This is no work of supererogation, no matter of mere liking and

choice. I am not at liberty to refuse to share the burdens of the

brotherhood. "Bear ye one another's burdens," Paul says, "and so

fulfil _the law of Christ_." This law the Apostle has already cited

and enforced against the contentions and jealousies rife in Galatia

(ch. v. 14, 15). But it has a further application. Christ's law of

love not only says, "Thou shalt not bite and devour; thou shalt not

provoke and envy thy brother;" but also, "Thou shalt help and comfort

him, and regard his burden as thine own."

This law makes of the Church one body, with a solidarity of interests

and obligations. It finds employment and discipline for the energy of

Christian freedom, in yoking it to the service of the over-burdened.

It reveals the dignity and privilege of moral strength, which consist

not in the enjoyment of its own superiority, but in its power to bear

"the infirmities of the weak." This was the glory of Christ, who

"pleased not Himself" (Rom. xv. 1-4). The Giver of the law is its

great Example. "Being in the form of God," He "took the form of a

servant," that in love He might serve mankind; He "became obedient,

unto the death of the cross" (Phil. ii. 1-8). Justly is the inference

drawn, "We also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (1

John iii. 16). There is no limit to the service which the redeemed

brotherhood of Christ may expect from its members.

Only this law must not be abused by the indolent and the

overreaching, by the men who are ready to throw their burdens

on others and make every generous neighbour the victim of their

dishonesty. It is the need not the demand of our brother which

claims our help. We are bound to take care that it is his necessity

to which we minister, not his imposture or his slothfulness. The

warning that "each man shall bear his own burden" is addressed to

those who _receive_, as well as to those who render aid in the common

burden-bearing of the Church.

II. The adjustment of social and individual duty is often far from

easy, and requires the nicest discernment and moral tact. Both

are brought into view in this paragraph, in its latter as well as

in its former section. But in vv. 1, 2 the need of others, in vv.

3-5 our personal responsibility forms the leading consideration. We

see on the one hand, that a true self-regard teaches us to identify

ourselves with the moral interests of others: while, on the other

hand, a false regard to others is excluded (ver. 4) which disturbs

the judgement to be formed respecting ourselves. The thought of _his

own burden_ to be borne by each man now comes to the front of the

exhortation.

Ver. 3 stands between the two counterpoised estimates. It is another

shaft directed against Galatian vain-glory, and pointed with Paul's

keenest irony. "For if a man thinketh he is something, being nothing

he deceiveth himself."

This truth is very evident. But what is its bearing on the matter

in hand? The maxim is advanced to support the foregoing admonition.

It was their self-conceit that led some of the Apostle's readers

to treat with contempt the brother who had trespassed; he tells

them that this opinion of theirs is a _delusion_, a kind of mental

hallucination (φρεναπατᾷ ἑαυτόν). It betrays a melancholy ignorance.

The "spiritual" man who "thinks himself to be something," says to

you, "I am quite above these weak brethren, as you see. Their habits

of life, their temptations are not mine. Their sympathy would be

useless to me. And I shall not burden myself with their feebleness,

nor vex myself with their ignorance and rudeness." If any man

separates himself from the Christian commonalty and breaks the ties

of religious fellowship on grounds of this sort, and yet imagines

he is following Christ, he "deceives himself." Others will see how

little his affected eminence is worth. Some will humour his vanity;

many will ridicule or pity it; few will be deceived by it.

The fact of a man's "thinking himself to be something" goes far to

prove that he "is nothing." "Woe unto them that are wise in their

own eyes, and prudent in their own sight." Real knowledge is humble;

it knows its nothingness. Socrates, when the oracle pronounced him

the wisest man in Greece, at last discovered that the response was

right, inasmuch as he alone was aware that he knew nothing, while

other men were confident of their knowledge. And a greater than

Socrates, our All-wise, All-holy Saviour, says to us, "Learn of Me,

for I am meek and lowly in heart." It is in humility and dependence,

in self-forgetting that true wisdom begins. Who are we, although

the most refined or highest in place, that we should despise plain,

uncultured members of the Church, those who bear life's heavier

burdens and amongst whom our Saviour spent His days on earth, and

treat them as unfit for our company, unworthy of fellowship with us

in Christ?

They are themselves the greatest losers who neglect to fulfil

Christ's law. Such men might learn from their humbler brethren,

accustomed to the trials and temptations of a working life and a

rough world, how to bear more worthily their own burdens. How foolish

of "the eye to say to the hand" or "foot, I have no need of thee!"

"God hath chosen the poor of this world rich in faith." There are

truths of which they are our best teachers--priceless lessons of the

power of Divine grace and the deep things of Christian experience.

This isolation robs the poorer members of the Church in their turn

of the manifold help due to them from communion with those more

happily circumstanced. How many of the evils around us would be

ameliorated, how many of our difficulties would vanish, if we could

bring about a truer Christian fraternisation, if caste-feeling in

our English Church-life were once destroyed, if men would lay aside

their stiffness and social _hauteur_, and cease to think that they

"are something" on grounds of worldly distinction and wealth which in

Christ are absolutely nothing.

The vain conceit of their superiority indulged in by some of his

readers, the Apostle further corrects by reminding the self-deceivers

of _their own responsibility_. The irony of ver. 3 passes into a

sterner tone of warning in vv. 4 and 5. "Let each man try his own

work," he cries. "Judge yourselves, instead of judging one another.

Mind your own duty, rather than your neighbours' faults. Do not think

of your worth or talents in comparison with theirs; but see to it

that your _work_ is right." The question for each of us is not, What

do others fail to do? but, What am I myself really doing? What will

my life's work amount to, when measured by that which God expects

from me?

This question shuts each man up within his own conscience. It

anticipates the final judgement-day. "Every one of us must give

account of _himself_ to God" (Rom. xiv. 12). Reference to the conduct

of others is here out of place. The petty comparisons which feed our

vanity and our class-prejudices are of no avail at the bar of God.

I may be able for every fault of my own to find some one else more

faulty. But this makes _me_ no whit better. It is the intrinsic,

not the comparative worth of character and daily work of which God

takes account. If we study our brother's work, it should be with a

view to enable him to do it better, or to learn to improve our own

by his example; not in order to find excuses for ourselves in his

shortcomings.

"And then"--if our work abide the test--"we shall have our glorying

in ourselves alone, not in regard to our neighbour." Not his flaws

and failures, but my own honest work will be the ground of my

satisfaction. This was Paul's "glorying" in face of the slanders

by which he was incessantly pursued. It lay in the testimony of

his conscience. He lived under the severest self-scrutiny. He knew

himself as the man only can who "knows the fear of the Lord," who

places himself every day before the dread tribunal of Christ Jesus.

He is "made manifest unto God;" and in the light of that searching

Presence he can affirm that he "knows nothing against himself."[145]

But this boast makes him humble. "_By the grace of God_" he is

enabled to "have his conversation in the world in holiness and

sincerity coming of God." If he had seemed to claim any credit for

himself, he at once corrects the thought: "Yet not I," he says, "but

God's grace that was with me. I have my glorying in Christ Jesus in

the things pertaining to God, in that which Christ hath wrought in

me" (1 Cor. xv. 10; Rom. xv. 16-19).

[145] 1 Cor. iv. 1-5; 2 Cor. i. 12; v. 10-12.

So that this boast of the Apostle, in which he invites the

vainglorious Galatians to secure a share, resolves itself after all

into his one boast, "in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (ver.

14). If his work on trial should prove to be gold, "abiding" amongst

the world's imperishable treasures and fixed foundations of truth

(1 Cor. iii. 10-15), Christ only was to be praised for this. Paul's

glorying is the opposite of the Legalist's, who presumes on his

"works" as his own achievements, commending him for righteous before

God. "Justified by works," such a man hath "whereof to glory, but

not toward God" (Rom. iv. 2). His boasting redounds to himself.

Whatever glory belongs to the work of the Christian must be referred

to God. Such work furnishes no ground for magnifying the man at the

expense of his fellows. If we praise the stream, it is to commend

the fountain. If we admire the lives of the saints and celebrate the

deeds of the heroes of faith, it is _ad majorem Dei gloriam_--"that

in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. iv.

11).

"For each will bear his own load." Here is the ultimate reason

for the self-examination to which the Apostle has been urging his

readers, in order to restrain their vanity. The emphatic repetition

of the words _each man_ in vv. 4 and 5 brings out impressively the

personal character of the account to be rendered. At the same time,

the deeper sense of our own burdens thus awakened will help to stir

in us sympathy for the loads under which our fellows labour. So that

this warning indirectly furthers the appeal for sympathy with which

the chapter began.

Faithful scrutiny of our work may give us reasons for satisfaction

and gratitude towards God. But it will yield matter of another kind.

It will call to remembrance old sins and follies, lost opportunities,

wasted powers, with their burden of regret and humiliation. It will

set before us the array of our obligations, the manifold tasks

committed to us by our heavenly Master, compelling us to say, "Who

is sufficient for these things?" And beside the reproofs of the past

and the stern demands of the present, there sounds in the soul's

ear the message of the future, the summons to our final reckoning.

Each of us has his own life-load, made up of this triple burden.

A thousand varying circumstances and individual experiences go to

constitute the ever-growing load which we bear with us from youth

to age, like the wayfarer his bundle, like the soldier his knapsack

and accoutrements--the individual lot, the peculiar untransferable

vocation and responsibility fastened by the hand of God upon our

shoulders. This burden we shall have to carry up to Christ's

judgement-seat. He is our Master; He alone can give us our discharge.

His lips must pronounce the final "Well done"--or, "Thou wicked and

slothful servant!"

In this sentence the Apostle employs a different word from that used

in ver. 2. There he was thinking of the weight, the _burdensomeness_

of our brother's troubles, which we haply may lighten for him,

and which is so far common property. But the second word, φορτίον

(applied for instance to _a ship's lading_), indicates _that which

is proper to each_ in the burdens of life. There are duties that

we have no power to devolve, cares and griefs that we must bear in

secret, problems that we must work out severally and for ourselves.

To consider them aright, to weigh well the sum of our duty will dash

our self-complacency; it will surely make us serious and humble.

Let us wake up from dreams of self-pleasing to an earnest, manly

apprehension of life's demands--"while," like the Apostle, "we look

not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not

seen and eternal" (2 Cor. iv. 18).

* * * * *

After all, it is the men who have the highest standard for themselves

that as a rule are most considerate in their estimate of others. The

holiest are the most pitiful. They know best how to enter into the

struggles of a weaker brother. They can appreciate his unsuccessful

resistance to temptation; they can discern where and how he has

failed, and how much of genuine sorrow there is in his remorse. From

the fulness of their own experience they can interpret a possibility

of better things in what excites contempt in those who judge by

appearance and by conventional rules. He who has learned faithfully

to "consider himself" and meekly to "bear his own burden," is most

fit to do the work of Christ, and to shepherd His tempted and

straying sheep. Strict with ourselves, we shall grow wise and gentle

in our care for others.

In the Christian conscience the sense of personal and that of social

responsibility serve each to stimulate and guard the other. Duty and

sympathy, love and law are fused into one. For Christ is all in all;

and these two hemispheres of life unite in Him.

CHAPTER XXVII.

_SOWING AND REAPING._

"But let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him

that teacheth in all good things. Be not deceived; God is not

mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

For he that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap

corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the

Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not be weary in well-doing:

for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. So then, as

we have opportunity, let us work that which is good toward all

men, and especially toward them that are of the household of the

faith"--GAL. vi. 6-10.

_Each shall bear his own burden_ (ver. 5)--_but let there be

communion of disciple with teacher in all that is good_. The latter

sentence is clearly intended to balance the former. The transition

turns upon the same antithesis between social and individual

responsibility that occupied us in the foregoing Chapter. But it is

now presented on another side. In the previous passage it concerned

the conduct of "the spiritual" toward erring brethren whom they were

tempted to despise; here, their behaviour toward teachers whom they

were disposed to neglect. There it is inferiors, here superiors that

are in view. The Galatian "vain-glory" manifested itself alike in

provocation toward the former, and in envy toward the latter (ch. v.

26). In both ways it bred disaffection, and threatened to break up

the Church's unity. The two effects are perfectly consistent. Those

who are harsh in their dealings with the weak, are commonly rude

and insubordinate toward their betters, where they dare to be so.

Self-conceit and self-sufficiency engender in the one direction a

cold contempt, in the other a jealous independence. The former error

is corrected by a due sense of our own infirmities; the latter by the

consideration of our responsibility to God. We are compelled to feel

for the burdens of others when we realise the weight of our own. We

learn to respect the claims of those placed over us, when we remember

what we owe to God through them. Personal responsibility is the last

word of the former paragraph; social responsibility is the first word

of this. Such is the contrast marked by the transitional _But_.

From this point of view ver. 6 gains a very comprehensive sense. "All

good things" cannot surely be limited to the "carnal things" of 1

Cor. ix. 11. As Meyer and Beet amongst recent commentators clearly

show, the context gives to this phrase a larger scope. At the same

time, there is no necessity to exclude the thought of temporal good.

The Apostle designedly makes his appeal as wide as possible. The

reasoning of the corresponding passage in the Corinthian letter is a

deduction from the general principle laid down here.

But it is _spiritual fellowship_ that the Apostle chiefly

desiderates. The true minister of Christ counts this vastly more

sacred, and has this interest far more at heart than his own

temporalities. He labours for the unity of the Church; he strives

to secure the mutual sympathy and co-operation of all orders and

ranks-- teachers and taught, officers and private members--"in every

good word and work." He must have the heart of his people with him

in his work, or his joy will be faint and his success scant indeed.

Christian teaching is designed to awaken this sympathetic response.

And it will take expression in the rendering of whatever kind of help

the gifts and means of the hearer and the needs of the occasion call

for. Paul requires every member of the Body of Christ to make her

wants and toils his own. We have no right to leave the burdens of

the Church's work to her leaders, to expect her battles to be fought

and won by the officers alone. This neglect has been the parent of

innumerable mischiefs. Indolence in the laity fosters sacerdotalism

in the clergy. But when, on the contrary, an active, sympathetic

union is maintained between "him that is taught" and "him that

teacheth," that other matter of the temporal support of the Christian

ministry, to which this text is so often exclusively referred,

comes in as a necessary detail, to be generously and prudently

arranged, but which will not be felt on either side as a burden or

a difficulty. Everything depends on the fellowship of spirit, on

the strength of the bond of love that knits together the members of

the Body of Christ. Here, in Galatia, that bond had been grievously

weakened. In a Church so disturbed, the fellowship of teachers and

taught was inevitably strained.

Such communion the Apostle craves from his children in the faith with

an intense yearning. This is the one fruit of God's grace in them

which he covets to reap for himself, and feels he has a right to

expect. "Be ye as I am," he cries--"do not desert me, my children,

for whom I travail in birth. Let me not have to toil for you in vain"

(ch. iv. 12-19). So again, writing to the Corinthians: "It was _I_

that begat you in Christ Jesus; I beseech you then, be followers of

me. Let me remind you of my ways in the Lord.... O ye Corinthians,

to you our mouth is open, our heart enlarged. Pay me back in kind

(you are my children), and be ye too enlarged" (1 Cor. iv. 14-17;

2 Cor. vi. 11-13). He "thanks God" for the Philippians "on every

remembrance of them," and "makes his supplication" for them "with

joy, because of their fellowship in regard to the gospel from the

first day until now" (Phil. i. 3-7). Such is the fellowship which

Paul wished to see restored in the Galatian Churches.

In ver. 10 he extends his appeal to embrace in it all the kindly

offices of life. For the love inspired by the Church, the service

rendered to her, should quicken all our human sympathies and

make us readier to meet every claim of pity or affection. While

our sympathies, like those of a loving family, will be concerned

"especially" with "the household of faith," and within that circle

more especially with our pastors and teachers in Christ, they have

no limit but that of "opportunity;" they should "work that which is

good toward all men." True zeal for the Church widens instead of

narrowing, our charities. Household affection is the nursery, not the

rival, of love to our fatherland and to humanity.

Now the Apostle is extremely urgent in this matter of communion

between teachers and taught. It concerns the very life of the

Christian community. The welfare of the Church and the progress of

the kingdom of God depend on the degree to which its individual

members accept their responsibility in its affairs. Ill-will towards

Christian teachers is paralyzing in its effects on the Church's

life. Greatly are _they_ to blame, if their conduct gives rise to

discontent. Only less severe is the condemnation of those in lower

place who harbour in themselves and foster in the minds of others

sentiments of disloyalty. To cherish this mistrust, to withhold

our sympathy from him who serves us in spiritual things, this, the

Apostle declares, is not merely a wrong done to the man, it is

an affront to God Himself. If it be God's Word that His servant

teaches, then God expects some fitting return to be made for the

gift He has bestowed. Of that return the pecuniary contribution, the

meed of "carnal things" with which so many seem to think their debt

discharged, is often the least and easiest part. How far have men a

right to be hearers--profited and believing hearers--in the Christian

congregation, and yet decline the duties of Church fellowship? They

eat the Church's bread, but will not do her work. They expect like

children to be fed and nursed and waited on; they think that if they

_pay_ their minister tolerably well, they have "communicated with"

him quite sufficiently. This apathy has much the same effect as the

Galatian bickerings and jealousies. It robs the Church of the help

of the children whom she has nourished and brought up. Those who act

thus are trying in reality to "mock God." They expect _Him_ to sow

his bounties upon them, but will not let Him reap. They refuse Him

the return that He most requires for His choicest benefits.

Now, the Apostle says, God is not to be defrauded in this way. Men

may wrong each other; they may grieve and affront His ministers.

But no man is clever enough to cheat God. It is not Him, it is

_themselves_ they will prove to have deceived. Vain and selfish men

who take the best that God and man can do for them as though it were

a tribute to their greatness, envious and restless men who break the

Church's fellowship of peace, will reap at last even as they sow.

The mischief and the loss may fall on others now; but in its full

ripeness it will come in the end upon themselves. The final reckoning

awaits us in another world. And as we act by God and by His Church

now, in our day, so He will act hereafter by us in His day.

Thus the Apostle, in vv. 6 and 7, places this matter in the searching

light of eternity. He brings to bear upon it one of the great

spiritual maxims characteristic of his teaching. Paul's unique

influence as a religious teacher lies in his mastery of principles

of this kind, in the keenness of insight and the incomparable vigour

with which he applies eternal truths to commonplace occurrences. The

paltriness and vulgarity of these local broils and disaffections lend

to his warning a more severe impressiveness. With what a startling

and sobering force, one thinks, the rebuke of these verses must have

fallen on the ears of the wrangling Galatians! How unspeakably mean

their quarrels appear in the light of the solemn issues opening out

before them! It was _God_ whom their folly had presumed to mock.

It was the harvest of eternal life of which their factiousness

threatened to defraud them.

* * * * *

The principle on which this warning rests is stated in terms that

give it universal application: _Whatsoever a man soweth, that

shall he also reap_. This is in fact the postulate of all moral

responsibility. It asserts the continuity of personal existence,

the connection of cause and effect in human character. It makes man

the master of his own destiny. It declares that his future doom

hangs upon his present choice, and is in truth its evolution and

consummation. The twofold lot of "corruption" or "life eternal" is

in every case no more, and no less, than the proper harvest of the

kind of sowing practised here and now. The use made of our seed-time

determines exactly, and with a moral certainty greater even than

that which rules in the natural field, what kind of fruitage our

immortality will render.

This great axiom deserves to be looked at in its broadest aspect. It

involves the following considerations:--

I. _Our present life is the seed-time of an eternal harvest._

Each recurring year presents a mirror of human existence. The analogy

is a commonplace of the world's poetry. The spring is in every land a

picture of youth--its morning freshness and innocence, its laughing

sunshine, its opening blossoms, its bright and buoyant energy; and,

alas, oftentimes its cold winds and nipping frosts and early, sudden

blight! Summer images a vigorous manhood, with all the powers in

action and the pulses of life beating at full swing; when the dreams

of youth are worked out in sober, waking earnest; when manly strength

is tested and matured under the heat of mid-day toil, and character

is disciplined, and success or failure in life's battle must be

determined. Then follows mellow autumn, season of shortening days and

slackening steps and gathering snows; season too of ripe experience,

of chastened thought and feeling, of widened influence and clustering

honours. And the story ends in the silence and winter of the grave!

_Ends?_ Nay, that is a new beginning! This whole round of earthly

vicissitude is but a single spring-time. It is the mere childhood of

man's existence, the threshold of the vast house of life.

The oldest and wisest man amongst us is only a little child in the

reckoning of eternity. The Apostle Paul counted himself no more. "We

know in part," he says; "we prophesy in part--talking, reasoning

like children. We shall become _men_, seeing face to face, knowing

as we are known" (1 Cor. xiii. 8, 11, 12). Do we not ourselves feel

this in our higher moods? There is an instinct of immortality, a

forecasting of some ampler existence, "a stirring of blind life"

within the soul; there are visionary gleams of an unearthly Paradise

haunting at times the busiest and most unimaginative men. We are

intelligences in the germ, lying folded up in the chrysalis stage

of our existence. Eyes, wings are still to come. "It doth not yet

appear what we shall be," no more than he who had seen but the

seed-sowing of early spring and the bare wintry furrows, could

imagine what the golden, waving harvest would be like. There is

a glorious, everlasting kingdom of heaven, a world which in its

duration, its range of action and experience, its style of equipment

and occupation, will be worthy of the elect children of God. Worship,

music, the purest passages of human affection and of moral elevation,

may give us some foretaste of its joys. But what it will be really

like, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard; nor heart of man conceived."

Think of that, struggling heart, worn with labour, broken by sorrow,

cramped and thwarted by the pressure of an unkindly world. "The

earnest expectancy of the creation" waits for your revealing (Rom.

viii. 19). You will have your enfranchisement; your soul will take

wing at last. Only have faith in God, and in righteousness; only "be

not weary in well-doing." Those crippled powers will get their full

play. Those baffled purposes and frustrated affections will unfold

and blossom into a completeness undreamed of now, in the sunshine

of heaven, in "the liberty of the glory of the sons of God." Why

look for your harvest here! It is _March_, not August yet. "_In due

season_ we shall reap, if we faint not." See to it that you "sow

to the Spirit," that your life be of the true seed of the kingdom;

and for the rest, have no care nor fear. What should we think of the

farmer who in winter, when his fields were frost-bound, should go

about wringing his hands and crying that his labour was all lost! Are

we wiser in our despondent moods? However dreary and unpromising,

however poor and paltry in its outward seeming the earthly seed-time,

your life's work will have its resurrection. Heaven lies hidden in

those daily acts of humble, difficult duty, even as the giant oak

with its centuries of growth and all its summer glory sleeps in the

acorn-cup. No eye may see it now; but "the Day will declare it!"

II. In the second place, _the quality of the future harvest depends

entirely on the present sowing_.

In _quantity_, as we have seen, in outward state and circumstance,

there is a complete contrast. The harvest surpasses the seed from

which it sprang, by thirty, sixty or a hundred-fold. But in _quality_

we find a strict agreement. In degree they may differ infinitely;

in kind they are one. The harvest multiplies the effect of the

sower's labour; but it multiplies exactly that effect, and nothing

else. This law runs through all life. If we could not count upon it,

labour would be purposeless and useless; we should have to yield

ourselves passively to nature's caprice. The farmer sows wheat in his

cornfield, the gardener plants and trains his fig-tree; and he gets

wheat, or figs, for his reward--nothing else. Or is he a "sluggard"

that "will not plow by reason of the cold?" Does he let weeds and

thistledown have the run of his garden-plot? Then it yields him a

plentiful harvest of thistles and of weeds! What could he expect?

"Men do not gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles." From

the highest to the lowest order of living things, each grows and

fructifies "after its kind." This is the rule of nature, the law

which constituted _Nature_ at the beginning. The good tree brings

forth good fruit; and the good seed makes the good tree.

All this has its moral counterpart. The law of reproduction in

kind holds equally true of the relation of this life to the next.

Eternity for us will be the multiplied, consummated outcome of the

good or evil of the present life. Hell is just sin ripe--rotten ripe.

Heaven is the fruitage of righteousness. There will be two kinds

of reaping, the Apostle tells us, because there are two different

kinds of sowing. "He that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh

reap corruption:" there is nothing arbitrary or surprising in that.

"Corruption"--the moral decay and dissolution of the man's being--is

the natural retributive effect of his carnality. And "he that soweth

to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." Here,

too, the sequence is inevitable. Like breeds its like. Life springs

of life; and death eternal is the culmination of the soul's present

death to God and goodness. The future glory of the saints is at

once a Divine reward, and a necessary development of their present

faithfulness. And eternal life lies germinally contained in faith's

earliest beginning, when it is but as "a grain of mustard seed." We

may expect in our final state the outcome of our present conduct, as

certainly as the farmer who puts wheat into his furrows in November

will count on getting wheat out of them again next August.

Under this law of the harvest we are living at this moment, and

sowing every day the seed of an immortality of honour or of shame.

Life is the seed-plot of eternity; and _youth is above all the

seed-time of life_. What are our children doing with these precious,

vernal years? What is going into their minds? What ideas, what

desires are rooting themselves in these young souls? If it be pure

thoughts and true affections, love to God, self-denial, patience

and humility, courage to do what is right--if these be the things

that are sown in their hearts, there will be for them, and for us, a

glorious harvest of wisdom and love and honour in the years to come,

and in the day of eternity. But if sloth and deceit be there, and

unholy thoughts, vanity and envy and self-indulgence, theirs will be

a bitter harvesting. Men talk of "sowing their wild oats," as though

that were an end of it; as though a wild and prodigal youth might

none the less be followed by a sober manhood and an honoured old

age. But it is not so. If wild oats have been sown, there will be

wild oats to reap, as certainly as autumn follows spring. For every

time the youth deceives parent or teacher, let him know that he will

be deceived by the Father of lies a hundred times. For every impure

thought or dishonourable word, shame will come upon him sixty-fold.

If his mind be filled with trash and refuse, then trash and refuse

are all it will be able to produce. If the good seed be not timely

sown in his heart, thorns and nettles will sow themselves there fast

enough; and his soul will become like the sluggard's garden, rank

with base weeds and poison-plants, a place where all vile things will

have their resort,--"rejected and nigh unto a curse."

Who is "he that soweth to his own flesh?" It is, in a word, the

_selfish_ man. He makes his personal interest, and as a rule his

bodily pleasure, directly or ultimately, the object of life. The

sense of responsibility to God, the thought of life as a stewardship

of which one must give account, have no place in his mind. He is a

"lover of pleasure rather than a lover of God." His desires, unfixed

on God, steadily tend downwards. Idolatry of self becomes slavery to

the flesh. Every act of selfish pleasure-seeking, untouched by nobler

aims, weakens and worsens the soul's life. The selfish man gravitates

downward into the sensual man; the sensual man downward into the

bottomless pit.

This is the "minding of the flesh" which "is death" (Rom. viii.

5-8, 13). For it is "enmity against God" and defiance of His law.

It overthrows the course of nature, the balance of our human

constitution; it brings disease into the frame of our being. The

flesh, unsubdued and uncleansed by the virtue of the Spirit, breeds

"corruption." Its predominance is the sure presage of death. The

process of decay begins already, this side the grave; and it is

often made visible by appalling signs. The bloated face, the sensual

leer, the restless, vicious eye, the sullen brow tell us what is

going on within. The man's soul is rotting in his body. Lust and

greed are eating out of him the capacity for good. And if he passes

on to the eternal harvest as he is, if that fatal corruption is not

arrested, what doom can possibly await such a man but that of which

our merciful Saviour spoke so plainly that we might tremble and

escape--"the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched!"

III. And finally, _God Himself is the Lord of the moral harvest_. The

rule of retribution, the nexus that binds together our sowing and our

reaping, is not something automatic and that comes about of itself;

it is directed by the will of God, who "worketh all in all."

Even in the natural harvest we look upwards to Him. The order and

regularity of nature, the fair procession of the seasons waiting

on the silent and majestic march of the heavens, have in all ages

directed thinking and grateful men to the Supreme Giver, to the

creative Mind and sustaining Will that sits above the worlds. As

Paul reminded the untutored Lycaonians, "He hath not left Himself

without witness, in that He gave us rains from heaven and fruitful

seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." It is "God" that

"gives the increase" of the husbandman's toil, of the merchant's

forethought, of the artist's genius and skill. We do not sing our

harvest songs, with our Pagan forefathers, to sun and rain and west

wind, to mother Earth and the mystic powers of Nature. In these

poetic idolatries were yet blended higher thoughts and a sense of

Divine beneficence. But "to us there is one God, the Father, of whom

are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through

whom are all things, and we through Him." In the harvest of the

earth man is a worker together with God. The farmer does his part,

fulfilling the conditions God has laid down in nature; "he putteth

in the wheat in rows, and the barley in its appointed place; for

his God doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him." He tills the

ground, he sows the seed--and there he leaves it _to God_. "He sleeps

and rises night and day; and the seed springs and grows up, he knows

not how." And the wisest man of science cannot tell him how. "God

giveth it a body, as it hath pleased Him." But _how_--that is His own

secret, which He seems likely to keep. All life in its growth, as

in its inception, is a mystery, hid with Christ in God. Every seed

sown in field or garden is a deposit committed to the faithfulness of

God; which He honours by raising it up again, thirty, sixty, or a

hundred-fold, in the increase of the harvest.

In the moral world this Divine co-operation is the more immediate,

as the field of action lies nearer, if one may so say, to the nature

of God Himself. The earthly harvest may, and does often fail. Storms

waste it; blights canker it; drought withers, or fire consumes it.

Industry and skill, spent in years of patient labour, are doomed

not unfrequently to see their reward snatched from them. The very

abundance of other lands deprives our produce of its value. The

natural creation "was made subject to vanity." Its frustration and

disappointment are over-ruled for higher ends. But in the spiritual

sphere there are no casualties, no room for accident or failure. Here

life comes directly into contact with the Living God, its fountain;

and its laws partake of His absoluteness.

Each act of faith, of worship, of duty and integrity, is a compact

between the soul and God. We "_commit our souls_ in well-doing unto a

faithful Creator" (1 Pet. iv. 19). By every such volition the heart

is yielding itself to the direction of the Divine Spirit. It "sows

unto the Spirit," whenever in thought or deed His prompting is obeyed

and His will made the law of life. And as in the soil, by the Divine

chemistry of nature, the tiny germ is nursed and fostered out of

sight, till it lifts itself from the sod a lovely flower, a perfect

fruit, so in the order of grace it will prove that from the smallest

seeds of goodness in human hearts, from the feeblest beginnings of

the life of faith, from the lowliest acts of love and service, God in

due season will raise up a glorious harvest for which heaven itself

will be the richer.

_THE EPILOGUE._

CHAPTER VI. 11-18.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

_THE FALSE AND THE TRUE GLORYING._

"See with how large letters I write unto you with mine own hand.

As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they compel

you to be circumcised; only that they may not be persecuted for

the cross of Christ. For not even they who receive circumcision

do themselves keep the law; but they desire to have you

circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. But far be it

from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,

through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto

the world."--GAL. vi. 11-14.

The rendering of ver. 11 in the Authorised Version is clearly

erroneous (_see how large a letter_). Wickliff, guided by the Latin

Vulgate--_with what maner lettris_--escaped this error. It is a

_plural_ term the Apostle uses, which occasionally in Greek writers

denotes an epistle (as in Acts xxviii. 21), but nowhere else in Paul.

Moreover the noun is in the _dative_ (instrumental) case, and cannot

be made the object of the verb.

Paul draws attention at this point to his penmanship, to the size

of the letters he is using and their autographic form. "See," he

says, "I write this in large characters, and under my own hand." But

does this remark apply to _the whole Epistle_, or to _its concluding

paragraph_ from this verse onwards? To the latter only, as we think.

The word "look" is a kind of _nota bene_. It marks something new,

designed by its form and appearance in the manuscript to arrest the

eye. It was Paul's practice to write through an amanuensis, adding

with his own hand a few final words of greeting or blessing, by

way of authentication.[146] Here this usage is varied. The Apostle

wishes to give these closing sentences the utmost possible emphasis

and solemnity. He would print them on the very heart and soul of his

readers. This intention explains the language of ver. 11; and it

is borne out by the contents of the verses that follow. They are a

postscript, or _Epilogue_, to the Epistle, rehearsing with incisive

brevity the burden of all that it was in the Apostle's heart to say

to these troubled and shaken Galatians.

[146] See 2 Thess. iii. 17, 18; 1 Cor. xvi. 21-23. In ver. 22 of

the latter passage we can trace a similar autographic message, on

a smaller scale. Comp. also Philemon 19.

The past tense of the verb (literally, _I have written_: ἔγραψα) is

in accordance with Greek epistolary idiom. The writer associates

himself with his readers. When the letter comes to them, Paul _has

written_ what they now peruse. On the assumption that the whole

Epistle is autographic it is hard to see what object the large

characters would serve, or why they should be referred to just at

this point.

Ver. 11 is in fact a sensational heading. The last paragraph of the

Epistle is penned in larger type and in the Apostle's characteristic

hand, in order to fasten the attention of these impressionable

Galatians upon his final deliverance. This device Paul employs but

once. It is a kind of practice easily vulgarised and that loses

its force by repetition, as in the case of "loud" printing and

declamatory speech.

In this emphatic finalé the interest of the Epistle, so powerfully

sustained and carried through so many stages, is raised to a yet

higher pitch. Its pregnant sentences give us--_first_, another

and still severer denunciation of "the troublers" (vv. 12, 13);

_secondly_, a renewed protestation of the Apostle's devotion to the

cross of Christ (vv. 14, 15); _thirdly_, a repetition in animated

style of the practical doctrine of Christianity, and a blessing

pronounced upon those who are faithful to it (vv. 15, 16). A pathetic

reference to the writer's personal sufferings, followed by the

customary benediction, brings the letter to a close. The first two

topics of the Epilogue stand in immediate contrast with each other.

I. _The glorying of the Apostle's adversaries._ "They would have you

circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh" (ver. 12).

This is the climax of his reproach against them. It gives us the

key to their character. The boast measures the man. The aim of the

Legalists was to get so many Gentiles circumcised, to win proselytes

through Christianity to Judaism. Every Christian brother persuaded

to submit himself to this rite was another trophy for them. His

circumcision, apart from any moral or spiritual considerations

involved in the matter, was of itself enough to fill these

proselytizers with joy. They counted up their "cases;" they rivalled

each other in the competition for Jewish favour on this ground. To

"glory in your flesh--to be able to point to your bodily condition as

the proof of their influence and their devotion to the Law--this,"

Paul says, "is the object for which they ply you with so many

flatteries and sophistries."

Their aim was intrinsically low and unworthy. They "want to make a

fair show (to present a good face) in the flesh." _Flesh_ in this

place (ver. 12) recalls the contrast between _Flesh_ and _Spirit_

expounded in the last chapter. Paul does not mean that the Judaizers

wish to "make a good appearance _in outward respects, in human

opinion_:" this would be little more than tautology. The expression

stamps the Circumcisionists as "carnal" men. They are "not in the

Spirit," but "in the flesh;" and "after the flesh" they walk. It is

on worldly principles that they seek to commend themselves, and to

unspiritual men. What the Apostle says of himself in Phil. iii. 3,

4, illustrates by contrast his estimate of the Judaizers of Galatia:

"We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory

in Christ Jesus, and _have no confidence in the flesh_." He explains

"having confidence in the flesh" by enumerating his own advantages

and distinctions as a Jew, the circumstances which commended him

in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen--"which were gain to me,"

he says, "but I counted them loss for Christ" (ver. 7). In that

realm of fleshly motive and estimate which Paul had abandoned, his

opponents still remained. They had exchanged Christian fidelity for

worldly favour. And their religion took the colour of their moral

disposition. To _make a fair show_, an imposing, plausible appearance

in ceremonial and legal observance, was the mark they set themselves.

And they sought to draw the Church with them in this direction, and

to impress upon it their own ritualistic type of piety.

This was a worldly, and in their case a _cowardly_ policy. "They

constrain you to be circumcised, only that for the cross of Christ

they may not suffer persecution" (ver. 12). This they were determined

by all means to avoid. Christ had sent His servants forth "as sheep

in the midst of wolves." The man that would serve Him, He said, must

"follow Him, taking up his cross." But the Judaists thought they

knew better than this. They had a plan by which they could be the

friends of Jesus Christ, and yet keep on good terms with the world

that crucified Him. They would make their faith in Jesus a means for

winning over proselytes to Judaism. If they succeeded in this design,

their apostasy might be condoned. The circumcised Gentiles would

propitiate the anger of their Israelite kindred, and would incline

them to look more favourably upon the new doctrine. These men, Paul

says to the Galatians, are sacrificing you to their cowardice.

They rob you of your liberties in Christ in order to make a shield

for themselves against the enmity of their kinsmen. They pretend

great zeal on your behalf; they are eager to introduce you into the

blessings of the heirs of Abraham: the truth is, they are victims of

a miserable fear of persecution.

The cross of Christ, as the Apostle has repeatedly declared (comp.

Chapters XII and XXI), carried with it in Jewish eyes a flagrant

reproach; and its acceptance placed a gulf between the Christian and

the orthodox Jew. The depth of that gulf became increasingly apparent

the more widely the gospel spread, and the more radically its

principles came to be applied. To Paul it was now sorrowfully evident

that the Jewish nation had rejected Christianity. They would not hear

the Apostles of Jesus any more than the Master. For the preaching of

the cross they had only loathing and contempt. Judaism recognised in

the Church of the Crucified its most dangerous enemy, and was opening

the fire of persecution against it all along the line. In this state

of affairs, for the party of men to compromise and make private terms

for themselves with the enemies of Christ was treachery. They were

surrendering, as this Epistle shows, all that was most vital to

Christianity. They gave up the honour of the gospel, the rights of

faith, the salvation of the world, rather than face the persecution

in store for those "who will live godly in Christ Jesus."

Not that they cared so much for the law in itself. Their glorying

was _insincere_, as well as selfish: "For neither do the circumcised

themselves keep the law.--These men who profess such enthusiasm for

the law of Moses and insist so zealously on your submission to it,

dishonour it by their own behaviour." The Apostle is denouncing the

same party throughout. Some interpreters make the first clause of

ver. 13 a parenthesis, supposing that "the circumcised" (participle

present: _those being circumcised_) are _Gentile perverts_ now being

gained over to Judaism, while the foregoing and following sentences

relate to the Jewish teachers. But the context does not intimate,

nor indeed allow such a change of subject. It is "the circumcised"

of ver. 13 _a_ who in ver. 13 _b_ wish to see the Galatians

circumcised, "in order to boast over their flesh,"--the same who,

in ver. 12, "desire to make a fair show in the flesh" and to escape

Jewish persecution. Reading this in the light of the previous

chapters, there seems to us no manner of doubt as to the persons thus

designated. They are the Circumcisionists, Jewish Christians who

sought to persuade the Pauline Gentile Churches to adopt circumcision

and to receive their own legalistic perversion of the gospel of

Christ. The present tense of the Greek participle, used as it is

here with the definite article,[147] has the power of becoming a

_substantive_, dropping its reference to time; for the act denoted

passes into an abiding characteristic, so that the expression

acquires the form of a title. "The circumcised" are _the men of the

circumcision_, those known to the Galatians in this character.

[147] ὁι περιτεμνόμενοι (_Revised Text_). On this idiom, see

Winer's _Grammar_, p. 444; A. Buttmann's _N. T. Grammar_, p. 296.

In ch. i. 23, and in ii. 2 (τ. δοκοῦσι), we have had instances of

this usage.

The phrase is susceptible, however, of a wider application. When

Paul writes thus, he is thinking of others besides the handful of

troublers in Galatia. In Rom. ii. 17-29 he levels this identical

charge of hypocritical law-breaking against the Jewish people at

large: "Thou who gloriest in the law," he exclaims, "through thy

transgression of the law dishonourest thou God?" This shocking

inconsistency, notorious in contemporary Judaism, was to be observed

in the conduct of the legalist zealots in Galatia. They broke

themselves the very law which they tried to force on others. Their

pretended jealousy for the ordinances of Moses was itself their

condemnation. It was not the glory of the law they were concerned

about, but their own.

The policy of the Judaizers was dishonourable both in spirit and in

aim. They were false to Christ in whom they professed to believe;

and to the law which they pretended to keep. They were facing both

ways, studying the safest, not the truest course, anxious in truth

to be friends at once with the world and Christ. Their conduct has

found many imitators, in men who "make godliness a way of gain,"

whose religious course is dictated by considerations of worldly

self-interest. A little persecution, or social pressure, is enough to

"turn them out of the way." They cast off their Church obligations as

they change their clothes, to suit the fashion. Business patronage,

professional advancement, a tempting family alliance, the _entrée_

into some select and envied circle--such are the things for which

creeds are bartered, for which men put their souls and the souls

of their children knowingly in peril. _Will it pay?_--this is the

question which comes in with a decisive weight in their estimate of

matters of religious profession and the things pertaining to God. But

"what shall it profit?" is the question of Christ.

Nor are they less culpable who bring these motives into play, and put

this kind of pressure on the weak and dependent. There are forms of

social and pecuniary influence, bribes and threats quietly applied

and well understood, which are hardly to be distinguished morally

from persecution. Let wealthy and dominant Churches see to it that

they be clear of these offences, that they make themselves the

protectors, not the oppressors of spiritual liberty. The adherents

that a Church secures by its worldly prestige do not in truth belong

to the "kingdom that is not of this world." Such successes are no

triumphs of the cross. Christ repudiates them. The glorying that

attends proselytism of this kind is, like that of Paul's Judaistic

adversaries, a "glorying in the flesh."

II. "But as for me," cries the Apostle, "far be it to glory, save

in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (ver. 14). Paul knows but

one ground of exultation, one object of pride and confidence--_his

Saviour's cross_.

Before he had received his gospel and seen the cross in the light

of revelation, like other Jews he regarded it with horror. Its

existence covered the cause of Jesus with ignominy. It marked Him

out as the object of Divine abhorrence. To the Judaistic Christian

the cross was still an embarrassment. He was secretly ashamed of a

crucified Messiah, anxious by some means to excuse the scandal and

make amends for it in the face of Jewish public opinion. But now this

disgraceful cross in the Apostle's eyes is the most glorious thing

in the universe. Its message is the good news of God to all mankind.

It is the centre of faith and religion, of all that man knows of God

or can receive from Him. Let it be removed, and the entire structure

of revelation falls to pieces, like an arch without its keystone.

The shame of the cross was turned into honour and majesty. Its

foolishness and weakness proved to be the wisdom and the power of

God. Out of the gloom in which Calvary was shrouded there now shone

forth the clearest light of holiness and love.

Paul gloried in the cross of Christ because it manifested to him _the

character of God_. The Divine love and righteousness, the entire

range of those moral excellences which in their sovereign perfection

belong to the holiness of God, were there displayed with a vividness

and splendour hitherto inconceivable. "God so loved the world," and

yet so honoured the law of right, that "He spared not His own Son,

but delivered Him up for us all." How stupendous is this sacrifice,

which baffles the mind and overwhelms the heart! Nowhere in the

works of creation, nor in any other dispensation of justice or mercy

touching human affairs, is there a spectacle that appeals to us with

an effect to be compared with that of the Sufferer of Calvary.

Let me look, let me think again. Who is He that bleeds on that tree

of shame? Why does the Holy One of God submit to these indignities?

Why those cruel wounds, those heart-breaking cries that speak of

a soul pierced by sorrows deeper than all that bodily anguish can

inflict? Has the Almighty indeed forsaken Him? Has the Evil One

sealed his triumph in the blood of the Son of God? Is it God's mercy

to the world, or is it not rather Satan's hate and man's utter

wickedness that stand here revealed? The issue shows with whom

victory lay in the dread conflict fought out in the Redeemer's soul

and flesh. "_God_ was in Christ"--living, dying, rising. And what was

He doing in Christ?--"reconciling the world unto Himself."

Now we know what the Maker of the worlds is like. "He that hath

seen Me," said Jesus on Passion Eve, "hath seen the Father. From

henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him." What the world knew

before of the Divine character and intentions towards man was but

"poor, weak rudiments." Now the believer has come to _Peniel_; like

Jacob, he has "seen the face of God." He has touched the centre of

things. He has found the secret of love.

Moreover, the Apostle gloried in the cross because it was _the

salvation of men_. His love for men made him boast of it, no less

than his zeal for God. The gospel burning in his heart and on his

lips, was "God's power unto salvation, both to Jew and Greek." He

says this not by way of speculation or theological inference, but

as the testimony of his constant experience. It was bringing men by

thousands from darkness into light, raising them from the slough

of hideous vices and guilty despair, taming the fiercest passions,

breaking the strongest chains of evil, driving out of human hearts

the demons of lust and hate. This message, wherever it went, was

_saving_ men, as nothing had done before, as nothing else has done

since. What lover of his kind would not rejoice in this?

We are members of a weak and suffering race, groaning each in his own

fashion under "the law of sin and death," crying out ever and anon

with Paul, "O wretched man that I am!" If the misery of our bondage

was acute its darkness extreme, how great is the joy with which we

hail our Redeemer! It is the gladness of an immense relief, the joy

of salvation. And our triumph is redoubled when we perceive that His

grace brings us not deliverance for ourselves alone, but commissions

us to impart it to our fellow-men. "Thanks be to God," cries the

Apostle, "who always leadeth us in triumph, and maketh known the

savour of His knowledge by us in every place" (2 Cor. ii. 14).

The essence of the gospel revealed to Paul, as we have observed

more than once, lay in its conception of the office of the cross of

Christ. Not the Incarnation--the basis of the manifestation of the

Father in the Son; not the sinless life and superhuman teaching of

Jesus, which have moulded the spiritual ideal of faith and supplied

its contents; not the Resurrection and Ascension of the Redeemer,

crowning the Divine edifice with the glory of life eternal; but _the

sacrifice of the cross_ is the focus of the Christian revelation.

This gives to the gospel its _saving_ virtue. Round this centre

all other acts and offices of the Saviour revolve, and from it

receive their healing grace. From the hour of the Fall of man the

manifestations of the Divine grace to him ever looked forward to

Calvary; and to Calvary the testimony of that grace has looked

backward ever since. "By this sign" the Church has conquered; the

innumerable benefits with which her teaching has enriched mankind

must all be laid in tribute at the foot of the cross.

The atonement of Jesus Christ demands from us a faith like Paul's,

a faith of _exultation_, a boundless enthusiasm of gratitude and

confidence. If it is worth believing in at all, it is worth believing

in heroically. Let us so boast of it, so exhibit in our lives its

power, so spend ourselves in serving it, that we may justly claim

from all men homage toward the Crucified. Let us lift up the cross of

Christ till its glory shines world-wide, till, as He said, it "draws

all men unto Him." If we triumph in the cross, we shall triumph by

it. It will carry the Church to victory.

And the cross of Jesus Christ is the salvation of men, just because

it is the revelation of God. It is "life eternal," said Jesus to the

Father, "_to know Thee_." The gospel does not save by mere pathos,

but by knowledge--by bringing about a right understanding between man

and his Maker, a reconciliation. It brings God and man together in

the light of truth. In this revelation we see _Him_, the Judge and

the Father, the Lord of the conscience and the Lover of His children;

and we see _ourselves_--what our sins mean, what they have done. God

is face to face with the world. Holiness and sin meet in the shock

of Calvary, and flash into light, each illuminated by contrast with

the other. And the view of what God is in Christ--how He judges, how

He pities us--once fairly seen, breaks the heart, kills the love of

sin. "The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," sitting on that

thorn-crowned brow, clothing that bleeding Form rent with the anguish

of Mercy's conflict with Righteousness on our behalf--it is this

which "shines in our hearts" as in Paul's, and cleanses the soul by

its pity and its terror. But this is no dramatic scene, it is Divine,

eternal fact. "We have beheld and do testify that the Father sent the

Son to be the Saviour of the world. We _know_ and have believed the

love that God hath to us" (1 John iv. 14, 16).

Such is the relation to God which the cross has established for the

Apostle. In what position does it place him toward _the world_? To

it, he tells us, he has bidden farewell. Paul and the world are dead

to each other. The cross stands between them. In ch. ii. 20 he had

said, "_I_ am crucified with Christ;" in ch. v. 24, that his "_flesh_

with its passions and lusts" had undergone this fate; and now he

writes, "Through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ _the world_ is

crucified to me, and I to the world."

Literally, _a world_--a whole world was crucified for Paul when his

Lord died upon the cross. The world that slew Him put an end to

itself, so far as he is concerned. He can never believe in it, never

take pride in it, nor do homage to it any more. It is stripped of

its glory, robbed of its power to charm or govern him. The death of

shame that old "evil world" inflicted upon Jesus has, in Paul's eyes,

reverted to itself; while for the Saviour it is changed into a life

of heavenly glory and dominion. The Apostle's life is withdrawn from

it, to be "hid with Christ in God."

This "crucifixion" is therefore mutual. The Apostle also "is

crucified to the world." Saul the Pharisee was a reputable, religious

man of the world, recognised by it, alive to it, taking his place in

its affairs. But that "old man" has been "crucified with Christ." The

present Paul is in the world's regard another person altogether--"the

filth of the world, the offscouring of all things," no better than

his crucified Master and worthy to share His punishment. He is

dead--"crucified" to it. Faith in Jesus Christ placed a gulf, wide

as that which parts the dead and living, between the Church of the

Apostles and men around them. The cross parted two worlds wholly

different. He who would go back into that other world, the world of

godless self-pleasing and fleshly idolatry, must step over the cross

of Christ to do it.

"_To me_," testifies Paul, "the world is crucified." And the Church

of Christ has still to witness this confession. We read in it a

prophecy. Evil must die. The world that crucified the Son of God, has

written its own doom. With its Satanic Prince it "has been judged"

(John xii. 31; xvi. 11). Morally, it is dead already. The sentence

has passed the Judge's lips. The weakest child of God may safely defy

it, and scorn its boasting. Its visible force is still immense; its

subjects multitudinous; its empire to appearance hardly shaken. It

towers like Goliath confronting "the armies of the living God." But

the foundation of its strength is gone. Decay saps its frame. Despair

creeps over its heart. The consciousness of its impotence and misery

grows upon it.

Worldliness has lost its old serenity irrecoverably. The cross

incessantly disturbs it, and haunts its very dreams. Antichristian

thought at the present time is one wide fever of discontent. It is

sinking into the vortex of pessimism. Its mockery is louder and more

brilliant than ever; but there is something strangely convulsive in

it all; it is the laughter of despair, the dance of death.

Christ the Son of God _has_ come down from the cross, as they

challenged Him. But coming down, He has fastened there in His place

the world that taunted Him. Struggle as it may, it cannot unloose

itself from its condemnation, from the fact that it has killed its

Prince of Life. The cross of Jesus Christ must save--or destroy. The

world must be reconciled to God, or it will perish. On the foundation

laid of God in Zion men will either build or break themselves for

ever. The world that hated Christ and the Father, the world that Paul

cast from him as a dead thing, cannot endure. It "passeth away, and

the lust thereof."

CHAPTER XXIX.

_RITUAL NOTHING: CHARACTER EVERYTHING._

"For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a

new creation. And as many as shall walk by this rule, peace _be_

upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God."--GAL. vi. 15,

16.

Verse 14 comprehends the whole theology of the Epistle, and ver. 15

brings to a head its practical and ethical teaching. This apophthegm

is one of the landmarks of religious history. It ranks in importance

with Christ's great saying: "God is a Spirit; and they that worship

Him, must worship in spirit and truth" (John iv. 21-24). These

sentences of Jesus and of Paul taken together mark the dividing line

between the Old and the New Economy. They declare the nature of the

absolute religion, from the Divine and human side respectively.

God's pure spiritual being is affirmed by Jesus Christ to be

henceforth the norm of religious worship. The exclusive sacredness

of Jerusalem, or of Gerizim, had therefore passed away. On the

other hand, and regarding religion from its psychological side, as

matter of experience and attainment, it is set forth by our Apostle

as an inward life, a spiritual condition, dependent on no outward

form or performance whatsoever. Paul's principle is a consequence

of that declared by his Master. If "God is a Spirit," to be known

and approached as such, ceremonial at once loses its predominance;

it sinks into the accidental, the merely provisional and perishing

element of religion. Faith is no longer bound to material conditions;

it passes inward to its proper seat in the spirit of man. And the

dictum that "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision nothing"

(comp. ch. v. 6; 1 Cor. vii. 19), becomes a watchword of Christian

theology.

This Pauline axiom is advanced to justify the confession of the

Apostle made in ver. 14; it supports the protest of vv. 12-14 against

the devotees of circumcision, who professed faith in Christ but

were ashamed of His cross. "That Judaic rite in which you glory,"

he says, "is nothing. Ritual qualifications and disqualifications

are abolished. Life in the Spirit, the new creation that begins

with faith in Christ crucified--that is everything." The boasts of

the Judaizers were therefore folly: they rested on "nothing." The

Apostle's glorying alone was valid: the new world of "the kingdom of

God," with its "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost,"

was there to justify it.

I. _For neither is circumcision anything._--Judaism is abolished at

a stroke! With it circumcision was _everything_. "The circumcision"

and "the people of God" were in Israelitish phrase terms synonymous.

"Uncircumcision" embraced all that was heathenish, outcast and

unclean.

The Mosaic polity made the status of its subjects, their relation to

the Divine covenant, to depend on this initiatory rite. "Circumcised

the eighth day," the child came under the rule and guardianship of

the sacred Law. In virtue of this mark stamped upon his body, he was

_ipso facto_ a member of the congregation of the Lord, bound to all

its duties, so far as his age permitted, and partner in all its

privileges. The constitution of Mosaism--its ordinances of worship,

its ethical discipline, its methods of administration, and the type

of character which it formed in the Jewish nation--rested on this

fundamental sacrament, and took their complexion therefrom.

The Judaists necessarily therefore made it their first object

to enforce circumcision. If they secured this, they could carry

everything; and the complete Judaizing of Gentile Christianity was

only a question of time. This foundation laid, the entire system of

legal obligation could be reared upon it (ch. v. 3). To resist the

imposition of this yoke was for the Pauline Churches a matter of life

and death. They could not afford to "yield by subjection--no, not for

an hour." The Apostle stands forth as the champion of their freedom,

and casts all Jewish pretensions to the winds when he says, "Neither

is _circumcision_ anything."

This absolute way of putting the matter must have provoked the

orthodox Jew to the last degree. The privileges and ancestral glories

of his birth, the truth of God in His covenants and revelations to

the fathers, were to his mind wrapped up in this ordinance, and

belonged of right to "the Circumcision." To say that circumcision is

nothing seemed to him as good as saying that the Law and the Prophets

were nothing, that Israel had no pre-eminence over the Gentiles, no

right to claim "the God of Abraham" as her God. Hence the bitterness

with which the Apostle was persecuted by his fellow-countrymen, and

the credence given, even by orthodox Jewish Christians, to the charge

that he "taught to the Jews apostasy from Moses" (Acts xxi. 21). In

truth Paul did nothing of the kind, as James of Jerusalem very well

knew. But a sentence like this, torn from its context, and repeated

amongst Jewish communities, naturally gave rise to such imputations.

In his subsequent Epistle to the Romans the Apostle is at pains to

correct erroneous inferences drawn from this and similar sayings of

his concerning the Law. He shows that circumcision, in its historical

import, was of the highest value. "What is the advantage of the Jew?

What the benefit of circumcision? Much every way," he acknowledges.

"Chiefly in that to them were entrusted the oracles of God" (Rom.

iii. 1, 2). And again: "Who are Israelites; whose is the adoption,

and the glory, and the covenants, and the lawgiving, and the service

of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers,--and of whom is

the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed

for ever" (Rom. ix. 4, 5). Eloquently has Paul vindicated himself

from the reproach of indifference to the ancient faith. Never did

he love his Jewish kindred more fervently, nor entertain a stronger

confidence in their Divine calling, than at the moment when in that

Epistle he pronounced the reprobation that ensued on their rejecting

the gospel of Christ. He repeats in the fullest terms the claim which

Jesus Himself was careful to assert, in declaring the extinction of

Judaism as a local and tribal religion, that "Salvation is of the

Jews" (John iv. 21-24). In the Divine order of history it is still

"to the Jew first." But natural relationship to the stock of Abraham

has in itself no spiritual virtue; "circumcision of the flesh"

is worthless, except as the symbol of a cleansed and consecrated

heart. The possession of this outward token of God's covenant

with Israel, and the hereditary blessings it conferred, brought

with them a higher responsibility, involving heavier punishment

in case of unfaithfulness (Rom. ii. 17-iii. 8). This teaching is

pertinent to the case of children of Christian families, to those

formally attached to the Church by their baptism in infancy and by

attendance on her public rites. These things certainly have "much

advantage every way." And yet in themselves, without a corresponding

inner regeneration, without a true death unto sin and life unto

righteousness, these also are nothing. The limiting phrase "in Christ

Jesus" is no doubt a copyist's addition to the text, supplied from

ch. v. 6; but the qualification is in the Apostle's mind, and is

virtually given by the context. No ceremony is of the essence of

Christianity. No outward rite by itself makes a Christian. We are

"joined to the Lord" in "one Spirit." This is the vital tie.

_Nor is uncircumcision anything._ This is the counter-balancing

assertion, and it makes still clearer the bearing of the former

saying. Paul is not contending against Judaism in any anti-Judaic

spirit. He is not for setting up Gentile in the place of Jewish

customs in the Church; he excludes both impartially. Neither, he

declares, have any place "in Christ Jesus," and amongst the things

that accompany salvation. Paul has no desire to humiliate the Jewish

section of the Church; but only to protect the Gentiles from its

aggressions. He lays his hand on both parties and by this evenly

balanced declaration restrains each of them from encroaching on

the other. "Was any one called circumcised"? he writes to Corinth:

"let him not renounce his circumcision. Hath any one been called in

uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised." The two states alike

are "nothing" from the Christian standpoint. The essential thing is

"keeping the commandments of God" (1 Cor. vii. 18, 19).

Christian Gentiles retained in some instances, doubtless, their

former antipathy to Jewish practices. And while many of the Galatians

were inclined to Legalism, others cherished an extreme repugnance

to its usages. The pretensions of the Legalists were calculated to

excite in the minds of enlightened Gentile believers a feeling of

contempt, which led them to retort on Jewish pride with language of

ridicule. Anti-Judaists would be found arguing that circumcision

was a degradation, the brand of a servile condition; and that its

possessor must not presume to rank with the free sons of God. In

their opinion, _uncircumcision_ was to be preferred and had "much

advantage every way." Amongst Paul's immediate followers there may

have been some who, like Marcion in the second century, would fain

be more Pauline than the Apostle himself, and replied to Jewish

intolerance with an anti-legal intolerance of their own. To this

party it was needful to say, "Neither is uncircumcision anything."

The pagan in his turn has nothing for which to boast over the man of

Israel. This is the caution which the Apostle urges on his Gentile

readers so earnestly in Rom. xi. 13-24. He reminds them that they

owe an immense debt of gratitude to the ancient people of God. Wild

branches grafted into the stock of Abraham, they were "partaking

of the root and fatness" of the old "olive-tree." If the "natural

branches" had been "broken off through unbelief," much more might

they. It became them "not to be high-minded but to fear." So Paul

seeks to protect Israel after the flesh, in its rejection and

sorrowful exile from the fold of Christ, against Gentile insolence.

Alas! that his protection has been so little availing. The Christian

persecutions of the Jews are a dark blot on the Church's record.

The enemies of bigotry and narrowness too oft imbibe the same spirit.

When others treat us with contempt, we are apt to pay them back

in their own coin. They unchurch us, because we cannot pronounce

their shibboleths; they refuse to see in our communion the signs of

Christ's indwelling. It requires our best charity in that case to

appreciate their excellencies and the fruit of the Spirit manifest in

them. "I am of Cephas," say they; and we answer with the challenge

"I of Paul." Sectarianism is denounced in a sectarian spirit. The

enemies of form and ceremony make a religion of their Anti-ritualism.

Church controversies are proverbially bitter; the love which

"hopeth and believeth all things," under their influence suffers a

sad eclipse. On both sides let us be on our guard. The spirit of

partisanship is not confined to the assertors of Church prerogative.

An obstinate and uncharitable pride has been known to spring up in

the breasts of the defenders of liberty, in those who deem themselves

the exponents of pure spiritual religion. "Thus I trample on the

pride of Plato," said the Cynic, as he trod on the philosopher's

sumptuous carpets; and Plato justly retorted, "You do it with greater

pride."

The Apostle would fain lift his readers above the level of this

legalist contention. He bids them dismiss their profitless debates

respecting the import of circumcision, the observance of Jewish

feasts and sabbaths. These debates were a mischief in themselves,

destroying the Church's peace and distracting men's minds from the

spiritual aims of the Gospel; they were fatal to the dignity and

elevation of the Christian life. When men allow themselves to be

absorbed by questions of this kind, and become Circumcisionist or

Uncircumcisionist partisans, eager Ritualists or Anti-ritualists,

they lose the sense of proportion in matters of faith and the poise

of a conscientious and charitable judgement. These controversies

pre-eminently "minister questions" to no profit but to the subverting

of the hearers, instead of furthering "the dispensation of God,

which is in faith" (1 Tim. i. 4). They disturb the City of God with

intestine strife, while the enemy thunders at the gates. Could we

only let such disputes alone, and leave them to perish by inanition!

So Paul would have the Galatians do; he tells them that the great

Mosaic rite is no longer worth defending or attacking. The best thing

is to forget it.

II. What then has the Apostle to put in the place of ritual, as

the matter of cardinal importance and chief study in the Church of

Christ? He presents to view _a new creation_.

It is something _new_ that he desiderates. Mosaism was effete.

The questions arising out of it were dying, or dead. The old

method of revelation which dealt with Jew and Gentile as different

religious species, and conserved Divine truth by a process of

exclusion and prohibition, had served its purpose. "The middle wall

of partition was broken down." The age of faith and freedom had

come, the dispensation of grace and of the Spirit. The Legalists

minimised, they practically ignored the significance of Calvary.

Race-distinctions and caste-privileges were out of keeping with such

a religion as Christianity. The new creed set up a new order of life,

which left behind it the discussions of rabbinism and the formularies

of the legal schools as survivals of bygone centuries.

The novelty of the religion of the gospel was most conspicuous in

_the new type of character_ that it created. The faith of the cross

claims to have produced not a new style of ritual, a new system of

government, but new men. By this product it must be judged. _The

Christian_ is the "new creature" which it begets.

Whatever Christianity has accomplished in the outer world--the

various forms of worship and social life in which it is embodied, the

changed order of thought and of civilisation which it is building

up--is the result of its influence over the hearts of individual

men. Christ, above all other teachers, addressed Himself directly

to the heart, whence proceed the issues of life. There His gospel

establishes its seat. The Christian is the man with a "new heart."

The prophets of the Old Testament looked forward to this as the

essential blessing of religion, promised for the Messianic times

(Heb. viii. 8-13). Through them the Holy Spirit uttered His protest

against the mechanical legalism to which the religion of the temple

and the priesthood was already tending. But this witness had fallen

on deaf ears; and when Christ proclaimed, "It is the Spirit that

quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing," when He said, "The things

that defile a man come out of his heart," He preached revolutionary

doctrine. It is the same principle that the Apostle vindicates. The

religion of Christ has to do in the first place with the individual

man, and in man with his heart.

What then, we further ask, is the character of this hidden man of

the heart, "created anew in Christ Jesus"? Our Epistle has given

us the answer. In him "faith working by love" takes the place of

circumcision and uncircumcision--that is, of Jewish and Gentile

ceremonies and moralities, powerless alike to save (ch. v. 6).

Love comes forward to guarantee the "fulfilling of the law,"

whose fulfilment legal sanctions failed to secure (ch. v. 14). And

the Spirit of Christ assumes His sovereignty in this work of new

creation, calling into being His array of inward graces to supersede

the works of the condemned flesh that no longer rules in the nature

of God's redeemed sons (ch. v. 16-24).

The Legalists, notwithstanding their idolatry of the law, did not

_keep_ it. So the Apostle has said, without fear of contradiction

(ver. 13). But the men of the Spirit, actuated by a power above law,

in point of fact do keep it, and "law's righteousness is fulfilled"

in them (Rom. viii. 3, 4). This was a new thing in the earth. Never

had the law of God been so fulfilled, in its essentials, as it was by

the Church of the Crucified. Here were men who truly "loved God with

all their soul and strength, and their neighbour as themselves." From

Love the highest down to Temperance the humblest, all "the fruit of

the Spirit" in its clustered perfection flourished in their lives.

Jewish discipline and Pagan culture were both put to shame by this

"new creation" of moral virtue. These graces were produced not in

select instances of individuals favoured by nature, in souls disposed

to goodness, or after generations of Christian discipline; but in

multitudes of men of every grade of life--Jews and Greeks, slaves and

freemen, wise and unwise--in those who had been steeped in infamous

vices, but were now "washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God."

Such regenerated men were the credentials of Paul's gospel. As he

looked on his Corinthian converts, drawn out of the very sink of

heathen corruption, he could say, "The seal of my apostleship are

ye in the Lord." The like answer Christianity has still to give to

its questioners. If it ever ceases to render this answer, its day

is over; and all the strength of its historical and philosophical

evidences will not avail it. The Gospel is "God's power unto

salvation"--or it is nothing!

Such is Paul's _canon_, as he calls it in ver. 16--the rule which

applies to the faith and practice of every Christian man, to the

pretensions of all theological and ecclesiastical systems. The true

Christianity, the true churchmanship, is that which turns bad men

into good, which transforms the slaves of sin into sons of God. A

true faith is a _saving_ faith. The "new creation" is the sign of the

Creator's presence. It is God "who quickeneth the dead" (Rom. iv. 17).

When the Apostle exalts character at the expense of ceremonial, he

does this in a spirit the very opposite of religious indifference.

His maxim is far removed from that expressed in the famous couplet of

Pope:

"For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."

The gospel of Christ is above all things a _mode of faith_. The "new

creature" is a son of God, seeking to be like God. His conception of

the Divine character and of his own relationship thereto governs his

whole life. His "life is in the right," because his heart is right

with God. All attempts to divorce morality from religion, to build up

society on a secular and non-religious basis, are indeed foredoomed

to failure. The experience of mankind is against them. As a nation's

religion has been, so its morals. The ethical standard in its rise

or fall, if at some interval of time, yet invariably, follows the

advance or decline of spiritual faith. For practical purposes, and

for society at large, religion supplies the mainspring of ethics.

Creed is in the long run the determinant of character. The question

with the Apostle is not in the least whether religion is vital to

morals; but whether this or that formality is vital to religion.

* * * * *

One cannot help wondering how Paul would have applied his canon to

the Church questions of our own day. Would he perchance have said,

"Episcopacy is nothing, and Presbyterianism is nothing;--but keeping

the commandments of God"? Or might he have interposed in another

direction, to testify that "Church Establishments are nothing, and

Disestablishment is nothing; charity is the one thing needful?"

Nay, can we even be bold enough to imagine the Apostle declaring,

"Neither Baptism availeth anything, nor the Lord's Supper availeth

anything,--apart from the faith that works by love"? His rule at any

rate conveys an admonition to us when we magnify questions of Church

ordinance and push them to the front, at the cost of the weightier

matters of our common faith. Are there not multitudes of Romanists

on the one hand who have, as we believe, perverted sacraments, and

Quakers on the other hand who have no sacraments, but who have,

notwithstanding, a penitent, humble, loving faith in Jesus Christ?

And their faith saves them: who will doubt it? Although faith must

ordinarily suffer, and does in our judgement manifestly suffer,

when deprived of these appointed and most precious means of its

expression and nourishment. But what authority have we to forbid to

such believers a place in the Body of Christ, in the brotherhood of

redeemed souls, and to refuse them the right hand of fellowship,

"who have received the Holy Ghost as well as we"? "It is the Spirit

that beareth witness:" who is he that gainsayeth? Grace is more than

the means of grace.

* * * * *

"And as many as shall walk by this rule, peace be on them and mercy,

and upon the Israel of God." Here is an Apostolic benediction for

every loyal Church. The "walk" that the Apostle approves is the

measured, even pace, the steady _march_[148] of the redeemed host

of Israel. On all who are thus minded, who are prepared to make

spiritual perfection the goal of their endeavours for themselves and

for the Church, Paul invokes God's peace and mercy.

[148] Στοιχήσουσιν; comp. ch. v. 25.

Peace is followed by the _mercy_ which guards and restores it. Mercy

heals backslidings and multiplies pardons. She loves to bind up a

broken heart, or a rent and distracted Church. Like the pillar of

fire and cloud in the wilderness, this twofold blessing rests day

and night upon the tents of Israel. Through all their pilgrimage it

attends the children of Abraham, who follow in the steps of their

father's faith.

With this tender supplication Paul brings his warnings and

dissuasives to an end. For the betrayers of the cross he has stern

indignation and alarms of judgement. Towards his children in the

faith nothing but peace and mercy remains in his heart. As an evening

calm shuts in a tempestuous day, so this blessing concludes the

Epistle so full of strife and agitation. We catch in it once more the

chime of the old benediction, which through all storm and peril ever

rings in ears attuned to its note: _Peace shall be upon Israel_ (Ps.

cxxv. 5).

CHAPTER XXX.

_THE BRAND OF JESUS._

"From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear branded on my

body the marks of Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be

with your spirit, brethren. Amen."--GAL. vi. 17, 18.

The Apostle's pen lingers over the last words of this Epistle. His

historical self-defence, his theological argument, his practical

admonitions, with the blended strain of expostulation and entreaty

that runs through the whole--now rising into an awful severity, now

sinking into mother-like tenderness--have reached their conclusion.

The stream of deep and fervent thought pouring itself out in these

pages has spent its force. This prince of the Apostles in word and

doctrine has left the Church no more powerful or characteristic

utterance of his mind. And Paul has marked the special urgency of his

purpose by his closing message contained in the last six verses, an

Epistle within the Epistle, penned in large, bold strokes from his

own hand, in which his very soul transcribes itself before our eyes.

It only remains for him to append his signature. We should expect him

to do this in some striking and special way. His first sentence (ch.

i. 1-10) revealed the profound excitement of spirit under which he is

labouring; not otherwise does he conclude. Ver. 17 sharply contrasts

with the words of peace that hushed our thoughts at the close of the

last paragraph. Perhaps the peace he wishes these troubled Churches

reminds him of his own troubles. Or is it that in breathing his

devout wishes for "the Israel of God," he cannot but think of those

who were "of Israel," but no sons of peace, in whose hearts was

hatred and mischief toward himself? Some such thought stirs anew the

grief with which he has been shaken; and a pathetic cry breaks from

him like the sough of the departing tempest.

Yet the words have the sound of triumph more than of sorrow. Paul

stands a conscious victor, though wounded and with scars upon him

that he will carry to his grave. Whether this letter will serve its

immediate purpose, whether the defection in Galatia will be stayed

by it, or not, the cause of the cross is sure of its triumph; his

contention against its enemies has not been in vain. The force of

inspiration that uplifted him in writing the Epistle, the sense of

insight and authority that pervades it, are themselves an earnest of

victory. The vindication of his authority in Corinth, which, as we

read the order of events, had very recently occurred, gave token that

his hold on the obedience of the Gentile Churches was not likely to

be destroyed, and that in the conflict with legalism the gospel of

liberty was certain to prevail. His courage rises with the danger. He

writes as though he could already say, "I have fought the good fight.

Thanks be to God, which always leadeth us in triumph" (2 Tim. iv. 7;

2 Cor. ii. 14).

The warning of ver. 17 has the ring of _Apostolic dignity_. "From

henceforth let no man give me trouble!" Paul speaks of himself as

a sacred person. God's mark is upon him. Let men beware how they

meddle with him. "He that toucheth you," the Lord said to His people

after the sorrows of the Exile, "toucheth the apple of Mine eye"

(Zech. ii. 8). The Apostle seems to have had a similar feeling

respecting himself. He announces that whosoever from this time lays

an injurious hand upon him does so at his peril. _Henceforth_--for

the struggle with Legalism was the crisis of Paul's ministry. It

called forth all his powers, natural and supernatural, into exercise.

It led him to his largest thoughts respecting God and man, sin and

salvation; and brought him his heaviest sorrows. The conclusion of

this letter signalises the culmination of the Judaistic controversy,

and the full establishment of Paul's influence and doctrinal

authority. The attempt of Judaism to strangle the infant Church is

foiled. In return it has received at Paul's hands its death-blow. The

position won in this Epistle will never be lost; the doctrine of the

cross, as the Apostle taught it, cannot be overthrown. Looking back

from this point to "prove his own work," he can in all humility claim

this "glorying in regard to himself" (ver. 4). He stands attested in

the light of God's approval as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. He

has done the cause of truth an imperishable service. He takes his

place henceforth in the front rank amongst the spiritual leaders of

mankind. Who now will bring reproach against him, or do dishonour to

the cross which he bears? Against that man God's displeasure will go

forth. Some such thoughts were surely present to the Apostle's mind

in writing these final words. They cannot but occur to us in reading

them. Well done, we say, thou faithful servant of the Lord! Ill must

it be for him who henceforth shall trouble thee.

"Troubles" indeed, and to spare, Paul had encountered. He has just

passed through the darkest experience of his life. The language

of the Second Epistle to Corinth is a striking commentary upon

this verse. "We are pressed on every side," he writes, "perplexed,

pursued, smitten down" (ch. iv. 8, 9). His troubles came not only

from his exhausting labours and hazardous journeys; he was everywhere

pursued by the fierce and deadly hatred of his fellow-countrymen.

Even within the Church there were men who made it their business to

harass him and destroy his work. No place was safe for him--not even

the bosom of the Church. On land or water, in the throngs of the city

or the solitudes of the desert, his life was in hourly jeopardy (1

Cor. xv. 30; 2 Cor. xi. 26).

Beside all this, "the care of the Churches" weighed on his mind

heavily. There was "no rest" either for his flesh or spirit (2 Cor.

ii. 13; vii. 5). Recently Corinth, then Galatia was in a ferment of

agitation. His doctrine was attacked, his authority undermined by

the Judaic emissaries, now in this quarter, now in that. The tumult

at Ephesus, so graphically described by Luke, happening at the same

time as the broils in the Corinthian Church and working on a frame

already overstrung, had thrown him into a prostration of body and

mind so great that he says, "We despaired even of life. We had the

answer of death in ourselves" (2 Cor. i. 8, 9). The expectation that

he would die before the Lord's return had now, for the first time it

appears, definitely forced itself on the Apostle, and cast over him a

new shadow, causing deep ponderings and searchings of heart (2 Cor.

v. 1-10). The culmination of the legalistic conflict was attended

with an inner crisis that left its ineffaceable impression on the

Apostle's soul.

But he has risen from his sick bed. He has been "comforted by the

coming of Titus" with better news from Corinth (2 Cor. vii. 6-16).

He has written these two letters--the Second to the Corinthians,

and this to the Galatians. And he feels that the worst is past. "He

who delivered him out of so great a death, will yet deliver" (2

Cor. i. 10). So confident is he in the authority which Christ gave

and enabled him to exercise in utter weakness, so signally is he

now stamped as God's Apostle by his sufferings and achievements,

that he can dare any one from this time forth to oppose him. The

anathema of this Epistle might well make his opponents tremble. Its

remorseless logic left their sophistries no place of refuge. Its

passionate entreaties broke down suspicion and sullenness. Let the

Circumcisionists beware how they slander him. Let fickle Galatians

cease to trouble him with their quarrels and caprices. So well

assured is he for his part of the rectitude of his course and of the

Divine approval and protection, that he feels bound to warn them that

it will be the worse for those who at such a time lay upon him fresh

and needless burdens.

One catches in this sentence too _an undertone of entreaty_, a

confession of weariness. Paul is tired of strife. "Woe is me," he

might say, "that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents

of Kedar! My soul hath long had her dwelling with him that hateth

peace." "Enmities, ragings, factions, divisions"--with what a

painful emphasis he dwells in the last chapter on these many forms

of discord. He has known them all. For months he has been battling

with the hydra-headed brood. He longs for an interval of rest. He

seems to say, "I pray you, let me be at peace. Do not vex me any

more with your quarrels. I have suffered enough." The present tense

of the Greek imperative verb (παρεχέτω) brings it to bear on the

course of things then going on: as much as to say, "Let these weapons

be dropped, these wars and fightings cease." For his own sake the

Apostle begs the Galatians to desist from the follies that caused

him so much trouble, and to suffer him to share with them God's

benediction of peace.

But what an argument is this with which Paul enforces his plea,--"for

I bear the brand of Jesus in my body!"

"The _stigmata_ of Jesus"--what does he mean? It is "in my

body"--some marks branded or punctured on the Apostle's person,

distinguishing him from other men, conspicuous and humiliating,

inflicted on him as Christ's servant, and which so much resembled

the inflictions laid on the Redeemer's body that they are called

"the marks of Jesus." No one can say precisely what these brands

consisted in. But we know enough of the previous sufferings of the

Apostle to be satisfied that he carried on his person many painful

marks of violence and injury. His perils endured by land and sea, his

imprisonments, his "labour and travail, hunger and thirst, cold and

nakedness," his three shipwrecks, the "night and day spent in the

deep," were sufficient to break down the strength of the stoutest

frame; they had given him the look of a worn and haggard man. Add

to these the stoning at Lystra, when he was dragged out for dead.

"Thrice" also had he been beaten with the Roman rods; "five times"

with the thirty-nine stripes of the Jewish scourge (2 Cor. xi. 23-27).

Is it to these last afflictions, cruel and shameful they were in

the extreme, that the Apostle specially refers as constituting

"the brand _of Jesus_"? For Jesus was _scourged_. The allusion of 1

Pet. ii. 24--"by whose _stripes_ (literally, _bruise_ or _weal_) ye

were healed"--shows how vividly this circumstance was remembered,

and how strongly it affected Christian minds. With this indignity

upon Him--His body lashed with the torturing whip, scored with livid

bruises--our Blessed Lord was exposed on the cross. So He was branded

as a malefactor, even before His crucifixion. And the same brand Paul

had received, not once but many times, for his Master's sake. As the

strokes of the scourge fell on the Apostle's shuddering flesh, he had

been consoled by thinking how near he was brought to his Saviour's

passion: "The servant," He had said, "shall be as his Lord." Possibly

some recent infliction of the kind, more savage than the rest, had

helped to bring on the malady which proved so nearly fatal to him.

In some way he had been marked with fresh and manifest tokens of

bodily suffering in the cause of Christ. About this time he writes of

himself as "always bearing about in his body the dying of the Lord

Jesus" (2 Cor. iv. 10); for the corpse-like state of the Apostle,

with the signs of maltreatment visible in his frame, pathetically

imaged the suffering Redeemer whom he preached. Could the Galatians

have seen him as he wrote, in physical distress, labouring under the

burden of renewed and aggravated troubles, their hearts must have

been touched with pity. It would have grieved them to think that they

had increased his afflictions, and were "persecuting him whom the

Lord had smitten."

His scars were badges of dishonour to worldly eyes. But to Paul

himself these tokens were very precious. "Now I rejoice in my

sufferings for you," he writes from his Roman prison at a later

time: "and am filling up what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ

in my flesh" (Col. i. 24). The Lord had not suffered everything

Himself. He honoured His servants by leaving behind a measure of His

afflictions for each to endure in the Church's behalf. The Apostle

was companion of his Master's disgrace. In him the words of Jesus

were signally fulfilled: "They have hated Me; they will also hate

you." He was following, closely as he might, in the way that led to

Calvary. All men may know that Paul is Christ's servant; for he wears

His livery, the world's contempt. Of Jesus they said, "Away with Him,

crucify Him;" and of Paul, "Away with such a fellow from the earth:

for it is not fit that he should live" (Acts xxii. 22). "Enough for

the disciple to be as his Master:" what could he wish more?

His condition inspired reverence in all who loved and honoured Jesus

Christ. Paul's Christian brethren were moved by feelings of the

tenderest respect by the sight of his wasted and crippled form. "His

bodily presence is weak (2 Cor. x. 10): he looks like a corpse!"

said his despisers. But under that physical feebleness there lay an

immense fund of moral vigour. How should he not be weak, after so

many years of wearying toil and relentless persecution and torturing

pain? Out of this very weakness came a new and unmatched strength; he

"glories in his infirmities," for there rests upon him the strength

of Christ (2 Cor. xii. 9).

Under the expression "_stigmata_ of Jesus" there is couched a

reference to the practice of marking criminals and runaway slaves

with a brand burnt into the flesh, which is perpetuated in our

English use of the Greek words _stigma_ and _stigmatize_. A man

so marked was called _stigmatias_, _i.e._, a branded scoundrel;

and such the Apostle felt himself to be in the eyes of men of the

world. Captain Lysias of Jerusalem took him for an Egyptian leader

of banditti. Honourable men, when they knew him better, learned

to respect him; but such was the reputation that his battered

appearance, and the report of his enemies, at first sight gained for

him.

The term _stigmata_ had also another and different signification. It

applied to a well-known custom of religious devotees to _puncture_,

or tattoo, upon themselves the name of their God, or other sign

expressive of their devotion (Isa. xiiv. 5; Rev. iii. 12). This

signification may be very naturally combined with the former in the

employment of the figure. Paul's _stigmata_, resembling those of

Jesus and being of the same order, were signs at once of reproach and

of consecration. The prints of the world's insolence were witnesses

of his devotion to Christ. He loves to call himself "the slave of

Christ Jesus." The scourge has written on his back his Master's name.

Those dumb wounds proclaim him the bondman of the Crucified. At the

lowest point of personal and official humiliation, when affronts

were heaped upon him, he felt that he was raised in the might of the

Spirit to the loftiest dignity, even as "Christ was crucified through

weakness, yet liveth through the power of God" (2 Cor. xiii. 4.)

The words _I bear_--not united, as in our own idiom, but standing the

pronoun at the head and the verb at the foot of the sentence--have

each of them a special emphasis. _I_--in contrast with his opponents,

man-pleasers, shunning Christ's reproach; and _bear_ he says

exultantly--"this is my burden, these are the marks I carry,"

like the standard-bearer of an army who proudly wears his scars

(Chrysostom). In the profound and sacred joy which the Apostle's

tribulations brought him, we cannot but feel even at this distance

that we possess a share. They belong to that richest treasure of the

past, the sum of

"Sorrow which is not sorrow, but delight

To hear of, for the glory that redounds

Therefrom to human kind and what we are."

The _stigmatization_ of Paul, his puncturing with the wounds of

Jesus, has been revived in later times in a manner far remote

from anything that he imagined or would have desired. _Francis of

Assisi_ in the year 1224 A.D. received in a trance the wound-prints

of the Saviour on his body; and from that time to his death, it

is reported, the saint had the physical appearance of one who had

suffered crucifixion. Other instances, to the number of eighty, have

been recorded in the Roman Catholic Church of the reproduction, in

more or less complete form, of the five wounds of Jesus and the

agonies of the cross; chiefly in the case of nuns. The last was that

of Louise Lateau, who died in Belgium in the year 1883. That such

phenomena have occurred, there is no sufficient reason to doubt. It

is difficult to assign any limits to the power of the human mind over

the body in the way of sympathetic imitation. Since St. Francis' day

many Romanist divines have read the Apostle's language in this sense;

but the interpretation has followed rather than given rise to this

fulfilment. In whatever light these manifestations may be regarded,

they are a striking witness to the power of the cross over human

nature. Protracted meditation on the sufferings of our Lord, aided

by a lively imagination and a susceptible physique, has actually

produced a rehearsal of the bodily pangs and the wound-marks of

Calvary.

This mode of knowing Christ's sufferings "after the flesh," morbid

and monstrous as we deem it to be, is the result of an aspiration

which however misdirected by Catholic asceticism, is yet the highest

that belongs to the Christian life. Surely we also desire, with Paul,

to be "made conformable to the death of Christ." On our hearts His

wounds must be impressed. Along the pathway of our life His cross

has to be borne. To all His disciples, with the sons of Zebedee, He

says, "Ye shall indeed drink of My cup; and with the baptism that I

am baptized withal shall ye be baptized." But "it is the Spirit that

quickeneth," said Jesus; "the flesh profiteth nothing." The pains

endured by the body for His sake are only of value when, as in Paul's

case, they are the result and the witness of an inward communion of

the Spirit, a union of the will and the intelligence with Christ.

The cup that He would have us drink with Him, is one of sorrow for

the sins of men. His baptism is that of pity for the misery of our

fellows, of yearning over souls that perish. It will not come upon

us without costing many a pang. If we receive it there will be ease

to surrender, gain and credit to renounce, self to be constantly

sacrificed. We need not go out of our way to find our cross; we have

only not to be blind to it, not to evade it when Christ sets it

before us. It may be part of the cross that it comes in a common,

unheroic form; the service required is obscure; it consists of a

multitude of little, vexing, drudging sacrifices in place of the

grand and impressive sacrifice, which we should be proud to make. To

be martyred by inches, out of sight--this to many is the cruellest

martyrdom of all. But it may be Christ's way, the fittest, the only

perfect way for us, of putting His brand upon us and conforming us to

His death.

Yes, conformity of spirit to the cross is _the mark of Jesus_. "If

we suffer with Him"--so the Apostolic Churches used to sing--"we

shall also be glorified together." In our recoil from the artificial

penances and mortifications of former ages, we are disposed in

these days to banish the idea of mortification altogether from

our Christian life. Do we not study our personal comfort in an

un-Christlike fashion? Are there not many in these days, bearing the

name of Christ, who without shame and without reproof lay out their

plans for winning the utmost of selfish prosperity, and put Christian

objects in the second place? How vain for them to cry "Lord, Lord!"

to the Christ who "pleased not Himself!" They profess at the Lord's

Table to "show His death;" but to show that death in their lives,

to "know" with Paul "the fellowship of His sufferings," is the last

thing that enters into their minds. How the scars of the brave

Apostle put to shame the self-indulgence, the heartless luxury, the

easy friendship with the world, of fashionable Christians! "Be ye

followers of me," he cries, "as I also of Christ." He who shuns that

path cannot, Jesus said, be My disciple.

So the blessed Apostle has put his mark to this Epistle. To the

Colossians from his prison he writes, "Remember my bonds." And to

the Galatians, "Look on my wounds." These are his credentials; these

are the armorial bearings of the Apostle Paul. He places the seal of

Jesus, the sign-manual of _the wounded hand_ upon the letter written

in His name.

THE BENEDICTION.

One benediction the Apostle has already uttered, in ver. 16. But that

was a general wish, embracing all who should walk according to the

spiritual rule of Christ's kingdom. On his readers specifically he

still has his blessing to pronounce. He does it in language differing

in this instance very little from that he is accustomed to employ.

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" is the distinctive blessing of

the New Covenant. It is to the Christian the supreme good of life,

including or carrying with it every other spiritual gift. _Grace_ is

Christ's property. It descended with the Incarnate Saviour into the

world, coming down from God out of heaven. His life displayed it;

His death bestowed it on mankind. Raised to His heavenly throne, He

has become on the Father's behalf the dispenser of its fulness to

all who will receive it. There exalted, thence bestowing on men "the

abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness," He is known and

worshipped as _our Lord Jesus Christ_.

What this grace of God in Christ designs, what it accomplishes in

believing hearts, what are the things that contradict it and make it

void, this Epistle has largely taught us. Of its pure, life-giving

stream the Galatians already had richly tasted. From "Christ's grace"

they were now tempted to "remove" (ch. i. 6). But the Apostle hopes

and prays that it may abide with them.

"With your spirit," he says; for this is the place of its visitation,

the throne of its power. The spirit of man, breathed upon by the Holy

Spirit of God, receives Christ's grace and becomes the subject and

the witness of its regenerating virtue. This benediction contains

therefore in brief all that is set forth in the familiar three fold

formula--"the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God,

and the communion of the Holy Ghost."

After all his fears for his wayward flock, all his chidings and

reproofs, forgiveness and confidence are the last thoughts in Paul's

heart: "Brethren" is the last word that drops from the Apostle's

pen,--followed only by the confirmation of his devout _Amen_.

* * * * *

To his readers also the writer of this book takes leave to address

the Apostle Paul's fraternal benediction: THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS

CHRIST BE WITH YOUR SPIRIT, BRETHREN. AMEN.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.

Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been

retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.

The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the

transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Page 130: The transcriber has inserted an anchor for footnote number

49 "Rom. ii. 25-iii. 1".

Page 210: The transcriber has changed "Gen. xxii. 8 16--1" to "Gen.

xxii. 16-18".

Page 251: (As enemies, "we were reconciled to God by the death of His

Son;") Missing opening double quote was added by the transcriber.