_THE ETHICAL APPLICATION._

CHAPTER v. 13-vi. 10.

CHAPTER XXII.

_THE PERILS OF LIBERTY._

"For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only _use_ not

your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be

servants one to another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one

word, _even_ in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not

consumed one of another."--GAL. v. 13-15.

Our analysis has drawn a strong line across the middle of this

chapter. At ver. 13 the Apostle turns his mind in the ethical

direction. He has dismissed "the troublers" with contempt in ver. 12;

and until the close of the Epistle does not mention them again; he

addresses his readers on topics in which they are left out of view.

But this third, ethical section of the letter is still continuous

with its polemical and doctrinal argument.

It applies the maxim of ver. 6, "Faith works through love"; it

reminds the Galatians how they had "received the Spirit of God" (ch.

iii. 2, 3; iv. 6). The rancours and jealousies opposed to love,

the carnal mind that resists the Spirit--these are the objects

of Paul's dehortations. The moral disorders which the Apostle

seeks to correct arose largely out of the mischief caused by the

Judaizers. And his exhortations to love and good works are themselves

indirectly polemical. They vindicate Paul's gospel from the charge

of antinomianism, while they guard Christians from giving occasion

to the charge. They protect from exaggeration and abuse the liberty

already defended from legalistic encroachments. The more precious

and sacred is the freedom of Gentile believers, the more on the one

hand do those deserve punishment who would defraud them of it; and

the more earnestly must they on their part guard this treasure from

misuse and dishonour. In this sense ver. 13_a_ stands between the

sentence against the Circumcisionists in ver. 12 and the appeal to

the Galatians that follows. It repeats the proclamation of freedom

made in ver. 1, making it the ground at once of the judgement

pronounced against the foes of freedom and the admonition addressed

to its possessors. "_For you were called_ (summoned by God to enter

the kingdom of His Son) _with a view to liberty_--not to legal

bondage; nor, on the other hand, that you might run into licence

and give the reins to self-will and appetite--not _liberty for an

occasion to the flesh_."

I. Here lies _the danger of liberty_, especially when conferred on a

young, untrained nature, and in a newly emancipated community.

Freedom is a priceless boon; but it is a grave responsibility. It

has its temptations, as well as its joys and dignities. The Apostle

has spoken at length of the latter: it is the former that he has

now to urge. Keep your liberties, he seems to say; for Christ's

sake and for truth's sake hold them fast, guard them well. You are

God's regenerated sons. Never forego your high calling. God is on

your side; and those who assail you shall feel the weight of His

displeasure. Yes, "stand fast" in the liberty wherewith "Christ made

you free." But take care how you employ your freedom; "only use not

liberty for an occasion to the flesh." This significant _only_ turns

the other side of the medal, and bids us read the legend on its

reverse front. On the obverse we have found it written, "The Lord

knoweth them that are His" (2 Tim. ii. 19; comp. Gal. iv. 6, 9). This

is the side of _privilege_ and of grace, the spiritual side of the

Christian life. On the reverse it bears the motto, "Let every one

that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity." This is the

second, the ethical side of our calling, the side of _duty_, to which

we have now to turn.

The man, or the nation that has won its freedom, has won but half the

battle. It has conquered external foes; it has still to prevail over

itself. And this is the harder task. Men clamour for liberty, when

they mean licence; what they seek is the liberty of the flesh, not

of the Spirit, freedom to indulge their lusts and to trample on the

rights of others, the freedom of outlaws and brigands. The natural

man defines freedom as the power to do as he likes; not the right of

self-regulation, but the absence of regulation is what he desires.

And this is just what the Spirit of God will never allow (ver. 17).

When such a man has thrown off outward constraint and the dread of

punishment, there is no inward law to take its place. It is his

greed, his passion, his pride and ambition that call for freedom; not

his conscience. And to all such libertarians our Saviour says, "He

that committeth sin is _the slave of sin_." No tyrant is so vile, so

insatiable as our own self-indulged sin. A pitiable triumph, for a

man to have secured his religious liberty only to become the thrall

of his vices!

It is possible that some men accepted the gospel under the delusion

that it afforded a shelter for sin. The sensualist, deterred from his

indulgences by fear of the Law, joined in Paul's campaign against

it, imagining that Grace would give him larger freedom. If "where

sin abounded grace did superabound," he would say in his heart, Why

not sin the more, so that grace might have a greater victory? This

is no fanciful inference. Hypocrisy has learned to wear the garb

of evangelical zeal; and teachers of the gospel have not always

guarded sufficiently against this shocking perversion. Even the man

whose heart has been truly touched and changed by Divine grace,

when the freshness of his first love to Christ has passed away and

temptation renews its assaults, is liable to this deception. He may

begin to think that sin is less perilous, since forgiveness was so

easily obtained. He may presume that as a son of God, sealed by the

Spirit of adoption, he will not be allowed to fall, even though he

stumble. He is one of "God's elect"; what "shall separate him" from

the Divine love in Christ? In this assurance he holds a talisman that

secures his safety. What need to "watch and pray lest he enter into

temptation," when the Lord is his keeper? He is God's enfranchised

son; "all things are lawful" to him; "things present" as well as

"things to come" are his in Christ. By such reasonings his liberty

is turned into an _occasion to the flesh_. And men who before they

boasted themselves sons of God were restrained by the spirit of

bondage and fear, have found in this assurance the occasion, the

"starting-point" (ἀφορμή) for a more shameless course of evil.

In the view of Legalism, this is the natural outcome of Pauline

teaching. From the first it has been charged with fostering

lawlessness. In the Lutheran Reformation Rome pointed to the

Antinomians, and moralists of our own day speak of "canting

Evangelicals," just as the Judaists alleged the existence of immoral

Paulinists, whose conduct, they declared, was the proper fruit of the

preaching of emancipation from the Law. These, they would say to the

Apostle, are your spiritual children; they do but carry your doctrine

to its legitimate issue. This reproach the gospel has always had

to bear; there have been those, alas, amongst its professors whose

behaviour has given it plausibility. Sensualists will "turn the grace

of our God into lasciviousness;" swine will trample under their feet

the pure pearls of the gospel. But they are pure and precious none

the less.

This possibility is, however, a reason for the utmost watchfulness

in those who are stewards in the administration of the gospel. They

must be careful, like Paul, to make it abundantly clear that they

"establish" and do not "make void law through faith" (Rom. iii. 31).

There is an evangelical Ethics, as well as an evangelical Dogmatics.

The ethics of the Gospel have been too little studied and applied.

Hence much of the confessed failure of evangelical Churches in

preserving and building up the converts that they win.

II. Faith in Christ gives in truth a new efficacy to the moral law.

For it works through love; and love fulfils all laws in one (vv.

13_b_, 14). Where faith has this operation, liberty is safe; not

otherwise. _Love's slaves are the true freemen._

The legalist practically takes the same view of human nature as the

sensualist. He knows nothing of "the desire of the Spirit" arrayed

against that of the flesh (ver. 17), nothing of the mastery over

the heart that belongs to the love of Christ. In his analysis the

soul consists of so many desires, each blindly seeking its own

gratification, which must be drilled into order under external

pressure, by an intelligent application of law. Modern Utilitarians

agree with the ancient Judaists in their ethical philosophy.

Fear of punishment, hope of reward, the influence of the social

environment--these are, as they hold, the factors which create

character and shape our moral being. "Pain and pleasure," they tell

us, "are the masters of human life." Without the faith that man is

the child of God, formed in His image, we are practically shut up to

this suicidal theory of morals. _Suicidal_ we say, for it robs our

spiritual being of everything distinctive in it, of all that raises

the moral above the natural; it makes duty and personality illusions.

Judaism is a proof that this scheme of life is impracticable. For the

Pharisaic system which produced such deplorable moral results, was

an experiment in external ethics. It was in fact the application of

a highly developed and elaborate traditional code of law, enforced

by the strongest outward sanctions, _without personal loyalty to

the Divine Lawgiver_. In the national conscience of the Jews this

was wanting. Their faith in God, as the Epistle of James declares,

was a "dead" faith, a bundle of abstract notions. Loyalty is true

law-keeping. And loyalty springs from the personal relationship of

the subject and the law-making power. This nexus Christian sonship

supplies, in its purest and most exalted form. When I see in the

Lawgiver my Almighty Father, when the law has become incarnate in the

person of my Saviour, my heart's King and Lord, it wears a changed

aspect. "_His commandments_ are not grievous." Duty, required by Him,

is honour and delight. No abstract law, no "stream of tendency" can

command the homage or awaken the moral energy that is inspired by

"the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Here the Apostle traverses antinomian deductions from his doctrine of

liberty. In the Epistle to the Romans (ch. vi.) he deals at length

with the theoretical objection to his teaching on this subject.

He shows there that salvation by faith, rightly understood and

experienced, renders continuance in sin impossible. For faith in

Christ is in effect the union of the soul with Christ, first in His

death, and then consequently in His risen life, wherein He lives only

"to God." Nay, Christ Himself lives in the believing man (Gal. ii.

20). Instead of our sinning "because we are not under the law, but

under grace," this is precisely the reason why we need not and must

not sin. Faith joins us to the risen Christ, whose life we share--so

Paul argues--and we should not sin any more than He. Here, from the

practical standpoint, he lays it down that _faith works by love; and

love casts out sin, for it unites all laws in itself_. Faith links us

to Christ in heaven (Romans); faith fills us with His love on earth

(Galatians). So love, marked out in ver. 6 as the energy of faith,

now serves as the guard of liberty. Neither legalist nor law-breaker

understands the meaning of faith in Christ.

At this point Paul throws in one of his bold paradoxes. He has been

contending all through the Epistle for freedom, bidding his readers

scorn the legal yoke, breathing into them his own contempt for the

pettiness of Judaistic ceremonial. But now he turns round suddenly

and bids them _be slaves_: "but let love," he says, "make you bondmen

to each other" (ver. 13). Instead of breaking bonds, he seeks to

create stronger bonds, stronger because dearer. Paul preaches

no gospel of individualism, of egotistic salvation-seeking. The

self-sacrifice of Christ becomes in turn a principle of sacrifice in

those who receive it. Paul's own ideal is, to be "conformed to His

death" (Phil. iii. 10). There is nothing anarchic or self-asserting

in his plea for freedom. He opposes the law of Pharisaic externalism

in the interests of the law of Christian love. The yoke of Judaism

must be broken, its bonds cast aside, in order to give free play to

"the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." Faith transfers

authority from flesh to spirit, giving it a surer seat, a more

effective, and in reality more lawful command over man's nature. It

restores the normal equipoise of the soul. Now the Divine law is

written on "the tablets of the heart"; and this makes it far more

sovereign than when engraved on the stone slabs of Sinai. Love and

law for the believer in Christ are fused into one. In this union

law loses nothing of its holy severity; and love nothing of its

tenderness. United they constitute the Christian sense of _duty_,

whose sternest exactions are enforced by gratitude and devotion.

And love is ever conqueror. To it toil and endurance that mock the

achievement of other powers, are a light thing. Needing neither bribe

nor threat, love labours, waits, braves a thousand dangers, keeps the

hands busy, the eye keen and watchful, the feet running to and fro

untired through the longest day. There is no industry, no ingenuity

like that of love. Love makes the mother the slave of the babe at

her breast, and wins from the friend for his friend service that no

compulsion could exact, rendered in pure gladness and free-will. Its

power alone calls forth what is best and strongest in us all. Love is

mightier than death. In Jesus Christ, love has "laid down life for

its friends"; the fulness of life has encountered and overcome the

uttermost of death. Love esteems it bondage to be prevented, liberty

only to be allowed to serve.

Without love, freedom is an empty boon. It brings no ease, no joy

of heart. It is objectless and listless. Bereft of faith and love,

though possessing the most perfect independence, the soul drifts

along like a ship rudderless and masterless, with neither haven nor

horizon. Wordsworth, in his Ode to Duty, has finely expressed the

weariness that comes of such liberty, unguided by an inward law and a

Divine ideal:

"Me this unchartered freedom tires;

I feel the weight of chance desires:

My hopes no more must change their name;

I long for a repose that ever is the same."

But on the other hand,

"Serene will be our days and bright,

And happy will our nature be,

When love is an unerring light,

And joy its own security."

This "royal law" (Jam. ii. 8) blends with its sovereignty of power

the charm of simplicity. "The whole law," says the Apostle, "hath

been fulfilled in one word--LOVE" (ver. 14). The Master said, "I came

not to destroy the law, but to fulfil." The key to His fulfilment was

given in the declaration of the twofold command of love to God and

to our neighbour. "On these two hang all the law and the prophets."

Hence the Apostle's phrase, _hath been fulfilled_. This unification

of the moral code is accomplished. Christ's life and death have

given to this truth full expression and universal currency. Love's

fulfilment of law stands before us a positive attainment, an

incontestable fact. Paul does not speak here, as in Rom. xiii. 9, of

the comprehending, the "summing up" of all laws in one; but of the

bringing of law to its completion, its realisation and consummation

in the love of Christ. "O how I love Thy law," said the purer spirit

of the Old Testament. "Thy love is my law," says the true spirit of

the New.

It is remarkable that this supreme principle of Christian ethics

is first enunciated in the most legal part of the Old Testament.

Leviticus is the Book of the Priestly Legislation. It is chiefly

occupied with ceremonial and civil regulations. Yet in the midst

of the legal minutiæ is set this sublime and simple rule, than

which Jesus Christ could prescribe nothing more Divine: _Thou shalt

love thy neighbour as thyself_ (Levit. xix. 18). This sentence is

the conclusion of a series of directions (vv. 9-18) forbidding

unneighbourly conduct, each of them sealed with the declaration,

"I am Jehovah." This brief code of brotherly love breathes a truly

Christian spirit; it is a beautiful expression of "the law of

kindness" that is on the lips and in the heart of the child of God.

We find in the law-book of Mosaism, side by side with elaborate rules

of sacrificial ritual and the homeliest details touching the life

of a rude agricultural people, conceptions of God and of duty of

surpassing loftiness and purity, such as meet us in the religion of

no other ancient nation.

The law, therefore, opposed and cast out in the name of faith, is

brought in again under the shield of love. "If ye love Me," said

Jesus, "_keep my commandments_." Love reconciles law and faith. Law

by itself can but prohibit this and that injury to one's neighbour,

when they are likely to arise. Love excludes the doing of any injury;

it "worketh no ill to its neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling

of the law" (Rom. xiii. 10). That which law restrains or condemns

after the fact, love renders impossible beforehand. It is not content

with the negative prevention of wrong; it "overcomes" and displaces

"evil with good."

"What law could not do," with all its multiplied enactments and

redoubled threats, faith "working by love" has accomplished at a

stroke. "The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who

walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Rom. viii. 3, 4).

Gentile Christians have been raised to the level of a righteousness

"exceeding that of scribes and pharisees" (Matt. v. 20). The flesh

which defied law's terrors and evaded its control, is subdued by the

love of Christ. Law created the need of salvation; it defined its

conditions and the direction which it must take. But there its power

ceased. It could not change the sinful heart. It supplied no motive

adequate to secure obedience. The moralist errs in substituting duty

for love, works for faith. He would make the rule furnish the motive,

the path supply strength to walk in it. The distinction of the gospel

is that it is "_the power_ of God unto salvation," while the law is

"_weak_ through the flesh."

Paul does not therefore override the law in the interest of faith.

Quite the contrary, he establishes, he magnifies it. His theology

rests on the idea of Righteousness, which is strictly a legal

conception. But he puts the law in its proper place. He secures

for it the alliance of love. The legalist, desiring to exalt law,

in reality stultifies it. Striving to make it omnipotent, he makes

it impotent. In the Apostle's teaching, law is the rule, faith the

spring of action. Law marks the path, love gives the will and power

to follow it. Who then are the truest friends of law--Legalists or

Paulinists, moralists or evangelicals?

III. Alas, the Galatians at the present moment afford a spectacle

far different from the ideal which Paul has drawn. Instead of

"serving each other in love," they are "biting and devouring one

another." The Church is in danger of being "consumed" by their

jealousies and quarrels (ver. 15).

These Asiatic Gauls were men of a warm temperament, quick to resent

wrong and prone to imagine it. The dissensions excited by the Judaic

controversy had excited their combative temper to an unusual degree.

"Biting" describes the wounding and exasperating effect of the manner

in which their contentions were carried on; "devour" warns them of

its destructiveness. Taunts were hurled across the field of debate;

vituperation supplied the lack of argument. Differences of opinion

engendered private feuds and rankling injuries. In Corinth the spirit

of discord had taken a factious form. It arrayed men in conflicting

parties, with their distinctive watchwords and badges and sectional

platforms. In these Churches it bore fruit in personal affronts

and quarrels, in an angry, vindictive temper, which spread through

the Galatian societies and broke out in every possible form of

contention (v. 20). If this state of things continued, the Churches

of Galatia would cease to exist. Their liberty would end in complete

disintegration.

Like some other communities, the Galatian Christians were oscillating

between despotism and anarchy; they had not attained the equilibrium

of a sober, ordered liberty, the freedom of a manly self-control.

They had not sufficient respect either for their own or for each

other's rights. Some men must be bridled or they will "bite;" they

must wear the yoke or they run wild. They are incapable of being

a law unto themselves. They have not faith enough to make them

steadfast, nor love enough to be an inward guide, nor the Spirit of

God in measure sufficient to overcome the vanity and self-indulgence

of the flesh. But the Apostle still hopes to see his Galatian

disciples worthy of their calling as sons of God. He points out

to them the narrow but sure path that leads between the desert of

legalism on the one hand, and the gulf of anarchy and licence on the

other.

* * * * *

The problem of the nature and conditions of Christian liberty

occupies the Apostle's mind in different ways in all the letters of

this period. The young Churches of the Gentiles were in the gravest

peril. They had come out of Egypt to enter the Promised Land, the

heritage of the sons of God. The Judaists sought to turn them aside

into the Sinaitic wilderness of Mosaism; while their old habits

and associations powerfully tended to draw them back into heathen

immorality. Legalism and licence were the Scylla and Charybdis on

either hand, between which it needed the most firm and skilful

pilotage to steer the bark of the Church. The helm of the vessel is

in Paul's hands. And, through the grace of God, he did not fail in

his task. It is in _the love of Christ_ that the Apostle found his

guiding light. "Love," he has written, "never faileth."

Love is the handmaid of faith, and the firstborn fruit of the Spirit

of Christ (vv. 6, 22). Blending with the law, love refashions it,

changing it into its own image. Thus moulded and transfigured, law

is no longer an exterior yoke, a system of restraint and penalty; it

becomes an inner, sweet constraint. Upon the child of God it acts as

an organic and formative energy, the principle of his regenerated

being, which charges with its renovating influence all the springs of

life. Evil is met no longer by a merely outward opposition, but by

a repugnance proceeding from within. "The Spirit lusteth against the

flesh" (v. 17). The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus becomes

the law of the man's new nature. God known and loved in Christ is the

central object of his life. Within the Divine kingdom so created,

the realm of love and of the Spirit, the soul henceforth dwells; and

under that kingdom it places for itself all other souls, loved like

itself in Christ.

CHAPTER XXIII.

_CHRIST'S SPIRIT AND HUMAN FLESH._

[_He showeth the battell of the flesh and the Spirit;

and the fruits of them both._ Heading in Genevan Bible.]

"But I say, Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust

of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and

the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the one

to the other; that ye may not do the things that ye would. But

if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law.... And

they that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the

passions and the lusts thereof. If we live by the Spirit, by the

Spirit let us also walk. Let us not be vainglorious, provoking

one another, envying one another."--GAL. v. 16-26.

Love is the guard of Christian freedom. The Holy Spirit is its guide.

These principles accomplish what the law could never do. It withheld

liberty, and yet did not give purity. The Spirit of love and of

sonship bestows both, establishing a happy, ordered freedom, the

liberty of the sons of God.

From the first of these two factors of Christian ethics the Apostle

passes in ver. 16 to the second. He conducts us from the consequence

to the cause, from the human aspect of spiritual freedom to the

Divine. Love, he has said, fulfils all laws in one. It casts out evil

from the heart; it stays the injurious hand and tongue; and makes

it impossible for liberty to give the rein to any wanton or selfish

impulse. But the law of love is no natural, automatic impulse. It is

a Divine inspiration. "Love is of God." It is the characteristic

"fruit of the Spirit" of adoption (ver. 22), implanted and nourished

from above. When I bid you "by love serve each other," the Apostle

says, I do not expect you to keep this law of yourselves, by force of

native goodness: I know how contrary it is to your Galatic nature;

"but I say, walk in the Spirit," and this will be an easy yoke;

to "fulfil the desire of the flesh" will then be for you a thing

impossible.

The word _Spirit_ (πνεύματι) is written indefinitely; but the

Galatians knew well what Spirit the Apostle meant. It is "the Spirit"

of whom he has spoken so often in this letter, the Holy Spirit of

God, who had entered their hearts when they first believed in Christ

and taught them to call God Father. He gave them their freedom: He

will teach them how to use it. The absence of the definite article in

_Pneuma_ does not destroy its personal force, but allows it at the

same time a broad, qualitative import, corresponding to that of the

opposed "desire of the flesh." The walk governed "by the Spirit" is

a _spiritual_ walk. As for the interpretation of the _dative_ case

(rendered variously _by_, or _in_, or even _for the Spirit_), that is

determined by the meaning of the noun itself. "The Spirit" is not the

path "in" which one walks; rather He supplies _the motive principle,

the directing influence_ of the new life.[139] Ver. 16 is interpreted

by vv. 18 and 25. To "walk in the Spirit" is to be "led by the

Spirit"; it is so to "live in the Spirit" that one habitually "moves"

(_marches_: ver. 25) under His direction.

[139] The construction of ch. vi. 16; Rom. iv. 12; Phil. iii. 16,

is not strictly analogous.

This conception of the indwelling Spirit of God as the actuating

power of the Christian's moral life predominates in the rest of this

chapter. We shall pursue the general line of the Apostle's teaching

on the subject in the present Chapter, leaving for future exposition

the detailed enumeration of the "fruit of the Spirit" and "works

of the flesh" contained in vv. 19-23. This antithesis of Flesh and

Spirit presents the following considerations:--(1) _the diametrical

opposition of the two forces_; (2) _the effect of the predominance of

one or the other_; (3) _the mastery over the flesh which belongs to

those who are Christ's_. In a word, Christ's Spirit is the absolute

antagonist and the sure vanquisher of our sinful human flesh.

I. "I say, Walk by the Spirit, and you will verily not fulfil

the lust of the flesh." On what ground does this bold assurance

rest? Because, the Apostle replies, _the Spirit and the flesh are

opposites_ (ver. 17). Each is bent on destroying the ascendency of

the other. Their cravings and tendencies stand opposed at every

point. Where the former rules, the latter must succumb. "For the

flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh."

The verb _lust_ in Greek, as in English, bears commonly an evil

sense; but not necessarily so, nor by derivation. It is a sad proof

of human corruption that in all languages words denoting strong

desire tend to an impure significance. Paul extends to "the desire

of the Spirit" the term which has just been used of "the lust of

the flesh," in this way sharpening the antithesis.[140] Words

appropriated to the vocabulary of the flesh and degraded by its use,

may be turned sometimes to good account and employed in the service

of the Holy Spirit, whose influence redeems our speech and purges

the uncleanness of our lips.

[140] Comp. Jas. iv. 5: "The Spirit which He made to dwell in

us, yearneth even unto jealous envy" (_R. V. margin_); also the

double use of ζηλόω in ch. iv. 17, 18 (Chapter XVIII, pp. 279,

280.).

The opposition here affirmed exists on the widest scale. All history

is a battlefield for the struggle between God's Spirit and man's

rebellious flesh. In the soul of a half-sanctified Christian, and

in Churches like those of Corinth and Galatia whose members are

"yet carnal and walk as men," the conflict is patent. The Spirit of

Christ has established His rule in the heart; but His supremacy is

challenged by the insurrection of the carnal powers. The contest thus

revived in the soul of the Christian is internecine; it is that of

the kingdoms of light and darkness, of the opposite poles of good

and evil. It is an incident in the war of human sin against the

Holy Spirit of God, which extends over all time and all human life.

Every lust, every act or thought of evil is directed, knowingly or

unknowingly, against the authority of the Holy Spirit, against the

presence and the rights of God immanent in the creature. Nor is there

any restraint upon evil, any influence counteracting it in man or

nation or race, which does not proceed from the Spirit of the Lord.

The spirit of man has never been without a Divine Paraclete. "God

hath not left Himself without witness" to any; and "it is the Spirit

that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." The Spirit of

truth, the Holy Spirit, is the Spirit of all truth and holiness. In

the "truth as it is in Jesus" He possesses His highest instrument.

But from the beginning it was His office to be God's Advocate, to

uphold law, to convict the conscience, to inspire the hope of mercy,

to impart moral strength and freedom. We "believe in the Holy Ghost,

the Lord and Giver of life."

This war of Spirit and Flesh is first ostensibly declared in the

words of Gen. vi. 3. This passage indicates the moral reaction of

God's Spirit against the world's corruption, and the protest which

in the darkest periods of human depravity He has maintained. God had

allowed men to do despite to His good Spirit. But it cannot always

be so. A time comes when, outraged and defied, He withdraws His

influence from men and from communities; and the Flesh bears them

along to swift destruction. So it was in the world before the Flood.

So largely amongst later heathen peoples, when God "suffered all

nations to walk in their own ways." Even the Mosaic law had proved

rather a substitute than a medium for the free action of the Spirit

of God on men. "The law was spiritual," but "weak through the flesh."

It denounced the guilt which it was powerless to avert.

With the advent of Christ all this is changed. The Spirit of God is

now, for the first time, sent forth in His proper character and His

full energy. At last His victory draws near. He comes as the Spirit

of Christ and the Father, "_poured out_ upon all flesh." "A new heart

will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you. I will put

My Spirit within you" (Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27): this was the great hope

of prophecy; and it is realised. The Spirit of God's Son regenerates

the human heart, subdues the flesh, and establishes the communion

of God with men. The reign of the Spirit on earth was the immediate

purpose of the manifestation of Jesus Christ.

But what does Paul really mean by "the flesh?" It includes everything

that is not "of the Spirit." It signifies the entire potency of sin.

It is the contra-spiritual, the undivine in man. Its "works," as we

find in vv. 20, 21, are not bodily vices only, but include every

form of moral debasement and aberration. _Flesh_ in the Apostle's

vocabulary follows the term _spirit_, and deepens and enlarges its

meaning precisely as the latter does. Where _spirit_ denotes the

supersensible in man, _flesh_ is the sensible, the bodily nature

as such. When _spirit_ rises into the supernatural and superhuman,

_flesh_ becomes the natural, the human by consequence. When _spirit_

receives its highest signification, denoting the holy Effluence of

God, His personal presence in the world, _flesh_ sinks to its lowest

and represents unrenewed nature, the evil principle oppugnant and

alien to God. It is identical with _sin_. But in this profound moral

significance the term is more than a figure. Under its use _the body_

is marked out, not indeed as the cause, but as the instrument, the

vehicle of sin. Sin has incorporated itself with our organic life,

and extends its empire over the material world. When the Apostle

speaks of "the body of sin" and "of death," and bids us "mortify the

deeds of the body" and "the members which are upon the earth,"[141]

his expressions are not to be resolved into metaphors.

[141] See Rom. vi. 6, 12; vii. 4, 5, 23, 24; viii. 10-13; Col.

ii. 11-13; iii. 5.

On this definition of the terms, it is manifest that the antagonism

of the Flesh and Spirit is fundamental. They can never come to terms

with each other, nor dwell permanently in the same being. Sin must be

extirpated, or the Holy Spirit will finally depart. The struggle must

come to a definitive issue. Human character tends every day to a more

determinate form; and an hour comes in each case when the victory

of flesh or spirit is irrevocably fixed, when "the filthy" will

henceforth "be filthy still," and "the holy, holy still" (Rev. xxii.

11).

The last clause of ver. 17, "that ye may not do the things that

ye would," has been variously interpreted. The rendering of the

Authorized Version ("so that ye _cannot_") is perilously misleading.

Is it that the flesh prevents the Galatians doing the good they

would? Or is the Spirit to prevent them doing the evil they otherwise

would? Or are both these oppositions in existence at once, so that

they waver between good and evil, leading a partly spiritual, partly

carnal life, consistent neither in right nor wrong? The last is the

actual state of the case. Paul is perplexed about them (ch. iv.

20); they are in doubt about themselves. They did not "walk in the

Spirit," they were not true to their Christian principles; the flesh

was too strong for that. Nor would they break away from Christ and

follow the bent of their lower nature; the Holy Spirit held them back

from doing this. So they have two wills,--or practically none. This

state of things was designed by God,--"_in order that_ ye may not

do the things ye haply would;" it accords with the methods of His

government. Irresolution is the necessary effect of the course the

Galatians had pursued. So far they stopped short of apostasy; and

this restraint witnessed to the power of the Holy Spirit still at

work in their midst (ch. iii. 5; vi. 1). Let this Divine hand cease

to check them, and the flesh would carry them, with the full momentum

of their will, to spiritual ruin. Their condition is just now one

of suspense. They are poised in a kind of moral equilibrium, which

cannot continue long, but in which, while it lasts, the action of the

conflicting forces of Flesh and Spirit is strikingly manifest.

II. These two principles in their development lead to entirely

opposite results.

(1) _The works of the flesh_--"manifest" alas, both then and

now--_exclude from the kingdom of God_. "I tell you beforehand," the

Apostle writes, "as I have already told you: they who practise such

things will not inherit God's kingdom" (v. 21).

This warning is essential to Paul's gospel (Rom. ii. 16); it is

good news for a world where wrong so often and so insultingly

triumphs, that there is a judgement to come. Whatever may be our

own lot in the great award, we rejoice to believe that there will

be a righteous settlement of human affairs, complete and final; and

that this settlement is in the hands of Jesus Christ. In view of

His tribunal the Apostle goes about "_warning_ and teaching every

man." And this is his constant note, amongst profligate heathen, or

hypocritical Jews, or backsliding and antinomian Christians,--"The

unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God." For that kingdom

is, above all, _righteousness_. Men of fleshly minds, in the nature

of things, have no place in it. They are blind to its light, dead to

its influence, at war with its aims and principles. "If we say that

we have fellowship with Him--the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--and

walk in darkness, _we lie_" (1 John i. 6). "Those who do such things"

forfeit by doing them the character of sons of God. His children

seek to be "perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect." They are

"blameless and harmless, imitators of God, walking in love as Christ

loved us" (Phil. ii. 15; Eph. v. 1, 2). The Spirit of God's Son is

a spirit of love and peace, of temperance and gentleness (v. 22).

If these fruits are wanting, the Spirit of Christ is not in us and

we are none of His. We are without the one thing by which He said

all men would know His disciples (John xiii. 35). When the Galatians

"bite and devour one another," they resemble Ishmael the persecutor

(ch. iv. 29), rather than the gentle Isaac, heir of the Covenant.

"If children, _then heirs_." Future destiny turns upon present

character. The Spirit of God's Son, with His fruit of love and peace,

is "the earnest of our inheritance, sealing us against the day of

redemption" (Eph. i. 14; iv. 30). By selfish tempers and fleshly

indulgences He is driven from the soul; and Losing Him, it is shut

out from the kingdom of grace on earth, and from the glory of the

redeemed. "There shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean;"

such is the excommunication written above the gate of the Heavenly

City (Rev. xxi. 27). This sentence of the Apocalypse puts a final

seal upon the teaching of Scripture. The God of revelation is the

Holy One; His Spirit is the Holy Spirit; His kingdom is the kingdom

of the saints, whose atmosphere burns like fire against all impurity.

Concerning the men of the flesh the Apostle can only say, "Whose end

is perdition" (Phil. iii. 19).

Writing to the Corinthians, Paul entreats his readers not to be

deceived upon this point (1 Cor. vi. 9, 10; Eph. v. 5). It seems so

obvious, so necessary a principle, that one wonders how it should

be mistaken, why he is compelled to reiterate it as he does in this

place. And yet this has been a common delusion. No form of religion

has escaped being touched by Antinomianism. It is the divorce of

piety from morality. It is the disposition to think that ceremonial

works on the one hand, or faith on the other, supersede the ethical

conditions of harmony with God. Foisting itself on evangelical

doctrine this error leads men to assume that salvation is the mere

pardon of sin. The sinner appears to imagine he is saved in order

to remain a sinner. He treats God's mercy as a kind of bank, on

which he may draw as often as his offences past or future may

require. He does not understand that sanctification is the sequel of

justification, that the evidence of a true pardon lies in a changed

heart that loathes sin.

(2) Of the opposite principle the Apostle states not the ultimate,

but the more immediate consequences. "Led by the Spirit, _ye are not

under the law_" (ver. 18); and "Against such things--love, peace,

goodness, and the like--_there is no law_" (ver. 23).

The declaration of ver. 18 is made with a certain abruptness.

Paul has just said, in ver. 17, that the Spirit is the appointed

antagonist _of the flesh_. And now he adds, that if we yield

ourselves to His influence we shall be no longer _under the law_.

This identification of sin and the law was established in ch. ii.

16-18; iii. 10-22. The law by itself, the Apostle showed, does

not overcome sin, but aggravates it; it shuts men up the hopeless

prisoners of their own past mis-doing. To be "under law" is to be

in the position of Ishmael, the slave-born and finally outcast son,

whose nature and temper are of the flesh (ch. iv. 21-31). After all

this we can understand his writing _law_ for _sin_ in this passage,

just as in 1 Cor. xv. 56 he calls "the law the _power_ of sin." To be

under law was, in Paul's view, to be held consciously in the grasp

of sin. This was the condition to which Legalism would reduce the

Galatians. From this calamity the Spirit of Christ would keep them

free.

The phrase "under law" reminds us once more of the imperilled

liberty of the Galatians. Their spiritual freedom and their moral

safety were assailed in common. In ver. 16 he had said, "Let the

Holy Spirit guide you, and you will vanquish sin"; and now, "By

the same guidance you will escape the oppressive yoke of the law."

Freedom from sin, freedom from the Jewish law--these two liberties

were virtually one. "Sin shall not lord it over you, because ye are

not under law, but under grace" (Rom. vi. 14). Ver. 23 explains this

double freedom. Those who possess the Spirit of Christ bear His

moral fruits. Their life fulfils the demands of the law, _without

being due to its compulsion_. Law can say nothing against them. It

did not produce this fruit; but it is bound to approve it. It has no

hold on the men of the Spirit, no charge to bring against them. Its

requirements are satisfied; its constraints and threatenings are laid

aside.

Law therefore, in its Judaistic sense and application, has been

abolished since "faith has come." No longer does it rule the soul

by fear and compulsion. This office, necessary once for the infant

heirs of the Covenant, it has no right to exercise over spiritual

men. Law cannot give life (ch. iii. 21). This is the prerogative of

the Spirit of God. Law says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God;"

but it never inspired such love in any man's breast. If he does so

love, the law approves him, without claiming credit to itself for the

fact. If he does not love his God, law condemns him and brands him a

transgressor. But "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts _by

the Holy Ghost_." The teaching of this paragraph on the relation of

the believer in Christ to God's law is summed up in the words of Rom.

viii. 2: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free

from the law of sin and death." Law has become my friend, instead of

my enemy and accuser. For God's Spirit fills my soul with the love in

which its fulfilment is contained. And now eternal life is the goal

that stands in my view, in place of the death with the prospect of

which, as a man of the flesh, the law appalled me.

III. We see then that _deliverance from sin belongs_ not to the

subjects of the law, but _to the freemen of the Spirit_. This

deliverance, promised in ver. 16, is declared in ver. 24 as an

accomplished fact. "Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the

lust of the flesh.... They that are of Christ Jesus have crucified

the flesh with its passions and its lusts." The tyranny of the flesh

is ended for those who are "in Christ Jesus." His cross has slain

their sins. The entrance of His Spirit imports the death of all

carnal affections.

"They who are Christ's did crucify the flesh." This is the moral

application of Paul's mystical doctrine, central to all his theology,

of the believer's union with the Redeemer (see Chapter X, pp.

156-160). "Christ in me--I in Him:" there is Paul's secret. He was

"one spirit" with Jesus Christ--dying, risen, ascended, reigning,

returning in glory. His old self, his old world was dead and

gone--slain by Christ's cross, buried in His grave (ch. ii. 20; vi.

14). And the flesh, common to the evil world and the evil self--that

above all was crucified. The death of shame and legal penalty, the

curse of God had overtaken it in the death of Jesus Christ. Christ

has risen, the "Lord of the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18), who "could not

be holden" by the death which fell on "the body of His flesh." They

who are Christ's rose with Him; while "the flesh of sin" stays in His

grave. Faith sees it there, and leaves it there. We "reckon ourselves

dead unto sin, and living unto God, in Christ Jesus." For such men,

the flesh that was once--imperious, importunate, law-defying--is no

more. It has received its death-stroke. "God, sending His own Son

in the likeness of sinful flesh and a sacrifice for sin, _condemned

sin in the flesh_" (Rom. viii. 3). Sin is smitten with the lightning

of His anger. Doom has taken hold of it. Destroyed already in

principle, it only waits for men to know this and to understand what

has been done, till it shall perish everywhere. The destruction of

the sinful flesh--more strictly of "sin in the flesh"--occurred, as

Paul understood the matter, virtually and potentially in the moment

of Christ's death. It was our human flesh that was crucified in

Him--slain on the cross because, though in Him not personally sinful,

yet in us with whom He had made Himself one, it was steeped in sin.

Our sinful flesh hung upon His cross; it has risen, cleansed and

sanctified, from His grave.

What was then accomplished in principle when "One died for all,"

is realised in point of fact when we are "baptized into His

death"--when, that is to say, faith makes His death ours and its

virtue passes into the soul. The scene of the cross is inwardly

rehearsed. The wounds which pierced the Redeemer's flesh and spirit

now pierce our consciences. It is a veritable crucifixion through

which the soul enters into communion with its risen Saviour, and

learns to live His life. Nor is its sanctification complete till it

is "conformed unto His death" (Phil. iii. 10). So with all his train

of "passions and of lusts," the "old man" is fastened and nailed down

upon the new, interior Calvary, set up in each penitent and believing

heart. The flesh may still, as in these Galatians, give mournful

evidence of life. But it has no right to exist a single hour. _De

jure_ it is dead--dead in the reckoning of faith. It may die a

lingering, protracted death, and make convulsive struggles; but die

it must in all who are of Christ Jesus.

* * * * *

Let the Galatians consider what their calling of God signified. Let

them recall the prospects which opened before them in the days of

their first faith in Christ, the love that glowed in their hearts,

the energy with which the Holy Spirit wrought upon their nature. Let

them know how truly they were called to liberty, and in good earnest

were made sons of God. They have only to continue as heretofore to be

led by the Spirit of Christ and to march forward along the path on

which they had entered, and neither Jewish law nor their own lawless

flesh will be able to bring them into bondage. "Where the Spirit of

the Lord is, there is liberty." Where He is not, there is legalism,

or licence; or, it may be, both at once.

CHAPTER XXIV.

_THE WORKS OF THE FLESH._

"Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are _these_,

fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery,

enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions,

parties, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of

the which I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that they

which practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of

God."--GAL. v. 19-21.

The tree is known by its fruits: the flesh by its "works." And

these works are "manifest." The field of the world--"this present

evil world" (ch. i. 4)--exhibits them in rank abundance. Perhaps at

no time was the civilised world so depraved and godless as in the

first century of the Christian era, when Tiberius, Caligula, Nero,

Domitian, wore the imperial purple and posed as masters of the earth.

It was the cruelty and vileness of the times which culminated in

these deified monsters. By no accident was mankind cursed at this

epoch with such a race of rulers. The world that worshipped them was

worthy of them. Vice appeared in its most revolting and abandoned

forms. Wickedness was rampant and triumphant. The age of the early

Roman Empire has left a foul mark in human history and literature.

Let Tacitus and Juvenal speak for it.

Paul's enumeration of the current vices in this passage has however

a character of its own. It differs from the descriptions drawn by

the same hand in other Epistles; and this difference is due doubtless

to the character of his readers. Their temperament was sanguine;

their disposition frank and impulsive. Sins of lying and injustice,

conspicuous in other lists, are not found in this. From these vices

the Galatic nature was comparatively free. Sensual sins and sins

of passion--_unchastity_, _vindictiveness_, _intemperance_--occupy

the field. To these must be added _idolatry_, common to the Pagan

world. Gentile idolatry was allied with the practice of impurity on

the one side; and on the other, through the evil of "sorcery," with

"enmities" and "jealousies." So that these works of the flesh belong

to four distinct types of depravity; three of which come under the

head of immorality, while the fourth is the universal principle of

Pagan irreligion, being in turn both cause and effect of the moral

debasement connected with it.

I. "The works of the flesh are these--_fornication_, _uncleanness_,

_lasciviousness_." A dark beginning! Sins of impurity find a place

in every picture of Gentile morals given by the Apostle. In whatever

direction he writes--to Romans or Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians,

or Thessalonians--it is always necessary to warn against these

evils. They are equally "manifest" in heathen literature. The extent

to which they stain the pages of the Greek and Roman classics sets

a heavy discount against their value as instruments of Christian

education. Civilised society in Paul's day was steeped in sexual

corruption.

_Fornication_ was practically universal. Few were found, even among

severe moralists, to condemn it. The overthrow of the splendid

classical civilisation, due to the extinction of manly virtues in the

dominant race, may be traced largely to this cause. Brave men are

the sons of pure women. John in the Apocalypse has written on the

brow of Rome, "the great city which reigneth over the kings of the

earth," this legend: "_Babylon the great, mother of harlots_" (Rev.

xvii. 5). Whatever symbolic meaning the saying has, in its literal

sense it was terribly true. Our modern Babylons, unless they purge

themselves, may earn the same title and the same doom.

In writing to Corinth, the metropolis of Greek licentiousness, Paul

deals very solemnly and explicitly with this vice. He teaches that

this sin, above others, is committed "against the man's own body." It

is a prostitution of the physical nature which Jesus Christ wore and

still wears, which He claims for the temple of His Spirit, and will

raise from the dead to share His immortality. Impurity degrades the

body, and it affronts in an especial degree "the Holy Spirit which we

have from God." Therefore it stands first amongst these "works of the

flesh" in which it shows itself hostile and repugnant to the Spirit

of our Divine sonship. "Joined to the harlot" in "one body," the vile

offender gives himself over in compact and communion to the dominion

of the flesh, as truly as he who is "joined to the Lord" is "one

spirit with Him" (1 Cor. vi. 13-20).

On this subject it is difficult to speak faithfully and yet directly.

There are many happily in our sheltered Christian homes who scarcely

know of the existence of this heathenish vice, except as it is named

in Scripture. To them it is an evil of the past, a nameless thing of

darkness. And it is well it should be so. Knowledge of its horrors

may be suitable for seasoned social reformers, and necessary to

the publicist who must understand the worst as well as the best

of the world he has to serve; but common decency forbids its being

put within the reach of boys and innocent maidens. Newspapers and

novels which reek of the divorce-court and trade in the garbage of

human life, in "things of which it is a shame even to speak," are

no more fit for ordinary consumption than the air of the pest-house

is for breathing. They are sheer poison to the young imagination,

which should be fed on whatsoever things are honourable and pure and

lovely. But bodily self-respect must be learned in good time. Modesty

of feeling and chastity of speech must adorn our youth. "Let marriage

be honourable in the eyes of all," let the old chivalrous sentiments

of reverence and gentleness towards women be renewed in our sons, and

our country's future is safe. Perhaps in our revolt from Mariolatry

we Protestants have too much forgotten the honour paid by Jesus to

the Virgin Mother, and the sacredness which His birth has conferred

on motherhood. "Blessed," said the heavenly voice, "art thou among

women." All our sisters are blessed and dignified in her, the holy

"mother of our Lord" (Luke i. 42, 43).[142]

[142] Comp., 1 Tim. ii. 13-15: _saved through the

childbearing_--_i.e._, surely, the bearing of the Child Jesus,

_the seed of the woman_.

Wherever, and in whatever form, the offence exists which violates

this relationship, Paul's fiery interdict is ready to be launched

upon it. The anger of Jesus burned against this sin. In the wanton

look He discerns the crime of adultery, which in the Mosaic law was

punished with death by stoning. "The Lord is an avenger in all these

things"--in everything that touches the honour of the human person

and the sanctity of wedded life (1 Thess. iv. 1-8). The interests

that abet whoredom should find in the Church of Jesus Christ an

organization pledged to relentless war against them. The man known

to practise this wickedness is an enemy of Christ and of his race.

He should be shunned as we would shun a notorious liar--or a fallen

woman. Paul's rule is explicit, and binding on all Christians,

concerning "the fornicator, the drunkard, the extortioner--with such

a one no, not to eat" (1 Cor. v. 9-11). That Church little deserves

the name of a Church of Christ, which has not means of discipline

sufficient to fence its communion from the polluting presence of

"such a one."

_Uncleanness_ and _lasciviousness_ are companions of the more

specific impurity. The former is the general quality of this class

of evils, and includes whatever is contaminating in word or look, in

gesture or in dress, in thought or sentiment. "Lasciviousness" is

uncleanness open and shameless. The filthy jest, the ogling glance,

the debauched and sensual face, these tell their own tale; they speak

of a soul that has rolled in corruption till respect for virtue has

died out of it. In this direction "the works of the flesh" can go no

further. A lascivious human creature is loathsomeness itself. To see

it is like looking through a door into hell.

A leading critic of our own times has, under this word of Paul's, put

his finger upon the plague-spot in the national life of our Gallic

neighbours--_Aselgeia_, or Wantonness. There may be a certain truth

in this charge. Their disposition in several respects resembles that

of Paul's Galatians. But we can scarcely afford to reproach others

on this score. English society is none too clean. _Home_ is for our

people everywhere, thank God, the nursery of innocence. But outside

its shelter, and beyond the reach of the mother's voice, how many

perils await the weak and unwary. In the night-streets of the city

the "strange woman" spreads her net, "whose feet go down to death."

In workshops and business-offices too often coarse and vile language

goes on unchecked, and one unchaste mind will infect a whole circle.

Schools, wanting in moral discipline, may become seminaries of

impurity. There are crowded quarters in large towns, and wretched

tenements in many a country village, where the conditions of life

are such that decency is impossible; and a soil is prepared in which

sexual sin grows rankly. To cleanse these channels of social life is

indeed a task of Hercules; but the Church of Christ is loudly called

to it. Her vocation is in itself a purity crusade, a war declared

against "all filthiness of flesh and spirit."

II. Next to _lust_ in this procession of the Vices comes _idolatry_.

In Paganism they were associated by many ties. Some of the most

renowned and popular cults of the day were open purveyors of

sensuality and lent to it the sanctions of religion. Idolatry

is found here in fit company (comp. 1 Cor. x. 6-8). Peter's

First Epistle, addressed to the Galatian with other Asiatic

Churches, speaks of "the desire of the Gentiles" as consisting in

"lasciviousness, lusts, winebibbings, revellings, carousings, and

_abominable idolatries_" (ch. iv. 3).

Idolatry forms the centre of the awful picture of Gentile depravity

drawn by our Apostle in his letter to Rome (ch. i.). It is, as

he there shows, the outcome of man's native antipathy to the

knowledge of God. Willingly men "took lies in the place of truth,

and served the creature rather than the Creator." They merged God

in nature, debasing the spiritual conception of the Deity with

fleshly attributes. This blending of God with the world gave rise,

amongst the mass of mankind, to Polytheism; while in the minds of

the more reflective it assumed a Pantheistic shape. The manifold of

nature, absorbing the Divine, broke it up into "gods many and lords

many"--gods of the earth and sky and ocean, gods and goddesses of

war, of tillage, of love, of art, of statecraft and handicraft,

patrons of human vices and follies as well as of excellencies,

changing with every climate and with the varying moods and conditions

of their worshippers. No longer did it appear that God made man

in His image; now men made gods in "the likeness of the image of

corruptible man, and of winged and four-footed and creeping things."

When at last under the Roman Empire the different Pagan races blended

their customs and faiths, and "the Orontes flowed into the Tiber,"

there came about a perfect chaos of religions. Gods Greek and Roman,

Phrygian, Syrian, Egyptian jostled each other in the great cities--a

_colluvies deorum_ more bewildering even than the _colluvies

gentium_,--each cultus striving to outdo the rest in extravagance and

licence. The system of classic Paganism was reduced to impotence. The

false gods destroyed each other. The mixture of heathen religions,

none of them pure, produced complete demoralisation.

The Jewish monotheism remained, the one rock of human faith in the

midst of this dissolution of the old nature-creeds. Its conception

of the Godhead was not so much metaphysical as ethical. "Hear O

Israel," says every Jew to his fellows, "the Lord our God is one

Lord." But that "one Lord" was also "_the Holy One_ of Israel."

Let his holiness be sullied, let the thought of the Divine ethical

transcendence suffer eclipse, and He sinks back again into the

manifold of nature. Till God was manifest in the flesh through the

sinless Christ, it was impossible to conceive of a perfect purity

allied to the natural. To the mind of the Israelite, God's holiness

was one with the _aloneness_ in which he held Himself sublimely aloof

from all material forms, one with the pure spirituality of His being.

"There is none holy save the Lord; neither is there any rock like our

God:" such was his lofty creed. On this ground prophecy carried on

its inspired struggle against the tremendous forces of naturalism.

When at length the victory of spiritual religion was gained in

Israel, unbelief assumed another form; the knowledge of the Divine

unity hardened into a sterile and fanatic legalism, into the idolatry

of dogma and tradition; and Scribe and Pharisee took the place of

Prophet and of Psalmist.

The idolatry and immorality of the Gentile world had a common root.

God's anger, the Apostle declared, blazed forth equally against both

(Rom. i. 18). The monstrous forms of uncleanness then prevalent were

a fitting punishment, an inevitable consequence of heathen impiety.

They marked the lowest level to which human nature can fall in

its apostasy from God. Self-respect in man is ultimately based on

reverence for the Divine. Disowning his Maker, he degrades himself.

Bent on evil, he must banish from his soul that warning, protesting

image of the Supreme Holiness in which he was created.

"He tempts his reason to deny

God whom his passions dare defy."

"They did not like to retain God in their knowledge." "They loved

darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." These

are terrible accusations. But the history of natural religion

confirms their truth.

_Sorcery_ is the attendant of idolatry. A low, naturalistic

conception of the Divine lends itself to immoral purposes. Men try

to operate upon it by material causes, and to make it a partner in

evil. Such is the origin of magic. Natural objects deemed to possess

supernatural attributes, as the stars and the flight of birds, have

divine omens ascribed to them. Drugs of occult power, and things

grotesque or curious made mysterious by the fancy, are credited with

influence over the Nature-gods. From the use of drugs in incantations

and exorcisms the word _pharmakeia_, here denoting _sorcery_, took

its meaning. The science of chemistry has destroyed a world of magic

connected with the virtues of herbs. These superstitions formed a

chief branch of sorcery and witchcraft, and have flourished under

many forms of idolatry. And the magical arts were common instruments

of malice. The sorcerer's charms were in requisition, as in the case

of Balaam, to curse one's enemies, to weave some spell that should

involve them in destruction. Accordingly _sorcery_ finds its place

there between _idolatry_ and _enmities_.

III. On this latter head the Apostle enlarges with edifying

amplitude. _Enmities_, _strife_, _jealousies_, _ragings_, _factions_,

_divisions_, _parties_, _envyings_--what a list! Eight out of fifteen

of "the works of the flesh manifest" to Paul in writing to Galatia

belong to this one category. The Celt all over the world is known

for a hot-tempered fellow. He has high capabilities; he is generous,

enthusiastic, and impressionable. Meanness and treachery are foreign

to his nature. But he is _irritable_. And it is in a vain and

irritable disposition that these vices are engendered. Strife and

division have been proverbial in the history of the Gallic nations.

Their jealous temper has too often neutralised their engaging

qualities; and their quickness and cleverness have for this reason

availed them but little in competition with more phlegmatic races. In

Highland clans, in Irish septs, in French wars and Revolutions the

same moral features reappear which are found in this delineation of

Galatic life. This persistence of character in the races of mankind

is one of the most impressive facts of history.

"Enmities" are private hatreds or family feuds, which break out

openly in "strife." This is seen in Church affairs, when men take

opposite sides not so much from any decided difference of judgement,

as from personal dislike and the disposition to thwart an opponent.

"Jealousies" and "wraths" (or "rages") are passions attending enmity

and strife. There is _jealousy_ where one's antagonist is a rival,

whose success is felt as a wrong to oneself. This may be a silent

passion, repressed by pride but consuming the mind inwardly. _Rage_

is the open eruption of anger which, when powerless to inflict

injury, will find vent in furious language and menacing gestures.

There are natures in which these tempests of rage take a perfectly

demonic form. The face grows livid, the limbs move convulsively, the

nervous organism is seized by a storm of frenzy; and until it has

passed, the man is literally beside himself. Such exhibitions are

truly appalling. They are "works of the flesh" in which, yielding to

its own ungoverned impulse, it gives itself up to be possessed by

Satan and is "set on fire of hell."

_Factions_, _divisions_, _parties_ are words synonymous. "Divisions"

is the more neutral term, and represents the state into which

a community is thrown by the working of the spirit of strife.

"Factions" imply more of self-interest and policy in those concerned;

"parties" are due rather to self-will and opinionativeness. The

Greek word employed in this last instance, as in 1 Cor. xi. 19, has

become our _heresies_. It does not imply of necessity any doctrinal

difference as the ground of the party distinctions in question. At

the same time, this expression is an advance on those foregoing,

pointing to such divisions as have grown, or threaten to grow into

"distinct and organized parties" (Lightfoot).

_Envyings_ (or _grudges_) complete this bitter series. This

term might have found a place beside "enmities" and "strife."

Standing where it does, it seems to denote the rankling anger, the

persistent ill-will caused by party-feuds. The Galatian quarrels

left behind them grudges and resentments which became inveterate.

These "envyings," the fruit of old contentions, were in turn the

seed of new strife. Settled rancour is the last and worst form of

contentiousness. It is so much more culpable than "jealousy" or

"rage," as it has not the excuse of personal conflict; and it does

not subside, as the fiercest outburst of passion may, leaving room

for forgiveness. It nurses its revenge, waiting, like Shylock, for

the time when it shall "feed fat its ancient grudge."

"Where jealousy and faction are, there," says James, "is confusion

and every vile deed." This was the state of things to which the

Galatian societies were tending. The Judaizers had sown the seeds

of discord, and it had fallen on congenial soil. Paul has already

invoked Christ's law of love to exorcise this spirit of destruction

(vv. 13-15). He tells the Galatians that their vainglorious and

provoking attitude towards each other and their envious disposition

are entirely contrary to the life in the Spirit which they professed

to lead (vv. 25, 26), and fatal to the existence of the Church. These

were the "passions of the flesh" which most of all they needed to

crucify.

IV. Finally, we come to sins of intemperance--_drunkenness,

revellings, and the like_.

These are the vices of a barbarous people. Our Teutonic and Celtic

forefathers were alike prone to this kind of excess. Peter warns

the Galatians against "wine-bibbings, revellings, carousings." The

passion for strong drink, along with "lasciviousness" and "lusts"

on the one hand, and "abominable idolatries" on the other, had in

Asia Minor swelled into a "cataclysm of riot," overwhelming the

Gentile world (1 Pet. iv. 3, 4). The Greeks were a comparatively

sober people. The Romans were more notorious for gluttony than for

hard drinking. The practice of seeking pleasure in intoxication is

a remnant of savagery, which exists to a shameful extent in our own

country. It appears to have been prevalent with the Galatians, whose

ancestors a few generations back were northern barbarians.

A strong and raw animal nature is in itself a temptation to this

vice. For men exposed to cold and hardship, the intoxicating cup

has a potent fascination. The flesh, buffeted by the fatigues of a

rough day's work, finds a strange zest in its treacherous delights.

The man "drinks and forgets his poverty, and remembers his misery no

more." For the hour, while the spell is upon him, he is a king; he

lives under another sun; the world's wealth is his. He wakes up to

find himself a sot! With racked head and unstrung frame he returns to

the toil and squalor of his life, adding new wretchedness to that

he had striven to forget. Anon he says, "I will seek it yet again!"

When the craving has once mastered him, its indulgence becomes his

only pleasure. Such men deserve our deepest pity. They need for their

salvation all the safeguards that Christian sympathy and wisdom can

throw around them.

There are others "given to much wine," for whom one feels less

compassion. Their convivial indulgences are a part of their general

habits of luxury and sensuality, an open, flagrant triumph of the

flesh over the Spirit. These sinners require stern rebuke and

warning. They must understand that "those who practise such things

shall not inherit the kingdom of God," that "he who soweth to his own

flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption." Of these and their like

it was that Jesus said, "Woe unto you that laugh now; for ye shall

mourn and weep."

Our British Churches at the present time are more alive to this

than perhaps to any other social evil. They are setting themselves

sternly against drunkenness, and none too soon. Of all the works

of the flesh this has been, if not the most potent, certainly the

most conspicuous in the havoc it has wrought amongst us. Its ruinous

effects are "manifest" in every prison and asylum, and in the private

history of innumerable families in every station of life. Who is

there that has not lost a kinsman, a friend, or at least a neighbour

or acquaintance, whose life was wrecked by this accursed passion?

Much has been done, and is doing, to check its ravages. But more

remains to be accomplished before civil law and public opinion shall

furnish all the protection against this evil necessary for a people

so tempted by climate and by constitution as our own.

With _fornication_ at the beginning and _drunkenness_ at the end,

Paul's description of "the works of the flesh" is, alas! far indeed

from being out of date. The dread procession of the Vices marches

on before our eyes. Races and temperaments vary; science has

transformed the visible aspect of life; but the ruling appetites of

human nature are unchanged, its primitive vices are with us to-day.

The complicated problems of modern life, the gigantic evils which

confront our social reformers, are simply the primeval corruptions of

mankind in a new guise--the old lust and greed and hate. Under his

veneer of manners, the civilized European, untouched by the grace of

the Holy Spirit of God, is still apt to be found a selfish, cunning,

unchaste, revengeful, superstitious creature, distinguished from his

barbarian progenitor chiefly by his better dress and more cultivated

brain, and his inferior agility. Witness the great Napoleon, a very

"god of this world," but in all that gives worth to character no

better than a savage!

With Europe turned into one vast camp and its nations groaning

audibly under the weight of their armaments, with hordes of degraded

women infesting the streets of its cities, with discontent and social

hatred smouldering throughout its industrial populations, we have

small reason to boast of the triumphs of modern civilisation. Better

circumstances do not make better men. James' old question has for our

day a terrible pertinence: "Whence come wars and fightings among you?

Come they not hence, even of your pleasures that war in your members?

Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and covet, and cannot obtain. Ye ask

and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may spend it on your

pleasures."

CHAPTER XXV.

_THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT._

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering,

kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such

there is no law."--GAL. v. 22, 23.

"The tree is known by its fruits." Such was the criterion of

religious profession laid down by the Founder of Christianity.

This test His religion applies in the first instance to itself. It

proclaims a final judgement for all men; it submits itself to the

present judgement of all men--a judgement resting in each case on the

same ground, namely that of _fruit_, of moral issue and effects. For

character is the true _summum bonum_; it is the thing which in our

secret hearts and in our better moments we all admire and covet. The

creed which produces the best and purest character, in the greatest

abundance and under the most varied conditions, is that which the

world will believe.

These verses contain the ideal of character furnished by the gospel

of Christ. Here is the religion of Jesus put in practice. These are

the sentiments and habits, the views of duty, the temper of mind,

which faith in Jesus Christ tends to form. Paul's conception of the

ideal human life at once "commends itself to every man's conscience."

And he owed it to the gospel of Christ. His ethics are the fruit of

his dogmatic faith. What other system of belief has produced a like

result, or has formed in men's minds ideas of duty so reasonable

and gracious, so just, so balanced and perfect, and above all so

practicable, as those inculcated in the Apostle's teaching?

"Men do not gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles." Thoughts

of this kind, lives of this kind, are not the product of imposture or

delusion. The "works" of systems of error are "manifest" in the moral

wrecks they leave behind them, strewing the track of history. But the

virtues here enumerated are the fruits which the Spirit of Christ

has brought forth, and brings forth at this day more abundantly than

ever. As a theory of morals, a representation of what is best in

conduct, Christian teaching has held for 1800 years an unrivalled

place. Christ and His Apostles are still the masters of morality.

Few have been bold enough to offer any improvements on the ethics

of Jesus; and smaller still has been the acceptance which their

proposals have obtained. The new idea of virtue which Christianity

has given to the world, the energy it has imparted to the moral will,

the immense and beneficial revolutions it has brought about in human

society, supply a powerful argument for its divinity. Making every

deduction for unfaithful Christians, who dishonour "the worthy name"

they bear, still "the fruit of the Spirit" gathered in these eighteen

centuries is a glorious witness to the virtue of the tree of life

from which it grew.

This picture of the Christian life takes its place side by side

with others found in Paul's Epistles. It recalls the figure of

Charity in 1 Cor. xiii., acknowledged by moralists of every school

to be a master-piece of characterization. It stands in line also

with the oft-quoted enumeration of Phil. iv. 8: "Whatsoever things

are true, whatsoever things are reverend, whatsoever things are

just, whatsoever things are chaste, whatsoever things are lovely,

whatsoever things are kindly spoken, if there be any virtue, and if

there be any praise, think on these things." These representations do

not pretend to theoretical completeness. It would be easy to specify

important virtues not mentioned in the Apostle's categories. His

descriptions have a practical aim, and press on the attention of his

readers the special forms and qualities of virtue demanded from them,

under the given circumstances, by their faith in Christ.

It is interesting to compare the Apostle's definitions with Plato's

celebrated scheme of the four cardinal virtues. They are _wisdom_,

_courage_, _temperance_, with _righteousness_ as the union and

co-ordination of the other three. The difference between the cast of

the Platonic and Pauline ethics is most instructive. In the Apostle's

catalogue the first two of the philosophical virtues are wanting;

unless "courage" be included, as it properly may, under the name of

"virtue" in the Philippian list. With the Greek thinker, _wisdom_

is the fundamental excellence of the soul. Knowledge is in his view

the supreme desideratum, the guarantee for moral health and social

well-being. The philosopher is the perfect man, the proper ruler of

the commonwealth. Intellectual culture brings in its train ethical

improvement. For "no man is knowingly vicious:" such was the dictum

of Socrates, the father of Philosophy. In the ethics of the gospel,

_love_ becomes the chief of virtues, parent of the rest.

_Love_ and _humility_ are the two features whose predominance

distinguishes the Christian from the purest classical conceptions

of moral worth. The ethics of Naturalism know love as a passion, a

sensuous instinct (ἔρως); or again, as the personal affection which

binds friend to friend through common interest or resemblance of

taste and disposition (φιλία). Love in its highest sense (ἀγάπη)

Christianity has re-discovered, finding in it a universal law for the

reason and spirit. It assigns to this principle a like place to that

which gravitation holds in the material universe, as the attraction

which binds each man to his Maker and to his fellows. Its obligations

neutralise self-interest and create a spiritual solidarity of

mankind, centring in Christ, the God-man. Pre-Christian philosophy

exalted the intellect, but left the heart cold and vacant, and the

deeper springs of will untouched. It was reserved for Jesus Christ to

teach men how to love, and in love to find the law of freedom.

If love was wanting in natural ethics, _humility_ was positively

excluded. The pride of philosophy regarded it as a vice rather than

a virtue. "Lowliness" is ranked with "pettiness" and "repining"

and "despondency" as the product of "littleness of soul." On the

contrary, the man of lofty soul is held up to admiration, who is

"worthy of great things and deems himself so,"--who is "not given to

wonder, for nothing seems great to him,"--who is "ashamed to receive

benefits," and "has the appearance indeed of being supercilious"

(Aristotle). How far removed is this model from our Example who has

said, "Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart." The classical

idea of virtue is based on the greatness of man; the Christian, on

the goodness of God. Before the Divine glory in Jesus Christ the

soul of the believer bows in adoration. It is humbled at the throne

of grace, chastened into self-forgetting. It gazes on this Image of

love and holiness, till it repeats itself within the heart.

* * * * *

Nine virtues are woven together in this golden chain of the Holy

Spirit's fruit. They fall into three groups of three, four, and two

respectively--according as they refer primarily to God, _love_,

_joy_, _peace_; to one's fellow-men, _longsuffering_, _kindness_,

_goodness_, _faith_; and to oneself, _meekness_, _temperance_. But

the successive qualities are so closely linked and pass into one

another with so little distance, that it is undesirable to emphasize

the analysis; and while bearing the above distinctions in mind, we

shall seek to give to each of the nine graces its separate place in

the catalogue.

1. _The fruit of the Spirit is love._ That fitliest first. Love is

the Alpha and Omega of the Apostle's thoughts concerning the new

life in Christ. This queen of graces is already enthroned within

this chapter. In ver. 6 Love came forward to be the minister of

Faith; in ver. 14 it reappeared as the ruling principle of Divine

law. These two offices of love are united here, where it becomes

the prime fruit of the Holy Spirit of God, to whom the heart is

opened by the act of faith, and who enables us to keep God's law.

Love is "the fulfilling of the law;" for it is the essence of the

gospel; it is the spirit of sonship; without this Divine affection,

no profession of faith, no practice of good works has any value in

the sight of God or intrinsic moral worth. Though I have all other

gifts and merits--wanting this, "I am nothing" (1 Cor. xiii. 1-3).

The cold heart is dead. Whatever appears to be Christian that has not

the love of Christ, is an unreality--a matter of orthodox opinion

or mechanical performance--dead as the body without the spirit. In

all true goodness there is an element of love. Here then is the

fountain-head of Christian virtue, the "well of water springing up

into eternal life" which Christ opens in the believing soul, from

which flow so many bounteous streams of mercy and good fruits.

This love is, in the first instance and above all, _love to God_. It

springs from the knowledge of His love to man. "God is love," and

"love is of God" (1 John iv. 7, 8). All love flows from one fountain,

from the One Father. And the Father's love is revealed in the Son.

Love has the cross for its measure and standard. "He sent the

Only-begotten into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein

is love: hereby know we love" (1 John iii. 16; iv. 9, 10). The man

who knows this love, whose heart responds to the manifestation of God

in Christ, is "born of God." His soul is ready to become the abode

of all pure affections, his life the exhibition of all Christ-like

virtues. For the love of the Father is revealed to him; and the love

of a son is enkindled in his soul by the Spirit of the Son.

In Paul's teaching, love forms the antithesis to _knowledge_. By

this opposition the wisdom of God is distinguished from "the wisdom

of this world and of its princes, which come to nought" (1 Cor. i.

23; ii. 8; viii. 1, 3). Not that love despises knowledge, or seeks

to dispense with it. It requires knowledge beforehand in order to

discern its object, and afterwards to understand its work. So the

Apostle prays for the Philippians "that their love may abound yet

more and more in knowledge and all discernment" (ch. i. 9, 10). It

is not _love without knowledge_, heat without light, the warmth of

an ignorant, untempered zeal that the Apostle desiderates. But he

deplores the existence of _knowledge without love_, a clear head with

a cold heart, an intellect whose growth has left the affections

starved and stunted, with enlightened apprehensions of truth that

awaken no corresponding emotions. Hence comes the pride of reason,

the "knowledge that puffeth up." Love alone knows the art of building

up.

Loveless knowledge is not wisdom. For wisdom is lowly in her own

eyes, mild and gracious. What the man of cold intellect sees, he

sees clearly; he reasons on it well. But his data are defective. He

discerns but the half, the poorer half of life. There is a whole

heaven of facts of which he takes no account. He has an acute and

sensitive perception of phenomena coming within the range of his five

senses, and of everything that logic can elicit from such phenomena.

But he "cannot see afar off." Above all, "he that loveth not,

_knoweth not God_." He leaves out the Supreme Factor in human life;

and all his calculations are vitiated. "Hath not _God_ made foolish

the wisdom of the world?"

If knowledge then is the enlightened eye, love is the throbbing,

living heart of Christian goodness.

2. _The fruit of the Spirit is joy._ Joy dwells in the house of Love;

nor elsewhere will she tarry.

Love is the mistress both of joy and sorrow. Wronged, frustrated,

hers is the bitterest of griefs. Love makes us capable of pain and

shame; but equally of triumph and delight. Therefore the Lover of

mankind was the "Man of sorrows," whose love bared its breast to the

arrows of scorn and hate; and yet "for the joy that was set before

Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame." There was no sorrow

like that of Christ rejected and crucified; no joy like the joy of

Christ risen and reigning. This joy, the delight of love satisfied

in those it loves, is that whose fulfilment He has promised to His

disciples (John xv. 8-11).

Such joy the selfish heart never knows. Life's choicest blessings,

heaven's highest favours fail to bring it happiness. Sensuous

gratification, and even intellectual pleasure by itself wants the

true note of gladness. There is nothing that thrills the whole

nature, that stirs the pulses of life and sets them dancing, like

the touch of a pure love. It is the pearl of great price, for which

"if a man would give all the substance of his house, he would be

utterly contemned." But of all the joys love gives to life, that is

the deepest which is ours when "the love of God is shed abroad in

our heart." Then the full tide of blessedness pours into the human

spirit. Then we know of what happiness our nature was made capable,

when we know the love that God hath toward us.

This joy in the Lord quickens and elevates, while it cleanses,

all other emotions. It raises the whole temperature of the heart.

It gives a new glow to life. It lends a warmer and a purer tone

to our natural affections. It sheds a diviner meaning, a brighter

aspect over the common face of earth and sky. It throws a radiance

of hope upon the toils and weariness of mortality. It "glories in

tribulation." It triumphs in death. He who "lives in the Spirit"

cannot be a dull, or peevish, or melancholy man. One with Christ his

heavenly Lord, he begins already to taste His joy,--a joy which none

taketh away and which many sorrows cannot quench.

Joy is the beaming countenance, the elastic step, the singing voice

of Christian goodness.

3. But joy is a thing of seasons. It has its ebb and flow, and would

not be itself if it were constant. It is crossed, varied, shadowed

unceasingly. On earth sorrow ever follows in its track, as night

chases day. No one knew this better than Paul. "Sorrowful," he says

of himself (2 Cor. vi. 10), "yet always rejoicing:" a continual

alternation, sorrow threatening every moment to extinguish, but

serving to enhance his joy. Joy leans upon her graver sister _Peace_.

There is nothing fitful or febrile in the quality of Peace. It is a

settled quiet of the heart, a deep, brooding mystery that "passeth

all understanding," the stillness of eternity entering the spirit,

the _Sabbath of God_ (Heb. iv. 9). It is theirs who are "justified

by faith" (Rom. v. 1, 2). It is the bequest of Jesus Christ (John

xiv. 27). He "made peace for us through the blood of His cross." He

has reconciled us with the eternal law, with the Will that rules all

things without effort or disturbance. We pass from the region of

misrule and mad rebellion into the kingdom of the Son of God's love,

with its ordered freedom, its clear and tranquil light, its "central

peace, subsisting at the heart of endless agitation."

After the war of the passions, after the tempests of doubt and fear,

Christ has spoken, "Peace, be still!" A great calm spreads over the

troubled waters; wind and wave lie down hushed at His feet. The

demonic powers that lashed the soul into tumult, vanish before His

holy presence. The Spirit of Jesus takes possession of mind and heart

and will. And His fruit is peace--always peace. This one virtue takes

the place of the manifold forms of contention which make life a chaos

and a misery. While He rules, "the peace of God guards the heart and

thoughts" and holds them safe from inward mutiny or outward assault;

and the dissolute, turbulent train of the works of the flesh find the

gates of the soul barred against them.

Peace is the calm, unruffled brow, the poised and even temper which

Christian goodness wears.

4. The heart at peace with God has patience with men. "Charity

_suffereth long_." She is not provoked by opposition; nor soured

by injustice; no, nor crushed by men's contempt. She can afford to

wait; for truth and love will conquer in the end. She knows in whose

hand her cause is, and remembers how long _He_ has suffered the

unbelief and rebellion of an insensate world; she "considers Him that

endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself." Mercy and

longsuffering are qualities that we share with God Himself, in which

God was, and is, "manifest in the flesh." In this ripe fruit of the

Spirit there are joined "the love of God, and the patience of Christ"

(2 Thess. iii. 5).

Longsuffering is the patient magnanimity of Christian goodness, the

broad shoulders on which it "beareth all things" (1 Cor. xiii. 7).

5. "Charity suffereth long and _is kind_."

_Gentleness_ (or _kindness_, as the word is more frequently and

better rendered,) resembles "longsuffering" in finding its chief

objects in the evil and unthankful. But while the latter is passive

and self-contained, kindness is an active, busy virtue. She is

moreover of a humble and tender spirit, stooping to the lowest need,

thinking nothing too small in which she may help, ready to give back

blessing for cursing, benefit for harm and wrong.

Kindness is the thoughtful insight, the delicate tact, the gentle

ministering hand of Charity.

6. Linked with _kindness_ comes _goodness_, which is its other self,

differing from it only as twin sisters may, each fairer for the

beauty of the other. Goodness is perhaps more affluent, more catholic

in its bounty; kindness more delicate and discriminating. The former

looks to the benefit conferred, seeking to make it as large and full

as possible; the latter has respect to the recipients, and studies

to suit their necessity. While kindness makes its opportunities, and

seeks out the most needy and miserable, goodness throws its doors

open to all comers. Goodness is the more masculine and large-hearted

form of charity; and if it errs, errs through blundering and

want of tact. Kindness is the more feminine; and may err through

exclusiveness and narrowness of view. United, they are perfect.

Goodness is the honest, generous face, the open hand of Charity.

7. This procession of the Virtues has conducted us, in the order of

Divine grace, from the thought of a loving, forgiving God, the Object

of our _love_, our _joy_ and _peace_, to that of an evil-doing,

unhappy world, with its need of _longsuffering_ and _kindness_;

and we now come to the inner, sacred circle of brethren beloved in

Christ, where, with goodness, _faith_--that is, _trustfulness_,

_confidence_--is called into exercise.

The Authorised rendering "faith" seems to us in this instance

preferable to the "faithfulness" of the Revisers. "Possibly," says

Bishop Lightfoot:, "πίστις may here signify 'trustfulness, reliance,'

in one's dealings with others; comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 7:" we should

prefer to say "probably," or even "unmistakably," to this. The use of

_pistis_ in any other sense is rare and doubtful in Paul's Epistles.

It is true that "God" or "Christ" is elsewhere implied as the object

of faith; but where the word stands, as it does here, in a series of

qualities belonging to human relationships, it finds, in agreement

with its current meaning, another application. As a link between

_goodness_ and _meekness_, _trustfulness,_ and nothing else, appears

to be in place. The parallel expression of 1 Cor. xiii., of which

chapter we find so many echoes in the text, we take to be decisive:

"Charity _believeth_ all things."

The faith that unites man to God, in turn joins man to his

fellows. Faith in the Divine Fatherhood becomes trust in the

human brotherhood. In this generous attribute the Galatians were

sadly deficient. "Honour all men," wrote Peter to them; "love the

brotherhood" (1 Pet. ii. 17). Their factiousness and jealousies were

the exact opposite of this fruit of the Spirit. Little was there

to be found in them of the love that "envieth and vaunteth not,"

which "imputeth not evil, nor rejoiceth in unrighteousness," which

"beareth, believeth, hopeth, endureth all things." They needed more

faith in _man_, as well as in God.

The true heart knows how to _trust_. He who doubts every one is even

more deceived than the man who blindly confides in every one. There

is no more miserable vice than cynicism; no man more ill-conditioned

than he who counts all the world knaves or fools except himself.

This poison of mistrust, this biting acid of scepticism is a fruit

of irreligion. It is one of the surest signs of social and national

decay.

The Christian man knows not only how to stand alone and to "bear all

things," but also how to lean on others, strengthening himself by

their strength and supporting them in weakness. He delights to "think

others better" than himself; and here "meekness" is one with "faith."

His own goodness gives him an eye for everything that is best in

those around him.

Trustfulness is the warm, firm clasp of friendship, the generous and

loyal homage which goodness ever pays to goodness.

8. _Meekness_, as we have seen, is the other side of _faith_. It

is not tameness and want of spirit, as those who "judge after the

flesh" are apt to think. Nor is meekness the mere quietness of a

retiring disposition. "The man Moses was very meek, above all the

men which were upon the face of the earth." It comports with the

highest courage and activity; and is a qualification for public

leadership. Jesus Christ stands before us as the perfect pattern of

meekness. "I intreat you," pleads the Apostle with the self-asserting

Corinthians, "by the meekness and gentleness of Christ!" Meekness

is self-repression in view of the claims and needs of others; it is

the "charity" which "seeketh not her own, looketh not to her own

things, but to the things of others." For her, self is of no account

in comparison with Christ and His kingdom, and the honour of His

brethren.

Meekness is the content and quiet mien, the willing self-effacement

that is the mark of Christlike goodness.

9. Finally _temperance_, or _self-control_,--third of Plato's

cardinal virtues.

By this last link the chain of the virtues, at its higher end

attached to the throne of the Divine love and mercy, is fastened

firmly down into the actualities of daily habit and bodily regimen.

_Temperance_, to change the figure, closes the array of the graces,

holding the post of the rear-guard which checks all straggling and

protects the march from surprise and treacherous overthrow.

If _meekness_ is the virtue of the whole man as he stands before his

God and in the midst of his fellows, _temperance_ is that of his

body, the tenement and instrument of the regenerate spirit. It is the

antithesis of "drunkenness and revellings," which closed the list

of "works of the flesh," just as the preceding graces, from "peace"

to "meekness," are opposed to the multiplied forms of "enmity" and

"strife." Amongst ourselves very commonly the same limited contrast

is implied. But to make "temperance" signify only or chiefly the

avoidance of strong drink is miserably to narrow its significance.

It covers the whole range of moral discipline, and concerns every

sense and passion of our nature. Temperance is a practised mastery

of self. It holds the reins of the chariot of life. It is the steady

and prompt control of the outlooking sensibilities and appetencies,

and inwardly moving desires. The tongue, the hand and foot, the

eye, the temper, the tastes and affections, all require in turn to

feel its curb. He is a temperate man, in the Apostle's meaning, who

_holds himself well in hand_, who meets temptation as a disciplined

army meets the shock of battle, by skill and alertness and tempered

courage baffling the forces that outnumber it.

This also is a "fruit of the Spirit"--though we may count it the

lowest and least, yet as indispensable to our salvation as the love

of God itself. For the lack of this safeguard how many a saint has

stumbled into folly and shame! It is no small thing for the Holy

Spirit to accomplish in us, no mean prize for which we strive in

seeking the crown of a perfect self-control. This mastery over the

flesh is in truth the rightful prerogative of the human spirit, the

dignity from which it fell through sin, and which the gift of the

Spirit of Christ restores.

And this virtue in a Christian man is exercised for the behoof of

others, as well as for his own. "I keep my body under," cries the

Apostle, "I make it my slave and not my master; lest, having preached

to others, I myself should be a castaway"--that is self-regard, mere

common prudence; but again, "It is good not to eat flesh, nor drink

wine, nor to do anything whereby a brother is made to stumble or made

weak" (1 Cor. ix. 27; Rom. xiv. 21).

Temperance is the guarded step, the sober, measured walk in which

Christian goodness keeps the way of life, and makes straight paths

for stumbling and straying feet.

CHAPTER XXVI.

_OUR BROTHER'S BURDEN AND OUR OWN._

"Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, ye which

are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of meekness;

looking to thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one

another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. For if a

man thinketh himself to be something, when he is nothing, he

deceiveth himself. But let each man prove his own work, and then

shall he have his glorying in regard of himself alone, and not

of his neighbour. For each man shall bear his own burden."--GAL.

vi. 1-5.

The division of the chapters at this point is almost as unfortunate

as that between chaps. iv. and v. The introductory "Brethren" is not

a form of transition to a new topic; it calls in the brotherly love

of the Galatians to put an end to the bickerings and recriminations

which the Apostle has censured in the preceding verses. How unseemly

for _brethren_ to be "vainglorious" towards each other, to be

"provoking and envying one another!" If they are spiritual men, they

should look more considerately on the faults of their neighbours,

more seriously on their own responsibilities.

The Galatic temperament, as we have seen, was prone to the

mischievous vanity which the Apostle here reproves. Those who had,

or fancied they had, some superiority over others in talent or in

character, prided themselves upon it. Even spiritual gifts were made

matter of ostentation; and display on the part of the more gifted

excited the jealousy of inferior brethren. The same disposition

which manifests itself in arrogance on the one side, on the other

takes the form of discontent and envy. The heart-burnings and the

social tension which this state of things creates, make every chance

collision a danger; and the slightest wound is inflamed into a

rankling sore. The stumbling brother is pushed on into a fall; and

the fallen man, who might have been helped to his feet, is left to

lie there, the object of unpitying reproach. Indeed, the lapse of

his neighbour is to the vainglorious man a cause of satisfaction

rather than of sorrow. The other's weakness serves for a foil to

his strength. Instead of stooping down to "restore such a one," he

holds stiffly aloof in the eminence of conscious virtue; and bears

himself more proudly in the lustre added to his piety by his fellow's

disgrace. "God, I thank Thee," he seems to say, "that I am not as

other men,--nor even as this wretched backslider!" The compellation

"Brethren" is itself a rebuke to such heartless pride.

There are two reflections which should instantly correct the spirit

of vain-glory. The Apostle appeals in the first place to _brotherly

love_, to the claims that an erring fellow-Christian has upon our

sympathy, to the meekness and forbearance which the Spirit of

grace inspires, in fine to Christ's law which makes compassion our

duty. At the same time he points out to us _our own infirmity_ and

exposure to temptation. He reminds us of the weight of our individual

responsibility and the final account awaiting us. A proper sense at

once of the rights of others and of our own obligations will make

this shallow vanity impossible.

This double-edged exhortation takes shape in two leading sentences,

sharply clashing with each other in the style of paradox in which the

Apostle loves to contrast the opposite sides of truth: "Bear ye one

another's burdens" (ver. 2); and yet "Every man shall bear his own

burden" (ver. 5).

I. What then are the considerations that commend _the burdens of

others_ for our bearing?

The burden the Apostle has in view is that of _a brother's trespass_:

"Brethren, if a man be overtaken in some trespass."

Here the question arises as to whether Paul means _overtaken by the

temptation_, or _by the discovery of his sin_--surprised _into_

committing, or _in_ committing the trespass. Winer, Lightfoot,

and some other interpreters, read the words in the latter sense:

"_surprised_, _detected_ in the act of committing any sin, so that

his guilt is placed beyond a doubt" (Lightfoot). We are persuaded,

notwithstanding, that the common view of the text is the correct

one. The manner of the offender's detection has little to do with

the way in which he should be treated; but the circumstances of his

fall have everything to do with it. The suddenness, the surprise of

his temptation is both a reason for more lenient judgment, and a

ground for hope of his restoration. The preposition "in" (έν), it

is urged, stands in the way of this interpretation. We might have

expected to read "(surprised) _by_," or perhaps "_into_ (any sin)."

But the word is "trespass," not "sin." It points not to the cause of

the man's fall, but to _the condition in which it has placed him_.

The Greek preposition (according to a well known idiom of verbs of

_motion_)[143] indicates the result of the unexpected assault to

which the man has been subject. A gust of temptation has caught him

unawares; and we now see him lying overthrown and prostrate, involved

"in some trespass."

[143] For this pregnant force of έν see the grammarians:

Moulton's _Winer_, pp. 514, 5; _A. Buttmann_, pp. 328, 9. (Eng.

Ver.).

The Apostle is supposing an instance--possibly an actual case--in

which the sin committed was due to weakness and surprise, rather

than deliberate intention; like that of Eve, when "the woman being

beguiled fell into transgression."[144] Such a fall deserves

commiseration. The attack was unlooked for; the man was off his

guard. The Gallic nature is heedless and impulsive. Men of this

temperament should make allowance for each other. An offence

committed in a rash moment, under provocation, must not be visited

with implacable severity, nor magnified until it become a fatal

barrier between the evil-doer and society. And Paul says expressly,

"If _a man_ be overtaken"--a delicate reminder of our human infirmity

and common danger (comp. 1 Cor. x. 13). Let us remember that it is a

man who has erred, of like passions with ourselves; and his trespass

will excite pity for him, and apprehension for ourselves.

[144] 1 Tim. ii. 14: the expression is parallel in point of

grammar, as well as sense; γέγονεν έν παραβάσει.

Such an effect the occurrence should have upon "the spiritual," on

the men of love and peace, who "walk in the Spirit." The Apostle's

appeal is qualified by this definition. Vain and self-seeking men,

the irritable, the resentful, are otherwise affected by a neighbour's

trespass. They will be angry with him, lavish in virtuous scorn;

but it is not in them to "restore such a one." They are more likely

to aggravate than heal the wound, to push the weak man down when he

tries to rise, than to help him to his feet. The work of restoration

needs a knowledge of the human heart, a self-restraint and patient

skill, quite beyond their capability.

The _restoration_ here signified, denotes not only, or not so much,

the man's inward, spiritual renewal, as his recovery for the Church,

the mending of the rent caused by his removal. In 1 Cor. i. 10; 2

Cor. xiii. 11; 1 Thess. iii. 10, where, as in other places, the

English verb "perfect" enters into the rendering of παταρτίζω, it

gives the idea of re-adjustment, the right fitting of part to part,

member to member, in some larger whole. Writing to the Corinthian

Church at this time respecting a flagrant trespass committed there,

for which the transgressor was now penitent, the Apostle bids its

members "confirm their love" to him (2 Cor. ii. 5-11). So here "the

spiritual" amongst the Galatians are urged to make it their business

to _set right_ the lapsed brother, to bring him back as soon and

safely as might be to the fold of Christ.

Of all the fruits of the Spirit, _meekness_ is most required

for this office of restoration, the meekness of Christ the Good

Shepherd--of Paul who was "gentle as a nurse" amongst his children,

and even against the worst offenders preferred to "come in love and

a spirit of meekness," rather than "with a rod" (1 Thess. ii. 7; 1

Cor. iv. 21). To reprove without pride or acrimony, to stoop to the

fallen without the air of condescension, requires the "spirit of

meekness" in a singular degree. Such a bearing lends peculiar grace

to compassion. This "gentleness of Christ" is one of the finest

and rarest marks of the spiritual man. The moroseness sometimes

associated with religious zeal, the disposition to judge hardly the

failings of weaker men is anything but according to Christ. It is

written of Him, "A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking

flax shall He not quench" (Isa. xlii. 3; Matt xii. 20).

Meekness becomes sinful men dealing with fellow-sinners. "Considering

_thyself_," says the Apostle, "lest thou also be tempted." It is a

noticeable thing that men morally weak in any given direction are

apt to be the severest judges of those who err in the same respect,

just as people who have risen out of poverty are often the harshest

towards the poor. They wish to forget their own past, and hate to

be reminded of a condition from which they have suffered. Or is the

judge, in sentencing a kindred offender, seeking to reinforce his

own conscience and to give a warning to himself? One is inclined

sometimes to think so. But reflection on our own infirmities should

counteract, instead of fostering censoriousness. Every man knows

enough of himself to make him chary of denouncing others. "Look to

_thyself_," cries the Apostle. "Thou hast considered thy brother's

faults. Now turn thine eye inward, and contemplate thine own. Hast

thou never aforetime committed the offence with which he stands

charged; or haply yielded to the like temptation in a less degree? Or

if not even that, it may be thou art guilty of sins of another kind,

though hidden from human sight, in the eyes of God no less heinous."

"Judge not," said the Judge of all the earth, "lest ye be judged.

With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you" (Matt. vii.

1-5).

This exhortation begins in general terms; but in the latter clause

of ver. 1 it passes into the individualising singular--"looking to

_thyself_, lest even _thou_ be tempted." The disaster befalling

one reveals the common peril; it is a signal for every member of

the Church to take heed to himself. The scrutiny which it calls

for belongs to each man's private conscience. And the faithfulness

and integrity required in those who approach the wrongdoer with a

view to his recovery, must be chastened by personal solicitude. The

fall of a Christian brother should be in any case the occasion of

heart-searching, and profound humiliation. Feelings of indifference

towards him, much more of contempt, will prove the prelude of a worse

overthrow for ourselves.

The burden of a brother's trespass is the most painful that can

devolve upon a Christian man. But this is not the only burden we

bring upon each other. There are burdens of anxiety and sorrow, of

personal infirmity, of family difficulty, of business embarrassment,

infinite varieties and complications of trial in which the resources

of brotherly sympathy are taxed. The injunction of the Apostle has

an unlimited range. That which burdens my friend and brother cannot

be otherwise than a solicitude to me. Whatever it be that cripples

him and hinders his running the race set before him, I am bound,

according to the best of my judgement and ability, to assist him to

overcome it. If I leave him to stagger on alone, to sink under his

load when my shoulder might have eased it for him, the reproach will

be mine.