Bible Commentaries
1 Thessalonians 5

Verse 17

Ceaseless Prayer

Pray without ceasing.— 1 Thessalonians 5:17.

It seems as if these words contained some exaggeration, as if they were more a figure of speech than a reality, as if they expressed more than the actual truth. We can hardly suppose that a man of active duties, requiring close attention, application and energy, could possibly be engaged all day long in prayer and acts of devotion. And we may suppose that the idea to be conveyed is rather that we are required to attend regularly to the duties of private devotion. If we interpret the text thus the grand truth which it contains is lost sight of, and the sublime spirituality which it enjoins is not realized. It is no mere rhetorical description, no figure, no exaggeration, but a simple actual fact. And when we are enjoined and commanded by the Apostle to “pray without ceasing,” to “continue instant in prayer,” to “pray always,” it naturally occurs to us to ask, If this is a literal duty, how is it to be complied with? How can we, amidst our ordinary employments and engrossing duties, fulfil this requirement?

Let us answer this question first of all; and then let us see what we can do to fulfil to the letter the Apostle’s injunction.

I

Prayer is a Spiritual Attitude

1. The chief, sometimes the one, idea we have of prayer is that it is petition, asking for certain things we want, some help we desire, or deliverance from the power of some evil. But this is just where we make a mistake. Prayer, the very highest, is where there is least petition, least asking of definite benefits, most of communion, reliance, trust in God. The higher our spirituality, the more full our confidence in God, the more complete our acquiescent surrender to His will, the less petition there will be. Prayer in its highest meaning is thus communion with, recognition of, and sympathy with God, continual desire of the soul after God as the one supreme object of its love, intercourse of our spirit with the Divine. It is the soul living and feeling as if it were always in the presence of God, holding converse with Him, not always by audible words, but with a constant sense of His presence, trusting, loving, following, and serving Him. In one word, the soul in a state of sympathy and love to God—that is prayer. As the needle, however the ship may swing, points ever to the pole, so the soul, in every place and in every circumstance of life, turns to God and sets and rules its life by Him.

It is impossible to doubt the spiritual intensity, the religious fervour, of passages such as these from the pages in Suggestions for Thought in which she describes “Communion with God”:—

“If it is said ‘we cannot love a law’—the mode in which God reveals Himself—the answer is, we can love the spirit which originates, which is manifested in, the law. It is not the material presence only that we love in our fellow-creatures. It is the spirit, which bespeaks the material presence, that we love. Shall we then not love the spirit of all that is lovable, which all material presence bespeaks to us?… What does ignorant finite man want? How great, how suffering, yet how sublime are his wants! Think of his wounded aching heart, as compared with the bird and beast! his longing eye, his speaking countenance, compared with these! they show something of such difference, but nothing, nothing compared with what is within, where no eye can read. What then, poor sufferer, dost thou want? I want a wise and loving counsellor, whose love and wisdom should come home to the whole of my nature. I would work, oh! how gladly, but I want direction how to work. I would suffer, oh! how willingly, but for a purpose.… God always speaks plain in His laws—His everlasting voice.… My poor child, He says, dost thou complain that I do not prematurely give thee food which thou couldst not digest? My son, I am always one with thee, though thou art not always one with me. That spirit racked or blighted by sin, my child, it is thy Father’s spirit. Whence comes it, why does it suffer, or why is it blighted, but that it is incipient love, and truth, and wisdom, tortured or suppressed? But Law (that is, the will of the Perfect) is now, was without beginning, and ever shall be, as the inducement and the means by which that blight or suffering which is God within man, shall become man one with God.” 1 [Note: Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 489.]

2. If, then, we define prayer as the means whereby the fellowship of the soul with God, the oneness of our life with the life of God is realized, prayer will not necessarily be the saying of prayers. Words give definiteness to our thoughts, and there are those to whom words make concentration of mind possible; but the words in themselves are nothing. The real act of prayer is not in the words that are used, but in the attitude of the man towards his God when he is using them. God does not hear the words, but He is infinitely sensitive to the spiritual attitude. So prayer is much more than the “saying of prayers.” The utterance of thoughts in words may be true prayer; thinking may also be true prayer; work may be prayer; wrestling with a problem may be prayer; fighting for a noble cause may be prayer; private meditation may be prayer; there is such a way of doing the ordinary round and the daily task of life that this shall be true prayer; any act of our lives, whatsoever it may be, if we do it in such a way as consciously and concentratedly to cultivate a spiritual attitude of sympathy and fellowship with God, is prayer.

St. Anthony was once asked how we might know if we prayed properly. “By not knowing it at all,” he answered. He certainly prays well who is so taken up with God that he does not know he is praying. The traveller who is always counting his steps will not make much headway.

I am asked to explain that saying attributed to our Blessed Father St. Anthony, that he who prays ought to have his mind so fixed upon God as even to forget that he is praying. Here is the explanation in our Saint’s own words. He says: “The soul must be kept steadfastly in this path (that, namely, of love and confidence in God) without allowing it to waste its powers in continually trying to ascertain what precisely it is doing and whether its work is satisfactory. Alas! our satisfactions and consolations do not always satisfy God; they only feed that miserable love and care of ourselves which has to do neither with God nor with the thought of God. Certainly children whom our Lord has set before us as models of the perfection to be aimed at by us are, generally speaking, especially in the presence of their parents, quite untroubled about what is to happen. They cling to them without a thought of providing for themselves. The pleasures their parents procure them they accept in good faith and enjoy in simplicity, without any curiosity whatever as to their causes or effects. The love they feel for their parents and their reliance upon them is all they need. Those whose one desire is to please the Divine Lover have neither inclination nor leisure to turn back upon themselves, for their minds tend continually in the direction whither love carries them.” 1 [Note: J. P. Camus, The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, 246.]

So far is this “pray without ceasing” from being absurd, because extravagant, that every man’s life is in some sense a continual state of prayer. For what is his life’s prayer but its ruling passion? All energies, ambitions and passions are but expressions of a standing nisus in life, of a hunger, a draft, a practical demand upon the future, upon the unattained and the unseen. Every life is a draft upon the unseen. If you are not praying toward God you are toward something else. You pray as your face is set, towards Jerusalem or Babylon. The very egotism of craving life is prayer; the great difference is the object of it. To whom, for what, do we pray? The man whose passion is habitually set upon pleasure, knowledge, wealth, honour or power is in a state of prayer to these things for them. He prays without ceasing. These are his real gods, on whom he waits day and night. He may from time to time go on his knees in church, and use words of Christian address and petition. He may even feel a momentary unction in so doing. But it is a flicker; the other devotion is his steady flame. His real God is the ruling passion and steady pursuit of his life taken as a whole. He certainly does not pray in the name of Christ. And what he worships in spirit and in truth is another God than he addresses at religious times. He prays to an unknown God for a selfish boon. Still he prays. The set and drift of his nature prays. It is the prayer of instinct not of faith. It is the prayer that needs total conversion. But he cannot stop praying either to God or to God’s rival—to self, society, world, flesh, or even devil. Every life that is not totally inert is praying either to God or God’s adversary. 2 [Note: P. T. Forsyth, in Prayer, by Dora Greenwell and P. T. Forsyth.]

3. This attitude, this spiritual communion with God may be carried with us all day. It may pervade all we do, be a light and a joy, a principle and a motive in the midst of every duty, and in every position. In the case of husband or wife or child, parent or friend, or any one that we love sincerely, the love for them is not dropped at the threshold of the door. We cannot always be beside them to lavish endearments, or to whisper affection, but the thought of them goes with us, the sense of their presence comes unbidden to mould and inspire, to elevate and ennoble our whole life and acting. Carry something of that idea into our relations with God. We have hours of close fellowship and converse with God, times when we are alone with Him, when our heart goes out in deeper intensity, in more earnest consecration, times of whisperings and breathings of love and tenderness between our soul and God. But the love of God and the thought of God are not confined to such times. The thought of God goes with us all the day long. Let us make it the wish and endeavour of our life that every thought, word, and action shall be ruled as if we felt that we were constantly under the eye of Omniscience. Our desire is that all may be done to please Him, that there may be nothing to offend Him, or opposed to what we know to be His will and wish. To have our life full of the consciousness of God, as if we heard ever the voice of God bidding us, and the eye of God looking on us, and the hand of God leading us, to do everything so that He may be pleased with and approve of it, that He may be honoured and glorified—this is what makes the whole life one great connected beautiful prayer.

The greatest thing any one can do for God and for man is to pray. It is not the only thing. But it is the chief thing. A correct balancing of the possible powers one may exert puts it first. For if a man is to pray right, he must first be right in his motives and life. And if a man be right, and put the practice of praying in its right place, then his serving and giving and speaking will be fairly fragrant with the presence of God. The great people of the earth to-day are the people who pray. There are people that put prayer first, and group the other items in life’s schedule around and after prayer. These are the people to-day who are doing the most for God; in winning souls; in solving problems; in awakening churches; in supplying both men and money for mission posts; in keeping fresh and strong these lives far off in sacrificial service on the foreign field where the thickest fighting is going on; in keeping the old earth sweet awhile longer. 1 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Prayer, 12.]

II

How to Maintain the Spirit of Prayer

This spirit of devotion is itself the fruit of ceaseless prayer this strong consciousness of dependence on God becomes an ever-present and abiding thing only when in all our necessities we betake ourselves to Him. Occasions are never wanting, and will never be wanting, which call for the help of God; therefore, let us pray without ceasing. It is useless to say that the thing cannot be done, before the experiment has been made. There are few works that cannot be accompanied with prayer; there are few indeed that cannot be preceded by prayer; there are none at all that would not profit by prayer. Take the very first work to which we must set our mind and our hand, and we know it will be better done if, as we turn to it, we look up to God and ask His help to do it well and faithfully, as a Christian ought to do it for the Master above.

1. Thus the spirit of prayer is created and fostered by frequent and deliberate approaches to the Throne of Grace. This medical advice is given to students who sit much at their desks, contracting their chests by bending over their books: “Rise from time to time, throw back your head and shoulders, and draw a deep, full breath.” This is what we do when we definitely and consciously pray: we draw a deep, full breath. And it is a habit which it were well for us to acquire and practise. We need our still hours, our stated seasons of communion, morning by morning, evening by evening; but these are not enough. It would rid us of many a vexation and deliver us from many a temptation if, amid our toil and fret, we would ever and anon remember Jesus and tighten our grip upon Him, escaping for one refreshing moment from the noise and dust and getting our heads into Eternity.

I do not believe in silent adoration, if there is nothing but silence; and I do not believe in a man going through life with the conscious presence of God with him, unless, often, in the midst of the stress of daily life, he shoots little arrows of two-worded prayers up into the heavens, “Lord! be with me”; “Lord! help me”; “Lord! stand by me now”; and the like. “They cried to God in the battle,” when some people would have thought they would have been better occupied in trying to keep their heads with their swords. It was not a time for very elaborate supplications when the foemen’s arrows were whizzing round them, but “they cried to God in the battle, and he was intreated of them.” 1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

While your hands are busy with the world, let your hearts still talk with God; not in twenty sentences at a time, for such an interval might be inconsistent with your calling, but in broken sentences and interjections. He who prays without ceasing uses many little darts and hand-grenades of godly desire, which he casts forth at every available interval. 2 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

2. Further, if we honestly try to obey this precept we shall more and more find out, the more earnestly we do so, that set seasons of prayer are indispensable to realizing it. There must be, away up amongst the hills, a dam cast across the valley that the water may be gathered behind it, if the great city is to be supplied with the pure fluid. Otherwise the pipes will be empty. And that is what will become of Christian professors in regard to their habitual consciousness of God’s presence, if they do not take care to have their hours of devotion sacred, never to be interfered with, be they long or short, as may have to be determined by family circumstances, domestic duties, daily avocations, and a thousand other causes. But, unless we pray at set seasons, there is little likelihood of our praying without ceasing. Unless we set apart each day certain times for private prayer, we should tend to neglect it altogether; we should be giving a terrible opportunity to the world to take advantage of a day of forgetfulness to encourage us to forget God altogether. If we said that this prayer without ceasing of which the Apostle is here speaking was the only kind we needed, that our aspirations always accompanied our actions, we should indeed be presumptuous, we should indeed be forgetting our real character; we should become day by day less definite in our efforts, because we should be omitting periodical self-judgment, and so through want of any regulation we should tend to relapse into carelessness or presumptuous fanaticism. Private prayer at definite periods reminds us of our aims, enables us to judge of our actions, brings back our life into God’s presence, from which it has too often strayed.

Every morning he renewed his touch with Christ so that he would not lose it through the busy hours. It was his habit to close every day by reporting to his Friend. Of this habit he said: “The disciples returned at evening and made a report to Christ of their work. Thus I tell Him of my life during the day, my dealings with persons who have come into it, and whatever has been attempted—in short, the whole day’s work: its efforts, failures, mistakes, sins and joys. That is my evening prayer.” 1 [Note: J. T. Faris, The Life of Dr. J. R. Miller, 223.]

It will, I suppose, be admitted that there is no greater proof of complete religious sincerity than fervour in private prayer. If an individual, alone by the side of his bed, prolongs his intercessions, lingers wrestling with his Divine Companion, and will not leave off until he has what he believes to be evidence of a reply to his entreaties—then, no matter what the character of his public protestations, or what the frailty of his actions, it is absolutely certain that he believes in what he professes. My Father prayed in private in what I may almost call a spirit of violence. He entreated for spiritual guidance with nothing less than importunity. It might be said that he stormed the citadels of God’s grace, refusing to be baffled, urging his intercessions without mercy upon a Deity who sometimes struck me as inattentive to his prayers or wearied by them. My Father’s acts of supplication, as I used to witness them at night, when I was supposed to be asleep, were accompanied by stretchings out of the hands, by crackings of the joints of the fingers, by deep breathings, by numerous sounds which seemed just breaking out of silence, like Virgil’s bees out of the hive, “magnis clamoribus.” My Father fortified his religious life by prayer as an athlete does his physical life by lung-gymnastics and vigorous rubbings. 2 [Note: Edmund Gosse, Father and Son, 229.]

One of the surprises of my childhood was my father’s locked study. It is true that when his children knocked he would come to the door, and open to us, but there was first a little shuffling of feet, and then in a few moments he stood before us. Sometimes I thought there must be some one else in the room—for I heard my father’s voice; but on entering I saw him only. It was all mysterious to a child, but as the years passed on I learnt what it meant. For the locked study was the secret of the Open Heart. Because he dwelt every day in the kingdom of penitence and tears and submission, he found his city of mirth and laughter and sunshine. 3 [Note: Love and Life: The Story of J. Denholm Brash, 65.]

3. Public prayer, too, is a necessary corrective to private prayer, which, if that were all, would tend to spiritual selfishness, would isolate the individual believer from the great company of his fellow-Christians, would limit his conception of his Christian duties by rendering him liable to think only of some and forget others, would, in fact, leave him one-sided in his religion, just as solitude makes a man one-sided in his social character.

We know how hard it is for most men, how hard, it may be, we ourselves continually find it, to keep the act of worship truly, purely spiritual; to be always lifting up our hearts to the Unseen, the Eternal, the Incomprehensible; always striving beyond the thoughts, the scenes of sense and time; always remembering that the ultimate reality of worship is in the light that no man can approach unto, and that our highest acts are but as hands stretched out, as avenues of access, towards the everlasting adoration and intercession that is on high, where Christ “ever liveth to make intercession for us”: where St. John saw “in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing as though It had been slain.” We know how our hearts are ever faltering away from the effort of faith, and wanting to stay at some resting-place amidst the things that are seen, amid the ways of that lower level which we think we can understand. That appeal to come up higher, to raise the venture of our hearts above all that is on earth, is made to us all; and to answer it rightly is the soul’s great task. It is a task from which men swerve in diverse ways; proffering in lieu of the uplifted venture, sometimes a moral life or activity in good works, sometimes a zeal for the cause of religion, sometimes the acceptance of a creed, sometimes the conviction that they are saved, and sometimes a worship that lingers unduly at the counterpart on earth of the supreme reality, the fount of all reality, in heaven. Out of the knowledge of our own weakness, let us learn the care we need to take lest others be weakened, lest others be allowed to halt where they should find the very spring and power for that ceaseless ascent to which God beckons all. 1 [Note: Francis Paget, Bishop of Oxford, 354.]

I build the palace of my Lord the King

Wherein Life makes her crimson offering,

With rite of consecration and long praise.

With weight of prayer and length of many days

She makes her sacrament of suffering.

The music of meet words and magical,

That rise as incense and as incense fall,

Fills all the palace of my Lord the King.

The House is dim with voices murmuring

The sacred burden of their ritual.

If, after many suns have come and gone,

The light of some apocalyptic Dawn

Shall flame with splendour in a crimson sky,

Grant, Dweller in the Shrine, that even I

May hear the Voice, and see Thy veil withdrawn! 1 [Note: D. H. S. Nicholson, Poems, 69.]

Ceaseless Prayer

Literature

Bibb (C. W.), Sharpened Arrows and Polished Stones, 122.

Caughey (J.), Revival Sermons, 15.

Cooper (T.), Plain Pulpit Talk, 170.

Cornaby (W. A.), In Touch with Reality, 45.

Creighton (M.), University Sermons, 34.

Dawson (E. C.), Comrades, 160.

Drury (T. W.), The Prison-Ministry of St. Paul, 113.

Elmslie (W. G.), Expository Lectures and Sermons, 266.

Fénelon (F. de S.), Counsels to Those Who are Living in the World, 90.

Hall (F. O.), Soul and Body, 178.

Hamilton (J.), Works, i. 151.

Henson (H. H.), Preaching to the Times, 98.

Illingworth (J. R.), University and Cathedral Sermons, 164.

Ingram (A. F. W.), Banners of the Christian Faith, 61.

Lewis (E. W.), Some Views of Modern Theology, 35.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Philippians, etc., 229.

Matheson (G.), Times of Retirement, 245.

Miller (J. R.), Our New Edens, 43.

Murray (A.), With Christ, 248.

Pearse (M. G.), Parables and Pictures, 113.

Romanes (E.), Thoughts on the Collects for the Trinity Season, 25.

Shore (T. T.), Some Difficulties of Belief, 1.

Smith (D.), Man’s Need of God, 187.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xviii. (1872), No. 103.

Stephen (R.), Divine and Human Influence, ii. 85.

Tipple (S. A.), Sunday Mornings at Norwood, 109.

Westcott (B. F.), Village Sermons, 324.

Cambridge Review, v. Supplement No. 120 (A. J. C. Allen).

Christian World Pulpit, xli. 15 (J. Hall); lxii. 97 (H. H. Henson); lxvii. 269 (J. G. Bowran); lxxv. 393 (A. B. Boyd Carpenter).

Verse 21

Proving and Holding Fast

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.— 1 Thessalonians 5:21.

1. These are very astonishing words to address to a community of new converts. We might have expected that the Apostle would be careful to give them precise and detailed instructions, plain and solemn warnings, encouraging assurances of Divine approval, but hardly that he should bid them take account of their own experiences, and train themselves in the difficult and risky art of self-direction. We might have expected that this earliest Epistle of St. Paul would point out clearly the manner in which controversies might be quickly and finally closed by reference to some authoritative tribunal; that it would have stated the constitution of the Christian Church in plain language, which should leave no loophole for schismatical casuistry; that it would set out in unambiguous language the powers of the Christian clergy, and the manner in which those powers were to be exercised. Of all this, however, we find nothing. The Epistle is addressed to the community or Church of the Thessalonians, and contains no clear reference at all to an official ministry; for the mention of some prominent members of the community, as supervising its business and “admonishing” it, hardly suggests an official ministry, but rather a volunteer executive sustained in office by the general confidence and goodwill. The Thessalonians are “to esteem them exceeding highly in love for their work’s sake.” The Apostle’s appeal is directly to the whole body of members: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

2. The words of the text stand in close relation to the words which they immediately follow: “Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesyings; prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” It is manifest from the record of those Apostolic times that the operations of the Holy Spirit were of an exceptional and temporary character. This is specially apparent in those spiritual utterances, those mysterious “tongues,” to which St. Paul refers in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. But, further, there appears to have been on the part of those early Christians a very natural desire to prophesy—to speak out, in the presence of others, their own impressions or experiences of the spiritual life. A new prospect, transcendent in its beauty and glory, had been opened up to them by the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the freshness of their new hopes and new joys, they were eager to make known to one another, with unregulated fervour even in their religious assemblies, their individual experience of the love of God in Christ Jesus their Lord. There would, however, be some among the Christian converts, some of the less enthusiastic and more sober-minded, who would both dislike and distrust such utterances. It is probably such critics as these that the Apostle has in his mind when he addresses to them the words of caution, “Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesyings.” He could see the possible danger of such utterances; but he recognized in them the workings of the Holy Ghost, and would have them not suppressed, but tested and controlled. There were in them, no doubt, elements of exaggeration, dangers of self-seeking and of unreality, of presumption and pride; and these were not of God, but of the evil one. Yet behind all these there was a spiritual reality, obscured but not obliterated, and therefore they were to prove all things and to hold fast the good.

Many of the fathers of the Church connect these verses with what they consider a saying of Jesus, one of the few which are reasonably attested, though it has failed to find a place in the written gospels. The saying is, “Show yourselves approved money-changers.” The fathers believed that the Apostle uses a metaphor from coinage. To prove is really to assay, to put to the test as a banker tests a piece of money; the word rendered “good” is often the equivalent of our “sterling”; “evil,” of our base or forged; and the word which in our old Bibles is rendered “appearance”—“Abstain from all appearance of evil”—and in the Revised Version “form”—“Abstain from every form of evil”—has, at least in some connexions, the signification of mint or die. If we bring out this faded metaphor in its original freshness, it will run something like this: “Show yourselves skilful money-changers; do not accept in blind trust all the spiritual currency which you find in circulation; put it all to the test; rub it on the touchstone; keep hold of what is genuine and of sterling value, but every spurious coin decline.” 1 [Note: J. Denney, The Epistles to the Thessalonians, 244.]

I

Prove

1. Why must we prove? Because faculties have been given us for that very purpose. The possession of faculties for thinking and reasoning tells us that we have the duty as well as the right of exerting them, just as truly as to have been born with eyes confers upon the individual the right to see. The eye has to be trained and so to become adjusted to objects about it. In many cases it is defective. We do not, therefore, bandage every man’s eyes or put spectacles upon him, because these are required by certain persons. The maxim, Usum non tollit abusus, obtains here. Persons have grievously abused their right of private judgment; it does not follow that they should be deprived of it. It would be safer to infer that the faculty for forming such judgments imposes upon them the duty of using it.

The question you put is by no means an easy one to answer: whether, namely, it be right and wise for you to read on both sides of the question—or rather, I should say, questions? for on this subject they are endless, and grow up like Hydra’s heads. I could not reply, No: for that is the very advice given by the Romish Church, which we so much blame; and it is very inconsistent in us to condemn their prohibitions of heretical or Protestant books to the laity, if we, tractarian or evangelical clergy, forbid, as is constantly done, the perusal of books which we judge heretical. Now, first of all, the questions of religious truth are interminable, and a lifetime would scarcely suffice to pass even the outworks of them all. Next, very few minds are in possession of the means or of the severe mental training which qualifies a man to set out as an original discoverer of truth; so that if we cannot begin with a large number of truths, which must be considered as first principles and settled, life must be one perpetual state of Pyrrhonism and uncertainty. On the other hand, to refuse to examine when doubts arise is spiritual suicide; and I do not see how, on this principle, any progress in truth could ever have been made. Why should the Pharisees have been blamed for the views so long stereotyped or the Jews for remaining in Judaism? 1 [Note: Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson, 317.]

2. This duty is not dropped when a man accepts the obedience of Christ. The Christian life is necessarily a struggle with intellectual as well as with moral difficulties, with ignorance as well as with sin. Let no one enter upon it with the thought that his days of perplexity are over, that henceforth he is to be within the calm shelter of the haven, where no breath of wind or stormy wave can reach him from the open sea. There may be those who are thus blessed, but most are called to the battle. But the battle is itself a blessing when it graces, strengthens, confirms. The great German thinker may have been guilty of an exaggeration, but it was the exaggeration of a truth, when he said, “Did the Almighty, holding in His right hand ‘Truth,’ and in His left ‘Search after Truth,’ deign to tender me the one I might prefer, in all humility, and without hesitation, I should request ‘Search after Truth.’ ” There are, indeed, some who, wearied of searching after truth, have bowed their reason to some external authority, some infallible Church, admitting all its assertions as equally true; while others have found refuge in a universal scepticism denouncing all as equally false. The one goes against the precept, “Prove all things,” the other against its natural and necessary counterpart, “Hold fast that which is good”; and both evade one of the most potent means of moral training for this ceaseless conflict, this patient endurance, this quiet hope, this earnest longing, this immovable confidence in what is right and good, when they do not use it as one of the ways in which God has chosen to educate us for Himself.

Faith, whatever else it may be or imply, involves definite and strong conviction. Conviction requires evidence. Evidence is the objective truth which compels assent. Subjectively and spiritually, faith in a Fiji islander may be the same as it is in a cultivated and reflecting man, but intellectually it cannot be the same. Whatever the truth may be, or in whatever form it may meet the mind,—whether by an argument, or a person, or a dream, or a fantasy,—it must convince the intellect that something is true. 1 [Note: N. Porter, Yale College Sermons, 337.]

In the Cathedral Church of Copenhagen, amid Thorwaldsen’s famous group of the Twelve Apostles, stands the figure of a grave and meditative man, with earnestly questioning face, rule and measure in hand, as though prepared to bring all things under strict verification, whose name no one needs to ask, so plainly does the statue stand for the doubting Thomas. Thomas was, according to the traditions of the Early Church, a born sceptic, a constitutional questioner, whose faith followed his understanding, who could not rest on external authority, who brought even Christ’s words to the bar of reason, and, failing to elicit an intelligible answer, withheld his assent—in short, a genuine Rationalist. Yet this Thomas was one of the twelve disciples, a full member of the Apostolic College. 2 [Note: R. H. Newton.]

II

Prove all Things

1. “Prove all things” is a favourite text with Protestants, and especially with Protestants of an extreme type. It has been called “a piece of most rationalistic advice”; it has been said to imply that “every man has a verifying faculty, whereby to judge of facts and doctrines, and to decide between right and wrong, truth and falsehood.” But this is a most unconsidered extension to give to the Apostle’s words. He does not say a word about every man; he is speaking expressly to the Thessalonians, who were Christian men. He would not have admitted that any man who came from the street, and constituted himself a judge, was competent to pronounce upon the contents of the prophesyings, and to say which of the burning words were spiritually sound, and which were not. On the contrary, he tells us very plainly that some men have no capacity for this task—“The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit”; and that even in the Christian Church, where all are to some extent spiritual, some have this faculty of discernment in a much higher degree than others.

Again and again it comes home to me that true wisdom lies in the abiding recognition that spiritual things are spiritually discerned. If we labour for the meat which perisheth not, and if we witness to the Kingdom of God in word and deed, our labour and our witness must be in the Spirit, i.e. by and to the Spirit. 1 [Note: R. W. Corbet, Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day, 112.]

Johann was one day on his travels, and came to a wood. In an old tree he found a bird’s nest with seven eggs, which resembled the eggs of the common swift. But the latter bird only lays three eggs, so the nest could not belong to it. Since Johann was a great connoisseur in eggs, he soon perceived that they were the eggs of the hoopoo. Accordingly, he said to himself, “There must be a hoopoo somewhere in the neighbourhood, although the natural history books assert that it does not appear here.” After a time he heard quite distinctly the well-known cry of the hoopoo. Then he knew that the bird was there. He hid himself behind a rock, and he soon saw the speckled bird with its yellow comb. When Johann returned home after three days, he told his teacher that he had seen the hoopoo on the island. His teacher did not believe it, but demanded proof. “Proof!” said Johann. “Do you mean two witnesses?” “Yes!” “Good! I have twice two witnesses, and they all agree: my two ears heard it, and my two eyes saw it.” “Maybe. But I have not seen it,” answered the teacher. Johann was called a liar because he could not prove that he had seen the hoopoo in such and such a spot. However, it was a fact that the hoopoo appeared there, although it was an unusual occurrence in this neighbourhood. 2 [Note: A. Strindberg, Zones of the Spirit, 13.]

2. The truth is, St. Paul is not concerned so much with the things which we are to prove as with the spirit in which the duty should be performed. What he would say to us is in substance this: “Whatever subjects may engage your attention, or require the formation of your opinion, let this be the course you pursue: be not prejudiced, be not hasty either in approving or in condemning; ‘prove all things’; weigh them in the balance of a sober judgment, and deal with them by the use of that reasoning power with which God has endowed you. Estimate the value of every statement and every argument with what power and ability you may possess, deal with them in a philosophic rather than a polemic spirit. Pray that your intellectual gifts may be guided in their services by the Holy Spirit of Truth, and then, whatever truth, whatever good you may find, lay hold on that and hold it fast.”

A man has as much right to use his own understanding, in judging of truth, as he has a right to use his own eyes, to see his way: therefore it is no offence to another, that any man uses his own right. It is not to be expected that another man should think as I would, to please me, since I cannot think as I would to please myself; it is neither in his nor my power to think as we will, but as we see reason, and find cause. It is better for us that there should be difference of judgment, if we keep charity: but it is most unmanly to quarrel because we differ. Men’s apprehensions are often nearer than their expressions; they may mean the same thing, when they seem not to say the same thing. 1 [Note: Benjamin Whichcote, Moral and Religious Aphorisms.]

3. This shows us the place and the duty of criticism in relation to the Bible. To criticize is, first, to distinguish—to distinguish in a complex reality what is primary, essential, eternal, from what is secondary, accidental, temporary. So we find out what is the essence of the thing itself, making it what it is, as distinct from accessories not necessarily peculiar to it, which have gathered round it, and which can be, and perhaps at times should be, stripped off. To criticize is, next, to test. When this first duty of distinction has been discharged, and the root of the matter made known to us, it has then to go on to the work described in the text—to test or prove it. It must try to discern, first, whether it is a reality—whether (that is) what it declares as truth is a real truth, accordant with the great laws of being; whether the power which it claims to wield is a real power, able to guide, to rule, and to exalt humanity. Historical science has studied and analysed the actual Christianity, the Church of Christ, in all ages. It has bidden us look through the visible developments of law, system, ritual, to the inner spiritual force, which gives them life; it has distinguished in it the obviously human element, with all the imperfection and evil clinging to it, which it shares with other great world-wide powers, from that element which is its peculiar characteristic, clearly unique and claiming to be miraculous and Divine. It makes us see plainly that this inner reality is, in spite of all imperfections, accretions, superstitions, the reproduction in the individual and the community of the life of Christ Himself. So, again, literary and critical science examines the Holy Scripture. It distinguishes in it also the human element of imperfection and progressiveness from that which claims to be Divine—the essential truth itself from the forms in which it has been conveyed. And the result is to make us see clearly that the one key to its right interpretation is the knowledge of the central manifestation of Christ Himself—His Life, His Word, His Person—that in relation to this all other parts stand simply as preparatory or explanatory, and only in that dependence can be rightly understood and reasonably reverenced.

Professor Huxley once said that men of science no longer believed in justification by faith, but in “justification by verification.” Now, St. Paul taught justification by faith, but he also, as we see, taught justification by verification. In his view, the one did not exclude the other. St. Paul calls, not for the surrender, but for the exercise, of the reason. We have his approval if we feel that, in religious as in other matters, we wish to have our intelligence satisfied, before we yield the submission of our hearts. 1 [Note: J. G. Henderson.]

In order to the discovery of that which is better of two things, it is necessary that both should be equally submitted to the attention, and therefore that we should have so much faith in authority as shall make us repeatedly observe and attend to that which is said to be right, even though at present we may not feel it so. And in the right mingling of this faith with the openness of heart which proves all things, lies the great difficulty of the cultivation of the taste, as far as the spirit of the scholar is concerned; though, even when he has this spirit, he may be long retarded by having evil examples submitted to him by ignorant masters. The temper, therefore, by which right taste is formed is characteristically patient. It dwells upon what is submitted to it. It does not trample upon it, lest it should be pearls, even though it looks like husks. It is a good ground, soft, penetrable, retentive; it does not send up thorns of unkind thoughts, to choke the weak seed; it is hungry and thirsty too, and drinks all the dew that falls on it. It is “an honest and good heart,” that shows no too ready springing before the sun be up, but fails not afterwards; it is distrustful of itself, so as to be ready to believe and to try all things, and yet so trustful of itself, that it will neither quit what it has tried nor take anything without trying. And the pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and good is so great, that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks of fashion, or diseases of vanity: it cannot be cramped in its conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies; its visions and its delights are too penetrating, too living, for any whitewashed object or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It clasps all that it loves so hard that it crushes it if it be hollow. 1 [Note: Ruskin, Modern Painters, pt. iii. sec. 1, chap. iii. (Works, iv. 58).]

III

Hold Fast that which is Good

1. The command addressed by St. Paul to the Thessalonians describes with incisive brevity the only kind of criticism that is right in principle and likely to be fruitful in results. It is the criticism, first, which claims, not to discover, but to “test” all things—taking the thing criticized as it actually presents itself, and not reconstructing it out of our own discovery or imagination. It is the criticism, next, which, until it is forced to an opposite conclusion, holds (with Richard Hooker) that whatever has spiritual life and power in it cannot be “wholly compacted of untruths,” but must have in it something “which is good,” and which it is therefore worth while “to hold fast.” It is, moreover and above all, the criticism which performs its two functions simultaneously, not waiting in suspense till the whole conceivable work of testing is over, before it proceeds to grasp anything firmly, but at every point laying strong and enthusiastic hold of whatever, so far, it has found by trial to be good, living in it by strong sympathy, and making this experience of its inner meaning a means of advancing towards larger knowledge.

It is interesting to observe the various shades of meaning in which the Apostle uses the word δοχιμάζειν , which he here employs. There are passages, like the present, where the sense is general. But there are others where it clearly implies, not the exercise of the critical faculty, but the appreciative acceptance of what is manifestly good and true, as when he exhorts the Philippians to approve the things that are excellent, and the Romans to prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. 2 [Note: Archbishop Maclagan.]

2. So we are not only to prove all things; we are bidden to “hold fast that which is good”; to be faithful to whatever has proved itself to us as worthy of love and reverence. The value of every discovery or invention consists largely in its power to satisfy some human want. The great test is experience of its results. May we not apply the same test to religious truth? If we have felt a craving to be delivered from sin, and to be made partakers of light and holiness; to be drawn nearer to God and to be lifted above ourselves; to know something of human destiny, and to obtain more worthy views of the world, and a deeper insight into moral truth, then let us ask, Does Christianity meet any or all of these requirements? If, in our assurance that God is love, and that we, though weak and ignorant and sinful, are His children, we feel convinced that God has spoken to us, and that His Word is in His own Gospel; if we have believed in His promises, and tasted the blessings of forgiven sin, and the peace which the toil and the changes of the world cannot reach; if we have attained higher views of holiness and truth—are not these things good, and shall we not hold them fast? These are sufficient for our life; and as for others, we must maintain towards them an attitude, not indeed of indifference, but of bold and ceaseless endeavour, proving all things, and holding fast that which is good.

When the anchors faith has cast are dragging in the gale,

I am quietly holding fast to the things that cannot fail.

I know that right is right, that it is not good to lie;

That love is better than spite, and a neighbour than a spy;

In the darkest night of the year, when the stars have all gone out,

That courage is better than fear, and faith is better than doubt;

And fierce though the fiends may fight, and long though the angels hide,

I know that truth and right have the universe on their side,

And that somewhere beyond the stars is a love that is better than fate;

When the night unlocks her doors I shall see Him, and I can wait.

3. Happily for us, the great truths which should guide our judgment are just those which cannot escape our observation. The distinction between good and evil is written upon our conscience in characters which nothing can altogether efface The love of God beams in the sunshine, is poured forth in the refreshing shower, reveals itself in all the wondrous glory and beauty of the world. History reveals one human life in which Divinity shines out in all the radiance of perfect love, and purity, and Divine self-sacrifice. The condemnation of sin and the way of deliverance for the sinner were manifested in the death upon the cross. Thus, grasping with a perfect faith the great elements of good, we are able to look accurately at the difficulties which beset us, and prepare ourselves boldly for the journey or the fight.

Christianity has abler advocates than its professed defenders, in those quiet and humble men and women who in the light of it and the strength of it live holy, beautiful, and self-denying lives. The God that answers by fire is the God whom mankind will acknowledge; and so long as the fruits of the Spirit continue to be visible in charity, in self-sacrifice, in those graces which raise human creatures above themselves, thoughtful persons will remain convinced that with them in some form or other is the secret of truth. 1 [Note: J. A. Froude.]

Proving and Holding Fast

Literature

Aglionby (F. K.), The Better Choice, 144.

Barry (A.), Some Lights of Science on the Faith, 218.

Blunt (J. J.), University Sermons, 243.

Boyd (A. K. H.), Changed Aspects of Unchanged Truths, 1.

Calthrop (G.), Hints to My Younger Friends, 121.

Denney (J.), The Epistles to the Thessalonians (Expositor’s Bible), 233.

Hardy (E. J.), Doubt and Faith, 1.

Henson (H. H.), Christ and the Nation, 102.

Henson (H. H.), The Road to Unity, 97.

Hutton (A. W.), Ecclesia Discens, 92.

Jones (T.), The Social Order, 45.

Merson (D.), Words of Life, 91.

Porter (N.), Yale College Sermons, 332.

Secker (T.), Sermons, i. 25.

Christian World Pulpit, xxviii. 378 (R. H. Newton); xlviii. 333 (J. B. Hastings); l. 241 (W. D. Maclagan); liv. 395 (E. J. Hardy); lxv. 308 (C. S. Horne); lxxv. 193 (J. G. Henderson).

Church of England Pulpit, xlii. 265 (W. D. Maclagan).

Clergyman’s Magazine, 3rd Ser., x. 228 (J. R. Palmer).

Guardian, lxvii. (1912) 1409 (H. C. Beeching).

Verse 23

A Prayer for Sanctity

And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.— 1 Thessalonians 5:23.

Very beautiful is St. Paul’s affection for the Thessalonians. It may have been the more tender because they had treated him with kindness, a kindness the more appreciated as a contrast to his experience at Philippi, whence he had just escaped on the occasion of his visit to their city. Be that as it may, he himself likens the love he felt for them to that of a father towards his children, or of a mother nursing her own little ones. And the purer his love, the higher were the blessings he longed for on their behalf. Hence he prays here not that his friends may escape persecution, or have worldly prosperity, but that in Christian character they may be wholly God’s. To desire such a benediction for others is one of the best signs of newness of life, for this is what Jesus Himself was seeking when He came here to save His people from their sins, and to present them faultless before His Father’s face in glory.

Human love is so mixed with alloy that we are not naturally anxious that our friends should be faultless, but are rather gratified when we see that they are no more perfect than ourselves, and are not always displeased when their failings are pointed out. It seems to raise us higher if they are just a little lowered, for a tree which is by no means tall begins to look tall when all those around it are cut down to a lower level. And in addition to this common yet sinful tendency to disparagement, prejudices and animosities play a very important part in our judgment of others, and in our desires for them. This prevalence of prejudice, and this wish to be thought better than our neighbours, often prevent us from earnestly desiring their true ennoblement, and from praying for their redemption from all evil, that they may be blameless until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. From all this jealousy St. Paul is singularly and nobly free. His prayer for his friends is that they may be found blameless, that they may be sanctified wholly.

Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, it is precisely love’s contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved, it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its own triumph. Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the most passionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting, and vain ego, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. The contrast is perfect. 1 [Note: Amiel’s Journal (trans. by Mrs. Humphry Ward), 284.]

He rarely spoke contemptuously of any one’s views or methods. When Evan Roberts, the Welsh revivalist, was holding his meetings at Liverpool, a fellow-clergyman spoke disparagingly of his efforts to Watson, who replied: “Well, I don’t know anything about that, but remember we don’t draw these audiences, so let us keep quiet.” He was present himself with Roberts on the platform a few weeks after. When Dr. Torrey and Mr. Alexander were conducting their mission in Liverpool, a wave of criticism swept over them. One afternoon Watson attended a service, and the next day a Liverpool paper had a warm yet discriminating eulogy on the missioners, signed “A City Pastor.” The style proclaimed the author, and later on Watson owned to having written that kind letter of encouragement. 2 [Note: W. R. Nicoll, Ian Maclaren: Life of the Rev. J. Watson, 383.]

I

The Meaning of Sanctification

1. What does the Apostle mean by this prayer for sanctity? Sanctification may be looked at from different standpoints.

(1) There is a true sense in which Christ is made to us, judicially, sanctification. That is to say, Christ’s perfect holiness covers the failures and the defects of believers after their conversion, as well as the sins of the soul when it first draws near to Him. It is not an imputed sanctification that the Apostle is dealing with here. If it were an imputed sanctification, it could not be the subject of prayer; because they would have it already. Nor does he mean by sanctification here—and it is important to see it— glorification, as some would almost seem to think he does. We must not put the standard too high; we must not put it where it is altogether out of reach. He is not praying for the dead. His prayer is for us to-day. “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it,” he says.

(2) Nor is this sanctification sinless perfection. Sinless perfection is the scarecrow that the devil employs to frighten God’s children off the finest of the wheat. The fact is that sanctification is God’s truth, and sinless perfection is the devil’s counterfeit. But wherever there is a counterfeit there is always a truth; and very often the grossness of the counterfeit is the measure of the importance of the truth. Satan is only a copyist. There is no condition here upon earth in which we do not need atoning blood; there is no condition here in which we do not need the forgiveness of our trespasses; there is no condition here in which we do not need the perpetual intercession of our Great High Priest. Within these limits comes the prayer for entire sanctification.

(3) Sanctification is not merely the repression of evil; that is virtue. The pagan, the Roman philosopher, can teach that, more or less. But sanctity, as an old divine once said, is “the life of God in man.” The moralist knows nothing of it; he has neither the thing itself nor the word.

(4) Sanctification is not the same as good works. Sanctification is God’s work in us, whereby He imparts to our members a holy disposition, inwardly filling us with delight in His law and with repugnance to sin. But good works are acts of man which spring from this holy disposition. Hence Sanctification is the source of good works; it is the lamp that shines with their light, the capital of which they are the interest. “Sanctification” imparts something to man; “good works” take something out of him. “Sanctification” forces the root into the ground; to do “good works” forces the fruit out of the fruitful tree.

The Pietist says: “Sanctification is man’s work; it cannot be insisted upon with sufficient emphasis. It is our best effort to be godly.” And the Mystic maintains: “We cannot do good works, and may not insist upon them; for man is unable; God alone works them in him independently of him.” Of course, both are equally wrong and unscriptural. The former, in reducing sanctification to good works takes it out of God’s hand and lays it upon man, who never can perform it; and the latter, in making good works take the place of sanctification, releases man from the task laid on him and claims that God will perform it. Both errors must be opposed. 1 [Note: A. Kuyper, in Homiletic Review, lv. 136.]

John Brash was amid the arduous work of his first circuit when, as he says, “I began to seek the blessing of perfect love. One Sunday, having to preach in the country in the afternoon and evening, I spent the forenoon in prayer. While pleading with God for the blessing, my agony became so great that I resolved not to rise from my knees until I had obtained it. It was easy for me to yield up to God everything that I felt He required from me but one—and that was my reputation. In order to live a life of consecration to Him, it would be necessary for me to adopt a simple and unadorned style of preaching, to discard all subjects that would be pleasing and interesting merely, and to aim solely and always at usefulness. The consequence of adopting such a style would be, as it then seemed to me, obscurity and hard work in discouraging spheres, and amongst small congregations. The struggle was severe, but all attempts at compromise, and all sophistical reasoning about seeking popularity as a stepping-stone to usefulness failed to satisfy my conscience, and I at last made a full surrender of all my powers to God, that they might be employed for His glory alone. In the instant that I made the offering I felt that it was accepted, and that God had taken full possession of my heart. The experience was so distinct from anything I had previously felt that it was impossible to doubt the nature of the blessing I had received. Throughout the day there was an abiding consciousness of a presence which I knew to be that of Christ Himself. My feeling was one of reverent, subdued joy, arising from the knowledge that I was united to Him, and filled with His Spirit. Since that memorable Sunday the discussions I have read and heard on the subject of instantaneous and conscious sanctification from sin have had little interest for me. I know that the blessing may be received instantaneously; though in some cases the transition from partial to entire sanctification may be imperceptible to the subject of it.” 2 [Note: John Brash: Memorials and Correspondence, 26.]

2. To “sanctify” is to set something apart for a holy purpose, so that it may be regarded as holy, and as being profaned if used for a lower purpose. If we were to distinguish between “sanctification” and “consecration” we should say the latter represents the human and the former the Divine side of the same act or experience. We “consecrate” ourselves when we yield ourselves up to God, for Him to do with us what He wills, laying ourselves as it were upon the altar as a living sacrifice. God “sanctifies” us when He accepts this offering, and conforms us to His Son. Hence we are not told that we must wholly “sanctify” ourselves, but the God of peace is asked to effect this for us. Similarly, Jesus prays in His final intercession on earth for His disciples: “sanctify them through thy truth.” But in the same prayer, alluding to Himself, He says, “for their sakes I sanctify myself,” a solemn declaration in which He claims the Divine as well as the human power. What He meant was that He had set Himself apart for the holy purpose of redeeming man, even by the sacrifice of Himself; and this was a sacrifice not confined to Calvary though it was consummated there.

In the sanctification of Jesus Christ to the Father’s redemptive service of mankind, a process by which He passed from unspotted personal perfection into the new perfection of a vicarious Mediatorship, two methods of operation merge into each other. Our Lord speaks of Himself as “him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world.” The life received from the everlasting springs brought with it inspirations of love which determined His office and moved Him to an act of supreme self-dedication for the race. Side by side with the effusion of sanctifying life from the Father there came the voluntary consecration of the Son to His sacred and benign tasks. “And for their sakes I sanctify myself.” And in the sanctification of the redeemed Church two similar acts must be co-ordinated—sanctification by the act and operation of God Himself, and also a sanctification in the free, practical, self-determined acts of the daily life, responding to the will and work of God. 1 [Note: T. G. Selby, The Strenuous Gospel, 481.]

3. Sanctification, then, is the imitation of Christ. It is being in the world as He was in the world. And that man is most holy, or most sanctified, who has least ignorance and error in his mind, least selfishness and earthliness in his heart, least perversity and stubbornness in his will, all of which Christ was without; the opposite and Godlike virtues adorning His character in perfect measure. Hence it is easy to understand how it should be said that men were sanctified by faith, sanctified through the truth.

This cannot be understood so long as we conceive of the human soul as a material substance that becomes brighter, more fruitful, or more fragrant, according to some supposed mysterious action of the Holy Spirit upon it. But if we look at the soul as brought to understand and believe the truth about Christ, His person, His cross, and His work, then we see how it straightway becomes like Christ; for it is only by the truth acting upon it that a rational soul can become enlightened, affectionate, devout, as Christ was. A soul that understands and believes the truth must become like Him, “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.” The Spirit does not sanctifiy us by putting some mysterious principle into our hearts called grace. The truth is the grace that He puts into our hearts, and out of this comes every other which deserves the name, even all the features of Christ’s image—“love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” We have the whole process described in the words of the Apostle Paul, perhaps the most beautiful description of sanctification in the whole Bible. We are beholding as in a glass, the glass of the Bible, “with open face” (with clear view), the glory of the Lord, i.e. of the Lord Jesus, and are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

The whole truth on the subject, then, is this: to be sanctified is to be Christ-like. We are thus sanctified by knowing the truth as it is in Jesus, and feeling its power more and more. And the great force that works out the change is the same Spirit that began it in the day of regeneration, revealing Christ to us in His Word, and forming Him in our hearts, the hope of glory.

Of all the Italian artists the Pre-Raphaelite Fra Angelico, the angelic brother, and saintly painter, is his great favourite. No one is so frequently mentioned, or spoken of in terms of such affectionate admiration. “These are the pictures,” he exclaims enthusiastically regarding the works of the great Dominican, “in which every face has soul within, and every hand a heart; all is life; joy is joy, and grief is grief; and piety through all mellows the whole to charity, as heavenward tread the holy saints of old. Describe each I cannot; only their remembrance is with me, and hooded Fra Angelico, pencil in hand, sketching and limning the faces, embodiment of Christ on earth.” Again: “The Madonna della Stella by Fra Angelico for sweetness and love surpasses all of his age, while the Christ nestles into her neck and loves, and for a while, before the thorny way is opened to Him, tastes all love of earth.” This is the painter of whom it is written that he was wont to say that the practice of art required repose and holy thoughts, and that he who would depict the acts of Christ must learn to live with Christ. This was the man who above all others took captive William Denny’s admiration. It was like drawing like. 1 [Note: A. B. Bruce, The Lift of William Denny, 19.]

II

Entire Sanctification

1. There is a sense in which sanctification is entire in regeneration. To the measure of every man’s light the surrender to God must be without reserve, and the cleansing of the heart from an evil conscience is as entire as justification is complete. “By one offering, he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” Though sanctification is in this sense complete in regeneration, in the purpose of God and the experience of the believer, much is left to be accomplished in the nature of the sanctified. The carnalities need to be purged out. Entire sanctification completes the work of regeneration, pervading every part of the renewed nature. The spirit is sanctified wholly; the reason is filled with the all-pervasive presence of God realized in the consciousness. Every faculty of the mind is not only cleansed from defilement, but in every part there is reflected the mind of God. The soul is sanctified wholly; its desires are holy, its passions clean, its thoughts pure, its impulses God-ward, and its delight is in the will of the Lord. The tugging of the old nature with its evil lusts is over. The body is sanctified wholly; its members become instruments of righteousness; it is a temple of God, cleansed, sanctified, and filled with the glory of His presence. The sanctification of the parts is not a separate process. The work is one, and is accomplished in the sanctification of the man. The parts are mentioned to set forth the completeness and entireness of the work of God in redeemed and sanctified man. It is entire, complete, without restriction, and without defect. Every part is cleansed, perfected, and pervaded with the energy of the Divine Presence. The fleshly is eradicated and the spiritual prevails.

What you say about the sin attaching to a reserve in the consecration reminds me of the truth on which Benjamin Hellier used to insist, that in the New Testament the only Christian life allowable is that of entire sanctification. For those who are stopping short of this there are exhortations, warnings, expostulations, invitations, prayers; but the life there presented to every believer is one of a surrendered will, an obedient heart, a victorious Spirit-filled life in union with Christ, bringing salvation from sin, and leading to steady growth, through increasing knowledge and manifold temptations. This is the true answer to those who ask where the New Testament speaks of a second blessing. Salvation is one blessing, which many Christians, through their own fault or that of their teachers, are not receiving in its completeness. 1 [Note: John Brash: Memorials and Correspondence, 36.]

2. What the Apostle meant by this threefold division of human nature cannot be determined with absolute confidence. It is possible that he availed himself of a current division of human nature into three parts—spirit, soul, and body; and that, without at all pronouncing on the truth of this view, he made use of it to express emphatically the whole of man’s being; just as we are commanded to love God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind, although it is not laid down as a fixed truth that man’s nature is made up of these four parts.

It is probable, however, that the Apostle meant more than this, and taught us to seek from God not only in general the recovery of our whole being from sin, but also of the particular parts and in the particular order in which they are here mentioned. He does not at all decide whether the spirit, soul, and body are rightly arranged by the philosophers in separate order. But he does teach that there are such parts of human nature, and he gives directions how they should be treated. There is the spirit, by which he means our highest facilities that come nearest to God, the faculties that connect man with the spiritual and the invisible. These might be perverted to pride and unbelief, and lead man into the condemnation of the devil. There is the soul, the seat of the affections and desires that more especially connect man with this lower world. These might be perverted to covetousness, to lust, to sinful anger, and the other soul passions that corrupt and embitter society. And there is the body, the instrument of man’s higher nature, with its own appetites and cravings, which might be perverted to excess and vicious indulgence, and become the tyrant over the highest powers it ought to serve.

From all these evils and dangers, the Apostle fervently prays that the Thessalonians may be preserved; and there is something in the order in which he arranges his petitions which is instructive. For if the spirit, which is placed first, be preserved, it will tend to preserve the soul; if the soul be preserved, it will tend to preserve the body. The favourable influence might begin above with man’s conscience and reason, then descend to his social affections and desires, then govern and regulate his bodily appetites. What the Apostle prays for is, that every man’s spirit should be as much in communion with God as the spirit of Jesus Christ; his soul as full of social affection and unselfish desire; his body as much the pure and willing instrument of his superior nature in God’s service. Then he would be sanctified wholly. All the parts of his being, like the several strings of a harp, would vibrate in perfect unison with each other, and with the master-strain of Christ’s example.

The soul opens upward to the Infinite and Eternal through the Spirit, with its capacity for God, and downward to the Finite and Temporal through the Body, with its capacity for material objects. The spirit stands for our heavenly aptitudes, the body for our earthly ones. By the one we are able to seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God; through the other we are apt to become entangled with the things that pertain to earth ( Colossians 3:1-5). 1 [Note: F. B. Meyer, The Soul’s Pure Intention, 5.]

(1) The spirit stands first in this enumeration because the work within its unseen recesses determines the surrender of the rest of a man’s powers to God’s uses. This is the point at which we touch the Eternal. Just as fire came first to the altar and from that central point spread in mystic and broadening illumination to the outer courts, with their lamps, vessels, and sacred treasures, so, in the later dispensation, the process by which God claims men for His will and hallows their powers, begins with the spirit. Here is the golden altar, and God descends into soul and body by first stirring into movement those higher affinities which link our natures immediately with His own. The strict and unhalting preparation of the outward life is imperative, but the mystery through which we become God’s dawns at the inmost centre of our being. We can never level ourselves up to this state by bodily acts and exercises, however intense the emotion which pervades them. Here lie the sources of character, and in sweetening these God makes the life a fragrant sacrifice. The spirit was designed for sovereignty over soul and body, and when God’s fiat restores its withered powers and puts within its grasp the sceptre of royalty, all other parts of man’s nature fall into due subordination and attain that faultless co-adaptation of movement in which perfection consists.

(2) The sanctification of the soul, which is the earthen vessel containing the lower passions and appetites, follows that of the spirit. When God possesses us for His own uses all natural instincts fulfil a Divine purpose, and fulfil it in harmony with providential plans. The forces of the nervous life may lend virility to a man’s service.

(3) It is not in its own strength and beauty that the glory of the body consists, but in its connexion with the other parts of man. It is the servant of man’s higher nature. It is the medium of communication between it and the outer world, conveying to the mind, through the senses, impressions of the outer world; and on the other hand, conveying the purpose of the higher powers of man, by means of its activity, into action in the outer world. It is in this service that the glory of the body consists. But the servant may become the master; this lowest part of human nature may become the ruling part. In that case the soul, with its strong and noble powers, becomes a shorn Samson in the lap of Delilah, and the spirit—that pure dove with wings of silver and feathers of yellow gold—has to lie among the pots, and bathe its breast in the mud of sensuality. Even the body itself, deposed from its true position and its true function, becomes degraded, and approaches towards brutality.

How well I remember when I was a young man, before I was ordained, being in a foreign town, just after leaving Oxford, and a boy came to me with a question which tested the truth of my manhood to the bottom. He was, I remember, five years younger than I was; I was twenty-three. He in that town had been spoken to in this manner by other young Englishmen who were spending their winter in that town. They asked him to come with them to the low parts of the town. They said: “All young men of your age always act like this; they are not men if they don’t.” He came to me; he was a very excitable, impulsive, lovable boy; and he said: “I have asked for an hour before I would give them my final answer. If I can find one man of your age who will on his word as a gentleman say he has not done that, I will not go; but, if not, I will go.” So he came to me. I was on my honour to give him a true answer, and, although it is thirty years ago, I thank God to-day that I could look him in the face and say: “I have never gone; I have never sinned in that way. I have many infirmities, many short-comings, but I have never misused my body in that way.” “Then,” he said, “I won’t go with them.” 1 [Note: Bishop A. F. W. Ingram, Secrets of Strength, 211.]

If you would see what it is to be “sanctified,” look to Jesus. His body was sanctified; for all its powers were used in absolute accordance with the will of God. His feet, to hasten to the bed of pain, or the haunt of the sin-stricken. His hand, to raise the dead and to save the sinking. His eyes, to look with ineffable pity on the city which spurned Him, or with silent rebuke on the disciple who denied Him. His voice, to teach with such ineffable wisdom and power as to constrain even His enemies to say, “Never man spake like this Man!” Even in what we may call the ordinary scenes of His life there was the same sanctity. He took part in festivities; and though some dared to say, “Behold, a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber,” they knew the charge was false; for by His holy presence He made every meal a sacrament, and every social gathering sacred. To be sanctified is to be like Him; so that on the tables of the home, and on the ledgers in the office, on our warehouses and marts, it shall be as though in letters of light these words were blazoned, “Holiness unto the Lord.” 2 [Note: A. Rowland, The Burdens of Life, 147.]

How should I describe the relations to each other of these factors of our human fabric? Should I call the body the sheath of the soul and the soul the sheath of the spirit. So saith the Latin father Tertullian. Or should I say that the body is the organ of the soul and the soul the organ of the spirit? Or the first the utterance of the second and the second the expression of the third? What is the body for? Not for intemperance, not for drunkenness, not for incontinence, not for the greed of avarice: but the body, saith St. Paul, is for the Lord. He is the proprietor of it. He is the builder of the body and redeemer of it; doubly owner of it and twice proprietor, first by creation and then by redemption. His body, pierced on the cross, redeemed ours; and we were then bought with a price. If then we would live to the Lord who died to make us His own again, let us keep our bodies in temperance, soberness, and chastity; if we do not He will cast us into outer darkness. But what did I say? Let us keep the body in order? Why, the body is the organ of the soul; the soul rules it with a will, uses it with a will, bids it walk with feet, touch with hand, taste with tongue, speak with mouth, see with eyes. The soul stares and peers through the eyes of a bad man with looks of lust, of pride, of hate: for the eyes of the body are the windows of the soul surveying through them this material world of sun and moon, of mountains and cities: while the hands and feet are the willing servants of the soul, executing its will, doing its bidding and going on its errands. Eyes, hands, feet, tongue, all instruments of unrighteousness to the soul of a bad man, of righteousness to the soul of the good. So then if the soul rules the body, let us keep the body in order. How? Clearly by keeping the soul in order, filling it with good desires, with pure motives, with wise counsels, with noble aims and aspirations: but what was I saying? Let us keep the soul in order, that through it we may keep the body in order? Yes, but quis custodiet ipsam custodem? What is to keep the soul in order? Why the soul itself is controlled by that of which it is the organ and the expression, even by the spirit. So then let each of us fill our highest nature, even the spirit, with good desires, with pure motives, with noble aspirations, with lofty thoughts of God’s Paradise and the glories of the coming Kingdom. What is this? That the body may be kept in order by its superior the soul, and the soul kept in order by its superior the spirit, let us each fill his own spirit with good desires? Let us? Can we? Is a man’s ego or self outside a man that he should pour into his own spirit good desires, as he would pour water into a cistern? A man’s ego is inside the man, whether it be seated in the soul or in the spirit or in both. For behind the body is its ruler and director the soul, behind the soul is its ruler the spirit: but behind the spirit of man is what? Is there no superior? No controller behind that? Why, yes, some unseen power there is that plays the part of King David to the harp and makes the music of the instrument; that suggests, that inspires, that persuades, drawing to virtue or tempting to vice. An evil power drawing to evil, a good power to good. Certainly behind the human spirit of a good man is that which is akin to it, even the Divine Spirit of the unseen Christ breathing into it good desires, pure motives, lofty inspirations, instilling a steady belief in a better world and a quiet assurance of a blessed immortality hereafter; shedding meekness, gentleness, purity, charity, a high nature filling with joy and peace a lower kindred nature, like sunshine filling daylight. 1 [Note: T. S. Evans, Body, Soul, and Spirit, 4.]

III

The Means and the Motive

1. Though, as we have seen, our own will must co-operate with God’s will in our sanctification, yet sanctification is not the result of our own effort. Our text, especially in the original, where emphasis is strong on “God himself,” suggests that it is in Him, not in ourselves, that we have hope. This is clearer in the Revised Version. In the verses immediately preceding the text St. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians as to what they were to do. Then suddenly he turns from the work of the human will to the work of the Divine Spirit, and says, “The God of peace himself sanctify you wholly.” And in the next verse he encourages them to believe that this will be so by the declaration, “Faithful is he that calleth you, who will also do it.”

2. But not only does St. Paul say it is God that sanctifies us, he says also that it is “the God of peace.” The use of this epithet is perhaps intended to teach us two truths.

(1) It teaches us this great lesson, that sanctification, like every other blessing of redemption, comes to us from God through the atonement of Jesus Christ. Previously to the atonement God could neither pardon nor sanctify. God is light as well as love. He would, to speak with reverence, have become unholy Himself had He consented to make the sinner holy before atonement was made. Now the great work is finished. God, as the God of peace, has “brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,” and is ready to make us perfect in every good work to do His will, working in us that which is well-pleasing in His sight.

Suppose a rich and fertile country from which alone we derived the supply of our tables, the clothing of our persons, the ornaments of our houses, were alienated from us by war, and by war of our own provoking. It would need some atonement, some reconciliation, to reopen our lost sources of improvement or even of subsistence. And suppose another powerful nation were to mediate on our behalf and restore pacific relations; then it would be possible for the old supplies to flow in, not because there was any pleasure in withholding them, but because, till then, the honour of the nation we had provoked was not satisfied. Such is a faint image of the change which has come over our relations to God by the interposition of Jesus Christ. Now, as the very God of peace, He can bestow what before His heart yearned to confer, but for which an honourable way was not found. Now the richest treasures of heaven may be brought down to us by the Holy Spirit. Heaven and earth are leagued in friendship, and there is no Christian who desires these ornaments of the soul, better far than the choicest productions found beneath the skies, that will not find the God of peace prepared to impart them, and to do unto him exceeding abundantly above all that he can ask or think. 1 [Note: Principal Cairns, Sanctification, 20.]

(2) But, again, the calmness He gives when we cease our own efforts, and trust Him, is our truest might to maintain this complete consecration. While the calm and holy light of that peace shines in the soul, the storm may roar without and be unheeded; and the phantoms of temptation beckon and allure us in vain. It was the power of that peace that gave St. Paul strength to control the temptations which assailed his vehement, sarcastic, fiery soul, and to bear the burdens of the weak, and submit silently to the slanders and scorns of the Church and the world.

Power that is not of God, however great,

Is but the downward rushing and the glare

Of a swift meteor that hath lost its share

In the one impulse which doth animate

The parent mass: emblem to me of fate!

Which through vast nightly wastes doth onward fare,

Wild-eyed and headlong, rent away from prayer—

A moment brilliant, then most desolate!

And, O my brothers, shall we ever learn

From all the things we see continually

That pride is but the empty mockery

Of what is strong in man! Not so the stern

And sweet repose of soul which we can earn

Only through reverence and humility! 1 [Note: George MacDonald, Poetical Works, 2:322.]

3. The words of the Apostle are chosen with the utmost care. He prays that they may be kept, not without fault, but without blame. Many blameless things are faulty, and many faulty things are blameless. A work done from purest love and to the utmost capacity may be full of faults but entirely free from blame. A picture is often hung in the home that has a value apart altogether from the judgment of the Academy. Faultless? Not by a long way. But a pure soul put its best into it, and soul is more than precision. Faultless? Nay, for though the sanctification be entire, it is not final. The glorification is not yet. Until it comes the spirit will be beset with limitations and infirmities, the soul will be hampered in its aspirations, and the body will continue to be an imperfect instrument preventing with its weakness the will of the spirit. Not faultless but blameless. Without reproach, without condemnation, and in all things acceptable before God!

To a person who was troubled at her imperfections, St. Francis de Sales wrote thus: “We should, indeed, like to be without imperfections, but, my dearest daughter, we must submit patiently to the trial of having a human, rather than an angelic, nature. Our imperfections ought not, indeed, to please us; on the contrary, we should say with the holy Apostle: Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death! But, at the same time, they ought not to astonish us, nor to discourage us: we should draw from them submission, humility, and mistrust of ourselves; never discouragement and loss of heart, far less distrust of God’s love for us; for though He loves not our imperfections and venial sins, He loves us, in spite of them. The weakness and backwardness of a child displeases its mother, but she does not for that reason love it less. On the contrary, she loves it more fondly, because she compassionates it. So, too, is it with God, who cannot, as I have said, love our imperfections and venial sins, but never ceases to love us, so that David with reason cries out to Him: ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord; for I am weak.’ ” 1 [Note: J. P. Camus, The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, 372.]

4. And what is the motive that ever urges us to this sanctification? To St. Paul it is “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That great event is the most powerful of all motives to cultivate Christian holiness. For to what end does Christ come? He comes to see in what degree His image has been perfected in His professing people. He comes to see who have called Him Lord, Lord, but have not done the things that He commanded them, and to expose them to shame and everlasting contempt. He comes also to display the graces and holy beauties of His genuine followers, and to be glorified in His saints, and admired in all them that believe.

The labours of those that have struggled to be like Him, who have watched and prayed that they might not walk unworthy of His Kingdom and glory, who have wept and made supplication, when no eye saw them, over their remaining spots and blemishes—their labours will not be in vain in the Lord. Every prayer for themselves, and every prayer for others that they too may be prepared and complete in all the will of God, shall find its reward openly; and the sighs that have gone up to heaven for entire sanctification will then receive a glorious answer, when they shall be fully conformed to the image of Him who is the firstborn among many brethren and presented holy and unblamable and unreprovable in His Father’s sight! “Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.”

The great thing, I suspect, is to assure ourselves, not that these things may be, but that they shall be: that Christ’s appearing is as certain as the sun’s rising, or as our deaths; that we do not make it certain by our faith, but that its certainty is the warrant of our faith, and that which is to cure us of its sluggishness. And if this is so, we may encourage all persons always to expect Christ’s manifestation; the more they do expect it, the better they will be, the more they will rise out of their sloth, their scorn, their confusions, their selfishness; the more they will work on manfully in their own appointed tasks, whatever they be, the more they will work with each other; the more they will fight against the temptations which will recur in a thousand different shapes, and will come again and again, as angels of light, to separate themselves from others under any pretence whatever, in faith, in hope, in worship; the more they will prize common thanksgivings, common prayers, and will rejoice to meet in using them, that they may pray against the devil, who is leading them, and all the people about them, to set up themselves, that they may not trust Christ, and glorify God. 1 [Note: Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, ii. 245.]

The Porter watches at the gate,

The servants watch within;

The watch is long betimes and late,

The prize is slow to win.

“Watchman, what of the night?”

But still

His answer sounds the same:

“No daybreak tops the utmost hill,

Nor pale our lamps of flame.”

One to another hear them speak

The patient virgins wise:

“Surely He is not far to seek”—

“All night we watch and rise.”

“The days are evil looking back,

The coming days are dim;

Yet count we not His promise slack,

But watch and wait for Him.”

One with another, soul with soul,

They kindle fire from fire:

“Friends watch us who have touched the goal”

“They urge us, come up higher.”

“With them shall rest our waysore feet,

With them is built our home,

With Christ.”—“They sweet, but He most sweet,

Sweeter than honeycomb.” 2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 202.]

A Prayer for Sanctity

Literature

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