hope.
+
+So say all the New Testament writers. 'When Christ, who is our life,
+shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory' says Paul.
+'The grace that is to be brought unto you in the revelation of Jesus
+Christ,' chimes in Peter. And John completes the trio with his 'We know
+that when He shall appear we shall be like Him.' These three things,
+brethren--with Christ, glory with Him, likeness to Him--are all that we
+know, and blessed be God! all that we need to know, of that dim future.
+And the more we confine ourselves to these triple great certainties, and
+sweep aside all subordinate matters, which are concealed partly because
+they could not be revealed, and partly because they would not help us if
+we knew them, the better for the simplicity and the power and the
+certainty of our hope. The object of Christian hope is Christ, in His
+revelation, in His presence, in His communication to us for glory, in
+His assimilating of us to Himself.
+
+    'It is enough that Christ knows all,
+    And we shall be with Him.'
+
+'The grace that is being brought unto you in the revelation of Jesus
+Christ.'
+
+II. And now notice the duty of the Christian hope.
+
+Hope a duty? That strikes one as somewhat strange. I very much doubt
+whether the ordinary run of good people do recognise it as being as
+imperative a duty for them to cultivate hope as to cultivate any other
+Christian excellence or virtue. For one man that sets himself
+deliberately and consciously to brighten up, and to make more operative
+in his daily life, the hope of future blessedness, you will find a
+hundred that set themselves to other kinds of perfecting of their
+Christian character. And yet, surely, there do not need any words to
+enforce the fact that this hope full of immortality is no mere luxury
+which a Christian man may add to the plain fare of daily duty or leave
+untasted according as he likes, but that it is an indispensable element
+in all vigorous and life-dominating Christian experience.
+
+I do not need to dwell upon that, except just to suggest that such a
+vividness and continuity of calm anticipation of a certain good beyond
+the grave is one of the strongest of all motives to the general
+robustness and efficacy of a Christian life. People used to say a few
+years ago, a great deal more than they do now, that the Christian
+expectation of Heaven was apt to weaken energy upon earth, and they used
+to sneer at us, and talk about our 'other worldliness' as if it were a
+kind of weakness and defect attached to the Christian experience. They
+have pretty well given that up now. Anti-Christian sarcasm, like
+everything else, has its fashions, and other words of reproach and
+contumely have now taken the place of that. The plain fact is that no
+man sees the greatness of the present, unless he regards it as being the
+vestibule of the future, and that this present life is unintelligible
+and insignificant unless beyond it, and led up to by it, and shaped
+through it, there lies the eternal life beyond. The low flat plain is
+dreary and desolate, featureless and melancholy, when the sky above it
+is filled with clouds. But sweep away the cloud-rack, and let the blue
+arch itself above the brown moorland, and all glows into lustre, and
+every undulation is brought out, and tiny shy forms of beauty are found
+in every corner. And so, if you drape Heaven with the clouds and mists
+born of indifference and worldliness, the world becomes mean, but if
+you dissipate the cloud and unveil heaven, earth is greatened. If the
+hope of the grave that is to be brought onto you at the revelation of
+Jesus Christ shines out above all the flatness of earth, then life
+becomes solemn, noble, worthy of, demanding and rewarding, our most
+strenuous efforts. No man can, and no man will, strike such effectual
+blows on things present as the man, the strength of whose arm is derived
+from the conviction that every stroke of the hammer on things present is
+shaping that which will abide with him for ever.
+
+My text not only enjoins this hope as a duty, but also enjoins the
+perfection of it as being a thing to be aimed at by all Christian
+people. What is the perfection of hope? Two qualities, certainty and
+continuity. Certainty; the definition of earthly hope is an anticipation
+of good less than certain, and so, in all the operations of this great
+faculty, which are limited within the range of earth, you get blended as
+an indistinguishable throng, 'hopes and fears that kindle hope,' and
+that too often kill it. But the Christian has a certain anticipation of
+certain good, and to him memory may be no more fixed than hope, and the
+past no more unalterable and uncertain than the future. The motto of our
+hope is not the 'perhaps,' which is the most that it can say when it
+speaks the tongue of earth, but the 'verily! verily!' which comes to its
+enfranchised lips when it speaks the tongue of Heaven. Your hope,
+Christian man, should not be the tremulous thing that it often is, which
+expresses itself in phrases like 'Well! I do not know, but I tremblingly
+hope,' but it should say, 'I know and am sure of the rest that
+remaineth, not because of what I am, but because of what He is.'
+
+Another element in the perfection of hope is its continuity. That hits
+home to us all, does it not? Sometimes in calm weather we catch a sight
+of the gleaming battlements of 'the City which hath foundations,' away
+across the sea, and then mists and driving storms come up and hide it.
+There is a great mountain in Central Africa which if a man wishes to see
+he must seize a fortunate hour in the early morning, and for all the
+rest of the day it is swathed in clouds, invisible. Is that like your
+hope, Christian man and woman, gleaming out now and then, and then again
+swallowed up in the darkness? Brethren! these two things, certainty and
+continuity, are possible for us. Alas! that they are so seldom enjoyed
+by us.
+
+III. And now one last word. My text speaks about the discipline or
+cultivation of this Christian hope.
+
+It prescribes two things as auxiliary thereto. The way to cultivate the
+perfect hope which alone corresponds to the gift of God is 'girding up
+the loins of your mind, and being sober.' Of course, there is here one
+of the very few reminiscences that we have in the Epistles of the
+_ipsissima verba_ of our Lord. Peter is evidently referring to our
+Lord's commandment to have 'the loins girt and the lamps burning, and ye
+yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord.' I do not need to
+remind you of the Eastern dress that makes the metaphor remarkably
+significant, the loose robes that tangle a man's feet when he runs, that
+need to be girded up and belted tight around his waist, as preliminary
+to all travel or toil of any kind. The metaphor is the same as that in
+our colloquial speech when we talk about a man 'pulling himself
+together.' Just as an English workman will draw his belt a hole tighter
+when he has some special task to do, so Peter says to us, make a
+definite effort, with resolute bracing up and concentration of all your
+powers, or you will never see the grace that is hurrying towards you
+through the centuries. There are abundance of loose, slack-braced people
+up and down the world, in all departments, and they never come to any
+good. It is a shame that any man should have his thoughts so loosely
+girt and vagrant as that any briar by the roadside can catch them and
+hinder his advance. But it is a tenfold shame for Christian people, with
+such an object to gaze upon, that they should let their minds be
+dissipated all over the trivialities of Time, and not gather them
+together and project them, as I may say, with all their force towards
+the sovereign realities of Eternity. A sixpence held close to your eye
+will blot out the sun, and the trifles of earth close to us will prevent
+us from realising the things which neither sight, nor experience, nor
+testimony reveal to us, unless with clenched teeth, so to speak, we make
+a dogged effort to keep them in mind.
+
+The other preliminary and condition is 'being sober,' which of course
+you have to extend to its widest possible signification, implying not
+merely abstinence from, or moderate use of, intoxicants, or material
+good for the appetites, but also the withdrawing of one's self sometimes
+wholly from, and always restraining one's self in the use of, the
+present and the material. A man has only a given definite quantity of
+emotion and interest to expend, and if he flings it all away on the
+world he has none left for Heaven. He will be like the miller that
+spoils some fair river, by diverting its waters into his own sluice, in
+order that he may grind some corn. If you have the faintest film of dust
+on the glass of the telescope, or on its mirror, if it is a reflecting
+one, you will not see the constellations in the heavens; and if we have
+drawn over our spirits the film of earthly absorption, all these bright
+glories above will, so far as we are concerned, cease to be.
+
+So, brethren, there is a solemn responsibility laid upon us by the gift
+of that great faculty of looking before and after. What did God make you
+and me capable of anticipating the future for? That we might let our
+hopes run along the low levels, or that we might elevate them and twine
+them round the very pillars of God's Throne; which? I do not find fault
+with you because you hope, but because you hope so meanly, and about
+such trivial and transitory things. I remember I once saw a sea-bird
+kept in a garden, confined within high walls, and with clipped wings,
+set to pick up grubs and insects. It ought to have been away out,
+hovering over the free ocean, or soaring with sunlit wing to a height
+where earth became a speck, and all its noises were hushed. That is what
+some of you are doing with your hope, degrading it to earth instead of
+letting it rise to God; enter within the veil, and gaze upon the glory
+of the 'inheritance incorruptible and undefiled.'
+
+
+
+
+THE FAMILY LIKENESS
+
+     'As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy, in all manner
+      of conversation.'--1 Peter i. 15.
+
+
+That is the sum of religion--an all-comprehensive precept which includes
+a great deal more than the world's morality, and which changes the
+coldness of that into something blessed, by referring all our purity to
+the Lord that called us. One may well wonder where a Galilean fisherman
+got the impulse that lifted him to such a height; one may well wonder
+that he ventured to address such wide, absolute commandments to the
+handful of people just dragged from the very slough and filth of
+heathenism to whom he spoke. But he had dwelt with Christ, and they had
+Christ in their hearts. So for him to command and for them to obey, and
+to aim after even so wide and wonderful an attainment as perfecting like
+God's was the most natural thing in the world. 'Be ye holy as He that
+hath called you is holy, and that in all manner of conversation.' The
+maximum of possible attainment, the minimum of imperative duty!
+
+So, then, there are three things here--the pattern, the field, and the
+inspiration or motive of holiness.
+
+I. The Pattern of Holiness.
+
+'As He that hath called you is holy.' God's holiness is the very
+attribute which seems to separate Him most from the creatures; for its
+deepest meaning is His majestic and Divine elevation above all that is
+creatural. But here, of course, the idea conveyed by the word is not
+that, if I may so say, metaphysical one, but the purely moral one. The
+holiness of God which is capable of imitation by us is His separation
+from all impurity. There is a side of His holiness which separates Him
+from all the creatures, to which we can only look up, or bow with our
+faces in the dust; but there is a side of His holiness which, wonderful
+as it is, and high above all our present attainment as it is, yet is not
+higher than the possibilities which His indwelling Spirit puts within
+our reach, nor beyond the bounds of the duty that presses upon us all.
+'As He which hath called you is holy.' Absolute and utter purity is His
+holiness, and that is the pattern for us.
+
+Religion is imitation. The truest form of worship is to copy. All
+through heathenism you find that principle working. 'They that make them
+are like unto them.' Why are heathen nations so besotted and sunken and
+obstinate in their foulnesses? Because their gods are their examples,
+and they, first of all, make the gods after the pattern of their own
+evil imaginations, and then the evil imaginations, deified, react upon
+the maker and make him tenfold more a child of hell than themselves.
+Worship is imitation, and there is no religion which does not
+necessarily involve the copying of the example or the pattern of that
+Being before whom we bow. For religion is but love and reverence in the
+superlative degree, and the natural operation of love is to copy, and
+the natural operation of reverence is the same. So that the old Mosaic
+law, 'Be ye holy as I am holy,' went to the very heart of religion. And
+the New Testament form of it, as Paul puts it in a very bold word, 'Be
+ye _imitators_ of God, as beloved children,' sets its seal on the same
+thought that we are religious in the proportion in which we are
+consciously copying and aspiring after God.
+
+But then, says somebody or other, 'it is not possible.' Well, if it were
+not possible, try it all the same. For in this world it is aim and not
+attainment that makes the noble life; and it is better to shoot at the
+stars, even though your arrow never reaches them, than to fire it along
+the low levels of ordinary life. I do not see that however the
+unattainableness of the model may be demonstrated, that has anything to
+do with the duty of imitation. Because, though absolute conformity
+running throughout the whole of a life is not possible here on earth, we
+know that in each individual instance in which we came short of
+conformity the fault was ours, and it might have been otherwise. Instead
+of bewildering ourselves with questions about 'unattainable' or
+'attainable,' suppose we asked, at each failure, 'Why did I not copy God
+_then_; was it because I could not, or because I would not?' The answer
+would come plain enough to knock all that sophisticated nonsense out of
+our heads, and to make us feel that the law which puts an unattainable
+ideal before the Christian as his duty is an intensely practical one,
+and may be reduced to practice at each step in his career. Imitation of
+the Father, and to be perfect, 'as our Father in heaven is perfect,' is
+the elementary and the ultimate commandment of all Christian morality.
+'Be ye holy as He that hath called you is holy.'
+
+Then let me remind you that the unattainableness is by no means so
+demonstrable as some people seem to think. A very tiny circle may have
+the same centre as one that reaches beyond the suburbs of the universe,
+and holds all stars and systems within its great round. And the tiniest
+circle will have the same geometrical laws applied to it as the
+greatest. The difference between finite and infinite has nothing to do
+with the possibility of our becoming like God, if we believe that 'in
+the image of God created He him'; and that men who have been not only
+made by original creation in the Divine image, but have been born again
+by the incorruptible seed of the Word into a kindred life with His, and
+derived from Him, can surely grow like what they have got, and unfold
+into actually possessed and achieved resemblance to their Father the
+kindred life that is poured into their veins.
+
+So every way it is better indefinitely to approximate to that great
+likeness, though with many flaws and failures, than to say it cannot be
+reached, and so I will content myself down here, in my sins and my
+meannesses. No! dear brethren, 'we are saved by hope,' and one prime
+condition of growth in nobleness is to believe it possible that, by His
+blessing we may be like Him here on earth in the measure of our
+perception of His beauty and reception of His grace.
+
+II. Again, notice the field of this Godlike holiness.
+
+'In all manner of conversation.' Of course I do not need to remind you
+that the word 'conversation' does not mean _talk_, but _conduct_; that
+it applies to the whole of the outward life. Peter says that every part
+of the Christian man's activity is to be the field on which his
+possession of the holiness derived from and like God's is to be
+exhibited. It is to be seen in all common life. Here is no cloistered
+and ascetic holiness which tabooes large provinces of every man's
+experience, and says 'we must not go in there, for fear of losing our
+purity,' but rather wherever Christ has trod before we can go. That is a
+safe guide, and whatever God has appointed there we can go and that we
+can do. 'On the bells of the horses shall be written _Holiness to the
+Lord_.' The horse-bells that make merry music on their bridles are not
+very sacred things, but they bear the same inscription as flamed on the
+front of the high priest's mitre; and the bowls in every house in
+Jerusalem, as the prophet says, shall bear the same inscription that was
+written on the sacrificial vessels, and all shall belong to Him.
+
+Only, whilst thus we maintain the possibility of exhibiting Godlike
+holiness in all the dusty fields of common life, let us remember the
+other side.
+
+In this day there is very little need to preach against an ascetic
+Christianity. There has been enough said of late years about a Christian
+man being entitled to go into all fields of occupation and interest, and
+there to live his Christianity. I think the time is about come for a
+caution or two to be dropped on the other side, 'Blessed is he that
+condemneth not himself in the thing which he alloweth.' Apply this
+commandment vigorously and honestly to trade, to recreation--especially
+to recreation--to social engagements, to the choice of companions, to
+the exercise of tastes. Ask yourselves 'Can I write _Holiness to the
+Lord_ on them?' If not, do not have anything to do with them. I wonder
+what the managers of theatres and music-halls would say if anybody
+proposed that motto to be put upon the curtain for the spectators to
+read before it is drawn up for the play. Do you think it would fit?
+Don't you, Christian men and women, don't you go into places where it
+would not fit. And remember that 'in all manner of conversation' has two
+sides to it, one declaring the possibility of sanctifying every creature
+of God, and one declaring the impossibility of a Christian man going,
+without dreadful danger and certain damage, into places where he cannot
+carry that consecration and purity with him.
+
+Again the field is all trivial things. 'In all manner of conversation.'
+There is nothing that grows so low but that this scythe will travel near
+enough to the ground to harvest it. There is nothing so minute but it is
+big enough to mirror the holiness of God. The tiniest grain of mica,
+upon the face of the hill, is large enough to flash back a beam; and the
+smallest thing we can do is big enough to hold the bright light of
+holiness. 'All'! Ah! If our likeness to God does not show itself in
+trifles, what in the name of common sense is there left for it to show
+itself in? For our lives are all made up of trifles. The great things
+come three or four of them in the seventy years; the little ones come
+every time the clock ticks. And as they say, 'Take care of the pence,
+and the pounds will take care of themselves.' If we keep the little
+things rigidly under the dominion of this principle, no doubt the big
+things will fall under it too, when they emerge. And if we do not--as
+the old Jewish book says:--'He that despiseth little things shall fall
+by little and little.' Whosoever has not a Christianity that sanctifies
+the trifles has a Christianity that will not sanctify the crises of his
+life. So, dear brother, this motto is to be written over every portal
+through which you and I go; and whatsoever we can put our hands to, in
+it we may magnify and manifest the holiness of God.
+
+III. Now, lastly, note the motive or inspiration of holiness.
+
+The language of my text might read like 'the Holy One who hath called
+you.' Peter would stir his hearers to the emulation of the Divine
+holiness by that thought of the bond that unites Him and them. 'He hath
+called you.' In which word, I suppose, he includes the whole sum of the
+Divine operations which have resulted in the placing of each of his
+auditors within the circle of the Christian community as the subjects of
+Christ's grace, and not only the one definite act to which the
+theologians attach the name of 'calling.' In the briefest possible way
+we may put the motive thus--the inspiration of imitation is to be found
+in the contemplation of the gifts of God. What He has said and done to
+me, calling me out of my darkness and alienation and lavishing the
+tokens of His love, the voice of His beseechings, the monitions of His
+Spirit, the message of His Son, the Incarnate Word, and invitation of
+God--all these things are included in His call. And all of them are the
+reasons why, bound by thankfulness, overcome by his forbearance,
+responding to His entreaties, and glued to Him by the strength of the
+hand that holds us, and the tenacity of His love, we should strive to
+'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called.'
+
+And not only so, but in the thought of the Divine calling there lies a
+fountain of inspiration when we remember the purpose of the calling. As
+Paul puts it in one of his letters: 'God has not called us to
+uncleanness but to holiness.' That to which He summons, or invites (for
+you may use either word), is holiness like His own. That is the crown of
+all His purposes for men, the great goal and blessed home to which He
+would lead us all.
+
+And so, if in addition to the fact of His 'gift and calling' and all
+that is included within it, if in addition to the purpose of that
+calling we further think of the relation between us and Him which
+results from it, so as that we, as the next verse says, call Him who
+hath called us, 'Our Father,' then the motive becomes deeper and more
+blessed still. Shall we not try to be like the Father of our spirits,
+and seek for His grace, to bear the likeness of sons?
+
+My text speaks only of effort, let us not forget that the truest way to
+be partakers of His holiness is to open our hearts for the entrance of
+the Spirit of His Son, and possessing that--having these promises and
+that great fulfilment of them--then to perfect holiness in the fear and
+love of the Lord.
+
+
+
+
+FATHER AND JUDGE
+
+     'If ye call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons
+      judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your
+      sojourning here in fear.'--1 Peter i. 17.
+
+
+'If ye call on Him as Father,' when ye pray, say, 'Our Father which art
+in heaven.' One can scarcely help supposing that the Apostle is here, as
+in several other places in his letter, alluding to words that are
+stamped ineffaceably upon his memory, because they had dropped from
+Christ's lips. At all events, whether there is here a distinct allusion
+to what we call the Lord's Prayer or no, it is here recognised as the
+universal characteristic of Christian people that their prayers are
+addressed to God in the character of Father. So that we may say that
+there is no Christianity which does not recognise and rejoice in
+appealing to the paternal relationship.
+
+But, then, I suppose in Peter's days, as in our days, there were people
+that so fell in love with one aspect of the Divine nature that they had
+no eyes for any other; and who so magnified the thought of the Father
+that they forgot the thought of the Judge. That error has been committed
+over and over again in all ages, so that the Church as a whole, one may
+say, has gone swaying from one extreme to the other, and has rent these
+two conceptions widely apart, and sometimes has been foolish enough to
+pit them against each other instead of doing as Peter does here,
+braiding them together as both conspiring to one result, the production
+in the Christian heart of a wholesome awe. If ye call on Him as Father
+'who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man's
+work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear.'
+
+So then, look at this twofold aspect of God's character.
+
+Both these conceptions ought to be present, flamingly and vividly,
+burning there before him, to every Christian man. 'Ye call Him Father,'
+but the Father is the Judge. True, the Judge is Father, but Peter
+reminds us that whatever blessed truths may be hived in that great Name
+of Father, to be drawn thence by devout meditation and filial love,
+there is not included in it the thought of weak-minded indulgence to His
+children, in any of their sins, nor any unlikelihood of inflicting penal
+consequences on a rebellious child. 'Father' does not exclude 'Judge,'
+'and without respect of persons He judg_eth_.'
+
+'Without respect of persons'--the word is a somewhat unusual New
+Testament one, but it has special appropriateness and emphasis on
+Peter's lips. Do you remember who it was that said, and on what occasion
+he said it: 'Now I perceive that God is no respecter of persons'? It was
+Peter when he had learned the lesson on the housetop at Joppa, looking
+out over the Mediterranean, and had it enforced by Cornelius' message.
+The great thought that had blazed upon him as a new discovery on that
+never-be-forgotten occasion, comes before him again, and this unfamiliar
+word comes with it, and he says, 'without respect of persons He judges.'
+Mountains are elevated, valleys are depressed and sunken, but I fancy
+that the difference between the top of Mount Everest and the gorge
+through which the Jordan runs would scarcely be perceptible if you were
+standing on the sun. Thus, 'without respect of persons,' great men and
+little, rich men and poor, educated men and illiterate, people that
+perch themselves on their little stools and think themselves high above
+their fellows: they are all on one dead level in the eye of the Judge.
+And this question is as to the quality of the work and not as to the
+dignity of the doer. 'Without respect of persons' implies universality
+as well as impartiality. If a Christian man has been ever so near God,
+and then goes away from Him, he is judged notwithstanding his past
+nearness. And if a poor soul, all crusted over with his sins and leprous
+with the foulness of long-standing iniquity, comes to God and asks for
+pardon, he is judged according to his penitence, 'without respect of
+persons.' That great hand holds an even balance. And though the
+strictness of the judicial process may have its solemn and its awful
+aspect, it has also its blessed and its comforting one.
+
+Now, do not run away with the notion that the Apostle is speaking here
+of that great White Throne and the future judgment that for many of us
+lies, inoperative on our creeds, on the other side of the great cleft of
+death. That is a solemn thought, but it is not Peter's thought here. If
+any of you can refer to the original, you will see that even more
+strongly than in our English version, though quite sufficiently strongly
+there, the conception is brought out of a continuous Divine judgment
+running along, all through a man's life, side by side with his work. The
+judgment here meant is not all clotted together, as it were, in that
+final act of judgment, leaving the previous life without it, but it runs
+all through the ages, all through each man's days. I beseech you to
+ponder that thought, that at each moment of each of our lives an
+estimate of the moral character of each of our deeds is present to the
+Divine mind.
+
+'Of course we believe that,' you say. 'That is commonplace; not worth
+talking about.' Ah! but because we believe it, as of course, we slip out
+of thinking about it and letting it affect our lives. And what I desire
+to do for you, dear friends, and for myself, is just to put emphasis on
+the one half of that little word 'judgeth' and ask you to take its three
+last letters and lay them on your minds. Do we feel that, moment by
+moment, these little spurs of bad temper, these little gusts of
+worldliness, that tiny, evanescent sting of pride and devildom which has
+passed across or been fixed in our minds, are all present to God, and
+that He has judged them already, in the double sense that He has
+appraised their value and estimated their bearing upon our characters,
+and that He has set in motion some of the consequences which we shall
+have to reap?
+
+Oh! one sometimes wishes that people did not so much believe in a future
+judgment, in so far as it obscures to them the solemn thought of a
+present and a continuous one. 'Verily, there is a God that _judgeth_ in
+the earth,' and, of course, all these provisional decisions, which are
+like the documents that in Scotch law are said to 'precognosce the
+case,' are all laid away in the archives of heaven, and will be
+produced, docketed and in order, at the last for each of us. Christian
+people sometimes abuse the doctrine of justification by faith as if it
+meant that Christians at the last were not to be judged. But they are,
+and there is such a thing as 'salvation yet so as by fire,' and such a
+thing as salvation in fulness. Do not let filial confidence drive out
+legitimate fear.
+
+He 'judges according to every man's work.' I do not think it is
+extravagant attention to niceties to ask you to notice that the Apostle
+does not say 'works,' but 'work'; as if all the separate actions were
+gathered into a great whole, as indeed they are, because they are all
+the products of one mind and character. The trend and drift, so to
+speak, of our life, rather than its isolated actions and the underlying
+motives, in their solemn totality and unity, these are the materials of
+this Divine judgment.
+
+Now, let me say a word about the disposition which the Apostle enjoins
+upon us in the view of these facts.
+
+The Judge is the Father, the Father is the Judge. The one statement
+proclaims the merciful, compassionate, paternal judgment, the other the
+judicial Fatherhood. And what comes from the combination of these two
+ideas, which thus modify and illuminate one another? 'Pass the time of
+your sojourning here in fear.' What a descent that sounds from the
+earlier verses of the letter: 'In whom, though now ye see Him not, yet
+believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving
+the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.' Down from
+those heights of 'joy unspeakable,' and 'already glorified,' the apostle
+drops plump into _this_ dungeon: 'Pass the time of your sojourning here
+in fear.' Of course, I need not remind you that the 'fear' here is not
+the 'fear which hath torment'; in fact, I do not think that it is a fear
+that refers to God at all. It is not a sentiment or emotion of which God
+is the object. It is not the reverent awe which often appears in
+Scripture as 'the fear of God,' which is a kind of shorthand expression
+for all modes of devout sentiment and emotion; but it is a fear, knowing
+our own weakness and the strong temptations that are round us, of
+falling into sin. That is the one thing to be afraid of in this world.
+If a man rightly understood what he is here for, then the only thing
+that he would be terrified for would be that he should miss the purpose
+of his being here and lose his hold of God thereby. There is nothing
+else worth being afraid of, but that _is_ worth being afraid of. It is
+not slavish dread, nor is it cowardice, but the well-grounded emotion of
+men that know themselves too well to be confident and know the world too
+well to be daring and presumptuous.
+
+Don't you think that Peter had had a pretty rough experience in his life
+that had taught him the wisdom of such an exhortation? And does it not
+strike you as very beautiful that it should come, of all people in the
+world, from his lips? The man that had said, 'Though all should forsake
+Thee, yet will not I.' 'Why cannot I follow Thee now?' 'Bid me come to
+Thee on the water.' 'This be far from Thee, Lord, it shall not be unto
+Thee'--the man that had whipped out his sword in the garden, in a spasm
+of foolish affection, now, in his quiet old age, when he has learnt the
+lesson of failures and follies and sins and repentance, says in effect:
+'Remember me, and do not you be presumptuous.' 'Pass the time of your
+sojourning here in fear.' 'If I had known myself a little better, and
+been a little more afraid of myself, I should not have made such a fool
+of myself or such shipwreck of my faithfulness.'
+
+Dear friends, no mature Christian is so advanced as that he does not
+need this reminder, and no Christian novice is so feeble as that,
+keeping obedient to this precept, he will not be victorious over all his
+evils. The strongest needs to fear; the weakest, fearing, is safe. For
+such fearfulness is indispensable to safety. It is all very well to go
+along with sail extended and a careless look-out. But if, for instance,
+a captain keeps such when he is making the mouth of the Red Sea where
+there are a narrow channel and jagged rocks and a strong current, if he
+has not every man at his quarters and everything ready to let go and
+stop in a moment, he will be sure to be on the reefs before he has tried
+the experiment often. And the only safety for any of us is ever to be on
+the watch, and to dread our own weakness. 'Blessed is the man that
+feareth always.'
+
+Such carefulness over conduct and heart is fully compatible with all the
+blessed emotions to which it seems at first antagonistic. There is no
+discord between the phrase that I have quoted about 'joy unspeakable and
+full of glory,' and this temper, but rather the two help one another.
+And such blended confidence and fear are the parents of courage. The man
+that is afraid that he will do wrong and so hurt himself and grieve his
+Saviour, is the man that will never be afraid of anything else. Martyrs
+have gone to the stake 'fearing not them that kill the body, and after
+that have no more that they can do,' because they were so afraid to sin
+against God that they were not afraid to die rather than to do it. And
+that is the temper that you and I should have. Let that one fear, like
+Moses' rod, swallow up all the other serpents and make our hearts
+impervious to any other dread.
+
+'Pass the time of your _sojourning_.' You do not live in your own
+country, you are in an alien land. You are passing through it. Troops on
+the march in an enemy's country, unless they are led by an idiot, will
+send out clouds of scouts in front and on the wings to give timeous
+warning of any attempted assault. If we cheerily and carelessly go
+through this world as if we were marching in a land where there were no
+foes, there is nothing before us but defeat at the last. Only let us
+remember that sleepless watchfulness is needed only in this time of
+sojourning, and that when we get to our own country there is no need
+for such patrols and advance guards and rearguards and men on the flank
+as were essential when we were on the march. People that grow exotic
+plants here in England keep them in glass houses. But when they are
+taken to their native soil the glass would be an impertinence. As long
+as we are here we have to wear our armour, but when we get yonder the
+armour can safely be put off and the white robes that had to be tucked
+up under it lest they should be soiled by the muddy ways can be let
+down, for they will gather no pollution from the golden streets. The
+gates of that city do not need to be shut, day nor night. For when sin
+has ceased and our liability to yield to temptation has been exchanged
+for fixed adhesion to the Lord Himself, then, and not till then, is it
+safe to put aside the armour of godly fear and to walk, unguarded and
+unarmed, in the land of perpetual peace.
+
+
+
+
+PURIFYING THE SOUL
+
+     '... ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the
+      Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren.'--1 Peter i. 22.
+
+
+Note these three subsidiary clauses introduced respectively by 'in,'
+'through,' 'unto.' They give the means, the Bestower, and the issue of
+the purity of soul. The Revised Version, following good authorities,
+omits the clause, 'through the Spirit.' It may possibly be originally a
+marginal gloss of some scribe who was nervous about Peter's orthodoxy,
+which finally found its way into the text. But I think we shall be
+inclined to retain it if we notice that, throughout this epistle, the
+writer is fond of sentences on the model of the present one, and of
+surrounding a principal clause with subsidiary ones introduced by a
+similar sequence of prepositions. For instance, in this very chapter, to
+pass over other examples, we read, 'Kept by' (or in) 'the power of God
+through faith unto salvation.' So, for my present purpose, I take the
+doubtful words as part of the original text. They unquestionably convey
+a true idea, whether they are genuine here or no.
+
+One more introductory remark--'Ye have purified your souls'--a bold
+statement to make about the vast multitude of the 'dispersed' throughout
+all the provinces of Asia Minor whom the Apostle was addressing. The
+form of the words in the original shows that this purifying is a process
+which began at some definite point in the past and is being continued
+throughout all the time of Christian life. The hall-mark of all
+Christians is a relative purity, not of actions, but of soul. They will
+vary, one from another; the conception of what is purity of soul will
+change and grow, but, if a man is a Christian, there was a moment in his
+past at which he potentially, and in ideal, purified his spirit, and
+that was the moment when he bowed down in obedience to the truth. There
+are suggestions for volumes about the true conception of soul-purity in
+these words of my text. But I deal with them in the simplest possible
+fashion, following the guidance of these significant little words which
+introduce the subordinate clauses.
+
+First of all, then, we have here the great thought that
+
+I. Soul purity is in, or by, obedience.
+
+Now, of course, 'the truth'--truth with the definite article--is the sum
+of the contents of the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ, His life, His
+death, His Glory. For to Peter, as to us He should be, Jesus Christ was
+Truth Incarnate. 'In Him were hid all the treasures of wisdom and
+knowledge.' The first thought that is suggested to me from this
+expression--obedience to the truth--is that the revelation of God in
+Jesus Christ is, as its ultimate intention, meant to be obeyed. There
+are plenty of truths which have no influence on life and conduct, for
+which all is done that they can demand when they are accepted. But _the_
+truth is no inert substance like the element which recent chemical
+discoveries have found, which is named 'argon,' the do-nothing: _the_
+truth is, as physiologists say, a ferment. It is intended to come into
+life, and into character, and into the inmost spirit of a man, and grip
+them, and mould them, and transform them, and animate them, and impel
+them. The truth is to be 'obeyed.'
+
+Now that altogether throws over two card-castles which imperfect
+Christians are very apt to build. One which haunted the thoughts of an
+earlier generation of Christians more than it does the present, is that
+we have done all that 'the truth' asks of us when we have intellectually
+endorsed it. And so you get churches which build their membership upon
+acceptance of a creed and excommunicate heretics, whilst they keep
+do-nothing and uncleansed Christians within their pale. But God does not
+tell us anything that we may know. He tells us in order that, knowing,
+we may be and do. And right actions, or rather a character which
+produces such, is the last aim of all knowledge, and especially of all
+moral and religious truth. So 'the truth' is not 'argon', it is a
+ferment. And if men, steeped to the eyebrows in orthodoxy, think that
+they have done enough when they have set their hands to a confession of
+faith, and that they are Christians because they can say, 'all this I
+steadfastly believe,' they need to remember that religious truth which
+does not mould and transform character and conduct is a king dethroned;
+and for dethroned kings there is a short step between the throne from
+which they have descended and the scaffold on which they die.
+
+But there is another--what I venture to call a card-castle, which more
+of us build in these days of indifference as to creed--and that is that
+a great many of us are too much disposed to believe that 'the truth as
+it is in Jesus' has received from us all which it expects when we trust
+to it for what we call our 'salvation,' meaning thereby forgiveness of
+sins and immunity from punishment. These are elements of salvation
+unquestionably, but they are only part of it. And the very truths on
+which Christian people rest for this initial salvation, which is
+forgiveness and acceptance, are meant to be the guides of our lives and
+the patterns for our imitation. Why, in this very letter, in reference
+to the very parts of Christ's work, on which faith is wont to rest for
+salvation,--the death on the Cross to which we say that we trust, and
+which we are so accustomed to exalt as a unique and inimitable work that
+cannot be reproduced and needs no repetition, world without end--Peter
+has no hesitation in saying that Christ was our 'Pattern,' and that,
+even when He went to the Cross, He died 'leaving us an example that we
+should follow in His steps.' So, brethren, the truth needs to be known
+and believed: the truth needs not only to be believed but to be trusted
+in; the truth needs not only to be believed and to be trusted in, but to
+be obeyed.
+
+Still further, another thought following upon and to some extent
+modifying the preceding one, is suggested here, and that is that the
+faith, which I have just been saying is sometimes mistakenly regarded as
+being all that truth calls for from us, is itself obedience. As I have
+said, the language in the original here implies that there was a given
+definite moment in the past when these dispersed strangers obeyed, and,
+by obeying the truth, purified their souls. What was that moment? Some
+people would say the moment when the rite of baptism was administered. I
+would say the moment when they bowed themselves in joyful acceptance of
+the great Word and put out a firm hand of faith to grasp Jesus Christ.
+That _is_ obedience. For, in the very act of thus trusting, there is
+self-surrender, is there not? Does not a man depart from himself and bow
+himself humbly before his Saviour when he puts his trust in Him? Is not
+the very essence of obedience, not the mere external act, but the
+melting of the will to flow in such directions as His master-impulse may
+guide it? Thus, faith in its depth is obedience; and the moment when a
+man believes, in the deepest sense of the word, that moment, in the
+deepest realities of his spirit, he becomes obedient to the will and to
+the love of his Saviour Lord, Who is the Truth as He is the Way and the
+Life. We find, not only in this Epistle, but throughout the Epistles,
+that the two words 'disobedience' and 'unbelief,' are used as
+equivalents. We read, for instance, of those that 'stumble at the word,
+being disobedient,' and the like. So, then, faith is obedience in its
+depth, and, if our faith has any vitality in it, it carries in it the
+essence of all submission.
+
+But then, further, my text implies that the faith which is, in its
+depth, obedience, in its practical issues will produce the practical
+obedience which the text enjoins. It is no mere piece of theological
+legerdemain which counts that faith is righteousness. But, just as all
+sin comes from selfishness, so, and therefore, all righteousness will
+flow from giving up self, from decentralising, as it were, our souls
+from their old centre, self, and taking a new centre, God in Christ.
+Thus the germ of all practical obedience lies in vital faith. It is, if
+I might so say, the mother-tincture which, variously combined, coloured,
+and perfumed, makes all the precious things, the virtues and graces of
+humanity, which the believing soul pours out as a libation before its
+God. It is the productive energy of all practical goodness. It is the
+bottom heat in the greenhouse which makes all the plants grow and
+flourish. Faith is obedience, and faith produces obedience. Does my
+faith produce obedience? If it does not, it is not faith.
+
+Then, with regard to this first part of my subject, comes the final
+thought that practical obedience works inwards as well as outwards, and
+purifies the soul which renders it. People generally turn that round the
+other way, and, instead of saying that to do right helps to make a man
+right within, they say 'make the tree good, and its fruit good'--first
+the pure soul, and then the practical obedience. Both statements are
+true. For every act that a man does reacts upon the doer, just as,
+whether the shot hits the target or not, the gun kicks back on the
+shoulder of the man that fired it. Conduct comes from character, but
+conduct works back upon character, and character is largely the deposit
+from the vanished seas of actions. So, then, whilst the deepest thought
+is, be good and you will do good, it is not to be forgotten that the
+other side is true--do good, and it will tend to make you good.
+Obedience purifies the soul, while, on the other hand, a man that lives
+ill comes to think as he lives, and to become tenfold more a child of
+evil. 'The dyer's hand is subdued to what it works in.' 'Ye have
+purified your souls,' ideally, in the act of faith, and continuously, in
+the measure in which you practically obey the truth.
+
+We have here
+
+II. Purifying through the Spirit.
+
+I have already said that these words are possibly no part of the
+original text, but that they convey a true Christian idea, whether the
+words are here genuine or no. I need not enlarge upon this part of my
+subject at any length. Let me just remind you how the other verse in
+this chapter, to which I have already referred as cast in the same mould
+as our text, covers, from a different point of view, the same ground
+exactly as our text. Here there is put first the human element: 'Ye have
+purified your souls in obeying the truth,' and secondly the Divine
+element; 'through the Spirit.' The human part is put in the foreground,
+and God's part comes in, I was going to say, subordinately, as a
+condition. The reverse is the case in the other text, which runs: 'Kept
+_in_ the power of God _through_ faith'--where the Divine element is in
+the foreground, as being the true cause, and the human dwindles to being
+merely a condition--'Kept by' (or in) 'the power of God through faith.'
+Both views are true; you may take the vase by either handle. When the
+purpose is to stimulate to action, man's part is put in the foreground
+and God's part secondarily. When the purpose is to stimulate to
+confidence, God's part is put in the foreground and the man's is
+secondary. The two interlock, and neither is sufficient without the
+other.
+
+The true Agent of all purifying is that Divine Spirit. I have said that
+the moment of true trust is the moment of initial obedience, and of the
+beginning of purity. And it is so because, in that moment of initial
+faith, there enters into the heart the communicated Divine life of the
+Spirit, which thenceforward is lodged there, except it be quenched by
+the man's negligence or sin. Thence, from that germ implanted in the
+moment of faith, the germ of a new life, there issue forth to ultimate
+dominion in the spirit, the powers of that Divine Spirit which make for
+righteousness and transform the character. Thus, the true cause and
+origin of all Christian nobility and purity of character and conduct
+lies in that which enters the heart at the moment that the heart is
+opened for the coming of the Lord. But, on the other hand, this Divine
+Spirit, the Source of all purity, will not purify the soul without the
+man's efforts. '_Ye_ have purified your souls.' You need the Spirit
+indeed. But you are not mere passive recipients. You are to be active
+co-operators. In this region, too, we are 'labourers together with God.'
+We cannot of ourselves do the work, for the very powers with which we do
+it, or try to do it, are themselves in need of cleansing. And for a man
+to try to purify the soul by his own effort alone is to play the part of
+the sluttish house-wife who would seek to wipe a dish clean with a dirty
+cloth. You need the Divine Spirit to work in you, and you need to use,
+by your own effort, the Divine Spirit that does work in you. He is as
+'rushing, mighty wind'; but, unless the sails are set and the helm
+gripped, the wind will pass the boat and leave it motionless. He is
+Divine fire that burns up the dross and foulness; but, unless we 'guard
+the holy fire' and feed it, it dies down into grey cold ashes. He is the
+water of life; but, unless we dig and take heed to keep clear the
+channels, no refreshing will permeate to the roots of the wilting
+flowers, and there will be dryness, thirst, and barrenness, even on the
+river's banks.
+
+So, brethren, neither God alone nor man alone can purify the soul. We
+need Him, else we shall labour in vain. He needs us, else He will bestow
+His gift, and we shall receive 'the grace of God in vain.'
+
+Lastly, we have here--
+
+III. Purifying ... unto ... love.
+
+The Apostle was speaking to men of very diverse nationalities who had
+been rent asunder by deep gulfs of mutual suspicion and conflicting
+interests and warring creeds, and a great mysterious, and, as it would
+seem to the world then, utterly inexplicable bond of unity had been
+evolved amongst them, and Greek and barbarian, bond and free, male and
+female, had come together in amity. The 'love of the brethren' was the
+creation of Christianity, and was the outstanding fact which, more than
+any other, amazed the beholders in these early days. God be thanked!
+there are signs in our generation of a closer drawing together of
+Christian people than many past ages, alas, have seen.
+
+But my text suggests solemn and great thoughts with regard to Christian
+love and unity. The road to unity lies through purity, and the road to
+purity lies through obedience. Yes; what keeps Christian people apart is
+their impurities. It is not their creeds. It is not any of the
+differences that appear to separate them. It is because they are not
+better men and women. Globules of quicksilver will run together and make
+one mass; but not if you dust them over. And it is the impurities on the
+quicksilver that keep us from coalescing.
+
+So then we have to school ourselves into greater conformity to the
+likeness of our Master, to conquer selfishness, and to purify our souls,
+or else all this talk about Christian unity is no better than sounding
+brass, and more discordant than tinkling cymbals. Let us learn the
+lesson. 'The unfeigned love of the brethren' is not such an easy thing
+as some people fancy, and it is not to be attained at all on the road by
+which some people would seek it. Cleanse yourselves, and you will flow
+together.
+
+Here, then, we have Peter's conception of a pure soul and a pure life.
+It is a stately building, based deep on the broad foundation of the
+truth as it is in Jesus; its walls rising, but not without our effort,
+being builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit, and
+having as the shining apex of its heaven-pointing spire 'unfeigned love
+to the brethren.' The measure of our obedience is the measure of our
+purity. The measure of our purity is the measure of our brotherly love.
+But that love, though it is the very aim and natural issue of purity,
+still will not be realised without effort on our part. Therefore my
+text, after its exhibition of the process and issues of the purifying
+which began with faith, glides into the exhortation: 'See that ye love
+one another with a pure heart'--a heart purified by obedience--and that
+'fervently.'
+
+
+
+
+LIVING STONES ON THE LIVING FOUNDATION STONE
+
+     'To Whom coming, as unto a living stone ... ye also, as living
+      stones, are built up.'--1 Peter ii. 4, 5.
+
+
+I wonder whether Peter, when he wrote these words, was thinking about
+what Jesus Christ said to him long ago, up there at Caesarea Philippi. He
+had heard from Christ's lips, 'Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will
+build My Church.' He had understood very little of what it meant then.
+He is an old man now, years of experience and sorrow and work have
+taught him the meaning of the words, and he understands them a great
+deal better than his so-called successors have done. For we may surely
+take the text as the Apostle's own disclaimer of that which the Roman
+Catholic Church has founded on it, and has blazoned it, in gigantic
+letters round the dome of St. Peter's, as meaning. It is surely
+legitimate to hear him saying in these words: 'Make no mistake, it is
+Jesus Himself on whom the Church is built. The confession of Him which
+the Father in heaven revealed to me, not I, the poor sinner who
+confessed it--the Christ whom that confession set forth, He is the
+foundation stone, and all of you are called and honoured to ring out the
+same confession. Jesus is the one Foundation, and we all, apostles and
+humble believers, are but stones builded on Him.' Peter's relation to
+Jesus is fundamentally the same as that of every poor soul that 'comes
+to' Him.
+
+Now, there are two or three thoughts that may very well be suggested
+from these words, and the first of them is this:--
+
+I. Those that are in Christ have perpetually to make the effort to come
+nearer Christ.
+
+Remember that the persons to whom the Apostle is speaking are no
+strangers to the Saviour. They have been professing Christians from of
+old. They have made very considerable progress in the Divine life; they
+are near Jesus Christ; and yet Peter says to them, 'You can get nearer
+if you try,' and it is your one task and one hope, the condition of all
+blessedness, peace, and joy in your religious life that you should
+perpetually be making the effort to come closer, and to keep closer, to
+the Lord, by whom you say that you live.
+
+What is it to come to Him? The context explains the figurative
+expression, in the very next verse or two, by another and simpler word,
+which strips away the figure and gives us the plain fact--'in Whom
+believing.' The act of the soul by which I, with all my weakness and
+sin, cast myself on Jesus Christ, and grapple Him to my heart, and bind
+myself with His strength and righteousness--that is what the Apostle
+means here. Or, to put it into other words, this 'coming,' which is here
+laid as the basis of everything, of all Christian prosperity and
+progress for the individual and for the community, is the movement
+towards Christ of the whole spiritual nature of a man--thoughts, loves,
+wishes, purposes, desires, hopes, will. And we come near to Him when day
+by day we realise His nearness to us, when our thoughts are often
+occupied with Him, bring His peace and Himself to bear as a motive upon
+our conduct, let our love reach out its tendrils towards, and grasp, and
+twine round Him, bow our wills to His commandment, and in everything
+obey Him. The distance between heaven and earth does part us, but the
+distance between a thoughtless mind, an unrenewed heart, a rebellious
+will, and Him, sets between Him and us a greater gulf, and we have to
+bridge that by continual honest efforts to keep our wayward thoughts
+true to Him and near Him, and to regulate our affections that they may
+not, like runaway stars, carry us far from the path, and to bow our
+stubborn and self-regulating wills beneath His supreme commandment, and
+so to make all things a means of coming nearer the Lord with whom is our
+true home.
+
+Christian men, there are none of us so close to Him but that we may be
+nearer, and the secret of our daily Christian life is all wrapped up in
+that one word which is scarcely to be called a figure, 'coming' unto
+Him. That nearness is what we are to make daily efforts after, and that
+nearness is capable of indefinite increase. We know not how close to His
+heart we can lay our aching heads. We know not how near to His fulness
+we may bring our emptiness. We have never yet reached the point beyond
+which no closer union is possible. There has always been a film--and,
+alas! sometimes a gulf--between Him and us, His professing servants. Let
+us see to it that the conscious distance diminishes every day, and that
+we feel ourselves more and more constantly near the Lord and intertwined
+with Him.
+
+II. Those who come near Christ will become like Christ.
+
+'To Whom coming, as unto a living stone, ye also as living stones.' Note
+the verbal identity of the expressions with which Peter describes the
+Master and His servants. Christ is the Stone--that is Peter's
+interpretation of 'on this _rock_ will I build My Church.' There is a
+reference, too, no doubt, to the many Old Testament prophecies which
+are all gathered up in that saying of our Lord's. Probably both Jesus
+and Peter had in mind Isaiah's 'stone of stumbling,' which was also a
+'sure corner-stone, and a tried foundation.' And words in the context
+which I have not taken for consideration, 'disallowed indeed of men, but
+chosen of God and precious,' plainly rest upon the 118th Psalm, which
+speaks of 'the stone which the builders rejected' becoming 'the head of
+the corner.'
+
+But, says Peter, He is not only the foundation Stone, the corner Stone,
+but a _living_ Stone, and he does not only use that word to show us that
+he is indulging in a metaphor, and that we are to think of a person and
+not of a thing, but in the sense that Christ is eminently and
+emphatically the living One, the Source of life.
+
+But, when he turns to the disciples, he speaks to them in exactly the
+same language. They, too, are 'living stones,' because they come to the
+'Stone' that is 'living.' Take away the metaphor, and what does this
+identity of description come to? Just this, that if we draw near to
+Jesus Christ, life from Him will pass into our hearts and minds, which
+life will show itself in kindred fashion to what it wore in Jesus
+Christ, and will shape us into the likeness of Him _from_ whom we draw
+our life, because _to_ Him we have come. I may remind you that there is
+scarcely a single name by which the New Testament calls Jesus Christ
+which Jesus Christ does not share with us His younger brethren. By that
+Son we 'receive the adoption of sons.' Is He the Light of the world? We
+are lights of the world. And if you look at the words of my text, you
+will see that the offices which are attributed to Christ in the New
+Testament are gathered up in those which the Apostle here ascribes to
+Christ's servants. Jesus Christ in His manhood was the Temple of God.
+Jesus Christ in His manhood was the Priest for humanity. Jesus Christ in
+His manhood was the sacrifice for the world's sins. And what does Peter
+say here? 'Ye are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to
+offer up spiritual sacrifices.' You draw life from Jesus Christ if you
+keep close to Him, and that life makes you, in derived and subordinate
+fashion, but in a very real and profound sense, what Jesus Christ was in
+the world. The whole blessedness and secret of the gifts which our Lord
+comes to bestow upon men may be summed up in that one thought, which is
+metaphorically and picturesquely set forth in the language of my text,
+and which I put into plainer and more prosaic English when I say--they
+that come near Christ become as Christ. As 'living stones' they, too,
+share in the life which flows from Him. Touch Him, and His quick Spirit
+passes into our hearts. Rest upon that foundation-stone and up from it,
+if I may so say, there is drawn, by strange capillary attraction, all
+the graces and powers of the Saviour's own life. The building which is
+reared upon the Foundation is cemented to the Foundation by the
+communication of the life itself, and, coming to the living Rock, we,
+too, become alive.
+
+Let us keep ourselves near to Him, for, disconnected, the wire cannot
+carry the current, and is only a bit of copper, with no virtue in it, no
+power. Attach it once more to the battery and the mysterious energy
+flashes through it immediately. 'To Whom coming,' because He lives, 'ye
+shall live also.'
+
+III. Lastly:
+
+They who become like Christ because they are near Him, thereby grow
+together.
+
+'To whom coming, as unto a living stone, ye also, as living stones, are
+built up.' That building up means not only the growth of individual
+graces in the Christian character, the building up in each single soul
+of more and more perfect resemblance to the Saviour, but from the
+context it rather refers to the welding together, into a true and
+blessed unity, of all those that partake of that common life. Now, it is
+very beautiful to remember, in this connection, to whom this letter was
+written. The first words of it are: 'To the strangers _scattered abroad_
+throughout,' etc. etc. All over Asia Minor, hundreds of miles apart,
+here one there another little group, were these isolated believers, the
+scattered stones of a great building. But Peter shows them the way to a
+true unity, notwithstanding their separation. He says to them in effect:
+'You up in Bithynia, and you others away down there on the southern
+coast, though you never saw one another, though you are separated by
+mountain ranges and weary leagues; though you, if you met one another,
+perhaps could not understand what you each were saying, if you "come
+unto the living Stone, ye as living stones are built up" into one.'
+There is a great unity into which all they are gathered who, separated
+by whatever surface distinctions, yet, deep down at the bottom of their
+better lives, are united to Jesus Christ.
+
+But there may be another lesson here for us, and that is, that the true
+and only secret of the prosperity and blessedness and growth of a
+so-called Christian congregation is the individual faithfulness of its
+members, and their personal approximation of Jesus Christ. If we here,
+knit together as we are nominally for Christian worship, and by faith in
+that dear Lord, are true to our profession and our vocation, and keep
+ourselves near our Master, then we shall be built up; and if we do not,
+we shall not.
+
+So, dear friends, all comes to this: _There_ is the Stone laid; it does
+not matter how _close_ we are lying to it, it will be nothing to us
+unless we are _on_ it. And I put it to each of you. Are you built on the
+Foundation, and from the Foundation do you derive a life which is daily
+bringing you nearer to Him, and making you liker Him? All blessedness
+depends, for time and for eternity, on the answer to that question. For
+remember that, since that living Stone is laid, it is _something_ to
+you. Either it is the Rock on which you build, or the Stone against
+which you stumble and are broken. No man, in a country evangelised like
+England--I do not say Christian, but evangelised--can say that Jesus
+Christ has no relation to, or effect upon, him. And certainly no people
+that listen to Christian preaching, and know Christian truth as fully
+and as much as you do, can say it. He is the Foundation on which we can
+rear a noble, stable life, if we build upon Him. If He is not the
+Foundation on which I build, He is the Stone on which I shall be broken.
+
+
+
+
+SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES
+
+     '... Spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus
+      Christ.'--1 Peter ii. 5.
+
+
+In this verse Peter piles up his metaphors in a fine profusion,
+perfectly careless of oratorical elegance or propriety. He gathers
+together three symbols, drawn from ancient sacrificial worship, and
+applies them all to Christian people. In the one breath they are
+'temples,' in the next 'priests,' in the third 'sacrifices.' All the
+three are needed to body out the whole truth of the relationship of the
+perfect universal religion--which is Christianity--to the fragmentary
+and symbolical religion of ancient time.
+
+Christians individually and collectively are temples, inasmuch as they
+are 'the habitation of God through the Spirit.' They are priests by
+virtue of their consecration, their direct access to God, their function
+of representing God to men, and of bringing men to God. They are
+sacrifices, inasmuch as one main part of their priestly function is to
+offer themselves to God.
+
+Now, it is very difficult for us to realise what an extraordinary
+anomaly the Christian faith presented at its origin, surrounded by
+religions which had nothing to do with morality, conduct, or spiritual
+life, but were purely ritualistic. And here, in the midst of them,
+started up a religion bare and bald, and with no appeal to sense, no
+temple, no altar, no sacrifice. But the Apostles with one accord declare
+that they had all these things in far higher form than those faiths
+possessed them, which had only the outward appearance.
+
+Now, this conception of the sacrificial element in the Christian life
+runs through the whole New Testament, and is applied there in a very
+remarkable variety of forms. I have taken the words of my text, not so
+much to discourse upon them especially. My object now is rather to
+gather together the various references to the Christian life as
+essentially sacrificial, and to trace the various applications which
+that idea receives in the New Testament. There are four classes of
+these, to which I desire especially to refer.
+
+I. There is the living sacrifice of the body.
+
+'I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye _present_'--which is a
+technical word for a priest's action--'your bodies a living sacrifice,'
+in contrast with the slaying, which was the presentation of the animal
+victim. Now, that 'body' there is not equivalent to self is distinctly
+seen when we notice that Paul goes on, in the very next clause, to say,
+'and be transformed by the renewing of your _mind_.' So that he is
+speaking, not of the self, but of the corporeal organ and instrument of
+the self, when he says 'present your _bodies_ a living sacrifice.'
+
+Of course, the central idea of sacrifice is surrender to God; and, of
+course, the place where that surrender is made is the inmost self. The
+will is the man, and when the will bows, dethroning self and enthroning
+God, submitting to His appointments, and delighting to execute His
+commandments, then the sacrifice is begun. But, inasmuch as the body is
+the organ of the man's activity, the sacrifice of the will and of self
+must needs come out into visibility and actuality in the aggregate of
+deeds, of which the body is the organ and instrument. But there must
+first of all be the surrender of my inmost self, and only then, and as
+the token and outcome of that, will any external acts, however religious
+they may seem to be, come into the category of sacrifice when they
+express a conscious surrender of myself to God. 'The flesh profiteth
+nothing,' and yet the flesh profiteth much. But here is the order that
+another of the Apostles lays down: 'Yield _yourselves_ to God,' and
+then, 'your members as instruments of righteousness to Him.'
+
+To speak of the sacrifice of the body as a living sacrifice suggests
+that it is not the slaying of any bodily appetite or activity that is
+the true sacrifice and worship, but the hallowing of these. It is a
+great deal easier, and it is sometimes necessary, to cut off the
+offending right hand, to pluck out the offending right eye, or, putting
+away the metaphor, to abstain rigidly from forms of activity which are
+perfectly legitimate in themselves, and may be innocuous to other
+people, if we find that they hurt us. But that is second best, and
+though it is better in the judgment of common sense to go into life
+maimed than complete to be cast into hell-fire, it is better still to go
+into life symmetrical and entire, with no maiming in hand or organ. So
+you do not offer the living sacrifice of the body when you annihilate,
+but when you suppress, and direct, and hallow its needs, its appetites,
+and its activities.
+
+The meaning of this sacrifice is that the whole active life should be
+based upon, and be the outcome of, the inward surrender of self unto
+God. 'On the bells of the horses shall be written, Holiness to the Lord,
+and every pot and vessel in Jerusalem shall be holy as the bowls upon
+the altar'--in such picturesque and yet profound fashion did an ancient
+prophet set forth the same truth that lies in this declaration of our
+Apostle, that the body, the instrument of our activities, should be a
+living sacrifice to God. Link all its actions with Him; let there be
+conscious reference to Him in all that I do. Let foot and hand and eye
+and brain work for Him, and by Him, and in constant consciousness of His
+presence; suppress where necessary, direct always, appetites and
+passions, and make the body the instrument of the surrendered spirit.
+And then, in the measure in which we can do so, the greatest cleft and
+discord in human life will be filled, and body, soul, and spirit will
+harmonise and make one music of praise to God.
+
+Ah! brethren, these bad principles have teeth to bite very close into
+our daily lives. How many of us, young and old, have 'fleshly lusts
+which war against the soul'? How many of you young men have no heart for
+higher, purer, nobler things, because the animal in you is strong! How
+many of you find that the day's activities blunt you to God! How many of
+us are weakened still under that great antagonism of the flesh lusting
+against the spirit, so that we cannot do the things that we would!
+Sensuality, indulgence in animal propensities, yielding to the clamant
+voices of the beast that is within us--these things wreck many a soul;
+and some of those that are listening to me now. Let the man govern and
+coerce the animal, and let God govern the man. 'I beseech you that you
+yield your bodies a living sacrifice.'
+
+II. There is the sacrifice of praise.
+
+Of course, logically and properly, this, and all the others that I am
+going to speak about, are included within that to which I have already
+directed attention. But still they are dealt with separately in
+Scripture, and I follow the guidance. We read in the Epistle to the
+Hebrews: 'By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise unto God
+continually--that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks unto His
+name.' There, then, is another of the regions into which the notion of
+sacrifice as the very essence of Christian life is to be carried.
+
+There is nothing more remarkable in Scripture than the solemn importance
+that it attaches to what so many people think so little about, and that
+is _words_. It even sometimes seems to take them as being more truly the
+outcome and revelation of a man's character than his deeds are. And that
+is true, in some respects. But at all events there is set forth, ever
+running all through the Scripture, that thought, that one of the best
+sacrifices that men can make to God is to render up the tribute of
+their praise. In the great psalm which lays down with clearness never
+surpassed in the New Testament the principles of true Christian worship,
+this is declared: 'Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me.' The true
+offering is not the slaying of animals or the presentation of any
+material things, but the utterance of hearts welling up thankfulness. In
+the ancient ritual there stood within the Holy place, and after the
+altar of burnt-offering had been passed, three symbols of the relation
+of the redeemed soul to God. There was the great candlestick, which
+proclaimed 'Ye are the light of the world.' There was the table on which
+the so-called shewbread was laid, and in the midst there was the altar
+of incense, on which, day by day, morning and evening, there was kindled
+the fragrant offering which curled up in wreaths of blue smoke aspiring
+towards the heavens. It lay smouldering all through the day, and was
+quickened into flame morning and evening. That is a symbol representing
+what the Christian life ought to be--a continual thank-offering of the
+incense of prayer and praise.
+
+Nor that only, brethren, but also there is another shape in which our
+words should be sacrifices, and that is in the way of direct utterances
+to men, as well as of thanksgiving to God. What a shame it is, and what
+a confession of imperfect, partial redemption and regeneration on the
+part of professing Christians it is, that there are thousands of us who
+never, all our lives, have felt the impulse or necessity of giving
+utterance to our Christian convictions! You can talk about anything
+else; you are tongue-tied about your religion. Why is that? You can make
+speeches upon political platforms, or you can discourse on many subjects
+that interest you. You never speak a word to anybody about the Master
+that you say you serve. Why is that? 'What is bred in the bone comes
+out in the flesh.' What is deep in the heart sometimes lies there
+unuttered, but more often demands expression. I venture to think that if
+your Christianity was deeper, it would not be so dumb. You strengthen
+your convictions by speech. A man's belief in anything grows
+incalculably by the very fact of proclaiming it. And there is no surer
+way to lose moral and spiritual convictions than to huddle them up in
+the secret chambers of our hearts. It is like a man carrying a bit of
+ice in his palm. He locks his fingers over it, and when he opens them it
+has all run out and gone. If you want to deepen your Christianity,
+declare it. If you would have your hearts more full of gratitude, speak
+your praise. There used to be in certain religious houses a single
+figure kneeling on the altar-steps, by day and by night, ever uttering
+forth with unremitting voice, the psalm of praise. That perpetual
+adoration in spirit, if not in form, ought to be ours. The fruit of the
+lips should continually be offered. Literally, of course, there cannot
+be that unbroken and exclusive utterance of thanksgiving. There are many
+other things that men have to talk about; but through all the utterances
+there ought to spread the aroma--like some fragrance diffused through
+the else scentless air from some unseen source of sweetness--of that
+name to which the life is one long thanksgiving.
+
+III. There is the sacrifice of help to men.
+
+The same passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to which I have already
+referred, goes on to bracket together the sacrifice of praise and of
+deeds. It continues thus:--'But to do good and to communicate forget
+not.' Again I say, logically this comes under the first division. But
+still it may be treated separately, and it just carries this
+thought--your praying and singing praises are worse than useless unless
+you go out into the world an embodiment and an imitation of the love
+which you hymn. True philanthropy has its roots in true religion. The
+service of man is the service of God.
+
+That principle cuts two ways. It comes as a sharp test of their prayers
+and psalm-singing to emotional Christians, who are always able to gush
+in words of thankfulness, and it confronts them with the question, What
+do you do for your brother? That is a question that comes very close to
+us all. Do not talk about being the priests of the Most High God unless
+you are doing the priestly office of representing God to men, and
+carrying to them the blessings that they need. Your service to God is
+worthless unless it is followed by diligent, fraternal, wise,
+self-sacrificing service for men.
+
+The same principle points in another direction. If, on the one hand, it
+crushes as hypocrisy a religion of talk, on the other hand it declares
+as baseless a philanthropy which has no reference to God. And whilst I
+know that there are many men who, following the dictates of their
+hearts, and apart altogether from any reference to higher religious
+sanctions, do exercise pity and compassion and help, I believe that for
+the basing of a lasting, wide, wise benevolence, there is nothing solid
+and broad except Christ and Him crucified, and the consciousness of
+having been--sinful and needy as we are--received and blessed by Him.
+Let the philanthropists learn that the surrender of self, and the fruit
+of the lips giving thanks to His name, must precede the highest kind of
+beneficence. Let the Christian learn that benevolence is the garb in
+which religion is dressed. 'True worship and undefiled ... is this, to
+visit the widow and the fatherless in their affliction.' Morality is the
+dress of Religion; Religion is the body of Morality.
+
+IV. Lastly, there is the sacrifice of death.
+
+'I am ready to be offered,' says the Apostle--to be _poured out_, as a
+libation. And again, 'If I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of
+your faith, I rejoice with you all.' And so may
+
+    'Death the endless mercies seal,
+     And make the sacrifice complete.'
+
+It may become not a reluctant being dragged out of life whilst we cling
+to it with both our hands. It may be not a reluctant yielding to
+necessity, but a religious act, in which a man resignedly and trustfully
+and gratefully yields himself to God; and says, 'Father! into Thy hands
+I commit my spirit.'
+
+Ah! brethren, is not that a better way to die than to be like some poor
+wretch in a stream, that clutches at some unfixed support on the bank,
+and is whirled away down, fiercely resisting and helpless? We may thus
+make our last act an act of devotion, and go within the veil as priests
+bearing in our hands the last of our sacrifices. The sacrifice of death
+will only be offered when a life of sacrifice has preceded it. And if
+you and I, moved by the mercies of God, yield ourselves living
+sacrifices, using our lips for His praise and our possessions for man's
+help, then we may die as the Apostle expected to do, and feel that by
+Christ Jesus even death becomes 'an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice
+acceptable, well-pleasing unto God.'
+
+
+
+
+MIRRORS OF GOD
+
+     '... That ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called
+      you out of darkness ...'--1 Peter ii. 9.
+
+
+The _Revised Version_, instead of 'praises,' reads _excellencies_--and
+even that is but a feeble translation of the remarkable word here
+employed. For it is that usually rendered 'virtues'; and by the word, of
+course, when applied to God, we mean the radiant excellencies and
+glories of His character, of which our earthly qualities, designated by
+the same name, are but as shadows.
+
+It is, indeed, true that this same expression is employed in the Greek
+version of the Old Testament in Isaiah xliii. in a verse which evidently
+was floating before Peter's mind. 'This people have I formed for Myself;
+they shall show forth My praise.'
+
+But even while that is admitted, it is to be observed that the
+expression here does not merely mean that the audible praise of God
+should be upon the lips of Christian people, but that their whole lives
+should, in a far deeper sense than that, be the manifestation of what
+the Apostle here calls 'excellencies of God.'
+
+I. Here we get a wonderful glimpse into the heart of God.
+
+Note the preceding words, in which the writer describes all God's
+mercies to His people, making them 'a chosen generation, a royal
+priesthood, a holy nation'; a people 'His own possession.' All that is
+done for one specific purpose--'that ye should show forth the praises of
+Him who hath called you out of darkness.' That is to say, the very aim
+of all God's gracious manifestations of Himself is that the men who
+apprehend them should go forth into the world and show Him for what He
+is.
+
+Now that aim may be, and often has been, put so as to present an utterly
+hard and horrible notion. That God's glory is His only motive may be so
+stated as to mean nearly an Almighty Selfishness, which is far liker the
+devil than God. People in old days did not always recognise the danger
+that lay in such a representation of what we call God's motive for
+action. But if you think for a moment about this statement, all that
+appears hard and repellent drops clean away from it, and it turns out to
+be another way of saying, 'God is Love.' Because, what is there more
+characteristic of love than an earnest desire to communicate itself and
+to be manifested and beheld? And what is it that God reveals to the
+world for His own glory but the loftiest and most wondrous compassion,
+that cannot be wearied out, that cannot be provoked, and the most
+forgiving Omnipotence, that, in answer to all men's wanderings and
+rebellions, only seeks to draw them to itself? That is what God wants to
+be known for. Is _that_ hard and repellent? Does that make Him a great
+tyrant, who only wants to be abjectly worshipped? No; it makes Him the
+very embodiment and perfection of the purest love. Why does He desire
+that He should be known? for any good that it does to Him? No; except
+the good that even His creatures can do to Him when they gladden His
+paternal heart by recognising Him for what He is, the Infinite Lover of
+all souls.
+
+But the reason why He desires, most of all, that the light of His
+character may pour into every heart is because He would have every heart
+gladdened and blessed for ever by that received and believed light. So
+the hard saying that God's own glory is His supreme end melts into 'God
+is Love.' The Infinite desires to communicate Himself, that by the
+communication men may be blessed.
+
+II. There is another thing here, and that is, a wonderful glimpse of
+what Christian people are in the world for.
+
+'This people have I formed for Myself,' says the fundamental passage in
+Isaiah already referred to, 'they shall show forth My praise.' It was
+not worth while forming them except for that. It was still less worth
+while redeeming them except for that.
+
+But you may say, 'I am saved in order that I may enjoy all the blessings
+of salvation, immunities from fear and punishment, and the like.' Yes!
+Certainly! But is that all? Or is it the main thing? I think not. There
+is not a creature in God's universe so tiny, even although you cannot
+see it with a microscope, but that it has a claim on Him that made it
+for its well-being. That is very certain. And so my salvation--with all
+the blessedness for me that lies wrapped up and hived in that great
+word--my salvation is an adequate end with God, in all His dealing, and
+especially in His sending of Jesus Christ.
+
+But there is not a creature in the whole universe, though he were
+mightier than the archangels that stand nearest God's throne, who is so
+great and independent that his happiness and well-being is the sole aim
+of God's gifts to him. For every one of us the Apostle means the word,
+'No man liveth to himself'--he could not if he were to try--'and no man
+dieth to himself.' Every man that receives anything from God is thereby
+made a steward to impart it to others. So we may say--and I speak now
+to you who profess to be Christians--'you were not saved for your own
+sakes.' One might almost say that that was a by-end. You were
+saved--shall I say?--for God's sake; and you were saved for man's sake?
+Just as when you put a bit of leaven into a lump of dough, each grain of
+the lump, as it is leavened and transformed, becomes the medium for
+passing on the mysterious transforming influence to the particle beyond,
+so every one of us, if we have been brought out of darkness into
+marvellous light, have been so brought, not only that we may recreate
+and bathe our own eyes in the flooding sunshine, but that we may turn to
+our brothers and ask them to come too out of the doleful night into the
+cheerful, gladsome day. Every man that Jesus Christ conquers on the
+field He sends behind Him, and says, 'Take rank in My army. Be My
+soldier.' Every yard of line in a new railway when laid down is used to
+carry materials to make the next yard; and so the terminus is reached.
+Even so, Christian people were formed for Christ that they might show
+forth His praise.
+
+Look what a notion that gives us of the dignity of the Christian life,
+and of the special manifestation of God which is afforded to the world
+in it. You, if you love as you ought to do, are a witness of something
+far nobler in God than all the stars in the sky. You, if you set forth
+as becomes you His glorious character, have crowned the whole
+manifestation that He makes of Himself in Nature and in Providence. What
+people learn about God from a true Christian is a better revelation than
+has ever been made or can be made elsewhere. So the Bible talks about
+principalities and powers in heavenly places who have had nobody knows
+how many millenniums of intercourse with God, nobody knows how deep and
+intimate, learning from Christian people the manifold wisdom which had
+folds and folds in it that they had never unfolded and never could have
+done. 'Ye are My witnesses,' saith the Lord. Sun and stars tell of
+power, wisdom, and a whole host of majestic attributes. We are witnesses
+that 'He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He
+increaseth strength.' Who was it that said
+
+    ''Twas great to speak a world from naught,
+     'Tis greater to redeem?'
+
+'Ye are saved that ye may show forth the praise of Him who hath called
+you out of darkness into His marvellous light.'
+
+III. Lastly, we have here a piece of stringent practical direction.
+
+All that I have been saying thus far refers to the way in which the very
+fact of a man's being saved from his sin is a revelation of God's mercy,
+love, and restoring power. But there are two sides to the thought of my
+text; and the one is that the very existence of Christian people in the
+world is a standing witness to the highest glory of God's name; and the
+other is that there are characteristics which, as Christian men, we are
+bound to put forth, and which manifest in another fashion the
+excellencies of our redeeming God.
+
+The world takes its notions of God, most of all, from the people who say
+that they belong to God's family. They read us a great deal more than
+they read the Bible. They _see_ us; they only _hear_ about Jesus Christ.
+'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image' nor any likeness of
+the Divine, but thou shalt make _thyself_ an image of Him, that men
+looking at it may learn a little more of what He is. If we have any
+right to say that we are a royal priesthood, a chosen nation, God's
+'possession,' then there will be in us some likeness of Him to whom we
+belong stamped more or less perfectly upon our characters; and just as
+people cannot look at the sun, but may get some notion of its power when
+they gaze upon the rare beauty of the tinted clouds that lie round about
+it, if, in the poor, wet, cold mistiness of our lives there be caught,
+as it were, and tangled some stray beams of the sunshine, there will be
+colour and beauty there. A bit of worthless tallow may be saturated with
+a perfume which will make it worth its weight in gold. So our poor
+natures may be drenched with God and give Him forth fragrant and
+precious, and men may be drawn thereby. The witness of the life which is
+Godlike is the duty of Christian men and women in the world, and it is
+mainly what we are here for.
+
+Nor does that exclude the other kind of showing forth the praises, by
+word and utterance, at fit times and to the right people. We are not all
+capable of that, in any public fashion; we are all capable of it in some
+fashion. There is no Christian that has not somebody to whom their
+words--they may be very simple and very feeble--will come as nobody
+else's words can. Let us use these talents and these opportunities for
+the Master.
+
+But, above all, let us remember that none of these works--either the
+involuntary and unconscious exhibition of light and beauty and
+excellencies caught from Him; or the voluntary and vocal proclamations
+of the name of Him from whom we have caught them--can be done to any
+good purpose if any taint of self mingles with it. 'Let your light so
+shine before men that they may behold your good works and
+glorify'--whom? you?--'your _Father_ which is in heaven.'
+
+The harp-string gives out its note only on condition that, being
+touched, it vibrates, and ceases to be visible. Be you unseen,
+transparent, and the glory of the Lord shall shine through you.
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST THE EXEMPLAR
+
+     'For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for
+      us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His
+      steps.'--1 Peter ii. 21.
+
+
+These words are a very striking illustration of the way in which the
+Gospel brings Christ's principles to bear upon morals and duty. The
+Apostle is doing nothing more than exhorting a handful of slaves to the
+full and complete and patient acceptance of their hard lot, and in order
+to teach a very homely and lowly lesson to the squalid minds of a few
+captives, he brings in the mightiest of all lessons by pointing to the
+most beautiful, most blessed, and most mysterious fact in the world's
+history--the cross of Christ. It is the very spirit of Christianity that
+the biggest thing is to regulate the smallest duties of life. Men's
+lives are made up of two or three big things and a multitude of little
+ones, and the greater rule the lesser; and, my friends, unless we have
+got a religion and a morality that can and will keep the trifles of our
+lives right there will be nothing right; unless we can take those
+deepest truths, make them the ruling principles, and lay them down side
+by side with the most trivial things of our lives, we are something
+short. Is there nothing in your life or mine so small that we cannot
+bring it into captivity and lift it into beauty by bringing it into
+connection with saving grace? Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an
+example. This is the first thing that strikes me, and I intend it also
+by way of introduction. Look how the Apostle has put the points
+together, as though there are two aspects which go together and cannot
+be rendered apart, like the under side and the upper side of a coin.
+'Christ also suffered for us,' and so for us says all the orthodox.
+'Leaving us an example'--there protests all the heretics. Yes, but we
+know that there is a power in both of them, and the last one is only
+true when we begin with the first. He suffered for us. There, there, my
+friends, is the deepest meaning of the cross, and if you want to get
+Christ for an example, begin with taking Him as the sacrifice, for He
+gave His life for you. Don't part the two things. If you believe Him to
+be Christ, then you take Him at the cross: if you want to see the
+meaning of Christ as an example, begin with Him as your Saviour.
+'Because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye
+should follow His steps.' These are the words, and what God hath joined
+together let no man put asunder. With these few remarks I shall deal
+with the words a little more exhaustively, and I see in them three
+things--the sufferings of Christ our gain, the sufferings of Christ our
+pattern, and the suffering of Christ our power to imitate.
+
+And first of all that great proclamation which underlies the whole
+matter--Christ also suffered for us. The sufferings of Christ are
+thereby our gain. I shall not dwell on the larger questions which these
+words naturally open for us, and I shall content myself with some of the
+angles and side views of thought, and one to begin with is this: It is
+very interesting to notice how, as his life went on, and his inspiration
+became more full, this Apostle got to understand, as being the very
+living and heart centre of his religion, the thing which at first was a
+stumbling-block and mystery to him. You remember when Christ was here on
+earth, and was surrounded by all His disciples, the man who actually led
+antagonism to the thought of a saving Messiah, was this very Apostle
+Peter. How he displayed his ignorance in the words, 'This shall not be
+unto Thee, O Lord'; and you remember also how his audacity rose to the
+height of saying, 'Why cannot I follow Thee now, Lord? I will lay down
+my life for Thy sake,' so little did he understand the purposes of
+Christ's suffering and Christ's death. And even after His resurrection
+we don't find that Peter in his early preaching had got as far as he
+seems to have got in this letter from which my text is taken. You will
+notice that in this letter he speaks a great deal about the sufferings
+of Christ, which he puts side by side and in contrast with God's
+glorifying of His Son. Christ's cross, which at first had come to him as
+a rejection, has now come to him in all its reality, and to him there
+was the one grand thing, 'He suffered for us,' as though he realises
+Christ in all His beauty and purity, and not only as a beautiful teacher
+and dear friend. That which at first seemed to him as an astounding
+mystery and perfect impossibility, he now comes to understand. With
+those two little words, 'for us,' where there was before impossibility,
+disappointment, and anomaly, the anomaly vanishes, although the mystery
+becomes deeper. In one sense it was incomprehensible; in another sense
+it was the only explanation of the fact. And, my friends, I want you to
+build one thought on this. Unless you and I lay hold of the grand truth
+that Jesus Christ died for us, it seems to me that the story of the
+Gospel and the story of the cross is the saddest and most depressing
+page of human history. That there should have been a man possessed of
+such a soul, such purity, such goodness, such tenderness, such
+compassion, and such infinite mercy--if there were all this to do
+nothing but touch men's hearts and prick and irritate them into bitter
+enmity--if the cross were the world's wages to the world's best Teacher,
+and nothing more could be said, then, my friends, it seems to me that
+the hopes of humanity have, in the providence of God, suffered great
+disaster, and a terrible indictment stands against both God and man. Oh,
+yes, the death of Jesus Christ, and the whole history of the world's
+treatment of Him, is an altogether incomprehensible and miserable
+thing--a thing to be forgotten, and a thing to be wept over in tears of
+blood, and no use for us unless we do as Peter did, apply all the warmth
+of the heart to this one master key, 'for us,' and then the mystery is
+only an infinitude of love and mercy. What before we could not
+understand we now begin to see, and to understand the love of God which
+passeth all understanding. Oh, my friends, I beseech you never think of
+the cross of Christ without taking those two words. It is a necessary
+explanation to make the picture beautiful: 'for us,' 'for us'; 'for me,
+for me.' And then notice still further that throughout the whole of this
+Epistle the comparative vagueness of the words 'for me' is interpreted
+definitely. So far as the language of my text is concerned there can be
+nothing more expressive, more outspoken, or more intelligible, 'Christ
+also suffered for us,' for our realm. But that is not all that Peter
+would have us learn. If you want to know the nature of the work, and
+what the Saviour suffered on the cross for our behalf, advantage, and
+benefit, here is the definition in the following verse, 'Who His own
+self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we being dead to
+sins should live unto righteousness.' 'For us,' not merely as an
+example; 'for us,' not merely for His purity, His beautiful life and
+calm death; no, better than all that, though a glorious example it is.
+He has taken away our sins, we are sprinkled with the blood of Jesus
+Christ; 'for us' in the sense of the words in another part of the
+Epistle, 'Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with
+corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of
+Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,' and if so, we
+are living examples of what Christ our Saviour has done for the whole
+world.
+
+There is another point I want to speak about in dwelling on the first
+part of the text. If you will read this Epistle of Peter at your
+leisure, you will see that while with Paul both make the cross of Christ
+the centre of their teaching, Paul speaks more about His death, and
+Peter more about His sufferings. Throughout the letters of Peter the
+phrase runs, and the phrase has come almost entirely into modern
+Christian usage from this Apostle. Paul speaks about the death, Peter
+speaks of the sufferings. The eye-witness of a Loving Friend, the man
+who had stood by His side through much of His sufferings (though he fled
+at last), a vivid imagination of His Master's trials, and a warm heart,
+led Peter to dwell not only on the one fact of the death, but also on
+the accompaniments of that awful death, of the mental and physical pain,
+and especially the temper of the Saviour. I shall not dwell on this,
+except to make one passing remark on it, viz., that there is a kind of
+preaching which prevails among the Roman Catholic Church, and is not
+uncommon to many of the Protestant churches, which dwells unduly on the
+physical fact of Christ's death and sufferings. I think, for my part, we
+are going to the other extreme, and a great many of us are losing a very
+great source of blessing to ourselves and to those whom we influence,
+because we don't realise and don't dwell sufficiently on the physical
+and mental sorrows and agony He went through with the death on the
+cross; and one bad effect of all this is that Christ's atonement has
+become to be a kind of theological jungle, and I don't know that the
+popular mind can have in the ordinary way any better means of the
+deliverance of Christ's cross from this theological maze than a little
+more frankness and honesty in dwelling on the sorrows and pain of our
+dear Lord.
+
+Now a word about the second part. The sufferings of Christ as
+represented here in the text are not only for our gain but our pattern,
+leaving us an example that we should follow His steps. We are not
+concerned here about the general principles of Christian ethics, and I
+don't think I need dwell on them at all as being great blessings to us;
+and passing from that I would rather dwell on the one specific thought
+before us--on the beautiful life, the gracious words, the gentle deeds,
+the wisdom, the rectitude, the tenderness, the submission to the Father
+and the oblivion to Himself, which characterises the whole life of Jesus
+Christ, from the very first up to the agony on the cross. We have looked
+to Him as our gain, and as the head and beginning of our salvation, and
+now we have to turn from that mysterious and solemn thought and look to
+Him as an ideal pattern by which our life should be moulded and shaped.
+'Leaving us an example.' Just as Elijah's mantle dropped from him as he
+rose, so Christ in going up to the Father fluttered down on the world a
+pattern which He had in His sufferings. He goes away, but the pattern
+abides with us. 'Leaving us an example.' The word used here is
+translated quite correctly. The word example is a very remarkable and
+unusual one; it means literally a thing to be retained. You put a
+copyhead before a child, and tell him to copy it, and trace it over till
+he retains it; or, to come to modern English, you put the copyhead on
+the top of a page. What blots, pothooks, and angles you and I make as we
+are trying to write on the top of the page of life. See, there is the
+pattern. Lo, another man hath written above, and you are asked to make
+your life exactly the same, the same angles and the same corners--to
+make your life in all respects coincide with that. My friends, we shall
+all have to take our copybooks to the Master's desk some day. There will
+be a headline there which Christ hath written, and one which we have
+written, and how do you think we shall like to put the two side by side?
+My friends, we had better do it to-day than have to do it then. There is
+the pattern life; the copy is plain. I don't think I need say any more
+about the other metaphor contained here. The Divine Exemplar has left us
+the headline that we should follow His footsteps, and it is a blessed
+thought to know that we are to follow in His own steps. 'What, cannot I
+follow Thee now?' said Peter once, and you remember when the Apostle had
+been restored to his office, the words of the Saviour were--'Feed My
+lambs; feed My sheep; feed My lambs, follow thou Me.' This is also our
+privilege. As a guide going across a wet moor with a traveller calls
+out, 'Step where I step, or else you will be bogged,' so we must tread
+in the steps of the Saviour, and then we shall come safe on the other
+side. Tread in His steps, aye, in the steps which are marked with
+bleeding feet, for 'He suffered and left us an example.' I will just add
+one word, dear friends, to deepen the thought in its impressiveness,
+that the cross of Christ it to be the pattern of our lives. It stands
+alone, thank God, for mighty power in its relation to the salvation of
+the world, and it stands alone in awful terror. You and I are, at the
+very worst, but at the edge of the storm which broke in all its dreadful
+fury over His head; we love to go but a little way down the hillside,
+while He descended to the very bottom; we love to drink but very little
+of the cup which He drained the last drop of and held it up empty and
+reversed, showing that nothing trickled from it, and exclaimed, 'The cup
+which My Father hath given Me have I drunk.' But although alone in all
+its mighty power, and though alone in all its awful terror, it may be
+copied by us in two things--perfect submission to our Maker, and
+non-resistance and meekness with regard to man. There is only one way of
+carrying the cross of Christ, which God lays on us all, and that is
+bowing our back. If we resist, it will crush us, and if we yield we have
+something to endure; and there is but one thing which enables a man to
+patiently bear the sorrows and griefs which come to us all, and that is
+the simple secret, 'Father, not as I will, but Thy will be done.' Christ
+suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in His
+footsteps, and when we patiently do this the rod becomes a guiding
+staff, and the crown of thorns a crown of glory.
+
+But my text reminds me that the sufferings of Christ are not only our
+gain and our pattern, but they are also our power to imitate--the power
+to fight the battle for Christ. Example is not all. The world wants more
+than that. The reason for men's badness is not because they have not
+plenty of patterns of good. If a copyhead could save the world it would
+have been saved long ago. Patterns of good are plenty; the mischief is
+we don't copy them. There are footsteps in abundance, but then our legs
+are lame, and we cannot tread in them, and what is the use of copies if
+we have a broken pen, muddy ink, and soiled paper? So we want a great
+deal more than that. No, my friends, the world is not to be saved by
+example. You and I know that the weakness and the foolishness of men
+know a great deal better than the wisest of men ever did, so we want
+something more. Examples don't give the power nor the wish to get it. Is
+not that true about you? Don't you feel that if this is all which
+religion has given you it stops short? The gospel comes and says, 'If
+you love Christ Jesus because you know that He died for you,' then there
+will be something else than the copybook. That copy and pattern will be
+laid to your heart and transferred there. You will not have to go on
+trying to make a bungling imitation; you will get it photographed on
+your spirit, and on your character more distinctly and more clearly down
+to the very minutest shade of resemblance to the Master, and with simple
+loving trust you will go on from strength to strength glorifying God in
+your life. They that begin with the cross of Christ, and make the
+sacrifice their all in all, will advance heavenward joyously; the cross
+and the sacrifice will be the pattern of your pilgrimage here, and the
+perfectness of your characters unto the likeness of the Son. The cross
+is the agency of sanctification as well as the means of
+forgiveness--saving grace to save us from the world, saving grace to
+help us everywhere and in everything for our salvation, and saving grace
+to help us to conquer our self-will, and saving grace to bind us to Him,
+whose abundant goodness and gratitude no man can tell. If we love Him we
+shall keep His commandments; if we love them we shall grow in grace, and
+not else. None else, my brother, my sister, but the Eternal Exemplar
+stands there as our refuge; and if you want to be filled with this
+all-saving grace, deep down to the bottom of His tender heart, if you
+want to be good, and of pure mind, then you have to begin with that
+Saviour who died for you, and trust to the cross for your forgiveness.
+Then listen to Him saying, 'Any man who comes after Me, let him take up
+My cross'--take it up, mark--'and follow Me.'
+
+
+
+
+HALLOWING CHRIST
+
+     'Be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; but sanctify
+      the Lord God in your hearts.'--1 Peter iii. 14, 15.
+
+
+These words are a quotation from the prophet Isaiah, with some very
+significant variations. As originally spoken, they come from a period of
+the prophet's life when he was surrounded by conspirators against him,
+eager to destroy, and when he had been giving utterance to threatening
+prophecies as to the coming up of the King of Assyria, and the voice of
+God encouraged him and his disciples with the ringing words: 'Fear not
+their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of Hosts Himself, and let
+Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread, and He shall be for a
+sanctuary.' Peter was in similar circumstances. The gathering storm of
+persecution of the Christians as Christians seems to have been rising on
+his horizon, and he turns to his brethren, and commends to them the old
+word which long ago had been spoken to and by the prophet. But the
+variations are very remarkable. The Revised Version correctly reads my
+text thus: 'Fear not their fear, neither be troubled, but sanctify in
+your hearts Christ as Lord.'
+
+I. We have first to note the substitution, as a matter of course,
+without any need for explanation or vindication, of Jesus Christ in
+place of the Jehovah of the Old Testament.
+
+There is no doubt that the reading adopted in the Revised Version is the
+true one, as attested by weighty evidence in the manuscripts, and in
+itself more probable by reason of its very difficulty. The other reading
+adopted in Authorised Versions is likely to have arisen from a marginal
+note which crept into the text, and was due to some copyist who was
+struck by Peter's free handling of the passage, and wished to make the
+quotations verbally accurate.
+
+Now, if we think for a moment of the Jew's reverence for the letter of
+Scripture, and then think again of the Jew's intense monotheism and
+dread of putting any creature into the place of God, we shall understand
+how saturated with the belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and how
+convinced that it was the vital centre of all Christian teaching, this
+Apostle must have been when, without a word of explanation, he took his
+pen, and, as it were, drew it through 'Lord God' in Isaiah's words, and
+wrote in capitals over it, 'Christ as Lord.'
+
+What does that mean? Some of us would, perhaps, hesitate to say that it
+means that He who was all through the growing ages of brightening
+revelation of old, named 'Jehovah,' is now named Jesus Christ. I believe
+that from the beginning He whom we call, according to the teaching of
+the great prologue of John's Gospel, the 'Word of God,' was the Agent of
+all Divine revelation. But whether that be so or no, whether we have the
+right to say that the same Person who was revealed as 'Jehovah' is now
+revealed as 'Jesus Christ,' the 'Word made flesh,' or no, we distinctly
+fail to apprehend who and what Jesus Christ was to the writer of this
+epistle, and fail to sanctify Him in our hearts, unless we say: 'To Thee
+belongeth all that belongs to God.' That is the first great truth that
+comes out of these words, and I would commend it to any of you who may
+be hesitating about that Christian fact of the true divinity of Jesus
+Christ. You cannot strike it out of the New Testament, and if you try to
+do so you tear the book to pieces, and reduce it to rags and tatters.
+
+Further, mark here what the Apostle means by the Christian sanctifying
+of Christ.
+
+That is a strange expression. How am I to sanctify Jesus Christ? Well,
+it is the same word that is used in the Lord's Prayer, and perhaps its
+use there may throw light on Peter's meaning here. 'Hallowed be Thy
+name'--explains the meaning of _hallowing_ Christ as Lord in our hearts.
+We sanctify or hallow one who is holy already, when we recognise the
+holiness, and honour what we recognise. So that the plain meaning of the
+commandments here is: set Christ in your hearts on the pedestal and
+pinnacle that belongs to Him, and then bow down before Him with all
+reverence and submission. Be sure that you give Him all that is His
+due, and in the love of your hearts, as well as in the thinkings of your
+minds, recognise Him for what He is, the Lord. Let us take care that our
+thoughts about Jesus Christ are full of devout awe and reverence. I
+venture to think that a great deal of modern and sentimental
+Christianity is very defective in this respect. You cannot love Jesus
+Christ too much, but you can love Him with too little reverence. And if
+you take up some of our luscious modern hymns that people are so fond of
+singing, I think you will find in them a twang of unwholesomeness, just
+because the love is not reverent enough, and the approaching confidence
+has not enough of devout awe in it. This generation looks at the half of
+Christ. When people are suffering from indigestion, they can only see
+half of the thing that they look at, and there are many of us that can
+only see a part of the whole Christ: and so, forgetting that He is
+judge, and forgetting that He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and
+forgetting that whilst He is manifested in the flesh our brother He is
+also _God_ manifest in the flesh, our Creator as well as our Redeemer,
+and our Judge as well as our Saviour, some do not enough hallow Him in
+their hearts as Lord.
+
+Peter had heard Jesus say that 'all men should honour the Son as they
+honoured the Father.' I beseech you, embrace the whole Christ, and see
+to it that you do not dethrone Him from His rightful place, or take from
+Him the glory that is due to His name. For your love will suffer, and
+become a mere sentiment, inoperative and sometimes unwholesome, unless
+you keep in mind Peter's injunction.
+
+But, further, there is included in this commandment, not only what
+Isaiah said, 'Let Him be your fear and your dread,' but also a reverent
+love and trust. For we do not hallow Christ as we ought, unless we
+absolutely confide in every word of His lips. Did you ever think that
+not to trust Jesus Christ is to blaspheme and profane that holy name by
+which we are called; and that to hallow Him means to say to Him, 'I
+believe every word that Thou speakest, and I am ready to risk my life
+upon Thy veracity'? Distrust is dishonouring the Master, and taking from
+Him the glory that is due unto His name.
+
+Then there is another point to be noted: 'Sanctify in your hearts Christ
+as Lord.' That is Peter's addition to Isaiah's words, and it is not a
+mere piece of tautology, but puts great emphasis into the exhortation.
+What is a man's heart, in New Testament and Old Testament language? It
+is the very centre-point of the personal self. And when Peter says,
+'Hallow Him in your hearts,' he means that, deep down in the very midst
+of your personal being, as it were, there should be, fundamental to all,
+and interior to all, this reverential awe and absolute trust in Jesus
+Christ--an habitual thought, a central emotion, an all-dominant impulse.
+'Out of the heart are the issues of life.' Put the healing agent into
+it, the fountain-head, and all the streams that pour out thence will be
+purified and sweetened. Deep in the heart put Christ, and life will be
+pure.
+
+Now, in another part of this letter the Apostle says, 'Ye are a
+spiritual house.' I think some notion of the same sort is running in his
+mind here. He thinks of each man's heart as being a shrine in which the
+god is enthroned, and in which worship is rendered. And if we have
+Christ in our hearts, then our hearts are temples; and if we 'hallow'
+the Christ that dwells within us, we shall take care that there are no
+foul things in that sanctuary. We dishonour the indwelling Deity when
+into that same heart we allow to come lusts, foulnesses, meannesses,
+worldlinesses, passions, sins, and all the crew of reptiles and wild
+beasts that we sometimes admit there. If we hallow Christ in our hearts,
+in any true fashion, He will turn out the money-changers and overturn
+the tables. And if we desire to hallow Him in our hearts, we too, must
+by His Spirit's help, purge the temple that He may enter and abide.
+
+And so I come to the next point, and that is the Christian courage and
+calmness that ensue from hallowing Christ in the heart.
+
+The Apostle first puts his exhortation: 'Be not afraid of their terror,
+neither be troubled,' and then he presents us an opposite injunction,
+obedience to which is the only means of obeying the first exhortation.
+If you do not sanctify Christ in your hearts, you cannot help being
+afraid of their terror, and troubled. If you do, then there is no fear
+that you will fall into that snare. That is to say, the one thing that
+delivers men from the fears that make cowards of us all is to have
+Christ lodged within our hearts. Sunshine puts out culinary fires. They
+who have the awe and the reverent love that knit them to Jesus Christ,
+and who carry Him within their hearts, have no need to be afraid of
+anything besides. Only he who can say, 'The Lord is the strength of my
+life' can go on to say, 'Of whom shall I be afraid?' There is nothing
+more hopeless than to address to men, ringed about with dangers, the
+foolish exhortations: 'Cheer up! do not be frightened,' unless you can
+tell them some reason for not being frightened. And the one reason that
+will carry weight with it, in all circumstances, is the presence of
+Jesus.
+
+    'With Christ in the vessel
+     I smile at the storm.'
+
+The world comes to us and says: 'Do not be afraid, do not be afraid; be
+of good courage; pluck up your heart, man.' The Apostle comes and says:
+'Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts; and then, and only then, will
+you be bold.' The boldness which fronts the certain dangers and
+calamities and the possible dangers and calamities of this life, without
+Christ, is not boldness, but foolhardiness. 'The simple passeth on, and
+is punished,' says the book of Proverbs. It is easy to whistle when
+going through the churchyard, and to say, 'Who's afraid?' But the ghosts
+rise all the same, and there is only one thing that lays them, and that
+is--the present Christ.
+
+In like manner the sanctifying of Jesus Christ in the heart is the
+secret of calmness. 'Fear not their fear, neither be troubled.' I wonder
+if Peter was thinking at all of another saying: 'Let not your heart be
+troubled; neither let it be afraid.' Perhaps he was. At any rate, his
+thought is parallel with our Lord's when He said, 'Let not your heart be
+troubled. Believe in God, and believe in Me.' The two alternatives are
+possible; we shall have either troubled hearts, or hearts calmed by
+faith in Christ. The ships behind the breakwater do not pitch and toss.
+The little town up amongst the hills, with the high cliffs around it,
+lies quiet, and 'hears not the loud winds when they call.' And the heart
+that has Christ for its possession has a secret peace, whatever strife
+may be raging round it.
+
+'Be not troubled; sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.' Peter leaves
+out a clause of Isaiah's, though he conveys the idea without reiterating
+the words. But Isaiah had added a sweet promise which means much the
+same thing as I have now been saying, when he went on to declare that to
+those who sanctify the Lord God in their hearts, He shall be for a
+sanctuary. 'The sanctuary was an asylum where men were safe. And if we
+have made our hearts temples in which Christ is honoured, worshipped,
+and trusted, then we shall dwell in Him as in the secret place of the
+Most High'; and in the inner chamber of the Temple it will be quiet,
+whatever noises are in the camp, and there is light coming from the
+Shekinah, whatever darkness may lie around. If we take Christ into our
+hearts, and reverence and love Him there, He will take us into His
+heart, and we shall dwell in peace, because we dwell in Him.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM
+
+     'Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm
+      yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered
+      in the flesh hath ceased from sin. 2. That he no longer should live
+      the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the
+      will of God. 3. For the time past of our life may suffice us to
+      have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in
+      lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and
+      abominable idolatries: 4. Wherein they think it strange that ye run
+      not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: 5.
+      Who shall give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and
+      the dead. 6. For, for this cause was the gospel preached also to
+      them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in
+      the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. 7. But the end
+      of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto
+      prayer. 8. And, above all things, have fervent charity among
+      yourselves; for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.'--1 Peter
+      iv. 1-8.
+
+
+Christian morality brought two new things into the world--a new type of
+life in sharp contrast with the sensuality rife on every side, and a new
+set of motives powerfully aiding in its realisation. Both these
+novelties are presented in this passage, which insists on a life in
+which the spirit dominates the flesh, and is dominated by the will of
+God, and which puts forward purely Christian ideas as containing the
+motives for such a life. The facts of Christ's life and the prospect of
+Christ's return to judge the world are here urged as the reason for
+living a life of austere repression of 'the flesh' that we may do God's
+will.
+
+I. We have, first, in verses 1 and 2, a general precept, based upon the
+broad view of Christ's earthly history. 'Christ hath suffered in the
+flesh.' That is the great fact which should shape the course of all His
+followers. But what does suffering in the flesh mean here? It does not
+refer only to the death of Jesus, but to His whole life. The phrase 'in
+the flesh' is reiterated in the context, and evidently is equivalent to
+'during the earthly life.' Our Lord's life was, in one aspect, one
+continuous suffering, because He lived the higher life of the spirit.
+That higher life had to Him, and has to us, rich compensations; but it
+sets those who are true to it at necessary variance with the lower types
+of life common among men, and it brings many pains, all of which Jesus
+knew. The last draught from the cup was the bitterest, but the
+bitterness was diffused through all the life of the Man of Sorrows.
+
+That life is here contemplated as the pattern for all Christ's servants.
+Peter says much in this letter of our Lord's sufferings as the atonement
+for sin, but here he looks at them rather as the realised ideal of all
+worthy life. We are to be 'partakers of Christ's sufferings' (v. 13),
+and we shall become so in proportion as His own Spirit becomes the
+spirit which lives in us. If Jesus were only our pattern, Christianity
+would be a poor affair, and a gospel of despair; for how should we
+reach to the pure heights where He stood? But, since He can breathe
+into us a spirit which will hallow and energise our spirits, we can rise
+to walk beside Him on the high places of heroic endurance and of holy
+living. Very beautifully does Peter hint at our sore conflict, our
+personal defencelessness, and our all-sufficient armour, in the
+picturesque metaphor 'arm yourselves.' The 'mind of Christ' is given to
+us if we will. We can gird it on, and if we do, it will be as an
+impenetrable coat-of-mail, which will turn the sharpest arrows and
+resist the fiercest sword-cuts.
+
+The last clause of verse 1 is a parenthesis, and, if it is for the
+moment omitted, the sentence runs smoothly on, especially if the Revised
+Version's reading is adopted. The purpose of arming us with the same
+mind is that, whilst we live on earth, we should live according to the
+will of God, and should renounce 'the lusts of men,' which are in us as
+in all men, and which men who are not clad in the armour which Christ
+gives to us yield to.
+
+But what of the parenthetical statement? Clearly, the words which follow
+it forbid its being taken to mean that dead men do not sin. Rather the
+Apostle's thought seems to be that such suffering in daily life after
+Christ's pattern, and by His help, is at once a sign that the sufferer
+has shaken off the dominion of sin, and is a means of further
+emancipating him from it.
+
+But the two great thoughts in this paragraph are, that the Christian
+life is one in which God's will, and not man's desires, is the
+regulating force, and that the pattern of that life and the power to
+copy the pattern are found in Christ, the sufferer for righteousness'
+sake.
+
+II. More specific injunctions, entering into the details of the higher
+life, follow, interwoven, as in the preceding verses, with a statement
+of the motives which make obedience to them possible to our weakness.
+The sins in view are those most closely connected with 'the flesh' in
+its literal meaning, amongst which are included 'abominable idolatries,'
+because gross acts of sensual immorality were inseparably intertwined
+with much of heathen worship. These sins of flesh were especially
+rampant among the luxurious Asiatic lands, to which this letter was
+addressed, but they flooded the whole Roman empire, as the works of
+poets like Martial and of moralists like Epictetus equally show. But New
+York or London could match the worst scenes in Rome or Ephesus, and
+perhaps would not be far behind the foul animalism of Sodom and
+Gomorrah. Lust and drunkenness are eating out the manhood of our race on
+both sides of the Atlantic, and, if we have 'the same mind' as the
+suffering Christ, we shall put on the armour for war to the knife with
+these in society, and for the rigid self-control of our own animal
+nature.
+
+Observe the strong motives which Peter just touches without expanding. A
+sad irony lies in his saying that the time past may suffice. The flesh
+had had enough of time given to it,--had not God a right to the rest?
+The flesh should have had none; it had had all too much. Surely the
+readers had had enough of the lower life, more than enough. Were they
+not sick of it, 'satisfied' even to disgust? Let us look back on our
+wasted years, and give no more precious moments to serve the corruptible
+flesh. Further, the life of submission to the animal nature is
+characteristic of 'the Gentiles,' and in sharp contrast, therefore, to
+that proper to Christ's followers. That is as true to-day, in America
+and England, as ever it was. Indeed, as wealth has increased, and
+so-called 'civilisation' has diffused material comforts, senseless
+luxury, gluttony, drunkenness, and still baser fleshy sins, have become
+more flagrantly common in society which is not distinctively and
+earnestly Christian; and there was never more need than there is to-day
+for Christians to carry aloft the flag of self-control and temperance in
+all things belonging to 'the flesh.'
+
+If we have the mind of Christ, we shall get the same treatment from the
+world which Peter says that the primitive Christians did from the
+idolaters round them. We shall be wondered at, just as a heathen stared
+with astonishment at this strange, new sect, which would have nothing to
+do with feasts and garlands and wine-cups and lust disguised as worship.
+The spectacle, when repeated to-day, of Christians steadfastly refusing
+to share in that lower life which is the only life of so many, is,
+perhaps, less wondered at now, because it is, thank God! more familiar;
+but it is not less disliked and 'blasphemed.' A total abstainer from
+intoxicants will not get the good word of the distiller or brewer or
+consumer of liquor. He will be called faddist, narrow, sour-visaged, and
+so on and so on. 'You may know a genius because all the dunces make
+common cause against him,' said Swift. You may know a Christian after
+Christ's pattern because all the children of the flesh are in league to
+laugh at him and pelt him with nicknames.
+
+Further, the thought of Christ as the judge should both silence the
+blasphemers and strengthen the blasphemed to endure. That judgment will
+vindicate the wisdom of those who sowed to the spirit and the folly of
+those who sowed to the flesh. The one will reap corruption; the other,
+life everlasting.
+
+The difficult verse 6 cannot be adequately dealt with here, but we may
+note that introductory 'for' shows that it, too, contains a motive
+urging to life, 'to the will of God,' and that no such motive appears in
+it if it is taken to mean, as by some, that the gospel is preached after
+death to the dead. Surely to say that 'the gospel was preached also (or,
+even) to them that are dead' is not to say that it was preached to them
+when dead.
+
+Peter's letter is of late enough date to explain his looking back to a
+generation now passed away, who had heard it in their lifetime. Nor does
+one see how the meaning of 'in the flesh,' which belongs to the phrase
+in the frequent instances of its occurrence in this context, can be
+preserved in the clause 'that they might be judged according to men in
+the flesh,' unless that means a judgment which takes place during the
+earthly life.
+
+We note, too, that the antithesis between being judged 'according to men
+in the flesh,' and living 'according to God in the spirit' recalls that
+in verse 2 between living in the flesh to the lusts of men and to the
+will of God. It would appear, therefore, that the Apostle's meaning is
+that the very aim of the preaching of the gospel to those who are gone
+to meet the Judge was that they might by it be judged while here in the
+flesh, in regard to the lower life 'according to men' (or, as verse 2
+has it, 'to the lusts of men'), and, being so judged, and sin condemned
+in their flesh, might live according to God in their spirits. That is
+but to say in other words that the gospel is meant to search hearts, and
+bring to light and condemn the lusts of the flesh, and to impart the new
+life which is moulded after the will of God.
+
+III. The reference to Christ as the judge suggests a final motive for a
+life of suppression of the lower nature,--the near approach of the end
+of all things. The distinct statement by our Lord in Acts i. 7 excludes
+the knowledge of the time of the end from the revelation granted to the
+Apostles, so that there need be no hesitation in upholding their
+authority, and yet admitting their liability to mistake on that point.
+But the force of the motive is independent of the proximity of the
+judgment. Its certainty and the indefiniteness of the time when we each
+shall have to pass into the other state of being are sufficient to
+preserve for each of us the whole pressure of the solemn thought that
+for us the end is at hand, and to enforce thereby Peter's exhortation,
+'Be ye therefore of sound mind.'
+
+The prospect of that end will sweep away many illusions as to the worth
+of the enjoyments of sense, and be a bridle on many vagrant desires.
+Self-control in all regions of our nature is implied in the word. Our
+various faculties are meant to be governed by a sovereign will, which is
+itself governed by the Divine will; and, if we see plain before us the
+dawning of the day of the Lord, the vision will help to tame the
+subordinate parts of ourselves, and to establish the supremacy of the
+spirit over the flesh. One special form of that general self-control is
+that already enjoined,--the suppression of the animal appetites,
+especially the abstinence from intoxicants. That form of self-control is
+especially meant by the second of these exhortations, 'Be sober.' How
+could a man lift the wine cup to his lips, and drown his higher nature
+in a flood of drunken riot, if the end, with its solemnities of
+judgment, blazed before his inner eye? But this self-command is
+inculcated that we may be fit to pray. These lower appetites will take
+all desire for prayer and all earnestness in it out of us, and only
+when we keep the wings of appetites close clipped will the pinions grow
+by which we can mount up with wings as eagles. A praying drunkard is an
+impossible monster.
+
+But exhortations to self-control are not all. We have to think of
+others, as well as of our own growth in purity and spirituality.
+Therefore Peter casts one swift glance to the wider circle of the
+brethren, which encompasses each of us, and gives the all-embracing
+direction, which carries in itself everything. 'Fervent love' to our
+fellow-Christians is the counterpoise to earnest government of
+ourselves. There is a selfishness possible even in cultivating our
+religion, as many a monk and recluse has shown. Such love as Peter here
+enjoins will save us from the possible evils of self-regard, and it will
+'cover the multitude of sins,'--by which is not meant that, having it,
+we shall be excused if we in other respects sin, but that, having it, we
+shall be more desirous of veiling than of exposing our brother's faults,
+and shall be ready to forgive even when our brother offends against us
+often. Perhaps Peter was remembering the lesson which he had once had
+when he was told that 'seventy times seven' was not too great a
+multitude of sins against brotherly love to be forgiven by it in one
+day.
+
+
+
+
+THE SLAVE'S GIRDLE
+
+     '... Be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and
+      giveth grace to the humble.'--1 Peter v. 5.
+
+
+The Apostle uses here an expression of a remarkable kind, and which
+never occurs again in Scripture. The word rendered in the Authorised
+Version 'be clothed,' or better in the Revised Version, 'gird yourselves
+with,' really implies a little more than either of those renderings
+suggests. It describes a kind of garment as well as the act of putting
+it on, and the sort of garment which it describes was a remarkable one.
+It was a part of a slave's uniform. Some scholars think that it was a
+kind of white apron, or overall, or something of that sort; others think
+that it was simply a scarf or girdle; but, at all events, it was a
+distinguishing mark of a slave, and he put it on when he meant work.
+And, says Peter, 'Do you strap round you the slave's apron, and do it
+for the same reason that He did it, to serve.'
+
+So, then, there are three points in my text, and the first is what we
+have to wear; second, what we have to wear it for; and, third, why we
+should wear it.
+
+I. What we have to wear.
+
+'Gird yourselves with the slave's apron of humility.' Humility does not
+consist in being, or pretending to be, blind to one's strong points.
+There is no humility in a man denying that he can do certain things if
+he can do them, or even refusing to believe he can do them well, if God
+has given him special faculties in any given direction. That is not
+humility at all. But to know whence all my strength comes, and to know
+what a little thing it is, after all; not to estimate myself highly,
+and, still further, not to be always insisting upon other people
+estimating me highly, and to think a great deal more about their claims
+on me than fretfully to insist upon my due modicum of respect and
+attention from others, that is the sort of temper that Peter means here.
+
+Now, that temper which may recognise fully any gift that God has given
+me, its sweep and degree, but that nevertheless takes a true, because a
+lowly, measure of myself, and does not always demand from other people
+their regard and assistance, that temper is a thing that we can
+cultivate. We can increase it, and we are all bound to try specifically
+and directly to do so. Now, I believe that a great part of the feeble
+and unprogressive character of so many Christian people amongst us is
+due to this, that they do not definitely steady their thoughts and focus
+them on the purpose of finding out the weak points to which special
+attention and discipline should be directed. It is a very easy thing to
+say, 'Oh, I am a poor, weak, sinful creature!' It would do you a great
+deal more good to say, 'I am a very passionate one, and my business is
+to control that quick temper of mine,' or, 'I am a great deal too much
+disposed to run after worldly advantage, and my business is to subdue
+that,' or, 'I am afraid I am rather too close-fisted, and I ought to
+crucify myself into liberality.' It would be a great deal better, I say,
+to apply the general confession to specific cases, and to set ourselves
+to cultivate individual types of goodness, as well as to seek to be
+filled with the all-comprehensive root of it all, which lies in union
+with Jesus Christ. We have often to preach, dear brethren, that the way
+of self-improvement is not by hammering at ourselves, but by letting God
+mould us, and to keep the balance right. We have also to insist upon the
+other side of the truth, and to press the complementary thought that
+specific efforts after the cultivation of specific virtues and all the
+more if they are virtues that are not natural to us, for the gospel is
+given to us to mend our natural tempers--is the duty of all Christian
+people that would seek to live as Christ would have them.
+
+And how is this to be done? How am I to gird upon myself and to keep--if
+I may transpose the metaphor into the key of modern English--tightly
+buckled around me this belt which may hold in place a number of fine
+articles of clothing?
+
+Well, there are three things, I think, that we may profitably do. Go
+down deep enough into yourself if you want to cure a lofty estimate of
+yourself. The top storeys may be beautifully furnished, but there are
+some ugly things and rubbish down in the cellar. There is not one of us
+but, if we honestly let the dredge down into the depths, as far down as
+the _Challenger's_ went, miles and miles down, will bring up a pretty
+collection of wriggling monstrosities that never have been in the
+daylight before, and are ugly enough to be always shrouded in their
+native darkness. Down in us all, if we will go deep enough, and take
+with us a light bright enough, we shall discover enough to make anything
+but humility ridiculous, if it were not wicked. And the only right place
+and attitude for a man who knows himself down to the roots of his being
+is the publican's when 'he stood afar off, and would not so much as lift
+up his eyes to heaven, and said, God be merciful to me a sinner.' Ah,
+dear friends, it will put an end to any undue exaltation of ourselves if
+we know ourselves as we are.
+
+Further, let us try to cultivate this temper, by looking at God, and
+having communion with Him. Think of Him as the Giver of anything in us
+that is good, and that annihilates our pride. Think of Jesus as our
+pattern; how that kills our satisfaction in little excellences! If you
+get high enough up the mountainside, the undulating country which when
+you were down amongst the knolls showed all variations of level, and
+where he who lived on the top of one little mound thought himself in a
+fine, airy situation as compared with his neighbour down in the close
+valley, is smoothed down, and brought to one uniform level; and from
+the hilltop the rolling land is a plateau.
+
+I have heard of a child who, when she was told that the sun was
+ninety-five millions of miles off, asked if that was from the top or the
+bottom storey of the house! There is about as much difference between
+the great men and the little, between heroes and the unknown men, as
+measured against the distance to God, as there is difference in the
+distance to the sun from the slates and from the cellar. Let us live
+near God, and so aspiration will come in the place of satisfaction, and
+the unattained will gleam before us, and beckon us not in vain, and the
+man that sees what an infinite stretch there is before him will be
+delivered from the temptations of self-conceit, and will say, 'Not as
+though I had already attained, either were already perfected, but I
+follow after.'
+
+But there is another advice to be given--cultivate the habit of thinking
+about other people, their excellences, their claims on you. To be always
+trying to get a footing in a social grade above our own is a poor
+effort, but there is a sense in which it is good advice--live with your
+_betters_. We can all do that. A man writes a bit of a book, preaches a
+sermon, makes a speech--all the newspapers pat him on the back, and say
+what a clever fellow he is. But let him steep his mind and his heart in
+the great works of the _great_ men, and he finds out what a poor little
+dwarf he is by the side of them. And so all round the circle. Live with
+bigger men, not with little ones. And learn to discount--and you may
+take a very liberal discount off--either the praises or the censures of
+the people round you. Let us rather say, 'With me it is a very small
+matter to be judged of man's judgment. He that judgeth me is the Lord.'
+
+There are plenty of hands, foremost among them a black one that is not
+so much a hand as a claw, ready to snatch the girdle of humility off
+you! Buckle it tight about you, brother; and in an immovable temper of
+lowly estimate of yourself live and work.
+
+II. The second thought here is, What we are to wear the apron or girdle
+for?
+
+The Revised Version makes a little alteration in the reading as well as
+in the translation of our text, the previous words to which, in the
+Authorised Version stand, 'Yea, all of you be subject one to another.'
+There is another reading which strikes out that clause, and adds a
+portion of it to the first part of my text, which then runs thus: 'Yea,
+all of you gird yourselves with humility to serve one another.' That is
+what Christian humility is for. The slave put on his garment, whatever
+it was, when he had work to do.
+
+But perhaps there is a deeper thought here. I wonder if it is fanciful
+to see in the text one of the very numerous allusions in this epistle to
+the events in our Lord's Passion. You remember that Jesus laid aside His
+garments, and took a towel, and girded Himself, and washed the
+disciples' feet, and then said, 'The servant is not above His master. I
+have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.'
+Probably, I think, there floated before the memory of the man who had
+said, 'Lord, Thou shalt never wash my feet,' and then, with the swift
+recoil to the opposite pole which makes us love Him so much, hurried to
+say, 'Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head'--some
+reminiscence of that upper chamber, and of how the Master had girded
+Himself with the slave's apron, or towel, in order that He might serve
+the disciples; and then had told them that that was the pattern for all
+Christian men, and for all Christian living till the very end.
+
+Service coming from humility, and humility manifested in service, are
+the requirements laid down in the text. Humility is the preparation for
+service; and service is the test of humility. If a man does not feel
+himself to be needy and low, he will never be able, and he will never be
+willing, to help those that are. You must go down if you would lift up.
+Laces and velvets and the fine feathers that the peacocks of
+self-conceit in this world strut about in are terribly in the way of
+Christian work. Rough work needs rough dress; and the only garb in which
+we shall be able to do the deeds of self-sacrifice that are needed in
+order to help our brethren is humility, the preparation for all service.
+
+But, further, service is the test of humility. Plenty of people will
+say, 'I know that I have nothing to boast of,' and so forth; but they
+never do any work. And there is a still more spurious kind of humility,
+that of a great many professing Christians (I wonder of how many of us)
+who, when we ask them for any kind of Christian service, say, 'I do not
+feel myself at all competent. I am sure I could not take a class in the
+Sunday School. I do not feel sufficiently master of the subject. I
+cannot talk. I have no facilities for influencing other people,' and so
+on. Too many of us are very humble when there is anything to be done,
+and never at any other time as far as anybody can see; and that sort of
+humility the Apostle does not commend. It is unfortunately very frequent
+amongst professing Christians. Christian humility is not particular
+about the sort of work it does for Jesus. Never mind whether you are on
+the quarter-deck, with gold lace on your coat and epaulettes on your
+shoulders as an officer, or whether you are a cabin-boy doing the
+humblest duties, or a stoker working away down fifty feet below
+daylight. As long as the work is done for the great Admiral, that is
+enough; and whoever does any work for Him will never want for a reward.
+There are some of us who like to be officers, but do not like carrying a
+musket in the ranks. Humility is the preparation for service, and
+service is the test of humility.
+
+III. Lastly, why we should wear this girdle.
+
+There is one reason given in my text, which Peter quotes from the Old
+Testament. 'God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.'
+That is often true even in regard to outward life. Providence and man
+often seem to be in league together to lift up the lowly ones and thwart
+the proud. If a man walks with his head very high, in this low-roofed
+world, he is pretty sure to get it knocked against the rafters before he
+has done. But it is the spiritual region that the Apostle is thinking
+about, in which the one condition of receiving God's grace is a lowly
+sense of my own character and nature, which is conscious of sin and
+weakness, and waits before Him. And the one condition of not receiving
+any of that grace is to keep a stiff upper lip and a high head. If I
+think that I am rich, 'and increased with goods, and have need of
+nothing,' that 'nothing' is exactly what I shall get from God, and if I
+have need of everything, and know that I have, that 'everything' is what
+I shall get from Him. 'He resisteth the proud, and He giveth grace to
+the humble.' On the high barren mountain-tops the dew and the rain slide
+off and find their way down to the lowly valleys, where they run as
+fertilising rivers. And the man that is humble and of a contrite heart,
+'with that man will I dwell, saith the Lord.' If we gird ourselves with
+the slave's dress of humility, then we shall one day have to say, 'My
+soul shall rejoice in the Lord, for He hath clothed me with the garments
+of salvation; and He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness; as
+a bridegroom decketh himself with his ornaments, and as a bride adorneth
+herself with her jewels.'
+
+
+
+
+SYLVANUS
+
+     'By Sylvanus, our faithful brother, as I account him, I have
+      written unto you briefly.'--1 Peter v. 12 (R.V).
+
+
+I adopt the Revised Version because, in one or two small points, it
+brings out more clearly the Apostle's meaning. This Sylvanus is, beyond
+all reasonable doubt, the same man who is known to us in the Acts of the
+Apostles by the name of Silas. A double name was very common amongst
+Jews, whose avocations brought them into close connection with Gentiles.
+You will find other instances of it amongst the Apostles: in _Paul_
+himself, whose Hebrew name was _Saul_; _Simon_ and _Peter_; and probably
+in _Bartholomew_ and _Nathanael_. And there is no reasonable doubt that
+a careful examination of the various places in which Silas and Sylvanus
+are mentioned shows that they were borne by one person.
+
+Now let me put together the little that we know about this man, because
+it will help us to some lessons. He was one of the chief men in the
+church at Jerusalem when the dispute arose about the necessity for
+circumcision for the Gentile Christians. He was despatched to Antioch
+with the message of peace and good feeling which the church at Jerusalem
+wisely sent forth to heal the strife. He remained in Antioch, although
+his co-deputy went back to Jerusalem; and the attraction of Paul--the
+great mass of that star--drew this lesser light into becoming a
+satellite, moving round the greater orb. So, when the unfortunate
+quarrel broke out between Paul and Barnabas, and the latter went sulkily
+away by himself with his dear John Mark, without his brethren's
+blessing, Paul chose Silas and set out upon his first missionary tour.
+He was Paul's companion in the prison and stripes at Philippi, and in
+the troubles at Thessalonica; and, though they were parted for a little
+while, he rejoined the Apostle in the city of Corinth. From thence Paul
+wrote the two letters to the Thessalonians, both of which are sent in
+the name of himself and Silas or Sylvanus. There is one more reference
+to Sylvanus in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, which mentions him
+as having been associated with Paul in the evangelisation of the church
+there.
+
+Then he drops out of the book altogether, and we never hear anything
+more about him, except this one passing reference, which shows us to him
+in an altogether new relation. He is no longer attached to Paul, but to
+Peter. Paul was probably either in prison, or, possibly, martyred. At
+all events, Sylvanus now stood to Peter in a relationship similar to
+that in which he formerly stood to Paul. He was evidently acquainted
+with and known to the churches to whom this letter was addressed, and,
+therefore, is chosen to carry Peter's message to them.
+
+Now I would suggest, in passing, how Sylvanus' relations to the two
+Apostles throws light upon the perfectly cordial alliance between them,
+and how it shatters into fragments the theory which was thought to be
+such a wonderful discovery some years ago, as to the 'great schism' in
+the early church between one section, led by Peter, and the more liberal
+party, headed by Paul. Instead of that, we find the two men working
+together, and the only division between them was not as to the sort of
+gospel they preached, but as to the people to whom they preached. This
+little incident helps us to realise how natural it was for a man steeped
+in Paul's teaching to attach himself, if circumstances suggested it, to
+the person who has been said to have been antagonistic in the whole
+drift of his conceptions of Christianity to that Apostle.
+
+But I do not wish to speak about that now. I take this figure of a man
+who so contentedly and continually took such a subordinate place--played
+second fiddle quite willingly all his days, and who toiled on without
+any notice or record, and ask whether it does not teach one or two
+things.
+
+I. First, then, I think we may see here a hint as to the worth and
+importance of subordinate work.
+
+Not a syllable that Silas ever said is recorded in Scripture. He had
+been a chief man among the brethren when he was in Jerusalem, but, like
+some other chief men in little spheres, he came to be anything but a
+chief man when he got alongside of Paul, and found his proper work. He
+did not say: 'I have always pulled the stroke oar, and I am not going to
+be second. I do not intend to be absorbed in this man's brilliant
+lustre. I would rather have a smaller sphere where my light may not
+suffer by comparison than be overshone by him.' By no means! He could
+not do Paul's work, but he could endure stripes along with him in the
+prison at Philippi, and he took them. He could not write as Peter
+could; it was not his work to do that. But he could carry one of
+Peter's letters. And so, 'by Sylvanus, a faithful brother, I have
+written to you.' Perhaps Sylvanus was amanuensis as well as
+letter-carrier, for I daresay Peter was no great hand with a pen; he was
+better accustomed to haul nets. At all events, subordinate work was what
+God had set him to do, and so he found joy in it.
+
+Well, then, is not that a pattern for us? People in the world or in the
+Church who can do prominent work are counted by units; and those who can
+do valuable subordinate work are counted by thousands--by millions.
+'Those members which seem to be more feeble are the more necessary,'
+says Paul. It is a great truth, which it would do us all good to lay
+more to heart.
+
+It is hard to tell what is superior and what is subordinate work. I
+suppose that in a steam engine the smallest rivet is quite as essential
+as the huge piston, and that if the rivet drops out the piston-rod is
+very likely to stop rising and falling. So it is a very vulgar way of
+talking to speak about A.'s work being large and B.'s work being small,
+or to assume that we have eyes to settle which work is principal and
+which subordinate.
+
+The Athenians, who deemed themselves wisest in the world, thought there
+were few people of less importance than the fanatical Jew who was
+preaching a strange story about what they knew so little of that they
+took Jesus and Resurrection to be the names of a pair of gods, one male
+and one female. But in the eyes that see truly--the eyes of God--the
+relative importance of Apostle and Stoic was otherwise appraised.
+
+We cannot tell, as the book of Ecclesiastes has it, 'which shall
+prosper--this or that.' And if we begin to settle which is important
+work, we shall be sure to make mistakes, both in our judgment about
+other people, and in our sense of the obligations laid upon ourselves.
+Let us remember that when a thing is to be done by the co-operation of a
+great many parts, each part is as important as the other, and each is
+indispensable. Although more glory may come to the soldiers who go to
+the front and do the fighting, the troops miles in the rear, that are
+quietly in camp looking after the stores and keeping open the lines of
+communication, are quite as essential to the success of the campaign.
+Their names will not get into the gazette; there will probably not be
+any honours at the conclusion of the war showered upon them; but, if
+they had not been doing their subordinate work, the men at the front
+would never have been able to do theirs. Therefore, the old wise law in
+Israel was: 'As his part is that goeth down into the battle, so shall
+his part be that tarrieth by the stuff; they shall part alike.'
+
+And so it is good for people that have only one talent, and cannot do
+much, and must be contented to help somebody else that can do more, to
+remember this pretty little picture of Sylvanus, 'the faithful brother,'
+contented all his life to be a satellite of somebody; first of all
+helping Paul, and then helping Paul's brother Peter. Let us not be too
+lazy, or too proud with the pride that apes humility, to do the little
+that we can do because it is little.
+
+II. Another lesson which is own sister to that first one, but which may
+be taken for a moment separately, is, the importance and obligation of
+persistently doing our task, though nobody notices it.
+
+As I remarked, there is not one word of anything that Sylvanus said, or
+of anything that he did apart from Paul or Peter, recorded. And for all
+the long stretch of years--we do not know how many, but a very large
+number--that lie between this text of mine, where we find him in
+conjunction with Peter, and that day at Corinth, where we left him with
+Paul, the Acts of the Apostles does not think it worth while to mention
+his name. Was he sitting with his hands in his pockets all the while, do
+you think, doing no Christian work? Did he say, as some good people are
+apt to say now, 'Well, I went to teach in Sunday School for a while, and
+I took an interest in this, that, or the other thing for a bit, but
+nobody took any notice of me; and I supposed I was not wanted, and so I
+came away!'
+
+Not he. That is what a great many of us do. Though we sometimes are not
+honest enough to say it to ourselves, yet we do let the absence of
+'recognition' (save the mark) influence us in the earnestness of our
+Christian work to far too great an extent. And I dare say there are good
+friends among us who, if they would be quite honest with themselves,
+would take the hint, and, if I may use such a word, the rebuke, to
+themselves.
+
+Dear brethren, all the work that any of us do has to become unnoticed
+after a little while. It will not last. Nobody will know about you or me
+thirty years after we are dead. What does it matter whether they know
+anything about us, or say anything about us, or pat us on the back for
+anything that we do, or recognise our service whilst we live? Surely, if
+we are Christian men and women, we have a better reason for working than
+that. '_I_ will never forget any of their works.' That ought to be
+enough for us, ought it not? Whoever forgets, He remembers; and if He
+remembers, He will not remain in our debt for anything that we have
+done.
+
+So let us keep on, noticed or unnoticed; it matters very little which it
+is. There is a fillip, no doubt--and we should not be men and women if
+we did not feel it--in the recognition of what we have tried to do. And
+sometimes it comes to us; but the absence of it is no reason for
+slackening our work. And this man, so patiently and persistently
+'pegging away' at his obscure task during all these years which have
+been swallowed up in oblivion, may preach a sermon to us all.
+
+Only let us remember that he also shows us that unnoticed work is
+noticed, and that unrecorded services are recorded. Here are you and I,
+nineteen centuries after he is dead, talking about him, and his name
+will live and last as long as the world, because, though written in no
+other history, it has been recorded here. Jesus Christ's record, the
+Book of Life, contains the names of 'fellow-labourers' whose names have
+dropped out of every other record; and that should be enough for us.
+Sylvanus did no work that Christ did not see, and no work that Christ
+did not remember, and no work of which he did not, eighteen hundred
+years since, enter into the enjoyment of the fruit, and which he enjoys
+up there, whilst we are thinking about him down here.
+
+III. The last thing that I would suggest is--here is an example to us of
+a character which we can all earn, and which will be the best that any
+man can get.
+
+A great genius, a wise philosopher, an eloquent preacher, a statesman, a
+warrior, poet, painter? No! 'A faithful brother.' He may have been a
+commonplace one. We do not know anything about his intellectual
+capacity. He may have had very narrow limitations and very few powers,
+or he may have been a man of large faculty and acquirements. But these
+things drop out of sight; and this remains--that he was _faithful_. I
+suppose the eulogium is meant in both senses of the word. The one of
+these is the root of the other; for a man that is full of faith is a man
+who may be trusted, is reliable, and will be sure to fulfil all the
+obligations of his position, and to do all the duties that are laid upon
+him.
+
+You and I, whether we are wise or not, whether we are learned or not,
+whether we have large faculties or not, whether we have great
+opportunities or very small ones, can all equally earn that name if we
+like. If the perfect judgment, the clear eye, of Jesus Christ beholds in
+us qualities which will permit Him to call us by that name, what can we
+want better? 'A faithful brother.' Trust in Christ; let that be the
+animating principle of all that we do, the controlling power that
+restrains and limits and stimulates and impels. And then men will know
+where to have us, and will be sure, and rightly sure, that we shall not
+shirk our obligations, nor scamp our work, nor neglect our duties. And
+being thus full of faith, and counted faithful by Him, we need care
+little what men's judgments of us may be, and need desire no better
+epitaph than this--a faithful brother.
+
+
+
+
+AN APOSTOLIC TESTIMONY AND EXHORTATION
+
+     '... I have written briefly, exhorting, and testifying that this is
+      the true grace of God wherein ye stand.'--1 Peter v. 12.
+
+
+'I have written briefly,' says Peter. But his letter, in comparison with
+the other epistles of the New Testament, is not remarkably short; in
+fact, is longer than many of them. He regards it as short when measured
+by the greatness of its theme. For all words which are devoted to
+witnessing to the glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ, must be narrow
+and insufficient as compared with that, and after every utterance the
+speaker must feel how inadequate his utterance has been. So in that word
+'briefly' we get a glimpse of the Apostle's conception of the
+transcendent greatness of the Gospel which he had to proclaim. This
+verse seems to be a summary of the contents of the Epistle. And if we
+observe the altered translation of the latter portion of my text which
+is given in the Revised Version, we shall see that the verse is itself
+an example of both 'testifying' and exhorting. For the last clause is
+not, as our Authorised Version renders it, 'Wherein ye stand'--a
+statement of a fact, however true that may be--but a commandment, 'In
+which stand fast.' And so we have here the Apostle's all-sufficient
+teaching, and this all-comprehensive exhortation. He 'witnesses' that
+this is the true grace of God, and because it is, he exhorts, 'stand
+fast therein.' Let us look at these two points.
+
+I. Peter's testimony.
+
+Now there is a very beautiful, though not, to superficial readers,
+obvious, significance in this testimony. 'This is the true grace of
+God.' What is meant by '_this_'? Not merely the teaching which he has
+been giving in the preceding part of the letter, but that which somebody
+else had been giving. Now these churches in Asia Minor, to whom this
+letter was sent, were in all probability founded by the Apostle Paul, or
+by men working under his direction: and the type of doctrine preached in
+them was what people nowadays call Pauline. And here Peter puts his seal
+on the teaching that had come from his brother Apostle, and says: 'The
+thing that you have learned, and that I have had no part in
+communicating to you, _this_ is the true grace of God.' If such be the
+primary application of the words (and I think there can be little doubt
+that it is), then we have an interesting evidence, all the stronger
+because unobtrusive, of the cordial understanding between the two great
+leaders of the Church in apostolic times; and the figments that have
+been set forth, with great learning and little common sense, about the
+differences that divided these great teachers of Christianity, melt away
+into thin air. Their division was only a division of the field of
+labour. 'They would that I should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto
+the circumcision.' All the evidence confirms what Paul says, 'Whether it
+were they or I, so we preach, and so' all the converts 'believed.' Thus
+it is not without significance and beauty that we here see dimly through
+the ages Peter stretching out his hands to Paul's convert, and saying,
+'This--which my beloved brother Paul taught you--this is the true grace
+of God.'
+
+But, apart altogether from that thought, note two things; the one, the
+substance of this witness-bearing; and the other, Peter's right to bear
+it. As to the substance of the testimony; 'grace' which has become a
+threadbare word in the minds of many people, used with very little
+conception of its true depth and beauty of meaning, is properly love in
+exercise towards inferior and sinful creatures who deserve something
+else. Condescending, pardoning, and active love, is its proper meaning.
+And, says Peter, the inmost significance of the gospel is that it is the
+revelation of such a love as being in God's heart.
+
+Another meaning springs out of this. That same message is not only a
+revelation of love, but it is a communication of the gifts of love. And
+the 'true grace of God' is shorthand for all the rich abundance and
+variety and exuberant manifoldness and all-sufficiency of the sevenfold
+perfect gifts for spirit and heart which come from faith in Jesus
+Christ. The truths that lie here in the Gospel, the truths which glow
+and throb in this letter of Peter's, are the revelation and the
+communication to men of the rich gifts of the Divine heart, which will
+all flow into that soul which opens itself for the entrance of God's
+word. And what are these truths? The main theme of this letter is Jesus
+Christ, the Lamb of God, that was slain. 'Ye were as sheep going astray,
+but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.' He
+dwells upon Christ's innocence, upon Christ's meekness; but most of all
+upon the Christ that died, 'whom, having not seen, we love, and in whom,
+though unseen, we, believing, receive the end of our faith'--and the end
+of the gospel--'even the salvation of our souls.'
+
+Thus, dear brethren, this gospel, the gospel of the Divine Christ that
+died for our sins, and lives to give His Spirit to all waiting hearts;
+this is the true grace of God. It is very needful for us to keep in view
+always that lofty conception of what this gospel is, that we may not
+bring it down to the level of a mere theory of religion; nor think of it
+as a mere publication of dry doctrines; that we may not lose sight of
+what is the heart of it all, but may recognise this fact, that a gospel
+out of which are struck, or in which are diminished, the truths of the
+sacrifice of Christ and His ever-living intercession for us, is not the
+true grace of God, and is neither a revelation of His love to inferior
+and sinful men, nor a communication of His gifts to our weakness. Let us
+remember Peter's witness. This--the full gospel of incarnation,
+sacrifice, resurrection, ascension, and reign in glory, and return as
+Judge--this, and nothing else, 'is the true grace of God.' And this
+gospel is not exalted to its highest place unless it is regarded as such
+by our waiting and recipient hearts.
+
+Further, what right had this man to take this position and say, 'I
+testify that this is the true grace of God'? He was no great genius; he
+did not know anything about comparative religion, which is nowadays
+supposed to be absolutely essential to understanding any one religion.
+He was not a scholar or a philosopher. What business had he to bring in
+his personality thus, as if he were an authority, and say, '_I_ testify
+that this is the true grace of God'?
+
+Well there are two or three answers: one peculiar to him and others
+common to all Christian people. The one peculiar to him is, as I
+believe, that he was conscious, and rightly conscious, that Jesus Christ
+had bestowed upon him the power to witness, and the authority to impose
+his testimony upon men as a word from God. In the most inartificial and
+matter-of-course way Peter here lets us see the apostolic conception of
+apostolic authority. He had a right--not because of what he was
+himself, but because of the authority which Christ had conferred on
+him--to say to men, 'I do not ask you to give heed to me, Peter. I
+myself also am a man (as he said to Cornelius), but I call on you to
+accept Christ's word, spoken through me, His commissioned messenger,
+when _I_ testify, and through me Christ testifies, that this is the true
+grace of God.'
+
+Now no one but an apostle has the right to say that; but we Christian
+people have a right to say something like it, and if we have not
+apostolic authority, we may have what is very nearly as good, and
+sometimes as powerful in its effect upon other people, and that is
+authority based on personal experience. If we have plunged deep into the
+secrets of God, and lived closely and faithfully in communion with Him,
+and for ourselves have found the grace of God, His love and the gifts of
+His love, coming into our lives, and ennobling, calming, elevating each
+of us; then we, too, have a right to go to men and say, 'Never mind
+about me; never mind about whether I am wise or foolish, I do not argue,
+but I tell you I have tasted the manna, and it is sweet. I have drunk of
+the water, and it comes cool and fresh from the rock. One thing I know,
+that whereas I was blind, now I see. I believed, and therefore have I
+spoken, and on the strength of my own tasting of it, I testify that
+this, which has done so much for me, is the true grace of God.' If we
+testify thus, and back up our witness with lives corresponding, some who
+are wholly untouched by a preacher's eloquence and controversialists'
+arguments, will probably be led by our attestation to make the
+experiment for themselves. 'Ye are My witnesses,' says God. He did not
+say, 'Ye are my advocates.' He did not bid us argue for Him, but He bid
+us witness for Him.
+
+II. Further, notice Peter's exhortation.
+
+According to the right rendering the last clause is, as I have already
+said, 'in which stand fast.' The translation in the Authorised Version,
+'in which ye stand,' gives a true thought, though not the Apostle's
+intention here. For, as a matter of fact, men cannot stand upright and
+firm unless their feet are planted on the rock of that true grace of
+God. If our heels are well fixed on it, then our goings will be
+established. It is no use talking to men about steadfastness of purpose,
+stability of life, erect independence, resistance to antagonistic
+forces, and all the rest, unless you give them something to stand upon.
+If you talk so to a man who has his foot upon shifting sands or slippery
+clay; the more he tries the deeper will he sink into the one, or slide
+the further upon the other. The best way to help men to stand fast is to
+give them something to stand upon. And the only standing ground that
+will never yield, nor collapse, nor, like the quicksand with the tide
+round it, melt away, we do not know how, from beneath our feet, is 'the
+grace of God.' Or, as Dr. Watts says, in one of his now old-fashioned
+hymns:--
+
+    'Lo! on the solid Rock I stand,
+     And all beside is shifting sand.'
+
+However, that is not what the Apostle Peter meant. He says, 'See that
+you keep firmly your position in reference to this true grace of God.'
+Now I am not going to talk to you about intellectual difficulties in the
+way of hearty and whole-souled acceptance of the gospel
+revelation--difficulties which are very real and very widespread in
+these days, but which possibly very slightly affect us; at least I hope
+so.
+
+But whilst these slay their thousands, the difficulties that affect us
+all in the way of keeping a firm hold on, or firm standing in (for the
+two metaphors coalesce) the gospel, which is the true grace of God, are
+those that arise from two causes working in combination. One is our own
+poor weak hearts, wavering wills, strong passions, unbridled desires,
+forgetful minds; and the other is all that army and babel of seductions
+and inducements, in occupations legitimate and necessary, in enjoyments
+which are in themselves pure and innocent, in family delights, in home
+engagements, in pursuits of commerce or of daily business--all that
+crowd of things that tempt us to forget the true grace and to wander
+away in a foolish and vain search after vain and foolish substitutes.
+
+Dear brethren, it is not so much because there are many adversaries in
+the intellectual world as because we are such weak creatures ourselves,
+and the world around us is so strong against us, that we need to say to
+one another and to ourselves, over and over again, 'Stand ye fast
+therein.' You cannot keep hold of a rope even, without the act of
+grasping tending to relax, and there must be a conscious and repeated
+tightening up of the muscles, or the very cord on which we hang for
+safety will slip through our relaxed palms. And however we may be
+convinced that there are no hope and no true blessedness for us except
+in keeping hold of God, we need that grasp to be tightened up by daily
+renewed efforts, or else it will certainly become slack, and we shall
+lose the thing that we should hold fast. So my text exhorts us against
+ourselves, and against the temptations of the world, which are always
+present with us, and are far more operative in bringing down the
+temperature of the Christian Church, and of its individual members,
+than any chilling that arises from intellectual doubts.
+
+And how are we to obey the exhortation? Well, plainly, if 'this' is the
+revelation of God in Jesus Christ, 'the true grace of God' which alone
+will give stability to our feet, then we 'shall not stand fast' in it
+unless we make conscious efforts to apprehend, and comprehend, and keep
+hold of it in our minds as well as in our hearts. May I say one very
+plain word? I am very much afraid that people do not read their Bibles
+very much now (or if they do read them, they do not study them), and
+that anything like an intelligent familiarity with the whole sweep of
+the great system (for it is a system) of Divine truth, evolved 'at
+sundry times and in divers manners' in this Word, is a very rare thing
+amongst even good people. They listen to sermons, with more or less
+attention; they read newspapers, no doubt; they read good little books,
+and magazines, and the like; and volumes that profess to be drawn from
+Scripture. These are all right and good in their place. But sure I am
+that a robust and firm grasp of the gospel, 'which is the grace of God,'
+is not possible with a starvation diet of Scripture. And so I would say,
+try to get hold of the depth and width of meaning in the Word.
+
+Again, try to keep heart and mind in contact with it amidst distractions
+and daily duties. Try to bring the principles of the New Testament
+consciously to bear on the small details of everyday life. Do you look
+at your day's work through these spectacles? Does it ever occur to you,
+as you are going about your business, or your profession, or your
+domestic work, to ask yourselves what bearing the gospel and its truths
+have upon these? If my ordinary, so-called secular, avocations are
+evacuated of reference to, and government by, the Word of God, I want
+to know what of my life is left as the sphere in which it is to work.
+There is no need that religion and daily life should be kept apart as
+they are. There is no reason why the experience of to-day, in shop, and
+counting-house, and kitchen, and study, should not cast light upon, and
+make more real to me, 'the true grace of God.' Be sure that you desire,
+and ask for, and put yourself in the attitude of receiving, the gifts of
+that love, which are the graces of the Christian life. And when you have
+got them, apply them, 'that you may be able to withstand in the evil
+day; and, having done all, to stand.'
+
+
+
+
+THE CHURCH IN BABYLON
+
+     'The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth
+      you ...'--1 Peter v. 13.
+
+
+We have drawn lessons in previous addresses from the former parts of the
+closing salutations of this letter. And now I turn to this one to see
+what it may yield us. The Revised Version omits 'the church,' and
+substitutes 'she'; explaining in a marginal note that there is a
+difference of opinion as to whether the sender of the letter is a
+community or an individual. All the old MSS., with one weighty
+exception, follow the reading 'she that is in Babylon.' But it seems so
+extremely unlikely that a single individual, with no special function,
+should be bracketed along with the communities to whom the letter was
+addressed, as 'elected together with' them, that the conclusion that the
+sender of the letter is a church, symbolically designated as a 'lady,'
+seems the natural one.
+
+Then there is another question--where was Babylon? An equal diversity
+of opinion has arisen about that. I do not venture to trouble you with
+the arguments _pro_ and _con_, but only express my own opinion that
+'Babylon' means Rome.
+
+We have here the same symbolical name as in the Book of Revelation,
+where, whatever further meanings are attached to the designation, it is
+intended primarily as an appellation for the imperial city, which has
+taken the place filled in the Old Testament by Babylon, as the
+concentration of antagonism to the Kingdom of God.
+
+If these views of the significance of the expression are adopted we have
+here the Church in Rome, the proud stronghold of worldly power and
+hostility, sending its greetings to the scattered Christian communities
+in the provinces of what is now called Asia Minor. The fact of such
+cordial communications between communities separated by so many
+contrarieties as well as by race and distance, familiar though it is,
+may suggest several profitable considerations, to which I ask your
+attention.
+
+I. We have here an object lesson as to the uniting power of the gospel.
+
+Just think of the relations which, in the civil world, subsisted between
+Rome and its subject provinces; the latter, with bitter hatred in their
+hearts to everything belonging to the oppressing city, having had their
+freedom crushed down and their aspirations ruthlessly trampled upon; the
+former, with the contempt natural to metropolitans in dealing with
+far-off provincials. The same kind of relationship subsisted between
+Rome and the outlying provinces of its unwieldly empire as between
+England, for instance, and its Indian possessions. And the same uniting
+bond came in which binds the Christian converts of these Eastern lands
+of ours to England by a far firmer bond than any other. There was
+springing up amidst all the alienation and hatred and smothered
+rebellion a still incipient, but increasing, and even then strong bond
+that held together Roman Christians and Cappadocian believers. They were
+both 'one in Christ Jesus.' The separating walls were high, but,
+according to the old saying, you cannot build walls high enough to keep
+out the birds; and spirits, winged by the common faith, soared above all
+earthly-made distinctions and met in the higher regions of Christian
+communion. When the tide rises it fills and unifies the scattered pools
+on the beach. So the uniting power of Christian faith was manifest in
+these early days, when it bound such discordant elements together, and
+made 'the church that was in Babylon' forget that they were to a large
+extent Romans by birth, and stretch out their hands, with their hearts
+in them, to the churches to whom this letter was sent.
+
+Now, brethren, our temptation is not so much to let barriers of race and
+language and distance weaken our sense of Christian community, as it is
+to let even smaller things than these do the same tragical office for
+us. And we, as Christian people, are bound to try and look over the
+fences of our 'denominations' and churches, and recognise the wider
+fellowship and larger company in which all these are merged. God be
+thanked! there are manifest tokens all round us to-day that the age of
+separation and division is about coming to an end. Yearnings for unity,
+which must not be forced into acts too soon, but which will fulfil
+themselves in ways not yet clear to any of us, are beginning to rise in
+Christian hearts. Let us see to it, dear friends, that we do our parts
+to cherish and to increase these, and to yield ourselves to the uniting
+power of the common faith.
+
+II. We note, further, the clear recognition here of what is the strong
+bond uniting all Christians.
+
+Peter would probably have been very much astonished if he had been told
+of the theological controversies that were to be waged round that word
+'elect.' The emphasis here lies, not on 'elect,' but on 'together.' It
+is not the thing so much as the common possession of the thing which
+bulks largely before the Apostle. In effect he says, 'The reason why
+these Roman Christians that have never looked you Bithynians in the face
+do yet feel their hearts going out to you, and send you their loving
+messages, is because they, in common with you, have been recipients of
+precisely the same Divine act of grace.' We do not now need to discuss
+the respective parts of man and God in it, nor any of the interminable
+controversies that have sprung up around the word. God had, as the fact
+of their possession of salvation showed, chosen Romans and Asiatics
+together to be heirs of eternal life. By the side of these transcendent
+blessings which they possessed in common, how pitiably small and
+insignificant all the causes which kept them apart looked and were!
+
+And so here we have a partial parallel to the present state of
+Christendom, in which are seen at work, on one hand, superficial
+separation; on the other, underlying unity. The splintered peaks may
+stand, or seem to stand, apart from their sister summits, or may frown
+at each other across impassable gorges, but they all belong to one
+geological formation, and in their depths their bases blend
+indistinguishably into a continuous whole. Their tops are miles apart,
+but beneath the surface they are one. And so the things that bind
+Christian men together are the great things and the deepest things; and
+the things that part them are the small and superficial ones. Therefore
+it is our wisdom--not only for the sake of the fact of our unity and for
+the sake of our consciousness of unity, but because the truths which
+unite are the most important ones--that they shall bulk largest in our
+hearts and minds. And if they do, we shall know our brother in every man
+that is like-minded with us towards them, whatever shibboleth may
+separate us. I spoke a moment ago about the separate pools on the beach,
+and the tide rising. When the tide goes down, and the spiritual life
+ebbs, the pools are parted again. And so ages of feeble spiritual
+vitality have been ages of theological controversy about secondary
+matters; and ages of profound realisation by the Church of the great
+fundamentals of gospel truth have been those when its members were drawn
+together, they knew not how. Hence they can say of and to each other,
+'Elect together with you.'
+
+Brethren, for the sake of the strength of our own religious life, do not
+let us fix our attention on the peculiarities of our sects, but upon the
+catholic truths believed everywhere, always, by all. Then we shall 'walk
+in a large place,' and feel how many there are that are possessors of
+'like precious faith' with ourselves.
+
+III. Then, lastly, we may find here a hint as to the pressing need for
+such a realisation of unity.
+
+'The church that is in Babylon' was in a very uncongenial place. Thank
+God, no Babylon is so Babylonish but that a Church of God may be found
+planted in it. No circumstances are so unfavourable to the creation and
+development of the religious life but that the religious life may grow
+there. An orchid will find footing upon a bit of stick, because it draws
+nourishment from the atmosphere; and they who are fed by influx of the
+Divine Spirit may be planted anywhere, and yet flourish in the courts of
+our God. So 'the church that is in Babylon' gives encouragement as to
+the possibility of Christian faith being triumphant over adverse
+conditions.
+
+But it also gives a hint as to the obligation springing from the
+circumstances in which Christian people are set, to cultivate the sense
+of belonging to a great brotherhood. Howsoever solitary and surrounded
+by uncongenial associations any Christian man may be, he may feel that
+he is not alone, not only because his Master is with him, but because
+there are many others whose hearts throb with the same love, whose lives
+are surrounded by the same difficulties. It is by no means a mere piece
+of selfish consolation which this same Apostle gives in another part of
+his letter, when he bids the troubled so be of good cheer, as
+remembering that the 'same afflictions were accomplished in the
+brotherhood which is in the world.' He did not mean to say, 'Take
+comfort, for other people are as badly off as you are,' but he meant to
+call to the remembrance of the solitary sufferer the thousands of his
+brethren who were 'dreeing the same weird' in the same uncongenial
+world.
+
+If thus you and I, Christian men, are pressed upon on all sides by such
+worldly associations, the more need that we should let our hearts go out
+to the innumerable multitude of our fellows, companions in the
+tribulation, and patience, and kingdom of Jesus Christ. Precisely
+because the Roman believers were in Babylon, they were glad to think of
+their brethren in Asia. Isolated amidst Rome's splendours and sins, it
+was like a breath of cool air stealing into some banqueting house heavy
+with the fumes of wine, or some slaughter-house reeking with the smell
+of blood, to remember these far-off partakers of a purer life.
+
+But if I might for a moment diverge, I would venture to say that in the
+conditions of thought, and the tendencies of things in our own and other
+lands, it is more than ever needful that Christian people should close
+their ranks, and stand shoulder to shoulder. For men who believe in a
+supernatural revelation, in the Divine Christ, in an atoning Sacrifice,
+in an indwelling Spirit, are guilty of suicidal folly if they let the
+comparative trivialities that part them, separate God's army into
+isolated groups, in the face of the ordered battalions that are
+assaulting these great truths.
+
+Because persecution was beginning to threaten and rumble on the horizon,
+like a rising thundercloud, it was the more needful, in Peter's time,
+that Christians parted by seas, by race, language, and customs, should
+draw together. And for us, fidelity to our testimony and loyalty to our
+Master, to say nothing of common sense and the instinct of
+self-preservation, command Christian men in this day to think more, and
+to speak more, and to make more, of the great verities which they all
+possess in common.
+
+Thus, brethren, living in Babylon, we should open our windows to
+Jerusalem; and though we dwell here as aliens, we may say, 'We are come
+unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; to an
+innumerable company of angels; to the spirits of just men made perfect;
+and to the Church of the first-born whose names are written in Heaven.'
+
+
+
+
+MARCUS, MY SON
+
+     '... So doth Marcus, my son.'--1 Peter v. 13.
+
+
+The outlines of Mark's life, so far as recorded in Scripture, are
+familiar. He was the son of Mary, a woman of some wealth and position,
+as is implied by the fact that her house was large enough to accommodate
+the 'many' who were gathered together to pray for Peter's release. He
+was a relative, probably a cousin (Col. iv. 10, Revised Version), of
+Barnabas, and possibly, like him, a native of Cyprus. The designation of
+him by Peter as 'my son' naturally implies that the Apostle had been the
+instrument of his conversion. An old tradition tells us that he was the
+'young man' mentioned in his Gospel who saw Christ arrested, and fled,
+leaving his only covering in the captor's hands. However that may be, he
+and his relatives were early and prominent disciples, and closely
+connected with Peter, as is evident from the fact that it was to Mary's
+house that he went after his deliverance. Mark's relationship to
+Barnabas made it natural that he should be chosen to accompany him and
+Paul on their first missionary journey, and his connection with Cyprus
+helps to account for his willingness to go thither, and his
+unwillingness to go further into less known ground. We know how he left
+the Apostles, when they crossed from Cyprus to the mainland, and
+retreated to his mother's house at Jerusalem. We have no details of the
+inglorious inactivity in which he spent the time until the proposal of a
+second journey by Paul and Barnabas. In the preparations for it, the
+foolish indulgence of his cousin, far less kind than Paul's wholesome
+severity, led to a rupture between the Apostles, and to Barnabas
+setting off on an evangelistic tour on his own account, which received
+no sympathy from the church at Antioch, and has been deemed unworthy of
+record in the Acts.
+
+Then followed some twelve years or more, during which Mark seems to have
+remained quiescent; or, at all events, he does not appear to have had
+any work in connection with the great Apostle. Then we find him
+reappearing amongst Paul's company when he was in prison for the first
+time in Rome; and in the letters to Colossae he is mentioned as being a
+comfort to the Apostle then. He sends salutations to the Colossians, and
+is named also in the nearly contemporaneous letter to Philemon.
+According to the reference in Colossians, he was contemplating a journey
+amongst the Asiatic churches, for that in Colossae is bidden to welcome
+him. Then comes this mention of him in the text. The fact that Mark was
+beside Peter when he wrote seems to confirm the view that Babylon here
+is a mystical name for Rome; and that this letter falls somewhere about
+the same date as the letters to Colossae and Philemon. Here again he is
+sending salutations to Asiatic churches. We know nothing more about him,
+except that some considerable time after, in Paul's last letter, he asks
+Timothy, who was then at Ephesus, the headquarters of the Asiatic
+churches, to 'take Mark,' who, therefore, was apparently also in Asia,
+'and bring him' with him to Rome; 'for,' says the Apostle, beautifully
+referring to the man's former failure, 'he is profitable to me for'--the
+very office that he had formerly flung up--'the ministry.'
+
+So, possibly, he was with Paul in his last days. And then, after that,
+tradition tells us that he attached himself more closely to the Apostle
+Peter; and, finally, at his direction and dictation, became the
+evangelist who wrote the 'Gospel according to Mark.'
+
+Now that is his story; and from the figure of this 'Marcus, my son,' and
+from his appearance here in this letter, I wish to gather two or three
+very plain and familiar lessons.
+
+I. The first of them is the working of Christian sympathy.
+
+Mark was a full-blooded Jew when he began his career. 'John, whose
+surname was Mark,' like a great many other Jews at that time, bore a
+double name--one Jewish, 'John,' and one Gentile, 'Marcus.' But as time
+goes on we do not hear anything more about 'John,' nor even about 'John
+Mark,' which are the two forms of his name when he is first introduced
+to us in the Acts of the Apostles, but he finally appears to have cast
+aside his Hebrew and to have been only known by his Roman name. And that
+change of appellation coincides with the fact that so many of the
+allusions which we have to him represent him as sending messages of
+Christian greeting across the sea to his Gentile brethren. And it
+further coincides with the fact that his gospel is obviously intended
+for the use of Gentile Christians, and, according to an old and reliable
+tradition, was written in Rome for Roman Christians. All of which facts
+just indicate two things, that the more a man has real operative love to
+Jesus Christ in his heart, the more he will rise above all limitations
+of his interests, his sympathy, and his efforts, and the more surely
+will he let himself out, as far as he can, in affection towards and
+toils for all men.
+
+This change of name, though it is a mere trifle, and may have been
+adopted as a matter of convenience, may also be taken as reminding us
+of a very important truth, and that is, that if we wish to help people,
+the first condition is that we go down and stand on their level, and
+make ourselves one with them, as far as we can. And so Mark may have
+said, 'I have put away the name that parts me from these Gentiles, for
+whom I desire to work, and whom I love; and I take the name that binds
+me to them.' Why, it is the very same principle, in a small
+instance--just as a raindrop that hangs on the thorn of a rose-bush is
+moulded by the same laws that shape the great sphere of the central
+sun--it is a small instance of the great principle which brought Jesus
+Christ down into the world to die for us. You must become like the
+people that you want to help. 'Forasmuch as the children were partakers
+of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same, that
+He might deliver them.' And so, not only the duty of widening our
+sympathies, but one of the supreme conditions of being of use to
+anybody, are set forth in the comparatively trifling incident, which we
+pass by without noticing it, that this man, a Jew to his finger-tips,
+finally found himself--or, rather, finally was carried, for it was no
+case of unconscious drifting--into the position of a messenger of the
+Cross to the Gentiles; and for the sake of efficiency in his work, and
+of getting close by the side of people whom he wanted to influence,
+flung away deliberately that which parted him from them. It is a small
+matter, but a little window may show a very wide prospect.
+
+II. The history of Mark suggests the possibility of overcoming early
+faults.
+
+We do not know why he refused to bear the burden of the work that he had
+so cheerily begun. Probably the reason that I have suggested may have
+had something to do with it. When he started he did not bargain for
+going into unknown lands, in which there were many toils to be
+encountered. He was willing to go where he knew the ground, and where
+there were people that would make things easy for him; but when Paul
+went further afield, Mark's courage ebbed out at his finger ends, and he
+slunk back to the comfort of his mother's house in Jerusalem. At all
+events, whatever his reason, his return was a fault; or Paul would not
+have been so hard upon him as he was. The writer of the Acts puts Paul's
+view of the case strongly by the arrangement of clauses in the sentence
+in which he tells us that the Apostle 'thought not good to take him with
+them who withdrew from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to
+the work.' If he thus threw down his tools whenever he came to a little
+difficulty, and said, 'As long as it is easy work, and close to the base
+of operations, I am your man, but if there is any sacrifice wanted you
+must look out for somebody else,' he was not precisely a worker after
+Paul's own heart. And the best way to treat him was as the Apostle did;
+and to say to Barnabas' indulgent proposal, 'No! he would not do the
+work before, and now he shall not do it.' That is often God's way with
+us. It brings us to our senses, as it brought Mark to his.
+
+We do not know how long it took to cure Mark of his early fault, but he
+was thoroughly cured. The man that was afraid of dangers and
+difficulties and hypothetical risks in Asia Minor became brave enough to
+stand by the Apostle when he was a prisoner, and was not ashamed of his
+chain. And afterwards, so much had he won his way into the Apostle's
+confidence, and made himself needful for him by his services and his
+sweetness, that the lonely prisoner, with the gibbet or headsman's
+sword in prospect, feels that he would like to have Mark with him once
+more, and bids Timothy bring him with himself, for 'he is profitable to
+me for the ministry.' 'He can do a thousand things that a man like me
+cannot do for himself, and he does them all for love and nothing for
+reward.' So he wants Mark once more. And thus not only Paul's
+generosity, but Mark's own patient effort had pasted a clean sheet over
+the one that was inscribed with the black story of his desertion, and he
+became 'profitable for' the task that he had once in so petulant and
+cowardly a way, flung up.
+
+Well, translate that from the particular into the general and it comes
+to this. Let no man set limits to the possibilities of his own
+restoration, and of his curing faults which are most deeply rooted
+within himself. Hope and effort should be boundless. There is nothing
+that a Christian man may not reach, in the way of victory over his worse
+self, and ejection of his most deeply-rooted faults, if only he will be
+true to Jesus, and use the gifts that are given to him. There are many
+of us whose daily life is pitched in a minor key; whose whole landscape
+is grey and monotonous and sunless; who feel as if yesterday must set
+the tune for to-day, and as if, because we have been beaten and baffled
+so often, it is useless to try again. But remember that the field on
+which the Stone of Help was erected, to commemorate the great and
+decisive victory that Israel won, was the very field on which the same
+foes had before contended, and _then_ Israel had been defeated.
+
+So, brethren, we may win victories on the very soil where formerly we
+were shamefully put to the rout; and our Christ with us will make
+anything possible for us, in the way of restoration, of cure of old
+faults, of ceasing to repeat former sins. I suppose that when a spar is
+snapped on board a vessel, and lashed together with spun yarn and
+lanyards, as a sailor knows how to do, it is stronger at the point of
+fracture than it was before. I suppose that it is possible for a man to
+be most impregnable at the point where he is naturally weakest, if he
+chooses to use the defences that Jesus Christ has given.
+
+III. Take another lesson--the greatness of little service.
+
+We do not hear that this John Mark ever tried to do any work in the way
+of preaching the gospel. His business was a very much humbler one. He
+had to attend to Paul's comfort. He had to be his factotum, man of all
+work; looking after material things, the commissariat, the thousand and
+one trifles that some one had to see to if the Apostle's great work was
+to get done. And he did it all his life long. It was enough for him to
+do thoroughly the entirely 'secular' work, as some people would think
+it, which it was in his power to do. That needed some self-suppression.
+It would have been so natural for Mark to have said, 'Paul sends Timothy
+to be bishop in Crete; and Titus to look after other churches;
+Epaphroditus is an official here; and Apollos is a great preacher there.
+And here am I, grinding away at the secularities yet. I think I'll
+"strike," and try and get more conspicuous work.' Or he might perhaps
+deceive himself, and say, 'more directly religious work,' like a great
+many of us that often mask a very carnal desire for prominence under a
+very saintly guise of desire to do spiritual service. Let us take care
+of that. This 'minister,' who was not a minister at all, in our sense of
+the word, but only in the sense of being a servant, a private attendant
+and valet of the Apostle, was glad to do that work all his days.
+
+That was self-suppression. But it was something more. It was a plain
+recognition of what we all ought to have very clearly before us, and
+that is, that all sorts of work which contribute to one end are one sort
+of work; and that at bottom the man who carried Paul's books and
+parchments, and saw that he was not left without clothes, though he was
+so negligent of cloaks and other necessaries, was just as much helping
+on the cause of Christ as the Apostle when he preached.
+
+I wonder if any of you remember the old story about an organist and his
+blower. The blower was asked who it was that played that great sonata of
+Beethoven's, or somebody's. And he answered, 'I do not know who played,
+but I blew it.' There is a great truth there. If it had not been for the
+unknown man at the bellows, the artist at the keys would not have done
+much. So Mark helped Paul. And as Jesus Christ said, 'He that receiveth
+a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward.'
+
+IV. Take as the last lesson the enlarged sphere that follows
+faithfulness in small matters.
+
+What a singular change! The man who began with being a servant of Paul
+and of Barnabas ends by being the evangelist, and it is to him, under
+Peter's direction, that we owe what is possibly the oldest, and, at all
+events, in some aspects, an entirely unique, narrative of our Lord's
+life. Do you think that Peter would ever have said to him: 'Mark! come
+here and sit down and write what I tell you,' if there had not been
+beforehand these long years of faithful service? So is it always, dear
+friends, 'He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also
+in much.' That is not only a declaration that faithfulness is one in
+kind, whatever be the diameter of the circle in which it is exercised,
+but it may also be taken as a promise, though that was not the original
+intention of the saying.
+
+For quite certainly, in God's providence, the tools do come to the hand
+that can wield them, and the best reward that we can get for doing well
+our little work is to have larger work to do. The little tapers are
+tempted, if I may use so incongruous a figure, to wish themselves set up
+on loftier stands. Shine your brightest in your corner, and you will be
+'exalted' in due time. It is so, as a rule, in this world; sometimes too
+much so, for, as they say is the case at the English bar, so it is
+sometimes in God's Church, 'There is no medium between having nothing to
+do and being killed with work.' Still the reward for work is more work.
+And the law will be exemplified most blessedly when Christ shall say,
+'Well done! good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a
+few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.'
+
+So this far-away figure of the minister-evangelist salutes us too, and
+bids us be of good cheer, notwithstanding all faults and failures,
+because it is possible for us, as he has proved, to recover ourselves
+after them all. God will not be less generous in forgiveness than Paul
+was; and even you and I may hear from Christ's lips, 'Thou art
+profitable to Me for the ministry.'
+
+
+
+
+II. PETER
+
+
+
+
+LIKE PRECIOUS FAITH
+
+     '... Them that have obtained like precious faith with us through
+      the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.'--2 Peter
+      i. 1.
+
+
+Peter seems to have had a liking for that word 'precious.' It is not a
+very descriptive one; it does not give much light as to the quality of
+the things to which it is applied; but it is a suggestion of one-idea
+value. It is interesting to notice the objects to which, in his two
+letters--for I take this to be his letter--he applies it. He speaks of
+the trial of faith as being 'precious.' He speaks (with a slight
+modification of the word employed) of Jesus Christ as being 'to them
+that believe, precious.' He speaks of the 'precious' blood of Christ.
+These instances are in the first epistle. In this second epistle we have
+the words of my text, and a moment after, 'exceeding great and precious
+promises.' Now look at Peter's list of valuables; 'Christ, Christ's
+blood, God's promises, our Faith, and the discipline to which that faith
+is subjected.' These are things that the old man had found out to be of
+worth.
+
+But then there is another word in my text that must be noted, 'like
+precious.' It brings into view two classes, to one of which Peter
+himself belongs--'us' and 'they.' Who are these two classes? It may be
+that he is thinking of the immense difference between the intelligent
+and developed faith of himself and the other Apostles, and the
+rudimentary and infantile faith of the recent believers to whom he may
+be speaking. And, if so, that would be beautiful, but I rather take it
+that he is tacitly contrasting in his own mind the difference between
+the Gentile converts as a whole, and the members of the Jewish community
+who had become believers in Jesus Christ, and that he is repeating the
+lesson that he had learned on the housetop at Joppa, and had had further
+confirmed to him by the experience of Caesarea, and that he is really
+saying exactly what he said when he defended himself before the Council
+in Jerusalem: 'Seeing that God had given unto them the like gift that he
+did unto us, who was I, that I should withstand God?' And so he looks
+out over all the Christian community, and ignores 'the middle wall of
+partition,' and says, 'Them that have obtained like precious faith with
+us.' I wish very simply to try to draw out the thoughts that lie in
+these words, and cluster round that well-worn and threadbare theological
+expression and Christian verity of 'faith' or 'trust.'
+
+I. And the first thing that I would desire to point you to is, what we
+learn here as to the object of faith.
+
+Now those of you who are using the Revised Version will notice that
+there is a very slight, but important, alteration there, from the
+rendering in the old translation. We read in the latter: 'Like precious
+faith with us _through_ the righteousness, ...' and that is a meaning
+that might be defended. But the Revised Version says, and says more
+accurately as far as the words go, and more truly as far as Christian
+thought goes, 'them that have obtained like precious faith with us _in_
+the righteousness.' Now, I daresay, it will occur to us all that that is
+a departure from the usual form in which faith is presented to us in the
+New Testament, because there, thank God! we are clearly taught that the
+one thing which faith grapples is not a thing but a Person. Christian
+faith is only human trust turned in a definite direction. Just as our
+trust lays hold on one another, so the object of faith is, in the
+deepest analysis, no doctrine, no proposition, not even a Divine fact,
+not even a Divine promise, but the Doer of the fact, and the Promiser of
+the promise, and the Person, Jesus Christ. When you say, 'I trust
+so-and-so's word!' what you mean is, 'I trust _him_, and so I put
+credence in his word.' And Christianity would have been delivered from
+mountains of misconception, and many a poor soul would have felt that a
+blaze of light had come in upon it, if this had been clearly proclaimed,
+and firmly apprehended by preachers and by hearers, that the object of
+trust is the living Person, Jesus Christ, and that the trust which
+grapples us to Him is essentially a personal relation entered into by
+our wills and hearts far more than by our heads.
+
+All that is being apprehended by the Christian Church to-day a great
+deal more clearly than it used to be when some of us were young. But we
+have the defects of our qualities. And this generation is accustomed far
+too lightly and superficially to say 'Oh! I do not care about doctrines.
+I cleave to the living Christ!' Amen! say I. But there is another
+question--What Christ is it that you are cleaving to? For our only way
+of knowing a person with whom we have no external acquaintance is by
+what we are told about him, and believe about him. And so, while we
+cannot assert too strongly that faith or trust in the living Christ, and
+not in a dogma, is the basis of real Christian life, we have need to be
+very definite and sure as to what Christ--which Christ--it is that we
+are trusting to? And there my text comes in, and tells us that faith is
+to grasp Christ as our righteousness; and another saying of the Apostle
+Paul's comes in, who for once speaks of faith as being faith not only in
+the Christ, but in 'His blood':--
+
+    'Jesus! Thy blood and righteousness,
+     My beauty are, my glorious dress.'
+
+Brethren! you will not get beyond that. The Christ, trusting in whom we
+have life and salvation, is the Christ whose blood cleanses, whose
+righteousness clothes us poor, sinful men. So, while proclaiming with
+all emphasis, and rejoicing to press it upon all my brethren, that
+salvation comes by personal trust in the Person, I supplement and fill
+out, not contradict, that proclamation, when I further say that the
+Person by trusting in whom we are saved, is the Jesus whose blood
+cleanses and whose righteousness becomes ours. That righteousness is, in
+our text, contemplated as God's, as being embodied in Christ's, that
+from Him it may be imparted to us, if we will fulfil the condition on
+which alone it can be ours, viz., faith. It becomes ours, by no mere
+imputation which has not a reality at the back of it, but because faith
+brings us into such a vital union with Jesus Christ as that His
+righteousness, or at least a spark from the central flame, becomes ours,
+not only in reference to our exemption from the burden of our guilt, but
+in reference to our becoming conformed to the image of His dear Son, and
+created anew in righteousness and holiness. The object of faith is
+Christ, the Christ whose blood and righteousness cleanses and clothes
+sinful souls.
+
+II. Let me ask you to look, in the next place, to what this text
+suggests to us about the worth of Christian faith.
+
+Peter calls it precious. Consider its worth as a channel. There is a
+very remarkable expression used in the Acts of the Apostles, 'The door
+of faith.' A door is of little value in itself, worth a few shillings at
+the most, but if it opens the way into a palace then it is worth
+something. And all the preciousness that there is in faith comes, not
+from its intrinsic value, but from the really precious things which it
+gives into our hands. Just as the dyer's hand may be tinged with royal
+purple, if he has been working in it, or a woman's hand may be scented
+and made fragrant if she has been handling perfumes, so the hand of
+faith takes tint and fragrance from that with which it is conversant. It
+is precious because it is the channel by which all precious things flow
+into our hearts and lives. If Ladysmith is, as I suppose it is,
+dependent for its water supply on one lead pipe, the preciousness of
+that pipe is not measured by what it would fetch if it were put up to
+auction for its lead, but by that which flows through it, and without
+which Death would come. And my faith is the pipe by which all the water
+of life comes sparkling and rejoicing into my thirsty soul. It is the
+opening of the door 'that the King of Glory may come in'; it is the
+taking down of the shutters that the sunshine may blaze into the
+darkened chamber; it is the grasping of the electric wire that the
+circuit may be completed. God puts out His hand, and we lay hold of it.
+It is not the outstretched hand from earth, but the down-stretched hand
+from heaven that makes the tottering man stand. So, dear friends, let us
+understand that salvation does not come as the reward of faith, but that
+the salvation is _in_ the faith, because faith is the channel by which
+all God's salvation pours into us. So there is nothing arbitrary in the
+way of salvation, as some shallow thinkers seem to propose, and there is
+no reason in the question, 'Why does God make salvation depend upon
+faith?' God could not but make salvation depend upon faith, because
+there is no other possible way by which the blessings which are gathered
+together into that one great pregnant word 'salvation' could find their
+way into a man's heart but through the channel of his trust. Have you
+opened that channel? If you have not, you need not wonder it cannot be
+otherwise--that salvation does not come unto you.
+
+Consider its worth as a defence. The Apostle in one place speaks about
+'the shield of faith.' But there is nothing in the belief that I am safe
+to make me safe. It is very often a fatal blunder. All depends upon that
+or Him, to which or whom I am trusting for my safety. Put yourself
+beneath the true Shield--'The Lord God is a sun and shield'--and then
+you will be safe. Your way of running into the strong tower which alone,
+with its massive walls, protects us from all danger and from all sin, is
+by trusting Him.
+
+Just as light things on a ship's deck have to be lashed in order to be
+secured and lie still, you and I have to lash ourselves to Jesus Christ;
+then, not by reason of the lashings, but by reason of Him, we are
+fastened and secured.
+
+Consider the worth of faith as a means of purifying. This very Apostle,
+in his great speech in Jerusalem, when vindicating the reception of the
+Gentiles into the Church, spoke of God as having 'purified their hearts
+by faith.' And here again, I say, there is no cleansing power in the
+act of trust. Cleansing power is in that which, by the act of trust,
+comes into my heart. Faith is not simple receptivity, not mere passive
+absorbing of what is given, but it is the active taking by desire as
+well as by confidence. And when we trust in Jesus Christ, His blood and
+righteousness, there flows into our hearts that Divine life which, like
+a river turned into a dung-heap, will sweep all the filth before it. You
+have to get the purifying power by faith. Ay! and you have to utilise
+the purifying power by effort and by work. 'What God hath joined
+together, let not men put asunder.'
+
+III. Now, lastly, note the identity of faith.
+
+'_Like_ precious,' says Peter, and, as I said, there may be defended a
+double application of the word, and two sets of pairs of classes may be
+supposed to have been in his mind. I do not discuss which of these may
+be the case, only I would suggest to you that from this beautiful
+gathering together of all the diversities of the Christian character,
+conception, and development into one great whole, we are taught that the
+one thing that makes a Christian is this trust. That is the universal
+characteristic; that is uniform, whatever may differ. Ah! how much and
+how little it takes to make a Christian. 'Only faith?' you say. Yes,
+thank God! not this, or that, not rites, not anything that a priest can
+do to you. Not orthodoxy; not morality; these will come, but trust in
+Christ and His blood and righteousness. England is a Christian country;
+is it? This is a Christian congregation; is it? You are a Christian; are
+you? Are you trusting in that Christ? If you are not; no! though you be
+orthodox up to the eyebrows, and though seven or seven hundred
+sacraments may have been given to you, and though you be a clean living
+man--all that does not make a Christian, but _this_ does--'Like precious
+faith with us in the righteousness of God and our Saviour.'
+
+Again, this great thought of the identity or uniformity of the one
+characteristic may suggest to us how Christian faith is one, under all
+varieties of form. There never has been in the Christian Church again,
+notwithstanding all our deplorable divisions and schisms, such a
+tremendous cleft as there was in the primitive Church between the Jewish
+and Gentile components thereof. But Peter flings this flying bridge
+across that abyss, and knits the two sides together, because he knows
+that away out yonder, amongst the Gentiles, and here in the little
+circle of the Jewish believers, there was the one faith that unifies
+all.
+
+So, dear friends, there should be the widest charity, but no vagueness;
+for the Christian faith in Him which unifies and bridges over all
+differences, mental and theological, is the Christ by whose blood we are
+cleansed, with whose righteousness we are made righteous.
+
+Again, from the same thought flows the other, of the identity of the
+uniform characteristic, at all stages of development or maturity. The
+mustard-seed and the tree, 'which is greater than all herbs,' have the
+same life in them. And the feeblest, tremulous little spark in some
+heart, just kindled, and scarcely capable of sustaining itself, is one
+with the flame leaping heaven-high, which lights up and cleanses the
+whole soul. So for those in advance, humility, and for those in the
+rear, hope. And something more than hope, for if you have the feeblest
+beginning of tremulous trust, you have that which only needs to be
+fostered to make you like Jesus Christ. Look at what follows our text:
+'Add to your faith, virtue, and to virtue, knowledge,' and so on,
+through the whole linked series of Christian graces. They all come out
+of that trust which knits us to Him who is the source of them all. So
+you and I are responsible for bringing our faith to the highest
+development of which it is capable.
+
+Alas! alas! are we not all like this very Apostle, who, in an ecstasy of
+trust and longing, ventured himself on the wave, and as soon as he felt
+the cold water creeping above his knees lost his trust, and so lost his
+buoyancy, and was ready to go down like a stone? He had so little faith,
+that he was beginning to sink; he had so much that he put out his
+hand--a desperate hand it was--and cried, 'Lord, save me!' And the hand
+came, and that steadied him, and bore him up till the water was beneath
+the soles of his feet again. 'Lord! I believe; help Thou my unbelief!'
+
+
+
+
+MAN SUMMONED BY GOD'S GLORY AND ENERGY
+
+     '... His Divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain
+      unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath
+      called us to glory and virtue.'--2 Peter i. 3.
+
+
+'I knew thee,' said the idle servant in our Lord's parable, 'that thou
+wert an austere man, reaping where thou didst not sow, and gathering
+where thou hadst not strewed. I was afraid, and went and hid my talent
+in the earth.' Our Lord would teach us all with that pregnant word the
+great truth that if once a man gets it into his head that God's
+principal relation to him is to demand, and to command, you will get no
+work out of that man; that such a notion will paralyse all activity and
+cut the nerve of all service. And the converse is as true, namely, that
+the one thought about God, which is fruitful of all blessing, joy,
+spontaneous, glad activity, is the thought of Him as giving, and not of
+demanding, of bestowing, and not of commanding. Teach a man that he is,
+as the book of James has it,'the giving God,' and let that thought soak
+into the man's heart and mind, and you will get any work out of him. And
+only when that thought is deep in the spirit will there be true service.
+
+Now that is the connection in which the words of my text come; for they
+are laid as the broad foundation of the great commandment that follows:
+'Beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to
+your virtue knowledge,' and so on, all the round of the ladder by which
+the Apostle represents us as climbing up to God. The foundation of this
+injunction is--God has given you everything. You have got it to begin
+with, and so do you set yourselves to work, and see that you make the
+thing that is yours your own, and incorporate into your being and into
+the very substance of your soul, and work out in all the blessed
+activities of a Christian life, the gifts that His royal and kingly hand
+has bestowed upon you. Take for granted that God loves you and gives you
+His whole self, and work on in the fulness of His possessed gift.
+
+That is the connection of the words before us. I take them just as they
+lie in our passage, dealing first of all with this question--God's call
+to you and me; how it is done. Now I do not know if I can venture to
+indulge any remarks about Biblical criticism, but you will perhaps bear
+with me just for a moment whilst I say that the people who know a great
+deal more about such subjects than either you or I, agree with one
+consent that the proper way of reading this verse of my text is not as
+our Bible has it; 'Him that has called us _to_ glory and virtue,' but
+'Him that hath called us _by_--by his own glory and virtue.' Do you see
+the difference? In one case the language expresses the things in
+imitation of the Divine nature to which God summons you and me when He
+calls us. That is how our Bible has taken it; but the deeper thought
+still is the things in that Divine nature and activity itself which
+constitute His great summons and invitation of men to His side; and
+these are the two, whatever they might be, which the Apostle here
+describes in that rather peculiar and unusual language for Scripture,
+'Who has called us by His own glory and His own virtue.' I venture to
+dwell on these two points for a moment or two.
+
+Now, first of all, God's glory. Threadbare and consequently vague as the
+expression is in the minds of a great many people who have heard it with
+their ears ever since they were little children, God's glory has a very
+distinct and definite meaning in Scripture, and all starts, as I think,
+from the Old Testament use of the expression, which was the distinct
+specific name for the supernatural light that lay between the cherubim,
+and brooded over the ark on the mercy-seat. The word signifies
+specifically and originally the glory of God, and irradiation of a
+material, though supernatural, symbol of His Divine and spiritual
+presence. Very well, lay hold of that material picture, for God teaches
+us as we do our children, with pictures. Take the symbol and lift it up
+into the spiritual region, and it is just this: the glory of God in its
+deepest meaning is the irradiation and the perpetual pouring out and out
+and out from Himself, as the rays of the sun stream out from its great
+orb, pouring out from Himself the light and the perfectness and the
+beauty of His own self revelation. And I think we may fairly translate
+and paraphrase the first words of my text into this: God's great way of
+summoning men to Himself is by laying out His love upon them and letting
+the fulness of that ineffable and uncreated light, in which is no
+darkness at all, stream into the else blinded and hopeless lives and
+hearts of men. Then the other side of the Apostle's thought seems to
+me--if we will only strip it of the threadbare technicalities associated
+with it--as great and wonderful, God's glory and God's virtue. A
+heathenish kind of smack lingers about that word, both as applied to men
+and as applied to God, and so seldom found in the New Testament; but
+meaning here, as I venture to say, without stopping to show it--meaning
+here substantially the same thing that we mean by that word energy or
+power. You know old women in country places talk about the virtues of
+plants. They do not mean by this the goodness of plants, but they mean
+the occult powers which they suppose them able to put forth. We read in
+one of the gospels that our Lord Himself said at one singular period of
+His life that virtue had gone out of Him, meaning thereby not goodness
+but energy. So I think we get a sufficient equivalent to the Apostle's
+meaning if for the second two words of my text we read, 'He hath called
+us by the glory, the raying out of his love, and He hath called us by
+the activity and the energy, the power in action of His great and
+illustrious Spirit.' So you see these two things, the light that streams
+out of an energy which is born of the streaming light. These two things
+are really at bottom but one, various aspects of one idea. Modern
+physicists tell us that all the activity in the system comes from the
+sun, and in the higher region all the activity comes from the sun, and
+there is no mightier force in the physical universe than the sunlight.
+Lightnings are vulgar, noisy, and limited in contrast. The
+all-conquering force is the light that streams out, and so says Peter in
+his vivid picturesque way--not meaning the mere talk of philosophy or
+theology--the manifestation of the glory of God is the mightiest force
+in the whole universe. It is not like the play of the moonbeam upon an
+iceberg, ineffectual, cold, merely touching the death without melting or
+warming it, but it rays out like the sun in the heavens, and the work
+done by the light is mightier than all our work. By His glory, and by
+the transcendent energies which reside in that illustrious manifestation
+of the uncreated light, God summons men to Himself. Well, if that is
+anything like fair exposition of the words before us, let me just ask
+you before I go further to stop on them for one moment. If I may venture
+to say so, put off your theological spectacles for a minute, and do not
+let us harden this thought down with any mere dogma that can be selected
+in the language of the creeds. Let us try and put it into words a little
+less hackneyed. Suppose, instead of talking about calling, you were to
+talk about inviting, summoning, beckoning; or I might use tenderer words
+still--beseeching, wooing, entreating; for all that lies in the thought.
+God summoning and calling, in that sense, men to Himself, by the raying
+out of His own perfect beauty, and the might with which the beams go
+forth into the darkness. Ah! is not that beautiful, dear brethren; that
+there is nothing more, indeed, for God to do to draw us to Himself than
+to let us see what He is? So perfectly fair, so sweet, so tender, so
+strong, so absolutely corresponding to all the necessities of our
+beings and the hunger of our hearts, that when we see Him we cannot
+choose but love Him, and that He can do nothing more to call wandering
+hearts back to the light and sweetness of His own heart than to show
+them Himself. And so from all corners of His universe, and in every
+activity of His hand and heart and spirit, we can hear a voice saying,
+'Son, give me thine heart.' 'Oh! taste and see that God is good.'
+'Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace; thereby good shall come
+unto thee.'
+
+But great and wonderful as such a thought seems to be when we look at it
+in the freshness which belongs to it, do you suppose that that was all
+that Peter was thinking about? Do you think that a wide, general, and if
+you leave it by itself, vague utterance like that which I have been
+indulging in, would give all the specific precision and fulness of the
+meaning of the word before us? I think not. I fancy that when this
+Apostle wrote these words he remembered a time long, long ago, when
+somebody stood by the little fishing-cobble there, and as the men were
+up to their knees in slush and dirt, washing their nets, said to them,
+'Follow Me.' I think that was in Peter's estimate God's call to him by
+God's glory and by God's virtue. And so I pause there for a moment to
+say that all the lustrous pouring out of light, all that transcendent
+energy of active love, is not diffused nebulous through a universe; it
+is not even spread in that sense over all the deeds of His hand; but
+whilst it is everywhere, it has a focus and a centre and a fire. The
+fire is gathered into the Son, Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ in His manhood
+and in His Deity; Jesus Christ in His life, passion, death,
+resurrection, ascension, and kingly reign. The whole creation, as this
+New Testament proclaims Him to us, is God's glory and God's virtue,
+whereby He draws men to Himself. I cannot stay to dwell on that thought
+as I should be glad to do. Let me just remind you of the two parts into
+which it splits itself up; and I commend it, dogmatically as I have to
+state it in such an audience as this--I commend it to the multitudes of
+young men here present. The highest form of the Divine glory is Jesus
+Christ, not the attributes with which men clothe the Divinity, not those
+abstractions which you find in books of theology. All that is but the
+fringe of the glory. And I tell you, dear friends, the living white
+light at the centre and heart of all the radiance of the flame is the
+light of life which is conveyed into the gentle Christ. As the Apostle
+John has it, 'We beheld His glory.' Yes, and taking and binding together
+the two words which people have so often treated against each other, 'We
+beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full
+of grace and truth,' the highest light in Him that says, 'I am the light
+of the world'--very light of very light. As a much maligned document has
+it,'very light of very light,' the brightness of His glory, the
+irradiation of His splendour, and the express image of His person. And
+as the light so the power. Christ the power; power in its highest,
+noblest form, the power of patient gentleness and Divine suffering;
+power in its widest sweep, 'unto every one that believeth'; power in its
+most wondrous operation, 'the power of God unto salvation.' So I come to
+you, I hope, with one message on my lips and in my heart. If you want
+light, look to Christ. If you want to behold that unveiled face, the
+glory of the Lord, turn to Him, and let His sunshine smite you on the
+face as the light smote Stephen, and then you can say, 'He that hath
+seen Him hath seen the Father.' My brother, the highest, noblest,
+perfect, and, as I believe, final form in which all God's glory, all
+God's energy, are gathered together, and make their appeal to you and
+me, was when a Galilean peasant stood up in a little knot of forgotten
+Jews and said to them, and through them to you and me, 'Come unto Me all
+ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' He calls
+by His glory and by His virtue.
+
+Now still further. Confining myself as before to the words as they lie
+here in this text, let me ask you to think, and that for a moment or two
+only, on the great and wondrous purpose which this Divine energy and
+light had in view in summoning us to itself. His Divine power hath given
+unto us all things that pertain to life and all things that pertain to
+godliness. Look at that! One of the old Psalms says: 'Gather my saints
+together unto me, those who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice;
+assemble them all before my throne, and I will judge my people.' Is that
+the last and final revelation of God's purpose of drawing men to Him? Is
+that why He sends out His heralds and summons through the whole
+intelligent creation? Nay, something better. Not to judge, not to
+scourge, not to chastise, not to avenge. To give. This is the meaning of
+that summons that comes out through the whole earth, 'Come up hither,'
+that when we get there we may be flooded with the richness of His mercy,
+and that He may pour His whole soul out over us in the greatness of His
+gifts. This is God, and the perpetual activity summoning men to Himself
+that there He may bless them. He makes our hearts empty that He may fill
+them. He shapes us as we are that we may need Him and may recreate
+ourselves in Him. He says, 'Bring all your vessels and I will fill them
+full.' Now look in this part of my subject at what I may venture to call
+the magnificent confidence that this Peter has in the--what shall I
+say?--the encyclopaedical--if I may use a long word--and universal
+character of God. All things that pertain to life, all things that
+pertain to godliness. And somebody says, 'Yes, that is tautology, that
+is saying the same thing twice over in different language.' Never mind,
+says Peter, so much the better, it will help to express the exuberant
+abundance and fulness. He takes a leaf out of his brother Paul's book.
+He is often guilty when he speaks of God's gifts of that same sin of
+tautology, as for instance, 'Now unto Him who is able to do exceeding,
+abundantly, above all'--there are four of them--'all that we can ask or
+think.' Yes, in all forms language is but faint and feeble, weak and
+poor in the presence of that great miracle of a love that passeth
+knowledge and that we may know the heights and depths. And so says our
+Apostle, 'All things that pertain to life, all things that pertain to
+godliness.' The whole circle all round, all the 360 degrees of it, God's
+love will come down and lie on the top of it as it were, superimposed,
+so that there should not be a single gift where there is a flaw or a
+defect. Everything you want of life, everything you want for godliness.
+Yes, of course, the gift must bear some kind of proportion to the giver.
+You do not expect a millionaire to put down half a crown to a
+subscription list if he gives anything at all. And God says to you and
+me, 'Come and look at My storehouses, count if you can those golden
+vases filled with treasure, look at those massive ingots of bullion,
+gaze into the vanishing distances of the infiniteness of My nature and
+of My possessions, and then listen to Me. I give thee Myself--Myself,
+that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God. All things that
+pertain to life, all things that pertain to godliness. But I cannot pass
+on from this part of my subject without venturing one more remark. It is
+this: I do not suppose it is too minute, verbal criticism. This great
+encyclopaediacal gift is represented in my text, not as a thing that you
+are going to get, Christian men and women, but as a thing that you have
+gotten. And any of you that are able to test the correctness of my
+assertion will see I have thought the form of language used in the
+original is such as to point still more specifically than in our
+translation, to some one definite act in the past in which all that
+fulness of glory and virtue of life and godliness was given to us men.
+Is there any doubt as to what that is? We talk sometimes as if we had to
+ask God to give us more. God cannot give you any more than He gave you
+nineteen hundred years ago. It was all in Christ. Get a very vulgar
+illustration which is altogether inadequate for a great many purposes,
+but may serve for one. Suppose some man told you that there was a
+thousand pounds paid to your credit at a London bank, and that you were
+to get the use of it as you drew cheques against it. Well, the money is
+there, is it not? The gift is given, and yet for all that you may be
+dying, and half-dead, a pauper. I was reading a book only the other day
+which contained a story that comes in here. An Arctic expedition, some
+years ago, found an ammunition chest that Commander Parry had left fifty
+years ago, safe under a pile of stones. The wood of the chest had not
+rotted yet; the provisions inside of it were perfectly sweet, and good,
+and eatable. There it had lain all those years. Men had died of
+starvation within arm's length of it. It was there all the same. And
+so, if I might venture to vulgarise the great theme that I try to speak
+about, God has given us His Son, and in Him, all that pertains to life
+and all that pertains to godliness. My brother, take the things that are
+freely given to you of God.
+
+And so that leads me to one last word, and it shall only be a word, in
+regard to what our text tells us of the way by which on our side we can
+yield to this Divine call, and receive this Divine fulness of gifts,
+through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory. Through the
+knowledge! Yes, well there are two kinds of knowledge, are there not?
+There is the knowledge by which you know a book, for instance, on the
+subject of study, and there is the knowledge by which you know one
+another; and the kind of thing I mean when I say, 'I know mathematics,'
+is entirely different to what I mean when I say, 'I know John, Thomas,'
+or whoever he may be. And I venture to say that the knowledge, which is
+the condition of receiving the whole fulness of the glory and the whole
+fulness of the light, is a great deal more like the thing we mean when
+we talk of knowing one another than when we talk of knowing a book. That
+is to say, a man may have all the creeds and confessions of faith clear
+in his head, and yet none of the life, none of the light, none of the
+power, and none of the godliness. But if we know Him as our brother,
+know Him as our friend, our sacrifice, our Redeemer, Lord, all in all;
+know Him as our heaven, our righteousness, and our strength; if we know
+Him with the knowledge which is possession; if we know Him with the
+knowledge which, as the profoundest of the Apostles says, 'hath the
+truth in life'; if we know Him, see then, 'This is life eternal, to
+know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.'
+
+Now, friends, my words are done. God is calling you. No, let us put it a
+little more definitely than that--God is calling _thee_. There is no
+speech nor language where His voice is not heard. His words are gone out
+to the end of the world, and have reached even thyself. He calls thee,
+oh! brother, sister, friend, that you and I may turn round to Him and
+say, 'When Thou saidst, Seek ye my face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy
+face, Lord, will I seek.' Amen.
+
+
+
+
+PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE
+
+     'He hath given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that
+      by these ye might be partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped
+      the corruption that is in the world through lust.'--2 Peter i. 4.
+
+
+'Partakers of the Divine nature.' These are bold words, and may be so
+understood as to excite the wildest and most presumptuous dreams. But
+bold as they are, and startling as they may sound to some of us, they
+are only putting into other language the teaching of which the whole New
+Testament is full, that men may, and do, by their faith, receive into
+their spirits a real communication of the life of God. What else does
+the language about being 'the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty'
+mean? What else does the teaching of regeneration mean? What else mean
+Christ's frequent declarations that He dwells in us and we in Him, as
+the branch in the vine, as the members in the body? What else does 'he
+that is joined to the Lord in one spirit' mean? Do not all teach that in
+some most real sense the very purpose of Christianity, for which God
+has sent His Son, and His Son has come, is that we, poor, sinful, weak,
+limited, ignorant creatures as we are, may be lifted up into that solemn
+and awful elevation, and receive in our trembling and yet strengthened
+souls a spark of God? 'That ye may be partakers of the Divine nature'
+means more than 'that you may share in the blessings which that nature
+bestows.' It means that into us may come the very God Himself.
+
+I. So I want you to look with me, first, at this lofty purpose which is
+here presented as being the very aim and end of God's gift in the
+gospel.
+
+The human nature and the Divine are both kindred and contrary. And the
+whole Bible is remarkable for the emphasis with which it insists upon
+both these elements of the comparison, declaring, on the one hand, as no
+other religion has ever declared, the supreme sovereign, unapproachable
+elevation of the infinite Being above all creatures, and on the other
+hand, holding forth the hope, as no other religion has ever ventured to
+do, of the possible union of the loftiest and the lowest, and the
+lifting of the creature into union with God Himself. There are no gods
+of the heathen so far away from their worshippers, and there are none so
+near them, as our God. There is no god that men have bowed before, so
+unlike the devotee; and there is no system which recognises that, as is
+the Maker so are the made, in such thorough-going fashion as the Bible
+does. The arched heaven, though high above us, it is not inaccessible in
+its serene and cloudless beauty, but it touches earth all round the
+horizon, and man is made in the image of God.
+
+True, that divine nature of which the ideal man is the possessor has
+faded away from humanity. But still the human is kindred with the
+divine. The drop of water is of one nature with the boundless ocean that
+rolls shoreless beyond the horizon, and stretches plumbless into the
+abysses. The tiniest spark of flame is of the same nature as those
+leaping, hydrogen spears of illuminated gas that spring hundreds of
+thousands of miles high in a second or two in the great central sun.
+
+And though on the one hand there be finiteness and on the other
+infinitude: though we have to talk, in big words, of which we have very
+little grasp, about 'Omniscience,' and 'Omnipresence,' and 'Eternity,'
+and such like, these things may be deducted and yet the Divine nature
+may be retained; and the poor, ignorant, finite, dying creature, that
+perishes before the moth, may say, 'I am kindred with Him whose years
+know no end; whose wisdom knows no uncertainty nor growth; whose power
+is Omnipotence; and whose presence is everywhere.' He that can say, 'I
+am,' is of the same nature as His whose mighty proclamation of Himself
+is 'I AM THAT I AM.' He who can say 'I will' is of the same nature as He
+who willeth and it is done.
+
+But that kindred, belonging to every soul of man, abject as well as
+loftiest, is not the 'partaking' of which my text speaks; though it is
+the basis and possibility of it; for my text speaks of men as
+'_becoming_ partakers,' and of that participation as the result, not of
+humanity, but of God's gift of 'exceeding great and precious promises.'
+That creation in the image and likeness of God, which is represented as
+crowned by the very breath of God breathed into man's nostrils implies
+not only kindred with God in personality and self-conscious will, but
+also in purity and holiness. The moral kindred has darkened into
+unlikeness, but the other remains. It is not the gift here spoken of,
+but it supplies the basis which makes that gift possible. A dog could
+not become possessor of the Divine nature, in the sense in which my text
+speaks of it. Any man, however bad, however foolish, however degraded,
+abject and savage, can become a partaker of it, and yet no man has it
+without something else than the fact of his humanity.
+
+What, then, is it? No mere absorption, as extravagant mystics have
+dreamed, into that Divine nature, as a drop goes back into the ocean and
+is lost. There will always be 'I' and 'thou,' or else there were no
+blessedness, nor worship, nor joy. We must so partake of the Divine
+nature as that the bounds between the bestowing God and the partaking
+man shall never be broken down. But that being presupposed, union as
+close as is possible, the individuality of the giver and the receiver
+being untampered with is the great hope that all Christian men and women
+ought consciously to cherish.
+
+Only mark, the beginning of the whole is the communication of a Divine
+life which is manifested mainly in what we call moral likeness. Or to
+put it into plain words, the teaching of my text is no dreamy teaching,
+such as an eastern mystic might proclaim, of absorption into an
+impersonal Divine. There is no notion here of any partaking of these
+great though secondary attributes of the Divine mind which to many men
+are the most Godlike parts of His nature. But what my text mainly means
+is, you may, if you like, become 'holy as God is holy.' You may become
+loving as God is loving, and with a breath of His own life breathed into
+your hearts. The central Divinity in the Divine, if I may so say, is the
+amalgam of holiness and love. That is God; the rest is what belongs to
+God. God _has_ power; God _is_ love. That is the regnant attribute, the
+spring that sets everything agoing. And so, when my text talks about
+making us all, if we will, partakers of a Divine nature, what it means,
+mainly, is this--that into every human spirit there may pass a seed of
+Divine life which will unfold itself there in all purity of holiness, in
+all tenderness and gentleness of love. 'God is love; and he that
+dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' Partakers we shall be
+in the measure in which by our faith we have drawn from Him the pure and
+the hearty love of whatever things are fair and noble; the measure in
+which we love righteousness and hate iniquity.
+
+And then remember also that this lofty purpose which is here set forth
+is a purpose growingly realised in man. The Apostle puts great stress
+upon that word in my text, which, unfortunately, is not rendered
+adequately in our Bible, 'that by these ye might _become_ partakers of
+the Divine nature.' He is not talking about a _being_, but about a
+_becoming_. That is to say, God must ever be passing, moment by moment,
+into our hearts if there is to be anything godly there. No more
+certainly must this building, if we are to see, be continually filled
+with light-beams that are urged from the central sun by its impelling
+force than the spirit must be receiving, by momentary communication, the
+gift of life from God if it is to live. Cut off the sunbeam from the sun
+and it dies, and the house is dark; cut off the life from the root and
+it withers, and the creature shrivels. The Christian man lives only by
+continual derivation of life from God; and for ever and ever the secret
+of his being and of his blessedness is not that he has become a
+possessor, but that he has become a partaker, of the Divine nature.
+
+And that participation ought to, and will, be a growing thing. By daily
+increase we shall be made capable of daily increase. Life is growth; the
+Divine life in Him is not growth, but in us it does grow, and our
+infancy will be turned into youth; and our youth into maturity; and,
+blessed be His name, the maturity will be a growing one, to which grey
+hairs and feebleness will never come, nor a term ever be set. More and
+more of God we may receive every day we live, and through the endless
+ages of eternity; and if we have Him in our hearts, we shall live as
+long as there is anything more to pass from God to us. Until the
+fountain has poured its whole fulness into the cistern, the cistern will
+never be broken. He who becomes partaker of the Divine nature can never
+die. So as Christ taught us the great argument for immortality is the
+present relation between God and us, and the fact that He is the God of
+Abraham points to the resurrection life.
+
+II. Look, in the second place, at the costly and sufficient means
+employed for the realisation of this great purpose. 'He hath given to us
+exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might become
+partakers,' etc.
+
+Of course the mere words of a promise will not communicate this Divine
+life to men's souls. 'Promises' here must necessarily, I think, be
+employed in the sense of fulfilment of the promises. And so we might
+think of all the great and wondrous words which God has spoken in the
+past, promises of deliverance, of forgiveness, and the like; but I am
+rather disposed to believe that the extreme emphasis of the epithets
+which the Apostle selects to describe these promised things now
+fulfilled suggests another interpretation.
+
+I believe that by these 'exceeding great and precious promises' is
+meant the unspeakable gift of God's own Son, and the gift therein and
+thereafter of God's life-giving Spirit. For is not this the meaning of
+the central fact of Christianity, the incarnation--that the Divine
+becomes partaker of the human in order that the human may partake of the
+Divine? Is not Christ's coming the great proof that however high the
+heavens may stretch above the flat, sad earth, still the Divine nature
+and the human are so kindred that God can enter into humanity and be
+manifest in the flesh? Contrariety vanishes; the difference between the
+creature and the Creator disappears. These mere distinctions of power
+and weakness, of infinitude and finiteness, of wisdom and of ignorance,
+of undying being and decaying life, vanish, as of secondary consequence,
+when we can say, 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.' There can
+be no insuperable obstacle to man's being lifted up into a union with
+the Divine, since the Divine found no insuperable obstacle in descending
+to enter into union with the human.
+
+So then, because God has given us His Son it is clear that we may become
+partakers of the Divine nature; inasmuch as He, the Divine, has become
+partaker of the children's flesh and blood, and in that coming of the
+Divine into the human there was brought the seed and the germ of a life
+which can be granted to us all. Brethren! there is one way, and one way
+only, by which any of us can partake of this great and wondrous gift of
+a share in God, and it is through Jesus Christ. 'No man hath ascended up
+into Heaven,' nor ever will either climb or fly there, 'save He that
+came down from Heaven; even the Son of man which is in Heaven.' And in
+Him we may ascend, and in Him we may receive God.
+
+Christ is the true Prometheus, if I may so speak, who brings to earth in
+the fragile reed of his humanity the sacred and immortal fire which may
+be kindled in every heart. Open your hearts to Him by faith and He will
+come in, and with Him the rejoicing life which will triumph over the
+death of self and sin, and give to you a share in the nature of God.
+
+III. Let me say, lastly, that this great text adds a human accompaniment
+of that Divine gift: 'Having escaped the corruption that is in the world
+through lust.'
+
+The only condition of receiving this Divine nature is the opening of the
+heart by faith to Him, the Divine human Christ, who is the bond between
+men and God, and gives it to us. But that condition being presupposed,
+this important clause supplies the conduct which attends and attests the
+possession of the Divine nature.
+
+Notice, here is human nature without God, described as 'the corruption
+that is in the world in lust.' It is like a fungus, foul-smelling,
+slimy, poisonous; whose growth looks rather the working of decay than of
+vitality. And, says my text, that is the kind of thing that human nature
+is if God is _not_ in it. There is an 'either' and 'or' here. On the one
+hand we must have a share in the Divine nature, or, on the other, we
+have a share in the putrescence 'that is in the world through lust.'
+
+Corruption is initial destruction, though of course other forms of life
+may come from it; destruction is complete corruption. The word means
+both. A man either escapes from lust and evil, or he is destroyed by
+it.
+
+And the root of this rotting fungus is 'in lust,' which word, of course,
+is used in a much wider meaning than the fleshly sense in which we
+employ it in modern times. It means 'desire' of all sorts. The root of
+the world's corruption is my own and my brothers' unbridled and godless
+desires.
+
+So there are two states--a life plunged in putridity, or a heart touched
+with the Divine nature. Which is it to be? It cannot be both. It must be
+one or the other. Which?
+
+A man that has got the life of God, in however feeble measure, in him,
+will flee away from this corruption like Lot out of Sodom. And how will
+he flee out of it? By subduing his own desires; not by changing
+position, not by shirking duty, not by withdrawing himself into
+unwholesome isolation from men and men's ways. The corruption is not
+only 'in the world,' so that you could get rid of it by getting out of
+the world, but it is 'in the world in lust,' so that you carry the
+fountain of it within yourself. The only way to escape is by no outward
+flight, but by casting out the unclean thing from our own souls.
+
+Depend upon it, the measure in which a man has the love of God in him
+can be very fairly estimated by the extent to which he is doing this.
+There is a test for you Christian people. There have been plenty of men
+and women in all ages of the Church, and they abound in this generation,
+who will make no scruple of declaring that they possess a portion of
+this Divine Spirit and a spark of God in their souls. Well then, I say,
+here is the test, bring it all to this--does that life within you cast
+out your own evil desires? If it does, well; if it does not, the less
+you say about Christ in your hearts the less likely you will be to
+become either a hypocrite, or a self-deceiver.
+
+And so, brethren, remember, one last word, viz., that whilst on the one
+hand whoever has the life of God in his heart will be fleeing from this
+corruption, on the other hand you can weaken--ay! and you can kill the
+Divine life by not so fleeing. You have got it, if you have it, to
+nourish, to cherish, and to do that most of all by obeying it. If you do
+not obey, and if habitually you keep the plant with all its buds picked
+off one after another as they begin to form, you will kill it sooner or
+later. You Christian men and women take warning. God has given you Jesus
+Christ. It was worth while for Christ to live; it was worth while for
+Christ to die, in order that into the souls of all sinful,
+God-forgetting, devil-following men there might pass this Promethean
+spark of the true fire.
+
+You get it, if you will, by simple faith. You will not keep it unless
+you obey it. Mind you do not quench the Holy Spirit, and extinguish the
+very life of God in your souls.
+
+
+
+
+THE POWER OF DILIGENCE
+
+     'Giving all diligence, add to your faith ...'--2 Peter i. 5.
+
+
+It seems to me very like Peter that there should be so much in this
+letter about the very commonplace and familiar excellence of diligence.
+He over and over again exhorts to it as the one means to the attainment
+of all Christian graces, and of all the blessedness of the Christian
+life. We do not expect fine-spun counsels from a teacher whose natural
+bent is, like his, but plain, sturdy, common sense, directed to the
+highest matter, and set aglow by fervent love to his Lord. The Apostle
+paints himself, and his own way of Christian living, when he thus
+frequently exhorts his brethren to 'give all diligence.' He says in this
+same chapter that he himself will 'give diligence [_endeavour_, in
+Authorised Version] that they may be able after his decease to have
+these things always in remembrance.' We seem to see Peter, not much
+accustomed to wield a pen, sitting down to what he felt a somewhat
+difficult task, and pointing the readers to his own example as an
+instance of the temper which they must cherish if they are to make
+anything of their Christian life. 'Just as I labour for your sakes at
+this unfamiliar work of writing, so do you toil at perfecting your
+Christian graces.'
+
+Now it strikes me that we may gain some instruction if we throw together
+the various objects to which in Scripture, and especially in this
+letter, we are exhorted to direct this virtue of diligence, and mark how
+comprehensive its range, and how, for all beauty of character and
+progress in the Divine life, it is regarded as an indispensable
+condition. Let us then look, first, at the homely excellence that is the
+master-key to all Christian maturity and grace, and then at the various
+fields in which we are to apply it.
+
+I. Now as to the homely virtue itself, 'giving all diligence.'
+
+We all know what 'diligence' means, but it is worth while to point out
+that the original meaning of the word is not so much _diligence_ as
+_haste_. It is employed, for instance, to describe the eager swiftness
+with which the Virgin went to Elizabeth after the angel's salutation and
+annunciation. It is the word employed to describe the murderous hurry
+with which Herodias came rushing in to the king to demand John the
+Baptist's head. It is the word with which the Apostle, left solitary in
+his prison, besought his sole trusty companion Timothy to 'make haste so
+as to come to him before winter.' Thus, the first notion in the word is
+haste, which crowds every moment with continuous effort, and lets no
+hindrances entangle the feet of the runner. Wise haste has sometimes to
+be content to go slowly. 'Raw haste' is 'half sister to delay.' When
+haste degenerates into hurry, and becomes agitation, it is weakness, not
+strength; it turns out superficial work, which has usually to be pulled
+to pieces and done over again, and it is sure to be followed by reaction
+of languid idleness. But the less we hurry the more should we hasten in
+running the race set before us.
+
+But with this caution against spurious haste, we cannot too seriously
+lay to heart the solemn motives to wise and well-directed haste. The
+moments granted to any of us are too few and precious to let slip
+unused. The field to be cultivated is too wide and the possible harvest
+for the toiler too abundant, and the certain crop of weeds in the
+sluggard's garden too poisonous, to allow dawdling to be considered a
+venial fault. Little progress will be made if we do not work as feeling
+that 'the night is far spent, the day is at hand,' or as feeling the
+apparently opposite but really identical conviction, 'I must work the
+works of Him that sent me while it is day. The night cometh when no man
+can work.' The day of full salvation, repose, and blessedness is near
+dawning. The night of weeping, the night of toil, is nearly past. By
+both aspects of this brief life we should be spurred to haste.
+
+The first element, then, in Christian diligence is economy of time as of
+most precious treasure, and the avoidance, as of a pestilence, of all
+procrastination. 'To-morrow and to-morrow' is the opiate with which
+sluggards and cowards set conscience asleep, and as each to-morrow
+becomes to-day it proves as empty of effort as its predecessors, and,
+when it has become yesterday, it adds one more to the solemn company of
+wasted opportunities which wait for a man at the bar of God. 'All their
+yesterdays have lighted' such idlers 'to dusty death,' because in each
+they were saying, 'to-morrow we will begin the better course,' instead
+of beginning it to-day. 'Now is the accepted time.' 'Wherefore, giving
+all haste, add to your faith.'
+
+Another of the phases of the virtue, which Peter here regards as
+sovereign, is represented in our translation of the word by
+'earnestness,' which is the parent of diligence. Earnestness is the
+sentiment, of which diligence is the expression. So the word is
+frequently translated. Hence we gather that no Christian growth is
+possible unless a man gives his mind to it. Dawdlers will do nothing.
+There must be fervour if there is to be growth. The heated bar of iron
+will go through the obstacle which the cold one will never penetrate. We
+must gather ourselves together under the impulse of an all-pervading and
+noble earnestness, too deep to be demonstrative, and which does not
+waste itself in noise, but settles down steadily to work. The engine
+that is giving off its steam in white puffs is not working at its full
+power. When we are most intent we are most silent. Earnestness is dumb,
+and therefore it is terrible.
+
+Again we come to the more familiar translation of the word as in the
+text. 'Diligence' is the panacea for all diseases of the Christian
+life. It is the homely virtue that leads to all success. It is a great
+thing to be convinced of this, that there are no mysteries about the
+conditions of healthy Christian living, but that precisely the same
+qualities which lead to victory in any career to which a man sets
+himself do so in this; that, on the one hand, we shall never fail if in
+earnest and saving the crumbs of moments, we give ourselves to the work
+of Christian growth; and that on the other hand, no fine emotions, no
+select moments of rapture and communion will ever avail to take the
+place of the dogged perseverance and prosaic hard work which wins in all
+other fields; and wins, and is the only thing that does win, in this one
+too. If you want to be a strong Christian--that is to say, a happy
+man--you must bend your back to the work and 'give all diligence.'
+Nobody goes to heaven in his sleep. No man becomes a vigorous Christian
+by any other course than 'giving all diligence.' It is a very lowly
+virtue. It is like some of the old wives' recipes for curing diseases
+with some familiar herb that grows at every cottage door. People will
+not have that, but if you bring them some medicine from far away, very
+rare and costly, and suggest to them some course out of the beaten rut
+of ordinary, honest living, they will jump at that. Quackery always
+deals in mysteries and rare things. The great physician cures diseases
+with simples that grow everywhere. A pennyworth of some familiar root
+will cure an illness that nothing else will touch. It is a homely
+virtue, but if in its homeliness we practised it, this Church and our
+own souls would wear a different face from what it and they do to-day.
+
+II. Note the wide field of action for this homely grace.
+
+I can do nothing more--nor is it necessary that I should--than put
+before your mind, in a sentence or two, the various applications of it
+which our letter gives.
+
+First, note that in our text, 'giving all diligence, add to your faith.'
+That is to say, unless you work with haste, with earnestness, and
+therefore with much putting forth of strength, your faith will not
+evolve the graces of character which is in it to bring forth. If, on the
+other hand, we set ourselves to our tasks, then out of faith will come,
+as the blossoms mysteriously and miraculously do out of an apparently
+dead stump, virtue, manliness, and knowledge, and temperance, and
+patience, and godliness, and brotherly mindedness, and charity. All that
+galaxy of light and beauty will shine forth on the one condition of
+diligence, and it will not appear without that. Without it, the faith,
+though it may be genuine, which lies in a man who is idle in cultivating
+Christian character, will bear but few and shrivelled fruits. The
+Apostle uses a very remarkable expression here, which is rendered in our
+Bible imperfectly 'giving all diligence.' He has just been saying that
+God has 'given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, and
+exceeding great and precious promises.' The Divine gift, then, is
+everything that will help a man to live a high and godly life. And, says
+Peter, on this very account, because you have all these requisites for
+such a life already given you, see that you 'bring besides into' the
+heap of gifts, as it were, that which you and only you can bring,
+namely, 'all diligence.' The phrase implies that diligence is our
+contribution. And the very reason for exercising it is the completeness
+of God's gift. 'On this very account'--because He has given so much--we
+are to lay 'all diligence' by the side of His gifts, which are useless
+to the sluggard.
+
+On the one hand there are all great gifts and boundless possibilities as
+to life and godliness, and on the other diligence as the condition on
+which all these shall actually become ours, and, passing into our lives,
+will there produce all these graces which the Apostle goes on to
+enumerate. The condition is nothing recondite, nothing hard either to
+understand or to practise, but it is simply that commonplace, humdrum
+virtue of diligence. If we will put it forth, then the gifts that God
+has given, and which are not really ours unless we put it forth, will
+pass into the very substance of our being, and unfold themselves
+according to the life that is in them; even the life that is in Jesus
+Christ Himself, in all forms of beauty and sweetness and power and
+blessedness. 'Diligence' makes faith fruitful. Diligence makes God's
+gifts ours.
+
+Then, again, the Apostle gives an even more remarkable view of the
+possible field for this all-powerful diligence when he bids his readers
+exercise it in order to 'make their calling and election sure.' Peter's
+first letter shows that he believed that Christians were 'chosen
+according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.' But for all that he
+is not a bit afraid of putting the other side of the truth, and saying
+to us in effect. 'We cannot read the eternal decrees of God nor know the
+names written in the Book of Life. These are mysteries above us. But if
+you want to be sure that you are one of the called and chosen, work and
+you will get the assurance.' The confirmation of the 'call,' of the
+'election,' both in fact and in my consciousness depends upon my action.
+The 'diligence,' of which the Apostle thinks such great things, reaches,
+as it were, a hand up into heaven and binds a man to that great
+unrevealed, electing purpose of God. If we desire that upon our
+Christian lives there shall shine the perpetual sunshine of an
+unclouded confidence that we have the love and the favour of God, and
+that for us there is no condemnation, but only 'acceptance in the
+beloved,' the short road to it is the well-known and trite path of toil
+in the Christian life.
+
+Still further, one of the other writers of the New Testament gives us
+another field in which this virtue may expatiate, when the author of the
+Epistle to the Hebrews exhorts to diligence, in order to attain 'the
+full assurance of hope.' If we desire that our path should be brightened
+by the clear vision of our blessed future beyond the grave, and above
+the stars, and within the bosom of God, the road to that happy assurance
+and sunny, cloudless confidence in a future of rest and fellowship with
+God lies simply here--work! as Christian men should, whilst it is called
+to-day.
+
+The last of the fields in which this virtue finds exercise is expressed
+by our letter, when Peter says, 'Seeing that we look for such things,
+let us _be diligent_, that we may be found of Him in peace without spot,
+and blameless.' If we are to be 'found in peace,' we must be 'found
+spotless,' and if we are to be 'found spotless' we must be 'diligent.'
+'If that servant begin to say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;
+and to be slothful, and to eat and drink with the drunken, the lord of
+that servant will come in an hour when he is not aware.' On the other
+hand, 'who is that faithful servant whom his lord hath set ruler over
+his household? Blessed is that servant whom his lord when he cometh
+shall find so doing?' Doing so, and diligently doing it, 'he shall be
+found in peace.'
+
+What a beautiful ideal of Christian life results from putting together
+all these items. A fruitful faith, a sure calling, a cloudless hope, a
+peaceful welcome at last! The Old Testament says, 'The hand of the
+diligent maketh rich'; the New Testament promises unchangeable riches to
+the same hand. The Old Testament says, 'Seest thou a man diligent in his
+business, he shall stand before kings.' The New Testament assures us
+that the noblest form of that promise shall be fulfilled in the
+Christian man's communion with his Lord here, and perfected when the
+diligent disciple shall 'be found of Him in peace,' and stand before the
+King in that day, accepted and himself a king.
+
+
+
+
+GOING OUT AND GOING IN
+
+     'An entrance ... my decease.'--2 Peter i. 11, 15.
+
+
+I do not like, and do not often indulge in, the practice of taking
+fragments of Scripture for a text, but I venture to isolate these two
+words, because they correspond to one another, and when thus isolated
+and connected, bring out very prominently two aspects of one thing. In
+the original the correspondence is even closer, for the words, literally
+rendered, are 'a going in' and 'a going out.' The same event is looked
+at from two sides. On the one it is a departure; on the other it is an
+arrival. That event, I need not say, is Death.
+
+I note, further, that the expression rendered, 'my decease,' employs the
+word which is always used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament
+to express the departure of the Children of Israel from bondage, and
+which gives its name, in our language, to the Second Book of the
+Pentateuch. 'My exodus'--associations suggested by the word can scarcely
+fail to have been in the writer's mind.
+
+Further, I note that this expression for Death is only employed once
+again in the New Testament--viz., in St. Luke's account of the
+Transfiguration, where Moses and Elias spake with Jesus 'concerning His
+decease--the exodus--which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.' If you
+look on to the verses which follow the second of my texts, you will see
+that the Apostle immediately passes on to speak about that
+Transfiguration, and about the voice which He heard then in the holy
+mount. So that I think we must suppose that in the words of our second
+text he was already beginning to think about the Transfiguration, and
+was feeling that, somehow or other, his 'exodus' was to be conformed to
+his Master's.
+
+Now bearing all these points in mind, let us just turn to these words
+and try to gather the lessons which they suggest.
+
+I. The first of them is this, the double Christian aspect of death.
+
+It is well worth noting that the New Testament very seldom condescends
+to use that name for the mere physical fact of dissolution. It reserves
+it for the most part for something a great deal more dreadful than the
+separation of body and soul, and uses all manner of periphrases, or what
+rhetoricians call euphemising, that is, gentle expressions which put the
+best face upon a thing instead of the ugly word itself. It speaks, for
+instance, as you may remember, in the context here about the 'putting
+off' of a tent or 'a tabernacle,' blending the notions of stripping off
+a garment and pulling down a transitory abode. It speaks about death as
+a sleep, and in that and other ways sets it forth in gracious and gentle
+aspects, and veils the deformity, and loves and hopes away the
+dreadfulness of it.
+
+Now other languages and other religions besides Christianity have done
+the same things, and Roman and Greek poets and monuments have in like
+manner avoided the grim, plain word--death, but they have done it for
+exactly the opposite reason from that for which the Christian does it.
+They did it because the thing was so dark and dismal, and because they
+knew so little and feared so much about it. And Christianity does it for
+exactly the opposite reason, because it fears it not at all, and knows
+it quite enough. So it toys with leviathan, and 'lays its hand on the
+cockatrice den,' and my text is an instance of this.
+
+'My decease ... an entrance.' So the terribleness and mystery dwindled
+down into this--a change of position; or if locality is scarcely the
+right class of ideas to apply to spirits detached from the body--a
+change of condition. That is all.
+
+We do not need to insist upon the notion of change of place. For, as I
+say, we get into a fog when we try to associate place with pure
+spiritual existence. But the root of the conviction which is expressed
+in both these phrases, and most vividly by their juxtaposition, is this,
+that what happens at death is not the extinction, but the withdrawal, of
+a person, and that the man _is_, as fully, as truly as he was, though
+all the relations in which he stands may be altered.
+
+Now no materialistic teaching has any right to come in and bar that
+clear faith and firm conclusion. For by its very saying that it knows
+nothing about life except in connection with organisation, it
+acknowledges that there is a difference between them. And until science
+can tell me how it is that the throb of a brain or the quiver of a
+nerve, becomes transformed into morality, into emotion, I maintain that
+it knows far too little of personality and of life to be a valid
+authority when it asserts that the destruction of the organisation is
+the end of the man. I feel myself perfectly free--in the darkness in
+which, after all investigation, that mysterious transformation of the
+physical into the moral and the spiritual lies--I feel perfectly free to
+listen to another voice, the voice which tells me that life can subsist,
+and that personal being can be as full--ay, fuller--apart altogether
+from the material frame which here, and by our present experience, is
+its necessary instrument. And though accepting all that physical
+investigation can teach us, we can still maintain that its light does
+not illumine the central obscurity; and that, after all, it still
+remains true that round about the being of each man, as round about the
+being of God, clouds and darkness roll,
+
+    'Life and thought have gone away,
+                      Side by side,
+     Leaving door and window wide.'
+
+That, and nothing more, is death--'My decease ... an entrance.'
+
+Then, again, the combination of these two words suggests to us that the
+one act, in the same moment, is both departure and arrival. There is not
+a pin-point of space, not the millionth part of a second of time,
+intervening between the two. There is no long journey to be taken. A man
+in straits, and all but desperation, is recorded in the old Book to have
+said: 'There is but a step between me and death.' Ah, there is but a
+step between death and the Kingdom; and he that passes out at the same
+moment passes in.
+
+I need not say a word about theories which seem to me to have no basis
+at all in our only source of information, which is Revelation; theories
+which would interpose a long period of unconsciousness--though to the
+man unconscious it be no period at all--between the act of departure and
+that of entrance. Not so do I read the teaching of Scripture: 'This day
+thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.' We pass out, and as those in the
+vestibule of a presence-chamber have but to lift the curtain and find
+themselves face to face with the king, so we, at one and the same
+moment, depart and arrive.
+
+Friends stand round the bed, and before they can tell by the undimmed
+mirror that the last breath has been drawn, the saint is 'with Christ,
+which is far better.' To depart _is_ to be with Him. There is a moment
+in the life of every believing soul in which there strangely mingle the
+lights of earth and the lights of heaven. As you see in dissolving
+views, the one fades and the other consolidates. Like the mighty angel
+in the Apocalypse, the dying man stands for a moment with one foot on
+the earth and the other already laved and cleansed by the waters of that
+'sea of glass mingled with fire which is before the Throne,' 'Absent
+from the body; present with the Lord.'
+
+Further, these two words suggest that the same act is emancipation from
+bondage and entrance into royalty.
+
+'My exodus.' Israel came out of Egyptian servitude and dropped chains
+from wrists and left taskmasters cracking their useless whips behind
+them, and the brick kilns and the weary work were all done when they
+went forth. Ah, brethren, whatever beauty and good and power and
+blessedness there may be in this mortal life, there are deep and sad
+senses in which, for all of us, it is a prison-house and a state of
+captivity. There is a bondage of flesh; there is a dominion of the
+animal nature; there are limitations, like high walls, cribbing,
+cabining, confining us--the limitations of circumstance. There is the
+slavery of dependence upon this poor, external, and material world.
+There are the tyranny of sin and the subjugation of the nobler nature to
+base and low and transient needs. All these fetters, and the scars of
+them, drop away. Joseph comes out of prison to a throne. The kingdom is
+not merely one in which the redeemed man is a subject, but one in which
+he himself is a prince. 'Have thou authority over ten cities.' These are
+the Christian aspects of death.
+
+II. Now note, secondly, the great fact on which this view of death
+builds itself.
+
+I have already remarked that in one of my texts the Apostle seems to be
+thinking about Jesus Christ and His decease. The context also refers to
+another incident in his own life, when our Lord foretold to him that the
+putting off his tabernacle was to be 'sudden,' and added: 'Follow thou
+Me.'
+
+Taking these allusions into account, they suggest that it is the death
+of Jesus Christ--and that which is inseparable from it, His
+Resurrection--that changes for a soul believing on Him the whole aspect
+of that last experience that awaits us all. It is His exodus that makes
+'my exodus' a deliverance from captivity and an entrance upon royalty.
+
+I need not remind you, how, after all is said and done, we are sure of
+life eternal, because Jesus Christ died and rose again. I do not need to
+depreciate other imperfect arguments which seem to point in that
+direction, such as the instincts of men's natures, the craving for some
+retribution beyond, the impossibility of believing that life is
+extinguished by the fact of physical death. But whilst I admit that a
+good deal may be said, and strong probabilities may be alleged, it seems
+to me that however much you may argue, no words, no considerations,
+moral or intellectual, can suffice to establish more than that it would
+be a very good thing if there were a future life and that it is probable
+that there is. But Jesus Christ comes to us and says, 'Touch Me, handle
+Me; a spirit hath not flesh and bones as I have. Here I am. I _was_
+dead; I _am_ alive for evermore.' So then _one_ life, that we know
+about, _has_ persisted undiminished, apart from the physical frame, and
+that one Man has gone down into the dark abyss, and has come up the same
+as when He descended. So it is His exodus--and, as I believe, His death
+and Resurrection alone--on which the faith in immortality impregnably
+rests.
+
+But that is not the main point which the text suggests. Let me remind
+you how utterly the whole aspect of any difficulty, trial, or sorrow,
+and especially of that culmination of all men's fears--death itself--is
+altered when we think that in the darkest bend of the dark road we may
+trace footsteps, not without marks of blood in them, of Him that has
+trodden it all before us. 'Follow thou Me,' He said to Peter; and it
+should be no hard thing for us, if we love Him, to tread where He trod.
+It should be no lonely road for us to walk, however the closest clinging
+hands may be untwined from our grasp, and the most utter solitude of
+which a human soul is capable may be realised, when we remember that
+Jesus Christ has walked it before us.
+
+The entrance, too, is made possible because He has preceded us. 'I go to
+prepare a place for you.' So we may be sure that when we go through
+those dark gates and across the wild, the other side of which no man
+knows, it is not to step out of 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day'
+into some dim, cold, sad land, but it is to enter into His presence.
+
+Israel's exodus was headed by a mummy case, in which the dead bones of
+their whilom leader were contained. Our exodus is headed by the Prince
+of Life, who was dead and is alive for evermore.
+
+So, brethren, I beseech you, treasure these thoughts more than you do.
+Turn to Jesus Christ and His resurrection from the dead more than you
+do. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that the Christianity of this
+day is largely losing the habitual contemplation of immortality which
+gave so much of its strength to the religion of past generations. We are
+all so busy in setting forth and enforcing the blessings of Christianity
+in its effects in the present life that, I fear me, we are largely
+forgetting what it does for us at the end, and beyond the end. And I
+would that we all thought more of our exodus and of our entrance in the
+light of Christ's death and resurrection. Such contemplation will not
+unfit us for any duty or any enjoyment. It will lift us above the
+absorbed occupation with present trivialities, which is the bane of all
+that is good and noble. It will teach us 'a solemn scorn of ills.' It
+will set on the furthest horizon a great light instead of a doleful
+darkness, and it will deliver us from the dread of that 'shadow feared
+of man,' but not by those who, listening to Jesus Christ, have been
+taught that to depart is to be with Him.
+
+III. Now I meant to have said a word, in the close of my sermon, about a
+third point--viz., the way of securing that this aspect of death shall
+be our experience, but your time will not allow of my dwelling upon
+that as I should have wished. I would only point out that, as I have
+already suggested, this context teaches us that it is His death that
+must make our deaths what they may become; and would ask you to notice,
+further, that the context carries us back to the preceding verses. 'An
+entrance shall be _ministered_ unto you _abundantly_.' We have just
+before read, 'If these things be in you and _abound_, they make you that
+ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
+Jesus Christ'; and just before is the exhortation, 'giving all
+diligence, minister to your faith virtue.'
+
+So the Apostle, by reiterating the two words which he had previously
+been using, teaches us that if death is to be to us that departure from
+bondage and entrance into the Kingdom, we must here and now bring forth
+the fruits of faith. There is no entrance hereafter, unless there has
+been a habitual entering into the Holy Place by the blood of Jesus
+Christ even whilst we are on earth. There is no entrance by reason of
+the fact of death, unless all through life there has been an entrance
+into rest by reason of the fact of faith.
+
+And so, dear brethren, I beseech you to remember that it depends on
+yourself whether departing shall be arrival, and exodus shall be
+entrance. One thing or other that last moment must be to us all--either
+a dragging us reluctant away from what we would fain cleave to, or a
+glad departure from a foreign land and entrance to our home. It may be
+as when Peter was let out of prison, the angel touched him, and the
+chains fell from his hands, and the iron gate opened of its own accord,
+and he found himself in the city. It is for you to settle which of the
+two it shall be. And if you will take Him for your King, Companion,
+Saviour, Enlightener, Life here, 'the Lord shall bless your going out
+and coming in from this time forth and even for evermore.'
+
+
+
+
+THE OWNER AND HIS SLAVES
+
+     'Denying the Lord that bought them.'--2 Peter ii. 1.
+
+
+The institution of slavery was one of the greatest blots on ancient
+civilisation. It was twice cursed, cursing both parties, degrading each,
+turning the slave into a chattel, and the master, in many cases, into a
+brute. Christianity, as represented in the New Testament, never says a
+word to condemn it, but Christianity has killed it. 'Make the tree good
+and its fruit good.' Do not aim at institutions, change the people that
+live under them and you change _them_. Girdle the tree and it will die,
+and save you the trouble of felling it. But not only does Christianity
+never condemn slavery, though it was in dead antagonism to all its
+principles, and could not possibly survive where its principles were
+accepted, but it also takes this essentially immoral relation and finds
+a soul of goodness in the evil thing, which serves to illustrate the
+relation between God and man, between Christ and us. It does with
+slavery as it does with war, uses what is good in it as illustrating
+higher truths, and trusts to the operation, the slow operation of its
+deepest principles for its destruction.
+
+So, then, we have one Apostle, in his letters, binding on his forehead
+as a crown the designation, 'Paul,' a _slave_ of 'Jesus Christ,' and we
+have in my text an expanded allusion to slavery. The word that is here
+rendered rightly enough, 'Lord,' is the word which has been transferred
+into English as 'despot,' and it carries with it some suggestion of the
+roughness and absoluteness of authority which that word suggests to us.
+It does not mean merely 'master,' it means 'owner,' and it suggests an
+unconditional authority, to which the only thing in us that corresponds
+is abject and unconditional submission. That is what Christ is to you
+and me; the Lord, the Despot, the Owner.
+
+But we have not only owner and slave here; we have one of the ugliest
+features of the institution referred to. You have the slave-market, 'the
+Lord that _bought_ them,' and because He purchased them, owns them.
+Think of the hell of miseries that are connected with that practice of
+buying and selling human flesh, and then estimate the magnificent
+boldness of the metaphor which Peter does not scruple to take from it
+here, speaking of the owner who acquired them by a price. And not only
+that, but slaves will run away, and when they are stopped, and asked who
+they belong to, will say they know nothing about him. And so here is the
+runaway's denial, 'denying the Lord that bought them.' Now I ask you to
+think of these three points.
+
+I. Here we have the Owner of us all.
+
+I do not need, I suppose, to spend a moment in showing you that this
+relationship, which is laid down in our text, subsists between Jesus
+Christ and men, and it subsists between Jesus Christ and all men. For
+the people about whom the Apostle is saying that they have 'denied the
+Lord that bought them' can, by no construction, be supposed to be true
+Christians, but were enemies that had crept into the Church without any
+real allegiance to Jesus Christ, and were trying to wreck it, and to
+destroy His work. So there is no reference here to a little elected
+group out of the midst of humanity, who especially belonged to Jesus
+Christ, and for whom the price has been paid; but the outlook of my text
+in its latter portion is as wide as humanity. The Lord--that is, Jesus
+Christ--owns all men.
+
+Let me expand that thought in one or two illustrations which may help to
+make it perhaps more vivid. The slave's owner has absolute authority
+over him. You remember the occasion when a Roman officer, by reflecting
+upon the military discipline of the legion, and the mystical power that
+the commander's word had to set all his men in obedient activity, had
+come to the conclusion that, somehow or other, this Jesus whom he
+desired to heal his servant had a similar power in the material
+universe, and that just as he, subordinate officer though he was, had
+yet--by reason of the fact that he was 'under authority,' and an organ
+of a higher authority--the power to say to his servant, 'Go,' and he
+would go; and to another one, 'Come,' and he would come; so this Christ
+had power to say to disease, 'Depart,' and it would depart; and to
+health, 'Come,' and it would come; and to all the material forces of the
+universe, 'Do this,' and obediently they would do it. That is the
+picture, in another region, of the relation which Jesus Christ bears to
+men, though, alas, it is not the picture of the relation which men bear
+to Christ. But to all of us He has the right to say, wherever we are,
+'Come,' the right to say, 'Go,' the right to say, 'Do,' the right to
+say, 'Be this, that, and the other thing.'
+
+Absolute authority is His; what should be yours? Unconditional
+submission. My friend, it is no use your calling yourself a Christian
+unless that is your attitude. My sermon to-night has something else to
+do than simply to present truths to you. It has to press truths on you,
+and to appeal not only to your feelings, not only to your
+understandings, but to your wills. And so I come with this question: Do
+you, dear friend, day by day, yield to the absolute Master the absolute
+submission? And is that rebellious will--which is in you, as it is in us
+all--tamed and submitted so as that you can say, 'Speak, Lord! Thy
+servant heareth'? Is it?
+
+Further, the owner has the right, as part of that absolute authority of
+which I have been speaking, to settle without appeal each man's work. In
+those Eastern monarchies where the king was surrounded, not by
+constitutional ministers, but by his personal slaves, he made one man a
+shoeblack or a pipe-bearer, and the man standing next to him his prime
+minister. And neither the one nor the other had the right to say a word.
+Jesus Christ has the right to regulate your life in all its details, to
+set you your tasks. Some of us will get what the world vulgarly calls
+'more important duties'; some will get what the world ignorantly calls
+more 'insignificant' ones. What does that matter? It was our Owner that
+set us to our work, and if He tells us to black shoes, let us black them
+with all the pith of our elbows, and with the best blacking and brushes
+we can find; and if He sets us to work, which people think is more
+important and more conspicuous, let us do that too, in the same spirit,
+and for the same end.
+
+Again, the owner has the absolute right of possession of all the slave's
+possessions. He gets a little bit of land in the corner of his master's
+plantation, and grows his vegetables, yams, pumpkins, a leaf of tobacco
+or two, or what not, there. And if his master comes along and says,
+'These are mine,' the slave has no recourse, and is obliged to accept
+the conditions and to give them up. So Jesus Christ claims ours as well
+as us--ours because He claims us--and whilst, on the other hand, the
+surrender of external good is incomplete without the surrender of the
+inward will, on the other hand the abandonment and surrender of the
+inward life is incomplete, if it be not hypocritical, without the
+surrender of external possessions. All the slave's goods belonged to the
+owner.
+
+And the owner has another right. He can say, 'Take that man's child and
+sell him in the market!' and he can break up the family ties and
+separate husband and wife, and parent and child, and not a word can be
+said. Our Master comes, not with rough authority, but with loving,
+though absolute authority, and He sometimes untwines the hands that are
+most closely clasped, and says to the one of the two that have grown
+together in love and blessedness, 'Come!' and he cometh, and to the
+other 'Go!' and she goeth. Blessed they who can say, 'It is the Lord!
+Let Him do what seemeth Him good.'
+
+Now, dear friends, this absolute authority cannot be exercised by any
+man upon another man, and this unconditional submission, which Jesus
+Christ asks from us all, ought not to be rendered by any man to a man.
+It is a degradation when a human creature is put even in the external
+relation of slavery and servitude to another human creature, but it is
+an honour when Jesus Christ says to me, 'Thou art Mine,' and I say to
+Him, 'I am Thine, O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; Thou hast loosed my
+bonds.' In the old Saxon monarchies, some antiquarians tell us, the
+foundation of our modern nobility or aristocracy is found in that the
+king's servants became nobles. Jesus Christ's slave is everybody else's
+master. And it is the highest honour that a man can have to bow himself
+before that Lord, and to take His yoke upon him and learn of Him. So
+much, then, for my first point; now a word with regard to the second.
+
+II. The sale, and the price.
+
+'The Lord that bought them.' You perhaps remember other words which say,
+'Ye are bought with a price; be not the servants of men'; also other
+words of this Apostle himself, in which he speaks, in his other letter,
+of being 'bought with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without
+blemish and without spot.' Now notice, Christ's ownership of us does not
+depend on Christ's Divinity, which I suppose most of us believe, but on
+Christ's sacrifice for us. It is perfectly true that creation gives
+rights to the Creator. It is perfectly true that if we believe, as I
+think the New Testament teaches, that He, who before His name was Jesus
+was the Eternal Word of God, was the Agent of all Creation, and
+therefore has rights. But Christ's heart does not care for rights of
+that sort. It wants something far deeper, far tenderer, far closer than
+any such. And He comes to us with the language that is the language of
+love over all the universe, as between man and woman, as between man and
+man, as between man and God, as between God and man, upon His lips, and
+says, 'Thou must love Me, for I have died for thee.' Yes, brother; the
+only ground upon which absolute possession of a man can be rested is the
+ground of prior absolute surrender to Him. Christ must give Himself to
+me before He can ask me to give myself to Him. So all that was
+apparently harsh in the relationship, as I have been trying to set it
+forth to you, melts away and disappears. No owner ever owned a slave as
+truly as a loving woman owns her husband, or a loving husband his wife,
+because the ownership is the expression of perfect love on both sides.
+And that is the golden bond that binds men's souls to Christ in a
+submission which, the more abject it is, the more elevating it is, just
+because 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me.'
+
+I do not dwell upon any cold theological doctrine of an Atonement, but I
+wish you to feel that deep in this great metaphor of our text there lie
+the two things; first, the price that was paid, and, second, the bondage
+from which the slave was delivered. He belonged to another master before
+Christ bought him for Himself. 'He that committeth sin is the slave of
+sin.' Some of you are your own despots, your own tyrants. The worse half
+of you has got the upper hand. The mutineers that ought to have been
+down under hatches, and shackled, have taken possession of the deck and
+clapped the captain and the officers, and all the sextants and
+log-books, away into a corner, and they are driving the ship--that is,
+you--on to the rocks, as hard as they can. A man that is not Christ's
+slave has a far worse slavery in submitting to these tyrant sins that
+have tempted him with the notion of how fine it is to break through
+these old-womanly restraints and conventional fads of a narrow morality,
+and to have his fling, and do as he likes and follow nature. Ay, some of
+you have been doing that, and could write a far better commentary than
+any preacher ever wrote, out of your own experience, on the great words,
+'Whilst they promised them liberty, they themselves are the slaves of
+corruption!' Young men, is that true about any of you--that you came
+here into Manchester to a situation, and lonely lodgings, comparatively
+innocent, and that somebody said, 'Oh, do not be a milksop! come along
+and see life,' and you thought it was fine to shake off the shackles
+that your poor old mother used to try to put upon your limbs? And what
+have you made of it? I will tell you what a great many young men have
+made of it--I have seen scores of them in the forty years that I have
+been preaching here: 'His bones are full of the iniquity of his youth,
+which shall lie down with him in the dust.'
+
+There is a slavery which is blessedness, and there is a slavery which at
+first is delightsome to the worst part of us, and afterwards becomes
+bitter and deadly. And it is the bondage of sin, the bondage to my worst
+self, the bondage to my indulged passions, the bondage to other men, the
+bondage to the material world. Jesus Christ speaks to each of us in His
+great sacrifice, by which He says to us, 'The Son will make you free,
+and you shall be free indeed.' The Lord has bought us. Have you let Him
+emancipate you from all your bondage? Dear friends, bear with me if I
+press again upon you, I pray God that it may ring in your ears till you
+can answer that question, Jesus Christ having bought me, do I belong to
+Him?
+
+III. And now, lastly, notice the runaways.
+
+Did it ever occur to you what a pathetic force there is in Peter's
+picking out that word 'denying' as the shorthand expression for all
+sorts of sins? Who was it that thrice denied that he knew Him? That
+experience went very deep into the Apostle; and here, as I take it, is a
+most significant illustration of his penitent remembrance of his past
+life, all the more significant because of its reticence. The allusion is
+one that nobody could catch that did not know his past, but which to
+those who did know it was full of meaning and of pathos:--'Denying the
+Lord, as _I_ did on that dismal morning, in the High Priest's palace. I
+am speaking about it, for I know what it comes to, and the tears that
+will follow after.'
+
+But what I desire to press upon you, dear friends, is just this: That in
+that view of the lives of people who are not Christians there is
+suggested to us the essential sinfulness, the black ingratitude, and the
+absolute folly of refusing to acknowledge the claims of Him to whom we
+belong, and who has bought us at such a price. You can do it by word,
+and perhaps some of us are not guiltless in that respect. You can do it
+by paring down the character and office of Jesus Christ, and minimising
+the importance of His sacrifice from the world's sins, and thinking of
+Him, not as the Owner that bought us, but as the Master that teaches us.
+You can do it by cowardly hiding of your colours and being too
+shamefaced, too sensitive to the curled lip of the man that works at the
+next bench, or sits at the next desk, or the student that is beside you,
+or somebody else whose opinion you esteem, which prevents you from
+saying like a man, 'I belong to Jesus Christ, and whomsoever other
+people serve, as for me, I am going to serve Him.' And you can do it,
+and many of you are doing it, by simply ignoring His claims, refusing to
+turn to Him, not yielding up your will to Him, not turning your heart to
+Him, not setting your dependence upon Him. Is it not a shame that men,
+whose hearts will glow with thankfulness when another man, especially if
+he is a superior, comes to them with some gift, valuable, but nothing as
+compared with the transcendent gift that Christ brings, will yet let Him
+die for them and not care anything about Him? I can understand the
+vehement antagonism that some people have to Christ and Christianity,
+but what I cannot understand is the attitude of the immense mass of
+people that come to services like this, who profess to believe that
+Jesus Christ's love for them brought Him to the cross, and yet will not
+even pay the poor tribute of a little interest and a momentary
+inclination of heart towards Him. 'Is it nothing to you, all ye that
+pass by,' that Jesus Christ died for you? He bought you for His own. Let
+me beseech you to 'yield yourselves' servants, slaves of Christ, and
+then you will be free, and you will hear Him say in the very depth of
+your hearts, 'Henceforth I call you not slaves, but friends.'
+
+
+
+
+BE DILIGENT
+
+     'Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be
+      diligent that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and
+      blameless.'--2 Peter iii. 14.
+
+
+As we pass the conventional boundary of another year, most of us, I
+suppose, cast glances into the darkness ahead. To those of us who have
+the greater part of our lives probably before us, the onward look will
+disclose glad possibilities. To some of us, who have life mostly behind
+us, the prospect will take 'a sober colouring from an eye that hath kept
+watch over man's mortality,' and there will be little on the lower
+levels to attract. My text falls in with the mood which the season
+fosters. It directs our onward look to a blessed certainty instead of a
+peradventure, and it deduces important practical consequences from the
+hope. These three things are in the words of our text: a clear vision
+that should fill the future; a definite aim for life, drawn from the
+vision; and an earnest diligence in the pursuit of that aim, animated
+by that hope.
+
+Now these three--a bright hope, a sovereign purpose, and a diligent
+earnestness--are the three conditions of all noble life. They themselves
+are strength, and they will bring us buoyancy and freshness which will
+prolong youth into old age, and forbid anything to appear uninteresting
+or small.
+
+So I ask you to look at these three points, as suggested by my text.
+
+I. First, then, the clear hope which should fill our future.
+
+'Seeing that ye look for such things.' What things? Peter has been
+drawing a very vivid and solemn picture of the end, in two parts, one
+destructive, the other constructive. Anticipating the predictions of
+modern science, which confirm his prophecy, he speaks of the dissolution
+of all things by fervent heat, and draws therefrom the lesson: 'What
+manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and
+godliness?'
+
+But that dissolution by fire is not, as people often call it, the 'final
+conflagration.' Rather is it a regenerating baptism of fire, from which
+'the heavens and the earth that now are'--like the old man in the fable,
+made young in the flame--shall emerge renewed and purified. The lesson
+from that prospect is the words of our text.
+
+Now I am not going to dwell upon that thought of a new heaven and a new
+earth renewed by means of the fiery change that shall pass upon them,
+but simply to remark that there is a great deal in the teaching of both
+Old and New Testaments which seems to look in that direction. It is, at
+least, a perfectly tenable belief, and in my humble judgment is
+something more, that this earth, the scene of man's tragedy and crime,
+the theatre of the display of the miracle of redeeming love, emancipated
+from the bondage of corruption, shall be renewed and become the seat of
+the blessed. They who dwell in it, and it on which they dwell pass
+through analogous changes, and as for the individuals, the 'new
+creation' is the old self purified by the fire of the Divine Spirit into
+incorruption and righteousness, so the world in which they live shall,
+in like manner, be 'that new world which is the old,' only having
+suffered the fiery transformation and been glorified thereby.
+
+But passing from that thought, which, however interesting it may be as a
+matter of speculation, is of very small practical importance, notice,
+still further, the essential part of the hope which the Apostle here
+sets forth--viz., that that order of things towards which we may look is
+one permeable only for feet that have been washed and made clean.
+'Therein dwelleth righteousness.' _Righteousness_ there, of course, is
+the abstract for the concrete; the quality is put for the persons that
+exhibit it. And just as the condition of being at home in this present
+material world is the possession of flesh and blood, which puts
+creatures into relationships therewith, and just as it is impossible for
+a finite, bodyless spirit to move amongst, and influence, and be
+influenced by, the gross materialities of the heavens and the earth that
+now are, so is it impossible for anything but purity to be at rest in,
+or even to enter into that future world. 'The gates' of the New
+Jerusalem 'shall not be closed day nor night'; but through the ever-open
+gates none can pass except they who have washed their robes and made
+them white in the blood of the Lamb. There stand at the gates of that
+Paradise unseen, the repulsions of the angel with the flaming sword,
+and none can enter except the righteous. Light kills the creatures of
+the darkness.
+
+      'How pure that soul must be
+     Which, placed within Thy piercing sight,
+     Shall shrink not, but with calm delight
+       Can live, and look on Thee!'
+
+Thus, then, brethren, an order of things free from all corruption, and
+into which none can pass but the pure, should be the vision that ever
+flames before us. Peter takes it for granted that the anticipation of
+that future is an inseparable part of the Christian character. The word
+which he employs, by its very form, expresses that that expectance is
+habitual and continuous. I am afraid that a great many so-called
+Christians very seldom send their thoughts, and still less frequently
+their desires, onwards to that end. In all your dreams of the future,
+how much space has been filled by this future which is no dream? Have
+you, in these past days, and do you, as a matter of habitual and
+familiar occupation of your mind, let your eyes travel on beyond and
+above the low levels of earth and peradventures, to fix them on that
+certainty?
+
+Opticians make glasses with three ranges, and write upon a little bar
+which shifts their eyepieces, 'Theatre,' 'Field,' 'Marine.' Which of the
+three is your glass set to? The turn of a button determines its range.
+You can either look at the things close at hand, or, if you set the
+eyepiece right and use the strongest, you can see the stars. Which is it
+to be? The shorter range shows you possibilities; the longer will show
+you certainties. The shorter range shows you trifles; the longer, all
+that you can desire. The shorter range shows you hopes that are destined
+to be outgrown and left behind; the longer, the far-off glories, a
+pillar of light which will move before you for ever. Oh, how many of the
+hopes that guided our course, and made our objective points in the past,
+are away down below the backward horizon! How many hopes we have
+outgrown, whether they were fulfilled or disappointed. But we may have
+one which will ever move before us, and ever draw our desires. The
+greater vision, if we were only wise enough to bring our lives
+habitually under its influence, would at once dim and ennoble all the
+near future.
+
+Let us then, dear friends, not desecrate that wondrous faculty of
+looking before as well as after which God has given to us, by wasting it
+upon the nothings of this world, but heave it higher, and anchor it more
+firmly in the very Throne of God Himself. And for us let one solemn,
+blessed thought more and more fill with its substance and its light the
+else dim and questionable and insufficient future, and walk evermore as
+seeing Him who is invisible, and as hasting unto the coming of the day
+of the Lord.
+
+II. Then, secondly, note the definite aim which this clear hope should
+impress upon life.
+
+If you knew that you were going to emigrate soon, and spend all your
+life on the other side of the world, in circumstances the outlines of
+which you knew, you would be a fool if you did not set yourself to get
+ready for them. The more clearly we see and the more deeply we feel that
+future hope, which is disclosed for us in the words of my text, the more
+it will prescribe a dominant purpose which will give unity, strength,
+buoyancy, and blessedness to any life. 'Seeing that ye look for such
+things, be diligent.' For what? 'That ye may be found of Him in peace,
+without spot, and blameless.'
+
+Now mark the details of the aim which this great hope impresses upon
+life, as they are stated in the words of my text. Every word is weighty
+here. 'That ye may be _found_.' That implies, if not search, at least
+investigation. It suggests the idea of the discovery of the true
+condition, character, or standing of a man which may have been hidden or
+partially obscured before--and now, at last, is brought out clearly.
+With the same suggestion of investigation and discovery, the same phrase
+is employed in other places; as, for instance, when the Apostle Paul
+speaks about being 'found naked,' or as when he speaks about being
+'found in Him, not having mine own righteousness.' So, then, there is
+some process of examination or investigation, resulting in the
+discovery, possibly for the first time, of what a man really is.
+
+Then note, 'Found _in Him_,' or as the Revised Version reads it, 'in His
+sight.' Then Christ is the Investigator, and it is before 'those pure
+eyes and perfect judgment' that they have to pass, who shall be admitted
+into the new heavens and the new earth, 'wherein dwelleth
+righteousness.'
+
+Then mark what is the character which, discovered on investigation by
+Jesus Christ, admits there: 'without spot and blameless.' There must be
+the entire absence of every blemish, stain, or speck of impurity. The
+purer the white the more conspicuous the black. Soot is never so foul as
+when it lies on driven snow. They who enter there must have nothing in
+them akin to evil. 'Blameless' is the consequence of 'spotless.' That
+which in itself is pure attracts no censure, whether from the Judge or
+from the assessors and onlookers in His court.
+
+But, further, these two words, in almost the same identical form--one of
+them absolutely the same, and the other almost so--are found in Peter's
+other letter as a description of Jesus Christ Himself. He was a Lamb
+'without blemish and without spot.' And thus the character that
+qualifies for the new heavens is the copy of us in Jesus Christ.
+
+Still further, only those who thus have attained to the condition of
+absolute, speckless purity and conformity to Jesus Christ will meet His
+searching eye in calm tranquillity and be 'found of Him _in peace_.'
+
+The steward brings his books to his master. If he knows that there has
+been trickery with the figures and embezzlement, how the wretch shakes
+in his shoes, though he may stand apparently calm, as the master's keen
+eye goes down the columns! If he knows that it is all right, how calmly
+he waits the master's signature at the end, to pass the account! The
+soldiers come back with victory on their helmets, and are glad to look
+their captain in the face. But if they come back beaten, they shrink
+aside and hide their shame. If we are to meet Jesus Christ with quiet
+hearts, and we certainly shall meet Him, we must meet Him 'without spot
+and blameless.' The discovery, then, of what men truly are will be like
+the draining of the bed of a lake. Ah, what ugly, slimy things there are
+down in the bottom! What squalor and filth flung in from the houses, and
+covered over many a day by the waters! All that surface work will be
+drained off from the hearts of men. Shall we show slime and filth, or
+shall we show lovely corals and silver sands without a taint or a speck?
+
+These are the details of the life's aim of a Christian man. And they may
+all be gathered up into one. The end which we should seek as sovereign
+and high above all others is the conformity of our character to Jesus
+Christ our Lord. Never mind about anything else; let us leave all in
+God's hands. He will do better for us than we can do for ourselves. Let
+us trust Him for the contingent future; and let us set ourselves to
+secure this, that, whether joy or sorrow, whether wealth or poverty,
+whether success or failure, whether sweet companionship or solitary
+tears be our lot for the rest of our lives, we may grow in grace, and in
+the knowledge and likeness of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Make
+that your aim, and freshness, buoyancy, enthusiasm, the ennobling of
+everything in this world, and the bending of all to be contributory of
+it, will gladden your days. Make anything else your aim, and you fail of
+your highest purpose, and your life, however successful, will be dreary
+and disappointed, and its end will be shame.
+
+III. Lastly, notice the earnest diligence with which that aim should be
+pursued, in the light of that hope.
+
+Peter is fond of using the word which is here translated 'be diligent.'
+Hard work, honest effort, continuous and persevering, is His simple
+recipe for all nobleness. You will find He employs it, for instance, at
+least three times in this letter, in such connections as, 'Besides this,
+giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue,' and so on through the
+whole glorious series; and again, 'Wherefore the rather, brethren, give
+diligence to make your calling and election sure.' So, then, there is no
+mystery about the way of securing the aim; work towards it, and you will
+get it.
+
+Now, of course, there are a great many other considerations to be
+brought in in reference to the Christian man's means of becoming
+Christlike. We should have to speak of the gifts of a Divine Spirit, of
+the dependence upon God for it, and the like; but for the present
+purpose we may confine ourselves to Peter's own prescription, 'be
+diligent,' and that will secure it. But then the word itself opens out
+into further meanings than that. It not only implies diligence: there
+may be diligence of a very mechanical and ineffective sort. The word
+also includes in its meaning earnestness, and it very frequently
+includes that which is the ordinary consequence of earnestness--viz.,
+haste and economy of time.
+
+So I venture, in closing, just to throw my remarks into three simple
+exhortations. Be in earnest in cultivating a Christlike character.
+Half-and-half Christians, like a great many of us, are of no use either
+to God or to men or to themselves. Dawdling and languid, braced up and
+informed by no earnestness of purpose, and never having had enthusiasm
+enough to set themselves fairly alight, they do no good and they come to
+nothing. 'I would thou wert cold or hot.' One thing sorely wanted in the
+average Christianity of this day is that professing Christians should
+give the motives which their faith supplies for earnest consecration due
+weight and power. Nothing else will succeed. You will never grow like
+Christ unless you are in earnest about it any more than you could pierce
+a tunnel through the Alps with a straw. It needs an iron bar tipped with
+diamond to do it. Unless your whole being is engaged in the task, and
+you gather your whole self together into a point, and drive the point
+with all your force, you will never get through the rock barrier that
+rises between you and the fair lands beyond. Be in earnest, or give it
+up altogether.
+
+Then another thing I would venture to say is, Make it your _business_ to
+cultivate a character like that of Jesus Christ. If you would go to the
+work of growing a Christ-like spirit one-hundredth part as
+systematically as you will go to your business to-morrow, and stick at
+it, there would be a very different condition of things in most of our
+hearts. No man becomes noble and good and like the dear Lord 'by a
+jump,' without making a systematic and conscious effort towards it.
+
+I would say, lastly, Make haste about cultivating a Christlike
+character. The harvest is great, the toil is heavy, the sun is drawing
+to the west, the evening shadows are very long with some of us, the
+reckoning is at hand, and the Master waits to count your sheaves. There
+is no time to lose, brother; set about it as you have never done before,
+and say, 'This one thing I do.'
+
+And so let us not fill our minds with vain hopes which, whether they be
+fulfilled or not, will not satisfy us, but lift our eyes to and stay our
+anticipations on those glories beyond, as real as God is real, and as
+certain as His word is true. Let these hopes concentrate and define for
+us the aims of our life; and let the aims, clearly accepted and
+recognised, be pursued with earnestness, with 'diligence,' with haste,
+with the enthusiasm of which they, and they only, are worthy. Let us
+listen to our Master, 'I must work the works of Him that sent Me while
+it is day; the night cometh.' And let us listen to the words of the
+servant, which reverse the metaphor, and teach the same lesson in a
+trumpet call which anticipates the dawn and rouses the sleeping
+soldiers: 'The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us cast off
+the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.'
+
+
+
+
+GROWTH
+
+     'But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour
+      Jesus Christ....'--2 Peter iii. 18.
+
+
+These are the last words of an old man, written down as his legacy to
+us. He was himself a striking example of his own precept. It would be an
+interesting study to examine these two letters of the Apostle Peter, in
+order to construct from them a picture of what he became, and to
+contrast it with his own earlier self when full of self-confidence,
+rashness, and instability. It took a lifetime for Simon, the son of
+Jonas, to grow into Peter; but it was done. And the very faults of the
+character became strength. What he had proved possible in his own case
+he commands and commends to us, and from the height to which he has
+reached, he looks upwards to the infinite ascent which he knows he will
+attain when he puts off this tabernacle; and then downwards to his
+brethren, bidding them, too, climb and aspire. His last word is like
+that of the great Roman Catholic apostle to the East Indies: 'Forward!'
+He is like some trumpeter on the battlefield who spends his last breath
+in sounding an advance. Immortal hope animates his dying injunction:
+'Grow! grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.'
+
+So I think we may take these words, dear friends, as the starting-point
+for some very plain remarks about what I am afraid is a neglected duty,
+the duty of growth in Christian character.
+
+I. I begin, first, with a word or two about the direction which
+Christian growth ought to take.
+
+Now those of you who use the Revised Version will see in it a very
+slight, but very valuable alteration. It reads there: 'Grow in the grace
+and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.' The effect of that alteration
+being to bring out more clearly that whilst the direction of the growth
+is twofold, the process is one. And to bring out more clearly, also,
+that both the grace and the knowledge have connection with Jesus Christ.
+
+He is the Giver and the Author of the grace. He is the Object of the
+knowledge. The one is more moral and spiritual; the other, if we may so
+say, more intellectual; but both are realised by one act of progress,
+and both inhere in, and refer to, and are occupied with, and are derived
+from, Jesus Christ Himself.
+
+Let us look a little more closely at this double direction, this
+bifurcation, as it were, of Christian growth. The tree, like some of our
+forest trees, in its normal progress, diverges into two main branches at
+a short distance upwards from the root.
+
+First, we have growth in the 'grace' of Christ. Grace, of course, means,
+first, the undeserved love and favour which God in Jesus Christ bears to
+us sinful and inferior creatures; and then it means the consequence of
+that love and favour in the manifold spiritual endowments which in us
+become 'graces,' beauties, and excellences of Christian character. So
+then, if you are a Christian, you ought to be continually realising a
+deeper and more blessed consciousness of Christ's love and favour as
+yours. You ought to be, if I may so say, nestling every day nearer and
+nearer to His heart, and getting more and more sure, and more and more
+happily sure, of more and more of His mercy and love to you.
+
+And if you are a Christian you ought not only thus to be realising
+daily, with increasing certitude and power, the fact of His love, but
+you ought to be drinking in and deriving more and more every day of the
+consequences of that love, of the spiritual gifts of which His hands are
+full. There is open for each of us in Him an inexhaustible store of
+abundance. And if our Christian life is real and vigorous there ought to
+be in us a daily increasing capacity, and therefore a daily increasing
+possession of the gifts of His grace. There ought to be, in other words,
+also a daily progressive transformation into His likeness. It is 'the
+grace of our Lord Jesus,' not only in the sense that He is the Author
+and the Bestower of it to each of us, but also in the sense that He
+Himself possesses and exemplifies it. So that there is nothing mystical
+and remote from the experience of daily life in this exhortation: 'Grow
+in grace'; and it is not growth in some occult theological virtue, or
+transcendent experience, but a very plain, practical thing, a daily
+transformation, with growing completeness and precision of resemblance,
+into the likeness of Jesus Christ; the grace that was in Him being
+transferred to me, and my character being growingly irradiated and
+refined, softened and ennobled by the reflection of the lustre of His.
+
+This it is to 'grow into the grace of our Lord and Saviour'; a deeper
+consciousness of His love creeping round the roots of my heart every
+day, and fuller possession of His gifts placed in my opening hand every
+day; and a continual approximation to the beauty of His likeness, which
+never halts nor ceases.
+
+'Grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.' The knowledge of a
+person is not the same as the knowledge of a creed or of a thought or of
+a book. We are to grow in the knowledge of Christ, which includes but
+is more than the intellectual apprehension of the truths concerning Him.
+He might turn the injunction into--'Increase your acquaintance with your
+Saviour.' Many Christians never get to be any more intimate with Him
+than they were when they were first introduced to Him. They are on a
+kind of bowing acquaintance with their Master, and have little more than
+that. We sometimes begin an acquaintance which we think promises to
+ripen into a friendship, but are disappointed. Circumstances or some
+want of congeniality which is discovered prevent its growth. So with not
+a few professing Christians. They have got no nearer Jesus Christ than
+when they first knew Him. Their friendship has not grown. It has never
+reached the stage where all restraints are laid aside and there is
+perfect confidence. 'Grow in the knowledge of your Lord and Saviour
+Jesus Christ.' Get more and more intimate with Him, nearer to Him, and
+franker and more cordial with Him day by day.
+
+But there is another side to the injunction besides that. We are to grow
+in the grasp, the intellectual grasp and realisation of the truths which
+lie wrapped up and enfolded in Him. The first truths that a man learns
+when he becomes a Christian are the most important. The lesson that the
+little child learns contains the Omega as well as the Alpha of all
+truth. There is no word in all the gospel that is an advance on that
+initial word, the faith of which saves the most ignorant who trusts to
+it. We begin with the end, if I may say so, and the highest truth is the
+first truth that we learn. But the aspect which that truth bears to the
+man when, first of all, it dawns upon him, and he sees in it the end of
+his fears, the cleansing of his heart, the pardoning of his sins, his
+acceptance with God, is a very different thing from the aspect that it
+ought to wear to him, after, say forty years of pondering, of growing up
+to it, after years of experience have taught him. Life is the best
+commentary upon the truths of the gospel, and the experience teaches
+their depths and their power, their far-reaching applications and
+harmonies. So our growth in the knowledge of Jesus Christ is not a
+growing away from the earliest lessons, or a leaving them behind, but a
+growing up to and into them. So as to learn more fully and clearly all
+their infinite contents of grace and truth. The treasure put into our
+hands at first is discovered in its true preciousness as life and trial
+test its metal and its inexhaustibleness. The child's lesson is the
+man's lesson. All our Christian progress in knowledge consists in
+bringing to light the deep meaning, the far-reaching consequences of the
+fact of Christ's incarnation, death, and glory. 'God so loved the world
+that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him
+should not perish, but have everlasting life.' The same truth which
+shone at first a star in a far-off sky, through a sinful man's night of
+fear and agony, grows in brilliance as we draw nearer to it, until at
+last it blazes, the central Sun of the Universe, the hearth for all
+vital warmth, the fountain of all guiding light, the centre of all
+energy. Christ in His manhood, in His divinity, Christ in His cross,
+resurrection, and glory, is the object of all knowledge, and we grow in
+the knowledge of Him by penetrating more deeply into the truths which we
+have long ago learned, as well as by following them as they lead us into
+new fields, and disclose unsuspected issues in creed and practice.
+
+That growth will not be one-sided; for grace and knowledge will advance
+side by side--the moral and spiritual keeping step with the
+intellectual, the practical with the theoretical. And that growth will
+have no term. It is growth towards an infinite object of our aspiration,
+imitation, and affection. So we shall ever approach and never surpass
+Jesus Christ. Such endless progress is the very salt of life. It keeps
+us young when physical strength decays. It flames, an immortal hope, to
+light the darkness of the grave when all other hopes are quenched in
+night.
+
+II. Now, for a moment, look at another thought, viz., the obligation.
+
+It is a command, that is to say, the will is involved. Growth is to be
+done by effort, and the fact that it is a command teaches us this, that
+we are not to take this one metaphor as if it exhausted the whole of the
+facts of the case in reference to Christian progress.
+
+You would never think of telling a child to grow any more than you would
+think of telling a plant to grow, but Peter does tell Christian men and
+women to grow. Why? Because they are not plants, but men with wills,
+which can resist, and can either further or hinder their progress.
+
+    'Lo! in the middle of the wood,
+     The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud,
+                                ... and there
+     Grows green and broad, and takes no care.'
+
+But that is not how we grow. 'In the sweat of thy brow,' with pain and
+peril, with effort and toil, and not otherwise, do men grow in
+everything but stature. And especially is it so in the Christian
+character. There are other metaphors that need to be taken into
+consideration as well as this of growth, with all its sweet suggestions
+of continuous, effortless, spontaneous advance.
+
+The Christian progress is not only growth, it is warfare. The Christian
+progress is not only growth, it is a race. The Christian progress is not
+only growth, it is mortifying the old man. The Christian progress is not
+only growth, it is putting off the old man with his deeds and putting on
+the new! 'First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the
+ear,' was never meant for a complete account of how the Christian life
+is perfected.
+
+We are bidden to grow, and that command points to hindrances and
+resistance, to the need for effort and the governing action of our own
+wills.
+
+The command is one sorely needed in the present state of our average
+Christianity. Our churches are full of monsters, specimens of arrested
+growth, dwarfs, who have scarcely grown since they were babes, infants
+all their lives. I come to you with a very plain question: Have you any
+more of Christ's beauty in your characters, any more of His grace in
+your hearts, any more of His truth in your minds than you had a year
+ago, ten years ago, or at that far-off period when some of you
+greyheaded men first professed to be Christians? Have you experienced so
+many things in vain? Have the years taught you nothing? Ah, brethren!
+for how many of us is it true: 'When for the time ye ought to be
+teachers ye have need that one teach you which be the first principles
+of the oracles of God'? 'Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord
+and Saviour.'
+
+And we need the command because all about us there are hindrances. There
+is the hindrance of an abuse of the evangelical doctrine of conversion,
+and the idea that springs up in many hearts that if once a man has
+'passed from death unto life,' and has managed to get inside the door
+of the banqueting-hall, that is enough. And there are numbers of people
+in our Nonconformist communities especially, where that doctrine of
+conversion is most distinctly preached, whose growth is stopped by the
+abuse that they make of it in fancying if they have once exercised faith
+in Jesus Christ they may safely and sinlessly stand still. 'Conversion'
+is turning round. What do we turn round for? Surely, in order that we
+may travel on in the new direction, not that we may stay where we are.
+There is also the hindrance of mere indolence, and there is the
+hindrance arising from absorption in the world and its concerns.
+
+If all your strength is going thither, there is none left to grow with.
+Many professing Christians take such deep draughts of the intoxicating
+cup of this world's pleasures that it stunts their growth. People
+sometimes give children gin in order to keep them from growing. Some of
+you do that for your Christian character by the deep draughts that you
+take of the Circean cup of this world's pleasures and cares.
+
+And not unfrequently, some one favourite evil, some lust or passion, or
+weakness, or desire, which you have not the strength to cast out, will
+kill all aspirations and destroy all possibilities of growth; and will
+be like an iron band round a little sapling, which will confine it and
+utterly prevent all expansion. Is that the case with any of us? We all
+need--and I pray you suffer--the word of exhortation.
+
+III. Now, again, consider the method of growth.
+
+There are two things essential to the growth of animal life. One is
+food, the other is exercise; and your Christian character will grow by
+no other means.
+
+Now as to the first. The true means by which we shall grow in Christian
+grace is by holding continual intercourse and communion with Jesus
+Christ. It is from Him that all come. He is the Fountain of Life; He
+gives the life, He nourishes the life, He increases the life. And whilst
+I have been saying, in an earlier part of this discourse, that we are
+not to expect an effortless growth, I must here say that we shall very
+much mistake what Christian progress requires if we suppose that the
+effort is most profitably directed to the cultivation of specific and
+single acts of goodness and purity. Our efforts are best when directed
+to keeping ourselves in union with our Lord. The heart united to Him
+will certainly be advancing in all things fair and lovely and of good
+report. Keep yourselves in touch with Christ; and Christ will make you
+grow. That is to say, occupy heart and mind with Him, let your thoughts
+go to Him. Do you ever, from morning to night, on a week-day, think
+about your Master, about His truth, about the principles of His Gospel,
+about His great love to you? Keep your heart in union with Him, in the
+midst of the rush and hurry of your daily life. Are your desires turning
+to Him? Do they go out towards Him and feel after Him? It will take an
+effort to keep up the union with Him, but without the effort there will
+be no contact, and without the contact there will be no growth. As soon
+may you expect a plant, wrenched from the soil and shut out from the
+sunshine to grow, as expect any Christian progress in the hearts which
+are disjoined from Jesus Christ. But rooted in that soil, smiled upon by
+that sun, watered by the perpetual dew from His Heaven, we shall 'grow
+like the lily, and cast forth our roots like Lebanon. The secret of real
+Christian progress and the direction in which the effort of Christian
+progress can most profitably and effectually be made, is simply in
+keeping close to our Lord and Master. He is the food of the Spirit. 'I
+am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more
+abundantly.'
+
+Communion with Christ includes prayer. Desire to grow will help our
+growth. We tend to become what we long to be. Desire which impels to
+effort will not be in vain if it likewise impels to prayer. We may have
+the answer to our petition for growth in set ways; we may be but
+partially conscious of the answer, nor know that our faces shine when we
+go among men. But certainly if we pray for what is in such accordance
+with His will as 'growth in grace' is, we shall have the petition that
+we desire. That longing to know Him better and to possess more of His
+grace, like the tendrils of some climbing plant, will always find the
+support round which it may twine, and by which it may ascend.
+
+The other condition of growth is exercise. Use the grace which you have,
+and it increases. Practice the truth which you know, and many things
+will become clearer. The blacksmith's muscles are strengthened by
+wielding the forge-hammer, but unused they waste. The child grows by
+exercise. To him that hath--truly possesses with that possession which
+only use secures--shall be given.
+
+Communion with Christ, including prayer, and exercise are the means of
+growth.
+
+IV. Lastly, observe the solemn alternative to growth.
+
+It is not a question of either growing or not growing, and there an end;
+but if you will look at the context you will see that the exhortation of
+my text comes in in a very significant connection. 'Behold! beware, lest
+being led away ... ye fall from your own steadfastness.' 'But grow in
+grace.' That is to say, the only preventive of falling away from
+steadfastness is continual progress. The alternative of advance is
+retrogression. There is no standing still upon the inclined plane. If
+you are not going up, gravity begins to act, and down you go. There must
+either be continual advance or there will be certain decay and
+corruption. As soon as growth ceases in this physiology _disintegration_
+commences. Just as the graces exercised are strengthened, so the graces
+unexercised decay. The slothful servant wraps his talent in a napkin,
+and buries it in the ground. He may try to persuade his Master and
+himself with 'There Thou hast that is Thine'; but He will not take up
+what you buried. Rust and verdigris will have done their work upon the
+coin; the inscription will be obliterated and the image will be marred.
+You cannot bury your Christian grace in indolence without diminishing
+it. It will be like a bit of ice wrapped in a cloth and left in the sun,
+it will all have gone into water when you come to take it out. And the
+truth that you do _not_ live by, whose relations and large harmonies and
+controlling power are not being increasingly realised in your lives;
+that truth is becoming less and less real, more and more shadowy, and
+ghostlike to you. Truth which is not growing is becoming fossilised.
+'The things most surely believed' are often the things which have least
+power. Unquestioned truth too often lies 'bedridden in the dormitory of
+the soul side by side with exploded error.' The sure way to reduce your
+knowledge of Jesus Christ to that inert condition is to neglect
+increasing it and applying it to your daily life. There are men, in all
+churches, and there are some whole communions whose creeds are the most
+orthodox, and also utterly useless, and as near as possible
+nonentities, simply because the creed is accepted and shelved. If your
+belief is to be of any use to you, or to be held by you in the face of
+temptations to abandon it, you must keep it fresh, and oxygenated, so to
+say, by continual fresh apprehension of it and closer application of it
+to conduct. As soon as the stream stands, it stagnates; and the very
+manna from God will breed worms and stink. And Christian truth
+unpractised by those who hold it, corrupts itself and corrupts them.
+
+So Peter tells us that the alternative is growth or apostasy. This decay
+may be most real and unsuspected. There are many, many professing
+Christians all ignorant that, like the Jewish giant of old, their
+strength is gone from them, and the Spirit of God departed. My brother,
+I beseech you, rouse yourself from your contented slothfulness. Do not
+be satisfied with merely having come within the Temple. Count nothing as
+won whilst anything remains to be won. There is a whole ocean of
+boundless grace and truth rolling shoreless there before you. Do not
+content yourselves with picking up a few shells on the beach, but launch
+out into the deep, and learn to know more and more of the grace and
+truth and beauty of your Saviour and your God.
+
+But remember dead things do not grow. You cannot grow unless you are
+alive, and you are not alive unless you have Jesus Christ.
+
+Have you given yourselves to Him? have you taken Him as yours? given
+yourselves to Him as His servants, subjects, soldiers? taken Him for
+yours as your Saviour, Sacrifice, Pattern, Inspirer, Friend? If you
+have, then you have life which will grow if you keep it in union with
+Him. Joined to Him, men are like a 'tree that is planted by the rivers
+of water,' which spreads its foliage and bears its fruit, and year after
+year flings a wider shadow upon the grass, and lifts a sturdier bole to
+the heavens. Separated from Him they are like the chaff, which has
+neither root nor life, and which cannot grow.
+
+Which, my friend, are you?
+
+
+
+
+I. JOHN
+
+
+
+
+THE MESSAGE AND ITS PRACTICAL RESULTS
+
+     'This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare
+      unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. 6.
+      If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we
+      lie, and do not the truth: 7. But if we walk in the light, as He is
+      in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of
+      Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. 8. If we say that
+      we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
+      9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us
+      our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10. If we say
+      that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in
+      us.'
+
+     'My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin
+      not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
+      Christ the righteous: 2. And He is the propitiation for our sins:
+      and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 3.
+      And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His
+      commandments. 4. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His
+      commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5. But whoso
+      keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected:
+      hereby know we that we are in Him. 6. He that saith he abideth in
+      Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.'--1 John
+      i. 5-ii. 6.
+
+
+John is the mystic among the New Testament writers. He dwells much on
+the immediate union of the soul with God, and he has little to say about
+institutions and rites. His method is not to argue, but to utter deep,
+simple propositions which convince by their own light. But he is also
+intensely eager for plain, practical morality, and in that respect sets
+the example which, unfortunately, too many of the more mystical types of
+Christian teaching have failed to follow. To him the outcome and test of
+all deep hidden union with God is righteousness in life.
+
+The blending of these two elements, which is the very keynote of this
+letter, is wonderfully set forth in this passage. They would require
+much more space than we command for their treatment, for every clause is
+weighty as gold. We can but skim the surface, and try to bring out the
+salient points.
+
+I. We have, first, a wonderful gathering up of the whole gospel message
+into one utterance as to the essential nature of God. Light is in all
+languages the symbol of knowledge, of joy, of purity. It is the source
+of life. Its very nature is to ray itself out into and conquer darkness.
+Its splendor dazzles every eye; all things rejoice in its beams.
+Darkness is the type of ignorance, of sorrow, of sin. But, whilst the
+symbol is thus rich in manifold revelations, probably purity and
+self-communication are the predominating ideas here.
+
+John has been honoured to give the world the three great revelations
+that God is spirit, is light, is love. And this profound saying in some
+sense includes both the others, inasmuch as light, which to the popular
+mind is most widely apart from matter, may well stand for the emblem of
+spirit, and, since to radiate is its inseparable quality, does represent
+in symbol the delight in imparting Himself, which is the very heart of
+the declaration that God is love. If, then, we grasp these two thoughts
+of absolute purity and of self-impartation as the very nature and
+property of God, John tells us that we grasp the kernel of the Gospel.
+
+And he thinks that men never will grasp them certainly unless a
+'message' from God, a definite revelation in historical fact, certifies
+them. We may hope or doubt, or desire, but we cannot be sure that God is
+light unless he tells us so by unmistakable act. John knew what act that
+was--the sending of His only-begotten Son. To the positive statement
+John, in his usual manner, appends an emphatic negative one: 'Darkness
+is not in him, no, not in any way.' He is light, all light, only light.
+
+II. With characteristic moral earnestness, John passes at once to the
+practical effects which the message is meant to have. We are not told
+what God is simply that we may know, but that, knowing, we may do and
+be. If He is light, two things will follow in those who are in union
+with Him--they will walk in light, and they will in His light see their
+own evil. John deals with these two consequences in verses 6-10--the
+former in verses 6 and 7; the latter in verses 8-10. The parallelism in
+the construction of these two sets of verses is striking:
+
+    VERSES 6, 7.                           VERSES 8, 9.
+
+      If we say                              If we say
+
+    that we have fellowship with           that we have no sin
+    Him, and walk in darkness,
+    we lie, and do not the truth.          we deceive ourselves, and the
+                                           truth is not in us.
+
+      But if we walk in the light,           If we confess our sins,
+    as He is in the light,
+
+    we have fellowship one with            He is faithful and righteous to
+    another.                               forgive us our sins,
+
+    and the blood of Jesus His Son         and to cleanse us from all
+    cleanseth us from all sin.             unrighteousness.
+
+As to the former of these two paragraphs, the underlying thought is that
+fellowship with God necessarily involves moral likeness to Him. Worship
+is always aspiration after, and conformity to, the character of the god
+worshipped, and there can be no true communion with a God who is light
+unless the worshipper walks in light. In plain language, all high-flying
+pretensions to communion with God must verify themselves by practical
+righteousness. That cuts deep into an emotional religion, which has much
+to say about raptures and the like, but produces little purifying effect
+on the humble details of daily life.
+
+There are always professing Christians who talk of their blessed
+experiences, and woefully fail in prosaic virtues. It is a pity that a
+man should hold his head so high that he does not look to keep his feet
+out of the mud. Such a profession is for the most part tainted with more
+or less conscious falsehood, and is always a proof that the truth--the
+sum of God's revelation--is not operative in the man; that he is not
+turning his belief into act, as all belief should be. On the other hand,
+the true relation resulting from the message is that we should walk in
+the light, as He is in it.
+
+Verse 10 seems to be simply a reiteration of the preceding idea, with
+some intensifying, and that chiefly in the description of the true
+character of the denial of sin. To make God a liar is worse than to lie
+or to deceive ourselves; and all ignoring of sin does that, because not
+only has God declared its universality by the words of revelation, but
+all His dealings with men are based upon the fact that they are all
+sinners, and we fly in the face of all His words and works if we deny
+that which we ourselves are. Therefore the Apostle further varies his
+expression, and says 'His word' instead of 'the truth,' thus bringing
+into prominence the thought that 'the truth' is made accessible to us
+because God has spoken.
+
+III. Chapter ii. 1-6 is in structure analogous to the preceding section.
+As there, so here, the 'message' is summed up in one great
+fact,--Christ's work as advocate for believers and as propitiation for
+the world. As there, so here, two practical consequences follow, which
+are drawn out on corresponding lines. Observe the repetition in verses 3
+and 5 _b_, of 'hereby know we,' and in verses 4 and 6 of 'He that
+saith.'
+
+Note, too, the reappearance of 'is a liar' and of 'the truth is not in
+him' in verse 4. The drift of the section may be briefly put as follows.
+John's heart melts as he thinks of the possibilities of holiness open to
+believers, and of the sad actualities of their imperfect lives, and he
+addresses them by the tender name, 'my little children.' The impelling
+and guiding motive of his letter is that they may not sin. Practical
+righteousness is the end of revelation, and its complete attainment
+should be the aim of every believer.
+
+But the sad experience of 'saints' is that they are not yet wholly
+delivered from its power. Therefore 'the message' is not only 'God is
+light without blending of darkness,' but, 'we Christians have an
+Advocate with the Father.' Jesus is to-day carrying on His mighty work
+of prevalent intercession for all His servants, and that intercession
+secures forgiveness for their inconsistencies and lapses, because it
+rests upon Christ's finished work of 'propitiation,' which is for the
+whole world, even though it actually avails only for believers.
+
+Such being the power of Christ's work in its twofold aspect of
+propitiation and of intercession, the same practical issues as in the
+preceding section were shown to flow from the revealed nature of God are
+here, in somewhat different form, linked with that work. First, keeping
+his commandments (which is equivalent to 'walking in the light') is the
+test to ourselves, as well as to others, of our really knowing Him with
+a knowledge which is not mere head work, but the acquaintance of
+sympathy and friendship, or, in the words of the previous paragraph,
+having fellowship with Him.
+
+Clearly, the scope of this section requires that 'His commandments'
+should here mean Christ's, not the Father's. All professions of knowing
+Jesus which are not verified by obedience to Him are false. If we do
+keep His word--not merely the individual 'commandments,' but the word as
+one great whole--our love to God reaches its perfection, for it is no
+mere emotion of the heart, but the force which is to mould and actuate
+all our acts.
+
+Verse 5 _b_ should be separated from the preceding words, for it is
+really the beginning of the second issue from the work of Christ, and is
+parallel with 'hereby know we,' etc., in verse 3. Observe the progress
+in thought from the assurance that we _know_ (ver. 3) to the assurance
+that we _are in_ Him. The Christian's relation to Jesus is not only that
+of acquaintance, however intimate, loving, and transforming, but that of
+actual dwelling in Him. That great truth shines on every page of the New
+Testament, and is not to be weakened down into metaphor or rhetoric. It
+is the very heart of the Christian life, and the test that we have
+attained to it, and that not merely as an occasional, but as a
+permanent, condition (note that '_are_ in Him' is strengthened to
+'_abideth_ in Him') is that our outward life, in its manifold
+activities, shall be conformed to the pattern of all holiness in the
+life of Jesus. To walk as He walked is to walk in the light. Profession
+is nothing, conduct is everything, and we shall only be clear of sin in
+the measure in which we have Him who is the light of men for the very
+life of our lives.
+
+
+
+
+WALKING IN THE LIGHT
+
+     'If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship
+      one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth
+      us from all sin.'--1 John i. 7.
+
+
+John was the Apostle of love, but he was also a 'son of thunder.' His
+intense moral earnestness and his very love made him hate evil, and
+sternly condemn it; and his words flash and roll as no other words in
+Scripture, except the words of the Lord of love. In the immediate
+context he has been laying down what is to him the very heart of his
+message, that 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' There
+are spots in the sun, great tracts of blackness on its radiant disc; but
+in God is unmingled, perfect purity. That being so, it is clear that no
+man can be in sympathy or hold communion with Him, unless he, too, in
+his measure, is light.
+
+So, with fiery indignation, John turns to the people, of whom there were
+some, even in the primitive Church, who made claims to a lofty
+spirituality and communion with God, and all the while were manifestly
+living in the darkness of sin. He will not mince matters with them. He
+roundly says that they are lying, and the worst sort of lie--an acted
+lie: 'They do not the truth.' Then, with a quick turn, he opposes to
+these pretenders the men who really are in fellowship with God, and in
+my text lays down the principle that walking in the light is essential
+to fellowship with God. Only, in his usual fashion, he turns the
+antithesis into a somewhat different form, so as to suggest another
+aspect of the truth, and instead of saying, as we might expect for the
+verbal accuracy of the contrast, 'If we walk in the light, as He is in
+the light, we have fellowship with God,' he says, 'we have fellowship
+one with another.' Then he adds a still further result of that walk,
+'the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin.'
+
+Now there are three things: walking in the light, which is the only
+Christian walk; the companions of those who walk in the light; and the
+progressive cleansing which is given.
+
+I. Note this 'Walking in the light,' which is the only Christian walk.
+
+In all languages, light is the natural symbol for three things:
+knowledge, joy, purity. The one ray is broken into its three constituent
+parts. But just as there are some surfaces which are sensitive to the
+violet rays, say, of the spectrum, and not to the others, so John's
+intense moral earnestness makes him mainly sensitive to the symbolism
+which makes light the expression, not so much of knowledge or of joy, as
+of moral purity. And although that is not exclusively his use of the
+emblem, it is predominately so, and it is so here. To 'walk in the
+light' then, is, speaking generally, to have purity, righteousness,
+goodness, as the very element and atmosphere in which our progressive
+and changeful life is carried on.
+
+Note, too, before I go further, that very significant antithesis: we
+'walk'; He _is_--God _is_ in the light essentially, changelessly,
+undisturbedly, eternally; and the light in which He is, His 'own calm
+home, His habitation from eternity,' is light which has flowed out from
+Himself as a halo round the midnight moon. It is all one in substance to
+say God is in light, or, as the Psalmist has it, 'He covered Himself
+with light as with a garment,' and to say, 'God is light.'
+
+But, side by side with that changeless abiding in the perfect purity,
+which is inaccessible, the Apostle ventures to put, not in contrast
+only, but in parallel (_as_ He is), our changing, effortful, active,
+progressive life in the light (God is); we walk.
+
+So, then, the essential of a Christian character is that the light of
+purity and moral goodness shall be as the very orb, in the midst of
+which it stands and advances. That implies effort, and it implies
+activity, and it implies progress. And we are only Christians in the
+measure in which the conscious activities of our daily lives, and the
+deepest energies of our inward being, are bathed and saturated with this
+love of, and effort after, righteousness. It is vain, says John, to talk
+about fellowship with God, unless the fellowship is rooted in sympathy
+with Him in that which is the very heart of his Being, the perfect light
+of perfect holiness. Test your Christianity by that.
+
+Then, still further, there is implied in this great requirement of
+walking in the light, not only activity and effort, and progress and
+purity, but also that the whole of the life shall be brought into
+relation with, and shall be moulded after, the pattern of the God in
+whom we profess to believe. Religion, in its deepest meaning, is the
+aspiration after likeness to the god. You see it in heathenism. Men make
+their gods after their own image, and then the god makes the worshippers
+after his image. Mars is the god of the soldier, and Venus goddess of
+the profligate, and Apollo god of the musical and the wise, etc., and in
+Christianity the deepest thing in it is aspiration and effort after
+likeness to God. Love is imitation; admiration, especially when it is
+raised to the highest degree and becomes adoration, is imitation. And
+the man that lies before God, like a mirror in the sunshine, receives
+on the still surface of his soul--but not, like the mirror, on the
+surface only, but down into its deepest depths--the reflected image of
+Him on Whom he gazes. 'We all with unveiled face, mirroring glory, are
+changed into the same image.' So to walk in the light is only possible
+when we are drawn into it, and our feeble feet made fit to tread upon
+the radiant glory, by the thought that He is in the light. To imitate
+Him is to be righteous. So do not let us forget that a correct creed,
+and devout emotions, ay! and a morality which has no connection with
+Him, are all imperfect, and that the end of all our religion, our
+orthodox creed and our sweet emotions and inward feelings of acceptance
+and favour and fellowship, are meant to converge on, and to produce
+this--a life and a character which lives and moves and has its being in
+a great orb of light and purity.
+
+But another thing is included in this grand metaphor of my text. Not
+only does it enjoin upon us effort and activity and progress in the
+light and the linking of all our purity with God, but also, it bids us
+shroud no part of our conduct or our character either from ourselves or
+from Him. Bring it all out into the light. And although with a penitent
+heart, and a face suffused with blushes, we have sometimes to say, 'See,
+Father, what I have done!' it is far better that the revealing light
+should shine down upon us, and like the sunshine on wet linen, melt away
+the foulness which it touches, than that we should huddle the ugly thing
+up in a corner, to be one day revealed and transfixed by the flash of
+the light turned into lightning. 'He that doeth the truth cometh to the
+light, that his deeds may be made manifest.'
+
+II. So much, then, for my first point; the second is: The companions of
+the men that walk in the light.
+
+I have already pointed out that the accurate, perhaps pedantically
+accurate, form of the antithesis would have been: 'If we walk in the
+light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with God.' But John
+says, first, 'we have fellowship one with another.' Underlying that, as
+I shall have to say in a moment, there is the other thought: 'We have
+fellowship with God.' But he deals with the other side of the truth
+first. That just comes to this, that the only cement that perfectly
+knits men to each other is their common possession of that light, and
+the consequent fellowship with God. There are plenty of other bonds that
+draw us to one another; but these, if they are not strengthened by this
+deepest of all bonds, the affinity of souls, that are moving together in
+the realm of light and purity, are precarious, and apt to snap. Sin
+separates men quite as much as it separates each man from God. It is the
+wedge driven into the tree that rends it apart. Human society with its
+various bonds is like the iron hoop that may be put around the barrel
+staves, giving them a quasi-unity. The one thing that builds men
+together into a whole is that each shall be, as it were, embedded in the
+rock which is the foundation, and the building will rise into a holy
+temple in the Lord. Sin separates; as the prophet confessed, 'All we
+like sheep have gone astray, every one to _his own way_,' and the flock
+is broken up into a multitude of scattered sheep. Social enthusiasts may
+learn the lesson that the only way by which brotherhood among men can
+become anything else than a name, and probably end, as it did in the
+great French Revolution, in 'brothers' making hecatombs of their
+brethren under the guillotine, is that it shall be the corollary from
+the Fatherhood of God. If we walk in the light, not otherwise, we have
+'fellowship one with another.'
+
+Then, still further, in this fellowship one with another, John
+presupposes the fellowship with God for each, which makes the
+possibility and the certainty of all being drawn into one family. He
+does not think it necessary to state, what is so plain and obvious,
+viz., that unless we are in sympathy with God, in our aspiration and
+effort after the light which is His home and ours, we have no real
+communion with Him. I said that sin separated man from man, and
+disrupted all the sweet bonds of amity, so that if men come into
+contact, being themselves in the darkness, they come into collision
+rather than into communion. A company of travellers in the night are
+isolated individuals. When the sun rises on their paths they are a
+company again. And in like manner, sin separates us from God, and if our
+hearts are turned towards, and denizens of, the darkness of impurity,
+then we have no communion with Him. He cannot come to us if we love the
+darkness. He
+
+    'Can but listen at the gate,
+     And hear the household jar within.'
+
+The tide of the Atlantic feels along the base of iron-bound cliffs on
+our western shores, and there is not a crevice into which it can come.
+So God moves about us, but is without us, so long as we walk in
+darkness. So let us remember that no union with Him is possible, except
+there be this common dwelling in the light. Two grains of quicksilver
+laid upon a polished surface will never unite if their surfaces be
+dusted over with minute impurities, or if the surface of one of them be.
+Clean away the motes, and they will coalesce and be one. A film of sin
+separates men from God. And if the film be removed the man dwells in
+God, and God in him.
+
+III. That brings me to my last point: The progressive cleansing of those
+who dwell in the light.
+
+'The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.' Now if you will
+notice the whole context, and eminently the words a couple of verses
+after my text, you will see that the cleansing here meant is not the
+cleansing of forgiveness, but the cleansing of purifying. For the two
+things are articulately distinguished in the ninth verse: 'He is
+faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
+unrighteousness.' So, to use theological terms, it is not justification,
+but sanctification that is meant here.
+
+Then there is another thing to be noticed, and that is that when the
+Apostle speaks here about the blood of Christ, he is not thinking of
+that blood as shed on the Cross, the atoning sacrifice, but of that
+blood as transfused into the veins, the source there of our new life.
+The Old Testament says that 'the blood is the life.' Never mind about
+the statement being scientifically correct; it conveys the idea of the
+time, which underlies a great deal of Old and New Testament teaching.
+And when John says the blood of Jesus cleanses from 'all sin,' he says
+just the same thing as his brother Paul said, 'the law of the spirit of
+life in Jesus Christ makes me free from the law of sin and death.' That
+is to say, a growing cleansing from the dominion and the power of sin is
+granted to us, if we have the life of Jesus Christ breathed into our
+lives. The metaphor is a very strong one. They tell us--I know nothing
+about the truth of it--that sometimes it has been possible to revive a
+moribund man by transfusing into his veins blood from another. That is
+a picture of the only way by which you and I can become free from the
+tyranny that dominates us. We must have the life of Christ as the
+animating principle of our lives, the spirit of Jesus emancipating us
+from the power of sin and death.
+
+So you see, there are two aspects of Christ's great work set before us
+under that one metaphor of the blood in its two-fold form, first, as
+shed for us sinners on the Cross; second, as poured into our veins day
+by day. That works progressive cleansing. It covers the whole ground of
+all possible iniquity. Pardon is much, purifying is more. The sacrifice
+on the Cross is the basis of everything, but that sacrifice does not
+exhaust what Christ does for us. He died for our sins, and lives for our
+sanctifying. He died for us, He lives in us. Because He died, we are
+forgiven; because He lives, we are made pure. Only remember John's 'if.'
+The 'blood of Jesus will progressively cleanse us until it has cleansed
+us from _all_ sin,' on condition that we 'walk in the light,' not
+otherwise. If the main direction of our lives is towards the light; if
+we seek, by aspiration and by effort, and by deliberate choice, to live
+in holiness, then, and not else, will the power of the life of Jesus
+Christ deliver us from the power of sin and death.
+
+Now, my text presupposes that the people to whom it is addressed, and
+whom it concerns, have already passed from darkness into light, if not
+wholly, yet in germ. But for those who have not so passed, there is
+something to be said before my text. And John says it immediately; here
+it is, 'If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
+the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for our
+sins only, but for the whole world.' So we have to begin with the blood
+shed for us, the means of our pardon, and then we have the advance of
+the blood sprinkled on us, the means of our cleansing. If by humble
+faith we take the dying Lord for our Saviour, and the channel of our
+forgiveness, we shall have the pardon of our sins. If we listen to the
+voice that says, 'Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the
+Lord. Walk as children of the light,' we shall have fellowship with the
+living Lord, and daily know more and more of the power of His cleansing
+blood, making us 'meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints
+in light.'
+
+
+
+
+THE COMMANDMENT, OLD YET NEW
+
+     'I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which
+      ye had from the beginning.... Again, a new commandment I write unto
+      you, which thing is true in him and in you.'--1 John ii. 7, 8.
+
+
+The simplest words may carry the deepest thoughts. Perhaps angels and
+little children speak very much alike. This letter, like all of John's
+writing, is pellucid in speech, profound in thought, clear and deep,
+like the abysses of mid-ocean. His terms are such as a child can
+understand; his sentences short and inartificial: he does not reason, he
+declares; he has neither argument nor rhetoric, but he teaches us the
+deepest truths, and shows us that we get nearer the centre by insight
+than by logic.
+
+Now the words that I have taken for my text are very characteristic of
+this Apostle's manner. He has a great, wide-reaching truth to proclaim,
+and he puts it in the simplest, most inartificial manner, laying side by
+side two artless sentences, and stimulates us by the juxtaposition,
+leading us to feel after, and so to make our own, the large lessons that
+are in them. Let me, then, try to bring these out.
+
+I. And the first one that strikes me is--'the word' is 'a commandment.'
+
+Now, by 'the word' here the Apostle obviously means, since he speaks
+about it as that which these Asiatic Christians 'heard from the
+beginning,' the initial truth which was presented for their acceptance
+in the story of the life and death of Jesus Christ. That was 'the word'
+and, says he, just because it was a history it is a commandment; just
+because it was the Revelation of God it is a law. God never tells us
+anything merely that we may be wise. The purpose of all divine speech,
+whether in His great works in nature, or in the voices of our own
+consciences, or in the syllables that we have to piece together from out
+of the complicated noises of the world's history, or in this book, or in
+the Incarnate Word, where all the wandering syllables are gathered
+together into one word--the purpose of all that God says to men is
+primarily that they may know, but in order that, knowing, they may do;
+and still more that they may be. And so, inasmuch as every piece of
+religious knowledge has in it the capacity of directing conduct, all
+God's word is a commandment.
+
+And, if that is true in regard to other revelations and manifestations
+that he has made of Himself, it is especially true in regard to the
+summing-up of all in the Incarnate Word, and in His words, and in the
+words that tell us of His life and of His death. So whatever truths
+there may be, and there are many, which, of course, have only the
+remotest, if any, bearing upon life and conduct, every bit of Christian
+truth has a direct grip upon a man's life, and brings with it a
+stringent obligation.
+
+Now, the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ, 'the Word which ye heard
+from the beginning,' which, I suppose, would roughly correspond with
+what is told us in our four Gospels; the word which these Asiatic
+Christians heard at first, the good news that was brought to them in the
+midst of their gropings and peradventures, commanded, in the first
+place, absolute trust, the submission of the will as well as the assent
+of the understanding. But also it commanded imitation, for Jesus Christ
+was revealed to them, as He is revealed to us, as being the Incarnate
+realisation of the ideal of humanity; and what He is, the knowledge that
+He is that, binds us to try to be in our turn.
+
+And more than that, brethren, the Cross of Christ is a commandment. For
+we miserably mutilate it, and sinfully as well as foolishly limit its
+application and its power, if we recognise it only--I was going to say
+mainly--as being the ground of our hope and of what we call our
+salvation, and do not recognise it as being the obligatory example of
+our lives, which we are bound to translate into our daily practice.
+Jesus Christ Himself has told us that in many a fashion, never more
+touchingly and wondrously than when in response to the request of a
+handful of Greeks to see Him, He answered with the word which not only
+declared what was obligatory upon Him, but what was obligatory upon us
+all, and for the want of which all the great endowments of the Greek
+mind at last rotted down into sensuousness, when He said, 'Except a corn
+of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die
+it bringeth forth much fruit' and then went on to say, 'he that loveth
+his life shall lose it.'
+
+So, then, brethren, 'the word which ye heard at the beginning,' the
+story of Christ, His life and His death, is a stringent commandment.
+Now, this is one of the blessings of Christianity, that all which was
+hard and hopeless, ministering to despair sometimes, as well as stirring
+to fierce effort at others, in the conception of law or duty as it
+stands outside us, is changed into the tender word, 'if ye love Me, keep
+My commandments.' If any man serve Me, let him ... 'follow Me.' It is a
+law; it is 'the law of liberty.' So you have not done all that is
+needful when you have accepted the teaching of Christ in the Scriptures
+and the teaching of the Scriptures concerning Christ. Nor have you done
+all that is needful when clasping Him, and clinging simply to His Cross,
+you recognise in it the means and the pledge of your acceptance with
+God, and the ground and anchor of all your hope. There is something more
+to be done. The Gospel is a commandment, and commandments require not
+only assent, not only trust, but practical obedience. The 'old
+commandment' is the 'word which ye heard from the beginning.'
+
+II. The old Christ is perpetually new.
+
+The Apostle goes on, in the last words of my text, to say, 'Which thing'
+(viz., this combination of the old and the new) 'is true in Him and in
+you.' 'True in Him'--that is to say, Christ, the old Christ that was
+declared to these Asiatic Christians as they were groping amidst the
+illusions of their heathenism, is perpetually becoming new as new
+circumstances emerge, and new duties are called for, and new days come
+with new burdens, hopes, possibilities, or dangers. The perpetual
+newness of the old Christ is what is taught here.
+
+Suppose one of these men in Ephesus heard for the first time the story
+that away in Judea there had lived the manifestation of God in the
+flesh, and that He, in His wonderful love, had died for men, that they
+might be saved from the grip of their sins. And suppose that man barely
+able to see, had yet seen that much, and clutched at it. He was a
+Christian, but the Christ that he discerned when he first discerned Him
+through the mists, and the Christ that he had in his life and in his
+heart, after, say, twenty years of Christian living, are very different.
+The old Christ remained, but the old Christ was becoming new day by day,
+according to the new necessities and positions. And that is what will be
+our experience if we have any real Christianity in us. The old Christ
+that we trusted at first was able to do for us all that we asked Him to
+do, but we did not ask Him at first for half enough, and we did not
+learn at first a tithe of what was in Him. Suppose, for instance, some
+great ship comes alongside a raft with ship-wrecked sailors upon it, and
+in the darkness of the night transfers them to the security of its deck.
+They know how safe they are, they know what has saved them, but what do
+they know compared with what they will know before the voyage ends of
+all the reservoirs of power and stores of supplies that are in her?
+Christ comes to us in the darkness, and delivers us. We know Him for our
+Deliverer from the first moment, if we truly have grasped Him. But it
+will take summering and wintering with Him, through many a long day and
+year, before we can ever have a partially adequate apprehension of all
+that lies in Him.
+
+And what will teach us the depths of Christ, and how does He become new
+to us? Well, by trusting Him, by following Him, and by the ministry of
+life. Some of us, I have no doubt, can look back upon past days when
+sorrow fell upon us, blighting and all but crushing; and then things
+that we had read a thousand times in the Bible, and thought we had
+believed, blazed up into a new meaning, and we felt as if we had never
+understood anything about them before. The Christ that is with us in the
+darkness, and whom we find able to turn even it, if not into light, at
+least into a solemn twilight not unvisited by hopes, that Christ is more
+to us than the Christ that we first of all learnt so little to know. And
+life's new circumstances, its emerging duties, are like the strokes of
+the spade which clears away the soil, and discloses the treasure in all
+its extent which we purchased when we bought that field. We buy the
+treasure at once, but it takes a long time to count it. The old Christ
+is perpetually the new Christ.
+
+So, brethren, Christian progress consists not in getting away from the
+original facts, the elements of the Gospel, but it consists in
+penetrating more deeply into these, and feeling more of their power and
+their grasp. All Euclid is in the definitions and axioms and postulates
+at the beginning. All our books are the letters of the alphabet. And
+progress consists, not in advancing beyond, but in sinking into, that
+initial truth, 'God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.'
+
+I might say a word here as to another phase of this perpetual newness of
+the old Christ--viz., in His adaptation to deal with all the
+complications and perplexities and problems of each successive age. It
+has taken the Church a long, long time to find out and to formulate,
+rightly or wrongly, what it has discovered in Jesus. The conclusions to
+be drawn from the simple Gospel truth, the presuppositions on which it
+rests, require all the efforts of all the Church through all the ages,
+and transcend them all. And I venture to say, though it may sound like
+unsupported dogma, that for this generation's questionings, social,
+moral, and political, the answer is to be found in Him. He, and He only,
+will interpret each generation to itself, and will meet its clamant
+needs. There is none other for the world to-day but the old Christ with
+the new aspect which the new conditions require.
+
+Did it ever strike you how remarkable it is, and, as it seems to me, of
+how great worth as an argument for the truth of Christianity it is, that
+Jesus Christ comes to this, as to every generation, with the air of
+belonging to it? Think of the difference between the aspect which a
+Plato or a Socrates presents to the world to-day, and the aspect which
+that Lord presents. You do not need to strip anything off Him. He
+committed Himself to no statements which the progress of thought or
+knowledge has exploded. He stands before the world to-day fitting its
+needs as closely as He did those of the men of His own generation. The
+old Christ is the new Christ.
+
+III. Lastly, in the Christian life the old commandment is perpetually
+new.
+
+'Which thing is true ... in you.' That is to say, 'the commandment which
+ye received at the beginning,' when ye received Christ as Saviour, has
+in itself a power of adapting itself to all new conditions as they may
+emerge, and will be felt increasingly to grow stringent, and
+increasingly to demand more entire conformity, and increasingly to sweep
+its circle round the whole of human life. For this is the result of all
+obedience, that the conception of duty becomes more clear and more
+stringent. 'If any man will do His will' the reward shall be that he
+will see more and more the altitude of that will, the length and breadth
+and depth and height of the possible conformity of the human spirit to
+the will of God. And so as we advance in obedience we shall see
+unreached advances before us, and each new step of progress will declare
+more fully how much still remains to be accomplished. In us the 'old
+commandment' will become ever new.
+
+And not only so, but perpetually with the increasing sweep and
+stringency of the obligation will be felt an increasing sense of our
+failure to fulfil it. Character is built up, for good or for evil, by
+slow degrees. Conscience is quickened by being listened to, and stifled
+by being neglected. A little speck of mud on a vestal virgin's robe, or
+on a swan's plumage, will be conspicuous, while a splash twenty times
+the size will pass unnoticed on the rags of some travel-stained
+wayfarer. The purer we become, the more we shall know ourselves to be
+impure.
+
+Thus, my brother, there opens out before us an endless course in which
+all the blessedness that belongs to the entertaining and preservation of
+ancient convictions, lifelong friends, and familiar truths, and all the
+antithetical blessedness that belongs to the joy of seeing, rising upon
+our horizon as some new planet with lustrous light, will be united in
+our experience. We shall at once be conservative and progressive;
+holding by the old Christ and the old commandment, and finding that both
+have in them endless novelty. The trunk is old; every summer brings
+fresh leaves. And at last we may hope to come to the new Jerusalem, and
+drink the new wine of the Kingdom, and yet find that the old love
+remains, and that the new Christ, whose presence makes the new heavens
+and the new earth, is 'the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,' the
+old Christ whom, amid the shadows of earth, we tried to love and copy.
+
+
+
+
+YOUTHFUL STRENGTH
+
+     'I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the
+      word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked
+      one.'--1 John ii. 14.
+
+
+'What am I going to be?' is the question that presses upon young people
+stepping out of the irresponsibilities of childhood into youth. But,
+unfortunately, the question is generally supposed to be answered when
+they have fixed upon a trade or profession. It means, rightly taken, a
+great deal more than that. 'What am I going to make of myself?' 'What
+ideal have I before me, towards which I constantly press?' is a question
+that I would fain lay upon the hearts of all that now hear me. For the
+misery and the reason of the failure of so many lives is simply that
+people have never fairly looked that question in the face and tried to
+answer it, but drift and drift, and let circumstances determine them.
+And, of course, in a world like this, such people are sure to turn out
+what such an immense number of people do turn out, failures as far as
+all God's purposes with humanity are concerned. The absence of a clear
+ideal is the misery and the loss of all young people who do not possess
+it.
+
+So here in my text is an old man's notion of what young men ought to be
+and may be. 'Ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye
+have overcome the wicked one.'
+
+So said the aged John to some amongst his hearers in these corrupt
+Asiatic cities. It was not merely a fair ideal painted upon vacancy, but
+it was a portrait of actual young Christians in these little Asiatic
+churches. And I would fain have some of you take this realised ideal for
+yours and see to it that your lives be conformed to it.
+
+There are three points here. The Apostle, first of all, lays his finger
+upon the strength, which is something more than mere physical strength,
+proper to youth. Then he lets us see the secret source of that strength:
+'Ye have the word of God abiding in you.' And then he shows the field on
+which it should be exercised, and the victory which it secures: 'And ye
+have overcome the wicked one.' Now let me touch upon these three points
+briefly in succession.
+
+I. First, then, note here the strength which you young people ought to
+covet and to aim at.
+
+It is not merely the physical strength proper to their age, nor the mere
+unworn buoyancy and vigour which sorrows and care and responsibilities
+have not thinned and weakened. These are great and precious gifts. We
+never know how precious they are until they have slipped away from us.
+These are great and precious gifts, to be preserved as long as may be,
+by purity and by moderation, and to be used for high and great purposes.
+But the strength that is in thews and muscles is not the strength that
+the Apostle is speaking about here, nor anything that belongs simply to
+the natural stage of your development, whether it be purely physical or
+purely mental. Samson was a far weaker man than the poor little Jew
+'whose bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible,' and who
+all his days carried about with him that 'thorn in the flesh.' It is not
+your body that is to be strong, but yourselves.
+
+Now the foundation of all true strength lies here, in a good, strong
+will. In this world, unless a man has learned to say 'No!' and to say it
+very decidedly, and to stick to it, he will never come to any good. Two
+words contain the secret of noble life: '_Resist!_' and '_Persist!_' And
+the true strength of manhood lies in this mainly, that, in spite of all
+antagonisms, hindrances, voices, and things that array themselves
+against you, having greatly resolved, you do greatly do what you have
+resolved, and having said 'I will!' let neither men nor devils lead you
+to say, 'I will not.' Depend upon it, that to be weak in this direction
+is to be weak all through. Strong passions make weak men. And a strong
+will is the foundation, in this wicked and antagonistic world in which
+we live, of all real strength.
+
+But then the strength that I would have you seek, and strive to
+cultivate, must be a strength of will founded upon strong reason.
+Determination unenlightened is obstinacy, and obstinacy is weakness. A
+mule can beat you at that: 'Be ye not as the mule, which have no
+understanding.' A determination which does not take into its view all
+the facts of the case, nor is influenced by these, has no right to call
+itself strength. It is only, to quote a modern saying--I know not
+whether true of the person to whom it was originally applied or no--is
+'only a lath painted to look like iron.' Unintelligent obstinacy is
+folly, like the conduct of some man who sticks to his pick and his task
+in a quarry after the bugle has warned him of an impending explosion,
+which will blow him to atoms.
+
+But that is not all. A strong will, illuminated by a strong beam of
+light from the understanding, must be guided and governed by a strong
+hand put forth by Conscience. 'I should like' is the weakling's motto.
+'I will' may be an obstinate fool's motto. 'I ought, therefore, God
+helping me, and though the devil hinders me, I will,' is a man's.
+Conscience is king. To obey it is to be free; to neglect it is to be a
+slave.
+
+Is not this a better ideal for life than gathering any outward
+possessions, however you may succeed therein? A thousand things will
+have to be taken into account, and may help or may hinder outward
+prosperity and success. But nobody can hinder you working at your
+character and succeeding in making it what it ought to be; and to form
+character is the end of life. 'To be weak is miserable, doing or
+suffering.' Ay! that is true, though Milton put it into the devil's
+mouth. And there is only one strength that will last, 'for even the
+youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail.'
+But the strength of a fixed and illuminated and conscience-guided will,
+which governs the man and is governed by God, shall never faint or grow
+weak. This is the strength which we should seek, and which I ask you to
+make the conscious aim of your lives.
+
+II. Now note, secondly, how to get it.
+
+'Ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you.' Those young Asiatic
+Christians, that John had in his eye, had learned the secret and the
+conditions of this strength; and not only in limb and sinew, or in
+springy and elastic buoyancy of youthful, mental, and spiritual vigour
+were they strong, but they were so because 'the Word of God abode in
+them.' Now, there are two significations of that great expression, both
+of them frequent in John's Gospel, and both of them, I think,
+transferred to this Epistle, each of which may yield us a word of
+counsel. By 'the Word of God,' as I take it, is meant--perhaps I ought
+to say _both_, but, at all events, _either_--the revelation of God's
+truth in Holy Scripture, or the personal revelation of the will and
+nature of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Whichever of these two
+meanings--and at bottom they come to be one--we attach to this
+expression, we draw from them an exhortation. Let me put this very
+briefly.
+
+Let me say to you, then, if you want to be strong, let Scripture truth
+occupy and fill and be always present to your mind. There are powers to
+rule and to direct all conduct, motive powers of the strongest character
+in these great truths of God's revelation. They are meant to influence a
+man in all his doings, and it is for us to bring the greatest and
+solemnest of them to bear on the smallest things of our daily life.
+Suppose, now, that you go to your work, and some little difficulty
+starts up in your path, or some trivial annoyance ruffles your temper,
+or some lurking temptation is suddenly sprung upon you. Suppose your
+mind and heart were saturated with God's truth, with the great thoughts
+of His being, of His love, of His righteousness, of Christ's death for
+you, of Christ's presence with you, of Christ's guardianship over you,
+of Christ's present will that you should walk in His ways, of the bright
+hopes of the future, and the solemn vision of that great White Throne
+and the retribution that streams thence, do you think it would be
+possible for you to fall into sin, to yield to temptation, to be annoyed
+by any irritation or bother, or overweighted by any duty? No! Whosoever
+lives with the thoughts that God has given us in His Word familiar to
+His mind and within easy reach of His hand, has therein an armlet
+against all possible temptation, a test that will unveil the hidden
+corruption in the sweetest seductions, and a calming power that will
+keep his heart still and collected in the midst of agitations. If the
+Word of God in that lower sense of the principles involved in the gospel
+of Jesus Christ, dwell in your hearts, the fangs are taken out of the
+serpent. If you drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt you, and you
+will 'be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.'
+
+Bring the greatest truths you can find to bear on the smallest duties,
+and the small duties will grow great to match the principles by which
+they are done. Bring the laws of Jesus Christ down to the little things,
+for, in the name of common sense, if our religion is not meant to
+regulate trifles, what is it meant to regulate? Life is made up of
+trifles. There are half a dozen crises in the course of your life, but
+there are a thousand trivial things in the course of every day. It would
+be a poor kind of regulating principle that controlled the crises, and
+left us alone to manage with the trifles the best way we could.
+
+But in order that there shall be this continual operation of the motives
+and principles involved in the gospel upon our daily lives, we must have
+them very near our hand, ready to be laid hold of. The soldier that
+would march through an enemy's country, having left his gun in the hands
+of some camp follower, would be very likely to be shot before he got his
+gun. I remember going through the Red Sea; at the mouth of it where the
+entrance is narrow, and the currents run strong, when the ship
+approaches the dangerous place, the men take their stations at appointed
+places, and the ponderous anchors are loosened and ready to be dropped
+in an instant if the swirl of the current sweeps the ship into dangerous
+proximity to the reef. It is no time to cut the lashings of the anchors
+when the keel is grating on the coral rocks. And it is no time to have
+to look about for our weapons when the sudden temptation leaps upon us
+like a strong man armed. You must have them familiar to you by devout
+meditation, by frequent reflection, prayer, study of God's Word, if they
+are to be of any use to you at all. And I am afraid that about the last
+book in the world that loads of young men and women think of sitting
+down to read, systematically and connectedly, is the Bible. You will
+read sermons and other religious books; you will read newspapers,
+pamphlets, novels; but the Scripture, in its entirety, is a strange book
+to myriads of men who call themselves Christians. And so they are weak.
+If you want to be strong, 'let the Word of God abide in your hearts.'
+
+And then if we take the other view, which at bottom is not another, of
+the meaning of this phrase, and apply it rather to the personal word,
+Jesus Christ Himself, that will yield us another exhortation, and that
+is, let Jesus Christ into your hearts and keep Him there, and He will
+make you strong. I believe that it is no piece of metaphor or an
+exaggerated way of putting the continuance of the influence of Christ's
+example and Christ's teaching upon men's hearts and minds, when He tells
+us that 'if any man open the door He will come in and sup with him.' I
+want to urge the one thought on you that it is possible, in simple
+literal fact, for that Divine Saviour, who was 'in Heaven' whilst He
+walked on earth, and walks on earth to-day when He has returned to His
+native Heaven, to enter into my spirit and yours, and really to abide
+within us, the life of our lives, 'the strength of our hearts, and our
+portion for ever.' The rest of us can render help to one another by
+strength ministered from without; Jesus Christ will come into your
+hearts, if you let Him, in His very sweetness and omnipotence of power,
+and will breathe His own grace into your weakness, strengthening you as
+from within. Others can help you from without, as you put an iron band
+round some over-weighted, crumbling brick pillar in order to prevent it
+from collapsing, but He will pass into us as you may drive an iron rod
+up through the centre of the column, and make it strong inside, and we
+shall be strong if Jesus Christ dwells within us. Open the door, dear
+young friends; let Christ come into your hearts, which He will do if you
+do not hinder Him, and if you ask Him. Trust Him with simple reliance
+upon Him for everything. Faith is 'the door'; the door is nothing of
+itself, but when it is opened it admits the guest. So do you let that
+Master come and abide, and you will hear Him say to you, as He said of
+old, 'Child! My grace is sufficient.' How modest He is. Sufficient!--an
+ocean _enough_ to fill a thimble! 'My grace is sufficient for thee; and
+My strength is made perfect in weakness.'
+
+III. Now, lastly, notice the field on which the strength is to be
+exercised, and the victory which it secures. 'Ye have overcome the
+wicked one.'
+
+There is a battle for us all, on which I need not dwell, the conflict
+with evil around and with evil within, and with the prince of the
+embattled legions of the darkness, whom the New Testament has more
+clearly revealed to us. You young people have many advantages in the
+conflict; you have some special disadvantages as well. You have strong
+passions, you have not much experience, you do not know how bitter the
+dregs are of the cup whose foaming bubbles look so attractive, and whose
+upper inch tastes so sweet. But on the other hand you have not yet
+contracted habits that it is misery to indulge in, and, as it would
+seem, impossible to break, and the world is yet before you.
+
+You cannot begin too soon to choose your side. And here is the side on
+which alone victory is possible for a man--the side of Jesus Christ, who
+will teach your hands to war and your fingers to fight.
+
+Notice that remarkable phrase, 'Ye have overcome the wicked one.' He is
+talking to young Christians before whom the battle may seem to lie, and
+yet He speaks of their conquest as an accomplished fact, and as a thing
+behind them. What does that mean? It means this, that if you will take
+service in Christ's army, and by His grace resolve to be His faithful
+soldier till your life's end, that act of faith, which enrols you as
+His, is itself the victory which guarantees, if it be continued, the
+whole conquest in time.
+
+There used to be an old superstition that--
+
+    'Who sheds the foremost foeman's life
+     His party conquers in the strife';
+
+and whosoever has exercised, however imperfectly and feebly, the faith
+in Jesus Christ the Lord has therein conquered the devil and all his
+works, and Satan is henceforth a beaten Satan, and the battle, in
+essence, is completed even in the act of its being begun.
+
+'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith'; not
+only because our confidence in Jesus Christ is the blowing of the bugle
+that summons to warfare and shakes off the tyrant's yoke, but it is
+also the means by which we join ourselves to Him who has overcome, and
+make His victory ours. He has fought our antagonist in the wilderness
+once, in Gethsemane twice, on the Cross thrice; and the perfect conquest
+in which Jesus bound the strong man and spoiled his goods may become,
+and will become, your conquest, if you wed yourselves to that dear Lord
+by simple faith in Him.
+
+What a priceless thing it is that you may begin your independent manhood
+with a conquest that will draw after it ultimate and supreme victory.
+You will still have to fight, but you will have only to fight
+detachments. If you trust yourselves to Jesus Christ you have conquered
+the main body of the army, and it is only the stragglers that you will
+have to contend with hereafter. He that loves Jesus, and has given
+himself to Him, has pinned the dragon to the ground by its head, and
+though it may 'swinge the scaly horror of its folded tail,' and twine
+its loathly coils around him, yet he has conquered, and he is
+conquering, and he will conquer. Only let him hold fast by the hand
+which brings strength into him by its touch.
+
+Will you, dear young friends, take service in this army? Do you want to
+be weak or strong? Do you want your lives to be victorious whatever may
+happen to them in the way of outward prosperity or failure? Then give
+yourselves to this Lord. His voice calls you to be His soldiers. He will
+cover your heads in the day of battle. He will strengthen you 'with
+might by His Spirit in the inner man.' He will hide His Word in your
+heart that you offend not against Him. He will dwell Himself within you
+to make you strong in your extremest weakness and victorious over your
+mightiest foe; and in that sign you will conquer and 'be more than
+conquerors through Him that loved you.'
+
+Oh, I pray that you may ask yourselves the question, 'What am I going to
+be?' and may answer it, 'I am going to be strong in the Lord and in the
+power of His might'; and to overcome, as He also hath overcome, the
+world and the flesh and the devil.
+
+
+
+
+RIVER AND ROCK
+
+     'The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth
+      the will of God abideth for ever.'--1 John ii. 17.
+
+
+John has been solemnly giving a charge not to love the world, nor the
+things that are in it. That charge was addressed to 'children,' 'young
+men,' 'fathers.' Whether these designations be taken as referring to
+growth and maturity of Christian experience, or of natural age, they
+equally carry the lesson that no age and no stage is beyond the danger
+of being drawn away by the world's love, or beyond the need of the
+solemn dehortation therefrom.
+
+My text is the second of the reasons which the Apostle gives for his
+earnest charge. We all, therefore, need it, and we always need it;
+though on the last Sunday of another year, it may be more than usually
+appropriate to turn our thoughts in its direction. 'The world passeth
+away, and the lust thereof.' Let us lay the handful of snow on our
+fevered foreheads and cool our desires.
+
+Now there are but two things set forth in this text, which is a great
+and wonderful antithesis between something which is in perpetual flux
+and passage and something which is permanent. If I might venture to
+cast the two thoughts into metaphorical form, I should say that here are
+a river and a rock. The one, the sad truth of sense, universally
+believed and as universally forgotten; the other, the glad truth of
+faith, so little regarded or operative in men's lives.
+
+I ask you, then, to look with me for a few moments at each of these
+thoughts.
+
+I. First, then, the river, or the sad truth of sense.
+
+Now you observe that there are two things in my text of which this
+transiency is predicated, the one 'the world,' the other 'the lust
+thereof'; the one outside us, the other within us. As to the former, I
+need only, I suppose, remind you in a sentence that what John means by
+'the world' is not the material globe on which we dwell, but the whole
+aggregate of things visible and material, together with the lives of the
+men whose lives are directed to, and bounded by, that visible and
+material, and all considered as wrenched apart from God. That, and not
+the mere external physical creation, is what he means by 'the world,'
+and therefore the passing away of which he speaks is not only (although,
+of course, it includes) the decay and dissolution of material things,
+but the transiency of things which are or have to do with the visible,
+and are separated by us from God. Over all these, he says, there is
+written the sentence, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.'
+There is a continual flowing on of the stream. As the original implies
+even more strongly than in our translation, 'the world' is in the act of
+'passing away.' Like the slow travelling of the scenes of some moveable
+panorama which glide along, even as the eye looks upon them, and are
+concealed behind the side flats before the gazer has taken in the whole
+picture, so equably, constantly, silently, and therefore unnoticed by
+us, all is in a state of continual motion. There is no _present_ time.
+Even whilst we name the moment it dies. The drop hangs for an instant on
+the verge, gleaming in the sunlight, and then falls into the gloomy
+abyss that silently sucks up years and centuries. There is no present,
+but all is movement.
+
+Brethren, that has been the commonplace of moralists and poets and
+preachers from the beginning of time; and it would be folly for me to
+suppose that I can add anything to the impressiveness of the thought.
+All that I want to do is to wake you up to preach it to yourselves, for
+that is the only thing that is of any use.
+
+    'So passeth, in the passing of an hour
+     Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower.'
+
+But besides this transiency external to us, John finds a corresponding
+transiency within us. 'The world passeth, and the lust thereof.' Of
+course the word 'lust' is employed by him in a much wider sense than in
+our use of it. With us it means one specific and very ugly form of
+earthly desire. With him it includes the whole genus--all desires of
+every sort, more or less noble or ignoble, which have this for their
+characteristic, that they are directed to, stimulated by, and fed or
+starved on, the fleeting things of this outward life. If thus a man has
+anchored himself to that which has no perpetual stay, so long as the
+cable holds he follows the fate of the thing to which he has pinned
+himself. And if it perish he perishes, in a very profound sense, with
+it. If you trust yourselves in the leaky vessel, when the water rises in
+_it_ it will drown _you_, and you will go to the bottom with the craft
+to which you have trusted yourselves. If you embark in the little ship
+that carries Christ and His fortunes, you will come with Him to the
+haven.
+
+But these fleeting desires, of which my text speaks, point to that sad
+feature of human experience, that we all outgrow and leave behind us,
+and think of very little value, the things that once to us were all but
+heaven. There was a time when toys and sweetmeats were our treasures,
+and since that day how many burnt-out hopes we all have had! How little
+we should know ourselves if we could go back to the fears and wishes and
+desires that used to agitate us ten, twenty, thirty years ago! They lie
+behind us, no longer part of ourselves; they have slipped away from us,
+and
+
+    'We all are changed, by still degrees,
+     All but the basis of the soul.'
+
+The self-conscious same man abides, and yet how different the same man
+is! Our lives, then will zig-zag instead of keeping a straight course,
+if we let desires that are limited by anything that we can see guide and
+regulate us.
+
+But, brethren, though it be a digression from my text, I cannot help
+touching for a moment upon a yet sadder thought than that. There are
+desires that _remain_, when the gratification of them has become
+impossible. Sometimes the lust outlasts the world, sometimes the world
+outlasts the lust; and one knows not whether is the sadder. There is a
+hell upon earth for many of us who, having set our affections upon some
+creatural object, and having had that withdrawn from us, are ready to
+say, 'They have taken away my gods! And what shall I do?' And there is a
+hell of the same sort waiting beyond those dark gates through which we
+have all to pass, where men who never desired anything, except what the
+world that has slipped out of their reluctant fingers could give them,
+are shut up with impossible longings after a for-ever-vanished good.
+'Father Abraham! a drop of water; for I am tormented in this flame.'
+That is what men come to, if the fire of their lust burn after its
+objects are withdrawn.
+
+But let me remind you that this transiency of which I have been speaking
+receives very strange treatment from most of us. I do not know that it
+is altogether to be regretted that it so seldom comes to men's
+consciousness. Perhaps it is right that it should not be uppermost in
+our thoughts always; but yet there is no vindication for the entire
+oblivion to which we condemn it. The march of these fleeting things is
+like that of cavalry with their horses' feet wrapped in straw, in the
+night, across the snow, silent and unnoticed. We cannot realise the
+revolution of the earth, because everything partakes in it. We talk
+about standing still, and we are whirling through space with
+inconceivable rapidity. By a like illusion we deceive ourselves with the
+notion of stability, when everything about us is hastening away. Some of
+you do not like to be reminded of it, and think it a killjoy. You try to
+get rid of the thought, and hide your head in the sand, and fancy that
+the rest of your body presents no mark to the archer's arrow. Now surely
+common sense says to all, that if there be some fact certain and plain
+and applying to you, which, if accepted, would profoundly modify your
+life, you ought to take it into account. And what I want you to do, dear
+friends, now, is to look in the face this fact, which you all
+acknowledge so utterly that some of you are ready to say, 'What was the
+use of coming to a chapel to hear that threadbare old thing dinned into
+my ears again?' and to take it into account in shaping your lives. Have
+you done so? Have you? Suppose a man that lived in a land habitually
+shaken by earthquakes were to say, 'I mean to ignore the fact; and I am
+going to build a house just as if there was not such a thing as an
+earthquake expected'; he would have it toppling about his ears very
+soon. Suppose a man upon the ice-slopes of the Alps was to say, 'I am
+going to ignore slipperiness and gravitation,' he would before long find
+himself, if there was any consciousness left in him, at the bottom of a
+precipice, bruised and bleeding. And suppose a man says, 'I am not going
+to take the fleetingness of the things of earth into account at all, but
+intend to live as if all things were to remain as they are'; what would
+become of him do you think? Is he a wise man or a fool? And is he _you_?
+He _is_ some of you! 'So teach us to number our days that we may apply
+our hearts unto wisdom.'
+
+Then let me say to you, see that you take noble lessons out of these
+undeniable and all-important facts. There is one kind of lesson that I
+do not want you to take out of it. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
+we die,' or, to put it into a more vulgar formula, 'A short life and a
+merry one.' The mere contemplation of the transiency of earthly things
+may, and often does, lend itself to very ignoble conclusions, and men
+draw from it the thought that, as life is short, they had better crowd
+into it as much of sensual enjoyment as they can.
+
+'Gather ye roses while ye may' is a very common keynote, struck by poets
+of the baser sort. And it is a thought that influences some of us, I
+have little doubt. Or there may be another consideration. 'Make hay
+whilst the sun shines.' 'Hurry on your getting rich, because you have
+not very long to do it in'; or the like.
+
+Now all that is supremely unworthy. The true lesson to be drawn is the
+plain, old one which it is never superfluous to shout into men's ears,
+until they have obeyed it--viz., 'Set not thine heart on that which is
+not; and which flieth away as an eagle towards heaven.' Do you, dear
+brother, see to it, that your roots go down through the gravel on the
+surface. Do you see to it that you dig deeper than that; and thrusting
+your hand, as it were, through the thin, silk-paper screen that stands
+between you and the Eternal, grasp the hand that you will find on the
+other side, waiting and ready to clasp you, and to hold you up.
+
+When they build a new house in Rome they have to dig down through
+sometimes sixty or a hundred feet of rubbish that runs like water, the
+ruins of old temples and palaces, once occupied by men in the same flush
+of life in which we are now. We too have to dig down through ruins,
+until we get to the Rock and build there, and build secure. Withdraw
+your affections and your thoughts and your desires from the fleeting,
+and fix them on the permanent. If a captain takes anything but the
+pole-star for his fixed point he will lose his reckoning, and his ship
+will be on the reefs. If we take anything but God for our supreme
+delight and desire we shall perish.
+
+Then let me say, too, let this thought stimulate us to crowd every
+moment, as full as it can be packed, with noble work and heavenly
+thoughts. These fleeting things are elastic, and you may put all but
+infinite treasure into them. Think of what the possibilities, for each
+of us, of this dying year were on the 1st of January; and of what the
+realisation has been by the 28th of December. So much that we could have
+done! so little that we have done! So many ripples of the river have
+passed, bearing no golden sand to pile upon the shore! 'We have been' is
+a sad word; but oh, the one sad word is, 'We might have been!' And, so,
+do you see to it that you fill time with that which is kindred to
+eternity, and make 'one day as a thousand years' in the elastic
+possibilities and realities of consecration and of service.
+
+Further, let the thought help us to the conviction of the relative
+insignificance of all that can change. That will not spoil nor shade any
+real joy; rather it will add to it poignancy that prevents it from
+cloying or from becoming the enemy of our souls. But the thought will
+wondrously lighten the burden that we have to carry, and the tasks which
+we have to perform. 'But for a moment,' makes all light. There was an
+old rabbi, long ago, whose real name was all but lost, because everybody
+nick-named him 'Rabbi Thisalso.' The reason was because he had
+perpetually on his lips the saying about everything as it came, 'This
+also will pass.' He was a wise man. Let us go to his school and learn
+his wisdom.
+
+II. Now let me say a word, and it can only be a word, about the second
+of the thoughts here, which I designated as the Rock, or the glad truth
+of Faith.
+
+We might have expected that John's antithesis to the world that passeth
+would have been the God that abides. But he does not so word his
+sentence, although the thought of the divine permanence underlies it.
+Rather over against the fleeting world he puts the abiding man who does
+the will of God.
+
+Of course there is a very solemn sense in which all men, even they who
+have most exclusively lived for what they call the present, do last for
+ever, and in which their deeds do so too. After death is the judgment,
+and the issues of eternity depend upon the actions of time; and every
+fleeting thought comes back to the hand that projected it, like the
+Australian savage's boomerang that, flung out, returns and falls at the
+feet of the thrower. But that is not what John means by 'abiding for
+ever.' He means something very much more blessed and lofty than that;
+and the following is the course of his thought. There is only one
+permanent Reality in the universe, and that is God. All else is shadow
+and He is the substance. All else was, is, and is not. He is the One who
+was, is, and is to come, the timeless and only permanent Being. The will
+of God is the permanent element in all changeful material things. And
+consequently he who does the will of God links himself with the Divine
+Eternity, and becomes partaker of that solemn and blessed Being which
+lives above mutation.
+
+Obedience to God's will is the permanent element in human life.
+Whosoever humbly and trustfully seeks to mould his will after the divine
+will, and to bring God's will into practice in his doings, that man has
+pierced through the shadows and grasped the substance, and partakes of
+the Immortality which he adores and serves. Himself shall live for ever
+in the true life which is blessedness. His deeds shall live for ever
+when all that lifted itself in opposition to the Divine will shall be
+crushed and annihilated. They shall live in His own peaceful
+consciousness; they shall live in the blessed rewards which they shall
+bring to the doers. His habits will need no change.
+
+What will you do when you are dead? You have to go into a world where
+there are no gossip and no housekeeping; no mills and no offices; no
+shops, no books; no colleges and no sciences to learn. What will you do
+there? 'He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.' If you have
+done your housekeeping, and your weaving and spinning, and your
+book-keeping, and your buying and selling, and your studying, and your
+experimenting with a conscious reference to God, it is all right. That
+has made the act capable of eternity, and there will be no need for such
+a man to change. The material on which he works will change, but the
+inner substance of his life will be unaffected by the trivial change
+from earth to heaven. Whilst the endless ages roll he will be doing just
+what he was doing down here; only here he was playing with counters, and
+yonder he will be trusted with gold, and dominion over ten cities. To
+all other men the change that comes when earth passes from them, or they
+from it, is as when a trench is dug across a railway, into which the
+express goes with a smash, and there is an end. To the man who, in the
+trifles of time, has been obeying the will of God, and therefore
+subserving eternity and his interests there, the trench is bridged, and
+he will go on after he crosses it just as he did before, with the same
+purpose, the same desires, the same submission, and the same drinking
+into himself of the fulness of immortal life.
+
+Brother, John tells us that obedience to the will of God brings
+permanence into our fleeting years. But how are we to obey the will of
+God? John tells us that the only way is by love. But how are we to love
+God? John tells us that the only way to love--which love is the only way
+to obedience--is by knowing and believing the love that God hath to us.
+But how are we to know that God hath love to us? John tells us that the
+only way to know the love of God, which is the only way of our loving
+Him, which in its turn is the only way to obedience, which again is the
+only way to permanence of life, is to believe in Jesus Christ and His
+propitiation for our sins. The river flows on for ever, but it sweeps
+round the base of the Rock of Ages. And in Him, by faith in His blood,
+we may find our sure refuge and eternal home.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVE THAT CALLS US SONS
+
+     'Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that
+      we should be called the sons of God....'--1 John iii. 1.
+
+
+One or two points of an expository character will serve to introduce
+what else I have to say on these words.
+
+The text is, I suppose, generally understood as if it pointed to the
+fact that we are called the sons of God as the great exemplification of
+the wonderfulness of His love. That is a perfectly possible view of the
+connection and meaning of the text. But if we are to translate with
+perfect accuracy we must render, not 'that we should be called,' but
+'_in order that_ we should be called the sons of God.' The meaning then
+is that the love bestowed is the means by which the design that we
+should be called His sons is accomplished. What John calls us to
+contemplate with wonder and gratitude is not only the fact of this
+marvellous love, but also the glorious end to which it has been given to
+us and works. There seems no reason for slurring over this meaning in
+favour of the more vague 'that' of our version. God gives His great and
+wonderful love in Jesus Christ, and all the gifts and powers which live
+in Him like fragrance in the rose. All this lavish bestowal of love,
+unspeakable as it is, may be regarded as having one great end, which God
+deems worthy of even such expenditure, namely, that men should become,
+in the deepest sense, His children. It is not so much to the
+contemplation of our blessedness in being sons, as to the devout gaze on
+the love which, by its wonderful process, has made it possible for us to
+be sons, that we are summoned here.
+
+Again, you will find a remarkable addition to our text in the Revised
+Version--namely, 'and such we are.' Now these words come with a very
+great weight of manuscript authority, and of internal evidence. They are
+parenthetical, a kind of rapid 'aside' of the writer's, expressing his
+joyful confidence that he and his brethren are sons of God, not only in
+name, but in reality. They are the voice of personal assurance, the
+voice of the spirit 'by which we cry Abba, Father,' breaking in for a
+moment on the flow of the sentence, like an irrepressible, glad answer
+to the Father's call. With these explanations let us look at the words.
+
+I. The love that is given.
+
+We are called upon to come with our little vessels to measure the
+contents of the great ocean, to plumb with our short lines the infinite
+abyss, and not only to estimate the quantity but the quality of that
+love, which, in both respects, surpasses all our means of comparison and
+conception.
+
+Properly speaking, we can do neither the one nor the other, for we have
+no line long enough to sound its depths, and no experience which will
+give us a standard with which to compare its quality. But all that we
+can do, John would have us do--that is, look and ever look at the
+working of that love till we form some not wholly inadequate idea of it.
+
+We can no more 'behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on
+us' than we can look with undimmed eyes right into the middle of the
+sun. But we can in some measure imagine the tremendous and beneficent
+forces that ride forth horsed on his beams to distances which the
+imagination faints in trying to grasp, and reach their journey's end
+unwearied and ready for their task as when it began. Here are we, ninety
+odd millions of miles from the centre of the system, yet warmed by its
+heat, lighted by its beams, and touched for good by its power in a
+thousand ways. All that has been going on for no one knows how many
+aeons. How mighty the Power which produces these effects! In like manner,
+who can gaze into the fiery depths of that infinite Godhead, into the
+ardours of that immeasurable, incomparable, inconceivable love? But we
+can look at and measure its activities. We can see what it does, and so
+can, in some degree, understand it, and feel that after all we have a
+measure for the Immeasurable, a comparison for the Incomparable, and can
+_thus_ 'behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us.'
+
+So we have to turn to the work of Christ, and especially to His death,
+if we would estimate the love of God. According to John's constant
+teaching, that is the great proof that God loves us. The most wonderful
+revelation to every heart of man of the depths of that Divine heart lies
+in the gift of Jesus Christ. The Apostle bids me 'behold what manner of
+love.' I turn to the Cross, and I see there a love which shrinks from no
+sacrifice, but gives 'Him up to death for us all.' I turn to the Cross,
+and I see there a love which is evoked by no lovableness on my part,
+but comes from the depth of His own Infinite Being, who loves because He
+must, and who must because He is God. I turn to the Cross, and I see
+there manifested a love which sighs for recognition, which desires
+nothing of me but the repayment of my poor affection, and longs to see
+its own likeness in me. And I see there a love that will not be put away
+by sinfulness, and shortcomings, and evil, but pours its treasures on
+the unworthy, like sunshine on a dunghill. So, streaming through the
+darkness of eclipse, and speaking to me even in the awful silence in
+which the Son of Man died there for sin, I 'behold,' and I hear, the
+'manner of love that the Father hath bestowed upon us,' stronger than
+death and sin, armed with all power, gentler than the fall of the dew,
+boundless and endless, in its measure measureless, in its quality
+transcendent--the love of God to me in Jesus Christ my Saviour.
+
+In like manner we have to think, if we would estimate the 'manner of
+this love,' that through and in the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ
+there comes to us the gift of a divine life like His own. Perhaps it may
+be too great a refinement of interpretation; but it certainly does seem
+to me that that expression 'to bestow His love upon' us, is not
+altogether the same as 'to love us,' but that there is a greater depth
+in it. There may be some idea of that love itself being as it were
+infused into us, and not merely of its consequences or tokens being
+given to us; as Paul speaks of 'the love of God shed abroad in our
+hearts' by the spirit which is given to us. At all events this
+communication of divine life, which is at bottom divine love--for God's
+life is God's love--is His great gift to men.
+
+Be that as it may, these two are the great tokens, consequences, and
+measures of God's love to us--the gift of Christ, and that which is the
+sequel and outcome thereof, the gift of the Spirit which is breathed
+into Christian spirits. These two gifts, which are one gift, embrace all
+that the world needs. Christ for us and Christ in us must both be taken
+into account if you would estimate the manner of the love that God has
+bestowed upon us.
+
+We may gain another measure of the greatness of this love if we put an
+emphasis--which I dare say the writer did not intend--on one word of
+this text, and think of the love given to '_us_,' such creatures as we
+are. Out of the depths we cry to Him. Not only by the voice of our
+supplications, but even when we raise no call of entreaty, our misery
+pleads with His merciful heart, and from the heights there comes upon
+our wretchedness and sin the rush of this great love, like a cataract,
+which sweeps away all our sins, and floods us with its own blessedness
+and joy. The more we know ourselves, the more wonderingly and thankfully
+shall we bow down our hearts before Him, as we measure His mercy by our
+unworthiness.
+
+From all His works the same summons echoes. They all call us to see
+mirrored in them His loving care. But the Cross of Christ and the gift
+of a Divine Spirit cry aloud to every ear in tones of more beseeching
+entreaty and of more imperative command to 'behold what manner of love
+the Father hath bestowed upon us.'
+
+II. Look next at the sonship which is the purpose of His given Love.
+
+It has often been noticed that the Apostle John uses for that expression
+'the sons of God,' another word from that which his brother Paul uses.
+John's phrase would perhaps be a little more accurately translated
+'children of God,' whilst Paul, on the other hand, very seldom says
+'children,' but almost always says 'sons.' Of course the children are
+sons and the sons are children, but still, the slight distinction of
+phrase is characteristic of the men, and of the different points of view
+from which they speak about the same thing. John's word lays stress on
+the children's kindred nature with their father and on their immature
+condition.
+
+But without dwelling on that, let us consider this great gift and
+dignity of being children of God, which is the object that God has in
+view in all the lavish bestowment of His goodness upon us.
+
+That end is not reached by God's making us men. Over and above that He
+has to send this great gift of His love, in order that the men whom He
+has made may become His sons. If you take the context here you will see
+very clearly that the writer draws a broad distinction between 'the sons
+of God' and 'the world' of men who do not comprehend them, and so far
+from being themselves sons, do not even know God's sons when they see
+them. And there is a deeper and solemner word still in the context. John
+thinks that men (within the range of light and revelation, at all
+events) are divided into two families--'the children of God and the
+children of the devil.' There _are_ two families amongst men.
+
+Thank God, the prodigal son in his rags amongst the swine, and lying by
+the swine-troughs in his filth and his husks, and his fever, _is_ a son!
+No doubt about that! He has these three elements and marks of sonship
+that no man ever gets rid of: he is of a divine origin, he has a divine
+likeness in that he has got mind and will and spirit, and he is the
+object of a divine love.
+
+The doctrine of the New Testament about the Fatherhood of God and the
+sonship of man does not in the slightest degree interfere with these
+three great truths, that all men, though the features of the common
+humanity may be almost battered out of recognition in them, are all
+children of God because He made them; that they are children of God
+because still there lives in them something of the likeness of the
+creative Father; and, blessed be His name! that they are all children of
+God because He loves and provides and cares for every one of them.
+
+All that is blessedly and eternally true; but it is also true that there
+is a higher relation than that to which the name 'children of God' is
+more accurately given, and to which in the New Testament that name is
+confined. If you ask what that relation is, let me quote to you three
+passages in this Epistle which will answer the question. 'Whoever
+believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God,' that is the first;
+'Every one that doeth righteousness is born of God,' that is the second;
+'Every one that loveth is born of God,' that is the third. Or to put
+them all into one expression which holds them all, in the great words of
+his prologue in the first chapter of John's Gospel you find this: 'To as
+many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God.'
+Believing in Christ with loving trust produces, and doing righteousness
+and loving the brethren, as the result of that belief, prove the fact of
+sonship in its highest and its truest sense.
+
+What is implied in that great word by which the Almighty gives us a name
+and a place as of sons and daughters? Clearly, first, a communicated
+life, therefore, second, a kindred nature which shall be 'pure as He is
+pure,' and, third, growth to full maturity.
+
+This sonship, which is no mere empty name, is the aim and purpose of
+God's dealings, of all the revelation of His love, and most especially
+of the great gift of His love in Christ. Has that purpose been
+accomplished in you? Have you ever looked at that great gift of love
+that God has given you on purpose to make you His child? If you have,
+has it made you one? Are you trusting to Jesus Christ, whom God has sent
+forth that we might receive the standing of sons in Him? Are you a child
+of God because a brother of that Saviour? Have you received the gift of
+a divine life through Him? My friend, remember the grim alternative! A
+child of God or a child of the devil! Bitter words, narrow words,
+uncharitable words--as people call them! And I believe, and therefore I
+am bound to say it, _true_ words, which it concerns _you_ to lay to
+heart.
+
+III. Now, still further, let me ask you to look at the glad recognition
+of this sonship by the child's heart.
+
+I have already referred to the clause added in the Revised Version, 'and
+such we are.' As I said, it is a kind of 'aside,' in which John adds the
+Amen for himself and for his poor brothers and sisters toiling and
+moiling obscure among the crowds of Ephesus, to the great truth. He
+asserts his and their glad consciousness of the reality of the fact of
+their sonship, which they know to be no empty title. He asserts, too,
+the present possession of that sonship, realising it as a fact, amid all
+the commonplace vulgarities and carking cares and petty aims of life's
+little day. 'Such we are' is the 'Here am I, Father,' of the child
+answering the Father's call, 'My Son.'
+
+He turns doctrine into experience. He is not content with merely having
+the thought in his creed, but his heart clasps it, and his whole nature
+responds to the great truth. I ask you, do you do that? Do not be
+content with hearing the truth, or even with assenting to it, and
+believing it in your understandings. The truth is nothing to you, unless
+you have made it your very own by faith. Do not be satisfied with the
+orthodox confession. Unless it has touched your heart and made your
+whole soul thrill with thankful gladness and quiet triumph, it is
+nothing to you. The mere belief of thirty-nine or thirty-nine thousand
+Articles is nothing; but when a man has a true heart-faith in Him, whom
+all articles are meant to make us know and love, then dogma becomes
+life, and the doctrine feeds the soul. Does it do so with you, my
+brother? Can _you_ say, 'And such we are?'
+
+Take another lesson. The Apostle was not afraid to say 'I know that I am
+a child of God.' There are many very good people, whose tremulous,
+timorous lips have never ventured to say 'I know.' They will say, 'Well,
+I hope,' or sometimes, as if that was not uncertain enough, they will
+put in an adverb or two, and say, 'I humbly hope that I am.' It is a far
+robuster kind of Christianity, a far truer one, ay, and a humbler one
+too, that throws all considerations of my own character and merits, and
+all the rest of that rubbish, clean behind me, and when God says, 'My
+son!' says 'My Father;' and when God calls us His children, leaps up and
+gladly answers, 'And we are!' Do not be afraid of being too confident,
+if your confidence is built on God, and not on yourselves; but be afraid
+of being too diffident, and be afraid of having a great deal of
+self-righteousness masquerading under the guise of such a profound
+consciousness of your own unworthiness that you dare not call yourself a
+child of God. It is not a question of worthiness or unworthiness. It is
+a question, in the first place, and mainly, of the truth of Christ's
+promise and the sufficiency of Christ's Cross; and in a very subordinate
+degree of anything belonging to you.
+
+IV. We have here, finally, the loving and devout gaze upon this
+wonderful love. 'Behold,' at the beginning of my text, is not the mere
+exclamation which you often find both in the Old and in the New
+Testaments, which is simply intended to emphasise the importance of what
+follows, but it is a distinct command to do the thing, to look, and ever
+to look, and to look again, and live in the habitual and devout
+contemplation of that infinite and wondrous love of God.
+
+I have but two remarks to make about that, and the one is this, that
+such a habit of devout and thankful meditation upon the love of God, as
+manifested in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the consequent gift of
+the Divine Spirit, joined with the humble, thankful conviction that I am
+a child of God thereby, lies at the foundation of all vigorous and happy
+Christian life. How can a thing which you do not touch with your hands
+and see with your eyes produce any effect upon you, unless you think
+about it? How can a religion which can only influence through thought
+and emotion do anything in you, or for you, unless you occupy your
+thoughts and your feelings with it? It is sheer nonsense to suppose it
+possible. Things which do not appeal to sense are real to us, and indeed
+we may say, _are_ at all for us, only as we think about them. If you had
+a dear friend in Australia, and never thought about him, he would even
+cease to be dear, and it would be all one to you as if he were dead. If
+he were really dear to you, you _would_ think about him. We may say
+(though, of course, there are other ways of looking at the matter) that,
+in a very intelligible sense, the degree in which we think about Christ,
+and in Him behold the love of God, is a fairly accurate measure of our
+Christianity.
+
+Now will you apply that sharp test to yesterday, and the day before, and
+the day before that, and decide how much of your life was pagan, and how
+much of it was Christian? You will never make anything of your professed
+Christianity, you will never get a drop of happiness or any kind of good
+out of it; it will neither be a strength nor a joy nor a defence to you
+unless you make it your habitual occupation to 'behold the manner of
+love'; and look and look and look until it warms and fills your heart.
+
+The second remark is that we cannot keep that great sight before the eye
+of our minds without effort. You will have very resolutely to look away
+from something else if, amid all the dazzling gauds of earth, you are to
+see the far-off lustre of that heavenly love. Just as timorous people in
+a thunder-storm will light a candle that they may not see the lightning,
+so many Christians have their hearts filled with the twinkling light of
+some miserable tapers of earthly care and pursuits, which, though they
+be dim and smoky, are bright enough to make it hard to see the silent
+depths of Heaven, though it blaze with a myriad stars. If you hold a
+sixpence close enough up to the pupil of your eye, it will keep you from
+seeing the sun. And if you hold the world close to mind and heart, as
+many of you do, you will only see, round the rim of it, the least tiny
+ring of the overlapping love of God. What the world lets you see you
+will see, and the world will take care that it will let you see very
+little--not enough to do you any good, not enough to deliver you from
+its chains. Wrench yourselves away, my brethren, from the absorbing
+contemplation of Birmingham jewellery and paste, and look at the true
+riches. If you have ever had some glimpses of that wondrous love, and
+have ever been drawn by it to cry, 'Abba, Father,' do not let the
+trifles which belong not to your true inheritance fill your thoughts,
+but renew the vision, and by determined turning away of your eyes from
+beholding vanity, look off from the things that are seen, that you may
+gaze upon the things that are not seen, and chiefest among them, upon
+the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
+
+If you have never looked on that love, I beseech you now to turn aside
+and see this great sight. Do not let that brightness burn unnoticed
+while your eyes are fixed on the ground, like the gaze of men absorbed
+in gold digging, while a glorious sunshine is flushing the eastern sky.
+Look to the unspeakable, incomparable, immeasurable love of God, in
+giving up His Son to death for us all. Look and be saved. Look and live.
+'Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on you,' and,
+beholding, you will become the sons and daughters of the Lord God
+Almighty.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNREVEALED FUTURE OF THE SONS OF GOD
+
+     'Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear
+      what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall
+      be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.'--1 John iii. 2.
+
+
+I have hesitated, as you may well believe, whether I should take these
+words for a text. They seem so far to surpass anything that can be said
+concerning them, and they cover such immense fields of dim thought, that
+one may well be afraid lest one should spoil them by even attempting to
+dilate on them. And yet they are so closely connected with the words of
+the previous verse, which formed the subject of my last sermon, that I
+felt as if my work were only half done unless I followed that sermon
+with this.
+
+The present is the prophet of the future, says my text: 'Now we are the
+sons of God, _and_' (not 'but') 'it doth not yet appear what we shall
+be.' Some men say, 'Ah! _now are_ we, but we shall be--nothing!' John
+does not think so. John thinks that if a man is a son of God he will
+always be so. There are three things in this verse, how, if we are God's
+children, our sonship makes us quite sure of the future; how our sonship
+leaves us largely in ignorance of the future, but how our sonship flings
+one bright, all-penetrating beam of light on the only important thing
+about the future, the clear vision of and the perfect likeness to Him
+who is our life. 'Now are we the sons of God,' therefore we shall be. We
+are the sons; we do not know what we shall be. We are the sons, and
+therefore, though there be a great circumference of blank ignorance as
+to our future, yet, blessed be His name, there is a great light burning
+in the middle of it! 'We know that when He shall appear we shall be like
+Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
+
+I. The fact of sonship makes us quite sure of the future.
+
+I am not concerned to appraise the relative value of the various
+arguments and proofs, or, it may be, presumptions, which may recommend
+the doctrine of a future life to men, but it seems to me that the
+strongest reasons for believing in another world are these two:--first,
+that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and has gone up there; and,
+second, that a man here can pray, and trust, and love God, and feel that
+he is His child. As was noticed in the preceding sermon, the word
+rendered 'sons' might more accurately be translated 'children.' If so,
+we may fairly say, 'We are the _children_ of God now--and if we are
+children now, we shall be grown up some time.' Childhood leads to
+maturity. The infant becomes a man.
+
+That is to say, he that here, in an infantile way, is stammering with
+his poor, unskilled lips the name 'Abba! Father!' will one day come to
+speak it fully. He that dimly trusts, he that partially loves, he that
+can lift up his heart in some more or less unworthy prayer and
+aspiration after God, in all these emotions and exercises, has the great
+proof in himself that such emotions, such relationship, can never be put
+an end to. The roots have gone down through the temporal, and have laid
+hold of the Eternal. Anything seems to me to be more credible than that
+a man who can look up and say, 'My Father,' shall be crushed by what
+befalls the mere outside of him; anything seems to me to be more
+believable than to suppose that the nature which is capable of these
+elevating emotions and aspirations of confidence and hope, which can
+know God and yearn after Him, and can love Him, is to be wiped out like
+a gnat by the finger of Death. The material has nothing to do with these
+feelings, and if I know myself, in however feeble and imperfect a
+degree, to be the son of God, I carry in the conviction the very pledge
+and seal of eternal life. That is a thought 'whose very sweetness
+yieldeth proof that it was born for immortality.' 'We are the sons of
+God,' therefore we shall always be so, in all worlds, and whatsoever may
+become of this poor wrappage in which the soul is shrouded.
+
+We may notice, also, that not only the fact of our sonship avails to
+assure us of immortal life, but that also the very form which our
+religious experience takes points in the same direction.
+
+As I said, infancy is the prophecy of maturity. 'The child is father of
+the man'; the bud foretells the flower. In the same way, the very
+imperfections of the Christian life, as it is seen here, argue the
+existence of another state, where all that is here in the germ shall be
+fully matured, and all that is here incomplete shall attain the
+perfection which alone will correspond to the power that works in us.
+Think of the ordinary Christian character. The beginning is there, and
+evidently no more than the beginning. As one looks at the crudity, the
+inconsistencies, the failings, the feebleness of the Christian life of
+others, or of oneself, and then thinks that such a poor, imperfect
+exhibition is all that so divine a principle has been able to achieve in
+this world, one feels that there must be a region and a time where we
+shall be all which the transforming power of God's spirit can make us.
+The very inconsistencies of Christians are as strong reasons for
+believing in the perfect life of Heaven as their purities and virtues
+are. We have a right to say mighty principles are at work upon Christian
+souls--the power of the Cross, the power of love issuing in obedience,
+the power of an indwelling Spirit; and is this all that these great
+forces are going to effect on human character? Surely a seed so precious
+and divine is somewhere, and at some time, to bring forth something
+better than these few poor, half-developed flowers, something with more
+lustrous petals and richer fragrance. The plant is clearly an exotic;
+does not its obviously struggling growth here tell of warmer suns and
+richer soil, where it will be at home?
+
+There is a great deal in every man, and most of all in Christian men and
+women, which does not fit this present. All other creatures correspond
+in their capacities to the place where they are set down; and the world
+in which the plant or the animal lives, the world of their surroundings,
+stimulates to activity all their powers. But that is not so with a man.
+'Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests.' They fit exactly, and
+correspond to their 'environment.' But a man!--there is an enormous
+amount of waste faculty about him if he is only to live in this world.
+There are large capacities in every nature, and most of all in a
+Christian nature, which are like the packages that emigrants take with
+them, marked 'Not wanted on the voyage.' These go down into the hold,
+and they are only of use after landing in the new world. If I am a son
+of God I have much in me that is 'not wanted on the voyage,' and the
+more I grow into His likeness, the more I am thrown out of harmony with
+the things round about me, in proportion as I am brought into harmony
+with the things beyond.
+
+That consciousness of belonging to another order of things, because I am
+God's child, will make me sure that when I have done with earth, the tie
+that binds me to my Father will not be broken, but that I shall go home,
+where I shall be fully and for ever all that I so imperfectly began to
+be here, where all gaps in my character shall be filled up, and the
+half-completed circle of my heavenly perfectness shall grow like the
+crescent moon, into full-orbed beauty. 'Neither life, nor death, nor
+things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
+creature' shall be able to break that tie, and banish the child from the
+conscious grasp of a Father's hand. Dear brother and sister, can you
+say, 'Now am I a child of God!' Then you may patiently and peacefully
+front that dim future.
+
+II. Now I come to the second point, namely, that we remain ignorant of
+much in that future.
+
+That happy assurance of the love of God resting upon me, and making me
+His child through Jesus Christ, does not dissipate all the darkness
+which lies on that beyond. 'We are the sons of God, _and_,' just because
+we are, 'it does not yet appear what we shall be.' Or, as the words are
+rendered in the Revised Version, 'it is not yet made manifest what we
+shall be.'
+
+The meaning of that expression, 'It doth not yet appear,' or, 'It is not
+made manifest,' may be put into very plain words. John would simply say
+to us, 'There has never been set forth before men's eyes in this earthly
+life of ours an example, or an instance, of what the sons of God are to
+be in another state of being.' And so, because men have never had the
+instance before them, they do not know much about that state.
+
+In some sense there has been a manifestation through the life of Jesus
+Christ. Christ has died; Christ is risen again. Christ has gone about
+amongst men upon earth after Resurrection. Christ has been raised to the
+right hand of God, and sits there in the glory of the Father. So far it
+has been manifested what we shall be. But the risen Christ is not the
+glorified Christ, and although He has set forth before man's senses
+irrefragably the fact of another life, and to some extent given glimpses
+and gleams of knowledge with regard to certain portions of it, I suppose
+that the 'glorious body' of Jesus Christ was not assumed by Him till the
+cloud 'received Him out of their sight,' nor, indeed, could it be
+assumed while He moved among the material realities of this world, and
+did eat and drink before them. So that, while we thankfully recognise
+that Christ's Resurrection and Ascension have 'brought life and
+immortality to light,' we must remember that it is the fact, and not the
+manner of the fact, which they make plain; and that, even after His
+example, it has not been manifested what is the body of glory which He
+now wears, and therefore it has not yet been manifested what we shall be
+when we are fashioned after its likeness.
+
+There has been no manifestation, then, to sense, or to human experience,
+of that future, and, therefore, there is next to no knowledge about it.
+You can only know facts when the facts are communicated. You may
+speculate and argue and guess as much as you like, but that does not
+thin the darkness one bit. The unborn child has no more faculty or
+opportunity for knowing what the life upon earth is like than man here,
+in the world, has for knowing that life beyond. The chrysalis' dreams
+about what it would be when it was a butterfly would be as reliable as a
+man's imagination of what a future life will be.
+
+So let us feel two things:--Let us be thankful that we do not know, for
+the ignorance is the sign of the greatness; and then, let us be sure
+that just the very mixture of knowledge and ignorance which we have
+about another world is precisely the food which is most fitted to
+nourish imagination and hope. If we had more knowledge, supposing it
+could be given, of the conditions of that future life, it would lose
+some of its power to attract. Ignorance does not always prevent the
+occupation of the mind with a subject. Blank ignorance does; but
+ignorance, shot with knowledge like a tissue which, when you hold it one
+way seems all black, and when you tilt it another, seems golden,
+stimulates desire, hope, and imagination. So let us thankfully acquiesce
+in the limited knowledge.
+
+Fools can ask questions which wise men cannot answer, and will not ask.
+There are questions which, sometimes, when we are thinking about our own
+future, and sometimes when we see dear ones go away into the mist,
+become to us almost torture. It is easy to put them; it is not so easy
+to say: 'Thank God, we cannot answer them yet!' If we could it would
+only be because the experience of earth was adequate to measure the
+experience of Heaven; and that would be to bring the future down to the
+low levels of this present. Let us be thankful then that so long as we
+can only speak in language derived from the experiences of earth, we
+have yet to learn the vocabulary of Heaven. Let us be thankful that our
+best help to know what we shall be is to reverse much of what we are,
+and that the loftiest and most positive declarations concerning the
+future lie in negatives like these:--'I saw no temple therein.' 'There
+shall be no night there.' 'There shall be no curse there.' 'There shall
+be no more sighing nor weeping, for the former things are passed away.'
+
+The white mountains keep their secret well; not until we have passed
+through the black rocks that make the throat of the pass on the summit,
+shall we see the broad and shining plains beyond the hills. Let us be
+thankful for, and own the attractions of, the knowledge that is wrapt in
+ignorance, and thankfully say, 'Now are we the sons of God, and it doth
+not appear what we shall be!'
+
+III. Now I must be very brief with the last thought that is here, and I
+am the less unwilling to be so because we cannot travel one inch beyond
+the revelations of the Book in reference to the matter. The thought is
+this, that our sonship flings one all-penetrating beam of light on that
+future, in the knowledge of our perfect vision and perfect likeness. 'We
+know that when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for we
+shall see Him as He is.'
+
+'When He shall be manifested'--to what period does that refer? It seems
+most natural to take the manifestation here as being the same as that
+spoken of only a verse or two before. 'And now, little children, abide
+in Him, and when He shall _be manifested_, we may have confidence, and
+not be ashamed before Him at His coming' (ii. 28). That 'coming' then,
+is the 'manifestation' of Christ; and it is at the period of His coming
+in His glory that His servants 'shall be like Him, and see Him as He
+is.' Clearly then it is Christ whom we shall see and become like, and
+not the Father invisible.
+
+To behold Christ will be the condition and the means of growing like
+Him. That way of transformation by beholding, or of assimilation by the
+power of loving contemplation, is the blessed way of ennobling
+character, which even here, and in human relationships, has often made
+it easy to put off old vices and to clothe the soul with unwonted grace.
+Men have learned to love and gaze upon some fair character, till some
+image of its beauty has passed into their ruder natures. To love such
+and to look on them has been an education. The same process is
+exemplified in more sacred regions, when men here learn to love and look
+upon Christ by faith, and so become like Him, as the sun stamps a tiny
+copy of its blazing sphere on the eye that looks at it. But all these
+are but poor, far-off hints and low preludes of the energy with which
+that blessed vision of the glorified Christ shall work on the happy
+hearts that behold Him, and of the completeness of the likeness to Him
+which will be printed in light upon their faces.
+
+It matters not, though it doth not yet appear what we shall be, if to
+all the questionings of our own hearts we have this for our
+all-sufficient answer, 'We shall be like Him.' As good old Richard
+Baxter has it:--
+
+    'My knowledge of that life is small,
+       The eye of faith is dim;
+     But, 'tis enough that Christ knows all,
+       And I shall be like Him!'
+
+'It is enough for the servant that he be as his Lord.'
+
+There is no need to go into the dark and difficult questions about the
+manner of that vision. He Himself prayed, in that great intercessory
+prayer, 'Father, I will that these whom Thou hast given Me be with Me
+where I am, that they may behold My glory.' That vision of the glorified
+manhood of Jesus Christ--certain, direct, clear, and worthy, whether it
+comes through sense or through thought--to behold that vision is all
+the sight of God that men in Heaven ever will have. And through the
+millenniums of a growing glory, Christ as He is will be the manifested
+Deity. Likeness will clear sight, and clearer sight will increase
+likeness. So in blessed interchange these two will be cause and effect,
+and secure the endless progress of the redeemed spirit towards the
+vision of Christ which never can behold all His Infinite Fulness, and
+the likeness to Christ which can never reproduce all his Infinite
+Beauty.
+
+As a bit of glass when the light strikes it flashes into sunny glory, or
+as every poor little muddy pool on the pavement, when the sunbeams fall
+upon it, has the sun mirrored even in its shallow mud, so into your poor
+heart and mine the vision of Christ's glory will come, moulding and
+transforming us to its own beauty. With unveiled face reflecting as a
+mirror does, the glory of the Lord, we 'shall be changed into the same
+image.' 'We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
+
+Dear brethren, all begins with this, love Christ and trust Him and you
+are a child of God! 'And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and
+joint heirs with Christ.'
+
+
+
+
+THE PURIFYING INFLUENCE OF HOPE
+
+     'And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even
+      as He is pure.'--1 John iii. 3.
+
+
+That is a very remarkable 'and' with which this verse begins. The
+Apostle has just been touching the very heights of devout contemplation,
+soaring away up into dim regions where it is very hard to follow,--'We
+shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
+
+And now, without a pause, and linking his thoughts together by a simple
+'and,' he passes from the unimaginable splendours of the Beatific Vision
+to the plainest practical talk. Mysticism has often soared so high above
+the earth that it has forgotten to preach righteousness, and therein has
+been its weak point. But here is the most mystical teacher of the New
+Testament insisting on plain morality as vehemently as his friend James
+could have done.
+
+The combination is very remarkable. Like the eagle he rises, and like
+the eagle, with the impetus gained from his height, he drops right down
+on the earth beneath!
+
+And that is not only a characteristic of St. John's teaching, but it is
+a characteristic of all the New Testament morality--its highest
+revelations are intensely practical. Its light is at once set to work,
+like the sunshine that comes ninety millions of miles in order to make
+the little daisies open their crimson-tipped petals; so the profoundest
+things that the Bible has to say are said to you and me, not that we may
+know only, but that knowing we may _do_, and _do_ because we _are_.
+
+So John, here: 'We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
+'And'--a simple coupling-iron for two such thoughts--'every man that
+hath this hope in Him'--that is, in Christ, not in himself, as we
+sometimes read it--'every man that hath this hope,' founded on Christ,
+'purifies himself even as He is pure.'
+
+The thought is a very simple one, though sometimes it is somewhat
+mistakenly apprehended. Put into its general form it is just this:--If
+you expect, and expecting, hope to be like Jesus Christ yonder, you will
+be trying your best to be like Him here. It is not the mere purifying
+influence of hope that is talked about, but it is the specific influence
+of this one hope, the hope of ultimate assimilation to Christ leading to
+strenuous efforts, each a partial resemblance of Him, here and now. And
+that is the subject I want to say a word or two about now.
+
+I. First, then, notice the principle that is here, which is the main
+thing to be insisted upon, namely, If we are to be pure, we must purify
+_ourselves_.
+
+There are two ways of getting like Christ, spoken about in the context.
+One is the blessed way, that is more appropriate for the higher Heaven,
+the way of assimilation and transformation by beholding--'If we see Him'
+we shall be 'like Him.' That is the blessed method of the Heavens. Yes,
+but even here on earth it may to some extent be realised! Love always
+breeds likeness. And there is such a thing, here on earth and now, as
+gazing upon Christ with an intensity of affection, and simplicity of
+trust, and rapture of aspiration, and ardour of desire which shall
+transform us in some measure into His own likeness. John is an example
+of that for us. It was a true instinct that made the old painters always
+represent him as like the Master that he sat beside, even in face. Where
+did John get his style from? He got it by much meditating upon Christ's
+words. The disciple caught the method of the Master's speech, and to
+some extent the manner of the Master's vision.
+
+And so he himself stands before us as an instance of the possibility,
+even on earth, of this calm, almost passive process, and most blessed
+and holiest method of getting like the Master, by simple gazing, which
+is the gaze of love and longing.
+
+But, dear brethren, the law of our lives forbids that that should be the
+only way in which we grow like Christ. 'First the blade, then the ear,
+then the full corn in the ear,' was never meant to be the exhaustive,
+all-comprehensive statement of the method of Christian progress. You and
+I are not vegetables; and the Parable of the Seed is only one side of
+the truth about the method of Christian growth. The very word 'purify'
+speaks to us of another condition; it implies impurity, it implies a
+process which is more than contemplation, it implies the reversal of
+existing conditions, and not merely the growth upwards to unattained
+conditions.
+
+And so growth is not all that Christian men need; they need excision,
+they need casting out of what is in them; they need change as well as
+growth. 'Purifying' they need because they are impure, and growth is
+only half the secret of Christian progress.
+
+Then there is the other consideration, viz., if there is to be this
+purifying it must be done by myself. 'Ah!' you say, 'done by yourself?
+That is not evangelical teaching.' Well, let us see. Take two or three
+verses out of this Epistle which at first sight seem to be contradictory
+of this. Take the very first that bears on the subject:--'The blood of
+Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin' (i. 7). 'If we confess
+our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse
+us from all unrighteousness' (i. 9). 'He that abideth in Him sinneth
+not' (iii. 6). 'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our
+faith' (v. 4).
+
+Now if you put all these passages together, and think about the general
+effect of them, it comes to this: that our best way of cleansing
+ourselves is by keeping firm hold of Jesus Christ and of the cleansing
+powers that lie in Him. To take a very homely illustration--soap and
+water wash your hands clean, and what you have to do is simply to rub
+the soap and water on to the hand, and bring them into contact with the
+foulness. You cleanse yourselves. Yes! because without the friction
+there would not be the cleansing. But is it you, or is it the soap, that
+does the work? Is it you or the water that makes your hands clean? And
+so when God comes and says, 'Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil
+of your doings, your hands are full of blood,' He says in effect, 'Take
+the cleansing that I give you and rub it in, and apply it: and your
+flesh will become as the flesh of a little child, and you shall be
+clean.'
+
+That is to say, the very deepest word about Christian effort of
+self-purifying is this--keep close to Jesus Christ. You cannot sin as
+long as you hold His hand. To have Him with you;--I mean by that to have
+the thoughts directed to Him, the love turning to Him, the will
+submitted to Him, Him consciously with us in the day's work. To have
+communion with Jesus Christ is like bringing an atmosphere round about
+us in which all evil will die. If you take a fish out of water and bring
+it up into the upper air, it writhes and gasps, and is dead presently;
+and our evil tendencies and sins, drawn up out of the muddy depths in
+which they live, and brought up into that pure atmosphere of communion
+with Jesus Christ, are sure to shrivel and to die, and to disappear. We
+kill all evil by fellowship with the Master. His presence in our lives,
+by our communion with Him, is like the watchfire that the traveller
+lights at night--it keeps all the wild beasts of prey away from the
+fold.
+
+Christ's fellowship is our cleansing, and the first and main thing that
+we have to do in order to make ourselves pure is to keep ourselves in
+union with Him, in whom inhere and abide all the energies that cleanse
+men's souls. Take the unbleached calico and spread it out on the green
+grass, and let the blessed sunshine come down upon it, and sprinkle it
+with fair water; and the grass and the moisture and the sunshine will do
+all the cleansing, and it will glitter in the light, 'so as no fuller on
+earth can white it.'
+
+So cleansing is keeping near Jesus Christ. But it is no use getting the
+mill-race from the stream into your works unless you put wheels in its
+way to drive. And our holding ourselves in fellowship with the Master in
+that fashion is not all that we have to do. There have to be distinct
+and specific efforts, constantly repeated, to subdue and suppress
+individual acts of transgression. We have to fight against evil, sin by
+sin. We have not the thing to do all at once; we have to do it in
+detail. It is a war of outposts, like the last agonies of that
+Franco-Prussian war, when the Emperor had abdicated, and the country was
+really conquered, and Paris had yielded, but yet all over the face of
+the land combats had to be carried on.
+
+So it is with us. Holiness is not feeling; it is character. You do not
+get rid of your sins by the act of divine amnesty only. You are not
+perfect because you say you are, and feel as if you were, and think you
+are. God does not make any man pure in his sleep. His cleansing does not
+dispense with fighting, but makes victory possible.
+
+Then, dear brethren, lay to heart this, as the upshot of the whole
+matter: First of all, let us turn to Him from whom all the cleansing
+comes; and then, moment by moment, remember that it is our work to
+purify ourselves by the strength and the power that is given to us by
+the Master.
+
+II. The second thought here is this: This purifying of ourselves is the
+link or bridge between the present and the future.--'Now are we the sons
+of God,' says John in the context. That is the pier upon the one side of
+the gulf. 'It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but when He is made
+manifest we shall be like Him.' That is the pier on the other. How are
+the two to be connected? There is only one way by which the present
+sonship will blossom and fruit into the future perfect likeness, and
+that is,--if we throw across the gulf, by God's help day by day here,
+that bridge of our effort after growing likeness to Himself, and purity
+therefrom.
+
+That is plain enough, I suppose. To speak in somewhat technical terms,
+the 'law of continuity' that we hear so much about, runs on between
+earth and Heaven; which, being translated into plain English, is but
+this--that the act of passing from the limitations and conditions of
+this transitory life into the solemnities and grandeurs of that future
+does not alter a man's character, though it may intensify it. It does
+not make him different from what he was, though it may make him more of
+what he was, whether its direction be good or bad.
+
+You take a stick and thrust it into water; and because the rays of light
+pass from one medium to another of a different density, they are
+refracted and the stick seems bent; but take the human life out of the
+thick, coarse medium of earth and lift it up into the pure rarefied air
+of Heaven, and there is no refraction; it runs straight on. Straight on!
+The given direction continues; and in whatever direction my face is
+turned when I die, thither my face will be turned when I live again.
+
+Do not you fancy that there is any magic in coffins and graves and
+shrouds to make men different from their former selves. The continuity
+runs clean on, the rail goes without a break, though it goes through the
+Mont Cenis tunnel; and on the one side is the cold of the North, and on
+the other the sunny South. The man is the same man through death and
+beyond.
+
+So the one link between sonship here and likeness to Christ hereafter is
+this link of present, strenuous effort to become like Him day by day in
+personal purity. For there is another reason, on which I need not dwell,
+viz., unless there be this daily effort on our part to become like Jesus
+Christ by personal purity, we shall not be able to 'see Him as He is.'
+Death will take a great many veils off men's hearts. It will reveal to
+them a great deal that they do not know, but it will not give the
+faculty of beholding the glorified Christ in such fashion as that the
+beholding will mean transformation. 'Every eye shall see Him,' but it is
+conceivable that a spirit shall be so immersed in self-love and in
+godlessness that the vision of Christ shall be repellent and not
+attractive; shall have no transforming and no gladdening power. And I
+beseech you to remember that about that vision, as about the vision of
+God Himself, the principle stands true; it is 'the pure in heart that
+shall see God' in Christ. And the change from life to the life beyond
+will not necessarily transform into the image of His dear Son. You make
+a link between the present and the future by cleansing your hands and
+your hearts, through faith in the cleansing power of Christ, and direct
+effort at holiness.
+
+III. Now I must briefly add finally: that this self-cleansing of which I
+have been speaking is the offspring and outcome of that 'hope' in my
+text. It is the child of hope. Hope is by no means an active faculty
+generally. As the poets have it, she may 'smile and wave her golden
+hair'; but she is not in the way of doing much work in the world. And it
+is not the mere fact of hope that generates this effort; it is, as I
+have been trying to show you, a certain kind of hope--the hope of being
+like Jesus Christ when 'we see Him as He is.'
+
+I have only two things to say about this matter, and one of them is
+this: of course, such strenuous effort of purity will only be the result
+of such a hope as that, because such a hope will fight against one of
+the greatest of all the enemies of our efforts after purity. There is
+nothing that makes a man so down-hearted in his work of self-improvement
+as the constant and bitter experience that it seems to be all of no use;
+that he is making so little progress; that with immense pains, like a
+snail creeping up a wall, he gets up, perhaps, an inch or two, and then
+all at once he drops down, and further down than he was before he
+started.
+
+Slowly we manage some little, patient self-improvement; gradually, inch
+by inch and bit by bit, we may be growing better, and then there comes
+some gust and outburst of temptation; and the whole painfully reclaimed
+soil gets covered up by an avalanche of mud and stones, that we have to
+remove slowly, barrow-load by barrow-load. And then we feel that it is
+all of no use to strive, and we let circumstances shape us, and give up
+all thoughts of reformation.
+
+To such moods then there comes, like an angel from Heaven, that holy,
+blessed message, 'Cheer up, man! "We shall be like Him, for we shall see
+Him as He is."' Every inch that you make now will tell then, and it is
+not all of no use. Set your heart to the work, it is a work that will be
+blessed and will prosper.
+
+Again, here is a test for all you Christian people, who say that you
+look to Heaven with hope as to your home and rest.
+
+A great deal of the religious contemplation of a future state is pure
+sentimentality, and like all pure sentimentality is either immoral or
+non-moral. But here the two things are brought into clear juxtaposition,
+the bright hope of Heaven and the hard work done here below. Now is that
+what the gleam and expectation of a future life does for you?
+
+This is the only time in John's Epistle that he speaks about hope. The
+good man, living so near Christ, finds that the present, with its
+'abiding in Him' is enough for his heart. And though he was the Seer of
+the Apocalypse, he has scarcely a word to say about the future in this
+letter of his, and when he does it is for a simple and intensely
+practical purpose, in order that he may enforce on us the teaching of
+labouring earnestly in purifying ourselves.
+
+My brother, is that your type of Christianity? Is that the kind of
+inspiration that comes to you from the hope that steals in upon you in
+your weary hours, when sorrows, and cares, and changes, and loss, and
+disappointments, and hard work weigh you down, and you say, 'It would be
+blessed to pass hence'? Does it set you harder at work than anything
+else can do? Is it all utilised? Or if I might use such an illustration,
+is it like the electricity of the Aurora Borealis, that paints your
+winter sky with vanishing, useless splendours of crimson and blue? or
+have you got it harnessed to your tramcars, lighting your houses,
+driving sewing-machines, doing practical work in your daily life? Is the
+hope of Heaven, and of being like Christ, a thing that stimulates and
+stirs us every moment to heroisms of self-surrender and to strenuous
+martyrdom of self-cleansing?
+
+All is gathered up into the one lesson. First, let us go to that dear
+Lord whose blood cleanseth from all sin, and let us say to Him, 'Purge
+me and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.' And
+then, receiving into our hearts the powers that purify, in His love and
+His sacrifice and His life, 'having these promises' and these
+possessions, 'Dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all
+filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the
+Lord.'
+
+
+
+
+PRACTICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
+
+     'Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth
+      righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.'--1 John
+      iii. 7.
+
+
+The popular idea of the Apostle John is strangely unlike the real man.
+He is supposed to be the gentle Apostle of Love, the mystic amongst the
+Twelve. He _is_ that, but he was the 'son of thunder' before he was the
+Apostle of Love, and he did not drop the first character when he
+attained the second. No doubt his central thought was, 'God is Love'; no
+doubt that thought had refined and assimilated his character, but the
+love which he believed and the love which he exercised were neither of
+them facile feebleness, but strong and radiant with an awful purity.
+None of the New Testament writers proclaims a more austere morality than
+does John. And just because he loved the Love and the Light, he hated
+and loathed the darkness. He can thunder and lighten when needful, and
+he shows us that the true divine love in a man recoils from its
+opposite as passionately as it cleaves to God and good.
+
+Again, John is, _par excellence_, the mystic of the New Testament,
+always insisting on the direct communion which every soul may have with
+God, which is the essence of wholesome mysticism. Now that type of
+thinking has often in its raptures forgotten plain, pedestrian morality;
+but John never commits that error. He never soars so high as to lose
+sight of the flat earth below; and whilst he is always inviting us and
+enjoining us to dwell in God and abide in Christ, with equal persistence
+and force he is preaching to us the plainest duties of elementary
+morality.
+
+He illustrates this moral earnestness in my text. The 'little children'
+for whom he was so affectionately solicitous were in danger, either from
+teachers or from the tendencies native in us all, to substitute
+something else for plain, righteous conduct; and the Apostle lovingly
+appeals to them with his urgent declaration, that the only thing which
+shows a man to be righteous--that is to say, a disciple of Christ--is
+his daily life, in conformity with Christ's commands. The errors of
+these ancient Asiatics live to-day in new forms, but still substantially
+the same. And they are as hard to kill amongst English Nonconformists
+like us as they were amongst Asiatic Christians nineteen centuries ago.
+
+I. So let me try just to insist, first of all, on that thought that
+doing righteousness is the one test of being a Christian.
+
+Now that word 'righteousness' is a theological word, and by much usage
+the lettering has got to be all but obliterated upon it; and it is worn
+smooth like sixpences that go from pocket to pocket. Therefore I want,
+before I go further, to make this one distinct point, that the New
+Testament righteousness is no theological, cloistered, peculiar kind of
+excellence, but embraces within its scope, 'whatsoever things are
+lovely, whatsoever things are fair, whatsoever things are of good
+report'; all that the world calls virtue, all which the world has
+combined to praise. There are countries on the earth which are known by
+different names to their inhabitants and to foreigners. The
+'righteousness' of the New Testament, though it embraces a great deal
+more, includes within its map all the territories which belong to
+morality or to virtue. The three words cover the same ground, though one
+of them covers more than the other two. The New Testament
+'righteousness' differs from the moralist's morality, or the world's
+virtue, in its scope, inasmuch as it includes our relations to God as
+well as to men; it differs in its perspective, inasmuch as it exalts
+some types of excellence that the world pooh-poohs, and pulls down some
+that the world hallelujahs and adulates; it strips the fine feathers of
+approving words off some vices which masquerade as virtues. It casts
+round the notion of duty, of morality, of virtue, a halo, and it touches
+it with emotion. Christianity does with the dictates of the natural
+conscience what we might figure as being the leading out of some captive
+virgin in white, from the darkness into the sunshine, and the turning of
+her face up to heaven, which illuminates it with a new splendour, and
+invests her with a new attractiveness. But all that any man rightly
+includes in his notion of the things that are 'of good report' is
+included in this theological word, righteousness, which to some of you
+seems so wrapped in mists, and so far away from daily life.
+
+I freely confess that in very many instances the morality of the
+moralist has outshone the righteousness of the Christian. Yes! and I
+have seen canoe-paddles carved by South Sea Islanders with no better
+tools than an oyster-shell and a sharp fish-bone, which in the
+minuteness and delicacy of their work, as well as in the truth and taste
+of their pattern, might put to shame the work of carvers with better
+tools. But that is not the fault of the tools; it is the fault of the
+carvers. And so, whilst we acknowledge that Christian people have but
+poorly represented to the world what Christ and Christ's apostles meant
+by righteousness, I reiterate that the righteousness of the gospel is
+the morality of the world _plus_ a great deal more.
+
+That being understood, let me remind you of two or three ways in which
+this great truth of the text is obscured to us, and in some respects
+contradicted, in the practice of many professing Christians. First, let
+me say my text insists upon this, that the conduct, not the creed, makes
+the Christian. There is a continual tendency on our part, as there was
+with these believers in Asia Minor long ago, to substitute the mere
+acceptance, especially the orthodox acceptance, of certain great
+fundamental Christian truths for Christianity. A man may believe
+thirty-nine or thirty-nine thousand Articles without the smallest
+intellectual drawback, and not be one whit nearer being a Christian than
+if he did not believe one of them. For faith, which is the thing that
+makes a man a Christian to begin with, is not assent, but trust. And
+there is a whole gulf, wide enough to drown a world in, between the two
+attitudes of mind. On the one side of the gulf is salvation, on the
+other side of the gulf there may be loss. Of course, I know that it is
+hard, though I do not believe it is impossible, to erect the structure
+of a saving faith on a very, very imperfect intellectual apprehension
+of Scripture truth. That has nothing to do with my present point. What I
+am saying is that, unless you erect that structure of a faith which is
+an act of your will and of your whole nature, and not the mere assent of
+your understanding, upon your belief, your belief is impotent, and is of
+no use at all, and you might as well not have it.
+
+What is the office of our creed in regard to our conduct? To give us
+principles, to give us motives, to give us guidance, to give us weapons.
+If it does these things then it does its work. If it lies in our heads a
+mere acceptance of certain propositions, it is just as useless and as
+dead as the withered seeds that rattle inside a dried poppy-head in the
+autumn winds. You are meant to begin with accepting truth, and then you
+are meant to take that truth as being a power in your lives that shall
+shape your conduct. To know, and there an end, is enough in matters of
+mere science, but in matters of religion and in matters of morality or
+righteousness knowing is only the first step in the process, and we are
+made to know in order that, knowing, we may do.
+
+But some professing Christians seem to have their natures built, like
+ocean-going steamers, with water-tight compartments, on the one side of
+which they keep their creed, and there is no kind of communication
+between that and the other side where their conduct is originated.
+'Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth righteousness is
+righteous.'
+
+Again, my text suggests conduct and not emotion.
+
+Now there is a type of Christian life which is more attractive in
+appearance than that of the hard, fossilised, orthodox believer--viz.,
+the warmly emotional and fervent Christian. But that type, all
+experience shows, has a pit dug close beside it into which it is apt to
+fall. For there is a strange connection between emotional Christianity
+and a want of straightforwardness in daily business life, and of
+self-control and government of the appetites and the senses. That has
+been sadly shown, over and again, and if we had time one could easily
+point to the reasons in human nature, and its strange contexture, why it
+should be so. Now I am not disparaging emotion--God forbid--for I
+believe that to a very large extent the peculiarity of Christian
+teaching is just this, that it does bring emotion to bear upon the hard
+grind of daily duty. But for all that, I am bound to say that this is a
+danger which, in this day, by reason of certain tendencies in our
+popular Christianity, is a very real one, and that you will find people
+gushing in religious enthusiasm, and then going away to live very
+questionable, and sometimes very mean, and sometimes even very gross and
+sensual lives. The emotion is meant to spring from the creed, and it is
+meant to be the middle term between the creed and the conduct. Why, we
+have learnt to harness electricity to our tramcars, and to make it run
+our messages, and light our homes, and that is like what we have to do
+with the emotion without which a man's Christianity will be a poor,
+scraggy thing. It is a good servant; it is a bad master. You do not show
+yourselves to be Christians because you gush. You do not show yourselves
+to be Christians because you can talk fervidly and feel deeply. Raptures
+are all very well, but what we want is the grind of daily righteousness,
+and doing little things because of the fear and the love of the Lord.
+
+May I say again, my text suggests conduct, and not verbal worship. You
+and I, in our adherence to a simpler, less ornate and aesthetic form of
+devotion than prevails in the great Episcopal churches, are by no means
+free from the danger which, in a more acute form, besets them, of
+substituting participation in external acts of worship for daily
+righteousness of life _Laborare est orare_--to work is to pray. That is
+true with explanations, commentaries, and limitations. But I wonder how
+many people there are who sing hymns which breathe aspirations and
+wishes that their whole daily life contradicts. And I wonder how many of
+us there are who seem to be joining in prayers that we never expect to
+have answered, and would be very much astonished if the answers came,
+and should not know what to do with if they did come. We live in one
+line, and worship in exactly the opposite. Brethren, creed is necessary;
+emotion is necessary; worship is necessary! But that on which these
+three all converge, and for which they are, is daily life, plain,
+practical righteousness.
+
+II. Now let me say, secondly, that being righteous is the way to do
+righteousness.
+
+One of the great characteristics of New Testament teaching of morality,
+or rather let me say of Christ's teaching of morality, is that it
+shifts, if I may so put it, the centre of gravity from acts to being,
+that instead of repeating the parrot-cry, 'Do, do, do' or 'Do not, do
+not, do not,' it says, 'Be, and the doing will take care of itself. Be;
+do not trouble so much about outward acts, look after the inward
+nature.' Character makes conduct, though, of course, conduct reacts upon
+character. 'As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,' and the way to set
+actions right is to set the heart right.
+
+Some of us are trying to purify the stream by putting in disinfectants
+half-way down, instead of going up to the source and dealing with the
+fountain. And the weakness of all the ordinary, commonplace morality of
+the world is that it puts its stress upon the deeds, and leaves
+comparatively uncared for the condition of the person, the inward self,
+from whom the deeds come. And so it is all superficial, and of small
+account.
+
+If that be so, then we are met by this experience: that when we honestly
+try to make the tree good that its fruit may be good we come full front
+up to this, that there is a streak in us, a stain, a twist--call it
+anything you like--like a black vein through a piece of Parian marble,
+or a scratch upon a mirror, which streak or twist baffles our effort to
+make ourselves righteous. I am not going, if I can help it, to
+exaggerate the facts of the case. The Christian teaching of what is
+unfortunately called total depravity is not that there is no good in
+anybody, but that there is a diffused evil in everybody which affects in
+different degrees and in different ways all a man's nature. And that is
+no mere doctrine of the New Testament, but it is a transcript from the
+experience of every one of us.
+
+What then? If I must be righteous in order that I may do righteousness,
+and if, as I have found out by experience (for the only way to know
+myself is to reflect upon what I have done)--if I have found out that I
+am not righteous, what then? You may say to me, 'Have you led me into a
+blind alley, out of which I cannot get? Here you are, insisting on an
+imperative necessity, and in the same breath saying that it is
+impossible. What is left for me?' I go on to tell you what is left.
+
+III. Union with Jesus Christ by faith makes us 'righteous even as He is
+righteous.'
+
+There is the pledge, there is the prophecy, there is the pattern; and
+there is the power to redeem the pledge, to fulfil the prophecy, to make
+the pattern copyable and copied by every one of us. Brethren, this is
+the very heart of John's teaching, that if we will, not by the mere
+assent of our intellect, but by the casting of ourselves on Jesus
+Christ, trust in Him, there comes about a union between us and Him so
+real, so deep, so vital, so energetic, that by the touch of His life we
+live, and by His righteousness breathed into us, we, too, may become
+righteous. The great vessel and the tiny pot by its side may have a
+connecting pipe, and from the great one there shall flow over into the
+little one as much as will fill it brim full. In Him we too may be
+righteous.
+
+My friend, there are men and women who are ready to set to their seals
+that that is true, and who can say, 'I have found it so. By union with
+Jesus Christ in faith, I have received new tastes, new inclinations, a
+new set to my whole life, and I have been able to overcome
+unrighteousnesses which were too many and too mighty for myself.' It is
+so; and some of us to our own consciences and consciousness are
+witnesses to it, however imperfectly. God forgive us! We may have
+manifested the renewing power of union with Christ in our daily lives.
+
+'Even as He is righteous'--the water in the great vessel and the little
+one are the same, but the vase is not the cistern. The beam comes from
+the sun, but the beam is not the sun. 'Even as' does not mean equality,
+but it does mean similarity. Christ is righteous, eternally,
+essentially, completely; we may be 'even as He is' derivatively,
+partially, and if we put our trust in Him we shall be so, and that
+growingly through our daily lives. And then, after earth is done with,
+'we know that, when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for
+we shall see Him as He is.'
+
+May we each, dear brethren, 'be found in Him, not having our own
+righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through faith in
+Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.'
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST'S MISSION THE REVELATION OF GOD'S LOVE
+
+     'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and
+      sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.'--1 John iv. 10.
+
+
+This is the second of a pair of twin verses which deal with
+substantially the same subject under two slightly different aspects. The
+thought common to both is that Christ's mission is the great revelation
+of God's love. But in the preceding verse the point on which stress is
+laid is the manifestation of that love, and in our text the point mainly
+brought out is its essential nature. In the former we read, 'In this was
+_manifested_ the love of God,' and in the present verse we read, 'Herein
+_is_ love.' In the former verse John fixes on three things as setting
+forth the greatness of that manifestation--viz., that the Christ is the
+only begotten Son, that the manifestation is for the world, and that its
+end is the bestowment of everlasting love. In my text the points which
+are fixed on are that that Love in its nature is self-kindled--'not that
+we loved God, but that He loved us'--and that it lays hold of, and casts
+out of the way that which, unremoved, would be a barrier between God and
+us--viz., our sin: 'He hath sent His Son to be the propitiation for our
+sins.'
+
+Now it is interesting to notice that these twin verses, like a double
+star which reflects the light of a central sun, draw their brightness
+from the great word of the Master, 'God so loved the world, that He gave
+His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
+perish, but have everlasting life.' Do you not hear the echo of His
+voice in the three expressions in the verse before the text--'only
+begotten' 'world' 'live'? Here is one more of the innumerable links
+which bind together in indissoluble union the Gospel and the Epistle.
+So, then, the great thought suggested by the words before us is just
+this, that in the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ we have the
+great revelation of the love of God.
+
+I. Now there are three questions that suggest themselves to me, and the
+first is this, What, then, does Christ's mission say about God's love?
+
+I do not need to dwell on the previous question whether, apart from that
+mission, there is any solid revelation of the fact that there is love in
+Heaven, or whether we are left, apart from it, to gropings and
+probabilities. I need not refer you to the ambiguous oracles of nature
+or to the equally ambiguous oracles of life. I need not, I suppose, do
+more than just remind you that even the men whose faith grasps the
+thought of the love of God most intensely, know what it is to be brought
+to a stand before some of the dreadful problems which the facts of
+humanity and the facts of nature press upon us, nor need I remind you
+how, as we see around us to-day, in the drift of our English literature
+and that of other nations, when men turn their backs upon the Cross,
+they look upon a landscape all swathed in mists, and on which darkness
+is steadily settling. The reason why the men of this generation, some
+of them very superficially, and for the sake of being 'in the swim' and
+some of them despairingly and with bleeding hearts, are turning
+themselves to a reasoned pessimism, is because they will not see what
+shines out from the Cross, that God is love.
+
+Nor need I do more than remind you, in a word, of the fact that, go
+where we will through this world, and consult all the conceptions that
+men have made to themselves of gods many and lords many, whilst we find
+the deification of power, and of vice, and of fragmentary goodnesses, of
+hopes and fears, of longings, of regrets, we find nowhere a god of whom
+the characteristic is love. And amidst that Pantheon of deities, some of
+them savage, some of them lustful, some of them embodiments of all
+vices, some of them indifferent and neutral, some of them radiant and
+fair, none reveals this secret, that the centre of the universe is a
+heart. So we have to turn away from hopes, from probability dashed with
+many a doubt, and find something that has more solid substance in it, if
+it is to be enough to bear up the man that grasps it and to yield before
+no tempests. For all that Bishop Butler says, probabilities are _not_
+the guide of life, in its deepest and noblest aspects. They may be the
+guide of practice, but for the anchorage of the soul we want no shifting
+sand-bank, but that to which we may make fast and be sure that, whatever
+shifts, it remains immovable. You can no more clothe the soul in
+'perhapses' than a man can make garments out of a spider's web. Religion
+consists of the things of which we are sure, and not of the things which
+are probable. 'Peradventure' is not the word on which a man can rest the
+weight of a crushed, or an agonising, or a sinking soul; he must have
+'Verily! verily!' and then he is at rest.
+
+How do we know what a man is? By seeing what a man does. How do we know
+what God is? By knowing what God does. So John does not argue with
+logic, either frosty or fiery, but he simply opens his mouth, and in
+calm, pellucid utterances sets forth the truths and leaves them to work.
+He says to us, 'I do not relegate you to your intuitions; I do not argue
+with you; I simply say, Look at Him; look, and see that God is love.'
+
+What, then, does the mission of Christ say to us about the love of God?
+It says, first, that it is a love independent of, and earlier than,
+ours. We love, as a rule, because we recognise in the object to which
+our heart goes out something that draws it, something that is loveable.
+But He whose name is 'I am that I am' has all the reasons of His actions
+within Himself, and just as He
+
+    'Sits on no precarious throne,
+       Nor borrows leave to be,'
+
+nor is dependent on any creature for existence, so He is His own motive,
+He is His own reason. Within that sacred circle of the Infinite Nature
+lie all the energies which bring that Infinite Nature into action; and
+like some clear fountain, more sparkling than crystal, there wells up
+for ever, from the depths of the Divine Nature, the love which is
+Himself. He loves, not because we love Him, but because He is God. The
+very sun itself, as some astronomers believe, owes its radiant
+brightness and ever-communicated warmth to the impact on, and reception
+into, it of myriads of meteors and of matter drawn from the surrounding
+system. So when the fuel fails, that fire will go out, and the sun will
+shrivel into a black ball. But this central Sun of the universe has all
+His light within Himself, and the rays that pour out from Him owe their
+being and their motion to nothing but the force of that central fire,
+from which they rush with healing on their wings.
+
+If, then, God's love is not evoked by anything in His creatures, then it
+is universal, and we do not need anxiously to question ourselves whether
+we deserve that it shall fall upon us, and no conscious unworthiness
+need ever make us falter in the least in the firmness with which we
+grasp that great central thought. The sun, inferior emblem as it is of
+that Light of all that is, pours down its beams indiscriminately on
+dunghill and on jewel, though it be true that in the one its rays breed
+corruption and in the other draw out beauty. That great love wraps us
+all, is older than our sins, and is not deflected by them. So that is
+the first thing that Christ's mission tells us about God's love.
+
+The second is--it speaks to us of a love which gives its best. John
+says, 'God _sent_ His Son,' and that word reposes, like the rest of the
+passage, on many words of Christ's--such as, for instance, when He
+speaks of Himself as 'sanctified and sent into the world,' and many
+another saying. But remember how, in the foundation passage to which I
+have already referred, and of which we have some reflection in the words
+before us, there is a tenderer expression--not merely 'sent,' but
+'gave.' Paul strengthens the word when he says, 'gave _up_ for us all.'
+It is not for us to speculate about these deep things, but I would
+remind you of what I dare say I have had occasion often to point out,
+that Paul seems to intend to suggest to us a mysterious parallel, when
+he further says, 'He that _spared_ not His own Son, but freely gave Him
+up to death for us all.' For that emphatic word 'spared' is a distinct
+allusion to, and quotation of, the story of Abraham's sacrifice of
+Isaac: 'Seeing thou hast not _withheld_ from Me thine only son.' And so,
+mysterious as it is, we may venture to say that He not only sent, but He
+gave, and not only gave, but gave up. His love, like ours, delights to
+lavish its most precious gifts on its objects.
+
+Now there arises from this consideration a thought which I only mention,
+and it is this. Christian teaching about Christ's work has often, both
+by its friends and its foes, been so presented as to lead to the
+conception that it was the work of Christ which made God love men. The
+enemies of evangelical truth are never tired of talking in that sense;
+and some of its unwise friends have given reason for the caricature. But
+the true Christian teaching is, 'God so loved ... that He gave.' The
+love is the cause of the mission, and not the mission that which evokes
+the love. So let us be sure that, not because Christ died does God love
+us sinful creatures, but that, because God loves us, Christ died for us.
+
+The third thing which the mission of Christ teaches us about the love of
+God is that it is a love which takes note of and overcomes man's sin. I
+have said, as plainly as I can, that I reject the travesty of
+Christianity which implies that it was Christ's mission which originated
+God's love to men. But a love that does not in the slightest degree care
+whether its object is good or bad--what sort of a love do you call that?
+What do you name it when a father shows it to his children? Moral
+indifference; culpable and weak and fatal. And is it anything nobler, if
+you transfer it to God, and say that it is all the same to Him whether a
+man is living the life of a hog, and forgetting all that is high and
+noble, or whether he is pressing with all his strength towards light
+and truth and goodness? Surely, surely they who, in the name of their
+reverence for the supreme love of God, cover over the fact of His
+righteousness, are mutilating and killing the very attribute that they
+are trying to exalt. A love that cares nothing for the moral character
+of its object is not love, but hate; it is not kindness, but cruelty.
+Take away the background because it is so black, and you lower the
+brilliancy of whiteness of that which stands in front of it. There is
+such a property in God as is fittingly described by that tremendous word
+'wrath.' God cannot, being what He is, treat sin as if it were no sin;
+and therefore we read, 'He sent His son to be the _propitiation_ for our
+sins.' The black dam, which we build up between ourselves and the river
+of the water of life, is to be swept away; and it is the death of Jesus
+Christ which makes it possible for the highest gift of God's love to
+pour over the ruined and partially removed barrier and to flood a man's
+soul. Brethren, no God that is worthy the name can give Himself to a
+sinful soul. No sinful soul that has not the habit, the guilt, the
+penalty of its sins swept away, is capable of receiving the life, which
+is the highest gift of the love. So our twin texts divide what I may
+call the process of redemption between them; and whilst the one says,
+'He sent His Son that we should have life through Him,' the other tells
+us of how the sins which bar the entrance of that life into our hearts,
+as our own consciences tell us they do, can be removed. There must first
+be the propitiation for our sins, and then that mighty love reaches its
+purpose and attains its end, and can give us the life of God to be the
+life of our souls. So much for my first and principle question.
+
+II. Now I have to ask, secondly, how comes it that Christ's mission says
+anything about God's love?
+
+That question is a very plain one, and I should like to press the answer
+to it very emphatically. Take any other of the great names of the
+world's history of poet, thinker, philosopher, moralist, practical
+benefactor; is it possible to apply such a thought as this to
+them--except with a hundred explanations and limitations--that they,
+however radiant, however wise, however beneficent, however fruitful
+their influence, make men sure that God loves them? The thing is
+ridiculous, unless you are using language in a very fantastic and
+artificial fashion.
+
+Christ's mission reveals God's love, because Christ is the Son of God.
+If it is true, as Jesus said, that 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
+Father,' then I can say, 'In Thy tenderness, in Thy patience, in Thy
+attracting of the publican and the harlot, in Thy sympathy with all the
+erring and the sorrowful, and, most of all, in Thy agony and passion, in
+Thy cross and death, I see the glory of God which is the love of God.'
+Brother, if you break that link, which binds the man Christ Jesus with
+the ever-living and the ever-loving God, I know not how you can draw
+from the record of His life and death a confidence, which nothing can
+shake, in the love of the Father.
+
+Then there is another point. Christ's mission speaks to us about God's
+love, if--and I was going to say _only_ if--we regard it as His mission
+to be the propitiation for our sins. Strike out the death as the
+sacrifice for the world's sin, and what you have left is a maimed
+something, which may be, and I thankfully recognise often is, very
+strengthening, very helpful, very calming, very ennobling, even to men
+who do not sympathise with the view of that work which I am now setting
+forth, but which is all that to them, very largely, because of the
+unconscious influence of the truths which they have cast away. It seems
+to me that those who, in the name of the highest paternal love of God,
+reject the thought of Christ's sacrificial death, are kicking away the
+ladder by which they have climbed, and are better than their creeds, and
+happily illogical. It is the Cross that reveals the love, and it is the
+Cross as the means of propitiation that pours the light of that blessed
+conviction into men's hearts.
+
+III. My last question is this: what does Christ's mission say about
+God's love to me?
+
+We know what it ought to say. It ought to carry, as on the crest of a
+great wave, the conviction of that divine love into our hearts, to be
+fruitful there. It ought to sweep out, as on the crest of a great wave,
+our sins and evils. It ought to do this; does it? On some of us I fear
+it produces no effect at all. Some of you, dear friends, look at that
+light with lack-lustre eyes, or, rather, with blind eyes, that are dark
+as midnight in the blaze of noonday. The voice comes from the Cross,
+sweet as that of harpers harping with their harps, and mighty as the
+voice of many waters, and you hear nothing. Some of us it slightly moves
+now and then, and there an end.
+
+Brethren, you have to turn the world-wide generality into a personal
+possession. You have to say, 'He loved _me_, and gave Himself for _me_.'
+It is of no use to believe in a universal Saviour; do you trust in your
+particular Saviour? It is of no use to have the most orthodox and clear
+conceptions of the relation between the Cross of Christ and the
+revelation to men of the love of God; have you made that revelation the
+means of bringing into your own personal life the conviction that Jesus
+Christ is _your_ Saviour, the propitiation for _your_ sins, the Giver to
+_you_ of life eternal? It is faith that does that. Note that, in the
+great foundation passage to which I have made frequent reference, there
+are two conditions put in between the beginning and the end. Some of us
+are disposed to say, 'God so loved the world that every man might have
+eternal life.' That is not what Christ said, 'God so loved the world
+that'--and here follows the first condition--'He _gave His Son_
+that'--and here follows the second--'he that _believeth on Him_ should
+not perish, but have everlasting life.' God has done what it is needful
+for Him to do. His part of the conditions has been fulfilled. Fulfil
+yours--'He that believeth on Him.' And if you can say, not He is the
+propitiation for our sin, but for _my_ sin, then you will live and move
+and have your being in a heaven of love, and will love Him back again
+with an echo and reflection of His own, and nothing shall be able to
+separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
+
+
+
+
+THE SERVANT AS HIS LORD
+
+     '... As He is, so are we in this world.'--1 John iv. 17.
+
+
+Large truths may be spoken in little words. Profundity is often supposed
+to be obscurity, but the deepest depth is clear. John, in his gospel and
+epistles, deals with the deepest realities, and with all things in their
+eternal aspects, but his vocabulary is the simplest in the New
+Testament. God and the world, life and death, love and hate, light and
+darkness, these are the favourite words round which his thoughts
+gather. Here are nine little monosyllables. What can be simpler than,
+'As He is, so are we in this world?' And what can go beyond the thought
+that lies in it, that a Christian is a living likeness of Christ?
+
+But the connection of my text is quite as striking as its substance.
+John has been dwelling upon his favourite thought that to abide in love
+is to abide in God, and God in us. And then he goes on to say that
+'Herein'--that is, in such mutual abiding in love--'is love made perfect
+with us'; and the perfection of that love, which is thus communion, is
+in order that, at the great solemn day of future trial, men may lift up
+their faces and meet His glance--which is _not_ strange to them, nor met
+for the first time--with open-hearted and open-countenanced 'boldness.'
+But 'love' and 'abiding' are the source of confidence in the Day of
+Judgment, because love and abiding are the source of assimilation to
+Christ's life. We have boldness, 'because as He is, so are we in this
+world'; and we are as He is, because we love and abide in Him. So here
+are three thoughts, the assimilation of the Christian man to Christ; the
+frank confidence which it begets; and the process by which it is
+secured.
+
+I. A Christian is Christ's living likeness.
+
+That is a startling thing to say, and all the more startling if you
+notice that John does not say 'As He _was_,' in this earthly life of
+humiliation and filial obedience, but 'as He _is_,' in His heavenly life
+and reign and glory. That might well repel us from all thought of
+possible resemblance, but the light, however brilliant it may be, is not
+blinding, and it is the Christ as He _is_, and not only--true as that
+is--the Christ as He _was_, who is the original of which Christian men
+are copies.
+
+Now _there_ is the difference between the teaching of such classes of
+religionists as represent Christ's humanity as all in all, and preach to
+us that He, in His earthly life is the pattern to whom we are to seek to
+conform our lives, and the true evangelical teaching. That dead Man is
+living, and His present life has in it elements which we can grasp, and
+to which every Christian life is to be conformed.
+
+Is there anything, then, within the glory to which I, in my poor,
+struggling, hampered, imperfect life here on earth, can feel that my
+character is being shaped? Yes, surely there is. I have no doubt that,
+in the words of my text, the Apostle is remembering the solemn ones of
+our Lord's high-priestly prayer as recorded in the seventeenth chapter
+of his gospel, where the same antithesis of our being in the world, and
+His not being there, recurs; and where the analogy and resemblance are
+distinctly stated--'I in Thee, and Thou in Me, that they also may be in
+us.'
+
+So, then, when we stand with our letter-writer in his Patmos island, and
+see the countenance 'as the sun shining in his strength, and the eyes as
+a flame of fire,' and the many crowns upon the head, and the many stars
+in the hand, though we may feel as if all resemblance was at an end, and
+aspiration after likeness could only fall at His feet and cover its
+face, yet there is within the glory something which may be repeated and
+reproduced in our lives, and that is, the indissoluble union of a Son
+with a Father, in all loving obedience, in all perfect harmony, in all
+mutual affection and outgoing of heart and thoughts. This is the centre
+of the life, alike of the Christ when He is glorified, and of the Christ
+when He was upon earth. So the very secret heart of the mysterious
+being of the Son is to be, and necessarily is, repeated in all those who
+in Him have received the adoption of sons.
+
+Or to put the whole thing into plainer words, it is the religious and
+the moral aspects of Christ's being, and not any one particular detail
+thereof; and these, as they live and reign on the Throne, just as truly
+as these, as they suffered and wept upon earth--it is these to which it
+is our destiny to be conformed. We are like Him, if we are His, in
+this,--that we are joined to God, that we hold fellowship with Him, that
+our lives are all permeated with the divine, that we are saturated with
+the presence of God, that we have submitted ourselves to Him and to His
+will, that 'not my will, but Thine, be done' is the very inmost meaning
+of our hearts and our lives. And thus 'we,' even here, 'bear the image
+of the heavenly, as we have borne the images of the earthly.' Now I am
+not going to dwell upon details; all these can be filled in by each of
+us for himself. The centre-point which I insist upon is this--the filial
+union with God, the filial submission to Him, and the consequent purity
+as Christ is pure, righteousness as Christ is righteous, and walking
+even as Christ walked, for ever in the light.
+
+But then there is another point that I desire to refer to. I have put an
+emphasis upon the 'is' instead of the 'was,' as it applies to Jesus
+Christ. I would further put an emphasis upon the 'are,' as it applies to
+us--'So _are_ we.'
+
+John is not exhorting, he is affirming. He is not saying what Christian
+men ought to strive to be, but he is saying what all Christian men, by
+virtue of their Christian character, _are_. Or, to put it into other
+words, likeness to the Master is certain. It is inevitably involved in
+the relation which a Christian man bears to the Lord. There may be
+degrees in the likeness, there may be differences of skill and
+earnestness in the artist. We have to labour like a portrait painter,
+slowly and tentatively approaching to the complete resemblance. It is 'a
+life-long task ere the lump be leavened.' This likeness does not reach
+its completeness by a leap. It is not struck, as the image of a king is,
+upon the blank metal disc, by one stroke, but it is wrought out by long,
+laborious, and, as I said, approximating and tentative touches. My text
+suggests that to us by its addition, 'So are we, _in this world_.' The
+'world'--or, to use modern phraseology, 'the environment'--conditions
+the resemblance. As far as it is possible for a thing encompassed with
+dust and ashes to resemble the radiant sun in the heavens, so far is the
+resemblance carried here. Some measure of it, and a growing measure, is
+inseparable from the reality of a Christian life.
+
+Now, you Christian people, does that plain statement touch you anywhere?
+'So _are_ we.' Well! you would be quite easy if John had said: 'So _may_
+we be; so _should_ we be; so _shall_ we be.' But what about the 'so
+_are_ we'? What a ghastly contradiction the lives of multitudes of
+professing Christians are to that plain statement! 'Like Jesus
+Christ'--would anybody say that about anything in me? 'So are we'--no
+words of mine, dear brethren, can make the statement more searching,
+more impressive; but, I pray you, lay this to heart: 'If any man have
+not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.' You may take sacraments
+and profess Christianity, or, as we Nonconformists have it, 'join
+churches,' and do all manner of outward work for ever and a day; but if
+you have not the likeness of Christ, at least in germ, and growing to
+something more than a germ, in your characters, you had better revise
+your position, and ask whether, after all, you have not been walking in
+a vain show, and fancied yourselves the servants of Christ, while you
+bear the image of Christ's enemy.
+
+A very tiny gully on a hillside, made by showers of rain, may fall into
+the same slopes, and has been created by the very same forces, working
+according to the same laws, as have scooped out valleys miles broad,
+bordered by mountains thousands of feet high. And in my little life,
+poor as it is, limited as it is, environed as it is by the world, and
+therefore often hampered and stained, as well as helped and brightened,
+by its environment, there may be, and there will be, in some degree, if
+I am a Christian man, the very same power at work by which Jesus Christ,
+the Son of the Father shines as the sun on the throne of the universe.
+
+But then, notice further, how that limitation to which I have referred
+in this world carries with it another message. _There_ is Christ in the
+heavens, veiled and unseen. Here are you on earth, his representative.
+There is a rage at present for putting pictures into all books, and folk
+will scarcely read unless they get illustrated literature. The world has
+for its illustrations of the gospel the lives of us Christian people. In
+the book there are principles and facts, and readers should be able to
+turn the page and see all pictured in us.
+
+That is what you are set to do in this world. 'As the Father sent Me,
+even so send I you.' 'As He is, so are we in this world.' It may be our
+antagonist, but it is our sphere, and its presence is necessary to evoke
+our characters. Christ has entrusted His reputation, His honour, to us,
+and many a man that never cares to look at _Him_ as He is revealed in
+Scripture, would be wooed and won to look at Him and love Him, if we
+Christian people were more true to our vocation, and bore more
+conspicuously on our faces and in our characters the image of the
+heavenly.
+
+II. Look for a moment at the second thought that is here: such a
+likeness to Jesus Christ is the only thing that will enable a man to
+lift up his head in the Day of Judgment.
+
+'We have boldness,' says John, _because_ 'as He is, so are we.' Now that
+is a very strong statement of a truth that popular, evangelical theology
+has far too much obscured. People talk about being, at the last,
+'accepted in the beloved.' God be thanked, it is true. A sweet old hymn
+that a great many of us learned when we were children, though it is not
+so well known in these days, says:--
+
+    'Bold shall I stand in that great day,
+     For who aught to my charge shall lay,
+     While through Thy blood absolved I am
+     From sin's tremendous curse and shame?'
+
+I believe that, and I try to preach it. But do not let us forget the
+other side. My text is in full accordance with the principles of our
+Lord's own teaching; and who knows the principles of His own words so
+well as the judge, who tells us, in His pictures of that great day, that
+the question put to every man will be, not what you _believe_, but what
+did you _do_, and what _are_ you?
+
+But this truth of my text has been not only wounded in the house of the
+friends of Christianity, but it has been overlooked by one of the very
+frequent objections that we hear made to evangelical teaching, that,
+according to it, a man is judged according to his belief and not
+according to his deeds. A man is judged according to his--not
+_belief_--but according to his _faith_. But he is judged according also
+to--not his _work_--but according to his _character_.
+
+And I wish, dear friends, to lay this upon your hearts, because many of
+us are too apt to forget it, that whilst unquestionably the beginning of
+salvation, and the condition of forgiveness here, and of acceptance
+hereafter, are laid in trust in Jesus Christ, that trust is sure to work
+out a character which is in conformity with His requirements and moulded
+after the likeness of Himself. 'The judgment of God is according to
+truth,' and what a man is determines where a man shall be, and what he
+shall receive through all eternity. Remember Christ's own teaching.
+Remember the teaching of that other apostle than John, according to
+which the 'wood, hay, stubble,' built by a man upon the foundation shall
+be burned up, and the builder himself be saved, yet so as by fire. And
+lay this to heart, that it is only when faith works in us, through love
+and communion, characters like Jesus Christ's, that we shall be able to
+stand--though even then we shall have to trust to divine and infinite
+mercy, and to the sprinkling of His blood--before the Throne of God. Lay
+up in store for yourselves a good foundation unto eternal life. And take
+this as the preaching of my text; character, and character alone, will
+stand the judgment of that great day.
+
+There is no real antagonism between such truths and the widest preaching
+of salvation by faith. It is the same man who, in his gospel, says, as
+from the lips of the Lord Himself, 'He that believeth is not judged,'
+and in his letter says, 'We may have boldness in that day, because, as
+He is, so are we in this world.'
+
+III. One word about the last point; the process by which this likeness
+is secured.
+
+That is contained, as I tried to show in my introductory remarks, in the
+earlier part of the verse. Our love is made perfect by dwelling in God,
+and God in us; in order that we may be thus conformed to Christ's
+likeness, and so have boldness in that great day. To be like Jesus
+Christ, what is needed is that we love Him, and that we keep in touch
+with Him. What is it to 'abide' in Him?--to direct the continual flow of
+mind and love and will and practical obedience to Him, to bear Him ever
+in the secret place of my heart whilst my hands are occupied with daily
+business, and my feet are running the sometimes rough race that is set
+before me. Think of Him ever, love Him ever. Let His name be like a
+perfume breathed through the whole atmosphere of your lives. Keep your
+wills in the attitude of submission, of acceptance, of indecision when
+necessary, and of absolute dependence upon Him. Let your outward acts be
+such as shall not bring a film of separation between Him and you. When
+thus our whole being is steeped and drenched with Christ, then it cannot
+but be that we shall be like Him. Even 'clouds themselves as suns
+appear, when the sun pierces them with light.' 'Abide in Me, and I in
+you.' You cannot make yourselves like Christ, but you can fasten
+yourselves to Christ, and He will give you power which shall make you
+like Him.
+
+But, remember, such abiding is no idle waiting, no passive confidence.
+It is full of energy, full of suppression, when necessary, of what is
+contrary to your truest self, and full of strenuous cultivation of that
+which is in accord with the will of the Father, and with the likeness of
+the 'first-born among many brethren.'
+
+Dear friends, lie in the light and you will become light. Abide in
+Christ, and you will get like Christ; and, being like Him, you will be
+able to lift up your heads, and rejoice when you front Him on the
+Throne, and you are at the bar. Then, when you are no more in the world,
+the likeness will be perfected, because the communion is complete. 'We
+shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
+
+
+
+
+LOVE AND FEAR
+
+     'There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear:
+      because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in
+      love.'--1 John iv. 18.
+
+
+John has been speaking of boldness, and that naturally suggests its
+opposite--fear. He has been saying that perfect love produces courage in
+the day of judgment, because it produces likeness to Christ, who is the
+Judge. In my text he explains and enlarges that statement. For there is
+another way in which love produces boldness, and that is by its casting
+out fear. These two are mutually exclusive. The entrance of the one is
+for the other a notice to quit. We cannot both love and fear the same
+person or thing, and where love comes in, the darker form slips out at
+the door; and where Love comes in, it brings hand in hand with itself
+Courage with her radiant face. But boldness is the companion of love,
+only when love is perfect. For, inconsistent as the two emotions are,
+love, in its earlier stages and lower degrees, is often perturbed and
+dashed by apprehension and dread.
+
+Now John is speaking about the two emotions in themselves, irrespective,
+so far as his language goes, of the objects to which they are directed.
+What he is saying is true about love and fear, whatever or whosoever
+may be loved or dreaded. But the context suggests the application in his
+mind, for it is 'boldness before him' about which he has been speaking;
+and so it is love and fear directed towards God which are meant in my
+text. The experience of hosts of professing Christians is only too
+forcible a comment upon the possibility of a partial Love lodging in the
+heart side by side with a fellow-lodger, Fear, whom it ought to have
+expelled. So there are three things here that I wish to notice--the
+empire of fear, the mission of fear, and the expulsion of fear.
+
+I. The empire of fear.
+
+Fear is a shrinking apprehension of evil as befalling us, from the
+person or thing which we dread. My text brings us face to face with that
+solemn thought that there are conditions of human nature, in which the
+God who ought to be our dearest joy and most ardent desire becomes our
+ghastliest dread. The root of such an unnatural perversion of all that a
+creature ought to feel towards its loving Creator lies in the simple
+consciousness of discordance between God and man, which is the shadow
+cast over the heart by the fact of sin. God is righteous; God
+righteously administers His universe. God enters into relations of
+approval or disapproval with His responsible creature. Therefore there
+lies, dormant for the most part, but present in every heart, and active
+in the measure in which that heart is informed as to itself, the
+slumbering, cold dread that between it and God things are _not_ as they
+ought to be.
+
+I believe, for my part, that such a dumb, dim consciousness of discord
+attaches to all men, though it is often smothered, often ignored, and
+often denied. But there it is; the snake hibernates, but it is coiled in
+the heart all the same; and warmth will awake it. Then it lifts its
+crested head, and shoots out its forked tongue, and venom passes into
+the veins. A dread of God is the ghastliest thing in the world, the most
+unnatural, but universal, unless expelled by perfect love.
+
+Arising from that discomforting consciousness of discord there come,
+likewise, other forms and objects of dread. For if I am out of harmony
+with Him, what will be my fate in the midst of a universe administered
+by Him, and in which all are His servants? Oh! I sometimes wonder how it
+is that godless men front the facts of human life and do not go mad. For
+here are we, naked, feeble, alone, plunged into a whirlpool, from the
+awful vortices of which we cannot extricate ourselves. There foam and
+swirl all manner of evils, some of them certain, some of them probable,
+any of them possible, since we are at discord with Him who wields all
+the forces of the universe, and wields them all with a righteous hand.
+'The stars in their courses fight against' the man that does not fight
+for God. Whilst all things serve the soul that serve Him, all are
+embattled against the man that is against, or not for, God and His will.
+
+Then there arises up another object of dread, which, in like manner,
+derives all its power to terrify and to hurt from the fact of our
+discordance with God; and that is 'the shadow feared of man,' that
+stands shrouded by the path, and waits for each of us.
+
+God; God's universe; God's messenger, Death--these are facts with which
+we stand in relation, and if our relations with Him are out of gear,
+then He and all of these are legitimate objects of dread to us.
+
+But now there is something else that casts out fear than perfect love,
+and that is--perfect levity. For it is the explanation of the fact that
+so many of us know nothing of this fear of which I speak, and fancy that
+I am exaggerating, or putting forward false views. There is a type of
+man, and I have no doubt there are some of its representatives among my
+hearers, who are below both fear and love as directed towards God; for
+they never think about Him, or trouble their heads concerning either Him
+or their relations to Him or anything that flows therefrom. It is a
+strange faculty that we all have, of forgetting unwelcome thoughts and
+shutting our eyes to the things that we do not want to see, like Nelson
+when he puts the telescope to his blind eye at Copenhagen, because he
+would not obey the signal of recall. But surely it is an ignoble thing
+that men should ignore or shuffle out of sight with inconsiderateness
+the real facts of their condition, like boys whistling in a churchyard
+to keep their spirits up, and saying, 'Who's afraid?' just because they
+are so very much afraid. Ah, dear friends, do not rest until you face
+the facts, and having faced them, have found the way to reverse them!
+Surely, surely it is not worthy of men to turn away from anything so
+certain as that between a sin-loving man and God there must exist such a
+relation as will bring evil and sorrow to that man, as surely as God is
+and he is. I beseech you, take to heart these things, and do not turn
+away from them with a shake of your shoulders, and say, 'He is preaching
+the narrow, old-fashioned doctrine of a religion of fear.' No! I am not.
+But I am preaching this plain fact, that a man who is in discord with
+God has reason to be afraid, and I come to you with the old exhortation
+of the prophet, 'Be troubled, ye careless ones.' For there is nothing
+more ignoble or irrational than security which is only made possible by
+covering over unwelcome facts. 'Be troubled'; and let the trouble lead
+you to the Refuge.
+
+II. That brings me to the second point--viz., the mission of fear.
+
+John uses a rare word in my text when he says 'fear hath torment.'
+'Torment' does not convey the whole idea of the word. It means
+suffering, but suffering for a purpose; suffering which is correction;
+suffering which is disciplinary; suffering which is intended to lead to
+something beyond itself. Fear, the apprehension of personal evil, has
+the same function in the moral world as pain has in the physical. It is
+a symptom of disease, and is intended to bid us look for the remedy and
+the Physician. What is an alarm bell for but to rouse the sleepers, and
+to hurry them to the refuge? And so this wholesome, manly dread of the
+certain issue of discord with God is meant to do for us what the angels
+did for Lot--to lay a mercifully violent hand on the shoulder of the
+sleeper, and shake him into aroused wakefulness, and hasten him out of
+Sodom, before the fire bursts through the ground, and is met by the fire
+from above. The intention of fear is to lead to that which shall
+annihilate it by taking away its cause.
+
+There is nothing more ridiculous, nothing more likely to destroy a man,
+than the indulgence in an idle fear which does nothing to prevent its
+own fulfilment. Horses in a burning stable are so paralysed by dread
+that they cannot stir, and get burnt to death. And for a man to be
+afraid--as every one ought to be who is conscious of unforgiven sin--for
+a man to be afraid and there an end, is absolute insanity. I fear; then
+what do I do? Nothing. That is true about hosts of us.
+
+What ought I to do? Let the dread direct me to its source, my own
+sinfulness. Let the discovery of my own sinfulness direct me to its
+remedy, the righteousness and the Cross of Jesus Christ. He, and He
+alone, can deal with the disturbing element in my relation to God. He
+can 'deliver me from my enemies, for they are too strong for me.' It is
+Christ and His work, Christ and His sacrifice, Christ and His indwelling
+Spirit that will grapple with and overcome sin and all its consequences,
+in any man and in every man; taking away its penalty, lightening the
+heart of the burden of its guilt, delivering from its love and
+dominion--all three of which things are the barbs of the arrows with
+which fear riddles heart and conscience. So my fear should proclaim to
+me the merciful 'Name that is above every name,' and drive me as well as
+draw me to Christ, the Conqueror of sin, and the Antagonist of all
+dread.
+
+Brethren, I said I was not preaching the religion of Fear. But I think
+we shall scarcely understand the religion of Love unless we recognise
+that dread is a legitimate part of an unforgiven man's attitude towards
+God. My fear should be to me like the misshapen guide that may lead me
+to the fortress where I shall be safe. Oh, do not tamper with the
+wholesome sense of dread! Do not let it lie, generally sleeping, and now
+and then waking in your hearts, and bringing about nothing. Sailors that
+crash on with all sails set--stunsails and all--whilst the barometer is
+rapidly falling, and boding clouds are on the horizon, and the line of
+the approaching gale is ruffling the sea yonder, have themselves to
+blame if they founder. Look to the falling barometer, and make ready for
+the coming storm, and remember that the mission of fear is to lead you
+to the Christ who will take it away.
+
+III. Lastly, the expulsion of fear.
+
+My text points out the natural antagonism, and mutual exclusiveness, of
+these two emotions. If I go to Jesus Christ as a sinful man, and get His
+love bestowed upon me, then, as the next verse to my text says, my love
+springs in response to His to me, and in the measure in which that love
+rises in my heart will it frustrate its antagonistic dread.
+
+As I said, you cannot love and fear the same person, unless the love is
+of a very rudimentary and imperfect character. But just as when you pour
+pure water into a bladder, the poisonous gases that it may have
+contained will be driven out before it, so when love comes in, dread
+goes out. The river, turned into the foul Augean stables of the heart,
+will sweep out all the filth and leave everything clean. The black,
+greasy smoke-wreath, touched by the fire of Christ's love, will flash
+out into ruddy flames, like that which has kindled them; and Christ's
+love will kindle in your hearts, if you accept it and apprehend it
+aright, a love which shall burn up and turn into fuel for itself the now
+useless dread.
+
+But, brethren, remember that it is '_perfect_ love' which 'casts out
+fear.'
+
+Inconsistent as the two emotions are in themselves, in practice, they
+may be united, by reason of the imperfection of the nobler. And in the
+Christian life they are united with terrible frequency. There are many
+professing Christian people who live all their days with a burden of
+shivering dread upon their shoulders, and an icy cold fear in their
+hearts, just because they have not got close enough to Jesus Christ, nor
+kept their hearts with sufficient steadfastness under the quickening
+influences of His love, to have shaken off their dread as a sick man's
+distempered fancies. A little love has not mass enough in it to drive
+out thick, clustering fears. There are hundreds of professing Christians
+who know very little indeed of that joyous love of God which swallows up
+and makes impossible all dread, who, because they have not a loving
+present consciousness of a loving Father's loving will, tremble when
+they front in imagination, and still more when they meet in reality, the
+evils that must come, and who cannot face the thought of death with
+anything but shrinking apprehension. There is far too much of the old
+leaven of selfish dread left in the experiences of many Christians. 'I
+feared thee, because thou wert an austere man, and so, because I was
+afraid, I went and hid my talent, and did nothing for thee' is a
+transcript of the experience of far too many of us. The one way to get
+deliverance is to go to Jesus Christ and keep close by Him.
+
+And my last word to you is, see that you resort only to the sane, sound
+way of getting rid of the wholesome, rational dread of which I have been
+speaking. You can ignore it; and buy immunity at the price of leaving in
+full operation the _causes_ of your dread--and that is stupid. There is
+only one wise thing to do, and that is, to make sure work of getting rid
+of the occasion of dread, which is the fact of sin. Take all your sin to
+Jesus Christ; He will--and He only can--deal with it. He will lay His
+hand on you, as He did of old, with the characteristic word that was so
+often upon His lips, and which He alone is competent to speak in its
+deepest meaning. 'Fear not, it is I,' and He will give you the courage
+that He commands.
+
+'God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love,
+and of a sound mind.' 'Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again
+to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry
+Abba, Father,' and cling to Him, as a child who knows his father's heart
+too well to be afraid of anything in his father, or of anything that his
+father's hand can send.
+
+
+
+
+THE RAY AND THE REFLECTION
+
+     'We love Him, because He first loved us.'--1 John iv. 19.
+
+
+Very simple words! but they go down into the depths of God, lifting
+burdens off the heart of humanity, turning duty into delight, and
+changing the aspect of all things. He who knows that God loves him needs
+little more for blessedness; he who loves God back again offers more
+than all burnt offering and sacrifices. But it is to be observed that
+the correct reading of my text, as you will find in the Revised Version,
+omits 'Him' in the first clause, and simply says 'we love,' without
+specifying the object. That is to say, for the moment John's thought is
+fixed rather on the inward transformation effected, from self-regard to
+love--than on considering the object on which the love is expended. When
+the heart is melted, the streams flow wherever there is a channel. The
+river, as he goes on to show us, parts into two heads, and love to God
+and love to man are, in their essence and root-principle, one thing.
+
+So my text is the summary of all revelation about God, the ultimate word
+about all our relations to Him, and the all-inclusive directory as to
+our conduct to one another. To know that God loves, and to love
+again--there is a little pocket encyclopaedia in two volumes, which
+contains the smelted-down essence of all theology and of all morality.
+Let us look at these three points.
+
+I. The ultimate word about God.
+
+'He first loved us.' Properly and strictly speaking, that 'first' only
+declares the priority of the divine love towards us over ours towards
+Him. But we may fairly give it a wider meaning, and say--first of all,
+ere Creation and Time, away back in the abysmal depths of an everlasting
+and changeless heart, changeless in the sense that its love was eternal,
+but not changeless in the sense that love could have no place within
+it--first of all things was God's love; last to be discovered because
+most ancient of all. The foundation is disclosed last when you come to
+dig, and the essence is grasped last in the process of analysis.
+
+So one of the old psalms, with wondrous depth of truth, traces up
+everything to this, 'For His mercy endureth for ever.' Therefore, there
+was time; therefore, there were creatures--'He made great lights, for
+His mercy endureth for ever.' Therefore, there were judgments--'He slew
+famous kings ... for His mercy endureth for ever.' And so we may pass
+through all the works of the divine energy, and say, 'He first loved
+us.'
+
+It is no accident that there are but foregleams of this great thought
+brightening the words and the thoughts of psalmist and prophet, saint
+and sage, from the beginning onwards, while the articulate utterance of
+the simple sentence was first heard from the lips of Him who declared
+the Father, and stands in that part of the Book which, both in its
+position there, and in its date of composition is the last of the
+Apostolic utterances. 'God is love';--that is in one aspect the
+foundation of His being, and in another aspect the shining ruby set on
+the very sky-piercing summit of the completed process of the revelation
+of that Being to man. 'He first loved us'; and thence, from that centre
+and germinal point, streams out the whole train of consequences in the
+divine activity, and in the divine self-revelation.
+
+I need not ask you to contrast with this infinitely simple and
+infinitely deep utterance all other thoughts of a divine Being--the cold
+abstractions of Theism, the dim dreads of popular apprehension, the
+vague utterances of any mythology, the clouds that men's thoughts have
+covered over the face of this great truth--and then, to set by the side
+of all these groping, these peradventures, these fears, these narrow,
+unworthy ideas, the clear simplicity, the infinite depth of 'He first
+loved us.'
+
+But I may ask you to consider, but for a moment, the relation which all
+the other perfection of the divine nature have to this central and
+foundation one. There are all those pompous names, 'Omnipresence' and
+'Omniscience' and the like, which are but the negations of the
+limitations of humanity or of finite creatures. There are the more
+spiritual and moral thoughts of Wisdom and Righteousness and the like.
+These are but the fringes of the glory: I was going to venture to say
+that the divinest thing in God is love. There is the central blaze; the
+rest is but the brilliant periphery that encloses it. And that infinite
+love stands to all these other attributes in the relation of being their
+master and motive spring. They are Love's instrument, and in the divine
+nature Love is Lord of all. They give it majesty; it gives them
+tenderness. We may reverently say, in regard to the divine nature, what
+the Apostle says about our humanity, that love is the 'bond of
+perfectness'--the girdle which, braced round all the garments, keeps
+them in their place. For round these infinite, innumerable, unnameable,
+and named divine perfections, is that which brings them all into
+symmetry and keeps them all in harmonious action--Love. He has wisdom,
+and power, and eternal being, but He is Love.
+
+But do not let us forget that whilst thus my text proclaims the ultimate
+truth, these other attributes, as they are called, are all smelted down,
+as it were, into, and present in, the love which is their crown. The
+same Apostle, who has thus the honour of ringing out to the world the
+good news that God is Love, declares that 'this is the message' which he
+has to tell, that 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' So
+the light of righteousness, as well as the lambent flame of love, burn
+together on that central fire of the universe. We must not so conceive
+of the love of God, as to darken the radiance of His righteousness, or
+to obscure the brilliancy of that pure light which tolerates no
+admixture of darkness.
+
+May I venture a step further, and ask whether we are not warranted in
+believing that in that which we call the love of God there do abide the
+same elements as characterise the thing that bears the same name in our
+human experience? The spectrum has told us that the constituents of the
+mighty sun in the heavens are the same as the constituents of this
+little darkened earth. And there are the same lines in the divine
+spectrum that there are in ours. So if we can venture to say of Him, He
+is Love, do not let us shrink from saying that then, like us, He
+delights in the companionship of His beloved; that, like us, He rejoices
+in giving Himself to His beloved; that, like us, but infinitely, He
+desires the good of His beloved; and that, like us, He seeks only for
+the requital of an answering love. All these things, the joy of the Lord
+in man, the yielding of the Lord to man, the beneficent desire of the
+Lord for the good of man, and the hunger of the Lord for the response of
+love from man--all these things are affirmed when we affirm that God is
+Love.
+
+Our Apostle would concur heartily in the great text which was the theme
+of a recent sermon. Paul said, 'God establishes His love towards us, in
+that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' John says, 'Herein
+is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son
+to be the propitiation for our sins.'
+
+So the Cross of Christ is the one demonstration that God loved us.
+Looking to it we can say, with a great modern teacher:--
+
+    'So the All-great were the All-loving too,
+     So through the thunder comes a human voice,
+     Saying "Oh! heart I made; a heart beats here,
+     Face, My hands fashioned, see it in Myself;
+     Thou hast no power, nor mayest conceive of Mine;
+     But love I gave thee, with Myself to love,
+     And thou must love Me, who have died for thee."'
+
+II. Here we have the ultimate word as to our religion.
+
+'We love Him, because He first loved us.' There is a bridge wanted
+between these two, and the bridge is supplied abundantly in this letter,
+in entire harmony with the teaching of the rest of the New Testament.
+Much has been said, and profitably said, with reference to the
+modification of the general type of Christian teaching in the writings
+respectively of Paul, Peter, James, and John. I thankfully recognise the
+diversities. They are not divergencies; they are perfectly
+complementary, and may all be made to harmonise. This Apostle of love
+has also declared to us how it comes that the love which burns at the
+centre of things, where there is a heart, kindles a responding love away
+out on the circumference of things, where there are men with hearts; and
+the bridge is--'We have known and believed the love that God hath to
+us.' So says John. And Paul, the Apostle of faith, who sometimes seems
+as if his only conception of the link of union between God and man was,
+on the part of man, faith, responds when he speaks of a faith which
+worketh, comes to energetic operation, through the love which it has
+kindled.
+
+So we come to this, that a simple trust in the love of God, as
+manifested in Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the only thing which will so
+deal with man's natural self-regard and desire to make himself his own
+object and centre, as to substitute for that the victorious love to God.
+You cannot love God, unless you believe that He loves you. You will
+never be absolutely sure of that, unless you have learned it from the
+Cross of Christ. You will not respond with the love that He desires, but
+there will be a film between your ice and the fire that could melt it,
+until that is swept away by the simple act of confidence in God
+manifested to you in Jesus Christ. This is Christianity; this, nothing
+less, is religion--to love God, because I believe that in Jesus Christ
+God has loved me.
+
+And that is the only thing that He desires or accepts. The Religion of
+Fear; what is it? 'Thou wert an austere man ... and I was afraid.' Yes!
+and what did you do when you were afraid? 'I hid my talent in the
+ground,' and was utterly idle. Here rise, on either side of the valley,
+two mountains--Ebal and Gerazim. From the one were thundered the curses,
+from the other broke the benediction of the blessings; the one is
+barren, the other is verdant--'which thing is an allegory.' The Religion
+of Fear does nothing, the Religion of Love does all. The Religion of
+Self-interest is narrow, poor, mostly inoperative of any lofty
+enthusiasm or high nobleness of character. The Religion of Duty; 'I
+ought to worship, I am bidden to do this, that, or the other thing,
+which I do not a bit like to do. I am forbidden to do this, that, and
+the other thing which I should very much like to do, if I durst'--that
+religion is the religion of a slave; and there are hosts of us that know
+nothing better. And so our Christianity is a feeble and an uncomfortable
+thing; and there are little joy, and little subjugation of the will, and
+little leaping up of the heart in glad obedience in it. I was talking to
+a good, aged man, not long ago, whose religion was of a very gloomy
+type. He said to me, 'As to love, I know next to nothing about it.' Ah!
+brethren, I am afraid that is true about a good many of us who call
+ourselves Christians.
+
+Then let me say, too, that if we love Him, it will be the motive power
+and spring of all manner of obediences and glad services. Love is the
+mother-tincture, so to speak, which you can colour, and to which you can
+add in various ways, and produce variously tinted and tasted and
+perfumed commixtures. Love lies at the foundation of all Christian
+goodness. It will lead to the subjugation of the will; and that is the
+thing that is most of all needed to make a man righteous and pure. So
+St. Augustine's paradox, rightly understood, is a magnificent truth,
+'Love! and do what you will.' For then you will be sure to will what God
+wills, and you ought.
+
+If this be the summing-up of all religion, a practical conclusion
+follows. When we feel ourselves defective in the glow and operative
+driving power of love to God, what is the right thing to do? When a man
+is cold, he will not warm himself by putting a clinical thermometer
+into his mouth, and taking his temperature, will he? Let him go into the
+sunshine and he will be warmed up. You can pound ice in a mortar, and
+except for the little heat generated by the impact of the pestle, it
+will keep ice still. But float the iceberg south into the tropics, and
+what has become of it? It has all run down into sweet, warm water, and
+mingled with the warm ocean that has dissolved it. So do not think about
+yourselves and your own loveless hearts so much, but think about God,
+and the infinite welling up of love in His heart to you, a great deal
+more. 'We love Him, because He first loved us'; therefore, to love Him
+more, we must feel more that He does love us.
+
+III. Lastly, here is the ultimate word about our conduct to men.
+
+I said that John, by leaving out any specification of the object of
+love, as well as by the verses that immediately follow, shows that he
+regards the emotion as one, though its direction is two-fold. That just
+comes to the plain truth, that the only victorious antagonist to the
+self-regarding temperament of average men, and the only power which will
+change philanthropy from a sentiment into a self-denying and active
+principle of conduct, is to be found in the belief of the love of God in
+Jesus Christ, and in answering love to Him.
+
+That is a lesson for many sorts of people to-day. What they call
+altruism is no discovery of Christianity, but its practice is. I freely
+admit that there is much honest and self-sacrificing beneficence and
+benevolence which are not connected, in the men who practice them, with
+faith in Jesus Christ. But I question very much whether these would have
+existed if the story of the Cross had been unknown. And sure I am that
+the history of non-Christian attempts to promote the brotherhood of man,
+and to diffuse a wide and operative love of mankind, teaches us, on the
+one side, that the emotion is not strong enough to last, and to work,
+unless it is based on God's love in Jesus Christ. And the history of
+Christianity, on the other side, though with many defects and things to
+be ashamed of, teaches us, conversely, that wherever there is a genuine
+love of God, its exterior form, so to say, the outside of it which is
+presented to the world, will be true love to man.
+
+Christian people, lay this to heart; you are to be mirrors of the love
+to which you turn for all blessedness and peace. It is of no use to say,
+'My religion is the love of God' unless the love of God is manifested in
+the love of man. If you love God, you will love those that God loves,
+those for whom Christ died, those who are just like what _you_ were when
+you learned that God loved you. The service of God is the service of
+man.
+
+One last word, 'We love Him, because He first loved us.' Do you? Or is
+it rather true of you: 'I do not love God, though He has loved me'? I
+saw not long since, up on the flank of a mountain, an obstinate patch of
+snow, that had fronted, in unmelted cold, months of the summer sun.
+There are some of us who lift a broad shield of thick-ribbed ice between
+ourselves and the radiance of the warm heart of God. Oh! brother; do not
+shut that love out of your heart; for if you do, you shut out peace and
+goodness, and shut in all manner of poisonous creatures and doleful
+shapes, whose companionship will be misery and death.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+List of corrections and amendments made:
+
+Ephesians:
+
+   Page
+    36: added closing quote after "the event of our inheritance"
+        (line 3)
+   102: "gentle words _ot_" to "_to_"
+   154: "it" added in "what it is to hear"
+   263: [Preached on Whitsunday] was a footnote.
+   286: (R.V.) to (R.V.). for consistency with other references.
+   286: "please _to_ understand" to "_do"
+   287: "we _shoud_ be entitled" to "should"
+   391: added -- and changed Ephes. to Eph. for consistency with
+        other headings
+   391: added colon after "Mark its simplicity" (for grammar, and
+        there was a large space in the book)
+
+Peter and John:
+
+     8: "_ordisaster_" to "_or disaster_"
+    28: added close quote after "that which is another's"
+    34: added close quote after "My heavenly Father's Kingdom."
+    39: "to _y_" -> "to you" in poetry
+    66: added -- after "especially to recreation" (for sense, and
+        there was a large space in the book)
+    86: "_Caesarae_ Philippi" to "_Caesarea_ Philippi"
+    88: "bow _or_ stubborn" to "bow _our_ stubborn"
+    99: "dicattes" to "dictates"
+   107: "ever" to "even" in quotation from 1 Peter ii. 21
+   116: added opening quote before "Any man who"
+   146: "inadeqate" to "inadequate"
+   170: "It may be that he he". Duplicate word deleted
+   173: "_Whose_ righteousness clothes" to "_whose_"
+   210: added open quote before sea of glass (by reference to
+        Rev 15:2)
+   219: "slave has no _resource_" -> "_recourse_"
+   219: added opening quote before "Take that man's child"
+   242: added closing quote after "like Lebanon."
+   260: added closing quote after "all sin."
+   297: added closing quote after "My Father;"
+   308: added closing quote after "at His coming"
+   313: corrected 1 John iv. 9 to 1 John i. 9 (the verse being
+        quoted)
+
+
+
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