I would not speak in terms that might seem to be reproach and
scolding. The matter is far too serious, the disease far too
widespread, to need or to warrant any exaggeration. But, dear
brethren, there are many so-called and, in a fashion, really Christian
people to whom Christ and His work are mainly, if not exclusively, the
means of escaping the consequences of sin--a kind of 'fire-escape.'
And to very many it comes as a new thought, in so far as their
practical lives are concerned, that these ought to be lives of
steadily increasing deliverance from the love and the power of sin,
and steadily increasing appropriation and manifestation of Christ's
granted righteousness. There are, I think, many of us from whom the
very notion of progress has faded away. I am sure there are some of us
who were a great deal farther on on the path of the Christian life
years ago, when we first felt that Christ was anything to us, than we
are to-day. 'When for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need
that one teach you which be the first principles of the oracles of
God.'
There is an old saying of one of the prophets that a child would die a
hundred years old, which in a very sad sense is true about very many
folk within the pale of the Christian Church who are seventy-year-old
babes still, and will die so. Suns 'growing brighter and brighter
until the noonday!' Ah! there are many of us who are a great deal more
like those strange variable stars that sometimes burst out in the
heavens into a great blaze, that brings them up to the brightness of
stars of the first magnitude, for a day or two; and then they dwindle
until they become little specks of light that the telescope can hardly
see.
And there are hosts of us who are instances, if not of arrested, at
any rate of unsymmetrical, development. The head, perhaps, is
cultivated; the intellectual apprehension of Christianity increases,
while the emotional, and the moral, and the practical part of it are
all neglected. Or the converse may be the case; and we may be full of
gush and of good emotion, and of fervour when we come to worship or to
pray, and our lives may not be a hair the better for it all. Or there
may be a disproportion because of an exclusive attention to conduct
and the practical side of Christianity, while the rational side of it,
which should be the basis of all, and the emotional side of it, which
should be the driving power of all, are comparatively neglected.
So, dear brethren! what with interruptions, what with growing by fits
and starts, and long, dreary winters like the Arctic winters, coming
in between the two or three days of rapid, and therefore brief and
unwholesome, development, we must all, I think, take to heart the
condemnation suggested by this text when we compare the reality of our
lives with the divine intention concerning them. Let us ask ourselves,
'Have I more command over myself than I had twenty years ago? Do I
live nearer Jesus Christ today than I did yesterday? Have I more of
His Spirit in me? Am I growing? Would the people that know me best say
that I am growing in the grace and knowledge of my Lord and Saviour?'
Astronomers tell us that there are dark suns, that have burnt
themselves out, and are wandering unseen through the skies. I wonder
if there are any extinguished suns of that sort listening to me at
this moment.