Bible Commentaries
Galatians 5

Verse 6

True Religion

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love.— Galatians 5:6.

It is remarkable to notice how large a space in the history of mankind is occupied by controversies about religion; they have existed at almost all times, and in almost all countries; and sometimes, as, for example, in the early days of Christianity, and at the period of the Reformation in Europe, they have absorbed all other controversies into themselves, and have gathered, as it were, into a single focus all the scattered energies of men.

In the text St. Paul tells us (1) what is the non-essential, and (2) what is the essential of true religion, and we shall deal with it under these two headings.

I

The Non-Essential

“In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision.”

1. The great controversy which embittered so much of St. Paul’s life, and marred so much of his activity, turned upon the question whether a heathen man could come into the Church simply by the door of faith, or whether he must also go through the gate of circumcision. The Jewish literalists in Galatia insisted on the rite of circumcision as necessary to salvation; they contended that Christianity was but a phase or form of the earlier religion which God had sanctioned, and that the ceremonial which had been enacted with so much minuteness of detail was not intended to pass away but to be good for all nations and for all times. It was contended on the other side that the revelation which God had made in early times was partial and incomplete, and that the regulations which He had sanctioned for the Jews were in their very nature temporary, and were from the first intended to pass away.

False teachers misrepresented the Apostle to both parties; accusing him to the Jews of undervaluing the Law, because he allowed the Gentiles to disregard it; affirming him to the Gentiles to be an abettor of superstition, because he permitted the Jews to conform to it. It was then that St. Paul, in the fiery indignation of his just wrath, advanced to the relief of those hard-pressed loyal Galatians who were still holding out against the Judaizers; designing at the same time to teach a wholesome lesson to all who, at the first proof of their faith, had deserted to the ranks of error; and moreover determined to destroy, as far as possible, the enemy’s power of doing mischief. “Neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision,” says St. Paul, “but faith.” You know, he says, that your salvation comes through faith. The proof that you have faith lies—in having faith. But, if you yield to the persuasion of the Judaizers, and suffer yourselves to be circumcised, you cease to have faith in Christ, you cease to benefit by His grace, and Christ will no longer profit you, as I protest and reiterate: in that case you put your trust in the Law, and you must trust to it alone, and be a slave to it in its entirety. In itself the act of circumcision has no effect; it is nought; but your accepting it now is a proof that you no longer trust to Christ, that you no longer have faith.

2. The controversy seems to be merely a controversy of the times; it concerns the distinctive ordinance of a people who were peculiar by choice and provincial by conviction. We see, however, that the ordinance of circumcision has a significance beyond itself. It stands not only for an item of ritual, but for the ritual interest of every heart. It represents here, in St. Paul’s words, not only an act of ceremonial conformity, but the attitude and bias of the conforming spirit. It is descriptive, not only of one act which religious people did, but of a religious tendency of thought, of a particular way of taking things, of a kind of religious life. Therefore, as St. Paul speaks of circumcision, and deals with it as a thing which, in itself, is unavailing, there rises before us as the object of his criticism a character rather than a deed—a character to which circumcision seems all-availing, to which a conventional rectitude, and a ceremonial consistency, and an ecclesiastical shibboleth are the things by which the world must stand—or fall. Because this man, this life, this character, is in the world to-day, the criticism still applies. Thus these words of St. Paul are the master-key to all the controversies which have raged, or are raging still, within the Christian Church, or within the still wider sphere of the religious life of mankind.

For circumcision much might be said from a Hebrew point of view. It was the sign of the covenant under the Old Testament dispensation. It had been solemnly commanded to Abraham, and he and his race had been circumcised; and to be uncircumcised was equivalent to being outside the covenant of promise. This was well known to the Apostle, and on occasion he could recall the fact that he himself had been circumcised the eighth day. But it was because the Jews prided themselves on their external descent from Abraham, without being at all anxious to know and to reproduce in their own lives the spirit and the character of the great patriarch, that St. Paul, in the preaching of the gospel, felt himself morally bound to encounter them with the most aggressive hostility. There could be no compromise between a gospel inspired and permeated by the pure inwardness of moral motives and a claim of superiority before God, founded on external observances, accidental advantages, or ancestral traditions of whatever kind. The thing that produced the spiritual result was not the rite but the truth, and therefore he felt that his function was to preach the truth and leave the rite to be administered by others. And so we can extend the principle here to all externalisms of worship, in all forms, in all churches, and say that in comparison with the essentials of an inward Christianity they are nothing and they do nothing.

When the zeal of a Christian doth leave the internals of religion, and fly to ceremonials, externals, or inferior things, the soul must needs consume and languish: yea, though you were sure your opinions were true, yet when the chiefest of your zeal is turned thither, and the chiefest of your conference there laid out, the life of grace decays within, and your hearts are turned from this heavenly life. Not that I would persuade you to undervalue the least truth of God; yet let every truth in our thoughts and speeches have its due proportion, and I am confident the hundredth part of our time and our conference would not be spent upon the now common themes. For as there are a hundred truths of far greater consequence, which do all challenge the precedency before these, so many of those truths alone are of a hundred times nearer concernment to our souls, and therefore should have an answerable proportion in our thoughts. Neither is it any excuse for our casting by those great fundamental truths, because they are common and known already. He is a rare and precious Christian who is skilled in the improving of well-known truths. I could wish you were all understanding men, able to defend every truth of God. But still I would have the chiefest to be chiefly studied, and none to shoulder out your thoughts of eternity. The least controverted points are usually most weighty, and of most necessary frequent use to our souls. 1 [Note: Richard Baxter.]

3. Even in the full career of his denunciation of error, St. Paul preserves the balance of his judgment. Circumcision cannot avail you anything, he is insisting. But he pauses to add “nor uncircumcision.”

He speaks in criticism of another tendency, and he points the failure of another character. The ritualists trusted in the presence of a ceremony to save them; but the anti-ritualists were beginning to trust in the absence of one. They had gained, to some extent, the vision of the Christian’s liberty. They understood, to a degree, the preaching of our freedom in Jesus Christ. They had learned that the days of hard formality and of exacting usage were gone by. Especially among the Gentiles was there somewhat of a disposition to exult. They had heard it said that in Christ Jesus “circumcision” is unavailing. They were making, in consequence, a great deal of “uncircumcision.” It was a mystery to St. Paul that men should extol their bonds, and glory in ceremonial requirements. But it was at least equally a mystery to him that men should put their trust in merely theoretic freedom, and boast themselves of a liberty which they never exercised for the purposes of a higher faith or worthier manhood. Circumcision cannot avail anything, he has said; and then with clear reference to the temptation of those whose cause he was defending, he adds emphatically, “nor uncircumcision.”

O we boast us of our law,

Glory in our gospel light,

Pity those who cannot draw

Fresh the living water bright;

We are favoured, we are blest,

We have heard the joyful sound,

We are sons of God confessed,

We are free who once were bound.

Bless the Lord who unto us

Is in mercy plenteous.

Ah! but what if we are still

Walking on in sinful ways,

Keeping a rebellious will,

Lusting for the world’s poor praise?

What if we are growing old,

None the wiser for the rod?

What if we have faith in gold,

Not in either man, or God?

Shall we praise the Lord that we

Have nor faith nor charity?

Not the hearer of the word,

But the doer, he is just.

He who, knowing not the Lord,

Keepeth yet his soul from rust,

He who doeth what is right,

Bravely stands by what is true,

Faithful to his inner light,

Dark although it seem to you—

He is nearer God than they

Who know truth and disobey. 1 [Note: Walter C. Smith, Thoughts and Fancies for Sunday Evenings, 97.]

4. True religion is not an outward thing. It does not consist in names or forms, in distinctions or privileges, in meats or drinks, in rites or ceremonies. These have their value. As long as we are here on earth, living in the flesh, we must have outward forms and symbolical rites. But such externals are not worth anything unless they make us grasp more firmly with our understanding, and feel more profoundly with our heart, the great truths of the gospel. It is a large attainment in Christian character to be able to say with St. Paul, Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing. Neither the one side nor the other touches the essentials.

The difference between art and nature shadows forth the difference between obedience in the Mosaic dispensation and the obedience of Christ. It is the difference between the artificial flower and the garden rose, between the sculptured figure and the breathing body; the one shaped from outside, the other determined from within. It is the difference between the mechanical and the vital; the one unsympathetic and constrained, the other organic, instinctive, voluntary, delightful. The law is henceforth put within our mind, written in our heart. 1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Gates of Dawn, 49.]

In the dusty room in the Interpreter’s House described by Bunyan in the Pilgrim’s Progress, we again have the Law and the Gospel, but this time under a new aspect and with a lighter touch. Formerly the Law kills, here it only irritates, producing that condition of confusion, turmoil, darkness, dirtiness, which is just the thing known as dustiness—a thing by itself. “I have had enough,” as Cheever makes Christian say, “of that fierce sweeper, the Law. The Lord deliver me from his besom!” The only thing which can remedy this morbidly irritated condition is the Gospel in its sweet, clean and allaying power. When a man finds its peace, the mirrors of the soul are clear again, and reflect truly the face of God and the things of the world. 2 [Note: John Kelman, The Road, i. 58.]

II

The Essential

“Faith working through faith.”

The antithesis of this text appears, in somewhat varied forms, in two other places in the Apostle’s writings. To the Corinthians he says, “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God.” His last word to the Galatians—the gathering up into one strong sentence of his whole letter—is, “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” Now, all these assertions embody substantially the same opposition between the conception of Christianity as depending upon a ceremonial rite, and as being a spiritual change. And the variations in the second member of the contrast throw light on each other. In one, the essential thing is regarded from the Divine side as being not a rite performed on the body, but a new nature, the result of a supernatural regeneration. In another, the essential thing is set forth as being not an outward act but an inward principle, which produces appropriate effects on the whole being. In yet another, the essential thing is conceived as being not a mere ceremonial but practical obedience, the consequence of the active principle of faith, and the sign of the new life. There is an evident sequence in the three sayings. They begin with the deepest, the Divine act of a new creation, and end with the outer-most, the last result and object of both the others—deeds of conformity to God’s law.

1. A new creation.—St. Paul did not believe that external rites could make men partakers of a new nature, but he believed that, if a man would trust in Jesus Christ, the life of that Christ would flow into his opened heart, and a new spirit and nature would be born in him.

The story of the Christian Church is but the record of the fact that men have been born again, that old things have passed away, and all things have become new. One has only to think of the writer of these texts, and of the change from Saul the persecutor to Paul the Apostle, to have evidence of the reality of the new birth. One has only to think of Augustine, of Luther, of John Bunyan, to recognize that the new creation is one of the great facts of human experience. It commences with an awakening to the full consciousness of the dignity and lofty destiny of man as a moral being, and with a deliberate purpose and plan to carry it out to its legitimate consequences in the life of an essentially social animal. This is what in the New Testament narrative of apostolic preaching, and in many well-known religious biographies of recent date, is called conversion; and there can be no doubt both of the necessity and of the reality of such a process. Men come to know that a new strength has entered into their lives, and they recognize that it has come from no source within their previous experience. Need we wonder that they accept the Scripture explanation of the great fact, and say, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me”?

Plato describes earthly life as follows: “Men sit in a cavern with their backs towards the light. Therefore they only see the shadows or simulacra of what passes in front of the cavern. Whoever hits on the brilliant idea of turning round, sees the originals, the realities in themselves, the light.” So simple is it! Only to turn round, or be converted, in a word. But it is not necessary on that account to become a monk, ascetic, or hermit. I almost agree with Luther that faith is everything. Our deeds lag far behind, and need only consist in refraining from all deliberate evil. As a beginning, one may be content with not stealing, lying, or bearing false witness. If we have greater claims and wish to train ourselves into superman, we may. But if we do not succeed, we should not throw the whole system overboard, but ceaselessly commence anew, never despair, try to smile at our vain efforts, be patient with ourselves, and believe good of God. When the religious man falls, he gets up again, brushes himself, and goes on; the irreligious man remains lying in the dirt. Thus the whole art of life consists in not turning one’s back to the light. 1 [Note: A. Strindberg, Zones of the Spirit, 112.]

2. Faith working through love.—Faith is the first act, or state, of the new creation. It is the new creature come to the consciousness of himself, of his relations to his Maker, of his surroundings and of his meaning. Certainly he must know and believe that there is a God; and he must understand His character, as a just as well as a beneficent Being; then he must become acquainted with God’s law, as holy and decisive, reaching to the inmost intents of the heart; and then, far above everything else, he must be forced to see plainly that—out of His sovereign grace—God has opened a way of pardon through an atoning death of His own Son. These must be known as primal truths under the gospel; then they must be believed, and that is faith.

Now faith, according to St. Paul, when once it lives in the soul, is all Christian practice in the germ. The living apprehension of the Crucified One, whereby the soul attains light and liberty, may be separable in idea, but in fact it is inseparable, from a Christian life. If the apprehension of revealed truth does not carry within itself the secret will to yield the whole being to God’s quickening grace and guidance, it is spiritually worthless. Faith, if it is to be good for anything, must be a working faith. If our faith puts us to sleep instead of awakening activity, if it sends us to bed instead of sending us to the field or the workshop, it is not worth having. It is a grace which saves and justifies, but it is also a grace “which worketh.” There must be correspondence between our emotional faith and our daily lives. In proportion as we feel fervent emotions of love towards God, so will our lives exhibit earnestness of purpose and activity of energy in “doing good” to the souls and bodies of our fellow-men. This sacred energy of the soul manifests itself in a life of holy love. It is set in active hostility to all forms of evil, to all selfishness, and to everything which tends to hinder its appropriation of Christ. So faith leads us into wider knowledge, into more active self-mastery, and to the growth of the whole man in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. It sets free every power of man for further growth and for ampler service. And the goal is the fulness of the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus.

The early Christians felt that virtue, like sin, was a subtle universal thing, entering into every act and thought, appearing outwardly in ten thousand diverse ways, diverse according to the separate framework of every heart in which it dwelt; but one and the same always in its proceeding from the love of God, as sin is one and the same in proceeding from hatred of God. And in their pure, early, and practical piety, they saw that there was no need for codes of morality, or systems of metaphysics. Their virtue comprehended everything, entered into everything; it was too vast and too spiritual, to be defined; but there was no need of its definition. For through faith, working by love, they knew that all human excellence would be developed in due order; but that, without faith, neither reason could define, nor effort reach, the lowest phase of Christian virtue. 1 [Note: Ruskin, Stones of Venice, ii. ch. viii. (Works, x. 365).]

I never have stopped, I hope I shall never stop, to consider what set or sect of people are at work, if I thoroughly and entirely approve of the work. I may think the work incomplete; but, if it comes in my way, and I think it good as far as it goes, I do help it with the little power I have. Above all I would not in this age refuse help to a society because it did not state that it was working in Christ’s cause. I do believe we want all generous and good work recognized as Christ’s, whether conscious or unconscious. I think the tendency is very much for doubters to think the best work is done by benevolent unbelievers; to think our faith cramps our labours and narrows our hearts. I would like, so far as in me lies, to show them we care for men as men, we care for good as good. I never would deny faith. I care very little to express it anywhere but in life. How much these people lose by their omission I believe they will one day know. I think the time will come when all this round world will seem to them mainly precious, because it was made by a Father and redeemed by His Song of Solomon 1 [Note: Life of Octavia Hill, 184.]

3. Keeping the commandments of God.—As the new creation is the beginning of the distinctively Christian life, and as faith working through love marks the evolution of its growth, so the third thing, keeping the commandments of God, may be said to indicate its consummation. The loftiest purpose of God, in all His dealings, is to make us like Himself; and the end of all religion is the complete accomplishment of that purpose. “Be ye imitators of God as dear children,” is the pure and comprehensive dictate which expresses the aim of all devout men.

To become like Christ is to be one who keeps the commandments of God. For the Man Christ Jesus not only obeyed the Law in all its precepts, negative and positive; He was one in whom the full meaning of the Law, its higher and more ultimate purpose, obtained a glorious realization. The law marked out boundaries, defined the borders of action, but within these borders and subject to these limitations Christ Jesus showed in the fulness of a perfect human life the worth and value of that life the limit of which law had defined. Here there was in living, concrete form the realization of what law was meant to define, for the sake of which law was brought into existence. Now the new creature, born of God, growing by faith that works through love, just in proportion to its growth, is growing into the likeness of Christ, and so growing into the power of keeping the commandments of God, as Jesus kept them.

Do not let us understand by what is called a “commandment” a peremptory mandate delivered by organs of speech, and giving orders to the Son, as to a subordinate, concerning what He ought to do. Let us rather, in a sense befitting the Godhead, perceive a transmission of will, like the reflexion of an object in a mirror, passing without note of time from Father to Song of Solomon 1 [Note: St. Basil.]

The question, in the last analysis, is between self and Christ, between works and grace. That is the evangelical crux of faith. It is quite true that “character is salvation,” and that goodness is goodness all the world over. Yet the fact remains that the more character and goodness we have, the less we are satisfied with it, and the more surely we are driven back on the redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ. Every advance in character only reveals more surely the infinite stretch of moral height and depth. And the more hopelessly we realize this, the more urgently do we feel our need of One to cast ourselves out on, good and evil alike, that we may lose all, and so find all in Him. After all, character is salvation: and there is a very real danger in any presentation of Christianity that would seem even to the most ignorant kind of man to disparage character. There is a popular hymn which contains the lines:

Doing is a deadly thing,

Doing ends in death.

And Joannes Agricola’s Calvinism leads him to the confident assurance that—

I have God’s warrant, could I blend

All hideous sins, as in a cup,

To drink the mingled venoms up;

Secure my nature will convert

The draught to blossoming gladness fast.

It is easy to see how dangerous such ideas may be to ill-balanced natures and untrained consciences. 2 [Note: John Kelman, The Road, ii. 157.]

True Religion

Literature

Blackie (J. S.), Lay Sermons, 299.

Clifford (J.), The Dawn of Manhood, 152.

Cooper (E.), Fifty-Two Family Sermons, 42.

Gibbon (J. M.), Evangelical Heterodoxy, 228.

Hatch (E.), Memorials, 89.

Hiley (R. W.), A Year’s Sermons, 55.

Horne (C. S.), The Soul’s Awakening, 61.

Iverach (J.), The Other Side of Greatness, 52.

Liddon (H. P.), Bampton Lectures for 1866, 284.

Maclaren (A.), Christ in the Heart, 229.

Maclaren (A.), Sermons Preached in Manchester, ii. 207.

Murphy (E. G.), The Larger Life, 121.

Pusey (E. B.), Selected Occasional Sermons, 1.

Robinson (C. S.), Studies in the New Testament, 169.

Ryle (H. E.), On the Church of England, 253.

Secker (T.), Sermons, v. 355, 383.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxii. (1876), No. 1280; xxvi. (1880), No. 1553; xxix. (1883), No. 1750.

Stanley (A. P.), Canterbury Sermons, 190, 205, 222.

Temple (F.), Rugby Sermons, iii. 181.

Tholuck (A.), Hours of Christian Devotion, 296.

Voysey (C.), Sermons (1876), No. 26.

Wilson (S. L.), Helpful Words for Daily Life, 46.

Woodward (H.), Sermons, 352.

Christian World Pulpit, xix. 26 (H. W. Beecher); xxi. 251 (H. W. Beecher); xlvii. 342 (J. Iverach); l. 262 (J. Iverach).

Church of England Magazine, xxxiv. 8 (R. Harvey).

Churchman’s Pulpit: The Lenten Season, v. 207 (B. Compton).

Verses 22-23

The Fruit of the Spirit

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.— Galatians 5:22-23.

This text needs no introduction. But by way of exposition we may divide it into three parts, and consider (1) the Nature of the Fruit of which the Apostle speaks; (2) its Variety—this being the chief thing here; and (3) its Culture.

I

The Nature of The Fruit

1. The fruit is the creation of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is not something that springs out of our old nature, amended, educated, refined; not something that we create in ourselves by our own will or effort, but something that is wrought in us by Divine power and energy. As well might a gardener try to cover a dead stick with green leaves and luscious fruit. The thing is impossible. Every bit of the “fruit” which God loves is the work, from first to last, of the Holy Ghost. His is all the glory. And only in the simplest dependence upon Him, and in surrender of ourselves to His almighty influence, can we ever know this blessed “fruit” as ours, to the glory of God.

2. And yet this fruit must grow from something that is within the man. It must be a genuine product of human life. “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; … I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Why not? He was certainly larger, and he probably had more colours in his garments—why not arrayed like one of these? Because the lily grew, and all the colours in the lily came from within, while all the glory of Solomon was a glory put on him from without. The glory of a house is the glory of the man who built it, not primarily of the man who lives in it. The glory that is put on a man is not a man’s own glory. The glory that does not grow is spurious.

You do not make a character as you build a house, laying one stone upon another; nor do you alter it as you might alter a house, pulling out these stones, and putting others in. It grows by inherent power, assimilating, rejecting, amplifying or transmuting, as though that which comes to it were food, which indeed it is—food from heaven or from hell. And every particle of this food that is truly incorporated in the man’s life goes to change character through and through, may be trusted to do it. Therefore, behind laws outworn and habits that should be outgrown, the charity that believes all things and hopes all things discovers the man as he really is, with promise of the man that he will be. 1 [Note: Michael Fairless: Her Life and Writings, 74.]

3. For the perfection of the fruit, the spiritual must master the natural. We have to do with a twofold nature—that which we share with all living things, and the new nature which we must win, and the winning of which represents an endless, never-ceasing task. Philosophers may be left to decide how these two natures are related to one another; the distinction is undeniable, and is rooted in every soul. And the power which leads us to the higher nature we name the Spirit of God. The lower nature urges a people simply to follow the materialistic instinct of self-preservation, to fight to the end in the struggle for existence, the struggle for fodder and a place at the stall. The Spirit of God, on the other hand, teaches that “man lives not by bread alone,” and that his supreme task is to win an abiding relation to the Eternal.

Angels of Growth, of old in that surprise

Of your first vision, wild and sweet,

I poured in passionate sighs

My wish unwise

That ye descend my heart to meet,—

My heart so slow to rise!

Now thus I pray: Angelic be to hold

In heaven your shining poise afar,

And to my wishes bold

Reply with cold,

Sweet invitation, like a star

Fixed in the heavens old.

Did ye descend: what were ye more than I?

Is’t not by this ye are divine,—

That, native to the sky,

Ye cannot hie

Downward, and give low hearts the wine

That should reward the high?

Weak, yet in weakness I no more complain

Of your abiding in your places:

Oh! still, howe’er my pain

Wild prayers may rain,

Keep pure on high the perfect graces

That stooping could but stain.

Not to content our lowness, but to lure

And lift us to your angelhood,

Do your surprises pure,

Dawn far and sure

Above the tumult of young blood,

And, star-like, there endure.

Wait there! wait and invite me while I climb;

For see, I come! but slow, but slow!

Yet ever as your chime

Soft and sublime,

Lifts at my feet, they move, they go

Up the great stair of time. 1 [Note: David Atwood Wasson.]

II

The Variety of the Fruit

1. The Apostle enumerates nine graces, but he describes them all as “fruit” not “fruits.” And this is true to life, for the Holy Spirit always clusters His work. One Christian virtue necessarily raises up another; there is no such thing as sanctification in a single point. As one berry in a bunch of grapes cannot ripen without the others ripening too, so it is with the Christian. Try to eradicate one sin of your character, and you will invariably find that in doing so you will weaken, if you do not pull up, another. Cultivate one good trait, and you will be surprised to find how many more seem to grow up, you scarcely know how, at its side. So that this is often the best way to carry on one’s own edification—to concentrate one’s prayers and self-discipline upon one particular point of attainment, not only because by that fixed-ness we shall best secure the growth and the attainment which we desire, but also because by cherishing that one excellence we shall promote all.

2. The list is not to be regarded as exhaustive. Indeed the catalogue of qualities after which men should aspire in what is called “the Sermon on the Mount” varies very much from the catalogue that is given here. There is not a word said in the Sermon on the Mount about love or faith or hope; and here there is not a word said about patience under suffering and persecution. “Longsuffering” is spoken of, but by that is not meant suffering under persecution. If we turn to Philippians and to Ephesians we shall find still further descriptions of Christian character; and they are not like any of the others. The fact is, it is simply impossible for any man to make a list which is exhaustive of the developments of the human mind. A true manhood in Jesus Christ means the education of every faculty; and the qualities which spring out of the combinations of these faculties must be well-nigh infinite. No man can exhaust the alphabet. There is practically no end to the possible combinations of its letters. The separate human faculties are more numerous than are the letters of the alphabet; and they can, by combination and culture, develop qualities ad infinitum. Therefore, we never look for a perfect human portraiture. We look for just enough hints to suggest in our minds that which we cull and fill up by the imagination and through our knowledge; but it would be vain to attempt to describe all that may be developed in a full, manly nature, under the Divine inspiration and culture. That would be attempting an impossibility.

Sometimes, when I read books in which perfection is put before us with the goal obstructed by a thousand obstacles, my poor little head is quickly fatigued. I close the learned treatise, which tires my brain and dries up my heart, and I turn to the Sacred Scriptures. Then all becomes clear and lightsome—a single word opens out infinite vistas, perfection appears easy, and I see that it is enough to acknowledge our nothingness, and like children surrender ourselves into the Arms of the Good God. Leaving to great and lofty minds the beautiful books which I cannot understand, still less put in practice, I rejoice in my littleness because “only little children and those who are like them shall be admitted to the Heavenly Banquet.” Fortunately—“there are many mansions in my Father’s house”; if there were only those—to me—incomprehensible mansions with their baffling roads, I should certainly never enter there. 1 [Note: Sœur Thérèse of Lisieux, 305.]

3. Yet there is a sequence in the order of these fruits. The list begins with “love” and ends with “temperance.” We should have expected the reverse of the order, but in the realm of the Spirit we begin with the best and ripest and juiciest, and then pass to the plainer and more severe. The fact of the matter is, the one is assured by the other, and this is the order of the assurance: create love, and you have the conditions of a fine self-control; obtain the juiciness of the first, and the seeming harshness of the last is never known. We may take them in three triads. The first three express our possible relationship to God—“love, joy, peace.” The next three express our possible relationship to our fellows—“longsuffering, gentleness, goodness.” The last three express our possible relationship to ourselves—“faithfulness, meekness, temperance.”

4. The first of these triads is “love, joy, peace.” We cannot call them duties or virtues; they are simply the results of communion with God—the certain manifestations of the better life of the Spirit. Love, of course, heads the list, as the foundation and moving principle of all the rest. It is the instinctive act of the higher life and is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit. It is the life sap which rises through the tree and gives form to all the clusters. The remaining two members of this triad are plainly consequences of the first. Joy is not so much an act or a grace of character as an emotion poured into men’s lives, because in their hearts abides love to God. Jesus Christ pledged Himself to impart His joy, so that it should remain in us and our joy should be full. There is only one source of permanent joy which takes possession of and fills all the corners and crannies of the heart, and that is love towards God equally abiding and all-pervasive. Peace will be built on love and joy, if our hearts are ever turning to God and ever blessed with the inter-communion of love between Him and us. True peace comes not from the absence of trouble but from the presence of God, and will be deep and passing all understanding in the exact measure in which we live in, and partake of, the love of God.

“Caritas,” which is in fact nothing else but “the energy and representative of the Spirit in our hearts,” expands and asserts itself, and makes its power to be known by its fruits of love, joy, peace and pity in the character of man. Mark, then, how joy springs out at once as the unfailing token of the Holy Spirit’s presence, the first sign that He is having His own way with a man’s heart. 1 [Note: Bishop Francis Paget.]

These two words, joy and peace, furnish the colour of the Christian life. The prevailing hue of most lives—it cannot be called colour—is grey if it be not drab. The clear skies out of which a wreath of light is continually transfiguring the whole landscape belong to more favourable climates than that of Great Britain. The deep glow of sunset, rich in purple, orange, crimson, and amethystine hues that have no names, appears but seldom and is soon gone. In a sense this is to be expected of spiritual life in a naughty world. The moods of the soul are sure to change, and nothing is more monotonous or exhausting than the uninterrupted glare of a pitiless Eastern sun. But religious life that has no colour has lost the secret of beauty and charm, and perhaps there is no feature in the Christian religion that would do more to convince a weary, cynical, blasé generation of the supernatural power of the grace of God than the fadeless colour it can infuse into a Christian life by the joy and peace which are the fruit of the Divine Spirit. 2 [Note: W. T. Davison, The Indwelling Spirit, 112.]

5. The second triad is “longsuffering, kindness, goodness.” All these three obviously refer to the spiritual life in its manifestations to men.

(1) Longsuffering.—How striking that this should come next! After dwelling upon the great dispositions of love in God, joy in God, peace in God, it is almost startling to be encountered by this sober grace, longsuffering. It is as though, when we turn to the Word, the first great necessity is the power of bearing up and holding out. It is something more than magnanimity; it is rather longanimity. It is not breadth of temper so much as length of temper. It is the capacity to present the same calm surface to men to-day, and to-morrow, and morrow after morrow, in spite of anything and everything. It is the power to bear irritating people without becoming irritated. It is the ability to tolerate even the intolerant. It is long temper as contrasted with short temper; the power of “bearing all things.”

Some of us meet injustice, wrong treatment, harshness, rudeness, unkindness, from those among whom we live and work. It is not easy to keep our hearts sweet and loving all the while in such experiences. It is easier for us to do as the world does—harden ourselves against the injustice or rudeness, or grow bitter, resentful, soured. That is what too many do in the midst of the selfishness, harshness, and wrong they meet in their condition. But this is not the transforming that is toward Christ-likeness. The struggle between the good and the evil in us goes on continually; but when the world is getting the better of us, when the good in us is being smothered, when the lamp within our bosom is being quenched, when its flame is growing dimmer, we are losing in the struggle. Instead of being transformed, our life is being darkened. 1 [Note: J. R. Miller.]

(2) Gentleness.—How exquisite the addition! We are not merely to bear the impatience and the intolerableness of the world; we are to be delicate in our approaches to it. The literal significance is just this: we are to “graze” people, to touch them slightly, but the touch has to be one of healing. If we want to know the meaning of the gentle touch, we must read Paul’s Epistles to the Thessalonians, and mark the exquisite gentleness of his reproofs. “He touched upon it so tenderly!” Ah, that is a rare fruit, and it comes in the life that is united by love and joy to God.

Writing to Southey, whom he urged to undertake a “life” of John Wesley, Sir Walter Scott says: When I was twelve years old, I heard him preach more than once, standing on a chair, in Kelso churchyard. He was a most venerable figure, but his sermons were vastly too colloquial for the taste of Saunders. He told many excellent stories. One I remember, which he said had happened to him at Edinburgh. “A drunken dragoon,” said Wesley, “was commencing an assertion in military fashion, G——d eternally d——n me, just as I was passing. I touched the poor man on the shoulder, and when he turned round fiercely, said calmly, ‘You mean God bless you.’ ” In the mode of telling the story he failed not to make us sensible how much his patriarchal appearance, and mild yet bold rebuke, overawed the soldier, who touched his hat, thanked him, and, I think, came to chapel that evening. 1 [Note: J. G. Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, ch. xliv.]

(3) Goodness.—More positive still is the grace! All the wealth accumulated in love and joy and peace in God is to be poured out in active, influential ministry upon our fellowmen. If we would realize the full wealthy content of this word “goodness” in all its reach and ranges, we must call to our aid that fascinating list of words beginning with the syllable “bene.” In goodness, we find benediction, benevolence, beneficence, benefits. It is a thoroughly ripe fruit, and its juices allay the pains and fears of men, and help to keep souls pure and sweet.

From what has been said, it is easy to see how genuinely good my father was. The goodness which St. Paul mentions as a component part of “the fruit of the Spirit” ( Galatians 5:22-23), and which, difficult as it is to dissect and define, we instinctively recognize when we see it, characterized him in a very high degree. Yes, he was good—thoroughly, genuinely, unaffectedly, transparently good. This was the clear-cut, ineffaceable impression he left upon the minds of all who knew him, however partial and imperfect their knowledge of him might be. Those who knew him best were most sensible of his goodness; in the intimacies of private life, it showed itself even more fully and winsomely than in his public relations and activities. When once my elder sister was travelling with him in America, their kind host in one city gathered a party of friends for a picnic at Niagara Falls. Powerfully moved by the majesty of the scene, my father suggested that they should turn aside to a secluded spot for a few moments of prayer. The prayer over, the party were again moving on, when my sister suddenly clasped the arm of the gentleman at her side, and earnestly exclaimed, “Oh, isn’t my father good?” “Yes, indeed he is,” said he. “Ah,” she rejoined, “but it is only we who live with him who know how good he is.” The daughterly tribute was the simple truth. It has happened before now that a man has been, in the strong line of the poet,

A household devil and a causeway saint

Never was there any such contradiction between what my father seemed to the world and what he was in reality at home. There were no skeletons in his cupboards, no hidden chambers in his life into which he would have been afraid for any one to enter. To the very core of him, he was a good man, courteous, sympathetic, considerate, one of “God’s gentlemen,” known as such by all his friends; and not even his enemies—and inevitably he made some enemies for righteousness’ sake—ever brought his goodness into doubt. 1 [Note: H. Varley, Henry Varley’s Life-Story, 238.]

6. The third triad—“faithfulness, meekness, temperance”—appears to point to the world in which the Christian life is to be lived as a scene of difficulties and oppositions. The rendering of the Revised Version is to be preferred to that of the Authorized in the first of the three, for it is not faith in its theological sense to which the Apostle is here referring. St. Paul’s thought is that the Christian life is to manifest itself in the faithful discharge of all duties and the honest handling of all things committed to it. Meekness even more distinctly contemplates a condition of things which is contrary to the Christian life, and points to a submissiveness of spirit which does not lift itself up against opposition, but bends like a reed before the storm. St. Paul preached meekness and practised it; but he could flash into strong opposition and with a resonant ring in his voice could say, “To whom we gave place by subjection, No! not for an hour.” The last member of the triad—temperance—points to the difficulties which the spiritual life is apt to meet with in the natural passions and desires, and insists upon the fact that conflict and rigid and habitual self-control are sure to be marks of that life.

The power of self-control is one of the great qualities that differentiate man from the lower animals. He is the only animal capable of a moral struggle or a moral conquest. Every step in the progress of the world has been a new “control”; it has been escaping from the tyranny of a fact to the understanding and mastery of that fact. For ages man looked in terror at the lightning-flash; to-day he has begun to understand it as electricity, a force he has mastered and made his slave. The million phases of electrical invention are but manifestations of our control over a great force. But the greatest of all “control” is self-control. Self-denial and self-control are the necessary postulates of all moral excellence. A man who will take the world easily will never take it grandly. To lie in the lap of luxury may be the highest enjoyment of which a feeble character is capable, but a strong man must have something difficult to do. Moreover, the happiness of the human race does not consist in our being devoid of passions, but in our learning to control them. It has been well said that in any discussion or disagreement with another, if you are in the wrong, you cannot afford to lose your temper; and if you are in the right there is no occasion to. Or, as a lawyer has wittily put it, “Possession is nine parts of the law, self-possession is ten.” 1 [Note: John Stuart Blackie.]

Spenser sings the prowess of Sir Guion, and Holbein draws a picture of the Faithful Knight, who in every line of his figure, every muscle of his body, every detail of his mien and armour, bespeaks the man that is fit to rule others because he can rule himself. Self-control comes last in St. Paul’s list, not because it is least, or lowest, but because it is the bond of all the rest. Many men attain a good measure of self-control by effort, and none can gain the grace without effort, strenuous and constant. But he who would master himself completely and maintain his control to the end finds that this “temperance” is a gift of the Spirit. “Thee o’er thyself I crown and mitre,” said Virgil to Dante, but only when he had triumphantly passed the seven terraces of Purgatory. Man need not wait till then for such high coronation, but the only man who can conquer himself is he in whom the Divine Spirit exercises complete control and sway. 2 [Note: W. T. Davison, The Indwelling Spirit, 115.]

These thoughts were mine—to dwell alone,

My spirit on its lordly throne,

Hating the vain stir, fierce and loud,

The din of the tumultuous crowd;

And how I thought to arm my soul,

And stablish it in self-control;

And said I would obey the right,

And would be strong in wisdom’s might,

And bow unto my own heart’s law,

And keep my heart from speck or flaw,

That in its mirror I might find

A reflex of the Eternal mind. 3 [Note: R. C. Trench, Justin Martyr.]

III

The Culture of the Fruit

1. The production of this fruit is the end to be aimed at. The “fruit” is the climax of the tree’s operations. For this it braves the blasts of many a wild and stormy night; for this it endures biting frosts of winter, and presents its bare, denuded boughs to snow and sleet; for this it opens its bud in the spring-time, and spreads its verdant leaves before the summer sun; for this it sucks up acids from the soil, and labours to provide itself with carbon from the surrounding atmosphere. This is the end of all its labours, the aim of the year’s toil, the climax of all its operations.

“By their fruits ye shall know them.” Just in the manifestation of these characteristic virtues in their union does the world recognize the supremacy of the Christian religion. Do what it will, it cannot produce the like. The recrudescence of startling spiritual gifts or materialistic miracles, for which so many are sighing, would not greatly impress the present sceptical and cynical age. The modern Egyptian magicians would be able to emulate the wonders of the modern Moses. But genuine Christian character—loving, cheerful, calm, forbearing, considerate, genuine, trustworthy, unassuming, self-controlled—they cannot, and know they cannot, produce. “But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can”; and seeing it, they confess that God is of a truth among us.

There is always danger of misrepresentation in the attempt to present a view that is not one’s own; but it does seem clear that those who deny the Divinity of Christ must think that the Christian character was introduced and realized and propagated and maintained under strangely incongruous and uncongenial conditions. It certainly does not look like a character that has started up out of an enthusiastic delusion, an exaggerated and misguided devotion, a fanatical misunderstanding of a teacher’s meaning, a credulous fostering of irrational hopes and fancies; still less can the thought of it be brought into connexion with any wilful or self-deceiving fraud. For it is not out of such darkness and disorder, by the working of natures so perverse and unhealthy and unreasonable, that such a type of moral excellence as this could spring up and endure—a type in which humanity attains its best harmony and strength, and renders its most reasonable service. The sobriety and usefulness of the Christian character; its quiet and wide attractiveness; its readiness for adaptation to new demands and opportunities in shifting circumstances and strange countries; its peculiar balance and blending of traits which are generally found apart, and thought to stand in contrast; its steady health and freshness; its hidden stores of strength and charm and wisdom and refreshment; its power to help all men at all times;—these are distinctive qualities which seem to thrust away the suggestion of an origin in delusion, or misunderstanding, or extravagance, and to claim for the character that bears them a direct line of kindred with some perfect type of manhood, some true idea of what man might and should be, some thought about him in the mind of God. 1 [Note: Francis Paget, Studies in the Christian Character.]

2. We ought to manifest this fruit in its most favourable and attractive form, so that others may be tempted to try its sweet taste. The apple seeds are encased in a thick, pleasant-tasting mass of juicy substance; the pear and the plum, too; and these fruits are tinted with the most beautiful hues; while the seeds of the strawberry are raised on to a cone-shaped, richly-coloured mass of delicious and tempting food material, and the individual seeds of the raspberry are clothed in a ruddy coat of luscious matter. What is the reason for all this? It is simply that birds and animals may be attracted to them—tempted to eat them, and this in order that the seeds may be more widely disseminated. So the fruit of the Spirit should be presented to men in such a form that, so far from being repelled by it as they too often are at present, they would be attracted to it, and tempted to taste it for themselves. Our love, our joy, our peace should be shown to them in such a way that it will win their admiration, and, tasting it, the seed will sink into their own soul, and again bring forth fruit to God’s glory.

Everything about McCheyne drew men Christward. More than most, he was the living epistle, signed with the King’s autograph and sealed by His Spirit. It was with him as with young Sir Pelleas; they who met him wondered after him,

because his face

Shone like the countenance of a priest of old

Against the flame about a sacrifice

Kindled by fire from heaven. 2 [Note: A. Smellie, Robert Murray McCheyne, 204.]

Drummond’s sympathy, his leisure from himself, his strength, won the confidence of anxious inquirers at Mr. Moody’s evangelistic meetings, as his personal charm on the platform had first stirred their hope; and he thus became acquainted with the secrets of hundreds of lives. Men felt he was not a voice merely, but a friend, and on his arm they were lifted up. He was always hopeful about the most hopeless, picked out some good points in the worst, and sent a man away feeling that he was trusted once more, not only by this friend, but by Christ, by God. The affection which such treatment aroused was extraordinary. I have seen numbers of letters, commonplace enough but for the intense love and gratitude which they breathe, and which sometimes approaches worship. It was such power as was possessed by some of the greatest of the mediæval saints—and he was not twenty-four. One man said to me only the other day, “Since Drummond died I have not been able to help praying to him.”

Mr. R. R. Simpson sends the following: “At an inquiry meeting in the Assembly Hall I spoke to a bright looking young man, and found that he had decided for Christ. On my asking him what led him to decision, the striking answer was, ‘It was the way Mr. Drummond laid his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the face that led me to Christ.’ ” 1 [Note: G. A. Smith, Life of Henry Drummond, 98.]

3. The fruits of the spirit are perfectly spontaneous. “Against such there is no law.” Is this an example of St. Paul’s irony? The clause may be read as a supreme example of ironical speech. Rather perhaps it is added to show the Christian’s true relation to law, the victory which the spirit gains just because the law is not painfully toiled after, not punctiliously performed, but easily and supremely transcended. The Galatians, led astray by Judaizers, were being brought again into bondage by ceremonies and restrictions, and were fast losing the secret of Christian freedom. Law not only cannot condemn these fruits of the Spirit; it cannot produce anything of the kind, any more than a machine could fashion a lily.

Neither God nor man will condemn these fruits of the Spirit. God will not, for they are the fruits of His own Divine Spirit working within the soul of man. Law will never be against the eternally right and fitting, and these fruits of the Spirit are to be placed in such high orderings. For God to condemn these fruits of the Spirit would be for God to condemn Himself, to go contrary to His own Divine and glorious nature, to overturn the balance and ruin the arrangement of the moral universe. Man will not condemn. There is no court on earth, in either barbarous or civilized nations, where a man could be summoned and condemned for being joyful, peaceful, longsuffering, good, meek, gentle. Wicked men hate the good and plot for their condemnation and destruction; but the good are never summoned to the bar of justice on account of goodness, meekness, gentleness.

I remember some words of Socrates, shortly before he drank the cup of hemlock. In his cell in Athens, he awoke one morning, and there was a friend at his bedside. He asked what news there was, and his friend told him that everything had been arranged for his escape, and that he must flee. But the brave man refused. “No,” he answered Crito, “unless the law releases me, I stay. It protected my birth, my growth, my education, my marriage, my whole life. It now commands my death. If I broke it, I should be haunted by its angry ghost for ever.” So law encompasses me like an atmosphere. It remains with me always. If I break it, it will haunt me for ever. But I meet its requirements, not, as Socrates did, by dying myself. There is a better way. The death of the Son of God is available for me. I flee to it and to Him. And now law is the fortress which shelters, and not the sword which smites. 1 [Note: A. Smellie, In the Secret Place, 349.]

Of course, developing his own thoughts and life freely, he was charged by his opponents with faithlessness to the Church and with latitudinarian opinions. But he rejoiced in finding within the Church of England room to expand his soul, and freedom for his intellect. If the latter part of the accusation was true, and he was latitudinarian in opinion, it is at least remarkable that he should have induced, in those who heard him profitably, not only a spiritual life, but also a high and punctilious morality. His hearers kept the Law all the better for being freed from the Law. And many a working man in Brighton, many a business man in London, many a young officer, many a traveller upon the Continent, many a one living in the great world of politics or in the little world of fashion, can trace back to words heard in Trinity Chapel the creation in them of a loftier idea of moral action, and an abiding influence which has made their lives, in all their several spheres if not religious, at least severely moral. 2 [Note: Stopford A. Brooke, Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson, 479.]

The Fruit of the Spirit

Literature

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