(crossed over, transmigrated) from death unto life." We use the words
to convince people of the definite nature of conversion; we say it is
as real as a passage from death to life, and as truly marked; it is the
advent of a new life in the soul. But can we honestly go on to base
the assertion on the fact of our own love to men, to--souls? Would we
venture to stand or fall by this test, "I have loved, I love," and not
be afraid that our good angels would rise up to bear witness against us
as we said it?
A third passage comes before us; for some one will say, "We believe,
and is it not written that he that believeth hath everlasting life?"
and may we not rest upon the assurance conveyed by the present tense of
the verb employed?
Without going at present into the consideration of this passage from
the Gospel, let us say, roughly, that the test of the existence of a
spiritual life presented by St. John in the Epistle is of a threefold
character: it is--
([Greek: alpha]) A test of faith: he that believeth that Jesus is the
Christ is born of God.
([Greek: beta]) A test of love: he that loveth is born of God.
([Greek: gamma]) A test of righteousness: every one that doeth
righteousness is born of Him.
And if these are true criteria of the life within us, each of these
statements, with its necessary consequences, may be predicated of that
soul in which the Heavenly Life has been brought forth.
For instance: we must not take ([Greek: alpha]) and reject ([Greek:
beta]) and ([Greek: gamma]); nor must we disregard the consequences
which are a necessary part of our experimental verifications.
Of these three passages we should most probably elect to be tried by
([Greek: alpha]); for it is comparatively easy for us, especially at
the present day, to hold to an intellectual assent to a proposition.
In fact the difficulty is that the sieve is too wide; for almost every
one believes that Jesus is the Christ. It must be evident then that we
have misunderstood the text or omitted the consequences which follow
from it. Now the continuation of the statement is that whatsoever is
in this holy birth has victory over the world; and if we apply the test
of an overcoming life to our supposed faith, things look very
different. Discouraged, we pass on to the second criterion; if not by
faith, let us be judged by love.
Since we all of us love something and some persons, we shall perhaps
find ourselves safe under this test.
But, upon examination, we perceive that he does not simply mean love of
God, or love of Jesus, or a merely selective human love; but love of
the brethren and of the children of God in a universal manner. He
twists it backwards and forwards, saying at one moment, "He that loveth
God, let him love his brother also"; at another, "If he love not his
brother whom he hath seen, how _can_ he love God whom he hath not
seen"? and again, "By this we know that we love the children of God,
when we love God," and, breaking off abruptly, "when we love God, and
keep His commandments." Certainly if love is universal and coincident
with obedience, we shall scarcely be able to face this test.
So we pass on to the third criterion--that of righteousness; and here,
perhaps, we may expect some help, knowing how careful the Lord is to
judge us by the light we have, how generously He measures every effort
after holiness, and blesses every pang of the spiritual hunger. We may
not be able to grasp the creeds which others recite so fluently; we may
not be able to give easy expression to the affections which thrill
within us; may, perhaps, wonder if we love at all; but at least we can
say this,--we want to be right. But then we are confronted with the
difficulty that what God means is not that we should want to be right,
but that we should be right. He explains and characterises the
spiritual birth by the words of the Apostle, "He that doeth
righteousness is righteous even as Christ is righteous." "He that is
born of God doth not sin." "Every one that is born of Him sinneth
not." It almost seems as if the Apostle of Love had been
remetamorphosed into the Son of Thunder, and were calling down fire
from heaven upon us to devour us. And do not let us say that this is
merely St. John's extravagant way of preaching holiness; for it is the
language in which the teachers of the time generally held and
transmitted the Christian doctrine. Thus Ignatius, writing to the
Ephesians, adopts the three tests of faith and love and righteousness:
"No man professing the faith sinneth; nor does he who professeth love,
hate; the tree is known by its fruits; so, likewise, those who profess
to be Christ's shall be seen from their deeds."
And Polycarp presents the life-criteria in the same manner: "You shall
be built up in the faith which is given to you: before which is love to
God and to Christ and to the neighbour; for he who has love is far from
all sin." And so we might multiply instances.
What shall we then say: Is a new Sinai set up on the square of the New
Jerusalem? or is it a sense of good things not seen as yet that makes
us cry, "Search me, O God; ... and see if there be any lack of faith or
love or righteousness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting"?
XIII
THE ETERNAL IDEA
"See that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed thee in
the Mount."--HEB. viii. 5.
When we speak of a pattern, we generally understand by it some
temporary or partial representation of an idea that is to be or has
been realised--such as the plan of a house, or the mould of a casting,
or, to take a more definite illustration, like the little silver models
of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, or the carved wooden lions which are
sold in the shops in the neighbourhood of the Lion Monument at Lucerne.
In these last two instances we see that the greater is made the pattern
of the less; and it is important for us to remember this; we are not to
suppose that God showed to Moses a diminutive tabernacle, a sort of
doll's house, in accordance with which he was to construct his house of
skins, or that He impressed upon him the nature of the priestly and
sacrificial worship by altars and offerings of a lower degree, of small
quantities. It is more like what Philo explained it to be, that the
outer world is fashioned upon the model of the World of Ideas whose
centre is the Divine Word; or like Swedenborg's Doctrine of
Correspondence, by which we may learn
Cup, column, candlestick,
All temporal things related royally,
And patterns of what shall be in the Mount.
But, to get a more simple and exact idea, let us observe the means
which those who have studied the heavens have taken to illustrate
astronomical facts. There is an astronomical toy called the orrery,
which can be made, by proper mechanism, to represent, with tolerable
accuracy, the actual motions of the planets in their orbits, and which
can serve to illustrate the phenomena which from time to time occur in
the heavens. Now the tabernacle of Moses is precisely like this; it is
a religious orrery, a means of representing religious truths and
bringing home religious facts to the consciousness of those who are
unable to study the skies and the lunar and planetary theories for
themselves. But no one who wishes to be a real astronomer would be
content with winding up the orrery and watching the balls go round; he
would know that the heavens must be studied for themselves, if one was
ever to understand them accurately: and no one who wishes to be more
than moderately religious can remain satisfied with the meagre
assistance obtained by ritual and externalism.
We observe, too, that no one who wished to chronicle fresh facts would
go to the orrery to learn them. He would, for instance, turn his
spectroscope on the sun, and not on the great ball which represents it
in the mechanism, if he wanted to determine the constituents of that
great luminary. And let us remember that we shall never get at any
fresh religious truth by means of ritual; the proper destination of all
orreries, religious or otherwise, is the museum. But meanwhile the
heavens still go round, which are the work of Thy fingers; and the moon
and the stars, which Thou hast ordained, can still be studied, even
when all the imitations of the universe have been swept away. We
desire for ourselves an emancipation from all that is merely
traditional in the religious life; we would refer back our lives to the
original thought of God concerning them. Our life needs emendation,
which can only take place satisfactorily by reference to the original
design. We are often perplexed in our study of Scripture, by various
readings and incorrect texts, and we wish that we could attain to
something like the possession of an exact copy, if it were only of a
single gospel. We read of Tischendorf finding the precious Codex in
the monastery on Mount Sinai, and cannot forbear wishing that, perhaps,
in some of the waste places of the East, there might be found a copy,
not of the fourth or fifth century, but, if possible, of the first.
Suppose, for example, that a copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew, signed
with his own hand, should come into our possession, in which it should
be stated that "I, Matthew, sometime a tax-gatherer for the Romans, and
now a collector of dues for the Almighty, and one of them that are set
to ask, 'How much owest thou unto my Lord?' have written this book, by
the aid of the Holy Spirit; wherein may be heard many voices of the
Lord; and lo! some of them have already come to pass, and the rest must
shortly be done. And may the peace of him that wrote this book abide
also with them that read." The supposition is not so very absurd, and
if it could be demonstrated to the satisfaction of the learned (a
people hard to persuade) that the Book and the hand were genuine, what
a number of questions would be settled. An end would be made of all
glosses and emendations of the text over which there have been so many
disputes, and there would be an excision of all parts that have been
added by later hands.
But we must admit that the corruptions of the sacred text are
insignificant in comparison with the deviations that we find in our own
lives from the original thought of God concerning us. Registered and
chronicled in heaven is the mind and will of our Father about us;
registered and chronicled also are the defects which have marred the
handiwork of God in the soul. We do not always set out with the
intention of spoiling our souls, and of keeping them from being holy
books, in which he that runs may read; but as a matter of fact what
self writes in the margin soon creeps into the text; and what we write
between the lines soon becomes a part of the manuscript.
Let who says
The soul's a clean white paper, rather say
A palimpsest, a prophet's holograph,
Defiled, erased, and covered by a monk's--
. . . . . . . we may discern perhaps
Some upstroke of an Alpha and Omega
Expressing the Old Scripture.
But if we are to undergo a real emendation, it must be by detecting
something more than an upstroke of the Divine Will; it must be by
reference to the original plan of God, and by a surrender to the same.
In the chapels at the back of the choir of Cologne Cathedral are
preserved the original parchments on which are drawn the plan of the
great minster. All the centuries through which this building has been
raising, the men that have been working at it have had in reverence the
original thoughts of the master-minds at the first: and those who have
been chosen to the superintendence of the work have been men who were
reckoned the most conversant with the laws of the Gothic architecture.
One can imagine that Archbishop Englebert sleeps the more softly in his
silver shrine because of the completed work of to-day. So we speak and
think of a great stone-temple, the working out of an idea whose details
were at first but scantily given, carried out in ages during which the
master-minds that planned it could no more be consulted.
And yet when a greater and more perfect tabernacle is in building, not
planned of mortal thought, and whose stones were too heavy to be moved
by mortal hands, how little reference there is to the plan of the
Founder, how few that are desirous of living according to the counsel
and will of God, and to see in that will, not a mere legal skeleton of
the structure, but a pattern, good and acceptable and perfect, with no
detail wanting for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Alas!
that our lives should be lived so much at random instead of being so
fashioned that it might be said over the completed structure at the
last, "Whose architect and craftsman is God." In Christianity the
ideal is to be the actual: there is to be no "shooting at the moon,
because by that means you reach higher than by aiming at a tree" (a
very doubtful statement even in mechanics); what God wants us to be
that we must be; and if He says, "Be ye perfect," then let us go on to
perfection and reach it. The Christian is called upon by his Master to
live out and actualise God's ideal thought concerning him. Upon the
map of his life is already marked out the road by which he is to reach
the heavenly city; if, at least, he reaches it, as God intends, by the
shortest way. There are no roundabout roads marked on the map in the
Mount, and yet the Divine Plan of our life will be found inclusive of
the minutest necessary details, just as an Ordnance map will tell you
each feature of interest and importance as you go from place to place.
It is of the utmost importance that we should take counsel's opinion
about our lives, and that we should pray, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me
to do?" that we should, if need be, weep much, until the Lamb shall
take off the seals from that book of life, which, in the archives of
the celestial city, is entitled "The Life of ---- taken from the
Pattern in the Mount"; that we should learn to conform ourselves to the
Divine original, just as a manuscript, however deformed by glosses and
traditions, is accurately and certainly emended by the discovery of the
original text; that we should know, in some sense, as Christ did,
whence we come and whither we go; that, as He said, we also might feel
that for this end we were born and for this purpose we came into the
world, that we might bear witness to the truth; that, with Him, too, we
might in some measure be able to say, "The son can do nothing but what
he seeth the Father do"; and that at our ending it might be said, "He
lived out the secret thought and counsel of the Almighty."
But in thinking of the pattern in the Mount as a pattern of life, it is
important for us to see that, in the first instance, this thought was
presented to us in connection with that side of life which we call
worship; for there was to be a sanctuary made, etc., nor must we omit
to get, with regard to our worship, a glimpse into the thought of God
beforehand, consulting the oracle in advance as did men in the old
days. We may not take voyage without the very best map that can be
had, lest we make shipwreck; nor, because we have not taken pains to
obtain the map, may we content ourselves with creeping round shores
that we know we ought to leave.
We must not separate the life from the worship; in fact they are one:
we learn that from the description of the ceaseless adoration of those
nearest the throne; they rest not day nor night saying, "Holy, holy,
holy." Are we to suppose from this that their existence is occupied in
the mere repetition of an everlasting Trisagion; or that, as Beecher
once said, "they stand like wax candles round the throne, uttering an
occasional Hallelujah"? Is it not rather God's way of showing us how
He is unceasingly glorified in those who live nearest Him, whose lives
worship Him?
The worship must be continuous with the life. I have a thermometer
which has become perfectly useless because the air has broken up the
continuity of the alcohol; it is worth next to nothing as an index of
temperature. And little can we learn from any soul in which the
continuity of the religious life is broken, and which has become life
streaked with worship.
Now let us learn one or two of the characteristics of a pure
life-worship.
Out of the worship according to the pattern in the Mount all
respectability has been differentiated: the Christian religion will not
hold caste in solution; it precipitates it to the bottom; its founder
died the death of a slave; how could they give the slave a back seat
after that? On the contrary, they gloried in the name; Paul, a slave
and an apostle; a slave, and so eligible for the honour of crucifixion;
an apostle, and so sent with the good news of life. Respect of persons
holds not in heaven; none there will criticise the clay out of which
the first raiment of your soul was made. What need is there, then,
that we should leave off holding the faith of our Lord Jesus, with
respect of persons (there are few churches where the ministers dare to
preach on such a text as that). Let us have done with such
classifications. In Jesus Christ there is neither barbarian nor
Scythian, bond nor free, town nor university, but Christ is all, and in
all.
We know, too, that the life-worship to which God calls us consists in
abandonment and surrender to an animating, impelling spirit. "The
Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy, and
thou shalt be turned into another man. And it shall be, when these
signs are come upon thee, that thou shalt do as occasion serve thee,
for the Lord is with thee." "Whither the Spirit was to go, thither was
their spirit to go." The highest life is one in which we realise not
merely surrender to the Divine Will, but harmony with it, so that the
rails on which the life moves, the human and Divine wills, become
strictly parallel.
A surrendered life implies surrendered lips: this is the key of true
worship; every one having a psalm, an interpretation; ye may all of you
prophesy. The ideal worship becomes the actual when heaven touches
earth, as on the day of Pentecost--they were all filled, and, by
consequence, they all ran over. Who would venture to tell the woman
who had been a sinner, that it was not seemly that her life should
proclaim the _magnolia Dei_, the wonders of God; my lips, she says,
have touched His feet, and are consecrated for evermore. Who shall
tell these prophesying handmaidens of the Lord that their place is in a
different spiritual order: "Are there two inner courts, they will
reply, to the New Jerusalem?"
Whoso hath felt the Spirit of the Highest
Cannot confound nor doubt Him, nor deny;
Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.
XIV
MORE LIGHT
"Ye are the light of the world."--MATT. v. 14.
There is a great stir nowadays about improved methods of lighting our
streets and houses. Men began with torches and pine splinters; then
they advanced to candles and oil lamps; after that to coal gas; and now
we are coming to electricity. In Paris they are experimenting with an
electrical system, and we shall have it in England before long, the
unmistakable cry of the natural world being "More light, more light."
A similar experience prevails in the spiritual life, whether we regard
that life in the isolated individual, or fix our attention upon the
dealings of God with the race of which we form a part. We need, in
fact, an improved illumination. It is plain that we do so. The light
of Moses is not enough for us. His face shines indeed, but with a
glory that fades away, so that he must put on a veil lest they should
detect its evanescence. The prophets of old days are like the flight
of meteors across the sky--very bright while they last, but no settled
and abiding glory. John the Baptist is a burning and a shining lamp;
but he says of himself, "I must decrease"; and with the words, "He must
increase," we are pointed on to Christ, the true Light of the world,
which if any man follow he shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
the light of life; who gives His own name and character to those whom
He receives as disciples, telling them, "Let your light shine." And
the individual soul begins with the glimmer of grace and the spark of a
respondent love, and the operation of the Lord improves this little
fitful glimmer, and develops it, until it becomes a clear and strong
illumination, by which we may read something of the heart of God
towards us, and understand that in the spiritual world, as in the
natural, the order of this providence is, "More light, more light."
Light, that we may know our way more accurately; light, by which we may
work; light, by which we may read; light, by which we may help others
to walk and work and read; for "ye are the light of the world, and
'Heaven doth with us, as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves.'"
God makes one man a lamp for another. Every saint should be like a
cranny in the walls of heaven or translucent crystal in its
foundations, letting the glory through. There is a glory within such a
one, because God has shined in his heart: there is a glory without him,
for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon him. Not once nor
twice has the Church historian to record, "They beheld his face, as it
had been the face of an angel."
Now in any improved system of illumination we have a right to expect
that one of its characteristics will be its capability for a general
application. It must not be as great a blaze as one's eyes can bear in
the principal thoroughfares, with thick darkness in the back streets
and lanes. The improved light must become more sun-like, more
catholic, that is, more for everybody, must rise upon just and unjust;
and while it participates in the universality of the sun, it must share
also the steadiness of the stars. Such, too, must be the better life
to which God calls us, not narrowing its sphere from day to day, nor
fitful, like a star of the first magnitude at one moment and of the
ninth a fortnight after, but burning with a steady patient zeal towards
all men that God has made. The light of love will survive the light of
enthusiasm, as Christ outlasts John the Baptist; enthusiasm must be
swallowed up of love.
A lighted lamp is no respecter of persons; it shines in all directions
and upon all people and things, being an imitation, within its measure,
of the sun, concerning whom it is said, "There is nothing hid from the
heat thereof." Is there this property of radiation about the light
that God has given you? Have you learnt and practically entered into
the truth that the supreme love is also the universal love, and that
God is no respecter of persons? "It gives light unto all that are in
the house": every soul truly won for God is marked with this token,
"For the sake of God and a perishing world." But perhaps you will say,
"My light is so small that I cannot be a help or a witness to any; I
have not light enough to show any the right way." Not so: a glow-worm
in the hedge can tell a man which way to walk, if it will only shine.
We may not all of us have the privilege of saying with John Wesley,
"The world is my parish." Our parish may be small, and we may be
lights indoors, shining for only one neglected soul in the house, or
for young ones who have to be trained for the Lord, or for the men on
our own staircase in college, or with whom we walk in afternoons.