II. Some of the plain consequent duties that arise from this
characteristic of the Christian Life.
Let me put them in the shape of one or two practical counsels. First let
us try to keep up, vivid and sharp, a sense of separation. I do not mean
that we should withdraw ourselves from sympathies, nor from services,
nor from the large area of common ground which we have with our fellows,
whether they be Christians or no--with our fellow-citizens; with those
who are related to us by various bonds, by community of purpose, of aim,
of opinion, or of affection. But just as Abraham was willing to go down
into the plain and fight for Lot, though he would not go down and live
in Sodom, and just as he would enter into relations of amity with the
men of the land, and yet would not abandon his black camels'-hair tent,
pitched beneath the terebinth tree, in order to go into their city and
abide with them, so one great part of the wisdom of a Christian man is
to draw the line of separation decisively, and yet to keep true to the
bond of union. Unless Christian people do make a distinct effort to keep
themselves apart from the world and its ways, they will get confounded
with these, and when the end comes they will be destroyed with them.
Sometimes voyagers find upon some lonely island an English castaway, who
has forgotten home, and duty, and everything else, to luxuriate in an
easy life beneath tropical skies, and has degraded himself to the level
of the savage islanders round him. There are professing
Christians--perhaps in my audience--who, like that poor castaway, have
'forgotten the imperial palace whence they came,' and have gone down and
down and down, to live the fat, contented, low lives of the men who
find their good upon earth and not in heaven. Do you, dear brethren, try
to keep vivid the sense that you belong to another community. As Paul
puts it, with a metaphor drawn from Gentile instead of from Jewish life,
as in our text, 'Our citizenship is in heaven.' Philippi, to the
Christian Church of which that was said, was a Roman colony; and the
characteristics of a Roman colony were that the inhabitants were
enrolled as members of the Roman tribes, and had their names on the
register of Rome, and were governed by its laws. So we, living here in
an outlying province, have our names written in the 'Golden Book' of the
citizens of the new Jerusalem. Do not forget, if I might use a very
homely illustration, what parish your settlement is in; remember what
kingdom you belong to.
Again, if we are strangers of the Dispersion, let us live by our own
country's laws, and not by the codes that are current in this foreign
land where we are settled for a time. You remember what was the
complaint of the people in Persia to Esther's king? 'There is a people
whose laws are different from all the peoples that be upon the earth.'
That was an offence that could not be tolerated in a despotism that
ground everything down to the one level of a slavish uniformity. It will
be well for us Christian people if men look at us, and say, 'Ah, that
man has another rule of conduct from the one that prevails generally. I
wonder what is the underlying principle of his life; it evidently is not
the same as mine.'
Live by our King's law. People in our colonies, at least the officials,
set wonderful store by the approbation of the Colonial Office at home.
It does not matter what the colonial newspapers say, it is 'what will
they say in Downing Street?' And if a despatch goes out approving of
their conduct, neighbours may censure and sneer as they list. So we
Christians have to report to Home, and have so to live 'that whether
present or absent'--in a colony or in the mother country--'we may be
well pleasing unto Him.'
Keep up the honour and advance the interests of your own country. You
are here, among other reasons, to represent your King, and people take
their notions of Him very considerably from their experience of you. So
see to it that you live like the Master whom you say you serve.
The Russian Government sends out what are called military colonies,
studded along the frontier, with the one mission of extending the
empire. We are set along the frontier with the same mission. The
strangers are scattered. Congested, they would be less useful;
dispersed, they may push forward the frontiers. Seed in a seed-basket is
not in its right place; but sown broadcast over the field, it will be
waving wheat in a month or two. 'Ye are the salt of the earth'--salt is
_sprinkled_ over what it is intended to preserve. You are the strangers
of the Dispersion, that you may be the messengers of the Evangelisation.