the necessity for two distinct efforts, the second more or less
unanticipated. We started to climb to the apparent summit, only to
find, when we got there, that it was no real summit at all, but a
prominent spur, and that a second climb was required of us before we
were really at the top. An intellectual experience not unlike this is
the lot of the student of the Epistle to the Romans. The apparent
climax of the epistle is the end of chapter viii, and the student at
starting expects his brain to be chiefly taxed in following the closely
knit argument which is to lead him thither. But he reaches it only to
find another like effort of mind required of him in grasping the
meaning of the section (chapters ix-xi) in which St. Paul is occupied
in justifying God's dealings with the chosen people. But now,
intellectually speaking, his work is almost over. {96} As the climber,
seated on the summit of the hill when at last it is gained, lets his
eye range over a rich and wide prospect, and takes in its vastness and
variety, or traces below him the delightful descent: so it is with the
reader of this epistle who has entered sincerely into the spirit of St.
Paul. His intellectual scruples as to the divine dealings have been
just laid to rest; before that his mind had been convinced, and his
heart and will attracted and won, by the unfolding of the divine
righteousness, that is to say of the free grace and love of God. And
now, proportionate to the greatness of the effort by which this
satisfaction of intellect and heart and will has been won, is the joy
of expansion which remains--the joy of the surrendered mind in
appreciating all that is practically possible for it in the light of
the love of God. 'I will run the way of thy commandments, because thou
dost enlarge my heart,' that is, expand it with a sense of liberty and
joy[1]. 'All things are ours,' if but once in completeness of
self-surrendering faith 'we are Christ's' as assuredly 'Christ is
God's[2].' 'I can do all things in Christ that strengtheneth me[3].'
[1] Ps. cxix. 32. See Driver's _Parallel Psalter_, Oxford (1898).
[2] 1 Cor. iii. 21-3.
[3] Phil. iv. 13.
{97}
DIVISION V. Sec. i. CHAPTER XII. 1-2.
_Self-surrender in response to God._
And first of all the general attitude of mind is defined, which it
befits us to adopt towards God as He has now revealed Himself to us.
It is the response of entire self-surrender--the response of sacrifice
to sacrifice. St. Paul 'beseeches,' or rather 'encourages,' or
'summons' the Roman Christians, using for his motive power[1] all the
rich store of divine compassions which he has just been occupied in
disclosing or explaining to them, to make the only response really
possible to such an exhibition of divine love; and that is to present
themselves in sacrifice to God. What God asks is not dead victims but
living men, in body as well as spirit consecrated to His service and
rendered acceptable in His sight: and this sort of self-oblation, {98}
on the pattern of Christ, is the only reasonable sort of divine service
for man to offer. The transitory world, to which such an ideal is
quite alien, is indeed all around them, but they are not to suffer
themselves to be assimilated to its fleeting fashion. Their whole
point of view is changed and become new; and this must result in so
thorough a transformation of their old worldly ways of thinking that a
new inward light will shine in their hearts, and they will be able to
discriminate and see what God's will is, and so to follow the way of
perfection.
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. And 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.
This short paragraph is full of meaning, and is profoundly
characteristic of St. Paul in thought and language.
The 'therefore' is one of the great transitional 'therefores[2]' by
which St. Paul shows his constant sense of the inter-connexion of
doctrine and life: the doctrine passing by a clear logic into the
practical life, and the life drawing all its {99} practical motives
from the realities disclosed in the doctrine. It is truly nothing
whatever but shallowness and 'shortness of thought' which can suffer us
to imagine that the Christian character--I do not say all morality, but
the Christian character--could long survive the Christian creed.
And the character of this summary exhortation shows us that any idea of
a faith which stops short of moral identification with its object is
utterly alien to St. Paul's mind. Faith is no true Christian faith, if
it is content to receive from the Father, or from Christ, a gift which
leaves it still outside the life of God. The faith which Christ
inspires asks for and receives nothing less than real fellowship in His
divine and human life, and that life is, in its joys as well as its
sorrows, a life of self-surrender, of sacrifice. Thus the Christian
only welcomes the gift of pardon through Christ's sacrifice in order to
be admitted into the freedom of the dedicated life in Christ, which is
the life of sacrifice. It is the sort of sacrifice (as St. Paul's
language indicates) which is as different as possible from any such
asceticism as is prompted by contempt of the flesh or the body, or
refusal of joy, or love of death. It is sacrifice which seeks to
cultivate {100} into full vitality every faculty of body as well as of
mind (and that in an active society or brotherhood), in order to
consecrate all we are or can be to the service of God, and so realize
in conscious correspondence with the divine will the rational worship
for humanity.
St. Paul's words here about a 'living' as opposed to a bloody, and a
'rational' as opposed to an animal sacrifice, may be the basis on which
the eucharist, the Christian worship 'in spirit and in truth,' was
often called in early times the 'reasonable' and 'bloodless
sacrifice[3].' And whether this be the case or no, at any rate we must
relearn the lesson that St. Augustine is for ever insisting upon, that
the eucharistic sacrifice essentially involves and implies the offering
of the Church as the body of Christ, {101} that is, the offering of
ourselves as members of the body; and we may feel profoundly thankful
that, in our service of Holy Communion, this truth has been restored to
its proper prominence, after having been, in the pre-Reformation
service, almost ignored. 'And here we offer and present unto thee, O
Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and
lively sacrifice unto thee.' In this prayer is really the climax of
our sacrificial worship[4].
The true service of God is intelligent correspondence with the divine
will--this is perfection; and to correspond with the divine will we
must be able to know it: and this is what we can do if we are true to
the principle of our new birth, and suffer it _radically and
permanently to transform_ us and our point of view (for nothing less
than this is carried by St. Paul's expression rendered 'transform').
Negatively, this means that we must maintain our separateness from the
worldly world, to which we died at our baptism--the world of human
society as it devotes itself to its business and its pleasures, {102}
leaving God out of account[5]. For if the worldly world is suffered to
_fashion us in accordance with its shallow and transitory show_ (this
is the idea conveyed by the word rendered 'fashion'), we shall be
blinded to what our regeneration ought to have made plain to us.
[1] For the use of 'by,' cf. xv. 30; 1 Cor. i. 10 ('through' is the
same word); 2 Cor. x. 1.
[2] See further, _Ephes._ pp. 172 ff.
[3] It is more likely, however, that the phrases 'rational worship' and
'bloodless sacrifice' had an earlier Jewish origin. They occur in _The
Testament of the XII Patriarchs_, which is apparently a Jewish document
christianized. There the _angels_ are said (_Levi._ 3) to 'offer to
the Lord a rational odour of sweet savour and a bloodless offering.'
Philo also, as Mr. Conybeare points out to me, in several passages
describes the true sacrifices as 'bloodless': and by bloodless
sacrifices he means either the meal offerings as opposed to the animal
sacrifices (_De Anim. Sacrif._ ed. Mangey ii. 250), or truly spiritual
acts as opposed to merely outward (_De Ebreitate_, i. p. 370, cf. ii.
254). These two ideas run easily into one another, and the earliest
uses of the expression 'bloodless sacrifice' for the eucharist have a
similar ambiguity.
[4] See further, p. 179. I may be allowed to express the earnest
desire that we might have liberty in our Church to read _both_ of the
Post-Communion Prayers, which seem supplementary rather than
alternative to one another.
[5] See _Ephes._ p. 92.
{103}
DIVISION V. Sec. 2. CHAPTER XII. 3-21.
_The community spirit._
And when St. Paul, justifying himself here, as before and later on, by
the special divine favour which has made him the apostle of the
Gentiles[1], proceeds to develop his exhortation, it appears that with
him, as with St. James[2], the form in which 'divine service' shows
itself must be love of the brethren. To be called into the body of
Christ--the society which is bound into one by His life and spirit--is
to be called to social service, that is, to live a community life, and
to cultivate the virtues which make true community life possible and
healthy. Of these the first is humility, which in this connexion means
the viewing oneself in all things as one truly is, as a part of a
whole. Of the faith by which the whole body lives, a share, but only
{104} a share, belongs to each member--a certain measure of faith--and
he must not strain beyond it. But he is diligently to make the best of
his faculty, and do the work for which his special gift qualifies him,
in due subordination to the welfare of the whole, whether it be
inspired preaching, or ordinary teaching, or the distribution of alms,
or presidency, or some other form of helping others which is his
special function. Besides humility there are other virtues which make
the life of a community healthy and happy, and St. Paul enumerates
them, as they occur to his mind, in no defined order or completeness.
There must be sincerity in love, that is in considering and seeking the
real interest of others; there must be the righteous severity which
keeps the moral atmosphere free from taint; there must be tenderness of
feeling, which makes the community a real family of brothers; and an
absence of all self-assertion, or desire for personal prominence; and
thorough industry; and spiritual zeal; and devotion to God's service;
and the cheerfulness which Christian hope inspires; and the ready
endurance of affliction; and close application to prayer; and a love
for giving whenever fellow Christians need; and an eagerness to
entertain them when they are {105} travelling--for 'the community'
embraces, not one church only, but 'all the churches.'
Nay in a wider sense the community extends itself to all mankind, even
those who persecute[3] them. According to his Lord's precepts, the
Christian is only to bless his persecutors. Generally he is to be, in
the deep, original sense, sympathetic with his fellow men everywhere in
their joys and sorrows, and (to return to the Christian community) he
is to seek to let it be pervaded by an impartial kindness; and, not
thinking himself a superior person suited only for superior affairs, he
is to let the current of ordinary human needs bear him along. He is
not to set undue store on his own opinions[4]; he is utterly to banish
the spirit of retaliation; he is deliberately to plan so to live as
that his life shall prove, not a stumblingblock, but a moral attraction
to men in general[5]; he is never to quarrel with any one if he can
possibly help it; he is completely to suppress his resentment {106}
when he is wronged, and simply to leave the matter to the wrath of God,
as indeed the law would have him do[6]; so that, by his very meekness
and returning good for evil, he may, according to the wise man's
saying, heap burning shame upon his enemy, like coals of fire[7]. Evil
is all around the Christian, and it is a strong man armed; but the
Christian has with him the forces of good which are yet stronger, and
by no passive withdrawal, but by the active exercise of good, he is to
win the victory over evil.
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. For even as we have many members in one
body, and all the members have not the same office: so we, who are
many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.
And having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us,
whether prophecy, _let us prophesy_ according to the proportion of our
faith; or ministry, _let us give ourselves_ to our ministry; or he that
teacheth, to his teaching; or he that exhorteth, to his exhorting: he
that giveth, _let him do it_ with liberality; he that ruleth, with
diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be
without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is
good. In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another;
in honour preferring one another; in diligence not slothful; {107}
fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient in
tribulation; continuing stedfastly in prayer; communicating to the
necessities of the saints; given to hospitality. Bless them that
persecute you; bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that rejoice;
weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Set
not your mind on high things, but condescend to things that are lowly.
Be not wise in your own conceits. Render to no man evil for evil.
Take thought for things honourable in the sight of all men. If it be
possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men. Avenge
not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto wrath: for it is written,
Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the Lord. But if
thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink: for in
so doing thou shall heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome
of evil, but overcome evil with good.
(1) It is the idea of corporate life which dominates all this
exhortation. No writing in the New Testament has done more than the
Epistle to the Romans to strengthen the sense of spiritual
individuality, and to rouse the individual spirit to protest, as it
protested in Luther, against spiritual tyranny. But it is a complete
mistake to suppose that the epistle is individualistic in tendency.
The life into which the individual's faith in Jesus admits him is the
life of a community, and its virtues are the virtues of community life.
The strengthened individuality is to go to enrich an organized society.
{108}
This is expressed in the familiar metaphor of the body which had been
employed in non-Christian thought before St. Paul identified it with
himself and Christianity by the vigorous and profound use which he made
of it[8]. The Christian community is a body bound together in a common
life by a common inspiring presence and spirit. The divine grace and
good favour of Christ shows itself in special 'gifts' (in the Greek
this word 'charisma' expresses a particular embodiment of the general
grace, 'charis,' of God); and no individual member is without his
special endowment. It is not a few officers of the community who are
gifted, but all; and all are to co-operate in the common life and work.
Of gifts there are various sorts which we hear of in the New Testament.
There are the official gifts, the result of what we call ordination, as
the gift which was 'in' Timothy 'by the laying on of hands.' And those
among the Christians at Rome, who 'presided' and 'ministered,' would
have been, we should suppose, official presbyters or 'bishops,' and
deacons. But the Roman Christians hardly constituted yet an organized
church, and we cannot tell whence such officers of {109} the community
received their appointment. There is no ground for a positive
assertion of any kind[9]. Again we hear of special gifts, such as
powers of healing, speaking with tongues and prophesying, which
sometimes accompanied the bestowal of the Spirit, through the laying on
of hands which was given to all. And the gift of prophesying among the
Roman Christians may have been a gift of this kind. But St. Paul is
perhaps writing with the circumstances of the Corinthian church, rather
than those of the Roman Christians, in his mind; and we can gather but
little about the exact condition of things at the capital. Once more,
St. Paul uses the word 'gifts' for more personal and moral endowments,
as for the bent of mind which leads men, under divine guidance, towards
celibacy or marriage[10]. But in this place he is not distinguishing.
He is hardly speaking in view of any special circumstances at Rome. He
is but emphasizing the fact which is the basis of all the life of
Christians everywhere--the fact that each individual member of the body
has a special gift, and a special function for the good of the whole
body, by which the gift is to express itself. What every individual
Christian has to do, {110} then, is to realize his own gift and
correspond to it. The gift involves a certain 'measure of faith.' The
faith of each individual Christian is the same in its basis. It holds
him in spiritual allegiance to the same Lord, and in confession of the
same elemental creed. But, besides this, it involves a special
insight, which is the peculiar endowment of the individual. There is
something which each man can realize and impart, as no one else is
qualified to do. The Church is the poorer if he holds back or fails to
stir up this gift of his own, and on the other hand he incurs the peril
of presumption if he ventures beyond it. Even the inspired man, the
prophet, must prophesy within the limits of what his own special
proportion of faith enables him to perceive and grasp[11], even though
another prophet with a larger faith might rightly say what he may not
venture upon. 'Let each man be fully {111} persuaded in his own mind.'
For any assertion which goes beyond what the faith of the individual
enables him to be convinced of, is for him 'sin.' We greatly need this
exhortation to-day. The convictions of many are vague and uncertain,
and their teaching without heart or force, because, like parrots, they
catch up and repeat what others may have insight enough to warrant
their asserting, but they have not. To correspond with one's own
personal gift of faith is to realize one's vocation; and, by the
development of the individual points of view, inside the common
'tradition,' the fullness and richness of the corporate faith is
secured.
The cohesion of the body lies in each one's realizing his own gift, and
also reverencing that of others. Here is humility. Humility is not
self-contempt, or cringing to others. To realize one's own gift, one's
own relation to God, gives to each man a dignity, a power to stand
upright and face the world. The sovereign Master and Giver has given
me my own life and my own gifts. He is responsible for the existence
which He gave me, and I am not to shame Him by shrinking from making
the best of it. But also humility is, in all relations, truth about
ourselves. It is truth about ourselves as regards God, who {112} is
simply the giver of whatever we have and are; and it is truth about
ourselves as regards our fellow men--our own gifts being justly
appraised only when they are regarded as means of serving the body as a
whole, without any self-aggrandizement, with a due respect to the gifts
of others, and even a positive will to let them have higher place than
ourselves.
Indeed we shall do well to meditate deeply on this. What good work is
there which is not in more or less continual danger of suffering, or
even being abandoned, because fellow Christians, zealous fellow
Christians, will plainly, and it must be wilfully, yield to the
ambition to be first: will not be content to be second or third: will
not do the unobtrusive work: will think 'How can I shine,' rather than
'How can I serve'? In fact, how very unwilling we are to recognize, in
our ideals of education, and in our theory of grown life, that
ambition, in the strict sense of the word--the desire to obtain
distinction for ourselves, as distinct from the desire to serve--is not
a motive which Christianity can sanction, or from which it can hope for
a blessing.
We linger lovingly, wistfully, on the picture of the corporate life of
a Christian community. Has it vanished from the earth, this real
fraternal {113} living, 'high and low, rich and poor, one with
another,' each supplementing the deficiencies of the other, and
receiving of their fullness? May we not do something more than we are
doing to realize it in our congregations or parishes? Is nearly enough
emphasis laid on the _social_ relationship of each congregation of
fellow worshippers or each local church?
Dimly through the mist of ages in old churchwardens' accounts, in the
rare instances where they have been preserved from days before the
Reformation, we discern what a really fraternal, self-governing and
mutually co-operative community the mediaeval English parish was. Let
me extract a few sentences from the excellent preface[12] which Bishop
Hobhouse prefixed to an edition of the surviving _Churchwardens'
Accounts_ of a number of Somersetshire parishes.
'The (parish) community was completely organized with a constitution
which recognized the rights of the whole and of every adult member to a
voice in self-government, but kept the self-governing community under a
system of inspection and (if need should be) restraint from central
authority.' 'The whole adult population were accounted parishioners,
and had an equal voice {114} when assembled for consultation under the
rector. Seeing that both sexes served the office of warden, there can
be no doubt that both had a vote.'
The strongly existing spirit of good will and pride in the parish
church found all the necessary funds for the maintaining of the church
and the services, and for the provision of often a sumptuous and rich
treasury of ornaments. The needs of the Church were met generally by
the local industry of 'such as were wise-hearted'--builders,
carpenters, workers in gold and silver, bell-founders, embroiderers,
writers, illuminators, book-binders, and others.
Hard by the church the church-house was the centre of the popular
recreations of the holy day or holiday.
The parish elected and paid its own officers, except the rector, and
the affairs and ornaments of the church, even in part the arrangement
of the services, were under the government, not of the rector, but of
the parish meeting, of which he was president, under the restraining
hand of the rural dean and archdeacon.
The support of the poor or disabled was a wholly voluntary matter.
'The brotherhood tie was so strongly realized by the community, that
{115} the weaker ones were succoured by the stronger as out of a family
store.'
'All the tendency of the feudal system, working through the machinery
of the manorial court, was to _keep the people down_. All the tendency
of the parochial system, working through the parish council, holding
its assemblies in the churches, where the people met on equal terms as
children and servants of the living God, and members of one body in
Christ Jesus, was to _lift the people up_.' In these assemblies there
was no distinction between lord and vassal, high and low, rich and
poor; in them the people learnt the worth of being free. Here were the
schools in which, in the slow course of centuries, they were
disciplined to self-help, self-reliance and self-respect[13].
No doubt these descriptions of mediaeval parish life represent an ideal
very imperfectly realized. But is it not an ideal we need to recover?
Is there not a call for Church reform, both moral and formal, to
restore to us the community life of our parishes, and fill St. Paul's
language again with its primary and natural meaning?
[1] See i. 5, 11-15; xv. 15-17.
[2] Jas. i. 17.
[3] The word is the same as St. Paul has just used to describe the
eager 'pursuit' of opportunities of hospitality by the Christian. He
'pursues' opportunities of doing good, while he is himself 'pursued' by
enemies to do him evil.
[4] Cf. xi. 25, and Prov. iii. 7.
[5] Prov. iii. 4 LXX. 'Provide things honourable in the sight of the
Lord and of man.'
[6] Deut. xxxii. 35.
[7] Prov. xxv. 21.
[8] The truth, however, which underlies the metaphor of the body is, we
may say, equally present in all the New Testament writers.
[9] See, however, p. 196.
[10] 1 Cor. vii. 7.