Bible Commentaries
Romans 12

Verse 1

The Body for God

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.— Romans 12:1.

1. What St. Paul says to us here is no single or partial lesson dropped by the way. Standing where it does in his writings, it carries an exceptional weight of authority and breadth of meaning. It forms a kind of midpoint in the greatest and most comprehensive of his early Epistles. The two divisions of the Epistle are joined together by this text, itself St. Paul’s own text and foundation for the moral teaching which follows it, as it is at the same time the immediate conclusion from the doctrinal teaching which has gone before. The doctrine of the Epistle to the Romans is justification by faith; the practical lesson of the Epistle to the Romans is self-consecration to God.

2. “I beseech you therefore”—take the words separately in order to understand the mind of the Apostle.

(1) Notice, to begin with, the word “therefore”; it connects this great appeal with what had gone before. St. Paul had been laying before his Roman readers the marvellous provision of grace, the sovereign love of God in adopting us into sonship; he had been picturing the wondrous wealth and resource of the Father’s love: “Of him, and through him, and to him are all things: I beseech you therefore.” That is always St. Paul’s way: first the doctrine, then the duty; first the creed, then the character: because of what God has done, live in accordance with His will; first the principle of redemption, then the individual life that follows. It is so in the Epistle to the Ephesians; for the first three chapters he shows the marvellous light and life and heavenly possibility in Christ, then he adds in striking suddenness, “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy.” 1 [Note: A. E. Joscelyne.]

(2) “ I beseech you.” This is the entreaty of a man who was himself living the life of bodily consecration to God. St. Paul had given himself up altogether to God, body, soul, and spirit. And now he was filled with the conscious strength and triumph of this sublime unity. His life was full-orbed and rounded perfectly. Every thought, every aim, every desire had in it the might of God; of God, and through God, and to God was the beat of every pulse, the throb of every thought, the life of every desire, and the strength of every work. There was of necessity in this man a constant sense of triumph. He moved about with a calm untroubled confidence, quite sure that all things were working together for the glory of the Lord, and for his good. There sang ever in his soul the music of those who serve God day and night in His holy temple. And then, in all the consciousness of this blessed life, he thinks of the half-hearted, of those who come far enough out of the far country to lose the husks of the swine, but not far enough to get the bread of the Father’s house. These are the miserable people of the world, who admit the claims of God, and yet do not give themselves up to them; who pull for heaven, and yet do not cast off the rope that holds them to the shore. The Apostle’s soul is stirred within him, and at once with a demand and an entreaty he cries: “I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye give yourselves right up and wholly to God!” If this religion is worth anything it is worth all the mind and heart and strength that we can put into it.

(3) “I beseech you.” Note the tenderness and winsomeness of St. Paul’s language. “I beseech you.” He struck the keynote there. It was his favourite word—he loved to play on the gentler notes in presenting Christ to men. His preaching was predominantly persuasive, pleading, and tender. Predominantly—it did not leave out the severities. Sometimes there was the voice of God’s wrath in it, there were visions of the terrors of the Lord and of a judgment throne. But he was always most at home when he assumed the gentleness of a mother. “I beseech you.” There is the sweet ring of that appeal in all his Epistles: “I beseech you by the gentleness of Christ”; “I beseech you by the compassions of Christ”; “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God”; “I might be bold to enjoin thee, yet for love’s sake I rather beseech thee.” We are told that in preaching he lifted up his hand. We can almost see that raised hand. It is never a clenched fist; it is never shaken in the face of a congregation; it is stretched out as if it would lay hold of people and sweetly constrain them. It quivers with emotion, and there is the sound of tears in his voice. “By the space of three years,” he says, “I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.”

(4) “I beseech you.” Paul is speaking to Jews and Gentiles alike, united in the one Church, all taught by their own several histories that a Christless world is a world on the way downwards into darkness and death, all now raised to a new and endless and fruitful life in the crucified and risen Lord, all receivers of this gift by no claim of wages earned but by the mercy of the God who loved them. It is the sons of purity that he calls to suffer pain. It is to the souls captivated by love that he appeals for an exercise of self-denial. “Ye,” he says, “who have yourselves been made white, ye who have received the mercy of your God, ye who by Divine grace have already reached the inner shrine of the sanctuary, I appeal to you to bear the burdens of humanity. I ask not those in the outer court. I ask not those who are one with the degraded multitude. I ask not those who are partners in the same sin as that of their guilty brother, and who, therefore, might be expected to bear his infirmities. I ask the white-robed. I appeal to the spotless. I call upon the pure in heart who see God. I cry, “If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye who are spiritual, restore!” “I beseech you by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.”

When vaccination was introduced in Aberdeen, there existed a strong popular prejudice against it and a corresponding reluctance on the part of parents to allow their children to undergo that operation. It “went over” the medical men of Aberdeen to disabuse people’s minds of the fear that it “would do more harm than good.” This having come to Dr. Kidd’s knowledge, he was determined that it should not go over him. He accordingly took up the subject with characteristic energy, and at once set himself to acquire as much knowledge and information regarding it as he could from the local medical men and other available sources. In this way he soon mastered the theory of vaccination, but would not rest content until he had mastered the practice also; and having found a willing coadjutor in the person of a medical friend, he was soon able to perform the operation himself. Thus equipped, he frequently from the pulpit enforced on parents the duty of having their children vaccinated, and of giving them the benefit of that invaluable discovery. On one of these occasions he said, “If you mothers have any scruple about taking your children to a doctor, bring them to me, at my house, any week-day morning, between nine and ten o’clock, and I’ll vaccinate them for you myself. You don’t seem afraid to entrust the souls of your children to my care, and surely you won’t have any fear to entrust me with their bodies.” This appeal had a wonderful effect, and many mothers came to his house with their children at the daily appointed time. The result came to be that the prejudice against vaccination gradually subsided, and Dr. Kidd was soon able to discontinue his own amateur labours in favour of the medical men of the city, who, ere long, had as much work of that kind on their hands as they were well able to overtake. His personal ascendancy once more asserted itself, though even he had a stiff fight before he overcame the stubbornness and fears of the people. They had such faith in the man that they at last submitted, when their own judgment was unconvinced, and their own inclination was decidedly hostile. 1 [Note: J. Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 173.]

I

The Motive Force

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God.”

It was not a little step that St. Paul was urging these Roman Christians to take: “I beseech you to present your bodies a living sacrifice.” This act of consecration must have a motive adequate to produce it. The life of consecration must have a dynamic equal to sustaining it. Where is the motive power of the Christian life to be found?

1. It was in the “mercies of God” that the Apostle found his motive power. That plural does not mean that he is extending his view over the whole wide field of the Divine beneficence, but rather that he is contemplating the one all-inclusive mercy about which the former part of his letter has been so eloquent—viz. the gift of Christ—and contemplating it in the manifoldness of the blessings which flow from it. The mercies of God which move a man to yield himself as a sacrifice are not the diffused beneficences of His providence, but the concentrated love that lies in the person and work of His Son.

2. The emotionless moralist will tell you to do right for right’s sake, because goodness is beautiful in itself and brings its own reward. And the stern moralist will advise you to pursue the clean and righteous course because the other way ends in a harvest of shame and sorrow. And, of course, both these voices are heard in the Bible; they are both used by the Christian preacher. But they are low down in the Christian scale; they have little force in the Christian conscience. There is no ring of persuasiveness in them, because there is no emotion and no fire. We never feel the kindling and the inspiration until we get to the very furnace, the power-producing furnace of the Christian life, and that is the soul-enthralling, love-creating mercies of God in Christ.

“The Well is deep.”

Thy saying is most true:

Salvation’s well is deep,

Only Christ’s hand can reach the waters blue.

And even He must stoop to draw it up,

Ere He can fill thy cup.

3. It is impossible to be too careful in observing the connexion between consecration and mercy, for in the very vague theology of the present day there is a great deal which certainly has the appearance of teaching that the blessed peace of a union with Christ is to be the result of entire consecration. But we are here taught, not that we are to reach mercy as the result of the completeness of our consecration, but that, having realized mercy, we should yield ourselves in consecration to God. That union with the Lord Jesus must be given through the personal appropriation of the mercy of God in Him.

One ship turns east, and another west

With the selfsame winds that blow;

’Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales,

Which tells us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the waves of fate,

As we voyage along through life;

’Tis the set of the soul which decides the goal,

And not the calm or the strife.

II

The Consecration

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.”

It is not often that the idea of sacrifice is associated with the thought of mercy. We commonly view it as one of the obstacles to our belief in God’s mercy. In all religions but one, men sacrifice to God when they think His mercy turned away; they sacrifice to avert His anger, to restore His smile. But there is one religion which inverts the order—the religion of Christ. All other faiths say, “Sacrifice that ye may win God’s favour”; Christianity says, “Win God’s favour that ye may sacrifice.” All other faiths make sacrifice the root; Christianity makes sacrifice the flower.

It is the sacrifice of the body that St. Paul calls for. Let us look first at sacrifice, and secondly at the sacrifice of the body.

i. Sacrifice

1. “ Making sacrifices.”—We often speak of making sacrifices for Christ. That expression is not in the Bible. On the contrary, it rather runs against the true view of the subject—for it seems to limit sacrifice to particular acts, whereas the whole life is the sacrifice.

Was there ever a time when there were so many home-made Christians as there are to-day, man-made, church-made Christians? Who does not know the recipe? Tie up the hands and say: “Sir, you must not do that.” Tie up the feet and say: “You must not go to such and such places—at least, when you are at home.” Gag the mouth, blind the eyes, stop the ears, and there is your Christian: a creature with his heart hungering for the world as fiercely as ever, and whose only evidence of any earnestness is in a constant discussion as to whether there is any harm in a score of questionable or unquestionable things that he desires, and in the sincerity of his complaint that they are forbidden. 1 [Note: M. G. Pearse.]

Dr. Stewart of Lovedale, his biographer tells us, could not endure the idea that missionaries were to be pitied for the sacrifices they made. A member of his staff says: “One incident will live in my memory for all time. It occurred in the course of a brief address he gave once at the weekly staff prayer-meeting in the large hall at Lovedale. Something that he had heard or read moved him to speak of the so-called sacrifices which men made when entering the mission-field. He flamed up at the idea, and spoke with a burning torrent of words which showed us—just for the moment—the liquid fires of devotion which he hid behind his reserve. As I write I can see, as though it were yesterday, that tall form swaying with noble passion: Sacrifice! What man or woman could speak of sacrifice in the face of Calvary? What happiness or ambition or refinement had any one ‘given up’ in the service of humanity to compare with the great sacrifice of Him who ‘emptied himself and … took upon himself the form of a servant’? It made some of us feel rather ashamed of our heroics, for we knew that if ever a man since Livingstone had a right to speak like that it was Dr. Stewart.” 2 [Note: Stewart of Lovedale, 176.]

Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! it is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a forgoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice. 3 [Note: David Livingstone.]

People who make real sacrifices are never able to calculate self-complacently the good the said sacrifices are doing them; just as people who really grieve are unable at the time to philosophize about the good effects of grief. 4 [Note: F. W. Robertson, Life and Letters, 435.]

2. True sacrifice.—Have you ever seen a forester cutting down a great tree? It falls to earth, never to rise again; there will be no more shade or beauty, no more glory of summer green or autumn gold. Is the tree wasted? No, it is sacrificed. One day a brave ship sails the seas; to build it the tree was sacrificed. One day God’s church rises towards heaven; to form the roof the tree was sacrificed. Have you ever seen men quarrying stone? It is torn out of the quarry, and split and shattered, and carved and cut, and chiselled and hammered; one day we see the walls of a stately cathedral, and there is the stone which was sacrificed. You watch a sculptor carving the marble; the white fragments fall thickly, the marble wastes, but the beautiful image grows; it is not waste, but sacrifice. Was Mary’s ointment wasted? No, the world has been sweeter for it ever since. Was Gordon’s life wasted when he died at Khartoum, or Nelson’s when he fell at Trafalgar? Many a devoted missionary, many brave men and delicate women have died of fever and savage torture, and the world says, To what purpose was this waste? But theirs was a sacrifice to win souls. To some people the crucifixion of our Master seems a waste of life; to the Church it is the great sacrifice, which taketh away the sins of the world. “He that loseth his life shall find it.”

Listen to the parable of the earth, as it lies far down beneath the blue heaven, or as in the cold night it looks up at the silver stars. “Here am I,” it mutters, “so far away from Him who made me. The grass blades and the flowers lift up their heads and whisper to the breeze, the trees go far up into the golden sunshine, the birds fly up against the very heaven, the clouds are touched sometimes with glory as if they caught the splendour of the King, the stars are bright as if they shone with the light of His presence. And I am down here! How can I ever climb up to Him who made me?” And then the poor earth sighs again: “And that is not all—not even the worst of it. I am only dull soil, without any beauty of form, or richness of colour, or sweetness of smell! All things seem full of loveliness but me. How can I ever be turned into worth and blessedness?”

And now there comes the seed, and it is hidden in the earth. “Earth,” whispers the seed, “wilt thou give me thy strength?”

“No, indeed,” replies the earth; “why should I give thee my strength? It is all I have got, and I will keep it for myself.”

“Then,” saith the seed, “thou shalt be earth, and only earth, for ever and ever. But if thou wilt give me thy strength thou shalt be lifted into another life.”

So the earth yields and gives up its strength to the seed. And the seed takes hold of it and lifts it up and begins to turn it into a hundred forms of beauty; it rises with wondrous stem; it drinks in sunshine and rain and air, mingling them with the earth’s strength and changing all to toughened branch or dainty leaf, to rich flower or ripened fruit. Then its work is done as it ends in the seed. And it cries to the earth: “Spake I not truly? Thou art not lost, but by sacrifice transformed to higher life, to worth and beauty.” 1 [Note: M. G. Pearse.]

All the winter-time the wine gives joy

To those who else were dismal in the cold;

But the vine standeth out amid the frost;

And after all, hath only this grace left,

That it endures in long, lone steadfastness

The winter through:—and next year blooms again;

Not bitter for the torment undergone,

Not barren for the fulness yielded up;

As fair and fruitful towards the sacrifice

As if no touch had ever come to it

But the soft airs of heaven and dews of earth;—

And so fulfils itself in love once more. 2 [Note: Harriet E. H. King.]

3. The permanent value of sacrifice.—Here lies the test by which we may try the fabric of our own actions. We have—have now and for ever—only that which we have offered to others and to God. Wherever the thought of self dominates in our schemes; wherever we identify the success of a cause, however noble, with our own success; wherever we determine for our own pleasure, as far as we can, the course of events great or small—there is the seed of ultimate corruption and decay and failure. The fatal harvest may be early or it may be late, but it is prolific and it is certain. That which is marked with the Cross has the pledge of permanence; that which bears the impress of self must perish.

Sacrifice hallows what it touches. And under its hallowing touch values increase by long leaps and big bounds. Here is a fine opportunity for those who would increase the value of gifts that seem small in amount. Without stopping now for the philosophy of it, this is the tremendous fact. Perhaps the annual foreign missionary offering is being taken up in your church. The pastor has preached a special sermon, and it has caught fire within you. You find yourself thinking as he preaches, and during the prayer following, “I believe I can easily make it fifty dollars this year. I gave thirty-five last time.” You want to be careful not to make it fifty dollars, because you can do that easily. If you are shrewd to have your money count the most, you will pinch a bit somewhere and make it sixty-two fifty. For the extra amount that you pinch to give will hallow the original sum and increase its practical value enormously. Sacrifice hallows what it touches, and the hallowing touch acts in geometrical proportion upon the value of the gift. 1 [Note: S. D. Gordon.]

ii. The Sacrifice of the Body

“Present your bodies,” says the Apostle. He does not say your “souls.” We are very ready at times to say that we serve God in the spirit, though our deeds are somewhat mixed; and sometimes a man will do a wrong thing and admit that it is not quite right, but “my heart is right,” he will say, “and God looks upon the heart.” That is a kind of service that has no part or lot in Christ. A man who is trying to sever his body from his spirit, a man who thinks religion is merely a thing of the spirit and not of the outward life, a thing of the soul and not a thing of the body, is misreading the Gospel.

It is a matter of great interest, and even awe, to me, to observe how the nobler feelings can exist in their intensity only where the whole nature, the lower too, is intense also; and how that which is in itself low and mean becomes sublimated into something that is celestial. Hence, in the highest natures I suppose goodness will be the result of tremendous struggle; just as the “bore,” which is nothing in the Thames, becomes a convulsion on the Ganges, where the waters of a thousand miles roll like a sea to meet the incoming tide of the ocean. 2 [Note: F. W. Robertson, Life and Letters, 215.]

1. What was St. Paul’s attitude to the body?

(1) It was not the pagan attitude of worship.—This attitude is perhaps best illustrated by the ancient Greeks. Their worship of the body took two forms—the worship of beauty and the worship of physical strength. Their worship of beauty is a commonplace to every one who knows anything whatever about the nation whose sculpture is the admiration and despair of later artists. With them the artistic feeling was not a luxury of the wealthy, but was interwoven with the life of the whole people. The most beautiful women of Greece were as famous as its greatest men. Their worship of physical strength was shown especially by the place given to athletics in the great national festivals, such as the Olympian Games. These games were not a mere sporting meeting, but a sacred celebration. The winner was considered to reflect immortal glory upon the city which bare him. He returned home in triumphal procession; he received a distinction which might be compared to our conferring of the “freedom” of a city; a statue was erected in his honour; and sometimes his exploits were celebrated in the loftiest poetry. So essential a part of Greek life were these games that chronology was based upon them, the years being reckoned by Olympiads.

To-day there is among us much of this old pagan worship. Witness the “religion of the ballet,” the portraits of professional beauties in the shop windows, and the extolling of sensuous charms in much popular modern poetry. Witness, too, the exaggerated language that is used about the elevating influence of art; as though the salvation of society from sin and misery were in mere picture-galleries; as though the criminal classes would cease to be criminal if presented with season tickets for the Royal Academy. Nor can we deny the existence of a widespread worship of physical strength. In recent years we have seen the revival of the prize-fight and the canonization of St. Slavin. These be thy gods, O Israel. These are the heroes whose names stand first on the modern bead-roll of fame. And even health and innocent sports have been degraded by excessive admiration. Games which used to be played for amusement have now become partly a science and partly a trade. 1 [Note: H. W. Horwill.]

(2) It was not the pseudo-Christian attitude—that the body is the seat of all evil.—Heresy at Colosse took the form of hostility to the body as a physical organism. Some members of the Church there hated the body instead of the evil heart of unbelief, and so became ascetics, injuring the body and starving it. Hence St. Paul’s rebuke of those things which “have a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and severity to the body; but are not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh.” This tendency was developed still further under the monastic system. One man lived for fifty years in a subterranean cave, which was his way of hiding his light under a bushel. Some buried themselves up to the neck in the burning sands of the desert. Some slept on bundles of thorns. Some bound themselves to jump about on one leg. Another forced his body into the hoop of a cart wheel, and remained in that position for ten years. Another, Saint Simeon Stylites—the most conspicuous example of a man’s making himself a fool for Christ’s sake—is said to have kept himself alive for thirty years on the top of a column, and, when too weak to stand any longer upright, to have had a post erected on it to which he was fastened by chains. The monks of later days did not go to such extremes, though they wore hair clothes, and in many other ways developed considerable ingenuity in the manufacture of discomfort. In the Middle Ages there might have been seen on the Continent long processions of “Flagellants” travelling from country to country, weeping as they went, singing penitential hymns, and applying the scourge to their naked backs. And they found that all this did not destroy sin.

This contempt for the body which St. Paul rebuked among the Colossians has not yet died out of the Church. We are constantly speaking about the value of souls, and forget sometimes that these souls are in bodies. How often we sneer at the body as though it were not worth attention! But great indeed is the mistake of those who think they glorify God by sneering at or maltreating the body, which is one of the noblest products of His skill. Would you compliment an inventor by destroying his machine, by pulling it to pieces either literally or metaphorically? 1 [Note: H. W. Horwill.]

After dinner to the San Gregorio to Bee the frescoes, the “Martyrdom of St. Andrew,” the rival frescoes of Guido and Domenichino, and afterwards drove about till dark, when we went to a most extraordinary performance—that of the Flagellants. I had heard of it, and had long been curious to assist at it. The church was dimly lit by a few candles on the altar, the congregation not numerous. There was a service, the people making responses, after which a priest, or one of the attendants of the church, went round with a bundle of whips of knotted cord, and gave one to each person who chose to take it. I took mine, but my companion laughed so at seeing me gravely accept the whip, that he was obliged to hide his face in his hands, and was passed over. In a few minutes the candles were extinguished, and we were left in total darkness. Then an invisible preacher began exhorting his hearers to whip themselves severely, and as he went on his vehemence and passion increased. Presently a loud smacking was heard all round the church, which continued a few minutes; then the preacher urged us to fresh exertions, and crack went the whips again louder and faster than before, as he exhorted. The faithful flogged till a bell rang; the whips stopped, in a few minutes the candles were lit again, and the priest came round and collected his cords. I had squeezed mine in my hands, so that he did not see it, and I brought it away with me. As soon as the candles were extinguished the doors were locked, so that nobody could go out or come in till the discipline was over. I was rather nervous when we were locked up in total darkness, but nobody whipped me, and I certainly did not whip myself. A more extraordinary thing (for sight it can’t be called) I never witnessed. I don’t think the people stripped, nor, if they did, that the cords could have hurt them much. 1 [Note: The Greville Memoirs, i. 396.]

In regard to those atrocious scenes which formed the favourite Huron recreation of a summer night, the Jesuits, it must be confessed, did not quite come up to the requirements of modern sensibility. They were offended at them, it is true, and prevented them when they could; but they were wholly given to the saving of souls, and held the body in scorn, as the vile source of incalculable mischief, worthy the worst inflictions that could be put upon it. What were a few hours of suffering to an eternity of bliss or woe? If the victim were heathen, these brief pangs were but the faint prelude of an undying flame; and if a Christian, they were the fiery portal of Heaven. They might, indeed, be a blessing; since, accepted in atonement for sin, they would shorten the torments of Purgatory. Yet, while schooling themselves to despise the body, and all the pain or pleasure that pertained to it, the Fathers were emphatic on one point—it must not be eaten. In the matter of cannibalism, they were loud and vehement in invective. 2 [Note: Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America, ii. 173.]

The ideals of different races and centuries have no doubt been very different. With us cleanliness is next to godliness. With our ancestors it was the very reverse, and dearly they paid for their error, in plagues and black death. According to the Venerable Bede, St. Etheldreda was so holy that she rarely washed, except perhaps before some great festival of the Church; and Dean Stanley tells us in his Memorials of Canterbury that after the assassination of Becket the bystanders were much impressed, for “the austerity of hair drawers, close fitted as they were to the bare flesh, had hitherto been unknown to English saints, and the marvel was increased by the sight—to our notions so revolting—of the innumerable vermin with which the haircloth abounded—boiling over with them, as one account describes it, like water in a simmering cauldron. At the dreadful sight all the enthusiasm of the previous night revived with double ardour. They looked at each other in silent wonder, then exclaimed, ‘See! see what a true monk he was, and we knew it not,’ and burst into alternate fits of weeping and laughter, between the sorrow of having lost such a head, and the joy of having found such a saint.” 1 [Note: Lord Avebury, Peace and Happiness, 41.]

When Archbishop Whately was dying, his chaplain read to him the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and then quoted the words from the Epistle to the Philippians ( Romans 3:20-21): “We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body,” etc. The dying man was pained, and asked for “the right thing” to be read to him. The chaplain then repeated it again, with the rendering, with which we are now familiar in the Revised Version: “Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation.” “That is right,” said the Archbishop; “there is nothing vile which God has made.”

(3) It was the attitude of Christ.—One of the greatest lessons of the Incarnation was the honour put by Christ upon the body by His living in it. Throughout His life He emphasized this regard for the body by such parables as that of the Good Samaritan, and by such miracles as that of the Feeding of the Multitudes. By the Apostles the figure of the body was used to show the connexion between Christ and His Church. “We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.” In reading the Epistles of St. Paul, we are especially startled by the constant references to the importance of the body. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts thereof; neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” “The body is for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.” “Glorify God therefore in your body”—“and in your spirits” seems to have been added by some copyist, quite unnecessarily. The reason why we should glorify God in our bodies is that we were bought with a price. “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?” What a marvellous thought, that God is living in the world to-day in the bodies of Christians! But of all passages there is none more striking than our text. St. Paul has been devoting eleven chapters to the exposition of the story of the sin of man, the atonement of Christ, and all the blessings that follow. These eleven chapters are perhaps the noblest theological argument ever written. He then Bums them all up, coming out of theory into practice, by saying. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present,” not, as we should probably have expected, “your souls,” or “your intellects,” but “your bodies a living sacrifice.”

In 1899 a very important addition was made to our store of early liturgical documents by the publication of the Sacramentary of Bishop Serapion, which dates from 350 a.d. The work consists of thirty prayers such as a Bishop would be likely to use. Of these the first six and the last twelve have to do with the celebration of the Eucharist; the remainder relate to Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination, and Burial. “Life is a remarkable note of the collection,” and it is life in the fullest sense of the word. In the opening Offertory prayer we find the words, “We beseech thee, make us living men.” At the invocation of the Word upon the elements, “Make all who communicate to receive a medicine of life for the healing of any sickness.” In “the prayer for those who have suffered,” “Grant health and soundness, and cheerfulness and all advancement of soul and body.” And in the final Benediction, “Let the communion of the Body and Blood go with this people. Let their bodies be living bodies, and their souls be clean souls.” Provision is also made for special prayer for the sick, and for the blessing of oils and waters for their benefit, and in these connexions we find such expressions as the following: “Be propitious, Master; assist and heal all that are sick. Rebuke the sicknesses.” “Grant them to be counted worthy of health.” “Make them to have perfect health of body and soul.” “Grant healing power upon these creatures that every power and every evil spirit and every sickness may depart.” It need scarcely be said that all these references to bodily wants are set in a context which is marked by the simplest and most ardent spiritual devotion. The physical is never allowed to usurp the first place. But it is never forgotten. The early Christians believed that the Life which was offered to them in fellowship with their Lord was to extend to every part of their constitution, to “spirit and soul and body.” 1 [Note: A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 220.]

Let us not always say,

“Spite of this flesh to-day,

I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole.”

As the bird wings and sings,

Let us cry, “All good things

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul.” 2 [Note: Browning, Rabbi ben Ezra.]

2. What, now, is to be the manner of the offering? The name that used to be applied to the burnt-offering was a very significant one. It meant the thing that went up—“that which ascends”; it never came down. So our offering is to be offered to God, and never taken back. This is brought out by the word used for “present.” It really means that the thing is to be done once for all.

(1) To “present” or to “yield” is to cease to resist. That there may be a resistance, even in those who have been quickened by the Spirit, to the will of God, no believer who knows anything of his own heart can deny. This resistance is one of the main hindrances to the exercise of faith. It was so with Jacob at Peniel. “And there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.” This passage in Jacob’s history has a parallel in the life of many a child of God. How many can trace a similar crisis in God’s dealings with them!

It is the law in public and political life. A man entering the President’s cabinet, as a secretary of some department, surrenders any divergent views he may have to those of his chief. With the largest freedom of thought that must always be where there are strong men, there must of necessity be one dominant will if the administration is to be a powerful one. It is the law of commercial life. The man entering the employ of a bank, a manufacturing concern, a corporation of any sort, in whatever capacity, enters to do the will of somebody else. Always there must be one dominant will if there is to be power and success. 3 [Note: S. D. Gordon.]

(2) But yielding means also ceasing to withhold. “My son, give me thine heart.” In other words, let God have full possession, not only of the spirit and the soul, but of all your physical powers. Yield every member up to Him.

All misuse of the body is not of vulgar vice, the kind of thing which is soul-murder, and which declares its character openly and visibly. There is a subtler misuse. There is a way of living which gives increasing concern to the incidentals of life, which spends itself for comfort; for comfort which may be quite of a refined kind, but which, because it is raised into an essential, instead of relegated to an inconsequent and incidental matter, is unutterably vicious. It is keen on luxuries and pleasures that are not sin in themselves, but, unless they are kept in minor place, are utterly and fatally deadening. “Pride, fulness of bread, and prosperous ease,” these deaden the spirit; they make the ears deaf too, and the hands unready for the needs of the world and the claims of God. Be on your guard. What is ailing with many of us is that we are too fatally comfortable. It is sucking out the better life of us. “How could I fail to win?” said Frederick the Great, after the battle of Rosbach. “Soubrise had seven cooks and one spy; I had seven spies and one cook.” The remark has a wide application. Watch the proportion of things. Life is a battle which has a way of hanging on to the proportions a man preserves between the commissariat and the intelligence departments; between his cooks and his sentries. “What I say unto one, I say unto you all—Watch.” 1 [Note: T. Yates, Sculptors of Life, 108.]

(3) And again, yielding also means ceasing to struggle. It means no longer trying to keep oneself up—putting forth vigorous efforts to keep oneself from sinking—but casting all upon Him who is able to keep us from falling.

It is indeed a life of self-denial this, and I feel as if now for the first time I had even a dim view of what it is to be not one’s own, to me a heart-rending lesson, a long and bitter lesson, one I would gladly exchange for fasting, or scourging, or what asceticism you will. Let me keep my own will, let me be my own, aim at my own idea of holiness, aid myself with my own props, and I would do most things. But this is the hard thing to learn, that in everything, from this moment for ever, I am not only not to get my own will, but I am to desire not to get my own will, to will to be controlled by another wholly and unceasingly. This has to me at times all the pain of dissolution. It is indeed a dying to this world.

Death ends indeed the cares of life,

Yet shudders life when death comes near,

And such the fond heart’s death-like strife

When first the loved one does appear.

For, where true love is wakened, dies

The tyrant self, that despot dark.

Rejoice then that in death he lies,

And breathe morn’s free air, with the lark. 1 [Note: Early Letters of Marcus Dods, 103.]

3. And what is the nature of the offering? In the old time the bodies offered in sacrifice were those of bulls and goats—not men, but possessions of men. That order of sacrifice had now passed away, since One had come who had borne our sins in His own body on the fatal tree; and in His doing of the will of God we had been hallowed by the offering of His body once for all. But sacrifice itself had not therefore passed away from among mankind. A riper and more complete form of sacrifice had succeeded, no longer of our possessions only, but of our very selves. But it is a living sacrifice. In this there is no contradiction. We sometimes fancy that sacrifice must needs involve death, or at least suppression. But it is not so. True sacrifice involves that utter offering of which death is the complete fulfilment. But this sacrifice of the will is not always executed in act. The sacrifice of Abraham was a true sacrifice, though Isaac was given back to him in life. The presenting, as St. Paul calls it, of Isaac was already complete; faith had already done its work. But when we present our very selves to God as a living sacrifice, alive with a new life, displacing the old sinful semblance of life which works only destruction, then by that same act we present our members to God as ready instruments of His righteousness. But this could not be if in sacrificing ourselves we always slew ourselves. The surrender of life to God is complete, but His will most commonly is to give us back the surrendered life as life from the dead.

(1) The sacrifice is to be a living sacrifice.—And since our sacrifice is to be a “living sacrifice”—something that has life in it, and not a thing which has lost its life or had its life taken away—we are not to wait till we are dead or nearly dead, we are not to wait till the infirmities of old age come upon us, or till the withering hand of sickness or of disease lays hold of us, before we give ourselves to God. Our life, the best of our life—the health, strength, and vigour of manhood—are to be given to Him. Why cannot there be a holy alliance between the athlete and the Christian? an alliance against the common enemies of both—against intemperance, and indolence, and dissipation, and effeminacy, and æsthetic voluptuousness, and heartless cynicism, and all the unnatural and demoralizing elements in our modern life? Why will some take so narrow a view of the true aims of physical training that they bound their horizon by the vision of prizes and athletic honours, not seeing that in themselves and by themselves these things are as worldly and as worthless as unsanctified wealth, or knowledge, or literature, or art? Why will others, again, who would not willingly break any of God’s commandments, who would not pass a day without prayer, who believe and trust in a risen Saviour—why will they not regard sedentary habits, and softness of living, and feebleness which might have been strength, and delicacy which might have been hardihood, as physical sins? Why will they not devote to the service of the Kingdom of heaven blood as pure, limbs as supple, condition as fit, energies as buoyant as if they were aspirants for a championship, and thus help to refute the slander that religion is a feeble emasculated thing, good enough for sick-beds, and minor tones, and solemn functions, and gentle counsel, but out of place amid the strong rough work and the more manly joys of life?

Quintin Hogg, the founder of the Polytechnic Institute of London, put a large fortune into the accomplishment of his work, but laid down something besides that was worth more than a fortune. “Mr. Hogg,” some one said to him once, “how much does it cost to build up an institute like yours?” “Only one man’s life-blood,” was his reply. 1 [Note: R. E. Speer.]

(2) The sacrifice is holy.—The original, the first, the primary significance of that word “holy” is devoted. The consecrated life is a life of utter devotion. That means many things. It means separation from the world, for one thing. But the positive point is that it means God first, God last, God everywhere, God as the spring of thought and word and deed, God as the ruling power of our whole being; we are devoted utterly to God, every bit of our life is stamped with the hallmark of devotion to Christ.

A few years ago I crossed from Fife to Hamburg in a coal-cargo steamer, English-built, but trading under the Swedish flag, the s.s. Zelos. My wife and I were given the Captain’s room—a long commodious cabin. One night I chanced to notice certain words cut in one of the iron beams overhead. These were: “Certified for the accommodation of the master.” 1 [Note: W. Christie.]

(3) The sacrifice is acceptable.—This condition embraces both the others, but goes beyond them. All men who ever offered sacrifice, unless it were in hypocrisy or by mere custom, offered it as well-pleasing to the god of their worship. But why they wished to please their god was another matter; their wish might come from this or that of a whole range of paltry, or indifferent, or lofty motives. Accordingly St. Paul, knowing well the false thoughts of sacrifice which spring up naturally in men’s hearts, has left no room for them in his exhortation. Against one false thought of sacrifice he has set the need that it be living; against another he has provided by refusing to recognize a sacrifice which, though living, is not kept holy. But the universal thought of pleasing God has a truth of its own which may not without peril be forgotten. The livingness, the holiness are in themselves well-pleasing to God; yet it is possible, strange and contradictory as it may seem, for men to make the sacrifices, and to be careful about them in both these respects, to speak much and act much on the belief that sacrifice and life and holiness are truly great things, and yet to forget God Himself. But when this happens, the whole meaning of sacrifice is lost. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength “remains the first and great commandment. The Christian desire of well-pleasing has nothing to do with the hope of gain or the fear of suffering, but is that desire of well-pleasing which belongs to love and love alone. The supreme value of sacrifice springs from the yearning of God’s children on earth for their Father in heaven.

I cannot get out of my mind, when I read these words, the figure of a consecrated knighthood. Christians are to be the chosen knights of the Lord’s table, the representatives and embodiments of true Christian chivalry. This, with higher and more glorious relationships, is the true conception of the Church. Every member of the Christian Church is a knight of King Jesu’s table, a member of an elect company, elected to special devotion and unceasing service. This is not always the ideal conception which prevails in the Christian Church. There are unworthy conceptions of membership. There is what I may call the book conception. It is thought sufficient to have the name on the roll. I know that the Scriptures mention with great honour those “whose names are written in the Book of Life.” Ay, but these are the names of the alive, and they are enrolled because of the surrender of their life to the service of their King. The one is a mere label, and might mean anything. This name is written with one’s own blood. And there is what I may call the couch conception. It is not openly expressed, but tacitly implied. The member who embodies this conception sits and reclines, and thinks it enough to feel happy! The wind that roars outside the house constrains him to draw his couch nearer the fire. He does not regard the tempest as a call to service, but as an incitement to more coddling ease. Sometimes the couch conception deteriorates into the stretcher conception! And by this I mean that the member of the Church not only reclines, but expects to be carried by the more faithful few. And there is the leech conception. This type of membership reveals itself in constant grasping. The hand is opened only to take, and never to give. It is greedy for comfort, for attention, for visitation. It never opens its veins and lets out blood; it knows nothing about sacrifice. And because all these conceptions are so prevalent the Church is the victim of perilous weakness. “Some are sickly, and not a few asleep.” And therefore the Church is sometimes like an infirmary, and sometimes like a sleeping compartment—anything rather than a gathering-place of armed knights, pledged to be true unto death, and ready to go forth in living sacrifice to serve the King in fighting the gathered hosts of the devil. 1 [Note: J. H. Jowett.]

In the guest book of a friend I saw recently a few lines written by Dr. John Willis Baer, in which he said, quoting from another—

God gave Himself for us,

God gave Himself to us,

God wants to give Himself through us. 2 [Note: J. W. Chapman.]

III

The Part which Reason Plays

“Which is your reasonable service.”

1. It is natural to suppose, at first sight, and indeed the explanation is given by many expositors, that the word “reasonable” here means that it is not an unreasonable thing, but on the contrary proper and becoming, that we should present our bodies unto God. That is true, but it is not the meaning of the word in this verse. The word rendered “reasonable” here occurs only once besides in the New Testament, and there it is translated “spiritual.” It means what belongs to the reason, and appertains to the mind, to the intellect and thought, not to any external or ceremonial law. Hence reasonable service means the service of reason, the service of mind. The reason of man is the priest that lays the body on the altar. The mind or will expresses its devotion by surrendering the body to God.

The powers of reason are required to determine what acts would be acts of rightful sacrifice and worship. Simple obedience to the precepts of the ceremonial law or tradition had once been a sufficient guide, but henceforth sacrifice was to be bound up with the new and glorious responsibilities which belong to knowledge. 1 [Note: F. J. A. Hort.]

2. The word “service,” too, is somewhat ambiguous. It does not here mean service in the sense of ministering to the wants and obeying the commands of a master, but service in the sense in which we use the word when we speak of “Divine service.” When the word service is used in a Scriptural sense, it means the service of worship; and reasonable service will therefore mean the worship of mind—the worship of thought, intellect, a worshipping mind approaching God. “I beseech you to present your bodies a living sacrifice, which is the worship of your minds.” If that is the meaning, and there cannot be much doubt that it is, the expression “reasonable service” seems to stand in contrast to the word “body” in the middle of the verse—“to present your bodies.” What you present is the body, but it is the worship of your mind. It is as much as to say, on the one hand, that no act done by the body is worship, is service, is acceptable unto the Lord, unless accompanied by an act of mind—an act of thought. God cannot be pleased with an external act, unless that external act represents an internal resolve, an internal desire, an internal act. There must be presentation of the body to perfect the worship of the mind. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”

The Body for God

Literature

Ainger (A.), The Gospel and Human Life, 14.

Aitken (W. H. M. H.), Newness of Life, 98.

Almond (H. H.), Christ the Protestant, 145.

Brown (J. B.), The Divine Life in Man, 145.

Buxton (W. H. J.), Day by Day Duty, 10.

Chapman (J. W.), And Judas Iscariot, 375.

Church (R. W.), Human Life, 31.

Dewhurst (E. M.), The King and His Servants, 35.

Greenhough (J. G.), The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 217.

Hackett (B.), Memorials of a Ministry, 51.

Hoare (E.), Sanctification, 116.

Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty, 97.

Hort (F. J. A.), Cambridge Sermons, 119.

Horwill (H. W.), The Old Gospel in the New Era, 79.

Hutchings (W. H.), Sermon Sketches, ii. 88.

Joscelyne (A. E.), The Voices of God, 44.

Jowett (J. H.), in British Congregationalist (January–June 1907), 564.

Leach (C), Sermons to Working Men, 136.

Lucas (H.), At the Parting of the Ways, 238.

Maclaren (A.), A Year’s Ministry, i. 315.

Matheson (G.), Rests by the River, 130.

Newbolt (W. C. E.), Counsels of Faith and Practice, 135.

Page-Roberts (W.), Reasonable Service, 41.

Pearse (M. G.), Some Aspects of the Blessed Life, 169.

Pipe (H. E.), Reminders of Old Truths, 64.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xii. No. 890.

Westcott (B. F), Peterborough Sermons, 326.

Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 33 (Duckworth); xxix. 372 (Dallinger); xxxviii. 88 (Robertson); xlii. 210 (Hocking).

Verse 2

In Fashion or in Favour

Be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.— Romans 12:2.

1. The great aim of St. Paul in the first eleven chapters of the Epistle to the Romans is to convince his readers that men of no race or class, whether Jews or Gentiles, can claim eternal life on the ground of their own merits, but, in order to receive it, must be content to accept it humbly and thankfully from the grace of God. His own summary of his whole argument is, “For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.” To this mercy or grace he traces the calling, the election, the justification, the sanctification, the peace, the joys, the hopes, and, in a word, all the blessings shown by him to be included in the portion of a Christian. These glorious privileges are all mercies, pure mercies of God.

From the commencement of the twelfth chapter to the close of his Epistle we find the Apostle presenting those mercies, the nature and fulness of which he had previously unfolded in doctrine, as motives to Christian activity. They do not produce the effect which they ought to have if they do not produce righteous and holy living. It is accordingly on the valid foundation which these mercies supply that the Apostle raises his practical exhortations.

2. St. Paul addresses men here on the hypothesis that in some sense or other they are responsible for their surroundings. He says: “Be not conformed to this world.” He would not have us for a moment listen to this suggestion of a necessity. “Be not.” He speaks as to people who make their own circumstances for themselves. And yet, in fact, the freedom of our will does not lie in any power to create or to fashion circumstances or facts or motives outside ourselves; our will has none of that properly creative or constructive power, but what it can do is to select among the actual facts and motives which lie in our circumstances already. Our freedom lies in selecting, in paying attention to, this or that element in our actual surroundings, and by thus attending to it we have the power to give it such predominant force that all the other elements in our surroundings sink by the side of it into insignificance. Thus, in fact, men can do what in effect comes to making their own surroundings.

In this London of ours there are the same surroundings for all of us, and, for the most part, they are ugly enough, grimy enough, in our atmosphere; but the artistic spirit selects, it looks to those particular buildings where it can find something which will gratify its sense of form. As the man of artistic sensibility walks up Whitehall he looks not to all the buildings indiscriminately. He selects and distinguishes the Banqueting Hall on his right. He loves its form. It is something which responds to his sense of beauty and of fitness. As he gets to the top of Whitehall he selects and distinguishes that one statue of incomparable beauty which is the distinction of London—Le Sueur’s statue of Charles I. Under the grime with which the London atmosphere has incrusted it, his eye can distinguish the lines of beauty and the majestic pose of the beautiful figure and the horse. A little farther and his imagination penetrates through the walls of the National Gallery and recalls those countless forms of beauty and of grace which have already passed into his memory from the pictures of Flemish or Italian or English School. He selects, and, by selecting, makes his own atmosphere.

So he knows what are the special glories of the sunset as it slopes along the Serpentine, what are the extraordinary beauties of the low and lurid lights which are always to be found as he walks along the Thames Embankment by day or by night. The artistic temperament selects; by selecting it attends to particular objects; it is not indiscriminate; it takes what it chooses. Thus it makes its own environment, and though it moves, in fact, among exactly the same multitudinal and thronging objects amidst which we all move, it makes its own world by that incomparable power which is possessed by the human will, of attending to what it pleases and, by attending to it, giving it the predominant force which makes that real and all the rest of little account.

And so it is with the religious man. He creates his atmosphere by what he attends to. He penetrates behind the show and glamour of the world, back to what lies behind. 1 [Note: Bishop Gore.]

The question which St. Paul invites the Christians in Rome to decide is whether they ought to be in fashion with the world or in favour with God. He urges them not to be “fashioned according to this world,” but to be “transformed” or transfigured, i.e. changed from the figure or fashion of things belonging to the world into likeness to Christ. In that way they will be in harmony with God’s will, and will discover how good God is.

Thus we may separate the good advice of the Apostle into three parts, and ask—

I. What is meant by being fashioned according to this world?

II. What is meant by being transformed by the renewing of the mind?

III. What is meant by proving that God’s will is good and acceptable and perfect?

I

Fashioned according to this World

i. Fashion

1. It is a custom of St. Paul to make a distinction between the “form” of a thing, which really and necessarily belongs to it, and the “fashion,” which is only a matter of outward seeming, or at best is subject to change; and so it is misleading here to talk of being “conformed” or “transformed,” when St. Paul speaks of only the good thing as a “form,” and of the bad one as a mere “fashion.” In another Epistle he says, “The fashion of this world passeth away” ( 1 Corinthians 7:31); here he reminds us that it is a passing thing, by the mere use of the word “fashion.”

2. This very fact, that “the fashion of this world” is changeable and uncertain, makes it harder to give definite rules as to the way to avoid being “fashioned according to this world.” St. Paul does not attempt to do so; he does not say, “Such and such talk, such and such employments, such and such pleasures are worldly: therefore the servants of God must avoid them”; but he gives us the warning against accommodating ourselves to the fashion, whatever it be, of this world. That warning holds good however the fashion may change.

Our English virtues and vices would seem at times to go in and out of fashion like our wearing apparel. Up to the time, say, of William Cobbett, contentment was accounted a virtue in an Englishman and enthusiasm a vice. To Hume or Gibbon the words “discontented enthusiast” would have suggested a repulsive and seditious personality of the Czolgosz type—or, at least, some contemptible Ranter or Shaker. It is curious to reflect how matters altered later on when the Divine duty of discontent came openly to be preached, and Besant and Rice’s “Dick Mortiboy” impressed upon the school-feast children that unless your station in life was already among the great ones of the earth it was a despicable thing therewith to be content. 1 [Note: Recreations and Reflections (from “The Saturday Review”), 373.]

Another virtue, charity or philanthropy, seems to have fluctuated in favour. In The Moonstone, Mr. Murthwaite, suggesting Godfrey Ablewhite as the possible culprit, observes, “I am told that he is a great philanthropist—which is decidedly against him to begin with.” Mr. Brough, the worthy family solicitor, cordially agreed with this, and it is pretty obvious that Wilkie Collins himself agreed with them both. The Moonstone was of course written long before charitable “slumming” came into fashion. Society philanthropists are always liable to offend by self-advertisement and the airs they give themselves of standing in loco Dei to the poor.

But the good bishop with a meeker air

Admits, and leaves them, Providence’s care.

Pope’s bishop was no doubt a worse man, but he avoided this particular rock of offence. 2 [Note: Ib., 377.]

3. “The last new fashion.” There is something inherently contemptuous in the phrase. When we say of anything that it “has become a fashion,” we almost mean it to be inferred that it has become so for no particularly good reason, and will probably some day cease to be so for some reason no better. Ever since the word came to be applied in our language to men’s customs or whims, it has absorbed that other idea of change, and therefore of comparative worthlessness. Now there is nothing intrinsically worthless or wrong in mere change, or in the substitution of one “fashion” for another. In things into which the moral element does not enter, there is no harm in fashion, but obviously much good. Take the most obvious, because vulgarest, use of the term, as applied to dress. Into this “fashion,” as into everything human, the evil will, the low morality of man can intrude. Ostentation, extravagance, self-indulgence, vulgar and reckless competition in all these things must, and do, intrude. But the love of beauty, of variety, in colour and form, is not base or worldly love. It should not shame us to find pleasure in letting the eye rest upon such things, which like all God’s gifts are seen and loved first as we gaze upon the faultless beauties and the everchanging beauties of His creation. That the eye, given us to perceive and rejoice in these beauties, should long for an ever-changing succession of them, should discern the loveliness of alternation and variety, is no disgrace. Change, transition, contrast, whether in Nature or in Art—how large a part do not these make in the beauty of God’s creation, and of that human art which has grown out of the study of that creation! Should we not be grateful for the “shifting fashions”—for so they are—of God’s world, for the shifting fashions of the landscape in winter and in summer, in spring and in autumn?

Robertson had seen a great deal of the fashionable society of watering-places. With the exception of the brief interludes of Oxford and Winchester, he had lived all his days in such places. By the world generally he would himself be regarded as a man of fashion. He himself keenly appreciated the social and intellectual side of such society. But he had a thorough suspicion and dislike of the essential characteristics of these places. This comes out in his sermons and also in his letters: “If you wish to know what hollowness and heartlessness are, you must seek for them in the world of light, elegant, superficial fashion, where frivolity has turned the heart into a rock-bed of selfishness. Say what men will of the heartlessness of trade, it is nothing compared with the heartlessness of fashion. Say what they will of the atheism of science, it is nothing to the atheism of that round of pleasure in which many a heart lives—dead while it lives.” 1 [Note: F. Arnold, Robertson of Brighton, 224.]

4. There are fashions in morals as well as in art, in religion, even, as well as in social etiquette; and it is against these that St. Paul warns his Roman Christians. Whenever and wherever the shifting moral sense of Society forms its own rules and standards, without reference to the revelation of God in His Word, and in His Son Jesus Christ, these fashions take their rise—the creations of the world—with no assurance of permanence, because they depend ultimately upon the conscience of the hour, which must needs vary. This must be true of every age—of this age no less than of that of which the Apostle was writing. It is to the conscience of the hour that we are not to “conform,” or “be fashioned,” if only because it has no permanence. There is no security, even if it is decently moral to-day, that it will be the same to-morrow.

The relations of the Kingdom of heaven and the world have grown infinitely more complex since St. Paul’s day. When he wrote, the boundary line between the Church and the World was tolerably clear and defined. It is no longer so, and the World presents new fronts to the Church, or rather is so permeated by the ways, if not the spirit, of the Church, that its fashions have become both more complex and more alluring. Now the World has become leavened to a certain extent by the ethics of the Church, and the Church leavened, alas! by the lower morals of the World, so that the boundary lines between the two become fainter and more misleading. And the pressure of the World upon the Church is greater than it was in St. Paul’s day, because it touches it at a greater number of points. The fashion of the World seriously threatened the real Christians in Rome; but it now threatens in a thousand fresh ways the nominal Christians of to-day.

“Fashion,” as a term, has degraded since St. Paul’s day. Unreality, as well as instability, is inseparable from the name of “fashion.” “Why does such and such a man or woman do so and so?” “Oh, because it’s the fashion—because it’s the thing to do!” Fashion is the public opinion of the “set,” to which everything else is sacrificed. The tyranny of the “set”—how inflexible its grip! what evils has it not to answer for! The vox populi, even when it is that of the large, free, public conscience, has no security for being the vox Dei; but how when it is the voice of a sect or a clique? To be really cynical is a bad enough thing—an affront to God and an insult to the law of Christian love; but what shall we say of the cynical fashion, taken up because for the moment, and with certain people we admire, it is the sign of cleverness and distinction. Then there is the sceptical fashion. To refuse God’s revelation, in Nature and in Conscience and in His Word, is sad enough; it is matter for deep pity as well as reproach. But what shall we say when it too has no root at all, good or evil, but is taken up as a badge of enlightenment, as a mark of separation from the humdrum superstitions of the world, and to win the good opinion of those in whom the same scepticism is perhaps at least genuine?

Terrible, again, is the growing defiance of the accepted moralities and decorums—the custom-hallowed decencies and reticences of life—which we see everywhere about us. Everywhere do we see signs of this revolt against old ideas of reverence, of modesty, of charity, and of courtesy, under the pretence of protesting against whatever is unreal or hypocritical in the so-called “respectabilities” of life. Where this is a genuine revolt, having a supposed excuse in undoubted conventionalities and hypocrisies to be found among us, it is at least not ignoble; but for one person who is fired by a genuine indignation that overmasters him, how many are there who follow in the same track only to win credit for the same thing, or even, must we not say, because the laxer morality, the reduced stringency, is easier and pleasanter?

These and a thousand other fashions and follies are all around us. The satirists of the day know these things well. The world is keenly alive to its own weak points. But satire has no power to cure them, has no “healing in its wings.” For satire treats symptoms only, and no wise physician is content with this. It was one of Pope’s half-truths that

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen.

But “hated” is just the wrong word here. To see the hatefulness of a thing and to hate it are quite different stages of moral growth. To hate is the correlative of to love; and when we have once begun to hate the evil that is in the world, we have also begun to hate the evil that is in ourselves, and our deliverance is at hand. 1 [Note: Alfred Ainger.]

In the department of the “minor morals” various little changes of fashion are observable. The change in the drinking habits of society is too hackneyed a topic to be more than mentioned, but if we are not mistaken, a striking change has taken place in the matter of “strong language.” It is quite true that “damns had their day” once—and it is equally certain that they are having another one now. Twenty years ago when one was sitting in the stalls it was not unusual, when the obnoxious word was uttered, to hear materfamilias let fall some such remark as, “I really do think he might have left that out!” Nowadays of course it passes absolutely unnoticed; nor does any man in telling a story think it necessary to omit the word, if it comes in naturally, because of the presence of women-folk. Nay, we appeal to our readers whether they do not hear it, more or less in play, from the lips of beauty in distress—in a bunker or elsewhere. Nous ne discutons pas—nous constatons. We merely remark that the mothers of this generation would not have done it any more than they would have smoked cigarettes. 1 [Note: Recreations and Reflections, 377.]

“One day,” says Madame de Hausset, in her curious memoirs of the Pompadour, “Madame said to the Due d’Ayen that M. de Choiseul was very fond of his sisters. ‘I know it, Madame,’ said he—‘and many sisters are the better for it.’ ‘What can you mean?’ she asked. ‘Why,’ he answered, ‘as the Due de Choiseul loves his sisters, it is thought fashionable to do the same; and I know silly girls, whose brothers formerly cared nothing for them, who are now most tenderly beloved. No sooner does their little finger ache than their brothers are running all over Paris to fetch the doctor for them. They flatter themselves that some one will say in M. de Choiseul’s drawing-room, “Ah, what a good brother is M. de—!” and that they will gain advancement thereby.’ ” We need scarcely add that the Due de Choiseul was chief minister, and the dispenser of royal favours. 2 [Note: J. H. Friswell, This Wicked World, 56.]

ii. This World

1. The marginal reference here gives “age” as an alternative reading for “world”—“be not fashioned according to the age or time”—and it should not be overlooked that the Greek word, here rendered “world,” does really mean the world in special relation to time as distinguished from place or space. The changing forms or fashions to which the Apostle here refers are those which essentially belong to changes incident to time, the suppressed contrast being, of course, with a heavenly order, which is eternal. The idea is not necessarily theological: we are quite accustomed to the thought as a necessary consequent on our observations of life and history, and of the changes which every careful watcher of life must needs note in other people and even in himself.

The “Time-Spirit”—the “Zeit-Geist”—is naturalized among us as a phrase to indicate the force which we see to be exercised, however little able we are to grasp and analyse it, in each succeeding epoch of our history; and it is clearly something after the same kind that St. Paul saw to be at work in the world of his day. And because his beloved converts must needs be in daily touch with the world, though it was their first duty and privilege to be not “of it,” he had seen how necessary it was to them to beware of the subtle power, the alluring and plausible charm, which it was certain to exercise over them, unless they were forewarned and forearmed.

2. When St. Paul lifted up his voice against the world, and besought the Christians committed to his charge to be separate from it, he was thinking of that imposing paganism which was ever fronting them. With its love of pleasure, its glorification of power, its imperial pageantry, its idolatrous temples, its unredeemed Art, its seduction both for the senses and for the intellect, paganism cast its glamour over the new Christian converts. Writers so far apart as Cardinal Newman in his Callista and the author of Quo Vadis suggest to our minds the fascinating atmosphere into which Christianity was born, and where in its youth it had to fight the good fight of faith. Beneath the beauty of form and colour, the magnificence of ceremonies and arms, the arts and riches of civilization, that was an unclean and leprous world. Whether they lived in Corinth, with its unblushing worship of lust, or in Rome, which was the moral sewer of the world, or in Ephesus, where Christians were tempted by the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, or in Pergamos, where there were those who held the abominable doctrine of Balaam, or in Thyatira, where Jezebel seduced God’s servants, or in Sardis, where only a few had not defiled their garments, Christians had ever to stand on guard. No wonder that some in Corinth had fallen through the lures of the flesh, or that a Demas had forsaken the faith before that imperial magnificence. Christians had to choose between their Lord and their world, and it was a world hard to escape or to resist.

3. It is evident that the world of to-day has changed, and it is unreasonable to require of modern Christians the line of action which was necessary in the first century. The spirit of Christ has counted for something during nineteen centuries, and Western society is not arrayed in arrogant hostility to the claims and ethics of our Master. His disciples are neither persecuted nor seduced after the fashion of the former days, and it is not necessary to preach that separation which once was compulsory, or to warn against the gross temptations which once beset the disciple from street and temple, from book and Art. Religious writers have shown a want of historical insight in adopting those fiery denunciations of the world which applied to the Corinth of St. Paul and the Rome of Juvenal. But this does not mean that there is no anti-Christian world or that Christians have not need to watch and pray; it only means that war has changed its form, and instead of the clash of swords we have the unseen danger of the rifle. We have to get to the principle which underlies all forms, and what constitutes the world in every age is devotion to the material instead of to the spiritual.

Preachers may talk with airy rhetoric about the distinction between the Church and the World; but we feel, somehow, that the lines of division tend to melt away before our eyes. We cannot draw sharp lines of separation. Men may try, they have often tried, to do so in one way or another. They may wear, like Quakers, a peculiar dress, or they may ticket certain forms of amusement as “worldly,” or they may use a peculiar phraseology; but experience tells us how ludicrous and disastrous such attempts have been, to what hypocrisies and absurdities they lead. The very expression, common enough once, still occasionally appears in newspapers, the “religious world”—how unreal it sounds! No, if we are to choose between the “religious world” and the “world” without a prefix, we must frankly prefer the latter. 1 [Note: H. R. Gamble.]

4. A man does not cease to be unworldly by adopting a ritual of renunciation any more than a Bushman becomes a European by washing off his grease and ochre, and attiring himself in clean linen and broadcloth. The casual gossip of the cloister may show that society and the petty interests of the butterfly crowd loom as large as ever in the imagination of its inmates. The unconscious leanings of an evangelical home ruled by the straitest maxims may show that the silly, senseless world finds a tell-tale mirror there. The trivialities of life, upon which the back has been ostensibly turned, cling like burrs to the textures of the inner man. Honest unworldliness is central to a man’s scheme of thought, and begins far down below the surface. We cannot bind it upon men by artificial precepts.

Are saints to be distinguished as men and women to whom everyday concerns offer no sort of attraction? Is their attitude towards civilization, and art, and business, and amusement that of unconcern or even of disdain? Are they to be recognized by differences of dress, or manner of speaking, from others around them? If so, Brother Lawrence in his kitchen, and Santa Zita going about her work as a housemaid, and even St. Paul weaving cloth for his tents, cannot properly be described as saints. 1 [Note: A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 105.]

(1) If any one is indulging in what the Prayer-Book calls “notorious sin,” i.e. sin of which no Christian can doubt that it is serious and deadly sin; if he is a scorner of God, or of his parents, a blasphemer, a fornicator, a thief, a slanderer, a liar; he must know at once, without further question, that he is “fashioned according to this world.”

A story is told of Dr. Guthrie, that, finding a little girl weeping in great distress in Edinburgh, he, pitying her, asked the reason, and discovered that she had lost sixpence. The Doctor not only supplied the money, but took the child to a baker, not far from the spot, to buy a loaf for her. “That little girl,” said the baker, “seems always to be losing sixpences, Doctor; perhaps it is her trade.” And so it was. The poor little lassie had been brought up in a “padding ken,” or a “fencing crib,” a school for young thieves; and her peculiar vocation was to take her walks abroad, drop a pretended sixpence, and burst into uncontrollable weeping. The best of the story is that Doctor Guthrie, bending down, told the child that she was now more than ever an object of pity, since she earned her living by sin, and, finding out where she dwelt, he rescued her from her terrible position. 2 [Note: J. H. Friswell, This Wicked World, 14.]

(2) But, apart from open or notorious sin, if a man’s heart is so set upon anything here in this present life that the thought of the world to come is unpleasant and irksome to him, he may be said to be fashioned according to this world. When a man is so entirely taken up with his property, pursuits, schemes, and employments in this world, innocent though they may be and useful in themselves, that he is more in earnest about them than about his devotions and the preparation of his soul for death, such a man has much need to watch and pray that he enter not into temptation; to pray that he may pray better, lest by little and little he fall away, and become a thorough child of this world, before he is aware.

St. Benedict, so the old story ran, was sitting in his cell, meditating upon heaven, when suddenly the glory of this world was presented to his gaze, gathered, as it seemed, into a single dazzling and bewitching beam. But the appeal was made in vain to a heart that had dwelt among the celestial realities. Inspexit et despexit—“he saw and he scorned it.” Was that altogether un-Christlike? Did not He also turn aside with something of loathing from the vision of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them? Did He not say, “I have overcome the world”? Was not His Apostle led by His Spirit when he declared that “if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”? And were not all of us called upon to “renounce” the world before we were enrolled as His disciples? 1 [Note: A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 112.]

(3) Again, we may be sure the world is getting or keeping too much hold of us, when we cannot bear being scorned or ridiculed for doing what we know in our heart to be right. This is especially a temptation of the world, because it is a temptation from our fellow-mortals, not from Satan, and because it is so entirely without a man.

Some time ago, at the close of a meeting, a young man remained behind, and after the way of salvation was explained, he was urged to decide for Christ. His answer was, “I dare not,” and the reason he gave was that he would be the only Christian in the workshop, and he dreaded the taunts and laughter of his workmates, and so he turned away from Christ for fear of a laugh. How different was the conduct of the young recruit—a lad of eighteen years of age—who stood as bravely as any Christian hero ever did. For two or three weeks he was the butt of the camp because he knelt and said his prayers, and testified for his Master. At length his company was ordered to the seat of war, and the battle came, and after a fierce fight the dead body of the young Christian was carried back, and the ringleader of his persecutors said, “Boys, I couldn’t leave him. He fought so bravely that I thought he deserved a decent burial.” And as they dug a grave and buried him, a comrade cut his name and regiment on a piece of board, and another added, “I guess you’d better put in the words ‘Christian Soldier’; he deserves it, and it may console him for all our abuse.” That is the courage we want. The courage that “hates the cowardice of doing wrong,” as Milton magnificently puts it, and the daring that stands unmoved amid scorn and obloquy. If you want to see that courage at its best, then look at Christ, and listen to these words of the Apostle, “Who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” 1 [Note: J. E. Roberts.]

II

Transformed by the Renewing of the Mind

1. The word transform occurs elsewhere in the New Testament on two occasions. It is the word used to denote our Lord’s Transfiguration ( Matthew 17:2; Mark 9:2); and it is the word employed by St. Paul to describe that growing conformity to the likeness of our Lord, which results from the contemplation of His excellency: “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed”—transformed or transfigured—“into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” ( 2 Corinthians 3:18).

2. “A transfigured life” suggests to us, in the light of the Lord’s Transfiguration, even nobler and loftier aspirations and hopes than the phrase “a transformed life.” And there lie in it and in the context such thoughts as these: the inward life, if it is healthy and true and strong, will certainly shape the outward conduct and character. Just as truly as the physical life moulds the infant’s limbs, just as truly as every periwinkle shell on the beach is shaped into the convolutions that will fit the inhabitant by the power of the life that lies within, so the renewed mind will make a fit dwelling for itself.

To a large extent a man’s spirit shapes his body; within limits, of course, but to a very large and real extent. Did you never see some homely face, perhaps of some pallid invalid, which had in it the very radiance of heaven, and of which it might be said without exaggeration that it was “as it had been the face of an angel”? Did you never see goodness making men and women beautiful? Did you never see some noble emotion stamp its own nobility on the countenance, and seem to dilate a man’s very form and figure, and make the weakest like an angel of God? Have there not been other faces like the face of Moses, which shone as he came down from the Mount of Communion with God? Or, as Milton puts it,

Oft converse with heavenly habitants

Begins to cast a beam on the outward shape,

The unpolluted temple of the mind.

Even as the fashion of His countenance was altered, so the inner life of Christ, deep and true in a man’s heart, will write its presence in his countenance, and show how awful and how blessed goodness is. 1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

Do you remember the scene in Roderick Hudson, a story written by Henry James? The hero, who is a young artist, has wandered to Rome, and there drifted into a life of selfish indulgence. But far away from the old American home a mother’s prayers had followed him. Her absent boy made her forget self in those moments when she kneeled at the throne of Grace; then face and soul become strangely plastic. She was conscious of no change as the years sped, but when at last she crossed the ocean in search of her son, and they met in the foreign city, the artist asked in surprise: “What has happened to your face? It has changed its expression.” “Your mother has prayed a great deal,” she replied. “Well, it makes a good face,” answered the artist. “It has very fine lines in it.” 2 [Note: A. G. Mackinnon.]

3. Now, how is this transfiguration to take place in our lives? We are not left in doubt as to the power which is to produce the change. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. We are to be transformed by the renewing of the mind; the change must begin within; we must invoke spiritual influences, power from on high. It will not be denied us if we seek it. “Ask, and ye shall receive.” We must not begin trying to correct outward habits till we have implored inward grace. We must believe that the Holy Spirit is willing to make His abode in our hearts.

Have you ever thought about the large place the New Testament gives to our mind? In the very next verse to this St. Paul goes on to say, “For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith.” That is characteristic of New Testament teaching. “Set your mind on the things that are above.” When St. Peter was trying to lead Jesus Christ into temptation, Jesus said to him, “Thou mindest not the things of God.” And when St. Paul is describing people who are alienated from God, he says they “mind earthly things.” You and I become like the things we think about. If we let our mind be a caravansary for all sorts of evil thoughts, we shall become evil. If we fix our mind upon worldly things, we shall become worldly. If we fix our mind upon things that are above, where Christ is, we shall become like Christ. We grow like the things we think about, and the renewing of the mind means that there is implanted in our heart, if we will have it so, a Divine power that will enable us to think about the things that have praise and virtue until we are changed into their image. We can be transformed by the renewing of our mind. 1 [Note: J. E. Roberts.]

The real secret of a transfigured life is a transmitted life—Somebody else living in us, with a capital S for that Somebody, looking out of our eyes, giving His beauty to our faces, and His winningness to our personality. 2 [Note: S. D. Gordon.]

III

The Motive

That ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

1. These remarkable words give the reason or motive why those to whom St. Paul wrote should seek for such a change. The meaning of the words is this: that we may, each one in our own experience, prove—that is, make proof of—that will of God which is good, and acceptable, and perfect.

Good, acceptable, perfect. These adjectives may either qualify the “will of God” as in the Authorized Version, or be in apposition to it, as in the Revised Version margin. The latter construction agrees better with the rhythm of the sentence. The will of God is identified with what is “good” in the moral sense; “acceptable,” well pleasing (that is, to God); and “perfect,” that is, ethically adequate or complete.

You wish to know what is the will of God which you must follow amid the dark perplexities of your life. Well, remember that the will of God is a living will. It develops from age to age. It moves within a world of constantly changing circumstances, and amid conditions which, like man’s life upon the earth, never continue in one stay. It is one thing to be sure that Jesus Christ dealt with the various situations that confronted Him with the certain authority of a sovereign conscience. It is quite another to examine His teaching in order to discover a moral code, or a system of casuistry which will apply to every development of social and personal life. There are those who hope to settle each matter that comes to them for decision by opening the sacred volume and accepting the first text on which the eye falls as revealing the Divine Will. There is more reason in this method of consulting the oracles of God than in that attitude towards it, still far too popular, which seems to regard it as a sort of religious red book, where precepts of conduct are to be learned as though they were the details of drill. Why, even the old Hebrews were taught that the way in which God reveals His mind to His children is more intimate and spiritual than this. “The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart.” The Word of God is not graven on stone; it is written on the tablets of the heart. Not outward conformity to a system, but the inward response to the self-revealing Spirit is that secret of the Lord which is with them that fear Him. 1 [Note: J. G. Simpson.]

2. To see the great importance of this declaration let us inquire, in the first place, what it implies. Now it implies two things.

(1) Our salvation is the will of God.—It is the will of God that we should be good, and holy, and acceptable in His sight; that (to gather all into one word) we should be saved; and that, if we are not saved, it is not because it is God’s will to leave us to perish, but in spite of God’s will, which would have us saved.

The will of God is not an eccentric will, like that of His wayward creatures, neither is it an arbitrary will, the will of one who is merely All-Power; but it is the will of Him who is Holiness, Wisdom, and Love, just as much as Power. When, therefore, He wills our salvation, He wills it in a certain way: in the way of truth, and wisdom, and love. He wills, that is, first, that we should truly be; that we should be not mere machines through which He works, but reasonable beings—beings who can choose; who can love Him; who can return love for love. 1 [Note: S. Wilberforce.]

He told me that in the loneliness of his own room he had been thinking of his sinful and wretched life, and feeling how impossible it was for him ever to be a different man, when all of a sudden, just like a voice in his soul, he heard the announcement that Christ alone can take away the sins of a man. In a flash he saw that he had nothing to do but surrender; that he was not to strive, but to be grateful; that God was only asking him to believe, not to struggle, not to build up the ruins of his life. “I simply gave myself to God,” he said quietly. “I don’t know how else to put it. I surrendered, laid down my arms, and felt all through my soul that I was pardoned and restored.” That is nine years ago. For nine years this man has not only been immune from drink, has not only made a comfortable home for his children, has not only been a first-rate workman and a good citizen, but throughout those nine years he has been, in Sister Agatha’s phrase, “a worker for Christ, beloved by all, and a hiding-place for many.” If you could see the brightness of his face and feel the overflowing happiness of his heart, you would better realize the miracle of conversion. The man is a living joy. 2 [Note: H. Begbie, In the Hand of the Potter, 266.]

(2) It is given to us to make trial of this will of God—to experience it; to prove it; to find it working in us; to know that it is real, by its life within ourselves. This Will of God is on our side; it is not in word and by accommodation, but indeed true, that He would have us perfect, acceptable, and blessed; and if we will but seek to be renewed, we shall know that all this is indeed so, by His blessed power day by day renewing us ourselves.

The primary meaning of the word “prove” in our text is to recognize, discern, discriminate. Hence we find that to come thus into affinity with God is to evolve an organ of spiritual consciousness. We cannot even know one another except through affinity. This is everywhere the key to intimacy with a person. It is this that conducts us behind the veil, and admits us to the adytum—the holy place of personality which is screened from the common gaze. The same law holds for the Divine. Love and loyalty and likeness to God will admit us to the secret place of His will. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.” 3 [Note: H. Howard.]

3. We have examined what the words imply. Let us now see some of the consequences which follow.

(1) The danger of thwarting God’s will.—Here is the key to the secret history of every careless life amongst us Christians, in its course and in its end. In its course—for such a life is a continuous striving against the will of God for us; against His gracious will that we should be good, and perfect, and acceptable before Him.

(2) The assurance of success.—What an untold might would be ours in striving against sin, if we did indeed believe it to be God’s will that we should overcome in the struggle! The first condition of success is the expectation of succeeding. How it nerves the soldier’s arm to know that he fights under a general who has always conquered. And so it is also in all the conflicts of our spiritual life. The lack of such confidence is one of the most common grounds of our weakness. We do not strengthen ourselves in God; we doubt His good will towards us; we practically shut Him out of our thoughts; and we are lost.

(3) The reality imparted to the spiritual life.—The “proving” of God’s will is that which gives a sense of true reality to all the spiritual world around us and within us. God’s word, prayer, the holy Sacraments, all the ordinances of Christ’s Church, as well as the more hidden suggestions of the blessed Spirit, through the heart and conscience—these are all full of a living reality for him who knows that he is here training under the active loving energies of the Almighty Will.

I worship Thee, sweet Will of God!

And all Thy ways adore,

And every day I live, I seem

To love Thee more and more.

Thou wert the end, the blessèd rule

Of our Saviour’s toils and tears;

Thou wert the passion of His Heart

Those three-and-thirty years.

And He hath breathed into my soul

A special love of Thee,

A love to lose my will in His,

And by that loss be free.

He always wins who sides with God,

To him no chance is lost;

God’s Will is sweetest to him, when

It triumphs at his cost.

When obstacles and trials seem

Like prison-walls to be,

I do the little I can do,

And leave the rest to Thee. 1 [Note: F. W. Faber.]

In Fashion or in Favour

Literature

Ainger (A.), The Gospel and Human Life, 137.

Balmforth (R.), The Evolution of Christianity, 107.

Burrows (H. W.), Lenten and Other Sermons, 29.

Candlish (R. S.), The Two Great Commandments, 40.

Flint (R.), Sermons and Addresses, 145.

Gamble (H. R.), The Ten Virgins, 63.

Greenhough (J. G.), in Great Texts of the New Testament, 181.

Hayman (H.), Rugby Sermons, 99.

Howard (H.), The Summits of the Soul, 83.

Inge (W. R.), All Saints’ Sermons, 181.

Jackson (G.), Memoranda Paulina, 38.

Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year (Christmas and Epiphany), 396.

Knight (G. H.), Full Allegiance, 43.

Lucas (H.), At the Parting of the Ways, 256.

Macaskill (M.), A Highland Pulpit, 28.

Maclaren (A.), Creed and Conduct, 122.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Romans, 230.

Manning (H. E.), Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects, iii. 3.

Percival (J.), Some Helps for School Life, 237.

Selby (T. G.), The Divine Craftsman, 229.

Simcox (W. H.), The Cessation of Prophecy, 251.

Simpson (J. G.), Christian Ideals, 111.

Temple (F.), Rugby Sermons, i. 282.

Watson (J.), The Inspiration of our Faith, 122.

Wilberforce (S.), Sermons, 237.

Christian World Pulpit, lix. 161 (Gore); lxv. 45 (Stewart); lxxix. 276 (Roberts).

Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., v. 40 (Vaughan); vii. 38 (Maurice).

Verse 11

Outward, Inward, Christward

In diligence not slothful; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.— Romans 12:11.

The position that the portion of Holy Scripture from which these words are taken occupies, gives to the words special significance. In the Epistle to the Romans they come as presenting the practical aspect of that truth which in the first eleven chapters the Apostle sets forth in all the depth and breadth and height of the great mystery of godliness.

In the first eleven chapters of the Epistle he seeks to justify the ways of God to man. It is a vindication of the righteousness of God seen through man’s failures; and so he traces the fall of man from his original righteousness, the corruption of the world, the debasement of its idolatries, the seeming failure of God’s purpose, even of the law that was given by Moses, and in the election of God’s people Israel. He does not flinch from facing any one of the great problems of God’s government of the world—its anomalies, its disappointments, its frustrations of the grace of God; the creature made subject to vanity, man losing the image of God in which he was created; Israel outcast and rejected—but he shows through all these ruins the increasing purpose of the Divine mercy as well as of the Divine righteousness. The ways of God are inscrutable and past finding out, but they are the ways of a boundless compassion and of a perfect justice. So it will be seen at last (that is the conclusion to which he comes) that the purpose of God shall not fail; that evil shall not triumph over good; that love and not hatred is the law of God’s universe; that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

Then the Apostle passes from that high mystery of doctrine to the practical aspect of the Christian life. Good is to prevail in man’s life, in the life of each individual Christian whom God has called; and in spite of the problems which beset the intellect, it is to be a life of holiness and peace and purity. Justification by faith is not to lead to an Antinomian carelessness about obedience, and righteousness, and truth, and purity, and honesty; it does not set aside the law, yea it establishes the law.

The text is a short summary of the Christian life. That life has three relationships: to the world around us, to our own heart within us, to Christ above us; and here there is a word for each. “In diligence not slothful”—that is the duty we owe to the world; “fervent in spirit”—that is the duty we owe to ourselves; “serving the Lord”—that is what we owe to Christ. We might paraphrase the text: “Do good diligently; be good enthusiastically; and let all service, outward and inward, be for the Lord.”

I

Outward

“In diligence not slothful.”

The language of the Authorized Version is “Not slothful in business”; and it comes to most of us as an exhortation to be industrious in our earthly callings. It is the word for a prosperous banker, an enterprising merchant, a tradesman who tries to make the most of his capital or his labour, a labouring man whose task is humble, but who has to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, and seeks to gain a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s labour. Well, doubtless, that lies within the scope and compass of the text; but if our thoughts are limited to that interpretation of it, we take altogether a poor, unsatisfying estimate of what the Apostle means, we lose more than one-half at least of the instruction and guidance it may give us. For the business of which the Apostle speaks is not the thing which a man does, but the temper, the motive, the character which accompany the doing of it. It is the temper of activity, of earnestness, and of thoroughness which a man may carry into his outward work.

The Authorized Version receives much credit for the melody of its words, but perhaps less than it deserves for their accuracy. Here the word “business” is taken in the modern sense of trade, and when it is found that that is not the meaning of the Greek, the Authorized Version is credited with a mistranslation. But in the sixteenth century “business” was used in the sense of “busyness,” that is, activity or diligence in whatever one is engaged in—just the meaning of the Greek word.

The word translated “business” in the Authorized Version is the same in the original as the word “diligence” in the eighth verse of the chapter: “He that ruleth, with diligence.” So here: “Not slothful as regards diligence.” The term indicates, not the kind of work to be done, but simply the manner of doing it. It does not point to men’s ordinary worldly callings and occupations, as distinguished from their spiritual exercises or spiritual frames. It is not the Apostle’s present object to harmonize, and reconcile, and blend the two in one. The expression “business” characterizes, not the work but the worker, not the action but the agent. The real meaning is, that in respect of diligence, or activity, in the matter to which this whole passage refers, you are to be not slothful. It is very much the wise man’s maxim: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might” ( Ecclesiastes 9:10).

Looking to the whole context of the verse, looking to the whole tenor and life of the Apostle, we may be sure that he meant those to whom he wrote to think chiefly of the spheres of Christian activity which were open to them, to each of them according to the gift that he had received—the gift of prophecy, ministration, helps and governments, diversities of tongues, gifts of healing, and the like. Spiritual activity, rather than secular activity, was what was in the Apostle’s thoughts. Primarily, at least, the words are addressed to those who are engaged in the sphere of Christian activity. But it will be serviceable to give the words a wider range and let them refer to our work in the world, and describe the manner in which our duty should be done: “As for our diligence in doing our duty, let us not be slothful—let us really do it diligently.”

1. We all know what this means in any worldly calling; and we know also that in every worldly calling it is an indispensable condition of eminence and success. There must be industry; strenuous, unremitting, untiring industry; willingness to forgo the luxury of ease, “to scorn delights, and live laborious days.” For the most part, this is a faculty to be acquired; a habit to be cultivated. It is a faculty which cannot be acquired too early; a habit which cannot be cultivated too assiduously. It is good advice, and advice which cannot be too often or too emphatically repeated, especially to the young: Learn this lesson soon, and learn it well. Accustom yourself, train yourself to this “diligence in business.” Do this systematically in whatever you undertake. Act upon the principle that whatever it is worth while to acquire, it is worth while to acquire thoroughly; whatever it is worth while to do at all, it is worth while to do well.

This text is in perfect harmony with other parts of Scripture. St. Paul in writing his second letter to the Thessalonians ( Romans 3:10) says, “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” The evil complained of here began to show itself even while the Apostle was with the Church. Some were idlers, and they needed the earnest words of St. Paul to rebuke them and incite them to labour. He was himself a remarkable example of industry. Often did he spend the day in preaching and teaching, and then labour far into the night at his “craft” for support, rather than be dependent on the bounty of others. He becomes righteously indignant at the Thessalonian idlers, and he declares that neither should they eat. They were not to be supported by the charity of others, unless they had done all they could for their own support. This was a common maxim among the Jews; and the same sentiment is often found in the writings of Greek poets, orators, and philosophers. The maxim is in harmony with strict justice. At the very dawn of human history we are taught that man was to earn his bread in the sweat of his face. A man who will not work ought to starve. You ought not to help him. Aid given to a lazy man is a premium on vice.

“Africa is the land of the unemployed,” Henry Drummond says in his Tropical Africa. This saying is true only regarding the men. “What is the first commandment?” a Lovedale boy was asked. “Thou shalt do no work,” was the reply. 1 [Note: Stewart of Lovedale, 207.]

Not often did Watts take subjects for his paintings from the stern realities of everyday life. But there is a small group of pictures in which the sorrows and privations of those who have been worsted in the battle of life, or have been less fortunate than their fellows, are portrayed with unusual power, and show how wide is the range of his sympathies. Nothing human is alien to him. The pencil that could give a glow of vivid colour to the mystic visions of fancy could paint in sombre hues the painful experiences of the poor. He has combined, as it were, the two capacities in the humorous picture entitled, “When Poverty comes in at the door, Love flies out at the window.” To this popular proverb he has given a realistic and yet an imaginative charm. The picture at once impresses the mind and makes its meaning plain. One side of it is illumined with a bright light emblematical of the happiness that has been but is now passing away. The room is poorly furnished, and yet exhibits traces of former abundance that redeem its squalidness. The secret of the change of circumstances in the household is revealed in the laziness and slovenliness of the mistress. Instead of diligently attending to her domestic affairs, she is absorbed in caressing a pet dove, and lounging on a bed, whose disordered clothes exhibit the careless housekeeping of many days. Her work-basket is overturned on the floor, and its contents are scattered. Doves make their nests in pigeon-holes above the bed, with all their litter of confusion, and from the open window the untended sprays of roses, returning to their wild condition through neglect, creep in. The housewife is young and beautiful; but whatever pleasing impression she produces is at once removed by the contradictory character of her slovenly habits. She cannot make a happy home; and therefore the door of the room on one side is represented as opening, admitting the sordid figure of Poverty, dressed in rags, and accompanied by the gaunt wolf of Hunger, and letting in at the same time the cold inclement wind outside, which blows before it a drift of withered autumn leaves that strew the floor, and speak eloquently of the hostile forces of nature which inevitably work havoc where there is no principle of order and industry to keep them in check; while through the wide-open window the winged Cupid, no longer a boy but a grown-up mature youth, is in the act of taking flight over the sill. Every detail of the picture tells, and enhances the effect of the whole; and no one can gaze upon the startling contrast between the dark forbidding figure of Poverty, and the bright affrighted look of Love, without reading the moral which it so forcibly teaches. Watts could not possibly have taught a more impressive lesson to all who are inclined to act the part of the young woman whose own improvident ways have made her the subject of experiment by two such antagonistic powers, Poverty approaching to overwhelm her, and Love abandoning her to its horrors. 1 [Note: Hugh Macmillan, G. F. Watts, 214.]

Life without industry is guilt; and industry without art is brutality. 2 [Note: Ruskin.]

There is no cure for the despair and the nervous misery from which so many among us are suffering like a long and steady piece of hard work. Work reacts on the worker. If it is slovenly it makes him slovenly, even in his outward appearance. If he does it, not with any love, but merely as drudgery, it gives him the careless look of drudgery. “To scamp your work will make you a scamp.” On the contrary, when work is well done it yields its reward long before pay-day comes round, because it communicates solidity and dignity to the character. I do not know any man who is more to be envied than the man who has an eye

That winces at false work, and loves the true;

With hand and arm that play upon the toil

As willingly as any singing-bird

Sets him to sing his morning roundelay,

Because he likes to sing, and likes the Song of Solomon 3 [Note: J. Stalker.]

2. It is this real work, this earnest life, that the Apostle desires to see exemplified in the Church of Christ, and among its members. It is thus that He would have them to undertake and prosecute the work of their Christian calling, to perform the functions of whatever they may find to be their office in the Church, the body of Christ, of which they are members. No doubt there is here a peculiar difficulty, arising out of the nature of that work and these functions. They are essentially spiritual. They make a demand upon the spiritual tendencies and tastes. In any circumstances, the faculty or habit which is required is difficult of acquisition. Still, there are certain qualities which are essential to worldly success, and if we carry them over into the life of the spirit we shall find that they are there also the secrets of progress in Christian usefulness.

(1) Here is a quality which is greatly esteemed in the ways of the world—the quality of alertness. It is characteristic of every successful merchant. If we listen to the ordinary speech of the man of the world, we find how great is the value which he places upon this gift. “A man must have all his wits about him.” “It is the early bird that catches the worm.” These are recognized maxims in the way of success, and they point to the commanding necessity of an alert spirit. A merchant must be alert for the detection of hidden perils. He must be alert for the perception of equally hidden opportunity. He must be alert for the recognition of failing methods. His eyes must clearly see where old roads are played out, and where new ground may be broken. Let us carry the suggestion over into the affairs of the Kingdom. The Scriptures abound in counsel to alertness. “Awake, awake!” “Watch ye!” “Let us watch and be sober!” “Watching unto prayer.” It is an all-essential ingredient in the life of the progressive saint.

The watchfulness which Jesus Christ commands is a faithful care to love always and to fulfil the will of God at the present moment, according to the indications we have of it; it does not consist in worrying ourselves, in putting ourselves to torture, and in being ceaselessly occupied with ourselves, but rather in lifting our eyes to God, from whence comes our only help against ourselves. 1 [Note: Fénelon.]

“Buy up the opportunity.” We are especially to look at things that appear to be useless, lest they turn out to be the raw material of the garments of heaven. Sir Titus Salt, walking along the quay of Liverpool, saw a pile of unclean waste. He saw it with very original eyes, and had the vision of a perfected and beautified product. He saw the possibilities in discarded refuse, and he bought the opportunity. That is perhaps the main business of the successful citizen of the Kingdom—the conversion of waste. This disappointment which I have had to-day, what can I make out of it? What an eye it wants to see the ultimate gain in checked and chilled ambition—

To stretch a hand through time, and catch

The far-off interest of tears.

This grief of mine, what can I make of it? Must I leave it as waste in the track of the years, or can it be turned into treasure? This pain of mine, is it only a lumbering burden, or does the ungainly vehicle carry heavenly gold? It is in conditions of this kind that the spiritual expert reveals himself. He is all “alive unto God,” and seeing the opportunity he seizes it like a successful merchant. 2 [Note: J. H. Jowett.]

(2) Again, we hear one man say of another who has risen to fortune: “Everything about him goes like clockwork.” Of another man whose days witness a gradual degeneracy quite another word is spoken: “He has no system, no method; everything goes by the rule of chance.” So the quality of method appears to be one of the essentials of a successful man of affairs. Is this equally true in the things of the Kingdom? How many there are of us who, in our religious life, are loose, slipshod, unmethodical! How unsystematic we are in our worship and our prayers! Our worldly business would speedily drop into ruin if we applied to it the inconsiderate ways with which we discharge the duties of our religion.

William Law, in A Serious Call, has instructed us in methodical devotion. He systematically divides the day, devoting to certain hours and certain seasons special kinds of praises and prayers. This was the early glory of the Methodist denomination. Their distinctiveness consisted in the systematic ordering of the Christian life. I know that too much method may become a bondage, but too little may become a rout. Too much red tape is creative of servitude, but to have no red tape at all is to be the victim of disorder.

Without method memory is useless. Detached facts are practically valueless. All public speakers know the value of method. Persons not accustomed to it imagine that a speech is learnt by heart. Knowing a little about the matter, I will venture to say that if any one attempted that plan, either he must have a marvellous memory, or else he would break down three times out of five. It simply depends upon correct arrangement. The words and sentences are left to the moment; the thoughts are methodized beforehand; and the words, if the thoughts are rightly arranged, will place themselves. 1 [Note: F. W. Robertson, Life and Letters, 389.]

In order to do the most we are capable of, the first rule is that every day should see its own work done. Let the task for each day be resolved and arranged for deliberately the night before, and let nothing interfere with its performance. It is a secret which we learn slowly—the secret of living by days. I am convinced that there are very few so precious. What confuses work, what mars life and makes it feverish, is the postponing of the task which ought to be done now. The word which John Ruskin had on his seal was “To-day.” 2 [Note: Claudius Clear, Letters on Life, 163.]

(3) Go once more into the realm of business. Here is a sentence that encounters us from one who knows the road: “The habit of firm decision is indispensable to a man of business.” The real business man waits till the hour is come, and then acts decisively. He strikes while the iron is hot. An undecisive business man lives in perpetual insecurity. He meanders along in wavering uncertainty until his business house has to be closed. Is not this element of decision needful in the light of the Spirit? Religious life is too apt to be full of “ifs” and “buts” and “perhapses” and “peradventures.” Am I experiencing at this moment a fervent holy spiritual impulse? In what consists my salvation? To strike while the iron is hot! “Suffer me first to go to bid them farewell.” No, the iron will speedily grow cold. While the holy thing glows before you, strongly decide and concentrate your energies in supporting your decision. “I am resolved what to do.” That was said by a man of the world. Let it be the speech of the man of the Kingdom of God.

“We must think again,” says Hazlitt, “before we determine, and thus the opportunity for action is lost. While we are considering the very best possible mode of gaining an object, we find that it has slipped through our fingers, or that others have laid rude, fearless hands upon it.”

A man can learn but what he can:

Who hits the moment is the man.

Lord Bacon has noticed, says the author of Friends in Council, that the men whom powerful persons love to have about them are ready men—men of resource. The reason is obvious. A man in power has perhaps thirty or forty decisions to make in a day. This is very fatiguing and perplexing to the mind. Any one, therefore, who can assist him with ready resource and prompt means of execution, even in the trifling matters of the day, soon becomes an invaluable subordinate, worthy of all favour. 1 [Note: A. Helps, Friends in Council.]

(4) And once more we find that in business life it is essential that a man must run risks and make ventures. He must be daring, and he must have the element of courage. What says the man of the world? “Nothing venture, nothing win.” “Faint heart never won fair lady.” Faint heart never wins anything. John Bunyan’s Faintheart had repeatedly to be carried. Has the citizen of the Kingdom to risk anything? Indeed he has. He must risk the truth. A lie might appear to offer him a bargain, but he must risk the truth. Let him sow the truth, even though the threatened harvest may be tears. Let him venture the truth, even though great and staggering loss seems to be drawn to his door. “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” A man has again and again to make his choice between Christ and thirty pieces of silver. Let him make the venture, let the silver go; risk the loss! If it means putting up the shutters he will go out with Christ! “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”

The Christian belief that all is in God’s hands, and all things work together for good, throws a new light on all the trivialities of life. All our petty occupations may be affected by the ultimate hope which we are taught to cherish. “Labour,” says Bishop Andrewes ( Sermons, ii. 206), “of itself is a harsh, unpleasant thing unless it be seasoned with hope.… ‘He that plows must plow in hope,’ his plough shall not go deep else, his furrows will be but shallow. Sever hope from labour and you must look for labour and labourers accordingly, slight and shallow, God knoweth.” 1 [Note: W. Cunningham, The Gospel of Work, 71.]

Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!

Away, O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!

Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!

Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?

Have we not grovell’d here long enough eating and drinking like mere brutes?

Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?

Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,

Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,

For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,

And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

O my brave soul!

O farther, farther sail!

O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?

O farther, farther, farther sail! 2 [Note: Walt Whitman, The Sea of Faith.]

II

Inward

“Fervent in spirit”

We pass from the outward activity of life to the inward spring, to the motive power, out of which this outward activity must flow, and without which it flags and falls.

“Fervent in spirit”—What is it but to be glowing, boiling, we might almost say boiling over, with a strong purpose, with a perfect love, with a twofold love—the love of God who has made, redeemed, and sanctified us, and the love of men, our brothers, because they are children of the same Father in Heaven? It is hardly more than a paraphrase of St. Paul’s words to say that what he bids us do is, in homely phrase, to keep the steam up; that steam of the Divine love which moves the whole machine of our spiritual life, without which it may be in perfect outward order, but will not go, will not work, will not do that for which the great Work-master designed the machine. Here, then, is another golden rule of life, that outward activity must be sustained by the inward fervour, by the glow of emotion, by the life of prayer.

What man can live denying his own soul?

Hast thou not learned that noble uncontrol

Is virtue’s right, the breath by which she lives?

O sure, if any angel ever grieves,

’Tis when the living soul hath learnt to chide

Its passionate indignations, and to hide

The sudden flows of rapture, the quick birth

Of overwhelming loves, that balance the worth

Of the wide world against one loving act,

As less than a sped dream; shall the cataract

Stop, pause, and palter, ere it plunge towards

The vale unseen? Our fate hath its own lords,

Which if we follow truly, there can come

No harm unto us. 1 [Note: Langdon Elwyn Mitchell.]

1. There are two forms which this Divine enthusiasm has assumed in religious souls—the enthusiasm for humanity, and the enthusiasm for individual salvation. The latter, which is the narrower and more selfish, which indeed is often “selfishness expanded to infinitude,” has led to many errors. Men, ready to sacrifice everything to secure their own personal deliverance from what they had dreamed of hell, have lived as hermits in deserts or on mountains, or have shut themselves up in monastic cells, or have subjected their bodies to cruel torments. The beliefs that have led to such lives are natural to men. They are found in every age and in every country and in all religions; and deeply as they are intermingled with error, yet so sovereign are the virtues of self-denial that without doubt they shall have their reward. And sometimes, on the other hand, the enthusiasm for humanity has been dissevered from deep personal religion. We may be sure that God will still bless the sincere lovers of their brethren, and that Christ will never be hard on any man who has lived and died for men. But when the two have been combined, when the sense of devotion has been united with the exaltation of charity, then such men have ever been the most glorious and the most blessed of the benefactors of mankind. What was Christianity itself but such an enthusiasm learnt from the example, caught from the Spirit, of Christ our Lord? The same love, even for the guilty and wretched, which brought the Lord Jesus step by step from that celestial glory to the lowest depth of the infinite descent, has been kindled by His Spirit in the hearts of His noblest sons. Forgiven, they have longed that others should share the same forgiveness.

Jesus of Nazareth is constantly kindling and keeping alive an enthusiastic personal devotion in the hearts of countless men, women, and children who have never seen Him—an enthusiasm which burns on steadily, century after century, with ever-increasing splendour. Let those who deny that He is still alive explain that marvellous Fact—if they can! It is unique in the history of our race. Could a man, dead for nearly two thousand years, rule so royally over the souls and bodies of the noblest and most unselfish of every age? NO! JESUS LIVES! and is ever pressing close to His Heart the heart of each individual disciple, pouring in the strengthening oil of the Holy Spirit and the new wine of a high enthusiasm which must find room for service.

Come, my beloved! we will haste and go

To those pale faces of our fellow-men!

Our loving hearts, burning with summer fire,

Will cast a glow upon their pallidness;

Our hands will help them, far as servants may;

Hands are apostles still to saviour-hearts.

2. Enthusiasm is indispensable; there is nothing which the devil dreads so much, there is nothing which the world denounces so continuously. To call a man an enthusiast has often been regarded as the sneer most likely to thwart his plans. Like the words “Utopian,” “Quixotic,” “unpractical,” it is one of the mud-banks reared by the world to oppose the swelling tide of moral convictions. The famous saying of Prince Talleyrand, “Above all, no enthusiasm!” concentrates the expression of the dislike felt by cold, calculating, selfish natures for those who are swept away by the force of mighty and ennobling aspirations.

For what is enthusiasm? It is a Greek word which means the fulness of Divine inspiration. It implies absorbing and passionate devotion for some good cause. It means the state of those whom St. Paul has described as “fervent (literally, ‘boiling’) in spirit.” It describes the soul of man no longer mean and earthy, but transfigured, uplifted, dilated by the Spirit of God. When a man is an enthusiast for good, he is so because a Spirit greater than his own has swept over him, as the breeze wanders over the dead strings of some Æolian harp, and sweeps the music, which slumbers upon them, now into Divine murmurings, and now into stormy sobs. A man becomes an enthusiast when God has flashed into his conscience the conviction of right and truth; has made him magnetic to multitudes; has made him as a flame of fire which leaps out of dying embers; as a wind of God which breathes over the slain that they may live. Without enthusiasm of some noble kind a man is dead; without enthusiasts a nation perishes. Of each man it is true that in proportion to the fire of his enthusiasm is the grandeur of his life; of each nation it is true that without enthusiasm it never has the will, much less the power, to undo the heavy burden or to atone for the intolerable wrong.

Let us think sometimes of the great invisible ship that carries our human destinies upon eternity. Like the vessels of our confined oceans, she has her sails and her ballast. The fear that she may pitch or roll on leaving the roadstead is no reason for increasing the weight of the ballast by stowing the fair, white sails in the depths of the hold. They were not woven to moulder side by side with cobble-stones in the dark. Ballast exists everywhere: all the pebbles of the harbour, all the sand on the beach will serve for it. But sails are rare and precious things: their place is not in the murk of the well, but amid the light of the tall masts, where they will collect the winds of space. 1 [Note: Maurice Maeterlinck, Life and Flowers, 76.]

(1) Think what enthusiasm has done even in spheres not immediately religious. The enthusiasm of the student, of the artist, of the discoverer, of the man of science—what else could have inspired their infinite patience, their unlimited self-sacrifice? Men cannot without effort render great services to mankind. “The progress of mankind,” it has been truly said, “has been from scaffold to scaffold and from stake to stake”; but men animated by a fine enthusiasm have braved the penalty. It plunged Roger Bacon into torture and imprisonment. It made Columbus face the sickly cruelty of ignorant priesthoods and the stormy hurricanes of unknown seas. It caused years of poverty, of suffering, of persecution, of calumnious denunciation to Galileo, to Kepler, to Newton, to the early geologists, to Charles Darwin. They gave to mankind a toil intense and infinite. And if in these days man has been enabled to

put forth

His pomp, his power, his skill,

And arts that make fire, flood, and air,

The vassals of his will,

it is only because his more gifted brethren have toiled for his good.

(2) Again, there is the enthusiasm of the reformer. Think how low the nations might have sunk if their decadence had not been again and again arrested, and their criminalities again and again rebuked. Think what Italy was fast becoming when Savonarola—until they choked his voice in blood—thundered in the Duomo of Florence against her corruptions and her apostasy! Think how the cramp of an intolerable tyranny might still have been torturing the souls of men had not Wyclif braved death to give the Bible to the English people! Think once more what truths would have been drowned in the deep seas of oblivion if John Hus had not calmly gone to the stake to which he was condemned by the bishops who surrounded the perjured Sigismund! Imagine what a sink of loathly abominations the nominal Church of God might now have been if the voice of Luther had never shaken the world.

(3) Again, there is the enthusiasm of the missionary. In the first centuries the world was full of missionaries. In those days every Christian felt that he was not a Christian if he were not in some form or other God’s missionary. And for centuries the Church produced many a noble missionary; men like Ulfilas, men like Boniface, men like Columba. Then began the ages of neglect, and darkness, and superstition, and for whole centuries there was found only here and there a man like St. Louis of France, or St. Francis of Assisi, with a mission spirit strong within him. In modern days it is to Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians, to William Carey and the Baptists that we owe the revival of missionary zeal. In the last century missions were regarded as foolish, rash—one knows not what; for the devil has a large vocabulary of words to quench the spirit which is so dangerous to his domain. Yet men despised and defied the devil, and the world which is his minion. Think of John Eliot, the lion-hearted apostle of the Indians, and his motto, “Prayer and painstaking can accomplish anything.” Think of the young and sickly David Brainerd, going alone into the silent forests of America, and among their yet wilder denizens, with the words, “Not from necessity, but from choice; for it seemed to me God’s dealings towards me had fitted me for a life of solitariness and hardness.” Think of Adoniram Judson and the tortures he bore so cheerfully in his Burmese prison.

(4) Then, once more, think of the glowing and beautiful enthusiasm of our social philanthropists. What man has done more for a multitude of souls than John Pounds, the poor Portsmouth cobbler, who, in the simple enthusiasm of ignorant love for the poor ragged children of the streets, became the ultimate founder of Ragged Schools! What a light from heaven was shed upon countless wanderers by the Gloucestershire printer, Robert Raikes, who saw the children wasting their Sundays idly in the streets. On the Embankment in London you see his statue and read the inscription: “As I asked, ‘Can nothing be done?’ a voice answered ‘Try’; I did try, and lo! what God hath wrought.” Who can judge the amount of misery rolled off the despairing heart of the world by the reformers of prisons, John Howard and Elizabeth Fry—Elizabeth Fry entering the foul wards for women in Newgate Prison, protected only by the beauty of her holiness; and John Howard traversing Europe, as Edmund Burke said, “to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infections of hospitals, to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt”?

All I am anxious for is that sympathy should be felt, or rather candour extended, towards the exaggerations of generous and unselfish men like Kingsley, whose warmth, even when wrong, is a higher thing than the correctness of cold hearts. It is so rare to find a clergyman who can forget the drill and pipeclay of the profession, and speak with a living heart for the suffering classes, not as a policeman established to lecture them into proprieties, but as one of the same flesh and blood vindicating a common humanity. 1 [Note: F. W. Robertson, Life and Letters, 292.]

3. The idea suggested by the word “fervent” is that of water heated to the boiling point. The figure is common in poetry and rhetoric. We speak of a man boiling with resentment; boiling over with rage. And the more generous and gentle affections, as well as the fiercer passions, are represented as working in this way. A patriot’s soul boils over with indignation at his country’s wrongs. A kind heart boils over with compassion when it sees a brother’s woe. Warmth, enthusiasm, zeal; amounting even, if there be occasion, to passionate grief, or pity, or anger—such is the frame or temperament here commended. The fervency, however, is to be spiritual. It is not animal excitement. It is not the natural fire of fervency of a hot and heady temper; or of keen, nervous sensibility and susceptibility; or of vehement personal feeling, unaccustomed to self-control.

(1) The meaning may be, that we are to be fervent in our spirit; fervent in the spiritual part of our nature; fervent in that new spiritual life and being of ours into which, as members of Christ and of His body, we enter. We are spiritual men. It is as spiritual men, and not merely as business men, that we are called to undertake offices and functions in the Church—to work in, and with, and for Christ. Let ours be not a cold or lukewarm spirituality, but a spirituality that is hot and boiling.

(2) On the other hand, it may be maintained that it is the Holy Spirit, as personally dwelling in us, that is meant. “Fervent in the Spirit” is an exact rendering of the original. But in fact the two renderings are at one: fervent in spirit; fervent in the Spirit. The fervency is, in every view of it, spiritual. It is so, inasmuch as it is fervency, not in the natural, but in the spiritual part of us; fervency working in us, not as carnal, but as spiritual. And it is so also because it is fervency wrought in us by the Holy Spirit.

4. The fervency, then, is to be spiritual. It is to have its seat in the heart’s core of our spiritual life; it is to be the direct fruit of the Spirit there.

(1) To be fervent in spirit is something more than mere earnestness. Doing the work simply as a matter of business, we may do it very earnestly, taking a real interest in it, throwing our whole soul into it. But the interest which we take in it may be such as we might take in any employment that stimulated our activity and gave scope for the exercise of our natural sensibility. We may throw our soul into it, as into some heroic enterprise or sentimental scheme that has power to charm by its novelty or fascinate by its romance. But the essential element of real spirituality may be wanting; and with much bustling stir and much boiling enthusiasm in what we take to be religious work and duty, we may still need to be affectionately warned that “to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”

It is not by becoming like Him that men will approach towards incorporation with Him; but by result of incorporation with Him, received in faith as a gift, and in faith adored, and used, that they will become like Him. It is by the imparted gift, itself far more than natural, of literal membership in Him; by the indwelling presence, the gradually disciplining and dominating influence, of His Spirit, which is His very Self within us, the inmost breath of our most secret being; that the power of His atoning life and death, which is the power of divinely victorious holiness, can grow to be the very deepest reality of ourselves. 1 [Note: R. C. Moberly.]

A distinction must be drawn between the gifts of God and the gift of God. The gifts are natural endowments, energy, strength, sagacity, powers of body, mind, and character, all of them bestowed upon man without his asking. The gift is the Divine fire, the Spirit of God Himself, the gift of life, which is bestowed only on such as ask for it. Without the gift, the gifts may be put to the very worst uses. They may be a curse to him who has them and to his fellows. But if the gift be added to the gifts, then the gifts, as St. Paul would say, become the arms of righteousness wielded in God’s cause. The more abundant the gifts, the richer the gift. The gift cannot create the gifts, it can only sanctify them. St. Peter had always been confident, vigorous, intrepid, fervid, and clear-sighted; St. Paul always logical, original, fiery, indomitable. They were both in nature leaders of men. When to these gifts the gift was added, St. Peter could not become a zealot, St. Paul could no longer remain a persecutor. They must work for God; they could not work against God. 1 [Note: W. G. Rutherford.]

The man of the last generation who of all men did most to reinvigorate the life of the English Church, although he died outside her communion, lets out the secret of his fertile and lasting influence when he relates how the thought grew upon him and possessed him, “that deliverance is wrought, not by the many, but by the few, not by bodies, but by persons,” and how from his schooldays onwards he loved and prized more every day the motto he had chosen as his own—“Exoriare aliquis.”

(2) The very first condition of this spiritual fervency is that clear insight into the Divine method of peace, or that belief of the truth as it is in Jesus, which casts out self-righteousness, self-seeking, and self-esteem. Then those old natural fires, which, when fanned by winds from the spiritual region, make the heart and bosom burn, are extinguished and die out. There is no room now for the feelings of keen self-torture, or hot and heady self-elation, which once by turns inflamed the unsteadfast soul. New fires are kindled; feelings of an entirely new kind come in to occupy the place of the expelled. Far more gentle are they, far more calm! and yet how warm, how steadily and uniformly warm! For the source of them continues always the same. That source is Christ; Christ living in us—“Christ in us, the hope of glory.”

I took this cutting from a newspaper the other day. “A vicar tried last winter, in his attempt to win the man in the street, twelve concerts, twenty dances, six lectures, three Christmas-trees, and several other things, and all in vain.” I think that parish might try a real novelty—the Gospel. I am persuaded of this, that the energy the Lord is going to use is the energy of the Spirit. 1 [Note: Harrington Lees.]

III

Christward

“Serving the Lord.”

“Serving the Lord”—this is the supreme motive of the Christian life. Some think that the word “Spirit” may have suggested “Lord,” which here refers not to the Father, but to Christ. There is another reading, “serving the opportunity,” as the Greek words for “Lord” and “time” (or season, opportunity) are very much alike. But a great balance of manuscript authority is in favour of the reading “Lord.” And, apart from the weight of authority on the side of the accepted text, the other reading seems to give a very incomplete climax to the Apostle’s thought, while it breaks entirely the sequence which is discernible in it. In this, the closing member of the triplet, St. Paul suggests a thought which will be stimulus to the diligence and fuel to the fire that makes the spirit boil. In effect he says, “Think, when your hands begin to droop, and when your spirits begin to be cold and indifferent, and languor to steal over you, and the paralysing influences of the commonplace and the familiar and the small begin to assert themselves, think that you are serving the Lord.” Will that not freshen you up? Will that not set you boiling again? Will it not be easy to be diligent when you feel that you are “ever in the great Taskmaster’s eye”?

1. But what is meant by “serving the Lord”? It means in the first place that our work for Christ is not work that is voluntarily undertaken by us, but work that is imposed on us by a Master.

It is true that, as in Isaiah’s case, the Lord may seem to put it to ourselves to come forward for His service of our own accord. In great kindness and condescension He allows us the satisfaction of offering ourselves as volunteers. Our engagement with Him is to have the grace, or graceful aspect, of being not so much a stern command on His part, leaving us no alternative but to enlist, but, rather, in the first instance, a spontaneous act on our part, hastening to place ourselves and our services at His disposal. But let us notice two things.

(1) To one dealt with as Isaiah was dealt with, the very hearing, or as it were the overhearing by accident, of that voice of the Lord, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” has all the force of a command. He must feel that the very idea of that Holy One, by whom he has first been so wonderfully humbled, and then lifted up, having work to be done, errands to be executed, lays him under an obligation to say, “Here am I.” He has absolutely no alternative here, any more than if the most peremptory order had been issued. He is very thankful for the generous consideration which allows him to have the pleasure of volunteering; but he cannot on that account imagine for a moment that he has really any discretion in the matter, or any right to hesitate or hang back.

The right Christians are those who fear God, and work with a light joyful heart; because they recognize God’s command and will. A good Christian peasant sees inscribed on his waggon and plough—a shoemaker on his leather and awl, a smith and carpenter on his wood and iron—this verse, “Happy art thou. It is well with thee.” The world reverses this, and says, “Wretched art thou, it is evil with thee, for thou must ever bear and carry; but happy are those who live in idleness, and have what they want, without labour.” 1 [Note: Luther.]

What can God do for a lazy Christian, who is disloyal to His purposes and the needs of the perishing? While thus treating God and men there can be no deep personal spiritual life or growth in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Such people often say to me, “Each time you come to us you seem to be mightily enjoying the religion you preach to us.” “Yes,” I reply, “I do enjoy my religion, twenty-four hours per day and three hundred and sixty-five days per year.” “Well,” they say, “I am often so cold and dead that I hardly know whether or not I have any religion at all.” When I ask them if they do any work for Christ and the saving and blessing of men, they usually answer me with a long-drawn-out “Well no.” “Then,” I always say, “you deserve to starve.” 1 [Note: T. Waugh, Twenty-Three years a Missioner, 194.]

Come weary-eyed from seeking in the night

Thy wanderers strayed upon the pathless wold,

Who wounded, dying, cry to Thee for light,

And cannot find their fold.

And deign, O Watcher with the sleepless brow,

Pathetic in its yearning—deign reply:

Is there, O is there aught that such as Thou

Wouldst take from such as I?

Are there no briars across Thy pathway thrust?

Are there no thorns that compass it about?

Nor any stones that Thou wilt deign to trust

My hands to gather out?

O, if Thou wilt, and if such bliss might be,

It were a cure for doubt, regret, delay—

Let my lost pathway go—what aileth me?—

There is a better way. 2 [Note: Jean Ingelow.]

(2) And then, secondly, when his offer is accepted, and he is taken at his word, he is clearly now a servant under the yoke. He is not at liberty to decline any work that may be assigned to him, however difficult and laborious, however perilous and painful to flesh and blood. It may be different from what he anticipated; not so pleasant, not so honourable. But what of that? When he offered himself, he asked no questions; he had no right to ask any. He stipulated for no conditions; it would have been unbelief to do so. Unreservedly he said, “Whatsoever be the errand, here am I; send me.” And he cannot qualify his offer, or attempt to make terms, now. Nor is this all. Not only must he undertake, as a servant, whatever work the Lord appoints; he must go through with it as a servant. He must feel himself to be a servant, bound to do the work, be it what it may. He must feel himself to be a servant, from first to last, in the doing of it.

I asked Thee for a larger life:

Thou gavedst me

A larger measure of the strife

Men wage for Thee;

And willed that where grey cares are rife

My place should be.

I asked Thee for the things that are

More excellent;

And prayed that nought on earth might mar

My heart’s content:

And lo! a toilsome way and far

My feet were sent.

I asked Thee for a clearer view

To make me wise:

Thou saidst, “It is enough for you

To recognize

My voice”—and then the darkness grew

Before my eyes.

I asked that I might understand

The way of pain:

Thine answer was to take my hand

In Thine again;

Nor aught of all Thy love had planned

Didst Thou explain.

I asked Thee once that I might fill

A higher place:

Thine answer was, “O heart, be still,

And I will grace

Thy patience with some gift of skill

To serve the race.”

And now I thank Thee for the prayer

Thou didst not hear;

And for the ministry of care,

The hour of fear,

For skies o’ercast, and places where

The way was drear.

For now I know that life is great

Not by the things

That make for peace, and all that Fate

Or Fortune flings

Down at my feet—for soon or late

These all take wings.

I do not ask what joys or woes

Time holds for me:

I simply seek a love that goes

Out unto Thee,

As surely as the river flows

To meet the sea. 1 [Note: Percy C. Ainsworth, Poems and Sonnets, 53.]

2. Is not this a lowering of the whole tone and style of our intercourse with the Lord, and our engagement for His work? After all seemed to be placed on the footing of a large and free commerce of love and confidence; when the adjustment of the whole question of our standing with God, and our relation to Him, had been taken out of the hands of law, and out of the category of legal bargaining, and transferred to a higher region, in which grace and honour reign; are we again to come down to the level of servants? Yes, and hired servants too. And why should this offend us? It did not offend Christ when He was doing His Father’s work on earth. He did it as a servant, even as a hired servant, when He “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.”

Our Master all the work hath done

He asks of us to-day;

Sharing his service, every one

Share too his sonship may.

Lord, I would serve and be a son;

Dismiss me not, I pray. 2 [Note: T. T. Lynch, The Rivulet, 4.]

3. Finally, obligation and responsibility are not badges of degradation. On the contrary, for intelligent creatures, on a right footing with their Creator, they are elements and conditions of highest glory and purest joy. Angels in heaven now work as servants; nay, as hired servants; for He whom they serve will never accept service unrequited. They work as servants, under obligation; upon their responsibility. It is in that character and capacity that they are summoned to join in the universal song of praise: “Bless the Lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure” ( Psalms 103:20-21). Saints in heaven hereafter will work in like manner; in fact, one chief element of heaven’s blessedness and glory is this, that there “his servants shall serve him” ( Revelation 22:3). And all our work here on earth, we will do the better if we do it, not as at our own hand, but as “serving the Lord.”

If I knew it now, how strange it would seem,

To think, to know, ere another day

I should have passed over the silent way,

And my present life become as a dream;

But what if that step should usher me

Right into the sinless company

Of the saints in heaven.

I’ll carefully watch the door of my lips

As I talk with my comrades to-day,

And think a little before I say,

To see that no careless expression slips,

Which I should find would so ill compare

With the holy converse uttered there,

By the saints in heaven.

If they let me in—Oh, how sweet, how strange,

The thought that before a new day dawn,

I may put the incorruptible on,—

That beautiful garment, the robe of change!

And walk and talk with that happy throng,

Perhaps join my voice in the “new, new song,”

With the saints in heaven.

But I fear I should be poorly meet

To mingle much with the saints at all;

My earthly service would seem so small—

Just going of errands on tired feet;

But, oh! how blest, if it were my share

To be the trusted messenger there,

For the saints in heaven!

With holy missives to take and bring,

Sometime, perhaps, it would come to be

That some pure saint would commission me

To carry his message straight to the King

And the King His answer would defer,

To turn and smile on the messenger

Of His saints in heaven! 1 [Note: Anna Jane Granniss.]

Outward, Inward, Christward

Literature

Brooke (S. A.), The Unity of God and Man, 155.

Burrell (D. J.), A Quiver of Arrows, 158.

Candlish (R. S.), The Two Great Commandments, 151.

Farrar (F. W.), Sin and its Conquerors, 38.

Jerdan (C.), Messages to the Children, 187.

Jowett (J. H.), Thirsting for the Springs, 152.

MacArthur (R. S.), The Calvary Pulpit, 43.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Romans, 267.

Maclaren (A.), Leaves from the Tree of Life, 63.

Percival (J.), Some Helps for School Life, 11.

Rutherford (W. G.), The Key of Knowledge, 218.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xv. (1869), No. 885.

Vaughan (C. J.), Doncaster Sermons, 186.

Vaughan (D. J.), Questions of the Day, 144.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xi. No. 870.

Christian World Pulpit, xix. 5 (Beecher); xxx. 185 (Horder); lv. 72 (Stalker).

Contemporary Pulpit, 1st Ser., vii. 129.

Keswick Week (1908), 190 (Lees).

Verse 12

For the Battle

Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing stedfastly in prayer.— Romans 12:12.

1. Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing stedfastly in prayer. At first sight they are three separate injunctions. Let some whose lot has fallen in pleasant places rejoice; let others whose lot is dark suffer patiently; let still others devote themselves to continual prayer. Or musing on the exhortations the idea may come to us that they are a descending scale.

If I have faltered more or less

In my great task of happiness;

If I have moved among my race

And shown no glorious morning face;

If beams from happy human eyes

Have moved me not; if morning skies,

Books, and my food, and summer rain

Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:—

Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take

And stab my spirit broad awake;

Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,

Choose Thou, before that spirit die,

A piercing pain, a killing sin,

And to my dead heart run them in! 1 [Note: R. L. Stevenson, Underwoods.]

And if pain fails to waken my heart fully to God, let me cling humbly and continuously to prayer. Let me not fail of prayer so that at the end my spirit may be attuned to God’s, and my life be not in vain.

2. But St. Paul, when he wrote these words, addressed them to the Christians of the Roman Church for whom he foresaw persecution in the near future, even if they were not suffering from it at this very time. And he would have them practise hope and patience and prayer in their persecution, and all at the same time.

The old physicians tell us of two antidotes against poison, the hot and the cold, and they dilate upon the special excellence of each of these; in like manner the Apostle Paul gives us first the warm antidote, “rejoicing in hope,” and then he gives us the cool antidote, “patient in tribulation.” Either of these, or both together, will work wonderfully for the sustaining of the spirit; but it is to be observed that neither of these remedies can be taken into the soul unless it is mixed with a draught of prayer. Joy and patience are curative essences, but they must be dropped into a glass full of supplication, and then they will be wonderfully efficient. 1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

3. St. Paul’s primary meaning in the word which is translated tribulation in our English version was persecution. But let us take tribulation in its usual sense of every kind of trial through which a man may have to pass. With this meaning let us see the dependence between the clauses and the possibility of the Christian following the three injunctions at the same time.

(1) “Rejoice in hope; be patient in tribulation.” This is an utter impossibility to the man whose hope is of this world, and who looks for mere ordinary happiness. To him tribulation is the supreme obstacle to hope and joy. If he suffers he cannot be joyful; he loses his hope. But for the man who is full of Christ’s hope all is different. “Hope, which comes to all, outwears the accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and death.” The Christian’s hope alters his idea of tribulation. Poverty, that is tribulation enough. But the monk embraces a life of poverty and self-denial of his own free-will.

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;

And hermits are contented with their cells.

Poverty has lost its grimness. It wears a smiling face. But, further, though the tribulation may remain very real the Christian accepts it—nay, welcomes it—as helping him on his way. And because of his great abiding hope the tribulation is dwarfed.

People may lay down their lives with cheerfulness in the sure expectation of a blessed immortality; but that is a different affair from giving up youth, with all its admirable pleasures, in the hope of a better quality of gruel in a more than problematical, nay, more than improbable, old age. 1 [Note: R. L. Stevenson, Crabbed Age and Youth.]

(2) Now let us take the last two clauses together. “Continue stedfastly in prayer; be patient in tribulation.” If we continue in prayer, does it follow that we shall be patient under trial? R. J. Campbell, in A Faith for To-Day, says: “I well remember the curious feeling with which I once encountered a man who prayed long and earnestly for a certain academic distinction—a distinction which could fall to one and one only. He was greatly chagrined and disappointed, and inclined to reproach God, when the honour went to another instead of himself. The earnestness of his prayers was unquestionable.” But not so did St. Paul conceive of prayer. His model was the Master who in His agony said, “Thy will be done.” So the Apostle would have these Roman Christians put themselves on God’s side in their praying.

And in all things he shall yield up his own will, saying and thinking in his heart, “Lord, I am as willing to be poor and without all those things of which Thou hast deprived me as I should be ready to be rich, Lord, if Thy will were so, and if in that state I might further Thy glory. It is not my natural will which must be done, but Thy will and the will of my spirit. Lord, I am thine, and I should be Thine as gladly in hell as in heaven, if in that way I could advance Thy glory. So then, O Lord, fulfil in me the good pleasure of Thy will.” 2 [Note: Maurice Maeterlinck, Ruysbroeck and the Mystics, 135.]

And with this spirit in prayer patience under trial will not be denied. “At this season the sun enters into the sign of Libra, for the day and night are equal, and light and darkness evenly balanced. Even so for the resigned soul Jesus Christ is in the sign of Libra; and whether He grants sweetness or bitterness, darkness or light, of whatever nature His gift may be, the man retains his balance, and all things are one to him, with the exception of sin, which has been driven out once for all.” And the more steadfast the prayer the more will the link be strengthened which binds our soul to God, and the more grace we will receive to meet each need of life.

All trouble and anguish, loss and pain,

When they’ve done their task appointed,

Vanish and fade; it is joy that lasts.

The seer, with vision anointed,

Beholds the flash of a rising dawn,

Though the midnight skies are gray

Patience, poor soul, with the present pain—

There cometh a better day.

I

Rejoicing in Hope

There are those who stigmatize Christianity as a religion of sorrow. They tell us that, like a bitter wind, it withers the flowers, that it says of laughter, It is mad, and of mirth, What doeth it? They contrast it, still ignorantly, with the gay and careless humanism of the ancient world. They dare to say—

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from Thy breath.

We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.

But this is not Christianity after the mind of the Apostle Paul. “Rejoice in hope,” he says to the Roman Christians. It would be difficult to find a more decided expression of optimism. The cheery tone is never absent from St. Paul’s speech. The buoyant and “springy” movement of his life is never changed. The light never dies out of his sky. Even the grey firmament reveals more hopeful tints, and becomes significant of evolving glory. The Apostle is an optimist, “rejoicing in hope,” a child of light, wearing the “armour of light,” “walking in the light,” even as Christ is in the light.

Nor was this Apostolic optimism a thin and fleeting sentiment begotten of a cloudless summer day. It was not born of sluggish thinking or of idle and shallow observation. The first chapter of this Epistle to the Romans contains as dark and searching an indictment of our nature as the mind of man has ever drawn. Let us rehearse the appalling catalogue, that the radiance of the Apostle’s optimism may appear the more abounding: “Senseless hearts,” “fools,” “uncleanness,” “vile passions,” “reprobate minds,” “unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful.” With fearless severity the Apostle leads us through the black realms of midnight and eclipse. And yet in the subsequent reaches of the great argument, of which these dark regions form the preface, there emerges the clear, calm, steady light of this optimistic text.

What was the cause of this courageous and energetic optimism? What can we do to imitate it? We can choose what we will look at. We can choose our atmosphere like the people of Italy who in frosty weather will be seen sitting in the market-place by their stalls with a dish of embers, which they grasp in their hands, and so make themselves comfortably warm on the bitterest day.

St. Paul looked at three things:—

1. He fixed his eyes on the Redemption of Christ.—In all the spacious reaches of the Apostle’s life the redemptive work of his Master is present as an atmosphere in which his thoughts and purposes and labours found their sustaining and enriching breath. Redemption was not degraded into a fine abstract argument, to which the Apostle had appended his own approval, and then, with sober satisfaction, had laid it aside, as a practical irrelevancy, in the stout chests of mental orthodoxy. It became the very spirit of his life. To him it was not a small device, an afterthought, a patched-up expedient to meet an unforeseen emergency. The redemptive purpose lay back in the abyss of the eternities; and in a spirit of reverent questioning the Apostle sent his trembling thoughts into those lone and silent fields. He emerged with whispered secrets such as these: “fore-knew,” “fore-ordained,” “chosen in him before the foundation of the world,” “eternal life promised before times eternal,” “the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

What a wonderful consciousness St. Paul has of the sweep and fulness of redemption. We know the variations of the glorious air: “the unsearchable riches of Christ”; “riches in glory in Christ Jesus”; “all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ”; “the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering.” And what is the resultant enfranchisement? Recall those wonderful sentences beginning with the words “But now.” It is a phrase that heralds a great deliverance. “But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested.” “But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God.” “But now are ye light in the Lord.” These represent no thin abstractions. To St. Paul the realities of which they speak were more real than the firm and solid earth. And is it any wonder that a man with such a magnificent sense of the reality of the redemptive work of Christ, who felt the eternal purpose throbbing in the dark backward and abyss of time, who conceived it operating upon our race in floods of grace and glory, and who realized in his own immediate consciousness the varied wealth of the resultant emancipation—is it any wonder that for this man a new day had dawned, and the birds had begun to sing and the flowers to bloom, and a sunny optimism had taken possession of his heart which found expression in an assured and rejoicing hope? 1 [Note: J. H. Jowett.]

2. St. Paul fixed his mind next on the reality and greatness of his present resources.—“By Christ redeemed”—yes, but that is only the Alpha and not the Omega of the work of grace. “By Christ redeemed; in Christ restored.” St. Paul’s mental and spiritual outlook comprehended a great army of positive forces labouring in the interests of the Kingdom of God. Look at some of his auxiliaries: “Christ liveth in me.” “Christ liveth in me! He breathes through all my aspirations. He thinks through all my thinking. He wills through all my willing. He loves through all my loving. He travails in all my labours. He works within me ‘to will and to do of his good pleasure.’ ” That is the primary faith of the hopeful life. But see what follows in swift and immediate succession. “If Christ is in you, the spirit is life.” “The spirit is life!” And therefore we find that in the Apostle’s thought dispositions are powers. They are not passive entities. They are positive forces vitalizing and energizing the common life of men. To St. Paul love expressed more than a relationship. It was an energy productive of abundant labours. Faith was more than an attitude. It was an energy creative of mighty endeavour. Hope was more than a posture. It was an energy generative of a most enduring patience. All these are dynamics, to be counted as active allies, co-operating in the ministry of the Kingdom. And so the Epistles abound in the recital of mystic ministries at work. The Holy Spirit worketh! Grace worketh! Faith worketh! Love worketh! Prayer worketh! And there are other allies robed in less attractive garb. “Tribulation worketh!” “Godly sorrow worketh!”

St. Paul never mentions the enemy timidly. He never seeks to underestimate his strength. Nay, again and again he catalogues all possible antagonisms in a spirit of buoyant and exuberant triumph. However numerous the enemy, however towering and well-established the iniquity, however black the gathering clouds, so sensitive is the Apostle to the wealthy resources of God that amidst it all he remains a sunny optimist, “rejoicing in hope,” labouring in the spirit of a conqueror even when the world was exulting in his supposed discomfiture and defeat.

3. And, thirdly, he fixed his thoughts on the wonder of the glory to come.—Can we safely exile this thought from our moral and spiritual culture? We know that this particular contemplation is largely absent from modern religious life, and we know the nature of the recoil in which our present impoverishment began. “Let us hear less about the mansions of the blest, and more about the housing of the poor!” Men revolted against an effeminate contemplation which had run to seed, in favour of an active philanthropy which sought the enrichment of the common life. But we have lost immeasurably by the uprooting of this plant of heavenly contemplation. We have built on the erroneous assumption that the contemplation of future glory inevitably unfits us for the service of man.

Were Richard Baxter’s labours thinned or impoverished by his contemplation of “the saints’ everlasting rest”? When we consider his mental output, his abundant labours as Father-confessor to a countless host, his pains and persecutions and imprisonments, we cannot but think he received some of the powers of his optimistic endurance from contemplations such as he counsels in his incomparable book. “Run familiarly through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem; visit the patriarchs and prophets, salute the apostles, and admire the armies of martyrs; lead on the heart from street to street, bring it into the palace of the great King; lead it, as it were, from chamber to chamber. Say to it, ‘Hear must I lodge, here must I die, here must I praise, here must I love and be loved. My tears will then be wiped away, my groans be turned to another tune, my cottage of clay be changed to this palace, my prison rags to these splendid robes’; ‘for the former things are passed away.’ ”

Hope, though slow she be, and late,

Yet outruns swift time and fate;

And aforehand loves to be

With remote futurity.

Hope is comfort in distress,

Hope is in misfortune bliss,

Hope in sorrow is delight,

Hope is day in darkest night.

Hope cast upward is to where

Storms do never domineer;

Trust and hope will welcome thee

There to full security. 1 [Note: Francis Beaumont.]

Our thought of future glory must have several elements in it if it is to nourish our hope as it nourished his.

(1) It must have an element of personality in it. It must be a hope which means future fulfilment to me. It must not, like Buddhism, represent the loss of personality—annihilation—as the reward. It must not offer us even the stimulus of the positivists. “You desire hope,” they say; “there is hope; we will grant immortality—an immortality of influence. The good you do shall live after you.” No. There must be an immortality in the vision and communion of Him whom to serve is eternal life.

(2) It must have an element of recovery in it. How we crave the recovery of lost friends! Is it all over when they leave us? The heart refuses to think so. It clings to the thought of reunion. Christ is the pledge of that—Christ the Uniter, who as on earth at the house of Jairus, at the bier of Nain, at the grave of Bethany, is the Joiner of parted hands and sundered lives, delivering divided ones to each other. We crave also the recovery of lost energies. Capacities that are checked by its ungenial conditions, aspirations that are thwarted by its narrow limits, expenditures of effort and affection that are made void by its thankless receptions, we think of them all. Has God created them only that they may be thrown away? Shall He not rather have respect to the work of His hands, and perfect that which concerneth us? Our hope is in Christ, who not only pledges their recovery, but promises that they shall be recovered by us, as the ultimate witnesses of His faithfulness, the ultimate sharers of His joy.

(3) It must have an element of catholicity in it. Hope, if it is to be true and complete, must embrace in its comprehensive sweep not only good for ourselves, in the attainment of a personal immortality and the re-establishment of personal ties, but good for the whole wide creation. It must include the purifying and the rectifying of society, the evangelizing of the nations, and the transforming of nature itself. No expectation would be perfect which does not blend with its pictures of individual and mutual blessedness the picture of a regenerate world, free from the curse and crowned with the blessing, bathed in the glory of God most precious, the brightness of His perfect purity, the beauty of His finished plan.

Lo! crowned with unutterable calm

And robed in light, came up the day-star Hope,

The virgin mother of the Christ of Joy.

Clear were her eyes with innocence, and deep

With dreams. Her lips were full with mysteries.

A crystal globe she held, wherein were seen

New vistas unimaginably fair.

Her presence seemed a kiss of God, which all

Rose up to take. In the diffused light

Of her adorable simplicity

Each man threw down his habit of disguise

And stood before his fellows, candid, brave,

Yet wearing weakness meekly, as a babe

Will wear it. 1 [Note: Anna Bunston, The Porch of Paradise, 12.]

II

Patient in Tribulation

St. Paul is his own best commentary on his own counsels. His purposes were frequently broken by tumultuous shocks. His plans were destroyed by hatred and violence. His course was twisted here, diverted there, and wrenched a hundred times from its appointed goings by the mischievous plots of wicked men. The little churches he had founded were in chronic disturbance and unrest. They were often infested with puerilities, and sometimes they were honeycombed by heresies which consumed their very life. And yet how sound and noble his patience! With what fruitful tenderness he waits for his lagging pupils! His very reproofs are given, not with the blind, clumsy blows of a street mob, but with the quiet, discriminating hand of a surgeon. This man, more than most men, had proved the hygienic value of endurance, and he, more than most men, was competent to counsel his fellow-believers to discipline themselves to patience in tribulation.

i. Tribulation

What is tribulation? Tribulation is comprehensive enough. It denotes every possible loss, cross, trouble that can enter into the mind of man; whatever we passively suffer, whatever we actively endure.

Let us look at tribulation, then, in some of its different aspects. “Patient in tribulation”? Yes. But make sure first of all that the tribulation is real, not fancied. Did we ever try to estimate the proportion in which the fanciful, the fictitious, the imaginary ills in life stand to the actual? Is it not the case that many a man makes his own sorrows, and that the things we anticipate, but which never happen, have more in them of calamity and burden than what we are forced in Providence to endure? Real tribulation we can divide into two kinds—that which comes to us from others, and that which comes from ourselves.

1. Tribulation from without.—This kind of tribulation has both a positive and a negative side. Take the positive first—that is, actual suffering caused us by others. This kind of tribulation was most immediately in the mind of the Apostle Paul when he wrote the words first to the little Roman Church. Dark clouds were gathering, threatenings of coming trouble. Days of persecution were at hand. Nero, hardening himself in vice, would soon need some one upon whom he could charge his guilt, and wreak his spite; no suffering would be too cruel with which to afflict the Church of God. To-day persecution does not take the same form. It is not so much bodily as mental persecution. The young man of to-day who follows Christ has no fear of death, imprisonment, or injury in any way to his body, but if he be thoroughgoing he is still persecuted—persecuted by jeers and laughter and even by calumny.

One of our bishops, when he was a London incumbent, was at one time deeply distressed by the persistent calumnies of a certain obnoxious parishioner. He wrote for advice to a high legal luminary, who was also a very religious man. His answer was laconic; it was a quotation: “ ‘Jesus stood before the governor.… And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing, … insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.’ Dear So-and-so, let the governor marvel greatly.” 1 [Note: Basil Wilberforce.]

There is a kind of negative tribulation which also comes from without. It is the disappointment that others cause us—the things we have to do without. Some glowing purpose has been suddenly frustrated; some bit of found work has been rudely broken. We suffer profound disappointment. And disappointment is apt to kindle irritation, and when that fire begins to burn much valuable furniture is in danger of being consumed.

One of the greatest crises in Principal Rainy’s life was when the House of Lords delivered judgment against the United Free Church. Rainy had given the strength of his life to promoting the union between his own Church and the United Presbyterian Church, and now it seemed as though he had only brought his own Church into grave trouble. He was in the House of Lords when judgment was given. After the decision he took Mr. Haldane’s arm and passed out with him. He was his guest in London. Mr. Haldane says that on the way home he never spoke. When they reached home he sat down and without any bitterness or resentment spoke, and “the one expression of regret that fell from his lips was that he was old.”

Loitering progress is tribulation of an allied kind. Things are walking, and we want them to run; or they are running, and we want them to fly. We hear one and another say: “Things don’t go fast enough for me”; or “Things are too slow for me.” And we become irritated, and then irritable, and we lose our patience, and in losing our patience we lose the very spirit and instrument of progress. How true this is in our relationship to little children, and especially to little children who are not highly gifted, and who have the misfortune to be dull-witted and slow. How fatal is the mistake to become impatient with them. To become impatient is to deprive them of the very atmosphere they require for journeying at all; impatience never converts dull-wittedness into quick-wittedness, and the teacher or parent who becomes impatient is robbing the child of its heritage, increasing its load of disadvantage, and making its little pilgrim journey prematurely dark and hard.

O comrade bold, of toil and pain!

Thy trial how severe,

When sever’d first by prisoner’s chain

From thy loved labour-sphere!

Say, did impatience first impel

The heaven-sent bond to break?

Or, couldst thou bear its hindrance well,

Loitering for Jesu’s sake?

O might we know! for sore we feel

The languor of delay,

When sickness lets our fainter zeal,

Or foes block up our way.

Lord! who Thy thousand years dost wait

To work the thousandth part

Of Thy vast plan, for us create

With zeal a patient heart. 1 [Note: J. H. Newman.]

2. Tribulation from within.—Quite as much of our tribulation is internal; it is not occasioned by others. Such trouble may be physical, as St. Paul’s own “thorn in the flesh.” Or it may be mental and spiritual. There is no one who does any thinking at all but has entered the dark, cold, chilling circle of apparently insoluble mystery. It may be the burdensome presence of immediate and palpable realities, such as the presence of suffering and pain. Or it may be those problems lying upon the borderland, or well within that mysterious realm where we seem to have neither eyes nor ears, hands nor feet: the mystery of God, the mystery of Providence, the mystery of Jesus Christ—His incarnation, His resurrection, His glorification, His relation to sin and hope and human endeavour and the veiled to-morrow; and all the great pressing problems of human birth, and human life, and human destiny. What shall we do with them? Or, what shall we not do with them? Let us make it an essential in all our assumptions that a prerequisite to all discovery is patience in tribulation. Do not let us deal with them as though they were Christmas puzzles, to be taken up at odd moments and cursorily examined, and then thrown aside again in irritation and impetuous haste.

Dr. Jowett says, “I am amazed to observe how hastily men and women drop these things; they ‘cannot be bothered with them,’ and so they retreat into a perilous indifference or into a fruitless agnosticism. George Eliot dropped her vital faith in the course of eleven days. Robert Elsmere dropped his vital faith with almost equal celerity. I heard from one young fellow who was burning all his boats and refusing to sail these vast, mysterious, glorious seas, and all because he had read a little pamphlet of not more than fifty pages from cover to cover!”

O why are darkness and thick cloud

Wrapped close for ever round the throne of God?

Why is our pathway still in mystery trod?

None answers, though we call aloud.

The seedlet of the rose,

While still beneath the ground,

Think you it ever knows

The mystery profound

Of its own power of birth and bloom,

Until it springs above its tomb?

The caterpillar crawls

Its mean life in the dust,

Or hangs upon the walls

A dead aurelian crust;

Think you the larva ever knew

Its gold-winged flight before it flew?

When from the port of Spain

Columbus sailed away,

And down the sinking main

Moved towards the setting day,

Could any words have made him see

The new worlds that were yet to be?

The boy with laugh and play

Fills out his little plan,

Still lisping, day by day,

Of how he’ll be a man;

But can you to his childish brain

Make aught of coming manhood plain?

Let heaven be just above us,

Let God be e’er so nigh,

Yet howsoe’er He love us,

And howe’er much we cry,

There is no speech that can make clear

The thing “that doth not yet appear.”

’Tis not that God loves mystery.

The things beyond us we can never know,

Until up to their lofty height we grow,

And finite grasps infinity. 1 [Note: Minot Hudson Savage.]

ii. Patience

That which passes muster for the spirit of patience is sometimes only constitutional amiability, or lymphatic indifference and stagnation.

1. Let us look first, then, at this spirit—the spirit of indolence. Perhaps its most frequent cause is a want of sensitiveness. The person is not finely developed, and so does not feel the tribulation, unless it is very material indeed—or at least does not feel it to anything like the same extent as his more sensitive brother. To the superficial onlooker he seems to be bearing his trial with patience; but he makes no progress, his capacity for sympathy is still dormant. Or his apparent patience may be the result of mere idleness.

Browning in The Statue and the Bust teaches the paltriness of this kind of patience. From mere indolence the “Bride of the Riccardi” did not leave her husband and flee to the “Great Duke Ferdinand” whom she loved. It was no thought that she would be committing a sin that deterred her, and so her patience was worthless. She says:—

If I spend the night with that devil twice,

May his window serve as my loop of hell

Whence a damned soul looks on Paradise!

I fly to the Duke who loves me well,

Sit at his side and laugh at sorrow

Ere I count another ave-bell.

’Tis only the coat of a page to borrow,

And tie my hair in a horse-boy’s trim,

And I save my soul—but not to-morrow.

And he on his part argues:—

Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool—

For to-night the Envoy arrives from France,

Whose heart I unlock with thyself, my tool.

Be sure that each renewed the vow,

No morrow’s sun should arise and set

And leave them then as it left them now.

But next day passed, and next day yet,

With still fresh cause to wait one day more

Ere each leaped over the parapet.

I hear you reproach, “But delay was best

For their end was a crime”—Oh, a crime will do

As well, I reply, to serve for a test,

As a virtue golden through and through,

Sufficient to vindicate itself

And prove its worth at a moment’s view!

The counter our lovers staked was lost

As surely as if it were lawful coin:

And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,

Though the end in sight was a vice, I say

You of the virtue, (we issue join)

How strive you? De te, fabula!

2. But there is a finer spirit—the spirit of stoicism—which animates some. It also, however, is a spirit of stagnation. It is no more than a surrender to the inevitable.

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever Gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud,

Under the bludgeonings of chance,

My head is bloody but unbowed.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul. 1 [Note: W. E. Henley.]

3. The spirit of progress. Wherein, then, lies the difference between the Christian spirit of progress and this old pagan spirit of stoicism?

(1) Take the two attitudes towards death. Seneca, like a Stoic, argues thus: “Death is universal, all men have died; death is inevitable, we must die. It is no good for any man to complain about the inevitable and the universal. It is better for us simply to submit to what we cannot alter.” Now here stands St. Paul, face to face with death. It is not a pleasant death, any more than it was a pleasant life. But St. Paul says, To me to die is gain. I have a wish to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness. If the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a house, builded of God, eternal in the heavens.

Such was the patience of Lazarus after his resurrection when “his heart and brain moved there “in glory, and “his feet stay here.”

“How, beast,” said I, “this stolid carelessness

Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march

To stamp out like a little spark thy town,

Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?”

He merely looked with his large eyes on me.

The man is apathetic, you deduce?

Contrariwise he loves both old and young,

Able and weak—affects the very brutes

And birds—how say I? flowers of the field—

As a wise workman recognizes tools

In a master’s workshop, loving what they make.

Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:

Only impatient, let him do his best,

At ignorance and carelessness and sin—

An indignation which is promptly curbed. 1 [Note: Browning, Epistle of Karshish.]

(2) Now if we have this spirit of patience in tribulation our pilgrim journey will be furthered; for to Christian patience there are two sides, a passive but also an active. We usually think of patience as a passive virtue, resignation, calm waiting for something to happen, as in Shakespeare’s classic lines:

She sat like patience on a monument

Smiling at grief.

But the word has an active side, even in our common speech, as in the phrase “a patient investigator,” implying untiring industry. It carries with it the idea of fortitude and high courage, willing to suffer, to endure, working out great ends undiscouraged, without repining or fretfulness.

The rock upon which the water drops, abides amidst the flux of the tides of the water, and is firm; but the camel, patient, moving across the thirsty desert, scenting by its wondrous instinct the oasis, or the city that is afar, is patient—endures.

(3) And, lastly, let us note that there are stages in Christian patience. We must begin with the true perspective and the feeling towards God of children to a Father, but after that we must sedulously cultivate the grace, advancing from step to step. Trustful acceptance of the will of God as the best possible for us—how difficult it is. But there are those who have risen to a still greater height and who not only accept the tribulation with patience, but feel actual joy in it.

Dr. Griffith John has told us that one day, when he was surrounded by a hostile Chinese crowd, and violence was used, he put up his hand to his smitten face, and when he withdrew it, and saw it bathed in blood, he was possessed by an extraordinary sense of exaltation, and he rejoiced that he had been “counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.” David Hill records a similar experience of unspeakable ecstasy, when his hand hung limp from a brutal blow. But, indeed, the witnesses are multitudinous; they can be found in every corner of the great fields of service, suffering men and women, wearing their scars like medals, feeling as though there had been conferred upon them some heavenly title and degree, and stepping out in the assured companionship of the once crucified but risen Lord.

III

Continuing Stedfastly in Prayer

The essence of prayer consists in drawing nigh; in other words, holding communion. The simplest and best test of a good prayer is: Did we draw nigh? Did we enter God’s Presence? Were we conscious that God was very nigh? Many times we have said our prayers but have never prayed; and this because our hearts were far from God. At other times, perhaps, we said no words but we entered the Presence with longing hearts. We looked, we thirsted, we wanted, and so we very truly prayed.

Prayer is intercourse; it is praise; it is congratulation; it is adoration of the Infinite Majesty; it is a colloquy in which the soul engages with the All-wise and the All-holy; it is a basking in the sunshine, varied by ejaculations of thankfulness to the Sun of Righteousness for His light and His warmth. In this larger sense, the earlier part of the “Te Deum” is prayer as much as the latter part; the earliest and latest clauses of the “Gloria in Excelsis” as truly as the central ones; the “Sanctus” or the “Jubilate” no less than the Litany; the “Magnificat” as certainly as the fifty-first Psalm.

St. Paul is addressing Christians, and so he does not simply say “pray.” He takes it for granted that they pray. But what he fears in them is a relaxing of their efforts, a losing of their first zeal in prayer, and so his exhortation is “Continue stedfastly in prayer.” Do not let the strength of your prayerful spirit escape, and do not let your acts of prayer, your special seasons diminish or grow less strenuous. It is an exhortation to hold fast.

Let us look at the prayerful spirit; and then at occasions of prayer. It is almost impossible to separate them, for they act and react the one on the other.

1. The prayerful spirit.—We cannot fulfil the Apostle’s exhortation even if we keep our regular seasons of prayer unless we have the prayerful spirit, the spirit of harmony with the will of God. It is the aspiration after all good, the wish, stronger than any earthly passion or desire, to live in His service only. It is the temper of mind which says in the evening, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”; which rises up in the morning, “to do thy will, O God”; and which all the day regards the actions of business and of daily life as done unto the Lord and not to men—“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” The trivial employments, the meanest or lowest occupations may receive a kind of dignity when thus converted into the service of God. This is the life of prayer, or rather the life which is itself prayer, which is always raised above this world, and yet is always on a level with this world; the life which has lost the sense of consciousness of self, and is devoted to God and to mankind, which may almost be said to think the thoughts of God, as well as do His works.

2. Acts of prayer.—But the prayerful spirit cannot exist unless special acts of prayer are practised. A passive desire to live in the atmosphere of prayer is dangerous, unless it finds its proper activity in definite exercises of prayer. We shall succeed in maintaining the spirit of constant prayer only when we foster it by stated periods of devotion.

If a man is right, and puts 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. I do not mean those who talk about prayer; nor those who say they believe in prayer; nor yet those who can explain about prayer; but I mean those people who take time to pray. They have not time. It must be taken from something else. This something else is important. Very important, and pressing, but less important and less pressing than prayer. 1 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Prayer, 12.]

3. Such continuance will not be without its effects. Its effects will be twofold.

(1) The effect on the man who prays.—No one denies that prayer has a subjective effect. It has an intellectual effect. Thus it has been observed that persons without natural ability have, through the earnestness of their devotional habits, acquired in time powers of sustained thought, and an accuracy and delicacy of intellectual touch, which would not otherwise have belonged to them. The intellect being the instrument by which the soul handles religious truth, a real interest in religious truth will of itself often furnish an educational discipline; it alone educates an intellect which would otherwise be uneducated.

It has also a moral effect. Habitual prayer constantly confers decision on the wavering, and energy on the listless, and calmness on the excitable, and disinterestedness on the selfish. It braces the moral nature by transporting it into a clear, invigorating, unearthly atmosphere; it builds up the moral life, insensibly but surely remedying its deficiencies, and strengthening its weak points, till there emerges a comparatively symmetrical and consistent whole, the excellence of which all must admit, though its secret is known only to those who know it by experience.

It has a social effect. Prayer makes men, as members of society, different in their whole bearing from those who do not pray. It gilds social intercourse and conduct with a tenderness, an unobtrusiveness, a sincerity, a frankness, an evenness of temper, a cheerfulness, a collectedness, a constant consideration for others, united to a simple loyalty to truth and duty, which leavens and strengthens society.

It is not too much to say that prayer has even physical results. The countenance of a Fra Angelico reflects his spirit no less than does his art; the bright eye, the pure elevated expression speak for themselves It was said of Keble that in his later years his face was like that of an illuminated clock; the colour and gilding had long faded away from the hands and figures, but the ravages of time were more than compensated for by the light which shone from within.

(2) The effect on those prayed for.—The subjective effect of prayer does not cover the whole ground. Prayer has also an objective effect. A man may say, “I can quite understand the good of praying for oneself; I can quite see that, according to God’s will, these gifts of grace are to be worked for by prayer, like the gifts of God in nature; but where is the evidence that there is the slightest good in praying for others?” He might even take this line—he might say, “It is presumptuous for me to imagine that I can affect the destiny of another soul! It is against what I read of the struggle for existence by each individual in nature. It is unfair, for what is to happen to those for whom no one prays? And where is the evidence that intercession for others does any good at all?”

Gilmour of Mongolia said: “Unprayed for, I feel like a diver at the bottom of a river, with no air to breathe; or like a fireman with an empty hose in a blazing building.”

For nearly twenty years it was the daily practice of Cardinal Vaughan’s mother to spend an hour—from five to six in the afternoon—in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament asking this favour—that God would call every one of her children to serve Him in the Choir or in the Sanctuary. In the event all her five daughters entered convents, and of her eight sons six became priests; even the two who have remained in the world for a time entered ecclesiastical seminaries to try their vocations. 1 [Note: J. G. Snead-Cox, Life of Cardinal Vaughan, i. 11.]

4. The encouragement.—Be sure that no true prayer remains unanswered, though thousands of prayers remain ungranted. He who alone knows all the things we have need of sees fit again and again to refuse the thing we ask, or to deny even the most unselfish of requests, and to delay satisfaction of the purest desires on behalf of those whose sins or sorrows we have carried to His Throne of Grace. And yet, assuredly, all such prayer enters into His ears, and all such prayer is duly answered, if not granted, by Him. Do we not sometimes discover, it may be long after, how, in ways we little dreamt of, through channels of which we knew nothing, the blessing for which we pleaded in vain was vouchsafed at last? And when there is no such discovery, where the refusal of the good we asked seems absolutely decreed and final, is it not our wisdom to leave all in the Father’s hands, and believe that what we know not now we shall know hereafter? No disclosure which awaits us behind the veil could surpass in interest the revelation of what has been achieved for ourselves and others by genuine yet ungranted prayer.

Two brothers freely cast their lot

With David’s royal Son;

The cost of conquest counting not,

They deem the battle won.

Brothers in heart, they hope to gain

An undivided joy;

That man may one with man remain,

As boy was one with boy.

Christ heard; and will’d that James should fall,

First prey of Satan’s rage,

John linger out his fellows all,

And die in bloodless age.

Now they join hands once more above,

Before the Conqueror’s throne;

Thus God grants prayer, but in His love

Makes times and ways His own. 1 [Note: J. H. Newman.]

For the Battle

Literature

Berry (C. A.), Vision and Duty, 99.

Black (H.), Christ’s Service of Love, 130.

Body (G.), The Guided Life, 101.

Candlish (R. S.), The Two Great Commandments, 183.

Drury (T. W.), The Prison-Ministry of St. Paul, 105.

Gray (W. A.), Laws and Landmarks of the Spiritual Life, 137.

James (F.), A National Pentecost, 44.

Jowett (J. H.), Apostolic Optimism, 1.

Jowett (J. H.), The Transfigured Church, 149.

Keenleyside (C. B.), God’s Fellow-Workers, 115.

Liddon (H. P.), Some Elements of Religion, 168.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Romans, 273.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxv. (1879), No. 1480.

Wilberforce (B.), Sanctification by the Truth, 160.

Christian World Pulpit, x. 250 (Jarvie); xlvii. 248 (Fairbairn).

Verse 21

The Polemics of Christianity

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.— Romans 12:21

This description of Christian warfare, of what may be called the Apostle’s rule of “polemics” or “doing battle,” is well worthy of its place at the close of his great summary of Christian duties. “Be not overcome of evil”—“be not conquered by evil” (so we might more faithfully render it)—“be not conquered by evil, but conquer evil by good.” The Apostle here, as so often elsewhere, has before his mind the image of the Christian soldier. Nothing shows more completely how in his time, peaceful as it was, the military character of the Roman Empire filled the whole horizon of the ordinary thoughts and topics of men than the Apostle’s constant allusions to the armour—the sword, the shield, the helmet—the battle, the conquest, the triumph. They show this, and they show that he did not shrink from using these images, even for the most peaceful, for the most solemn, for the most sacred purposes; they show that he was not in his Epistles a different man from what he was in common life; that the sights and sounds which filled his eyes and ears in the world around him were not forgotten when he took the parchment scroll, and bade his companion write down at his dictation the words which were to comfort and strengthen, not the Roman Christians of his own time only, but the whole Church of God for ever.

We shall deal with the subject in two parts. Let us take them in the order of the text.

I. The Power of Evil.

II. The Power of Good.

I

The Power of Evil

i. What is Evil?

1. We should observe in the first place the immediate object of St. Paul’s prohibition. What is the particular form of evil against which he directs this warning? It is the evil of giving way to a spirit of revenge. This prohibition does not mean that no power of correction is committed to man. In the opening verses of the very next chapter we are told that an earthly ruler is “the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” Distinguish between administration of punishment for offences against the law of God or man and infliction of chastisement through personal anger or some personal offence. The Son of Man, who never avenged Himself, by word or deed, upon those who injured or insulted Him, yet, on occasion, took upon Himself the office of avenger, visiting with His severest condemnation the profaners of His Father’s Temple, and upbraiding with the bitterest censure the hypocrisy and essential worldliness of the religious leaders of His day. As is the Master, such must the servants be. Let us reserve our indignation (a gift of God) for the condemnation of sin. Let us bear with meekness whatever slights or insults are aimed at ourselves.

Christianity is reproached because it has brought little that is new into the sphere of morals. That is quite a gratuitous impeachment. Our Lord’s method of dealing with evil, for instance, is startlingly new. Before He came the world knew no other way of treating evil than by reprisal and retribution; pains and penalties were the only remedies known to the rulers and judges of the earth. The Incarnation disclosed to the world a new and an amazing thought: for the mailed fist it substituted the pierced hand. Henceforth error and unrighteousness were to be antagonized by knowledge, long-suffering, sympathy, and forgiveness. On these lines our Lord taught, and thus personally He dealt with the provocations of His contemporaries. His disciples drank in His spirit, imitated His example, and taught His doctrine. The contrast between the truculent systems of the ancient world and the mild programme of the Gospel is complete. “Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” The originality of this ethic is incomparable. 1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

2. But there is an extended application to the words of the text. The inspired maxim includes all forms of evil, and there is no form of evil by which we are to allow ourselves to be overcome. What, then, is evil? How can we define it? Evil, like good, is one of those very wide and comprehensive words which, when we want to put our ideas into shape and order, urgently require definition, and which, nevertheless, by reason of their very width and comprehensiveness, almost refuse to be defined. But let us go to the root of the matter. What is evil in its root? Simply this. It is unregulated desire. Desire is that quality in men which corresponds to gravitation in the physical bodies, which, while all is well with us, keeps us moving around our true centre, the Being of beings—God. Sin is the free concentration of desire upon some other centre than God, that is, upon some created being; and just as if, in the heavenly spheres, a planet could get detached from its true orbit—from loyal revolutions around its proper sun—and could thus come within the range of other and counteracting attractions, the effect would be vast and irretrievable disaster, so is it in the moral world. Sin is this disorder in the governing desires of the soul, followed by a corresponding disorder in its outward action.

3. Evil is the work not of God but of the creature. God could not directly have created evil without denying Himself. Evil is a result of the abuse of God’s highest gift to created beings—their free will. Evil is the creature repudiating the law of its being by turning away its desire from Him who is the source, the centre, the end of its existence. If it be urged that God, in making man free, must have foreseen that man would thus abuse his freedom, it must be replied that God’s horizons are wider than ours, and that we may not unreasonably believe that He foresaw, in the very cure of evil, a good which would more than compensate for its existence—that, as the Apostle puts it, if sin abounded grace would much more abound.

Every one knows that microbes are a cause of disease. It is a great wonder, seeing that there are so many microbes about, that we keep as well as we do. But the reason why we keep well has been explained. In Pasteur’s laboratory in Paris a Russian physiologist named Metschnikoff has found out the secret, and he tells us how it is they are not so deadly as otherwise they might be. He has proved that certain cells contained in the blood, now called phagocytes, commonly known as the white corpuscles of the blood, have the power of independent motion. That is to say, they not only travel with the blood as it flows through the arteries and veins, but they can go anywhere in the body if they so choose. These phagocytes wander about in the blood, even make their way inside the tissue, and, wonderful to relate, they pursue, devour, and digest these deadly disease-producing microbes. They are like guardian angels of the body. Now there is something very similar going on in our spiritual life. St. Paul said: “When I would do good, evil is present with me.” We have all felt like that, and we all have the same war going on in our inmost being. When we disobey God, we always know what we ought to do—there is the good voice struggling to warn and crush the bad tendency. Conscience is a fine phagocyte. Listen to it always, and the deadly microbe of wrong-doing will soon be overtaken and slain. Your soul’s life will thus become healthy, strong, and noble. 1 [Note: J. Learmount.]

ii. The warning

“Be not overcome of evil.” Those words contain at once a warning of danger and an encouragement to resistance. They assume, as all Scripture does, that there is such a thing as evil, that it is around us, that contact with it is inevitable, that defeat and ruin by it are not impossible. It would be a shallow and a false philosophy, it would be a treacherous and apostate religion which should attempt to conceal this from us, or to tell us that the hard, narrow, up-hill path to heaven is smooth, and easy and strewn with roses. To our first parents the school of evil was Paradise itself. Esau was bred in the noble simplicity of the patriarch’s tent; the sons of Eli within the curtains of God’s bright sanctuary; Manasses in the pure palace of a royal saint; Judas among the chosen ones of the heavenly Kingdom, and in daily intercourse with the Son of God Himself. Yet what became of them? Esau grew into a coarse, sensual hunter; the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; Manasses was a foul apostate; and for Judas, the thief, the traitor, the son of perdition, it were better that he had not been born. So it is God’s will that man should be liable everywhere to the possibilities of evil. But—“ resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

1. Now, with regard to the particular case in point, St. Paul meant that we are overcome by evil whenever we yield to revenge, or become indifferent to the good and the welfare of those who do us wrong. If we say (or even think), “It’s no concern of mine. Let him reap as he has sown, let him look after himself, for to his own master he stands or falls,” we forget that, in a real sense, we are all our brothers’ keepers; not the keepers of their consciences—and we may not presume to dictate to them what they should believe, or what they should do—but we are their keepers in the sense that we are bound to help them, and “as we have opportunity,” to “work that which is good” toward them; and above all things to aid them in the conquest of their faults, whatever they may do to us.

What is it to be overcome of evil? Generally speaking it is just to suffer evil to lead us into evil. Evil for evil, we say; that is, revenge wrong by wrong. We have an example of this in the history of Tamerlane the Great, king of the Tartars, who reigned over the greater part of Western Asia some six hundred years ago. In the battle of Angora, which was fought in the year 1402, he defeated and took captive Bajazet, the king of the Turks. At first he treated the fallen monarch with great consideration and showed him much kindness. One day, however, entering into conversation with him, he asked, “Now, king, tell me freely and truly what thou wouldst have done to me had I fallen into thy power.” Bajazet, who had a most fierce and implacable disposition, answered, “Had God given unto me the victory I would have enclosed thee in an iron cage and carried thee about with me as a spectacle of derision to the world.” Then Tamerlane, in a flame of passion, said, “Thou proud man, as thou wouldst have done with me, even so shall I do with thee.” And he was as good—or should I say as bad?—as his word. A strong iron cage was made, and Bajazet was for three years carried about in the train of his conqueror, until at last, hearing that he was to be borne into Tartary, he struck his head violently against the iron bars and so put an end to his miserable existence. Now we see in this story how the conqueror became the conquered; the victor was changed into the vanquished. For Tamerlane was overcome of evil. His character would have appeared much nobler had he said to Bajazet, “I will treat thee much better than thou wouldst treat me: thou wouldst expose me to shame, but I will advance thee to honour.” 1 [Note: J. Aitchison.]

2. There are, however, other evils to which this maxim applies. We are not to be overcome of evil as we see it in society, in the tendencies at work around us; neither are we to be overcome by it as it exists within ourselves, in the habits we may have formed. Are we not all at times the victims of these? It may be the outbreak of a fiery temper, or the querulousness of a discontented soul, the suspiciousness of an uncharitable heart, the jealousy of a selfish spirit, the rashness of ungenerous judgment, or the sordidness of a worldly nature.

3. Now who of us will not admit that he has at some time or other been overcome by such things? Yes, this is part of the warfare. We may have been “overcome,” but we are never to be beaten by them, or to despair of the conquest of such faults. St. Paul says nothing about the length of the contest, but in the ultimate issue we must be the victors, not the vanquished. Sin gets into our lives, and it is a blessed thing for us that, even after sin has conquered us, it is possible for us by God’s mercy to conquer it in the end. We may lose a battle but need not lose the war, for we can repent. What is repentance? Being sorry for sin? No, not exactly. It means thinking again. “Second thoughts are best,” says the proverb. And repentance means “second thoughts.” Whenever we sin we think foolishly and wickedly; we deceive ourselves. When we repent we think better of it; we think wisely and rightly. And when by a foolish, wicked thought we allow sin to conquer us, we still can by means of repentance—the second wise thoughts that God always gives to those who will take them—drive out sin again.

Some time ago a little girl went into a room where a table was laid for dinner. Among other things there was a plate of oranges. The little girl felt tempted to take one of these, and she let herself be conquered by the wicked thought. She walked up to the table and took one, and then, not knowing that she was being watched all the time, went out of the room. But in a few minutes the one who was watching saw her come back. She walked quickly to the table and put the orange she had stolen back in its place, saying as she did so “Sold again, Satan!” 2 [Note: J. M. Gibbon.]

II

The Power of Good

“Overcome evil with good”—is this possible and practicable? Certainly. And no other method of overcoming evil is either possible or practicable. We may suppress it by force, but it remains evil still; it is not overcome. We may deprive it of its power of action, but it still exists; it is not overcome. We may frighten or flatter it into submission, but we do not thereby conquer it. We may shut our eyes to its presence, and imagine that it has ceased to be, but for all that it is powerful still, as we may soon find to our cost. Evil is overcome only when he who has been overcome by it renounces it and allies himself with good.

i. Good must win

1. God is the perfect goodness, and every good influence comes from God, therefore, however great the force of evil, good is always stronger than evil. But this is not all. The idea of God as the embodiment of abstract goodness will not materially help us in the battle of life. Sin is evil, and we feel its presence; and we need more than a mere ideal of abstract goodness to overcome the evil. But God has not left us thus blindly to feel after the good. “Where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly.” We shall be able to lay hold of the power of goodness by recognizing that the peculiar self-utterance of God is Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ is the embodiment of a universal sonship, and therefore that the overcoming principle is in us and in all men, and, being Divine, is ultimately irresistible.

2. It is not enough to rely on the good within ourselves; we must look to the good without ourselves. What that highest good is, we all know. But do we sufficiently remember how in the thought of that highest good, in the communion with God in Christ, lies not only our peace and safety, but our victory over evil? In earthly warfare, we know well that, however courageous may be the host, they must have a leader in whom to trust. And so it is in our spiritual warfare; we must have the example and the encouragement of the just and good who have gone before us. But, above all, we must look to Him who is called “Jesus”—that is, our “Joshua,” our Conqueror, our victorious Leader, the Captain of our salvation, the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

It is told of the Emperor Constantine, that he, the founder of the first Christian Empire, the first of Christian sovereigns, was converted to the faith of Christ by a vision which appeared to him at the head of his armies—a vision of a flaming cross, in the centre of which was written, in almost the very same Greek words as the Apostle here uses: “In this conquer,” or “ By this conquer.” The story itself is encompassed with doubt, but in a figure it conveys to us a true lesson. “In this conquer” should still be our motto. “In this,” in the Cross of Christ, the highest “good” which God has revealed to man, “in this conquer.” Conquer, because the Cross of Christ shows us what is God’s love to His creatures. Conquer, because it shows us what is the highest call of man. Conquer, because it shows us the strength and the firmness, the gentleness and mercy, the suffering and the victory in which, and through which, we too are to be victorious. 1 [Note: A. P. Stanley.]

Rise, O my soul, with thy desires to heaven,

And with divinest contemplation use

Thy time where time’s eternity is given,

And let vain thoughts no more thy thoughts abuse;

But down in darkness let them lie:

So live thy better, let thy worse thoughts die!

And thou, my soul, inspired with holy flame,

View and review with most regardful eye

That holy cross, whence thy salvation came,

On which thy Saviour and thy sin did die!

For in that sacred object is much pleasure,

And in that Saviour is my life, my treasure.

To thee, O Jesu! I direct mine eyes,

To thee my hands, to thee my humble knees;

To thee my heart shall offer sacrifice,

To thee my thoughts, who my thoughts only sees.

To thee my self, my self and all I give;

To thee I die, to thee I only live! 2 [Note: Sir Walter Raleigh.]

3. The greatest force in the world is good influence. It is encouraging to the weak and erring to know that they may overcome their weaknesses, that there is a power which may be instilled into their lives, giving them strength to resist all the overtures of the Evil One, and to battle against all his assaults. To all those who will let good influence be their guardian angel victory is secured. Right always wins—first, last, and always right is victorious.

Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasseled flower. Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapour, and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm breath, they touch us with soft responsive hands, they look at us with sad sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love. Then their presence is a power, then they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame. 1 [Note: George Eliot, Janet’s Repentance.]

Thou must be true thyself,

If thou the true wouldst teach;

Thy soul must overflow, if thou

Another’s soul wouldst reach.

The overflow of heart it needs

To give the lips full speech.

Think truly, and thy thoughts

Shall the world’s famine feed;

Speak truly, and each word of thine

Shall be a fruitful seed;

Live truly, and thy life shall be

A great and noble creed. 2 [Note: Horatius Bonar.]

ii. How Good overcomes Evil

We may divide the evil which we have to combat into three classes. (1) There is personal evil, that is evil in ourselves. (2) Then there is the evil of which the text particularly speaks, evil in our neighbour—we might call it domestic evil. (3) And, lastly, there is the evil in the world at large. We may characterize it as public evil. All these forms of evil are to be overcome with good.

1. Personal evil.—How shall I overcome evil in myself? I shall overcome it by emphasizing, predicting, calling into operation the good. I will overcome the natural with the spiritual, the temporal with the eternal, the phenomenal with the real; where I find an evil tendency in myself I will instantly call upon the opposite tendency in the Christ nature within me and accentuate it.

(1) Now all personal evil begins in thought, therefore evil thoughts will be overcome by good thoughts. “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” “ These things”—is this our way? Is it not rather our unhappy habit to revolve in our thought and imagination whatsoever things are painful, humiliating, ugly, and discouraging? We shall never overcome evil by this fellowship with sin and sadness. We overcome the evil in the good. The cardinal matter is to fix our thoughts and affections on things above, not on things on the earth; we cannot even think of these things without being blessed. The thought of beauty leaves a stain of sweet colour on the soul; to think of greatness is to grow; to muse on purity is to suffer a sea change into the whiteness and preciousness of the pearl.

That useless thoughts spoil all; that the mischief began there; but that we ought to be diligent to reject them as soon as we perceived their impertinence to the matter in hand, or to our salvation; and return to our communion with God. 1 [Note: Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, 13.]

You remember that terrible touch in one of our Lord’s sternest parables, about the evil spirit returning to the house whence he came out, and finding it “empty, swept, and garnished”—then goeth he and taketh to himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. What does that “empty, swept, and garnished” mean? It means that if the heart is not pre-occupied with good, it will be invaded by evil. The labourer who stands idle in the market-place is ever ready to be hired in the devil’s service. The worm of sin gnaws deepest into the idle heart. But preoccupy your heart with good; preoccupy your time with honest industry, and you are safe. 2 [Note: F. W. Farrar.]

She walks—the lady of my delight—

A shepherdess of sheep.

Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;

She guards them from the steep.

She feeds them on the fragrant height

And folds them in for sleep.

She roams maternal hills and bright,

Dark valleys safe and deep.

Into that tender breast at night

The chastest stars may peep.

She walks—the lady of my delight—

A shepherdess of sheep.

She holds her little thoughts in sight,

Though gay they run and leap.

She is so circumspect and right;

She has her soul to keep.

She walks—the lady of my delight—

A shepherdess of sheep. 1 [Note: Alice Meynell.]

(2) Let us concentrate our efforts on the good. We overcome the evil in the good. We shall not overcome our personal defects by dwelling upon them, tormenting ourselves on account of them, dealing directly with them, or by attempting singly to uproot them. To overcome this or that failing, we must think of it as little as possible, and as much as we can about the corresponding virtue; weaken the bad side by strengthening the good. Let us frankly recognize whatever grace has done for us, and by fostering it drive out the evil. Cherish the good thought, forward the generous impulse, follow out the upward-seeking desire; starve the roots of bitterness, smother them, choke them, drive them out by flowers of grace, fruits of light, and plants of God’s right-hand planting.

Mr. Kay Robinson, the naturalist, describes a competition witnessed by him in the fields. Owing to a peculiarity of weather, the poppies had managed to get a start of an inch or so in the matter of height over the wheat and barley, and the obnoxious flowers were just beginning to burst into bloom that would have converted the stunted grain into lakes of scarlet, when down came the rain; in a single day and night the wheat shot up above the poppies, and for the rest of the season the poisonous things were overwhelmed in a wavy sea of prosperous green and yellow gold. A similar competition is going on between our good and our bad qualities; it is a rivalry between the wheat and the tares as to which shall get on top and smother the other. What is the true course to adopt whilst this struggle proceeds? It is to concentrate ourselves on the corn. 1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

2. In dealing with domestic evil—that which we see and deplore in our immediate neighbourhood—the text must furnish guidance. The faults and follies of husband, wife, children, companions, servants, neighbours occasion frequent and sincere distress. How are these lapses to be effectually combated? Not by good advice even, much less by scorn and contempt. Verbal censure and social penalty do not largely avail against the evils which trouble our environment; the effectual remedy is unspeakably more costly. Our guilty neighbours must see in us the virtues they lack. Embodied excellence is to do the whole work of rebuking and charming, dispensing with eloquence, whether sacred or profane.

On the walls of a chamber of great beauty in the Alhambra this sentence is inscribed: “Look attentively at my elegance, and thou wilt reap the advantage of a commentary on decoration.” The variety, loveliness, and harmony of the architecture of that chamber are themselves a commentary on decoration and render literary criticism and description superfluous. In like manner the fine character and blameless doing of the Christian are a commentary on nobleness, rendering argument and expostulation unnecessary. Offending neighbours see “how awful goodness is, and virtue in her shape how lovely,” and words can add nothing to this incarnation of the true and beautiful. 1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

On his first entry upon the field of responsible life, he had formed a serious and solemn engagement with a friend—I suppose it was Hope-Scott—that each would devote himself to active service in some branch of religious work. He could not, without treason to his gifts, go forth like Selwyn or Patteson to Melanesia to convert the savages. He sought a missionary-field at home, and he found it among the unfortunate ministers to “the great sin of great cities.” In these humane efforts at reclamation he persevered all through his life, fearless of misconstruction, fearless of the levity or baseness of men’s tongues, regardless almost of the possible mischiefs to the public policies that depended on him. Greville tells the story how in 1853 a man made an attempt one night to extort money from Mr. Gladstone, then in office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, by threats of exposure; and how he instantly gave the offender into custody, and met the case at the police office. Greville could not complete the story. The man was committed for trial. Mr. Gladstone directed his solicitors to see the accused was properly defended. He was convicted and sent to prison. By and by Mr. Gladstone inquired from the governor of the prison how the delinquent was conducting himself. The report being satisfactory, he next wrote to Lord Palmerston, then at the Home Office, asking that the prisoner should be let out. There was no worldly wisdom in it, we all know. But then, what are people Christians for? 1 [Note: Morley, Life of Gladstone, iii. 419.]

Nothing more entices charity than to be first in the exercise of it. Dost thou desire to be loved? Love then. 2 [Note: Augustine, De Catech. Rud.]

I have read a story of a certain Chinese Emperor, that he was informed that his enemies had raised an insurrection in one of his distant provinces. On hearing this he said to his officers, “Come, follow me, and we will quickly destroy them.” He marched forward, and the rebels submitted upon his approach. All now thought that he would take his revenge, but were surprised to see the captives treated with mildness and humanity. “How,” cried the first minister, “is this the manner in which you fulfil your promise? Your royal word was given that your enemies should be destroyed; and, behold! you have pardoned them all, and even caressed some of them.” “I promised,” replied the Emperor, “to destroy my enemies. I have fulfilled my word; for see, they are enemies no longer; I have made friends of them.” 3 [Note: F. H. Robarts.]

There is a power for victory in the simple might of goodness. It was with this power that Dr. Arnold overcame lying at Rugby. “It is no use,” they said, “telling a lie to the Doctor, he always believes you.”

Old books tell us of a place in Arabia where roses grow so thickly that when the wind blows over them it gets so full of the sweet smells as to kill the lions in the desert beyond. Of course that is not true as a fact. There is no such place in Arabia. But it is true as a parable. You can kill lions with roses. 4 [Note: J. M. Gibbon.]

Be good at the depths of you, and you will discover that those who surround you will be good even to the same depths. Nothing responds more infallibly to the secret cry of goodness than the secret cry of goodness that is near. While you are actively good in the invisible, all those who approach you will unconsciously do things that they could not do by the side of any other man. Therein lies a force that has no name; a spiritual rivalry that knows no resistance. It is as though this were the actual place where is the sensitive spot of our soul; for there are souls that seem to have forgotten their existence, and to have renounced everything that enables them to rise; but, once touched here, they all draw themselves erect; and in the Divine plains of the secret goodness the most humble souls cannot endure defeat. 1 [Note: Maurice Maeterlinck.]

3. The effectual way to subdue public evil is the strategy of the text.

(1) We do not really overcome evil by substituting one evil for another, or by setting one evil to drive out another. Scientists neutralize one kind of microbe by introducing another, and sometimes, it would seem, they introduce one disease to expel another; but manœuvres have little place in the moral world. Statesmen will attempt to end an evil practice or institution by introducing it in a different shape, as the Siamese are said to domesticate spiders to drive out cockroaches; the profit of such devices, however, is generally dubious. Whatever the endless shifts and compromises of politics may be worth, they do not belong to the invincible strategy whenever they propose to vanquish evil by evil. Christianity implies a profounder process.

Your fire will not put out your companion’s fire; rather will they combine, and make a bigger and hotter blaze. Good arguments are best pressed home by soft words, and a righteous cause will be better pleaded with meekness than with passion. You remember how Jephthah’s roughness to the Ephraimites, who were angry because they were not asked to help in the battle against their country’s enemies, exasperated them further, and led to a terrible strife between brethren, in which thousands of lives were lost. And, on the other hand, you remember how the wise Gideon treated the same Ephraimites on a similar occasion; how he spoke gently to them, and made flattering excuses, and so pacified them that they gladly gave their help against the common foe. 2 [Note: H. Macmillan.]

The African is now appreciating the fact that there is industrial work for him to do, that he is needed for the work, and able to do it. The missionaries had lately to refuse over one hundred and twenty who wished to be trained as carpenters. We are told that in Ngoniland education is to-day as much prized as in Great Britain. The Ngoni lived as wolves among sheep till they were tamed by the messengers of Jesus Christ. “Give me a Gospel for an assegai,” one of them said to the missionary, “as the love of war has been taken out of my heart.” 1 [Note: James Wells, Stewart of Lovedale, 145.]

(2) We shall not overcome evil by the representation of it. Ghastly things are represented in art on the plea that they will disgust. The stark expression of naturalism in literature is excused on the ground that its loathsomeness is discredited by being described. And the drama pictures vice and violence with moral design. No mistake can be greater. Wickedness at once repels and fascinates, too often in the end proving contagious and destructive. It is infectious to represent evil, often dangerous to talk of it, and even an injustice to ourselves to figure it in fancy. The morbid element in life must be dealt with in art and literature; but it ought to be described, delineated, and dramatized with utmost reticence.

To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto. If a thing is wrong for us, we should not dwell upon the thought of it; or we shall soon dwell upon it with inverted pleasure. 2 [Note: R. L. Stevenson, A Christmas Sermon.]

The fabled basilisk was said to perish if it saw itself in a mirror; it could not survive the sight of its own hideousness. Evil is not killed in this way. It feeds on the vision. With regard to the spirit of terrible cruelty which marked the Renaissance in Italy, Symonds traces it to the influence of the fiendish atrocities of the tyrant Ezzelino. “In vain was the humanity of the race revolted by the hideous spectacle.… It laid a deep hold upon the Italian imagination, and by the glamour of loathing that has strength to fascinate, proved in the end contagious.” 3 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

An artist one day visited a friend of his, an undergraduate at Oxford. As he looked round upon the walls of his young friend’s rooms, and saw the gross and sordid prints and photographs, the artist’s heart went out in eager longing to purify the thought and sanctify the passion of his young friend. A day or so afterwards, a beautiful picture came addressed to the Oxford undergraduate with a little note enclosed from his artist friend: “Hang this up in your room, it will banish the chorus girls and the jockeys.” And it did! 1 [Note: W. S. Kelynack, in The Young Man, March 1911.]

(3) Evil is not overcome by denunciation. It is surprising how much efficacy is supposed to go with denunciation. Real, constructive, aggressive good is of far greater significance than eloquent invective; such invective has its place, but it must be accompanied by active practical effort, or it effects little more than summer lightning.

Carlyle, in his review of Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, has a most instructive passage. “We could truly wish to see such a mind as his engaged rather in considering what, in his own sphere, could be done, than what, in his own or other spheres, ought to be destroyed; rather in producing or preserving the True, than in mangling and slashing asunder the False.” But denunciatory rhetoric is so much easier and cheaper than good works, and proves a popular temptation. Yet it is far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness. 2 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

The Polemics of Christianity

Literature

Aitchison (J.), The Children’s Own, 154.

Cronshaw (H. P.), in Sermons for the People, New Ser., ii. 59.

Farrar (F. W.), In the Days of thy Youth, 139.

Gibbon (J. M.), In the Days of Youth, 82.

Greer (D. H.), From Things to God, 82.

Knight (W.), Things New and Old, 183.

Learmount (J.), Fifty-Two Sundays with the Children, 230.

Liddon (H. P.), Christmastide in St. Paul’s, 387.

Liddon (H. P.), Forty Sermons Selected from the Penny Pulpit, i. 504.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Romans, 300.

Macmillan (H.), The Daisies of Nazareth, 170.

Robarts (F. H.), Sunday Morning Talks, 70.

Sauter (B.), The Sunday Epistles, 70.

Stanley (A. P.), Canterbury Sermons, 275.

Watkinson (W. L.), The Supreme Conquest, 218.

West (R. A.), The Greatest Things in the World, 18.

Wilberforce (B.), Following on to Know the Lord, 99.

Christian World Pulpit, liv. 116 (Welldon); lxx. 86 (Watkinson); lxxvii. 28 (Scholes).

Contemporary Pulpit, 1st Ser., v. 50 (Hutton).