"So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one
of another."--ROMANS xii. 5.
There are some moral and spiritual truths which it seems to be almost
impossible to impress upon the practical life of the world, although they
meet with a sort of universal acceptance.
Men agree with them, they re-echo them, they applaud them; they do
everything, in fact, but exhibit them as the moving, inspiring, and
guiding truths of their daily practice.
And among these I fear we must still class that one which is expressed in
the text I have just read, a text which sets forth the fundamental fact
that whatever else Christianity may teach, it teaches as one of its first
and principal lessons that a Christian man has to live in Christ for his
neighbours.
If such a text means anything, it means that Christianity is essentially
a religion of society, that it sets before us social claims as standing
before all other claims; that, starting from the Divine Sacrifice as the
central fact of human life, it was intended to root out of our hearts the
noxious weed of selfishness by the power of the Divine love, and to build
up the organisation of men in their common relationships upon this new
basis.
It may sound somewhat strange to speak at this time of day of what
Christianity is intended to do, rather than what it has done already.
But it is even more strange to read the teaching of the Sermon on the
Mount, and all the other words of the Lord; all the lessons of His life
and His sacrifice; the history of the first generation of Christians; the
descent of the Spirit upon them; and the teaching of the apostolic
brotherhood--to remember that all this is our accepted faith; that it has
been the faith of one generation after another for eighteen hundred
years; that we grow up in this faith, live in it, and die in it; and at
the same time to contemplate side by side with it all the elements of the
common life, all the rules and customs of society, all the standards of
conduct which ordinary men take as their measure of daily duty and
purpose.
Thus, whilst on the one hand Christian influences, and all the changes in
the world's life which are due to them, fill us with wonder and
gratitude, the failures of Christianity are scarcely less impressive.
When we consider the ordinary run of men's lives, so different for the
most part in spirit, and in aim and guiding rules, from that type which
the New Testament sets before us, it would almost seem as if to the
majority their religion was not a ruling and dominating principle,
pervading this present life, but only an _ideal_, shedding around us a
glow of indefinite hopes and possibilities, an ideal hardly to be
realised, laid up somewhere in the heavens--[Greek text]. These
contrasts between the revelation of the Gospel and the standards of the
Christian world have always troubled the most earnest spirits in every
generation. Some of you remember, no doubt, how this contrast between
Christian profession and the life of selfish sin and waste flashed into
fierce poetry in one such spirit of the last generation, who grew up in
this school.
"Through the great, sinful streets of Naples, as I passed,
With fiercer heat than flamed above my head
My heart was hot within me, till at last
My brain was lightened when my tongue had said
Christ is not risen."
And men who are truly in earnest about faith and life, and who are
perplexed and distressed by the contradictions and insincerities that
meet them, must often be moved as he was.
And yet, when we look closer, and consider that the battle of spiritual
progress has this peculiarity attached to it, that it has to be fought
over again, in every generation, and in every separate individual soul,
the result is less surprising. Remembering this, we do not expect the
victory of the last generation to save us from defeat or failure.
And this has to be borne in mind equally in regard to the continuous
life of societies and to our own separate lives. Thus in such a society
as this, if our predecessors uplifted the standards of conduct,
inculcated high principles, and inspired their generation with a strong
pervading spirit, this should make it easier for us to do likewise; but
it does not insure our doing it. All this higher life will die in our
hands if the same regenerating spirit is not alive and working in our
hearts also. So, again, your individual victory over sin in the power of
the Spirit in you, does not save my life from having to fight the battle
for itself and win its own victories.
So that, however perplexing the phenomena of life may seem whilst we look
at them in the mass or from the outside, if we read the Gospel of Christ
as a message to our own souls a great deal of the perplexity disappears.
And it was with this personal message that Christ came, and there is no
hope of our understanding His mission, or of living in the light of His
transforming spirit, if we think of it in any other way than this.
The purpose of His revelation is to crucify the selfish instinct in us,
and to rouse us to the life of self-devotion, to the idea of consecrated
energies; and this being so, all Christian life is of the nature of a
warfare; and a warfare which begins afresh with each generation of men;
because selfishness, with all its tribe of attendant appetites and
passions, springs afresh in every single soul, and is nurtured,
strengthened, cultivated, by so many of the conditions of life.
If, then, the Spirit of Christ is really to prevail in our life, it must
be by effecting our emancipation from selfish instincts, and rousing in
us the spirit of devotion to the good of other lives.
In proportion as you diminish selfishness in your own life or in any
other, by fostering generous affections and cultivating the spirit of
social duty and religious aspiration, by walking in the footsteps of
Christ and living in the light of His presence, you are laying the only
possible foundation of any lasting progress, you are following the one
true method by which the mystery of sin is to be overcome.
We may wonder that this should be so difficult; for of selfishness we
should say that we all dislike it. In its grosser forms we repudiate it.
The very word is one which we articulate with a certain accent of
contempt.
But when we come to its refined and subtle workings in our nature, when
we think of its Proteus-like changeableness, its power of assuming the
various guises even of duty or religion; when we reflect how it can
clothe itself in the choicest garb of art, or science, or divine
philosophy, we find very likely that we are always in danger of being
enslaved by it.
And we do well to pray in all sincerity that grace may expel our
selfishness; for indeed the influence of true religion is to be gauged by
the extent to which this prayer is being fulfilled in us. The fulfilment
of it is what we mean by the regenerate life.
I need not ask you how you feel in the presence of any character which
you recognise as cleansed from all taint of selfishness, a character,
softened, refined, purified, inspired, consecrated. I would rather ask
whether you know of any personal influence to be compared with that of
such a character.
And if, as I anticipate, you would answer that there is none like it, I
would ask you to bear in mind that this influence may be yours. You are
invited by all the highest calls within and around you to make it yours.
"What is the aim and purpose of his life?" is a question which men are
justified in asking about us; and they are justified in passing their
verdict upon us by the answer which our life gives.
Does he live for himself, they will ask, for his own pleasures, his own
delights, be they coarse or refined, his own indulgence, his own
particular interest? Is there anything of the spirit or enthusiasm of
sacrifice visible in the ordinary tenor of his actions?
The world, this Christian world, is full of those concerning whom the
answer to such questions can only be a distinct negative; and yet we know
that in all such characters, whether in youth or age, Christianity is a
failure.
Therefore we shall accept it as our primary duty, the purpose of our
existence as a Christian school, to train up men who shall be penetrated
by the spirit of unselfishness, possessed by the feeling that their lives
are to be consecrated to the common good.
Societies differ very widely in the type of character they impress.
Here and there we see a society, here and there a school, which has
somehow acquired the power to stamp on those who go out from it a certain
impress of nobility.
They go forth like the knights of our famous English legend--imperfect no
doubt and erring, but each one of them inspired with the consciousness
that his life is a holy quest.
There are other societies and schools among them which seem to possess
everything but this one power.
What, then, are we to say of our hopes? What is to be the mission of our
generation here? Shall we contribute anything to raise the common type?
Or shall we drift on as the world drifts, a little better, or a little
worse?
Shall we not rather pray and hope as we begin once more to weave the web
of mutual influence, that you may grow up here not altogether like the
herd of common men, but emancipated early from the life of selfish
desire, feeling the spirit of Christ within you, remembering your
baptismal vows, with eyes open to heavenly visions, and not disobedient
unto them?