THE POSSIBILITIES AND DYNAMICS OF THE REGENERATE LIFE

1 Peter i. 3-5

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

How easily these early disciples break into doxology! Whenever some winding in the way of their thought brings the grace of God into view, the song leaps to their lips. The glory of grace strikes the chords of their hearts into music, and life resounds with exuberant praise. It is a stimulating research to study the birthplaces of doxologies in the apostolic writings. Sometimes the march of an argument is stayed while the doxology is sung. Sometimes the Te Deum is heard in the midst of a procession of moral maxims. The environment of the doxology varies, but the operative cause which gives it birth is ever the same. From the height of some ascending argument, or through the lens of some ethical maxim, the soul catches a glimpse of the “riches of His grace,” and the wonderful vision moves it to inevitable and immediate praise. I am not surprised, therefore, to find the doxology forming the accompaniment of a passage which contemplates the glory and the privileges of the re-created life. It is a Te Deum sung during the unveiling of the splendours of redeeming grace. Let us turn our eyes to the vision which has aroused the grateful song.

“Blessed be the God and Father . . . who begat us again.” [Verse 3] “Begat again.” That is one of the unique phrases of the Christian vocabulary. It is not to be found in systems of thought which are alien from the Christian religion. It is not to be found in the vocabulary of any of the modern schools which are severed from the facts and forces of the Christian faith. The emphasis of their teaching gathers round about terms of quite a different order, such as culture, training, discipline, education, evolution. The Christian religion has also much to say about the process of evolution. It dwells at length upon the ministries of “growth,” “training,” “increasing,” “putting on,” “perfecting.” But while it emphasises “growth,” it directs our attention to “birth.” While it magnifies the necessity of wise culture, it proclaims the necessity of good seed. So while the Bible lags behind no school in urging the importance of liberal culture, it stands alone in proclaiming the necessity of right germs. You cannot by culture develop the thorn-bush into a ladened vine. You cannot by the most exquisite discipline evolve “the natural man” into the “measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” If we had merely to do with perverted growths, then the trainer and pruner might twist the crooked straight. But we are confronted with more than perverted growths; we have to do with corrupt and rotting seed. If all we needed was the purification of our conditions, then the City Health Department might lead us into holiness. But we need more than the enrichment of the soil; we need the revitalising of the seed. And so the Christian religion raises the previous question. It begins its ministry at a stage prior to the process of evolution. It discourses on births and generation, on seeds and germs, and proclaims as its primary postulate, “Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”

Now, man is not enamoured of that dogmatic postulate. It smites his pride in the forehead. It lays himself and his counsels in the dust. It expresses itself in an alien speech. Men are familiar with the word “educate”; the alien word is “regenerate.” Political controversy has familiarised them with the word “reform”; the alien word is “transfigure.” They have made a commonplace of the word “organise”; the alien word is “vitalise.” They have made almost a fetish of the phrase “moral growth”; the alien word is “new birth.” And so we do not like the strange and humbling postulate; but whether we like it or not, the heart of every man bears witness to the truth and necessity of its imperative demand. Man be comes incredulous of the necessity of the new birth when he surveys the lives of others, but not when he contemplates his own. We gaze upon the conduct and behaviour of some man who is dissociated from the Christian Church, or who indeed is hostile or indifferent to the Christian faith. “We mark the integrity of his walk, the seemliness of his behaviour, the purity of all his relationships, the evident loftiness of his ideals, and we then project the sceptical inquiry, Does this man need to be begotten again? I do not accept one man’s judgment as to the necessity of another man’s regeneration. I wish to hear a man’s judgment concerning himself. I would like a man to be brought face to face with the life of Jesus, with all its searching and piercing demands, and with all its marvellous ideals, so marvellously attained, and I would like the man’s own judgment as to what would be required before he himself, in the most secret parts of his life, is clothed in the same superlative glory. I think it is impossible to meet with a single unconverted man who does not know that, if ever he is to wear the glory of the Son of God, and to be chaste and illumined in his most hidden thoughts and dispositions, there will have to take place some marvellous and inconceivable transformation. Let any man gaze long on “the unsearchable riches of Christ,” and then let him slowly and deliberately take the inventory of his own life, and I am persuaded he will come to regard the vaunted panaceas of the world as altogether secondary, he will relegate its vocabulary to the secondary, and he will welcome as the only pertinent and adequate speech, “Ye must be born again.”

Into what manner of life are we begotten again? What is the range of its possibilities, and the spaciousness of its prospects? The apostolic doxology winds its way among a wealth of unveiled glories.

“Blessed be the God . . . who begat us again unto a living hope.” [Verse 3] It is a hope affluent in life, It is a vivifying hope. There are hopes that are inoperative, ineffective, uninfluential. They generate no energy. They impart no power to work the mill. But the spiritual hope of the redeemed is living and life-creating, operating as a vital stimulus upon the consecrated race. How the Bible exults in the use of this great characteristic word: “Living Bread!” “Living Water!” “Living Fountains!” “The Living God!” The word conveys the suggestion of superabundant life, exuberant energy, an over flowing vitality. It quickens the sentiments. “We rejoice in hope.” The dispositions dance in the radiant light! It vitalises the thought. The mind which is inspired by the glorious expectation is grandly secure against the encroachment of the evil one. Hope-inspired thought is its own defence. It energises the will. The great hope feeds the will, vivifies it, makes it steadfast and unmovable. Into all this powerful hope are we begotten again by the abundant mercy of God.

“Begat us again . . . unto an inheritance.” [Verse 4] With our regeneration we become heirs to a glorious spiritual estate, with all its inexhaustible possessions and treasures. How the apostles roll out the New Testament music by ringing the changes upon this eagerly welcomed word! “Heirs of salvation!” “Heirs of the kingdom!” “Heirs together of the grace of life!” “Heirs according to the hope of eternal life!” The apostles survey their estate from different angles, that they may comprehend the wealth of the vast inheritance. With what fruitful words does the Apostle Peter characterise the nature of these possessions! It is an inheritance “incorruptible.” It is beyond the reach of death. No grave is ever dug on this estate. It is an inheritance “undefiled.” It is beyond the taint of sin. No contamination ever stains its driven snow. The robes of the glorified are whiter than snow. It is an inheritance “that fadeth not away.” It is beyond the blight of change. The leaf never turns. “Time does not breathe on its fadeless bloom.” Into this glorious inheritance are we begotten again by the abundant mercy of God.

“Begat us again . . . unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” [Verse 5] Here conies in the graciousness of spiritual evolution. All the steps on the work of salvation are “ready,” right away to the ultimate consummation. There has been no caprice in the arrangements. There need be no uncertainty in the expectations. There has been no defect in the preparations. There is no lack in the resources. What is needed for the ripening of the redeemed character has been provided. At every step of the way “all things are ready.” The glorious possibilities range from the seed to the “full corn in the ear”; from the new birth to the “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Such is the inspiring prospect, and such are some of the glorious possibilities of the redeemed and re-created life.

“We have searched this glowing doxology for glimpses of the new-begotten life. We have gazed upon its fascinating range of possibilities. Has it any suggestion to offer of the dynamics by which these alluring possibilities may be achieved? I have already dwelt upon the vitalising energy which flows from its living hope. Are there other suggestions of empowering dynamics by which even the loftiest spiritual height may be scaled? Let us glance at some of these suggested powers.

“According to His great mercy.” [Verse 3] I am glad and grateful that the pregnant passage is prefaced by this word. The regenerated soul is just enveloped in “great mercy.” Now mercy implies sympathy. “We cannot have mercy without sympathy. “Without mercy we cannot have leniency; but leniency is only thin, pinched fruit compared with the fat, juicy fruit of mercy. “Without sympathy we may have giving, but unsympathetic giving is like the cold, outer threshold, while mercy is like a glowing hearthstone. Mercy implies sympathy. Go a step further. Sympathy suggests the choicest companionship, the rarest of all fellowships. Where there is true sympathy, there is the most exquisite companionship. If, then, our God and Father enswathes us in “great mercy,” He visits in the sweetest fellowships. Therefore in the redeemed life there can be no loneliness, for in the Father’s presence all possible loneliness is destroyed. The mercy which implies companionship accompanies me as a dynamic from my faintest breathing as a babe-Christian on to the consummation when I shall have become a full-grown man in Christ.

“Begat us again . . . by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” [Verse 3] His resurrection opens to me the doors of the immortal life. If He had not risen, my hope had never been born. The breaking up of His grave means the breaking up of man’s winter, and the soft approach of the eternal spring. Because He has risen, death no longer counts! That Life, which in death defeated death, and converted “the place of a skull” into the altar of the people’s hope, is the dynamic of the regenerate soul, and makes the life invulnerable.

“By the power of God guarded unto salvation.” [Verse 5] Here is another aspect of the gracious energy which enables me to convert possibilities into achievements. I am “guarded.” The “power of God” defends me, hems me in, and secures me from every assault. My Father’s power is my garrison. He engirdles me, like a defensive army occupying a city wall, and makes me invincible against the menace and attacks of the devil. “As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people.” Such are the adequate resources, and such the wonderful equipments of the regenerate life. The land that stretches before us is glorious. The power to possess it is equally glorious. They may both be ours “by faith.”

SORROWFUL, YET ALWAYS REJOICING

1 Peter i. 6, 7

Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, might be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

“WHEREIN ye greatly rejoice!” These fountains of spiritual joy shoot into the light at most startling and unexpected places. Their favourite haunt seems to be the heart of the desert. They are commonly associated with a land of drought. In these Scriptural records I so often find the fountain bursting through the sand, the song lifting its pæan out of the night. If the text is a well of cool and delicious water, the context is frequently and waste. “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now . . . ye have been put to grief.” [verse 6] A present rejoicing set in the midst of an environing grief! A profound and refreshing satisfaction, even when the surface of the life is possessed by drought! I never expected to find a fountain in so unpromising a waste. “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice!” Who ever expected to find a well in that Sahara? As I trod the hot burning sands of “reviling” and “persecuting” and false accusing, little did I anticipate en countering a fountain of spiritual delight. Let us once again contemplate the strange conjunction. “Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Capernaum!” This on the one hand. And on the other hand, “A certain lawyer stood up, and tempted Him.” And between the two, “Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit.” Again, I say, I am amazed at the setting. If life were a prolonged marriage-feast, one might anticipate hearing the happy bells at every corner of the way; but to hear the joyous peal in the hour of grievous midnight and eclipse arrests the heart in keen and strained surprise. “These things have I said unto you, that My joy may be in you.” “My joy!” And yet Calvary loomed only a hand’s-breadth off, just twenty-four hours away! I thought the joy bells might have been heard away back in Nazareth, in the beauty and serenity of a secluded village life, or on some quiet evening, with His friends on the Galilean lake; but I never anticipated hearing them at Calvary’s base, in full view of shame and crucifixion. “My joy!” “One of you shall betray Me.” It is a marvellous conjunction, but one which is almost a commonplace in the Christian Scriptures. “They received the word in much affliction, with joy in the Holy Ghost.” It is a mysterious, yet glorious wedlock. “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now . . . ye have been put to grief.” What is the suggestion of this apparently forced and incongruous union? The suggestion is this, that the spiritual joy of the redeemed life is continuous, and is not conditioned by the changing moods of the transient day. Spiritual delights are not dried up when I pass into the seasons of material drought. When the shadows settle down upon my life, and my experiences darken into night, the night is not to be without its cheery and illuminating presence. The place of the midnight is to be as “the land of the midnight sun.” There shall be light enough to enable me to read the promises, to see my way, and to perceive the gracious presence of my Lord. “He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” Therefore the shadow need not annihilate my joy. My temporary grief need not expunge my spiritual delights. The funeral knell of bereavement may be tolling in the outer rooms of the life, while in the most secret places may be heard the joy bells of trustful communion with God. “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now . . . ye have been put to grief.”

“Wherein ye greatly rejoice.” [Verse 6] If our spiritual joy is to be continuous and persuasive, sending its pure vitalising ray even through the season of grief, we shall have to see to it that it is adequately nourished and sustained. Now, the nutriment of joy is to be found in appropriate thought. Happiness is usually the resultant of sensations, the ephemeral product of sensationalisms, having the uncertain life of the things on which it depends. Joy is the product of deep, quiet, steady, appropriate thought. Thought provides the oxygen in which the bright, cheery flame of love is sustained. What kind of thought is required? “Wherein ye rejoice”! In what? The rejoicing emerges from an atmosphere of thought—the thought which is contained in the previous verses, and which formed the basis of our last exposition. It is a contemplation of the possibilities and dynamics of the redeemed life. The possibilities stretch away in a most glorious and alluring panorama: “a living hope”; “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away”; “a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” The dynamics are no less wealthy than the prospects: the “great mercy” of the Father; “the resurrection of Jesus from the dead”; “the power” of the Holy Ghost! These constitute the oxygenating thought of the Christian redemption. If the soul be immersed in it, faint sparks will be kindled into fervent flames, and timid desires will be strengthened into confident rejoicing. “As I mused, the fire burnt.” Let mind and heart make their home in the spacious thoughts of God, and there will be born in the life a moral and spiritual glow which will not be chilled by any transient cloud, nor extinguished by the storms of the most tempestuous night. “Wherein ye greatly rejoice.”

“Though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials.” [Verse 6] The “manifold trials” “will come. Antagonisms may rush down upon us from north, south, east, and west, and may twist and wrench our lives into strange bewilderments, and yet the continuous thread of spiritual rejoicing need never be broken. Our affairs may be tossed into incredible complications, and yet “the joy of the Lord may be our strength.” The pleasing air of music, which in its simplicity a child might hum, may appear to be lost as it passes into the maze of tortuous variations and complications, but an expert ear can detect the continuity of the primal air beneath all the accretions of the voluminous sound. The air of simple spiritual rejoicing, which may be clearly heard when life is plain and serene, may be continued when life becomes complex and burdened, torn and harassed by “manifold trials.” We may still hear the sweet primitive air of Christian rejoicing. I am not surprised to hear the sounds of rejoicing from Paul’s life, when he was holding precious and sanctified intercourse with such beloved friends as Prisca and Aquila. But when the apostle is “put to grief through manifold trials,” and life becomes dark, heavy, and complicated, how will it fare with him then? “The gaoler thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. And it came to pass that at the midnight”—that is what I want to know about—“at the midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God.” It is the old air, rising through the pains and burden of a harassed and sorely tried life. “As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

Now, these “manifold trials” assume many guises and employ varied weapons of painful inquisition. Some of them may be found in the antagonism of men. Loyalty to truth may be confronted with persecution. A beautiful ministry may be given an evil interpretation. Our beneficence may be maligned. Our very leniency may be vituperated and proclaimed as a device of the devil. This may be one of the guises of “the manifold trials.” Or our antagonism may be found in the apparent hostility of our circumstances. Success is denied us. Every way we take seems to bristle with difficulties. Every street we enter proves to be a cul de sac. We never emerge into an airy and spacious prosperity. We pass our days in material straits. Such may be another of the guises of “the manifold trials.” Or it may be that our antagonist dwells in the realm of our own flesh. We suffer incessant pain. We are just a bundle of exquisite nerves. The streets of the city are instruments of torture. The bang of a door shakes the frail house to its base. We are the easy victims of physical depression. Who knows but that this may have been Paul’s “thorn in the flesh”? At any rate, it is one of “the manifold trials” by which many of our brethren are put to grief. I will go no further with the enumeration, because I am almost impatient to once again declare the evangel which proclaims that be hind all these apparent antagonisms we may have the unceasing benediction of the joy of our Lord. It is possible—I declare it, not as my personal attainment, but as a glorious possibility which is both yours and mine—it is possible to get so deep into the thought and purpose of God, and to dwell so near His very heart, as to “count it all joy” when we “fall into manifold trials,” because of that mystic spiritual alchemy by which trials are changed into blessings and our antagonists transformed into our slaves.

Can we just now nestle a little more closely into the loving purpose of God? Why are antagonisms allowed to range themselves across our way? Why are there any blind streets which bar our progress? Why does not labour always issue in success? Why are “manifold trials” permitted? We may find a partial response in the words of my text. They are permitted for “the proof” [Verse 7] of our faith. That is the purposed ministry of the sharp antagonism and the cloudy day—“the proof of your faith.” Now, to “prove” the faith means much more than to test it. First of all, it means to reveal it. To prove the faith is to prove it to others. God wants to reveal and emphasise your faith, and so He sends the cloud. May we not say that the loveliness of the moonlight is revealed and emphasised by the ministry of the cloud? It is when there are a few clouds about, and the moonlight transfiguring them, that the glory of the moon herself is declared. And it is when the cloud is in the life that the radiance of our faith is proved and proclaimed. How conspicuously the calm, steady faith of our glorified Queen was proved by the clouds which so frequently gathered about her life! The “manifold trials” set out in grand relief that which might have remained a commonplace. Light which fringes the cloud is light which is beautified. Faith which gleams from behind the trial is faith which is glorified. It is the hard circumstance which sets in relief the quality of our devotion. As I listened to a thrush singing in the cold dawn of a winter’s morning, I thought its song seemed sweeter and richer than when heard in the advanced days of spring. The wintry setting emphasised the quality of the strain. Perhaps if we heard the nightingale in the glare of the noontide, the song would not arrest us as when it proceeds from the depths of the night. The shades and loneliness add something to the sweetness. “And at midnight Paul and Silas sang.” That is the song which is heard by the fellow-prisoners and startles them into wonder. The trial came and your faith was “proved.” You lost your money, and men discovered your devotion. Your gold, the finest of your gold, the most rare and exquisite among your treasures, was destroyed and perished; but in the hour of your calamity your faith was proved, and men bowed in spiritual wonder before the mystery of the Divine. Your trial was your triumph; the place of apparent defeat became the hallowed shrine of a glorious conquest. “Now are ye in grief through manifold trials,” that in the midst of the cloud the Lord might “prove” and reveal your faith.

But “the manifold trials” do more than reveal the faith. There is another ministry wrapped up in this suggestive word “prove.” The trial that reveals the faith also strengthens and confirms it. [Verse 7] The faith that is “proved” is more richly endowed. The strong wind and rain which try the tree are also the ministers of its invigoration. The round of the varying seasons makes the tree “well seasoned,” and solidifies and enriches its fibre. It is the negative which develops the strength of the affirmative. It is antagonism which cultivates the wrestler. It is the trial which makes the saint. The man who sustains his hold upon God through one trial will find it easier to confront the next trial and exploit it for eternal good. And so these “manifold trials” prove our faith. They reveal and they enrich our resources. They strengthen and refine our spiritual apprehension. They may strip us of our material possessions, “the gold that perisheth” but they endow us with the wealth of that “inheritance” which is “in corruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.”

And, finally, there is one other radiant glimpse of the resplendent issues of a “proved” and invigorated faith: “That the proof of your faith . . . might be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” [Verse 7]

Our “proved” faith is to come to its crown in a manifestation of praise and glory and honour. When Jesus appears, these things are to appear with Him. The trial of our faith is to issue in “praise.” And what shall be the praise? On that great day of unveiling, when all things are made clear, I shall discover what my trials have accomplished. I shall perceive that they were all the time the instruments of a gracious ministry, strengthening me even when I thought I was being impoverished. The wonderful discovery will urge my soul into song, and praise will break upon my lips. “Found unto praise and glory.” And whose shall be the glory? When the Lord appears, many other things will become apparent. What I thought hard will now appear as gracious. What I recoiled from as severe I shall find to be merciful. What I esteemed as forgetfulness will reveal itself as faith fulness. He was nearest when I thought Him farthest away. He was faithful even when I was faithless. At His appearing I shall apprehend and appreciate my Lord. “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” “Found unto praise and glory and honour.” And whence shall flow the honour? I shall find that when the Lord sent a trial, and by the trial revealed my faith, many a fainting heart took courage, and by the beauty of my devotion many a shy soul was secretly wooed into the kingdom of God. I never knew it, but at His appearing this shall also appear. This discovery shall be my coronation. The supreme honours of heaven are reserved for those who have brought others there. “They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.” And so by the cloud of manifold trials God leads me into the spacious sovereignty of glory, praise, and honour.

A TWOFOLD RELATIONSHIP AND ITS FRUITS.

1 Peter i. 8, 9

Whom not having seen ye love; on whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

“Whom not having seen ye love.” [Verse 8] We some times speak of “love at first sight.” Two lives are brought together, and there is a recognition pregnant with far-off destinies. “Deep calleth unto deep.” The affinities leap into spiritual wedlock. Each knows the other as life’s complement, and the hearts embrace in hallowed union. It was only a look, and love was born:

The fair vision came, and its gentle impression awoke the sleeping love and stirred it into fervent and vigilant life. It was “love at first sight.”

BEING FASHIONED

1 Peter i. 13-16

Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind, be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is being brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as children of obedience, not fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts in the time of your ignorance: but like as He which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living; because it is written, Ye shall be holy; for I am holy.

“Wherefore!” [Verse 13] The word gathers up all the wealthy results of the previous reasonings. The present appeal is based on the introductory evangel. The inspiration of tasks is found in the recesses of profound truths. Spiritual impulse is created by the momentum of superlative facts. The dynamic of duty is born in the heart of the Gospel. “Wherefore,” says the apostle, if these be your prospects and dynamics, if you have been “begotten again into a living hope,” if you are heirs to “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled,” if even apparent hostilities may be converted into wealthy helpmeets, and “manifold trials” into the ministers of salvation, “girding up the loins of your mind, be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is being brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

The “wherefore” is thus suggestive of the bases of this urgent and practical appeal. Our life is purposed to shine in Divine dignity. Our prospects are glorious. Our resources are abounding. We should therefore lay aside our laxity. Life should not be spent in idle reverie. Our movement should not be a careless sauntering. Our rest should not be a thought less lounging. Life should be characterised by clear sight, definite thought, eager purpose, and decided ends.

“Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind.” [Verse 13] The figure of the passage is taken from the flowing garments of the Oriental dress. The flapping robes catch the wind and wrap themselves about the legs, and become serious hindrances to easy and progressive movement. The wearer therefore lays hold of the entangling garments and tucks them into a girdle, which discharges the ministry of a belt. He gathers together the disorderly robes and binds them into a compact and serviceable vesture. Now, the apostle declares that a similar disorder may prevail in the realm of thought and affection. Our life may be characterised by mental slovenliness. Our thoughts may trail in loose disorder. We may give little or no care to the beauty and firmness of the mind. How much loose thinking there is concerning the profoundest and most vital concerns of our life! And the loose thinking does not end with itself. A loose garment may trip a man up and cause him to stumble. Loose thinking is equally perilous, and may lead to moral entanglement and perdition. Loose thinking is creative of loose living; mental slovenliness issues in moral disorder. Therefore “gird up the loins of your mind.” Put some strenuousness into your thinking. Do not let your thought drift along on the stream of reverie. Steer your thought and strongly guide it into wealthy havens. How do I think about God? Loosely and unworthily, or with firm and fruitful conception? “God is great,” and greatly to be thought about; and if I think about Him loosely my sonship will be a stumbling and an offence. How do I think about grace? Is my thinking sluggish and unworthy, and so do I “despise the riches of his goodness”? How do I think about my spiritual call and prospects and destiny? Am I stumbling over my own thinking? Are my own garments my most immediate snares? Is my spiritual confusion the result of my mental indolence? “My people do not consider.” In my want of strong and strenuous thinking may be found some explanation of my moral and spiritual disasters.

As it is with the element of thought, so it is with the power of affection; for perhaps in the spiritual term “mind” both thought and affection are included. We speak of “wandering affections,” and truly affection may become an appalling vagrant. Affection is easily allured, easily entangled, easily snared by the worldly glitter which gleams by the side of the common way. Or, if we recur to the apostle’s figure, our loose affections, like flowing garments that are blown about by the wind, entangle our faculties and make havoc of our moral and spiritual progress. We must “gird up the loins” of our affection. It will not be child’s play, but he who wants a religion of child’s play must not seek the companionship of Christ. The Master spake of cutting off the right hand and plucking out the right eye, and the bleeding figure has reference to the severing of relationships and the disentangling of well-established affections. To free a flowing garment which has been caught in a thorn hedge may necessitate rents, and to disentangle an unworthy affection may necessitate pain, but even at the cost of rent and pain the deliverance must be effected. We must gird up the loins of our trailing affections. We must not hold them so cheaply. We must not permit them to sweep the broad road and to expose themselves to the entanglement of every obtruding thorn. We must “set” our “affections upon things above,” and for that sublime purpose we must gather them together in strenuous concentration. This exhortation is therefore an appeal for collectedness both of thought and of feeling. It is a warning against mental and affectional looseness, and with loving urgency the apostle pleads with his readers to pull themselves together, to gird up their loins, and with full energy of thought and feeling devote themselves to the worship and service of God.

“Be sober.” [Verse 13] This is more than an injunction against intemperance in diet. Intemperance is productive of stupor. It is the enemy of a refined sensitiveness. It is creative of heaviness and sleep. And it is this closing of the senses, by whatever agency it may be induced, against which the apostle raises his voice in clamant warning. “Be sober.” Be on your guard against everything which is creative of heaviness, and which may put your senses into a perilous sleep. At all costs keep awake and vigilant! Just as excessive drinking drugs the flesh and sinks the body into a heavy sleep, so there are other conditions which create a similar stupor in the soul and by which the moral and spiritual senses are burdened and benumbed. There are opiates and narcotics which may make us spiritually drunk, and render us unconscious of the Divine voices that peal from the heights. “Not a few sleep.” The sleep is induced by opiates. There is the opiate of pleasure; there is the opiate of prosperity; there is the opiate of self-satisfaction; there is the depressing drug of disappointment. Against all these we are to be on our guard. “Be sober,” and amid all the narcotising atmospheres of enchanted grounds preserve a wakeful spirit by a ceaseless fellowship with God.

“And set your hope perfectly on the grace that is being brought unto you in the revelation of Jesus Christ.” [Verse 13] Here is the spiritual attitude by which the girded and sober life may be attained. My resources are to be found in the grace that is brought unto me in Christ. In Christ is my reservoir of power. The grace of the Lord Jesus is my dynamic. The resource will never fail me. The supply is never exhausted. It is “being brought” unto me continually—a “river of water of life.” Grace is just a full river of heavenly favour, carrying all needful equipment and rich with the potencies of eternal life. Upon this grace I am to find the basis of my hope. I am to “set my hope perfectly” upon this as the all-sufficient energy for lifting me to the unveiled heights and enabling me to dwell there in undisturbed serenity. I am to release my thought from hindering entanglements, and I am to deliver my affection from enslaving fellowships, and I am to preserve a vigilant sobriety amid all the sleep-inducing atmospheres of the world; and for the accomplishment of this glorious emancipation I am bidden to “set my hope perfectly on the grace that is being brought unto me at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

The apostle now probes more deeply into the mode of godly living, and unveils a little more clearly the principle by which the holy life is fashioned. Life is formed by conformity. There is always a something towards which we tend and approximate, and “we take hue from that to which we cling.” There is always a something “according to” which we are being shaped. “According to Thy word,” “according to this world,” “according to the former lusts.” We are for ever coming into accord with some thing, and that something determines the fashion of our lives. Now, this principle of “forming by conforming” is proclaimed by the apostle in the succeeding words of this great passage; and as “children of obedience” we are called to a manner of life which at once demands a stern nonconformity and a strong and fervent conformity.

“Not fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts in the time of your ignorance.” [Verse 14] “Not fashioning . . . according to lusts.” That conformity must be broken. That “accordance” must be destroyed. Our lusts must not be our formatives, giving shape and fashion to our lives. If our lust raise its feverish and imperious demand, we must be stern and relentless nonconformists. Are we imagining that the imperiousness of lust moves in very circumscribed ways, and that perhaps we escape from its fierce and burning tyranny? The New Testament conception of lust covers a very spacious area, and includes elements to which perhaps we should not give the appalling name. You may have the same element in different guises, now appearing as a solid, and now as a liquid, and now as a gas. And you may have the same essential vice in some tangible loathsomeness and in some hidden and impalpable temper. The Master told us that we have the same essential thing in anger and in murder, only one is gross and solid, while the other is gaseous and comparatively refined. But the trouble is that, when vice is gaseous, we conceive it as proportionately harmless; when it solidifies into open crime, it ensures our reprobation. Now, when the Master speaks of lust, He speaks of it in its gaseous state, as a condition of thought, as a state of temper, as a mode of spirit; and in this interpretation “lust” is just the essentially carnal, the itching after the world, the feverish desire for selfish pleasure, to the utter ignoring of the supremacy of the truth.

In many lives this lust is the determining and formative force; everything is made to bow to it; all the affairs of life are fashioned by it. It occupies the throne and moulds all life’s concerns into its own accord. The apostle vehemently counsels his readers against this conformity. He pleads that the children of liberty should not retain the governing powers of their servitude. The night should not provide the patterns for the day. The season of “ignorance” should not create the ruling powers for the season of knowledge and revelation. He urges them to revolt against the old forces, to become spiritual nonconformists, not fashioning themselves after their former lusts.

“But like as He which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living.” [Verse 15] The holy God is to be the formative force in our life, and to Him are we to be devoted in close and intimate conformity. “As He which called you.” The call is a Divine pledge. The acceptance of the call implies a human obligation. There is the pledge on the side of God, and the obligation on the side of man. The call, given and received, creates an intimate fellowship. The One who calls is holy, and by the mighty ministry of the Spirit he who shares the fellowship is transformed into the same holiness. AH fellowship with God is productive of spiritual likeness. If we gaze into His face, we shall be illumined with the light of His countenance. “Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, we are transformed into the same image.” We absorb the glory of the Lord. We become transfigured by it. Let us mark the breadth of the transforming process. We are to be holy “in all manner of living.” The pervasive power of the Spirit is to influence every walk of life and every part of the walk. The transfiguring energy is to inhabit even trifles, and the commonplaces of life are to be illumined by the indwelling of the eternal light. We shall grow in grace, putting on more and more of the beauty of Him in whose fellowship we dwell.

THE HOLINESS OF THE FATHER

1 Peter i. 17-21

And if ye call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to each man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear: knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers; but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ: who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was manifested at the end of the times for your sake, who through Him are believers in God, which raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God.

“If ye call on Him as Father, who . . . judgeth.” [Verse 17] That is an extraordinary conjunction of terms. It is a daring and surprising companionship to associate, in immediate union, the function of the judge with the personality of Father. I had anticipated that the term “Father” would have suggested quite other relationships, and would have emphasised functions of an altogether different type. I did not anticipate the intimate wedlock of “Father” and “judge.” I had thought that the glad succession would have proceeded somewhat on this wise: “If ye call on Him as Father, who loveth!” “If ye call on Him as Father, who pitieth!” “If ye call on Him as Father, who forgiveth!” I had interpreted the word “father” as being suggestive of the free and kindly intimacies of the fireside; but here it stands indicative of the august prerogatives of a throne. “If ye call on Him as Father, who judgeth.” The element which I had forgotten is made conspicuous and primary, and determines the shape and colour of man’s relationship to God.

“If ye call on Him as Father, who judgeth.” Then the element of holy sovereignty must be a cardinal content in our conception of the Fatherhood of God. What does the term “Father” immediately suggest to me? Good nature or holiness; laxity or righteousness; a hearthstone or a great white throne? The primary element in my conception will determine the quality of my religious life. If the holiness of Fatherhood be minimised or obscured, every other attribute will be impoverished. Denude your conception of holiness, and it is like withdrawing the ozone from the invigorating air, or detracting the freshening salt from the healthy sea. Suppress or ignore the element of holiness, and think of the Father as affectionate, and the love that you attribute to Him will be only as a close and enervating air. Love without holiness is deoxygenated, and its ministry is that of an opiate or narcotic. Pity without holiness is a bloodless sentiment destitute of all healing efficiency. Forgiveness without holiness is the granting of a cheap and superficial excuse, in which there is nothing of the saving strength of sacrifice. Begin with pity or forgiveness, or forbearance or gentleness, and you have dispositions without dynamics, poor limp things, which afford no resource for the uplifting and salvation of the race. But begin with holiness, and you put a dynamic into every disposition which makes it an engine of spiritual health. Forgiveness with holiness behind it is a medicated sentiment, fraught with healing and bracing ministry. Gentleness with holiness behind it touches the aches and sores of the world with the firm and delicate hand of a discerning and experienced nurse. Exalt the element of holiness, and you enrich your entire conception of the Fatherhood of God. The “river of water of life” flows “out of the throne.” “The Father who judgeth.” “Our Father, hallowed be Thy name.”

And now the apostle proceeds to tell us how his conception of the holiness of God is fostered and enriched. Wherever he turns it is God’s holiness, and not God’s pity, which smites and arrests his attention. He is never permitted to become irreverent, for lie is never out of sight of “the great white throne.” He moves in fruitful wonder, ever contemplating the glory of the burning holiness of God. If he meditates upon the character of the Father’s judgments, it is their holiness by which he is possessed. If he moves with breathless steps amid the mysteries of redemption, even beneath the blackness of the cross he discovers the whiteness of the throne. If he dwells upon the purposes of the Divine yearning, it is the holiness of the Father’s ambition for His children which holds him entranced. The holiness of the Father emerges everywhere. It is expressed and placarded in all His doings. Everywhere could the apostle take upon his lips the words of another wondering spirit who gazed and worshipped in a far-off day: “I saw the Lord, high and lifted up! Holy, holy, holy is the LORD.”

“The Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to each man’s work.” [Verse 17] The apostle finds the holiness of the Father expressed in the character of His judgments. The elements which so commonly shape the judgments of men do not count in the judgments of God. He judgeth “without respect of persons.” Fine feathers do not count as refinement. Faces may be masks. The “persona” may be an actor. The Father pays no respect to the mere show of things. All masks become transparent. All veils become trans lucent. The material show, with all ephemeral titles, and nobilities, and dignities, and degrees, are not accepted as evidence, but are put down, and only spiritual characteristics and moral essentials are permitted as testimony of personal worth. “The Father, without respect of persons, judgeth according to each man’s work.” [Verse 17] And what is the bulk and quality of my work? If the Father judge me by my output in the shape of finished and realised achievement, then I shrink from the wretched unveiling! I have laboured for the salvation of men; how will He judge my “work”? Will He tabulate the results? Will He count my converts? Is that how James Gilmour will be judged, who after long years of labour in Mongolia could not record a single regenerated soul? If “work” means finished results, how few of us will be crowned! “This is the work, that ye believe.” That is the basis of judgment. How much of holy energy is expressed in our relationship to God? What is the strength of our fellowship with the Divine? That is the primal energy of character, and that is the criterion of the Divine judgment. Out of that energy of belief there is born the magnificent force which expresses itself in prolonged labours in Mongolia, in fearless pioneering in New Guinea, in unromantic, educational ministry in India, in plucky, unyielding struggle with great evils in England, in tiring, unapplauded toil among the poor, in dry and heart-breaking service among the rich, in steady, persistent battle with “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” All these toils are the offspring of belief. In the energy of belief they find their life and the secret of their dauntless perseverance. And so James Gilmour will not be judged by his “results,” but by his “bloody sweat.” He will be judged, and so shall we all, by the supplicating wrestle of the heart, by the quality of our aspiration, by the depth and fervour of our belief. In this type and character of judgment the apostle sees the mark of the holiness of God. “I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God,” and the Father judged them “according to each man’s work.” “I remember thy work of faith.”

The apostle now turns to another expression of the holiness of the Father, and he finds it in the character of our redemption. “Knowing that,” reflecting that, “ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things . . . but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.” [Verses 18, 19] Now, link to this a previous word which forms a vital part of the apostle’s reasoning. “I am holy.” He immediately unites the conception of holiness with the ministry of redemption. To keep that holiness in mind I am to reflect upon the character of redemption. I am to gaze into the mysterious depths of redemption, and I shall behold the holiness of my Father. Now, that is not our common inclination. We look into redemption for mercy, forgiveness, condescension, love. We look for the genial flame of affection; have we been blind to the dazzling blaze of holiness? We have felt the warm, yearning intimacy of love, inclining towards the sinner; have we felt the fierce, burning heat where holiness touches sin?

Redemption is more than the search of Father for child; it is a tremendous wrestle of holiness with sin. Have we felt only the tenderness of the search, and partially over looked the terribleness of the conflict? The fear is that we may feel the geniality of the one without experiencing the consuming heat of the other. I proclaim it as a modern peril. We do not open our eyes to the holiness that battles in our redemption, and so we gain only an enervated conception of redemptive love. Is not this a characteristic of many of the popular hymns which gather round about the facts of redemption? They are sweet, sentimental, almost gushing; the light, lilting songs of a thoughtless courtship: deep in their depths I discern no sense of bloody conflict, nor do I taste any tang of the bitter cup which made our Saviour shrink. And so, because we do not discern the majestic crusade of holiness, we do not realise the enormity of sin. If we look into the mystery of redemption, and do not see the august holiness of God, we can never see the blackness of the sovereignty of sin. Dim your sense of holiness, and you lighten the colour of sin. Now see what follows. Obscure the holiness and you relieve the blackness of sin. Relieve the blackness of sin and you impoverish the glory of redemption. The more we lighten sin the more we uncrown our Redeemer. If sin be a light thing, the Redeemer was superfluous. And so, with holiness hidden and sin relieved, we come to hold a cheap redemption, and it is against the conception of a cheap redemption that the apostle raises an eager and urgent warning—“There was nothing cheap about your redemption. It was not a light ministry which cost a mere trifle. Ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with precious blood, even the blood of Christ.” Reason from the cost of redemption to the nature of the conflict; reason from the nature of the conflict to the black enormity of sin; reason from the enormity of sin to the glory of holiness! A lax God could have given us licence and so redeemed us cheaply! A cheap redemption might have made us feel easy; it would never have made us good. A cheap forgiveness would only have confirmed the sin it forgave. If we are to see sin we must behold holiness, unveiled for us as in a “lamb without blemish and without spot.” [Verse 19 ] And so in the sacrifice of Christ, the apostle discerns something of the holiness of the Father, and thus apprehends the unspeakable antagonism of holiness and sin. To him redemption is more than a search; it is a conflict. It is more than a tender yearning; it is the mighty bearing of an appalling load. Between the Incarnation, when Christ was manifested, and the Resurrection, when God raised Him from the dead, the powers of holiness and sin met face to face in mighty combat, and in the appalling darkness of Gethsemane and Calvary sin was overthrown and holiness was glorified. When I move amid the mysteries of redemption, I never want to become deaf to my Saviour’s words, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.” I never want His cry to go out of my life, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” So long as that cry sounds through the rooms of my life I can never have a cheap Redeemer, and I shall be kept from the enervating influence of a cheap redemption. In redemption I behold an unspeakable conflict which keeps me ever in mind of the holiness of the Father hood of God. In my conception of redemption there shall be “no curse,” nothing withering and destructive, for “the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it.” In the sacrifice of love I shall behold the holiness of God.

Out of this large conception of a holy Father hood there will arise a worthy conception of sonship. If God be holy, expressing His holiness in all His dealings, and “if ye call on Him as Father,” what manner of children ought ye to be? If I call the holy God “my Father,” the assumption of kinship implies obligation to holiness. If I say “Father,” I may not ignore holiness. “If God were your father,” ye would bear His likeness. “Ye shall be holy; for I am holy.” If then ye call on Him as “Father,” put yourselves in the way of appropriating His glory, and of becoming radiant with the beauty of His holiness: “pass the time of your sojourning in fear.” [Verse 17] There is no suggestion in the counsel of any enslaving timidity. We are not to cringe like slaves, or to move as though we expected that at any moment an abyss might open at our feet. The Christian’s walk is a fine swinging step, born of hope and happy confidence. To “pass the time in fear “is not to move in paralysing dread. Nor is it to be the victim of a paralysing particularity which converts every trifle into a thorn, and makes the way of life a via dolorosa of countless irritations. The Christian is neither a faddist nor a slave. To “pass the time in fear “is just to be fearful of sleep, to watch against indifference, to be alert against an insidious thoughtlessness, to be spiritually awake and to miss no chance of heightening the purity of our souls by all the ministries of holy fellowships, and by a ready obedience to the Master’s will. “If ye call on Him as Father,” let the majestic claim inspire you to a spacious ambition: “pass your time “in a fervent aspiration after His likeness, “perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.”

THE CREATION OF CULTURE AND AFFECTION

1 Peter i. 22-25

Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from a clean heart fervently: having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth. For, All flesh is as grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower falleth: but the word of the, Lord abideth for ever.

IN the very heart of this passage there lies a fair and exquisite flower—the flower of an in tense and fervent affection. Its surroundings reveal to us the means of its production. The earlier clauses of the passage describe the mode of its growth; the later clauses describe the cause of its growth. The first part is descriptive of the rootage and the preliminary life of the flower of love; the second part proclaims the all-enswathing atmosphere in which growth is rendered possible and sure. On the one hand, there are revealed to us the successive and progressive stages of spiritual culture; on the other hand, we are introduced to the all-pervading power which determines their evolution. The earlier part centres round about “obedience”; the latter part gathers round about “the word of God.” The first half emphasises the human; the second half emphasises the Divine. The human and the Divine combine and co-operate, and in their mingled ministry create the sweet and unpolluted flower of love.

“Love one another from a clean heart fervently.” [Verse 22] How can I grow this sweet, white flower of love? Its creation is not the immediate result of volition; it is the issue of a process. We cannot command it; we can grow it. It is not an “alpha “but an “omega,” the “amen” in a spiritual succession. If I want the flower, I must begin at the root. If I want the love, I must begin with obedience. The first stage towards a fervent affection is “obedience to the truth” If a soul yearns to be crowned and beautified by the grace of a delicate love, it must put itself in the posture of “obedience to the truth.” Ay, but what is this truth to which we are to pay obeisance? Just as I penned the question, the sun, which had been concealed behind a cloud, broke from its hiding, and a broad, wealthy tide of light flowed over the garden, and revealed the young leaves in resplendent glory. The word “tree” obtains a new significance when you see the branches swaying in the golden light. It is even so with the familiar word “truth.” To one man the word is suggestive of a dim, dull, cloudy quantity, having little or nothing of arresting radiance or beauty. To another man “truth “is a gloriously unclouded light, suggesting the hallowed beauty of the eternal God. What do we mean by the term “hill”? That depends upon where we have lived. The word “hill” has one significance at Snowdon, another at Ben Nevis, another at Mont Blanc, and another amid the gigantic heights of Northern India. What do we mean by “the truth”? Where have we lived? The apostle has not used the word “truth” before. He seems to have kept it in abeyance until by some preliminary thought he has prepared our minds to give it adequate content. He has been leading us through a pilgrimage of contemplation, and at the end of the journey he utters the word “truth,” and if we would enter into his conception we must pack the word with the experiences of the previous way. We have been peering into the Fatherhood of God. The apostle has been pointing out to us elements which we were inclined to forget. We looked into the Father hood for sweetness; He pointed out whiteness. We looked for gentleness; He pointed out holiness. We looked for tender yearnings towards the sinner; He would not permit us to overlook the Divine hostility to sin. Wherever the apostle turns in the contemplation of the Father hood, it is the “whiteness” that arrests him. He looks into the Father’s judgments, and he beholds the whiteness of holiness. He glances behind the veil into the mysteries of redemption, and even amid the sacrifices of love he beholds the glory of “the great white throne.” Wherever he turns his wondering gaze, it is the perception of a character “without blemish and without spot” that brings him to his knees. When, therefore, we emerge from the solemn sight-seeing, as we do in the twenty-second verse, and I hear the apostle use the word “truth,” I know that he inserts into the word the content of superlative whiteness, and that while he uses it he bows before the holiness of the Fatherhood of God. Here, then, we must begin the culture of affection. We must begin with the contemplation of whiteness, with a steady, steadfast gazing upon the holiness of the Fatherhood of God. We must let holiness tower in our conception of God, as the dazzling snow abides on the lifted heights of the Alps. The “truth” is the unveiled face of the Holy Father. The first step in the creation of pure affection is the contemplation of a Holy God.

The apostle uses a very graphic word to further describe the healthy pose of a soul in reference to “the truth.” We are to be in “obedience to the truth.” There is a stoop in the word. It is a kneeling at attention. It is an eager inclining of the ear to catch the whisper of the Holy God. But it is more than that. It is the attention of a soul that is girt and ready for service. The wings are plumed for ministering flight. It is a listening, for the purpose of a doing. “Whosoever heareth these sayings of Mine and doeth them.” It is a soul waiting consciously and eagerly upon the Holy Father with the intent of hearing and doing His will. This is “obedience to the truth,” and this is the preliminary step in the creation and culture of God.

Now, let us pass to the vital succession described in the text. We enter a second stage of this progressive gradation. “Ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth.” [Verse 22] While ye were doing the one, ye were accomplishing the other. Obedience to truth is the agent of spiritual perfection. Homage to holiness is the minister of refinement. To bow to the august is to enlarge the life. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” To listen in waiting attention for the expression of the will of holiness is to fill the life with cleansing and refining ministry. We bleach our fabrics by exposing them to the light. We whiten our spiritual garments by dwelling in the hallowed glory of the Light of Life. We “purify our souls” by our “obedience to the truth.” We purify them. We make them chaste in all the varied meaning of that wealthy word. We rid them of secret defilements, washing quite out of the grain the soaking filth of selfishness and of impure ambition. We free them of all the uncouthness, the rudeness, and the rough discourtesies of the unhallowed life. We deliver them from the meretricious, the tawdry graces that are made to do duty for the fair realities of the sanctified life. The soul is made grandly simple, endowed with the winsome naturalness and grace of an unaffected child. This is the way of the eternal. When we dwell in the light, the powers of the soul are being rarefied, touched, and moulded into ever finer discernments. The organic quality of the life is enriched, and possibilities awakened of which we hardly dreamed. We transform our spiritual sub stance when we change our spiritual posture. We “purify our souls by our obedience to the truth.”

Now, mark the next stage in this brightening sequence. “Ye have purified your souls . . . unto unfeigned love.” [Verse 22] We are rising into finer issues. We have passed from hallowed obedience to purified spirit, and now we go on to unfeigned affection! The rarest issue of the rose-tree is the perfume of the rose. From root to perfume you ascend a gradation of increasing refinements until you come to its subtle and bewitching breath. And here in my text we have arrived at the sphere of fragrance, the realm of sentiment, the haunt of affection. “Ye have purified your souls . . . unto unfeigned love.” Mark the directive force of the preposition—“purified unto love”; as though the purification of the soul made straight, as by a gracious destiny, for the birth and revelation of love. The spirit can be so chastened, so refined by “obedience to the truth,” that love will emerge from it as naturally and spontaneously as perfume distils from a rose. “He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth!” He cannot help loving; his love is a spontaneous affluence, and he can no more restrain it than the rose can imprison her fragrance when she is tossed by the playful breeze. A fine sentiment is the offspring of a fine spirit. The posture of the soul determines the quality of the disposition. If the soul; “live and move and have her being” in the presence of the Holy Father, revealed in Christ our Saviour, and shape her course in “obedience to the truth,” she will be sublimed, and all her ministries will be attended by a gracious affection, diffusing itself as fragrance about the common ways of men. “Ye have purified your soul unto unfeigned love of the brethren.”

But now it may occasion a little surprise that, having reached this apparent climax in the thought, the affluence of a spontaneous affection, the apostle should add the injunction, “love one another from a clean heart fervently!” [Verse 22] What is the purpose of the apparently needless addition? We have watched the ascending stages in the spiritual processes that issue in love; what if there are ascending stages in the refinement of love itself? There may be degrees of riches even in perfumes. Even love itself may be refined into more and more exquisite .quality. That, I think, is the meaning of the apostle’s counsel. He urges them to seek for the superlative in the sweet kingdom of love, ever to set their minds on “the things above,” and to fix their yearnings upon still finer issues. We get a clear glimpse into the apostle’s mind through the vivid word in which he urges the counsel, “love one another . . . fervently.” There is a suggestion of increased tension in the word, as when the string of a violin has been stretched to a tighter pitch that it might yield a higher note. That is the apostle’s figure—a little more tension, that you may reach a little higher note. There are heights of love unreached. Tighten the strings of your devotion, that your soul may yield the entrancing strains. Be vigilant against all laxity, and stretch yourselves to the uttermost in the endeavour to compass the manifold music of the marvellous scales of love. When, there fore, the apostle enjoins a more fervent love, I feel that he drives me back to the first preliminary stage of spiritual growth. When he appeals for higher notes of love, he is really counselling a deeper holiness. If my love is to be more intense, I must seek a “closer walk with God.” I must tighten my holiness if I would enrich my music. There will come a more discerning love when there is a more devoted obedience. I shall pass from finer homage to rarer spiritual purity, and from rarer spiritual purity to increasing exquisiteness in love. “Seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from a clean heart fervently.”

How can we depend upon this succession in the processes? How can we be assured that one stage will lead to another in inevitable spiritual gradation? What is the nature of the bond and the quality of the guarantee? What is our assurance that “obedience to truth” will issue in chaste refinement of spirit, and that spiritual refinement will be crowned by a rare and fervent affection? The basis of our reliance is “the word of God.” [Verse 23] It was through the word of God there was given to us the seed of a regenerated life. We were “begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God.” That word, through which there came the first, faint seminal beginnings of a holy life, remaineth sure through all the stages of subsequent growth. We may rely upon “the word of God.” It “liveth and abideth,” an energising all-enveloping atmosphere, in which the beautiful young growth will be matured. If the centre of love depended upon the power of any human ministry, the issue would assuredly fail. Our dependence would then be built upon a thing enduring only through a transient season. Human aid is but “as the grass”; and the best of human aid, the very glory of it, only as “the flower of grass” [Verse 24 ] In the fierce, scorching noontide, the time of feverish strain, when we are most in need of enriching rest, “the grass withereth, and the flower falleth,” and there is barrenness where we yearned to find a soft and healing peace. No; not upon flesh must we depend for the evolution of the spiritual life. “Our hope is in God.” The Lord Himself pervades the processes and determines the line of ascending growth. “The word of the Lord abideth for ever.” [Verse 25]

THE LIVING STONES AND THE SPIRITUAL HOUSE

1 Peter ii. 1-10

Putting away therefore all wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation; if ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious: unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Because it is contained in scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame. For you therefore which believe is the preciousness: but for such as disbelieve, The stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner; and, A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence; for they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed. But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that ye may shew forth the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light: which in time past were no people, but now are the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

THERE is a wonderful ascending gradation in the earlier portions of this great chapter. It begins in the darkness, amid “wickedness” and “guile” and “hypocrisies,” and it winds its way through the wealthy, refining processes of grace, until it issues in the “marvellous light” of perfected redemption. It begins with individuals, who are possessed by uncleanness, holding aloof from one another in the bondage of “guile “and “envies “and “evil speakings”; it ends in the creation of glorious families, sanctified communities, elect races, “showing forth the excellencies” of the redeeming Lord. We pass from the corrupt and isolated individual to a redeemed and perfected fellowship. We begin with an indiscriminate heap of unclean and undressed stones; we find their consummation in a “spiritual house,” standing consistent and majestic in the light of the glory of God. We begin with scattered units; we end with co-operative communions. The subject of the passage is therefore clearly defined. It is concerned with the making of true society, the creation of spiritual fellowship, the realisation of the family, the welding of antagonistic units into a pure and lovely communion.

Where must we begin in the creation of this communion? The building of the house, says the apostle, must begin in the preparation of the stones. If the family is to be glorified, the individual must be purified. A choir is no richer than its individual voices, and if we wish to enrich the harmony we must refine the constituent notes. The basis of all social reformation is individual redemption. And so I am not surprised that the apostle, who is contemplating the creation of beautified brotherhoods, should primarily concern himself with the preparation of the individual. But how are the stones to be cleaned and shaped and dressed for the house? How is the individual to be prepared? By what spiritual processes is he to be fitted for larger fellowships and family communion? I think the apostle gives us a threefold answer.

“If ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” [Verse 3] That is the basal clause of the entire chapter. Everything begins here. It is no use our dreaming of perfected human relationships until the individual has deliberately tasted the things that are Divine. A chastened palate in the individual is a primary element in the consolidation of the race. There must be a personal experimenting with God. There must be a willingness to try the spiritual hygiene enjoined in the Gospel of Christ. We must “taste and see” what the grace is like that is so freely offered to us of God. We must taste it, and find out for ourselves its healthy and refreshing flavour. What is implied in the apostle’s figure? In the merely physical realm, when we taste a thing, what are the implications of the act? When we take a thing up critically for the purpose of discerning its flavour, there are at any rate two elements contained in the method of our approach. There is an application of a sense, and there is the exercise of the judgment. We bring an alertness of palate that we may register sensitive perceptions, and we bring an alertness of mind that we may exercise a discriminating judgment. Well, these two elements are only symbolic of the equipment that is required if we would “taste and see how gracious the Lord is.” We need to present to the Lord a sensitive sense and a vigilant mind. There is no word which is read so drowsily as the Word of God. There is no business so sluggishly executed as the business of prayer. If men would discern the secret flavours of the Gospel, they must come to it wide awake, and sensitively search for the conditions by which its hidden wealth may be disclosed. “Son of man, eat that thou findest. . . . Then did I eat it, and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness.” He had tasted and seen. “Eat that thou findest!” Well, the only way in which we can eat a message is to obey it. Obedience is spiritual consumption; and in the act of obedience, in the act of consumption, we discern the wondrous flavours of grace. We are, there fore, to approach the Gospel of our Lord. We are to patiently and sensitively realise its conditions. We are to put ourselves in the attitude of obedience, and, retaining a bright and wakeful mind, we shall begin to discern the glories of our redemption. We shall taste the flavour of reconciliation, the fine grace of forgiveness, and the exquisite quality of peace. This is the primary step in the creation of the family; the individual is to taste and appreciate the things of God.

All delights imply repulsions. All likes necessitate dislikes. A strong taste for God implies a strong distaste for the ungodly. The more refined my taste, the more exacting becomes my standard. The more I appreciate God, the more shall I depreciate the godless. I do not wonder, therefore, that in the chapter before us the “tasting” of grace is accompanied by a “putting away” [ Verse 1] of sin. If I welcome the one, I shall “therefore” repel the other. The finer my taste, the more scrupulous will be my repulsions. Mark the ascending refinement in this black catalogue of expulsions: “wickedness, guile, hypocrisies, envies, evil speakings!” The list ranges from thick, soddened, compact wickedness up to un kindly speech, and I am so to grow in my Divine appreciation that I just as strongly repel the gilded forms of sin as I do those that savour of the exposed and noisome sewer. The taste of grace implies the “putting away” of sin; and therefore the second step in the creation of the family is the cleansing of the individual. Is the cleansing essential? Let us lay this down as a primary axiom in the science of life—there can be no vital communion between the unclean. Why, we cannot do a bit of successful soldering unless the surfaces we wish to solder are vigorously scraped of all their filth. I suppose that, in the domain of surgery, one of the greatest discoveries of the last fifty years has been the discovery of dirt, and the influence which it has exercised as the minister of severance and alienation. It has been found to be the secret cause of inflammation, the hidden agent in retarded healing, the subtle worker in embittered wounds; and now surgical science insists that all its operations be performed in the most scrupulous cleanliness, and its intensified vigilance has been rewarded by pure and speedy healings and communions. It is not otherwise in the larger science of life. Every bit of uncleanness in the individual is a barrier to family communion. All dirt is the servant of alienation. It is essential, if we would have strong and intimate fellowships, that every member be sweet and clean. “Therefore put away all wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies and all evil speakings,” and by purified surfaces let us prepare ourselves for spiritual communion.

“As newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk.” [Verse 2] Having tasted of the grace of the Lord, and freeing yourselves from the embittering presence of sin, adopt an exacting diet—“long for the spiritual milk which is without guile.” Feed upon the loftiest ideals. Suffer nothing of adulterating compromise to enter into your spiritual food. Nourish yourselves upon aspirations undefiled. Do not let your wine be mingled with water. Do not permit any dilution from the suggestions of the world. “Long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation.” [Verse 2] It is the unadulterated food that ministers to growth. It is the high ideal which lifts men to the heights. The loftiness of one’s aim determines the degree of one’s growth. In these matters my spiritual gravitation is governed by my personal aspirations, my spirit pursues the path and gradient of my desires.

Here, then, is the threefold preparation of the individual for a family life of intimate and fruitful fellowship—a personal experience of grace, the expulsion from the life of all uncleanness, and the adoption of a rigorous and uncompromising ideal. The whole preparatory process is begun, continued, and ended in Christ. In Christ the individual is lodged, and in His grace, which is all-sufficient, he finds an abundant equipment for the spacious purpose of his perfected redemption.

Now, let us assume that the individual is ready for the fellowship. We have got the unit of the family. We have got the “living stone.” cleansed, shaped, dressed, ready to be built into the “spiritual house.” How, now, shall the society be formed? What shall be its cement? What shall be its binding medium, and the secret of its consistency? Here are the “living stones”; what shall we do with them? “Unto whom coming . . . as living stones ye are built up a spiritual house.” [ Verses 4, 5] “Unto whom coming!” The living stones are to find their bond of union in the living Christ. The alpha of all enduring communion is Christ. We cannot prepare the individual stones without Christ. We cannot build the individual stones into a house without Christ. He is the “corner stone,” and the pervading strength of every enduring structure. What is the implication of all this? It is this. We cannot have society without piety. We may have juxtapositions, connections, clubs, fleeting and superficial relationships, but the only enduring brotherhood is the brotherhood which is built upon faith. Apart from the Christ there can be no social cohesion. The “Word of God proclaims it, and history confirms it. Every preposition seems to have been exhausted by the Word of God in emphasising the necessity of a fundamental relationship with Christ—“in Christ,” “through Christ,” “by Christ,” “with Christ,” “unto Christ.” In every conceivable way Christ is proclaimed as the all-essential. In seeking to create societies we have therefore got to reckon with the Christ. We cannot ignore Him. He will not be ignored. We either use Him or we fall over Him. We use Him and rise into strength, or we neglect Him and stumble into ruin. We either make Him the “head of the corner,” [Verses 7, 8] or He becomes our “stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence.” Societies and families and nations, which are not built upon the Christ, fall to pieces, thrown into ruin by the very “law of the spirit of life.” But have not societies been built upon the Christ, and yet been far from manifesting the glory of a radiant, family communion? Look at the sects! Is not Christ the corner stone, and yet where is the sweet communion? Ah! it is when the different communities have got away from the Christ that their communion has been destroyed. It is when the sects get away from the spirit of the Christ, when they become wranglers about a letter, when they are heated by the fever of personal vanity, and lust for the spoils of sectarian triumph—it is then that the spiritual house collapses, and lies scattered in a heap of inhospitable fragments. But when we build upon Him, when He, and He only, is “the preciousness,” when all our personal aims are merged in line with His, when we have the Spirit of Christ, then are we bound into a gracious communion, into a vital and fundamental unity. And into what is He prepared to build us? This chapter is overflowing in the wealth of the figures by which it seeks to express the glorious mission. He will build us into a “spiritual house,” [ Verse 5] a spacious home, enclosing but one tenant, the gracious Spirit of God. He will distinguish us as “an elect race,” [Verse 9] moving in the world, yet not of it, standing out in strong relief from the discordant and fragmentary life by which it is surrounded. He will endow us with all the dignities of “a royal priesthood,” having kingly and priestly prerogatives, reigning with Christ in the realm of the spirit and exercising a powerful ministry of intercession in the most holy presence of God. He will constitute us “a holy nation,” a people whose policies shall be purities, and whose state craft shall just be the enlightened administration of large and unselfish minds. This is what our God is prepared to make of us. It is a great ideal, but then we have a great Father and a great Saviour and a mighty Spirit, and vast ideals are native to the very spirit of our redemption. It is a grand house which the Lord would build, and if only He had the stones the majestic edifice would speedily be reared.

And what is to be the mission of the glorified fellowship? If even two or three are gathered together, by common possession of the Spirit of Christ, into a sanctified society, what purpose is to be achieved by their communion? They are to “shew forth the excellencies of Him who called them out of darkness into His marvellous light.” [Verse 9] The “elect race” will be distinguished by its cheeriness, its geniality, its radiant sympathies, its abounding optimism. It will be of little use our professing that we are “called into marvellous light “if our society is only the home of controversy, or the abode of a brooding melancholy and depression. The redeemed society is composed of “children of light.” We are to prove that “now we are the people of God,” [Verse 10] that we have been naturalised—or shall I say supernaturalised?—into the kingdom of God, and we are to prove it by bringing into common affairs the air of a better country, a loftier tone, a finer temper, a nobler spirit. “Our citizenship” is to be “in heaven,” and we are to “shew forth the excellencies of God” in the lightsomeness and spirituality of His people. Such is to be the ministry of the spiritual society which our Father will create out of His reconciled and sanctified children. Such is to be the “spiritual house,” built up of “living stones,” and having as its one and only foundation Jesus Christ, our Lord.

THE MINISTRY OF SEEMLY BEHAVIOUR

1 Peter ii. 11-17

Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul; having your behaviour seemly among the Gentiles; that, wherein they speak against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works, which they behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. Be subject to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as sent by him for vengeance on evil-doers and for praise to them that do well. For so is the will of God, that by well-doing ye should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your freedom for a cloke of wickedness, but as bondservants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.

THIS is an appeal for the evangelising influences of a chaste and winsome character. It is an apostolic entreaty to consider the immeasurable momentum of a beautiful life. It is a glorification of the silent witness of saintliness. It is not given to all men to have the faculty and function of the prophet, his clear sight, and his power of fruitful interpretation, The persuasive, wooing speech, of the evangelist is not an element in the common endowment. The evangelist and the prophet may be only infrequent creations, and their gifts may have only a limited distribution. But we may all exercise the ministry of beauty. Every man may be an ambassador of life, discharging his office through the medium of holiness. Every man may be an evangelist in the domain of character, distributing his influence through the odour of sanctity, in seemliness of behaviour, in exquisite fitness of speech, in finely finished and well-proportioned life. This is a ministry for every body, the apostleship of spiritual beauty. And so in the passage before us the apostle is engaged in delineating the features of the character that tells. He is depicting a forceful life. He is exhibiting the behaviour which is influential in leading men to reverent thought and religious inquiry and spiritual conviction. What are these public aspects of the sanctified life? By what kind of living can we best arouse the interest of the world in the claims and kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? How may we become powerful evangelists, even though we have been denied the gift of tongues? How may we arrest the world in fruitful wonder? Let us seek the answer in the apostolic word.

THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST

1 Peter ii. 21-25

For hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow His steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously: who His own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were going astray like sheep; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.

“Christ also suffered . . . who did no sin.” [Verses 21, 22] The two phrases must be conjoined if either is to receive an adequate interpretation. The earlier term discloses its significance by the light of the later term. If we would know the content and intensity of the suffering, we must know the character of the sufferer. “Christ also suffered.” [Verse 21] The word is indeterminate until I know the quality of His life. Suffering is a relative term. The measure of its acuteness is determined by the degree of our refinement. The same burden weighs unequally on different men. Lower organisation implies diminished sensitiveness The higher the organisation the finer becomes the nerve, and the finer the nerve the more delicate becomes the exposure to pain. The more exquisite the refinement, the more exquisite is the pang.

I do not limit the principle to the domain of the flesh. It is a matter of familiar knowledge that in the body it is regnant. There are bodies in which the nerves seem atrophied or still-born, and there are bodies in which the nerves abound like masses of exquisitely sensitive pulp. But the diversity runs up into the higher endowments of the life, into the aesthetic and affectional and spiritual domains of the being. The man of little aesthetic refinement knows nothing of the aches and pains created by ugliness and discord. The rarer organisation is pierced and wounded by every jar and obliquity. It is even so in the realm of the affections. Where affection burns low, neglect and inattention are unnoticed; where love burns fervently, neglect is a martyrdom. If we rise still higher into the coronal dominions of the life, into the domain of moral and spiritual sentiments, we shall find that the degree of rectitude and holiness determines the area of exposure to the wounding, crucifying ministry of vulgarity and sin.

WIVES AND HUSBANDS

1 Peter iii. 1-8

In like manner, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, even if any obey not the word, they may without the word be gained by the behaviour of their wives; beholding your chaste behaviour coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it not be the outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner aforetime the holy women also, who hoped in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands: as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose children ye now are, if ye do well, and are not put in fear by any terror. Ye husbands, in like manner, dwell with your wives according to knowledge, giving honour unto the woman, as unto the weaker vessel, as being also joint-heirs of the grace of life; to the end that your prayers be not hindered. Finally, be ye all likeminded, compassionate, loving as brethren, tenderhearted, humbleminded.

WHERE shall we begin our interpretation of this influential passage? The starting-place of the exposition has much to do with the character and quality of its issues. Everybody knows the starting-place of a superficial and short-sighted curiosity. It fastens its primary attention upon the words “subjection,” “fear,” “obedience.” These are the words which are regarded as the points of emphasis. Around these words the interest gathers and culminates. The rest of the broad passage is secondary, and takes its colour from their determination. I propose to reverse the order. We will begin with the broad significance of the passage, and then reason backwards to the content of the individual words. We will gaze upon the entire face, and then take up the interpretation of single features. If we begin with the words “subjection,” “fear,” “obedience,” with no helpful clue of interpretation, we shall have a perverted and destructive conception of the dignity of womanhood. But if we begin with the broad, general portraiture of the wife and the husband, their mutual relationships will stand revealed as in the clear light of a radiant noon. In the passage for exposition the apostle delineates some of the spiritual characteristics of the ideal husband and the ideal wife. Let us quietly gaze at the portraiture, if perchance some of its beauty may steal into our spirits, and hallow common life with the light and glory of the blessed God.

Where does the apostle begin in his portraiture of the ideal wife? “Chaste behaviour.” [Verse 2] The first element in worthy womanhood is the wearing of the white robe. The spirit is perfectly clean. “The King’s daughter is all glorious within.” All her powers consort together like a white-robed angel-band. In every room of her life one can find the fair linen, “clean and white.” In the realm of the imagination her thoughts hover and brood like white doves. In the abode of motive her aspirations are as sweet and pure as the breathings of a little child. In the home of feeling, her affections are as incorruptible as rays of light. If you move among the powers of her speech, on the threshold of her lips you will find no stain, no footprint of “anything that defileth or worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.” In the inner life of the ideal woman, no unclean garment can be found, for everything wears the white robe. The spirit is “chaste.” But chasteness is more than cleanliness. The stone is not only white, it is chiselled into delicacy. Character is not left in the rough; it is refined into thoughtful finish. The substance is not only pure, it is worked into beauty. It is not only true in matter, it is consummated in exquisite manner. If the analogy of purified womanhood is to be found in the whiteness of the snow, its finish is to be found in the graceful curves and forms of the snowdrift. “Chaste behaviour” is just the refined purity of all the activities of the inner life.

Refined purity is therefore the primary element in the ideal wife, and it is the first essential in human communion. There can be no vital communion where both the communicants are not clean. “When dirt intrudes, fellowship is destroyed. Corruption is the antagonist of cohesion. “The wicked shall not stand.” Their very uncleanness eats up the consistency and brings the structure to ruin. “When uncleanness breaks out in the family circle, the family cannot “stand.” If envy take up its abode, or jealousy, or any type of carnal desire, the fair and beautiful circle is broken. The great family of the redeemed, “the multitude whom no man can number,” are one in the wearing of the “white robe.” Their consistency and solidarity are found in their purity, and in the absence of all the alienating forces of uncleanness and defilement. It is not otherwise in the relationship of husband and wife. The wearing of the white robe is the primary essential to their communion. “Keep thy garments always white”! Does the ideal appear insuperable? Then let me proclaim another word: “They shall walk with Me in white!” That is not a command; the words enshrine a promise. “Walking with Me, they shall be white.” The whiteness is the result of the companionship. “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean.” The sprinkling is not a transitory act; it is a permanent shower. The forces of the cleansing Spirit are sprayed upon our powers just as the antiseptic is sprayed upon the exposed wound to ward off and destroy the subtle forces of contamination and defilement. To be a companion of the Lord is to have the assurance of purity. “The fear of the Lord is clean.”

What is the second element in the portraiture Verse 4 of the ideal wife? “A meek and quiet spirit.” [Verse 4] There is nothing cringing or servile in the disposition. It is infinitely removed from the saddening, paralysing obeisance of the slave. “I am meek,” cries the Master; and can we detect anything fawning or fearful about the Son of Man? In the interpretation of the great word, let us eliminate from our minds every suggestion of servility and servitude. Meekness is just the opposite to self-aggressiveness and violent self-assertion. Meekness is just self-suppression issuing in beneficent service. Meekness does not tread the narrow path of a selfish ambition, tending only to some self-enriching end. Meekness takes broad, inclusive ways to large and unselfish ends. Meekness seeks the enrichment of life through the comprehension of the many. Self-assertion may appear to succeed, but it never really wins. It may gain a telescope, but it loses an eye. It may win an estate, but it loses the sense of the landscape. It may gain in goods what it loses in power. “It may gain the whole world, and lose its own soul.” The meek are the only true “heirs.” They gain an ever finer perceptiveness, and life reveals itself in richer perfumes and flavours and essences with every passing day. “The meek shall inherit the earth.”

“A meek and quiet spirit.” A quiet spirit! The opposite to that which we describe as “loud.” The “loud” woman is the ostentatious woman, moving about in broad sensations. “He shall not cry”; there was nothing loud about Him, quite an absence of the scream: “neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets”; there shall be nothing about Him of the artifice of self-advertisement. The Master was never “loud,” and so He was a most winsome and welcome companion. The “loud” woman is never companionable. The difference between a “loud” woman and a woman of “quiet spirit” is the difference between fireworks and sunshine, between a quiet, genial glow and a crackling bonfire. The apostle contrasts the “quiet spirit” with the love of sensational attire and loud adornments, the disposition to arrest attention by vulgar dazzle and display. The disposition is a fatal foe to real communion. After all, we cannot bask in the glare of fireworks; we rejoice in the quiet sunlight. Home is made of quiet materials, and one of the elements in the constitution of beautiful wedded fellowship is “a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.”

What is the third element in the portraiture of the ideal wife? “Not put in fear by any terror” How shall I describe the disposition? Let me call it the grace of repose. “Not put in fear by any terror.” [Verse 6] They are not the victims of “sudden, wild alarms.” They are not easily aroused into the fearfulness which is so often the parent of thoughtlessness. They have reposefulness of spirit. Now, if I may be allowed to say it, I think this fearfulness is more characteristic of women than of men. There are larger enemies inside the gates of men’s gardens; but in the garden of woman’s life, I think that the heat of fearfulness and the slugs of worry and fretfulness will be found to be more abounding. Fearfulness is destructive of the deeper delights of human fellowship. Restfulness is essential to deep and fruitful communion.

BE PITIFUL

1 Peter iii. 8

Finally, be ye all likeminded, compassionate, loving as brethren, tenderhearted, humbleminded.

“BE PITIFUL!” Here the standard of authority is set up in the realm of sentiment, and obedience is demanded in the domain of feeling! I did not anticipate that the Christian imperative would intrude into the kingdom of the feelings. I thought that feelings would lie quite outside the sphere of authority. I thought that feelings could not be made to order, and yet here is an order in which their creation is commanded! “Be pitiful!” I could have understood a commandment which dealt with the external incidents and manifestations of life. I should not have been surprised had there been laid upon me the obligation of hospitality—hospitality may be commanded. But then, hospitality need not touch the border lands of feeling. Hospitality may be generous and plentiful, and yet noble and worthy feeling may be absent. Hospitality may be a matter of form, and therefore it can be done to order. I should not have been surprised had I been commanded to show beneficence. Beneficence may be exercised while sentiment is numb. It is possible to have such a combination as callous prodigality. Beneficence may therefore be created by authority. But here in my text the imperative command enters the secret sanctuary of feeling. It is not concerned with external acts: it is concerned with internal disposition. It is not primarily a service which is commanded, but a feeling. But can feelings be made to order? Charity can: can pity? Labour can: can love? “This is My commandment, that ye love one another.” “Love one another with a pure heart fervently.” “Be kindly affectioned one to another.” “Be pitiful.” The order is clear and imperative: can I obey it? Authority commands me to be pitiful: then can pity be created by an immediate personal fiat? Can I say to my soul, “Soul, the great King commands thee to be arrayed in pity; bring out, therefore, the tender sentiment and adorn thyself with it as with a robe”? Or can a man say to himself, “Go to; this day I will array myself in love, and I will distribute influences of sweet and pure affection! I will unseal my springs of pity, and the gentle waters shall flow softly through all my common affairs”? Such mechanicalised affection would have no vitality, and such pity would be merely theatrical—of no more reality or efficacy than the acted pity of the stage. Feelings cannot rise matured at the mere command of the will.

But, now, while I may not be able to produce the sentiment of pity by an act of immediate creation, can I rear it by a thoughtful and reasonable process? I cannot create an apple, but I can plant an apple-tree. I cannot create a flower, but I can create the requisite conditions. I can sow the seed, I can give the water, I can even arrange the light. I can devote to the culture thoughtful and ceaseless care; and he who sows and plants and waters and tends is a fellow-labourer with the Eternal in the creation of floral beauty. What we cannot create by a fiat we may produce by a process. It is even so with the sentiments. Feelings cannot be effected at a stroke; they emerge from prepared conditions. Pity is not the summary creation of the stage; it is the long-sought product of the school. It is not the offspring of a spasm; it is the child of discipline. Pity is the culmination of a process; it is not stamped as with a die, it is grown as a fruit. The obligation therefore centres round about the process; the issues belong to my Lord. Mine is the planting, mine the watering, mine the tending; God giveth the increase. When, therefore, I hear the apostolic imperative, “Be pitiful!” I do not think of a stage, I think of a garden; I do not think of a manufactory, I think of a school.

Let us now consider the process. “Be pitiful!” That is the expression of a fine feeling; and if life is to be touched to such exquisite issues, life itself must be of fine material. Fine characteristics imply fine character. You will not get fine porcelain out of pudding-stone. The exquisiteness of the result must be hidden in the original substance. If you want rare issues, you must have fine organic quality. Some things are naturally coarser than others, and there are varying scales of refinement in their products. The timber that would make a good railway sleeper would not be of the requisite texture for the making of violins. I saw, only a little while ago, the exposed hearts of many varieties of Canadian timber. In some the grain was coarse and rough; in others the grain was indescribably close and compact, presenting a surface almost as fine as the rarest marble. Their organic qualities were manifold, and their destinations were as manifold as their grain. Some passed to rough-and-tumble usage; others passed to the ministry and expression of the finest art. These organic distinctions are equally pronounced when we ascend to the plane of animal life. The differing grains of timber find their analogy in the differing constitutions of an ordinary dray-horse and an Arab steed. You cannot harness the two beasts to the same burden and work. The sensitive responsiveness of the one, its quivering, trembling alertness, makes it fitted for ministries in which the other would find no place. It is again the repetition of the chaste porcelain and the common mug. It is not otherwise when we reach the plane of man. There is the same difference in grain. Our organic qualities are manifold. Look at the difference in our bodies. Some have bodies that are coarse and rough, dull and heavy, with little or no fine apprehension of the beauty and perfume and essences of the material world. Others have bodies of the finest qualities, alert and sensitive, responding readily to the coming and going of the exquisite visitors who move in sky or earth, on land and sea. In our bodies we appear to differ as widely as Caliban and Ariel—the thing of the ditch, and the light and buoyant creature of the air. Now, dare we push our investigation further? Do these organic differences appertain to the realm of the soul? Are there not souls which seem to be rough-grained, organically and spiritually coarse? The very substance of their being, the basis of motive and thought and feeling and ambition, is inherently vulgar, and they seem incapable of these finer issues of tender pity and chaste affection. Now, where character is rough-grained fine sentiments are impossible. You can no more elicit pity from vulgarity than you can elicit Beethoven’s Sonatas from undressed cat-gut. If we would have fine issues, we must have rare character. If we would have rare pity, we must become refined men.

“What, then, can be done? Can we do anything in the way of culture? Can the organic quality be changed? Can we make coarseness retire before the genius of refinement? It is surprising how much we can do in the kingdom of nature. By assiduous care we can transform the harsh and rasping crab-apple into the mild and genial fruit of the table; and we can, by persistent neglect, drive it back again into the coarseness of the wilderness. It is amazing how you can bring a grass-plot under discipline, until even the rank grass seems to seek conformity with the gentler turf; and it is equally amazing how by neglect and indifference you can degrade a lawn into a common field. In the realm of garden and field organic qualities can be changed. Does the possible transformation cease when we reach the kingdom of man? Can dull and heavy bodies be refined? Is it possible to alter the organic quality of a man’s flesh? It is much more possible than the majority of people assume. By thoughtful exercise, by reasonable diet, by firm restraint, by “plain living and high thinking,” it is possible to drive the heaviness out of our bodies, and to endow them with that organic refinement which will be the revealing minister of a new world. Can the transformation proceed further? Let me propound the question which is perhaps one of the greatest questions that can come from human lips: Is it possible to go into the roots and springs of character, into the primary spiritual substance which lies behind thought and feeling, and change the organic quality of the soul? If this can be done, the creation of pity is assured! If the coarse fibres of the soul can be transformed into delicate harp-strings, we shall soon have the sweet and responsive music of sympathy and affection! Can it be done? Why, this transformation is the very glory of the Christian evangel! What do we want accomplishing? We want the secret substance of the life chastened and refined, that it may become vibratory to the lives of our fellows. What think you then of this evangel? “He sits as a refiner.” And what is the purpose of the Refiner? Let the Apostle Paul supply the answer, “We are renewed by His Spirit in the inner man.” The Refiner renews our basal spiritual sub stance, takes away our drossy coarseness, and makes our spirits the ministers of refinement. And what are the conditions of obtaining refinement? The conditions are found in communion: “His Spirit in the inner man”: it is fellowship between man and his Maker; it is the companionship of the soul and God. All lofty communion is refining! All elevated companionships tend to make me chaste! What, then, must be the transforming influence of the companionship of the Highest? We can see its ministry in the lives of the saints. Lay your hand upon any one, man or woman, who walks in closest fellowship with the risen Lord, and you will find that the texture of their life is as the choicest porcelain, compared with which all irreligious lives are as coarse and common clay. By communion with the Divine we become “partakers of the Divine nature.” In fellowship we find the secret of spiritual refinement, and in spiritual refinement are found the springs of sympathy. To be pitiful we must become good. Our pity is born of our piety.

But there is a second step in the process to which I must briefly direct your thought. It is not enough to be organically refined. Refined faculties must be exercised. A man may have a brain of very rare organic quality, and yet the particular function of the brain may be allowed to remain inactive and immature. It is not enough for me to become spiritually refined; I must exercise my refined spirit in the ministry of a large discernment. Now, for the creation of a wise and ready sympathy, there is no power which needs more continuous use than the power of the Imagination. I sometimes think, looking over the wide breadths of common life, that there is no faculty which is more persistently denied its appropriate work. “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” Such vision calls for the exercise of the imagination. “Put yourself in his place.” Such transposition demands the ministry of the imagination. If the imagination be not exercised, we offer hospitality to the shrieking sisterhood of bigotry and intolerance. If a pure and refined imagination had been at work, how could an Anglican clergyman have declared that the Nonconformists are “in mad alliance with Anarchists”? And if a refined imagination had been in exercise, how could a Nonconformist have spoken of the Bishops as “caring little for the cause of Christ so long as they could suffocate Dissenters”? How much a refined imagination would have helped in the mutually sympathetic understanding of Pro-Boers and Anti-Boers? When this faculty is sleeping, evil things are very much awake! But for my immediate purpose I am asking for the exercise of the imagination in respect to things which would be otherwise insignificant. Imagination is second sight. Imagination is the eye which sees the unseen. Imagination does for the absent what the eye does for the present. Imagination does for the distant what the eye does for the near. The eye is concerned with surfaces; imagination is busied with depths. The dominion of the eye terminates at the horizon; at the horizon, imagination begins. Imagination is the faculty of realisation; it takes a surface and constructs a cube; it takes statistics, and fashions a life. Here is a surface fact: “Total of patients treated in the Queen’s Hospital during 1901, 31,064.” The eye observes the surface fact and passes on, and pity is unstirred. The imagination pauses at the surface, lingers long, if perchance she may comprehend something of its saddening significance. Imagination turns the figures over; 31,064! Then these afflicted folk would fill twenty buildings, each of them the size of the chapel at Carrs Lane. Says Imagination, “I will marshal the pain-ridden, bruised crowd in procession, and they shall pass my window and door, one a minute, one a minute, one a minute! How long will it take the procession to pass? Twenty-one days!” But what of the units of the dark and tearful procession? Imagination gets to work again. Have you a child down? They are like him. Have you a brother falling, or a sister faint and spent? They are like them. Have you known a mother torn and agonised with pain, or a father crushed and broken in his prime? They are like him. Have you gone down the steep way to the death-brink, and left a loved one there? Some of these, too, have been left at the brink, and their near ones are climbing up the steep way again alone! This is how refined imagination works, and, while she works, her sister, Pity, awakes and weeps! But if pity is not to be smothered again, the aroused impulse must be gratified and fed. I know that pity can give “ere charity begins,” but charity confirms pity, and strengthens and enriches it. Feelings of pity, which do not receive fulfilment in charity or service, may become ministers of petrifaction. Let our piety be the basis of our pity; let our imagination extend our vision; and from this area of hallowed out look there will arise rivers of gracious sympathy, abundantly succouring the children of pain and grief.

CHRIST SANCTIFIED AS LORD

1 Peter iii. 8-15

Finally, be ye all likeminded, compassionate, loving as brethren, tenderhearted, humbleminded: not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but contrariwise blessing; for hereunto were ye called, that ye should inherit a blessing. For, He that would love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: and let him turn away from evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears unto their supplication: but the face of the Lord is upon them that do evil. And who is he that will harm you, if ye be zealous of that which is good? But and if ye should suffer for righteousness sake, blessed are ye: and fear not their fear, neither be troubled; but sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord: being ready always to give answer to every man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, yet with meekness and fear.

“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.” [Verse 15] The heart is a sanctuary. It is a place of worship. Worship is always proceeding. There is a large congregation. Who are the worshippers? Let me name a few. There are our wishes, our ambitions, our motives, our willings. All these are worshippers, bowing in the heart before some enthroned and sovereign Lord. Our dispositions are also among the crowd. All the forces of thought and feeling are mingled in the varied congregation! Go into the sanctuary of any heart, and you will find, kneeling side by side in homage and obeisance, wishes, motives, sentiments, purposes, dispositions, all bowing before some central shrine. “Who is the Lord of the temple? In some temples it is Mammon! He is sanctified as Lord, and round him are kneeling the congregated thoughts, passions, and ambitions, offering him incense, supplication, and praise. Who is the Lord? In some temples it is the Lord of Misrule. He is sanctified as Lord! Chaos reigns, and in riotous disorder the mob of tumultuous thoughts and feelings offer him noisy acclamation. Who is the Lord of the temple? In some temples indifference is en throned. Indifference is sanctified as Lord! The atmosphere is opiated; life is a lounge; everything comes and goes in carelessness; all the worshippers are narcotised in thoughtlessness, or sunk in profound and perilous sleep. Who is the Lord of the temple? In some temples it is the devil. Every worshipper bends in adoration of vice, reciting the liturgy of uncleanness, and every member of the congregation, every thought, every feeling, every ambition, bears upon its forehead the mark of the beast. Who is the Lord of the temple? In some temples it is the Christ. All the assembled forces and powers of the life willingly prostrate themselves in fervent and lowly worship. Every hour of the day there is a worshipper in the radiant temple! Now it is a wish, now a shaping plan, now a completed purpose, now a penitent feeling, now a gay delight—these all stoop in reverent homage before the exalted Christ, and as we always appropriate the worth of the object we worship, the bending congregation of thoughts and sentiments acquire the beauty of the Lord. The worshipping motive is chastened and refined; the kneeling wish is etherealised; the stooping sorrow is transfigured; all the reverent forces of the personality are transformed into children of light. Who is the Lord in the temple? That is the all-determining question. “Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.” In your temple let the Christ be enthroned. Let everything in the life be made to kneel in that sanctuary. Bring ye everything to the foot of the great white throne. Let the Lord be King!” Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.” [Verse 15] That is the creative centre of the passage. All the surrounding context is resultant and consequent. This is the all-originating fountain! Around it are stretches of land, threaded with rivers which are the children of its creative springs. Let us pass from the springs to the rivers. If Christ be sanctified in the heart as Lord, if everything in the deep, secret places of the life bow before His throne, if at Matins and Evensong, and through all the intervening hours of the day, the endless procession of mystic forces in the soul reverently bend to His dominion, what will be the quality of the issues, what will be the striking characteristics of the life?

Are you surprised that the apostle’s answer begins with an enumeration of the softer graces: “compassionate, tenderhearted, humbleminded”? [Verse 8] Did you anticipate that he would begin with attributes more majestic, more manly and commanding? Is it disappointing that the apostle should give emphasis to graces which we commonly associate with women rather than with men? I have called them the softer graces; perhaps I ought to have called them the riper fruit. The ultimate expression of the strongest tree is its sweetest and ripest fruit. The tender, exquisite colour of a ripening acorn is the finest expression of the oak. Hearts of oak reach their finished achievement in the softest hues of their ripest fruit. Manliness is never perfected until it issues in tenderest grace. Therefore I am not surprised to find the apostle giving prominence to the finished and ripened attainments in sanctified life. What, again, are their names?

“Compassion” [Verse 8] The range of a man’s life is just the range of his compassions, which is only another name for the range of his correspondences. Death is just the destruction of all correspondence. The dying lose correspondence after correspondence; nerve after nerve and sense after sense collapse; communications are slowly broken; and by gradual paralysis and benumbment all correspondences end. The measure of my life is determined by the quality and quantity of my correspondences. This is true of the life of the flesh. It is true in the realm of the mind. How much am I in touch with? What is the range of my interests? What are my correspondences? It is true in the domains of the soul. How much do I live? That depends upon my compassion, my responsiveness, my “correspondence.” What is the extent of my fellow-feeling? What is my power of apprehending and realising my brother, and by the ministry of an unveiling imagination planting myself in the heart of his interests and estate? That is one of the rarest attainments in the sanctified life. The Lord refines His disciples into compassionateness. He indefinitely enlarges their correspondences. He endows them with sensitive passion, with profundity of feeling. “Deep calleth unto deep,” and they maintain fruitful fellowship with the joys and sorrows of their fellow-men.

“Tenderheartedness.” [Verse 8] That carries one a step further than compassion. Tenderheartedness is more than correspondence; it is gentle ministry. It includes the service of the tender hand, it not only feels the pains of others; it touches the wounds with exquisite delicacy. Even the pitiful man can be clumsy. Six men may have the sympathy, but only one of the six may be able to touch the wound so as to heal it. The Lord will add a gentle hand to our compassion. He will take away all brusqueness, all spiritual clumsiness, so that in the very ministry of pity we may not “break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax.”

“Humblemindedness” [Verse 8] Surely that adds a still richer bloom to the heavenly grace! The Lord will not only give us a heart of compassion; it shall be compassion rid of all brusqueness; it shall also be purged of all superciliousness and pride! It shall be “humbleminded.” Even pity may wear some of the garments of pride! There is something bitter and offensive in all compassion which moves in patronage. The Man whose “compassions failed not” was “meek and lowly in heart!” Pity is petrifying when it comes from pride; it is soothing and healing when it flows from the humble mind, and this is the perfected grace of the sanctified life.

“Not Tendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but contrariwise blessing.” [Verse 9] Surely that is the perfection of compassion! Compassion may go out on chivalrous errands with sensitive hands and lowly mind, and may meet with ingratitude and angry rebuff from those whom she seeks to serve. When the one we have been compassionately nursing turns and reviles us, and treats our ministry with contempt, how easy it is to become sour and hard, to return reviling for reviling, and to throw up the knightly service with disgust! But the Lord will so perfect the compassion that even in the midst of reviling it will continue in “blessing,” and in atmospheres of ingratitude and contempt will toil on in the ministry of “healing them that are bruised.” What say you now to these softer graces, these riper fruits of the sanctified life? Are they not a resplendent issue? He who continually, in his heart, sanctifies Christ as Lord, becomes possessed by a compassion which moves in delicate sensitiveness, and in humblemindedness, and which remains sweet and persistent in hostile atmospheres of murmuring and contempt.

BRINGING US TO GOD

1 Peter iii. 18-22

Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit; in which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient, when the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water: which also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ; who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him.

THE concluding passage of this great chapter is like a landscape in the uncertain light of the early morning. Here and there the black shadows still linger and prolong the night. The hollows are filled with mist. A prevailing dimness possesses the scene. From only a few things has the veil dropped, and their lineaments are seen in suggestive outline. On the whole, we are dealing with obscure hints, with partial unveilings, which awaken wonder, rather than convey enlightenment. Perhaps, in the present stage of our pilgrimage, an open-eyed wonder is more fruitful than an assurance begotten of broader light. Assurance may nourish sluggishness; an expectant wonder disciplines the powers to a rare perceptiveness. But amid all the indefiniteness of the revelation, there are two or three visions which are sufficiently clear to enrich our thought and life. We have glimpses of the Lord in a threefold activity. We see Him engaged in His redemptive work among men upon earth: “Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.” [Verse 18] We behold Him ministering to spirits who have left the sphere of earth, but who are not yet in reconciled fellowship with their God. “He went and preached unto the spirits in prison.” [Verse 19] And we see Him again on the throne of His glory receiving the willing and jubilant homage of the mystic powers who surround the sovereignty of God. “He is on the right hand of God . . . angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him.” [Verse 22] Let us contemplate these three relationships.

“Christ also suffered for sins ONCE.” [Verse 18] There is a reference to some distinct and definite historical event. To the apostle there was a certain nameable season when our redemption was achieved. The sufferings of the Master were infinitely more than momentary incidents, reflecting the permanent mood of God. Christ’s sufferings were altogether unique. They were paralleled by no previous happenings, and they would never be repeated. “Christ suffered for sins once”; something was done, done “once,” and done for ever. Therefore, Gethsemane and Calvary are gravely and uniquely significant. They are more than the tempestuous ending of a noble and laborious life. Behind their appalling externalities there are more appalling conditions. Behind the loneliness of the garden there is the more awful loneliness of the soul. Behind the blackness of Calvary there is the deeper darkness of the spirit. The real movements of redemptive ministry are not to be witnessed in the material setting of the Crucifixion. The human and material environment of the Master’s death has dominated our thought too much. I do not think that the material incidents of Gethsemane and Calvary were essential to our redemption. I believe that if Christ had never been betrayed by one of the twelve, He would still have died for our sins. I believe that if He had never suffered the brutal accompaniments of mockery and blasphemy, and the loathsome coarseness of contemptible men, He would still have died for our sins. I believe that if He had never been crucified, He would still have died for our sins. I believe that if He had finished His ministry in public acclamation, instead of public contempt, He would still have passed into outer darkness, into an un thinkable loneliness, into a terrible midnight of spiritual forsakenness and abandonment. He came to die, came to pass into the night which is “the wages of sin,” and what we men did was to add to His death the pangs of contempt and crucifixion.

“Christ suffered for sins once.” But could not sin have been forgiven without the sufferings? Could not sin have been forgiven without abandonment? Might we not have had our forgiveness without that cry of “forsaken”? I ask these questions not because I can answer them, but in order to awake a reverent wonder and a fruitful awe. This I know, that cheap forgiveness always lightens sin. Flippant forgiveness gilds the sin it forgives, and the sorest injury we can do to any man is to lighten his conception of the enormity of sin. The only really healthy forgiveness is the forgiveness which pardons sin while at the same time it reveals it. This, at any rate, is one of the commanding glories of evangelical religion—it never makes light of sin. Nowhere does forgiveness shine more resplendently, and nowhere does sin gloom more repulsively, than in the redemptive love of Christ. In that love we behold both the horrors of the midnight and the quiet, sunny glories of the noontide. “Christ suffered for sins once,” in order that sin might never be glozed and veneered. In obtaining our forgiveness by His death, the Lord Christ revealed His love and unveiled our sin.

“Christ suffered for sins . . . that He might bring us to God.” [Verse 18] By the power of His redemption we can make our way home. He is “the way”; the road has been opened for us by the ministry of His grace. He is the “truth”; in His redemption truth was not dimmed but glorified. He is “the life”; in His grace are to be found all the resources for raising the dead into the renewed and glorified estate of children of God. He suffered, “that He might bring us to God.” All that need be said about that gracious “bringing” is just this, that in Jesus, answering the call of His redeeming grace, men and women in countless numbers have turned their faces home, and are making their way out of the deadening bondage of sin into the “glorious liberty of the children of God.”

THE SUFFERING WHICH MEANS TRIUMPH

1 Peter iv. 1-6

Forasmuch then as Christ suffered in the flesh, arm ye yourselves also with the same mind; for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; that ye no longer should live the rest of your time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past may suffice to have wrought the desire of the Gentiles, and to have walked in lasciviousness, lusts, winebibbings, revellings, carousings, and abominable idolatries: wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them into the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: who shall give account to Him that is ready to fudge the quick and the dead. For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

“Forasmuch then as Christ suffered in the flesh.” [Verse 1] Do not let us so think of the sufferings of Christ as to relegate them to the last few days of His earthly ministry. It is well to confine the great term, “the passion,” to the awful events of Gethsemane and Calvary. In the midnight of the latter days the happenings are unspeakable. On Calvary the sufferings not only culminate; they become unique. They detach themselves from the common lot, and pass into the pangs of a lonely and terrible isolation whose supreme bitterness cannot be shared.

It is well to mark these appalling hours by the distinctive term, “the passion.” But we must not allow “the passion” to eclipse the sufferings of the earlier days. Christ always “suffered in the flesh.” The streak of blood lay like a red track across the years. The marks of sacrifice were everywhere pronounced. What occasioned the common sufferings? Here is the explanation. His life was dominated by a supreme thought; it was controlled by an all-commanding purpose. What was the purpose? What was the prevailing characteristic of His mind? “I do always those things that please Him.” He has translated that purpose of obedience into counsel for His disciples: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” That was the mind of the Master. He made his abode in the unseen. He sought His gratifications in the eternal. He rejected the sovereignty of the flesh. He subordinated the temporal. He uncrowned the body, making it a common subject, and compelling it into obeisance to high commands. In all the competing alternatives that presented themselves, priority was given to the spiritual. The allurements of ease, the piquant flavours of pleasurable sensations, the feverish delights of passion, the delicious thrill of popular acclamation, the sweetness of immediate triumph: all these many and varied offspring of the temporal were not permitted to be regnant; they were not allowed to usurp the place of executive and determining forces; they were muzzled and restrained, and kept to the rear of the life. Christ looked “not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.” Such was the mind of the Master.

Now, emphasis of this kind inevitably necessitates suffering. No man can give pre-eminence to the unseen without the shedding of blood. When the immediate contends with the apparently remote, the immediate is so urgently obtrusive that to hold it down entails a crucifixion. When carnality contends with conscience, the healthy settling of the contention necessitates suffering. When ease opposes duty, the putting down of the fascinating enemy necessitates suffering. When mere sharpness comes into conflict with truth, when money seeks to usurp the throne of righteousness, when the glitter of immediate success ranges itself against the fixed and glorious constellation of holiness, the controversies will not be settled in bloodless reveries and in unexhausting dreams. To put down the immediate and to prefer the remote, to subject the temporal and to choose the eternal, demands a continual crucifixion. Christ also suffered, being tempted! Alternatives were presented to Him, and the preference occasioned the shedding of blood. Christ suffered, being tempted! The temptations were not bloodless probings of the invulnerable air. They were searching appeals to vital susceptibilities, and resistance was pain. “Christ also suffered in the flesh.” All through the years He had been exercising the higher choice. Before He emerged into the public gaze, in the obscure years at Nazareth, in His early youth in the village, in the social life of the community, in the little affairs of the carpenter’s shop, He had been denying Himself and taking up His cross. He had preferred the eternal to the temporal, and His clear, commanding conscience had dominated the clamours of the flesh. This was the emphasis of the Master’s life; He “suffered in the flesh.” Now such emphasis spells sinlessness. When the eternal rules the temporal, when the remotely glorious is preferred before the immediately bewitching, when suffering is chosen before the violation of the moral and spiritual ideal, the soul is already wearing the crown of the sinless life.

“He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin.” [Verse 1] And now the apostle takes up the example of the Master and makes it a motive in the life of the disciple. “Forasmuch then as Christ suffered in the flesh, arm ye yourselves also with the same mind.” What was His mind? The preference and the predominance of the eternal. “Arm yourselves with the same mind.” Let the same governing purpose determine the choices in your life. In every moment of the little day let the eternal rule. “No longer live the rest of your time in the flesh.” [Verse 2] Don’t let the flesh constitute the entire circle of your movement! Don’t let the temporal define the boundaries of your journeyings! Launch out upon larger waters! Live no longer “to the lusts of men.” Don’t follow the feverish will-o’-the-wisps that flit about the swamps! But live “to the will of God.” Follow the eternal star! Let the spiritual control all the events in your life, both great and small, just as the force of gravitation dominates alike the swinging planet and the mote that sports in the sunbeam. Such a sovereign purpose will necessitate suffering, but the purpose will of itself provide the necessary defence. “Arm ye yourselves also with the same mind.” [Verse 1] The exalted purpose will be our armour, our assurance against destruction. If we are wounded, in the wounds there shall be no poison. If we suffer, in the sufferings there shall be no disease. In the combat there shall be no fatality. We are “armed” against destructive hurt. “What shall harm us if we be followers of that which is good?” “As dying, yet shall we live.” “Our light affliction . . . worketh for us a weight of glory.” “Forasmuch then as Christ suffered in the flesh, arm ye yourselves also with the same mind.”

From the contemplation of the Master’s “sufferings in the flesh” the apostle now turns the minds of his readers to the contemplation of their own yesterdays, if perchance they may find in the retrospect an added force to constrain them to a life of triumphant suffering. He has sought to allure them to exalted, spiritual living by the example of the Lord; now he will seek to drive them into the same lofty tendency by causing them to dwell upon their own loathsome and appalling past. The repulsion obtained from our yesterdays will give impetus to the inclination to live “to the will of God” to-day. “For the time past may suffice to have wrought the desire of the Gentiles, and to have walked in lasciviousness, lusts, winebibbings, revellings, carousings, and abominable idolatries.” [Verse 3] What an appalling list! And how plainly worded! Surely a list like that will add the force of recoil to the newly-born inclination towards God! It is a fruitful exercise to go into our yesterdays, and quietly meditate upon “our times past.” It is a humbling and painful ministry to trace the face of the past, bit by bit, feature by feature, giving to each characteristic its own plain and legitimate name. The Apostle Paul frequently employed this ministry when writing to his converts. He would never allow them to forget their yesterdays, lest they should lose the impetus that comes from the retrospect. “And such were some of you.” There you have a retrospective glance. What had they been? “Fornicators, adulterers, effeminate, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners.” How black the catalogue!” And such were some of you.” I think the reminder would send the converts to their knees in intenser supplication. Hear the apostle again in his letter to the Ephesians: “In time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” I say he will not suffer the past to be eclipsed and forgotten. He lifts the veil, and pointedly describes the terrible scene. And here is the Apostle Peter seeking to confirm his readers devotion by the power of a repulsion, and he turns their minds to “the times past.” It is a rare ministry for the creation of sincere and agonising prayer! A man may pray, “Lead, kindly Light,” and in in the utterance there may be “no agony and bloody sweat.” If he turn his face to the past, the burden of his yesterdays may crush out of his heart a prayer which is more a moaning cry than an articulate speech.

That last prayer is just the cry of an aching and broken heart! The retrospect made him a humble and wrestling suppliant. That is the motive of the apostle in reminding his readers of “the times past” in their lives. He longed to corroborate their new-born spirituality by the rebound acquired from the contemplation of their own past. “I thought over my ways, and turned my feet unto Thy testimonies.”

Now, let us assume that a man has become “armed with the mind” of Christ, that his own wasted past gives impetus to his renewed present, that he will pay homage to the eternal even at the cost of immediate suffering what will be the influence of such a life upon the world? Assume that the “unseen and eternal” receives the emphasis, that the temporal is denied at all costs if it conflict with the eternal, how will such a life of mingled restraint and loftiness affect the world? Here is the answer. “They think it strange that ye run not with them into the same excess of riot.” [Verse 4] “They think it strange!” They are arrested in wonder! What is the significance of this? That we shall startle the world by our Puritanism. We “run not with them into the same excess of riot.” They are astounded! Puritanism is arresting. Do not let us be ashamed of the old word. Puritanism is most vigorously denounced where it is least under stood. We need to get back the commanding characteristics of its life. We need to recover its broad principles, but not its particular and detailed application. I speak not now of the counterfeit Puritanism which expressed itself in loud and eccentric externalisms, and in much-flaunted and self-advertised piety and self-denial. There is the Puritan described by Lord Macaulay, who was distinguished from other men by “his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the upturned white of his eyes, his nasal twang, and his peculiar dialect.” That is a Puritanism for which no sane and healthy man desires a resurrection. But there is the Puritanism which Longfellow portrays in Miles Standish; there is the Puritanism of John Milton, in whose poetry we touch the very heart and spirit of the great awakening. “What, then, is the characteristic ideal of true Puritanism? It is life whose secret springs are governed by the eternal. It is choice of duty before ease, of ideas before sensations, of truth before popularity, of a good conscience before a full purse, of the holy God before dazzling and bewitching Mammon! That is the true Puritanism, and that is the life whose glorious passion arrests the un restrained and riotous world in sharp and inquisitive wonder. “They think it strange that ye run not with them into the same excess of riot.” That sense of wonder may ripen into reverence and may issue in prayer. The contemplation of a fine restraint and an unspotted integrity has often created an uneasiness which has eventually led its victim into the very rest and peace of God. But the world’s wonder does not always mature into reverence. Some times it sours into resentment, and results in a malignity which demands the Puritan’s crucifixion. I cannot forget that the men of old wondered at the Master, and then proceeded to His crucifixion. “They think it strange . . . speaking evil of you.” [Verse 4] They will attribute your restraint to evil motives. The hiding of your benevolence will be interpreted as stinginess; its expression will be regarded as self-advertisement. Your self-denial will be explained as a cloak that conceals a deeper covetousness; your entire walk will be denounced as inspired by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. In the face of such resentment and reviling what shall the Puritan do? What says the apostle? Just go on! In the face of it all, just calmly persist. Do not return reviling for reviling. Leave them and yourselves to the arbitrament of God. He knows all! We must all “give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.” Maintain the emphasis! Proclaim and exalt the Eternal! Live “not to the lusts of the flesh,” but “to the will of God.” The path of suffering is “the way to glory.” And “wisdom shall be justified of her children.”

GETTING READY FOR THE END

1 Peter iv. 7-11

The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore of sound mind, and be sober unto prayer: above all things being fervent in your love among yourselves; for love covereth a multitude of sins: using hospitality one to another without murmuring: according as each hath received a gift, ministering it among yourselves, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God; if any man speaketh, speaking as it were oracles of God; if any man ministereth, ministering as of the strength which God supplieth: that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, whose is the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

THAT is a most momentous conviction which is expressed in these words: “The end of all things is at hand.” [Verse 7] What kind of conduct will it determine, and to what kind of counsel will it lead? Here is an apostle, deeply possessed by the solemn conviction that the great Consummation is approaching, that the glorified Christ is returning, that the judgment is impending, and that the “end of all things is at hand.” In the looming presence of so urgent and so commanding an event, how will the apostle shape his message? What kind of counsel will he give to his readers? What manner of preparation will he constrain them to make? It matters little or nothing to my purpose that the apostle’s anticipations of the second advent were premature, and that the stupendous consummation was delayed. For you and for me the instructive and all-absorbing conjunction remains the same. Here is the Apostle Peter sharing with his fellow-Christians the expectation of an immediate end. The Judge is at the door! What will be the manner of their behaviour? If we knew that within a year or two the Master will reappear as the august and, sovereign Judge, how ought we to pass the intervening days? We know, from the letters of the Apostle Paul, how the urgent expectancy influenced many of the early Christians. Some were thrown into panic. Others were despoiled of their spiritual collectedness by the invasion of unreasonable excitement. Others abandoned their ordinary employment, and lapsed into an indolence in which they might find more leisure to wait and watch for the King’s appearing. And we know with what severity the apostle denounced these perilous and irrational excesses. “Study to be quiet and to do your own business.” “Be not shaken in mind.” “We command that with quietness ye work and eat your own bread.” “Let us watch and be sober.” All this dangerous sensationalism was combatted and subdued by the cool self-possession of this man’s healthy and imperial mind.

And now here is the Apostle Peter confronted by the same prevailing and insidious inclinations. What will be the character of his message? Let us make the matter directly pertinent to our own condition that we may appreciate the strong, cooling, controlling influence of the apostle’s counsel. For us, too, “the end” may be at hand. Death looms on the not-distant horizon. The King is at the gate! What shall be the nature of our preparations, and the character of our behaviour? “The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore of sound mind,” [Verse 7] Sound mind! Life is to be characterised by reasonableness and sanity. There is to be nothing morbid about our mental state, nothing melancholy or diseased. We are to be mentally “sound,” emancipated from distraction and panic. We may enter into the content of the descriptive word by watching its usage in our common speech. We are familiar with the phrase “as sound as a bell,” and the usage will act as part-interpreter of the apostle’s thought. “Sound as a bell!” There is no break in the metal, no severance in the elements; it holds together in compact and undivided unity. “Sound mind”; as sound as a bell; no break in the mind, no division, no distraction, but a wonderful collectedness, issuing in the definite tone of clear and decisive purpose. “We are also familiar with another application of the word, as in the usage, “sound” and “unsound” meat, where the significance is indicative of health and disease. And this, too, may guide us into the content of the apostle’s thought, for when he counsels “sound-mindedness” he unquestionably refers to a mental condition which is freed from all morbidity, defilement, taint, and disease. “The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore of sound mind,” delivered on the one hand from the mental distraction that destroys life’s music, and on the other hand from the morbid depression which so frequently opens the gate for the invasion of death. “And be sober” [Verse 7] That is the second note of the apostle’s counsel. “And be sober.” It is a warning against all kinds of intoxication, but especially against the intoxication of excited and tumultuous emotion. There are stimulants other than those of intoxicating drinks; and there is a sensationalism to be found elsewhere than in carnal gratification. Excessive stimulants may be found in the revival meeting, and men may revel in intoxicated emotionalism even in the sanctuary. Men may “lose their heads “in many more ways than by the excessive imbibing of strong drink. “Be sober.” Don’t give way to any excitement which will make life grotesque and foolish! Beware of the sensationalism which is often the minister of sin. “Be sober.” It is an appeal for the culture and discipline of emotion. “Be sober unto prayer”; [Verse 7] preserve that calmness of life which is consistent with steady aspiration and fruitful supplication; maintain a quiet “watching unto prayer.” Here, then, are two of the features which characterised a life possessed by a healthy expectancy of the Lord’s appearing: soundmindedness and sobriety. “We are to wait the coming of the King with mind and heart delivered from the distractions of panic, from the taint of corruption, and from a feverish sensationalism which is destructive of the higher ministries of fellowship and prayer.

And now the apostle proceeds to add a third element to those already mentioned. “Above all things being fervent in your love among yourselves.” [Verse 8] To “sound-mindedness “and “sobriety” he adds the ministry of “love.” Now the apostle is at some pains to make it clear to us what is the quality of this love which should characterise the life which expects the King’s appearing. In the first place, it is to be “fervent.” Now the significance of our English word “fervour” scarcely unveils to us the contents of the apostle’s mind. He did not so much suggest a love that is ardent as a love that is tense. This very word “tense” is almost the original word. The love has to be “tense,” stretched out, extended to the utmost limit of a grand comprehensiveness. The New Testament recognises different types and qualities of love, and there is no counsel in which it is more abounding than just in this counsel to push back the boundaries of a circumscribed affection so that it be characterised by a more spacious inclusiveness. There is love whose measure is that of an umbrella. There is love whose inclusiveness is that of a great marquee. And there is love whose comprehension is that of the immeasurable sky. The aim of the New Testament is the conversion of the umbrella into a tent, and the merging of the tent into the glorious canopy of the all-enfolding heavens. Therefore does the writer of this very letter, in a second letter which he has written, give this very suggestive counsel, “add to brotherly love, love.” Which just means this: make your love more tense; push back the walls of family love until they include the neighbour; again push back the walls until they include the stranger; again push back the walls until they comprehend the foe. The quality of our love is determined by its inclusiveness. At the one extreme there is self-love; at the other extreme there is philanthropy! What is the “tense,” the stretch of my love? What is its covering power? I do not wonder that the apostle proceeds to indicate the magnificent “cover “afforded by a magnificent love. “Love covereth a multitude of sins.” [Verse 8] Not the sins of the lover, but the sins of the loved! Love is willing to forget as well as to forgive! Love does not keep hinting at past failures and past revolts. Love is willing to hide them in a nameless grave. When a man, whose life has been stained and blackened by “a multitude of sins,” turns over a new leaf, love will never hint at the old leaf, but will rather seek to cover it in deep and healing oblivion. Love is so busy unveiling the promises and allurements of the morrow, that she has little time, and still less desire to stir up the choking dust on the blasted and desolate fields of yesterday. “Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners.” There’s a “cover” for you! “And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew . . . stood at His feet behind Him weeping!” There’s a cover for you! “The Son of Man is come to seek that which is lost.” There’s a cover for you! I do not wonder that the great evangelical prophet of the Old Testament, in heralding the advent of the Saviour, should proclaim Him as “a hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, and as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” “Love covereth all things.”

But we have not yet done with the apostle’s characterisation of the qualities of love. He adds a third word which confirms and enriches the other two. True love, “stretched-out” love, all-sheltering love, “uses hospitality without murmuring.” [Verse 9] True love is a splendid host, a veritable Gaius in the lavish entertainment which it offers to weary and footsore pilgrims. In the primitive Christian day, the apostolic days, love opened the door and gave hospitality to the itinerant preachers as they went from place to place proclaiming the message of the Cross. Love opened the door to the persecuted refugees, driven from their homesteads because of their devotion to the Lord. There were many of them about, and the love-children were to keep an open door and a sharp look-out, and offer the welcome entertainment. Love is the very genius of hospitality; it opens the “hospice” in the stormy and perilous heights, and provides a travellers rest. Wherever love is, the hospice may be found! “Love never faileth.” And the gracious ministry is all discharged so graciously; “without murmuring!” There is no frown upon the face, no sense of “put-outness” in the attention. It is all done, as Matthew Henry says, “in a kind, easy, hand some manner,” as though the host had been almost impatiently waiting for the privilege, and yearning for its speedy approach.

Now, brethren, the King is at the gate! Soon His hand will be upon the latch! How shall we prepare for Him? In sound-mindedness, in spiritual sobriety, and in a love which is ever straining after more and more spacious breadth of gracious and generous hospitality. How shall these dispositions express themselves? What shall be the medium of affection? What shall be the line of our ministry? The apostle provides the answer: “According as each hath received a gift.” [Verse 10] We must work through what we have received. “What hast thou that thou hast not received?” Our members, our senses, our mental aptitudes, our spiritual endowments! They are all the gifts of the King! We must use them all in the ministry of love. But beyond all these there is the mysterious and indescribable gift of our own individuality. We are each as unique in personality as we are each distinctive in face. Individuality is a unique gift, and is divinely purposed for unique service. We must reverently consecrate our individuality to the King’s use, that it may become the minister of His own “manifold grace” [Verses 10, 11] and “strength” In this subordination the individuality is preserved intact and unimpaired. Working through us, the Holy Ghost will, shall I say, impinge upon the world in a somewhat different form than from the life of any of our fellows. If an electric current be led through a series of several different materials, its appearance in the outer world will vary with each wire. “In a platinum wire it may appear as light, in an iron one as heat, round a bar of soft iron as magnetic energy, led into a solution as a power that decomposes and recombines.” So in many individualities are there “diversities of operations, but the one Spirit.” What we have to do is to take our individuality, “according as each hath received the gift,” and so reverently consecrate it that “the manifold grace” may work a unique ministry, and by “the strength which God supplieth” we may manifest a daily salvation which shall be to the glory of God.

Here then, I conclude. I think that no one can be made to stumble by any narrowness and irrelevancy in the apostle’s counsel. His commandment is exceeding broad. How shall we prepare for the coming of the King? What can be more reasonable than the response I have attempted to expound? In sound-mindedness, in spiritual sobriety, in an affection which is ever seeking greater inclusiveness, and working through the distinctive gifts of the consecrated individual life. I tell you, if this be my condition, I shall not be afraid “at His coming.” He may come in a moment, and very suddenly, in the noontide, or the midnight, or at the cock-crow; come when He may, I shall “love His appearing.” Living calmly, in the atmosphere of affection, and in the mystic strength of consecration, I shall know Him as my friend. The present Bishop of Durham has told us of a beloved friend of his who narrated to him a strangely vivid dream which he had long, long years ago. Let me tell it in the Bishop’s words. “Through the bed-chamber window seemed to shine on a sudden an indescribable light; the dreamer seemed to run, to look; and there, in the depths above, were beheld three forms. One was unknown, one the Archangel, One the Lord Jesus Christ. And at this most sudden sight that soul, the soul of one over whom, to my knowledge, the unutterable solemnities of the unseen are wont to brood with almost painful power, was instantaneously thrilled with a rapturous joy . . . unspeakable and full of glory: ‘My Saviour, my Saviour!’”

I pray that when that light breaks upon us, not in the ministry of a dream, but in the veritable coming of the Lord; when for you and for me “the end of all things is at hand,” may we have so brooded on “the solemnities,” and so laboured in the gracious ministry of affection, that we too, “when He cometh,” shall be “instantaneously thrilled with raptuous joy, unspeakable and full of glory: ‘My Saviour, my Saviour!’”

THE FIERY TRIAL,

1 Peter iv. 12-19

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you: but insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of His glory also ye may rejoice with exceeding joy. If ye are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are ye; because the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God resteth upon you. For let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief , or an evil-doer, or as a meddler in other men’s matters: but if a man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God in this name. For the time is come for judgement to begin at the house of God: and if it begin first at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear? Wherefore let them also that suffer according to the will of God commit their souls in well-doing unto a faithful Creator.

“The fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you.” [Verse 12] But is it not one of the perquisites of sainthood to be delivered from suffering? One would have anticipated that part of the inheritance of grace would be freedom from the fiery trial. The flames would never reach us. The enemy would be stayed, and we should sit down in happy quietness at the King’s feast! But this is not the programme of Christianity. Christianity is almost alarmingly daring in the obtrusive emphasis which it gives to the darker elements in its programme. There is no attempt to hide or obscure them. No effort is made to engage our attention to the “green pastures” and “still waters,” and to distract us from the affrighting valley of shadow and gloom. “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.” “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” “Perfected through sufferings.” “Let him take up his cross daily and follow me.” “The fiery trial which is to try you.” These are not words which are addressed to “murderers” or “thieves,” or “evil-doers,” or “busybodies”; they are quietly spoken to the saints, to men and women whose lives are pledged to virtue, and who are aspiring after the holiness of the perfected life in Christ.

Then let us just note this: our sufferings do not prove our religion counterfeit. Our many temptations do not throw suspicion on our sonship. Our trials are not the marks of our alienation. Do not let us think that we are strangers because our robes are sometimes stained with our blood. “Think it not strange,” says this much-schooled apostle, “Think it not strange!” Don’t think you have never been naturalised—super-naturalised—that you are still a foreigner, an outcast from the home of redemptive grace! These are the happenings of the home-country! They are not the marks of foreign rule. They are the signs of paternal government. You are in your Father’s house! God will convert the apparent antagonism into a minister of heavenly grace. The oppressive harrow, as well as the genial sunshine, is part of the equipment needed for the maturing and perfecting of the fruits of the earth.

“What, then, is the purpose of “the fiery trial”? What is the meaning of this permitted ministry of suffering? Well, in the first place, it tests character. It discharges the purpose of an examination. An examination, rightly regarded, is a vital part of our schooling. It is a minister of revelation. It unfolds our strengths and our weaknesses. And so it is in the larger examination afforded by the discipline of life. Our crises are productive of self-disclosures. They reveal us to ourselves, and I think the revelations are usually creative of grateful surprise. In the midst of the fiery trial we are filled with amazement at the fulness and strength of our resources. When the trial is looming we shrink from it in fear. “We say one to another, “I don’t know how I shall bear it!” And then the crisis comes, and in the midst of the fire we are calm and strong; and when it is past, how frequently we are heard to say, “I never thought I could have gone through it!” And so “probation worketh hope”; the heavy discipline is creative of assurance; the terror becomes the nutriment of our confidence.

But the fiery trial not only tests by revealing character, it also strengthens and confirms it. Hard trial makes hard and much-enduring muscle. The water that is too soft makes flabby limbs; it is not creative of bone. And circum stances which are too soft make no bone: they are productive of character without backbone. Luxuriousness is rarely the cradle of giants. It is not unsuggestive that the soft and bountiful tropics are not the home of the strong, indomitable, and progressive peoples. The pioneering and progressive races have dwelt in sterner and harder climes. The lap of luxury does not afford the elementary iron for the upbringing of strong and enduring life. Hardness hardens; antagonism solidifies; trials inure and confirm. How commonly it has happened that men who, in soft circumstances, have been weak and irresolute, were hardened into fruitful decision by the ministry of antagonism and pain. “Thou art Simon”—a hearer, a man of loose hearsays and happenings; “Thou shalt be called Peter”—a rock, a man of hard, compact, and resolute convictions. But “Simon” became “Peter” through the ministry of the fiery trial. The man of “soft clothing” is in the luxury of kings houses; the hard man with the camels hair and the leathern girdle is away out in the hardships of the desert. “We must through much tribulation enter into the Kingdom of God.”

But the fiery trial not only reveals and hardens the character, it also develops it by bringing out its hidden beauties. I am using the word develop as the photographer uses it. You know how he brings out the lines of his pictures. The picture is laid in the vessel, and the liquid is moved and moved across it; it passes over the face of the picture, and little by little the hidden graces are disclosed. “All Thy billows are gone over me.” That is the Lord’s developer; it brings out the soft lines in the character. Under its ministry we pass “from strength to strength, “from grace to grace,” “from glory to glory.”

And so the fiery trial tests and confirms and develops the character. I do not wonder that with conceptions such as these, and with such outlooks, the apostle calls upon his Christian readers to lift up their heads, to walk not as children of shame, but as children of rejoicing. And look at the motives he adduces to create the spirit of rejoicing. “Look at your companionship,” he seems to say. “Ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings.” [Verse 13] In the furnace with you is “one like unto the Son of Man.” We have scarcely touched the fringe of life if we have not discovered what that conviction means to men. “Yet I do persuade myself,” says Samuel Rutherford to one of his correspondents, “ye know that the weightiest end of the cross of Christ that is laid upon you lieth upon your strong Saviour; for Isaiah saith, ‘In all your afflictions he is afflicted.’ O blessed Second, who suffereth with you! And glad may your soul be even to walk in the fiery furnace with one like unto the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God. Courage! Up with your heart! When ye do tire He will bear both you and your burden.” And writing to Lady Forrest the same saintly writer gives this comfort: “I hear that Christ hath been so kind as to visit you with sickness. He would have more service of you. He is your loving husband, and would draw you into the bonds of a sweeter love.” Look at your companionship! “Rejoice,” inasmuch as the Lord is with you in unceasing fellowship.

And look at the character of the Operator. “The Spirit of glory resteth upon you.” [Verse 14] In the fiery trial the Operator is the Glory-spirit, the Maker of glory. As though He were controlling the hardships and trials and converting them into ministers of beauty and grace. The immeasurable waters of Niagara generate electrical power which a man may use to engrave a name upon a jewel; and the Spirit of Glory can so employ these waters of sorrow as to write our Father’s name upon our foreheads. In some hands the trial would be an agent of indiscriminate destruction. In some hands the implements in a surgery would be implements of mutilation and murder; in the hands of a wise and confident surgeon they are the ministers of sanity and health. “The Spirit of Glory resteth upon you,” and He has control of the implements! He sits by the fire. Look at the character of the Operator, and you will be filled with rejoicing.

And look at the splendid issues of it all. “At the revelation of His glory ye may rejoice with exceeding joy.” [Verse 13] Why this jubilant rejoicing? Because this shall be the ultimate issue: when the Lord is revealed in His glory it will be disclosed that we are sharers of the glory. The Spirit of Glory, which has rested upon us, will have wrought upon us, and brought us into the Master’s likeness. We “shall be manifested with Him in glory.”

Well, now, if this be the ministry of trial, surely the fiery trial is a solemn necessity. Luxurious ease would destroy us. If the winds remained asleep we should remain weak and enervated. Life would drowse along in effeminate dreams. The glory of the perfected life would never be ours. And so life must have its crises. Judgments are necessities. Judgment must “begin at the House of God.” Even the consecrated folk need the testing, the strengthening, the confirming discipline of suffering and pain. Even Paul must be thrown into the fiery furnace! Even John must feel the bite of the stinging flame! And if that be so with Paul and Peter and John, how much more for you and me! “If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?” What a work is our salvation! These wills, these desires, these yearnings, these bodies!” What work God has with us, to lift us into His own glory!

TENDING THE FLOCK

1 Peter v. 1-7

The elders therefore among you I exhort, who am a fellow-elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, who am also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight, not of constraint, but willingly, according unto God; nor yet for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as lording it over the charge allotted to you, but making yourselves ensamples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd shall be manifested, ye shall receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away. Likewise, ye younger, be subject unto the elder. Yea, all of you gird yourselves with humility, to serve one another: for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time; casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He careth for you.

“I exhort.” [Verse 1] Let me fix your eyes upon the counsellor. There is an evangel in the speaker, altogether apart from the inspiration of his message. “We are contemplating Simon Peter in the ripe, assured strength of his evening-time. “I exhort.” Shall we pause a moment that we may invite the ministry of reminiscence? By what chequered way has he reached this bourn of clear and quiet assurance? Let me recall some of the prominent landmarks. “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” . . . “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” . . . “Even if I must die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee.” . . . “Then began he to curse and swear, saying, I know not the man.” . . . “Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.” . . . “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter, they marvelled.” . . . “I, a fellow elder, a witness of the sufferings of Christ, a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed.” It is a wonderful evolution! From the call of the spring-time to the ripe, confident testimony of the autumn-time! And between the two extremes what a medley of sharp and changeful experience! The rough, untutored, impulsive character-force has been washed and disciplined into discerning and fruitful strength. And now I picture Simon Peter as an old saint, bearing the marks of the stern fight; sealed with the brands of the Lord Jesus; his face lit up with the sober light of chastening memory and glorious hope. “I am a witness of the sufferings.” Think of the content of the phrase when it falls from the lips of Simon Peter! How much he had seen which he now recalled in tears! “Could ye not watch with Me one hour?” He had seen that lonely and grief-filled Presence. “And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter.” He had caught a glimpse of that betrayed face, and the features were burnt into his soul in lines of remorseful fire. “I am a witness of the sufferings.” All the black and heart-rending events of Gethsemane and Calvary crowd the witnessing, for they were never absent for an hour from the Apostle’s so penitent and regretful heart. But Calvary did not eclipse Olivet. The terrors of the Crucifixion were looked at in the soft light of the Resurrection dawn and in the startling wonders of the Ascension. And so yesterday became linked with the morrow. Memory was transfigured into hope. The witness became a herald. The denier became the heir. “I am a witness of the sufferings of Christ, who am also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed.”

And now let us listen to the scarred old warrior’s counsel. He is giving fatherly instruction to the officers of the Church. He is speaking to the elders, the overseers, the appointed leaders of these hallowed primitive assemblies. I wish to give the counsel the widest application, that it may include the outermost circle of Christian service. If we limited the counsel to bishops, then we should all listen to the tremendous charge as critical or unconcerned spectators. If we included all pastors and deacons, still the unconcerned majority might listen with perilous relish to the implied indictment. The counsel applies to every kind of Christian leadership. Wherever man or woman assumes the post of leader of souls, guide to the home of God—whether it be among children or adults, in visiting the hospitals or in going from house to house, in the pastorate or in the class, in the obscure mission or in the conspicuous phases of cathedral labours—the Apostle’s counsel is pertinent, and unfolds the primary dispositions which are the secrets of prosperous service.

Mark, then, the opening word of the counsel. “Shepherd the flock of God which is among you.” [Verse 2] It is a very wealthy and suggestive word which forms the initial note of the Apostle’s instructions. The Authorised Version translates it “feed,” the Revised Version translates it “tend.” Each element is significant of the shepherd, and both are essential to the full interpretation of the apostle’s mind. It is a wonderful sphere of service which is disclosed to me. I am told that I can be the nourisher of my brother; I am told that I can also be his defence. I can “feed” him; I can stand between him and his hunger. I can tend him; I can stand between him and his perils. That is a beautiful ministry which God entrusts to me. I can get in among my brother’s wants and take him bread. I can feed his faith, his hope, his love. I can lead him into “green pastures and by still waters,” and discover to him the means of growth and refreshment. I can get in among my brother’s perils and erect extra safeguards and defences. It is possible to love my way in between my brother and his appetites, between his spirit and his snares. That is our ministry, whatever be the precise character of the leadership we have assumed. It matters little or nothing whether we be called bishops, pastors, teachers, visitors; our mission is to feed and to fend, to take nourishing bread, and to offer protective shelter. If a man stand between his brother and spiritual necessity, or between his brother and spiritual peril, he is discharging the office of a day s-man, a mediator, a faithful under-shepherd, working loyally under the leadership of the “chief Bishop and Shepherd of our souls.”

How, then, is this ministry of feeder and fender to be successfully discharged? How is it to be saved from offence and impertinence? How shall we gain admission to move among the needs and perils of our brother’s soul? How shall we gain an entrance into his secret place? “What dispositions are required in order to back the ministry and make it spiritually effective? The apostle acts as our counsellor, and gives us detailed instruction in all these things.

First of all, it must be the service of willingness. “Not of constraint, but willingly.” [Verse 2] One volunteer is worth two pressed men. I am not quite sure whether the proverbial saying is pertinent. I am doubtful if an equation can be established. On the high planes of spiritual service no number of pressed men can take the place of a volunteer. But can men be pressed into unfruitful spiritual service? Yes, men are sometimes constrained by what they call “the pressure of circumstances.” They say that they “could not very well get out of it.” They had been importuned so frequently that for very shame they could decline no longer. If they could have found another excuse, another excuse would have been offered. But their inventiveness failed them. Their excuse-chamber was empty. They simply had to do it! Their wills had no part in the hallowed service. They were just pressed into the ministry by circumstantial constraint which they could no longer comfortably resist. What shall we say about it? Just this—that people whose wills are not in the service, are really not in the service at all. Where there is no spontaneity the fervour is fictional, and we shall never thaw the wintry bondage of men by painted and theatrical fires.

But there is a loftier constraint than the pressure of importunity and the failure of the supply of excuse. There is the constraint of conscience, which sends men into service impelled by the sense of duty. But even the conscience-labourer may toil and toil away in a fruitless task. Men may do their duty unwillingly, and the absence of the will deprives their service of the very atmosphere which would render it efficient. Duty, without the inclination of the will, is cold and freezing, and never makes a warm and genial way into the hidden precincts of another’s soul. If I were stretched in pain and sickness I would not care to be nursed by duty. All the attentions might be regular and methodical, and yet I should mourn the absence of the something which makes the ministry winsome and alive. “I just love to have her near my bed,” said a hospital patient to me the other day, speaking of her Christly and consecrated nurse. That is duty with an atmosphere. It is duty transfigured. Duty may make people righteous; alone it will not make them good. “And scarcely for a righteous man, will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.” I do not think that duty will carry us far into the deep hungers and weaknesses of our fellow-men. We need the “plus,” the gracious inclination of the will, the leaning of the entire being in the line of service. We need to be swayed, not by the compulsion of external pressure, not even by the lonely sovereignty of the moral sense, but by an inward constraint, “warm, sweet, tender,” the unfailing impulse of grace, abiding in us as “a well, springing up into eternal life.” “Not of constraint, but willingly.”

Secondly, our service must be the service of affection. “Nor yet for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind.” [Verse 2] We are not to be moved in our service by any hunger for external reward, and do not let us think that external rewards are exhausted under the single category of money. Men may take up Christian service to enrich their purse, to enlarge their business, and in many ways to advance a transient interest, But we may also labour in the hunger for recognition and applause, and I am not sure which of the two occupies the lower sphere, he who hungers for money, or he who thirsts for applause. A preacher may dress and smooth his message to court the public cheers, and labourers in other spheres may bid for prominence, for imposing print, for grateful recognition. All this unfits us for our task. It destroys the fine sense of the shepherd. It destroys his perception of the needs and perils of the sheep. It despoils us of our bread, and robs us of our staff, and we have neither food nor protection to offer to our hungering and endangered fellow-man. “Not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind.” Do thy service, not for the praises and rewards of men, but as Martin Luther says, “from the very bottom of the heart, out of love to the thing itself, out of joyous devotion to the work which the Lord thy God gives thee.”

The service of willingness! The service of affection! It must also be the service of humility! “Neither as lording it over the flock . . . gird yourselves with humility, to serve one another.” [Verses 3-5] That is most subtle and needed counsel. Who would have expected that spiritual pastors would be warned against lordliness and pride? Who would have imagined that men who are ministering the gospel of lowliness should themselves be exalted in pride! It is one of the most insidious temptations which beset the working disciple of Christ. Pride ever lurks just at the heels of power. Even a little authority is prone to turn the seemly walk into a most offensive strut. But the peril is subtler still. While I assume to feed my brother, my own soul may be a-hungered. While I am helping his defence, the enemy may be ravaging my own land. The peril is subtler still. Some how we come to find a virtue in preaching and teaching, and our preaching and teaching become our doing. Teachers and preachers are somehow allured outside their own message—its evangel and its warnings—and we are solaced and soothed by the lonely fact that we have shared in its proclamation. It is a terrible temptation, and if we yield to it, it swells the heart with lordliness and pride. What is our security? “All of you gird yourselves with humility.” Put on the apron of the slave! Go into the awful presence of the Lord, and contemplate His glory until the vision brings you wonderingly to your knees! “Go, stand on the mount before the Lord.” That is the place where we discover our size! No man speaks of his greatness who has been closeted with God. Lordliness changes into holy fear, and pride bows down in reverent supplication. Oh, we must come from the Presence-chamber into the pulpit! Nay, the pulpit itself must be the Presence-chamber, and the man must preach in the consciously realised presence of the Almighty and Eternal God. The Lord will have no proud men in His service. Such men are self-appointed. “I never knew you.” Their names are not to be found in the Lamb’s Book of Life. “God resisteth the proud.” He stands in the way and fights them! “The angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary.” It is an appalling thought; our strongest antagonist may be the Lord whom we are professing to serve. “God resisteth the proud.” Let us hasten to add the complementary evangel. “And giveth grace to the humble.” It is the humble, kneeling soul that receives ineffable outpourings of Divine grace. Grace ever seeks out the lowliest.

To the humble soul God gives the very dynamics of fruitful service. In all spiritual ministry it is only grace that tells. Nothing else counts! Other gifts may amuse, may interest, may allure, but grace alone can engage in the labour of spiritual redemption. The servants of the Lord are to be filled with grace, and their overflow will constitute their influence upon their fellows. Out of them shall flow “rivers of water of life.” ” God giveth grace to the humble.”

Lastly, it must be the service of trustfulness. “Casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He careth for you.” [Verse 7] Take your alarms to Him. Talk out your fears with him. Lay them upon Him in quiet assurance. And this must be done in the interests of spiritual economy. Terrible is the waste of spiritual energy which results from anxiety and fear. To allow anxiety to rear itself in the soul is like permitting rank weeds to grow in the flower-bed; and the worthier growths, being deprived of nutriment, grow faint and droop away. “He careth for you.” In these high matters the Lord is doing the thinking.

And what is to be the reward of such services? “When the chief Shepherd shall be manifested . . .” [Verse 4] Some day we are to see Him face to face. What then? “Ye shall receive the crown of glory.” The victory crown will be composed of leaves and flowers which will never fade away; of leaves which are the tokens of abiding spring; of flowers which are the tokens of ever-enriching glory.

THROUGH ANTAGONISMS TO PERFECTNESS

1 Peter v. 8-10

Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom withstand stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are accomplished in your brethren who are in the world. And the God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered a little while, shall Himself perfect, stablish, strengthen you.

“The devil . . . walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” [Verse 8] Peter’s memory is here helping Peter’s message. [Reminiscence is shaping his counsel. It does seem as though at times this apostle dips his pen in his own blood. At any rate, the living crimson of his own experience abundantly colours the page. The epistle is hortatory: it is also biographical. The document is alive. It unfolds a faith; it also records a pilgrimage. In the passage which is immediately before us one feels how the life emerges as the commentary upon the message. Let me for a moment identify portions of this dim background, and set them in relation to the text. Here is the foreground, “God . . . who called you.” Here is the background, “And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after Me.” Here is the text, “Be watchful.” Here is the context, “Simon, Simon, sleepest thou? Couldst thou not watch one hour?” Here is the warning, “Your adversary, the devil . . . walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” Here is the reminiscence, “Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have thee.” Here is the evangel, “The God of all grace . . . will make you perfect.” Here is the experience, “Thou art Simon [hearer]; thou shalt be Peter” [a rock]. I say that this man’s life-blood stains his speech. His words are life, not the expression of speculation, but the utterance of a travail, the ripe judgments of a man who has “known and felt.” And now he lays down his pen for a moment and surveys his chequered days. He notes the innumerable allurements which have beset his path. He recalls the gay fascinations, the incentives to pride, the lure of power, the bewitchment of personal ambition. He marks the violence of vice, the tempestuous charge of passion, the terrific onrush of the blind and brutal forces of persecution. And all these confront the lonely wayfarer as he picks his way towards God. Life abounds in moral antagonisms. The empire of devilry runs right up to our gates. The destructive mouth is open on every side. The flesh lusts against the spirit. Life is filled with moral menace! All this the apostle sees as he contemplates his own pilgrimage, and so he takes up his pen again and writes this warning to his young, inexperienced, and somewhat wilful readers, “Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

I think there is something very suggestive in the figures employed by the Bible to describe the approaches of the powers of evil and night. The devil has a fairly extensive wardrobe, but his common and more familiar guises are of three types—a serpent, an angel of light, and a roaring lion. It is in one or other of these three shapes that the forces of sin most frequently assail us. They come in the guise of the serpent. They beguile our senses. They pervert our judgment. They enchant our imaginations. We are fascinated, bewitched, paralysed by the influence of some illicit and unclean spell. The love of money becomes a fascination. It holds a man as under a wizard’s spell. Gambling becomes a bewitchment, a kind of spiritual bondage, in which the poor soul, in mesmerised inclinations, is slowly drawn towards its own destruction. The devil approaches as a serpent, and like fixed and stupefied birds we are in peril of dropping into his devouring jaws. He comes also in the guise of an angel of light. He poses as an evangelist. He plays the rôle of one whose ministry it is to deepen our conception of the love and graciousness of God. He tells us that we do not think highly enough of God. He loves us too much to be pained by our small neglects. In fact, we best show our confidence in God by disregarding these neglects. Our trust is altogether too elementary and straight. We should cast ourselves down from a few pinnacles, and display to all men what a wonderful confidence we have in the out stretched everlasting arms of God! Such is the devil as an angel of light. Such is the devil as the preacher of the exceeding breadth of our Father’s love. Such is the devil intent on easing the strain of our religious life, relaxing its severities, and putting our feet into the way of a more spacious providence and peace. He would turn religion into thin refinements; he would convert a deep devotion into a glozing plausibility; and he would transform a hallowed trust into light and flippant presumption. And the devil also comes as a roaring lion. The subtlety of the serpent is laid aside; he discards the sheen of the angel of light; he appears as sheer brutal force, an antagonist of terrific and naked violence, bearing down his victims under the heavy paws of relentless persecution. “When the apostle wrote this letter, the lion was about; Nero was at work; the Christians were being hunted unto death, in the vain attempt at stamping out their faith and devotion to the Man of Nazareth, their Saviour and their Lord. He comes as a serpent, as an angel of light, as a roaring lion. He came to the Master as a serpent when he offered Him worldly power. He came as an angel of light when he sought to deepen and enrich His trust. He came to Him as a roaring lion in the blows and blasphemies of the bloodthirsty multitude. This antagonism we have got to meet. How can we meet it in the hope of certain triumph? Let us turn to the apostle’s counsel.

“Be sober.” [Verse 8] The culture of sobriety! See to Verse 8 it that you are not intoxicated, drugged into any kind of perilous stupor. Keep your head clear. Be collected. “Be sober.” Now, the apostle is writing to men and women who are professedly the followers of Jesus Christ, and I think there are two perils in the religious life, both of which have their issue in moral stupor. We can lose our senses in excitement, and we can lose them in sleep. There are perils in sensationalism, and there are perils in encroaching drowsiness. There is the stupor which accompanies exaggeration, and there is the stupor of indifference. There is an excessive emotionalism which offers no barriers against the incursions of the devil. That is the peril of all revivals. Men may “lose their heads,” and their very excitement fosters a moral drowsiness which gives hospitality to the besetting forces of temptation and sin. It is among the highly emotional races that we find the profoundest moral sleep. “Be sober.” If your spirit be fervent, at all pains let it be clear. “The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.” And on the other side there is the moral stupor which is the issue of a growing indifference, frequently initiated by small neglects. A man neglects the pointing of his house; damp enters; chills are born; disease is invited; death reigns. Relaxation in trifles is often the beginning of moral benumbment. Or it may be that a Christian man begins to take his pleasures in injurious measure. He used to sojourn in them; now he lives in them. “He that liveth in pleasure is dead.” The helpful potion has become an illicit drug. Taken in homœopathic doses the pleasure was a tonic and restorative; taken in larger measure it became an opiate, and sank the life in perilous sleep. “Whether our stupor be occasioned by excitement, or by neglect, or by dram-drinking, whether of alcoholic liquor or of drugging delights, such stupor gives the devil his opportunity, and offers him an open field in which his triumph is inevitable. “Be sober.”

“Be watchful.” [Verse 8] The culture of perceptiveness! Not only be sober, but thoroughly awake, exercising your perceptions to the rarest and most fruitful refinement. We know the large possibilities which allure us in the cultivation of the physical senses; equally large possibilities glow before us in the culture of the soul. Every exercise of watchfulness ensures us stronger sight. In the quest of the Divine we come to self-possession. In this line of culture the progress is from the greater to the less. The moral senses perceive ever finer and finer essences of good and evil. Moral progress is in the direction of the scruple. The finest scholar in the school of Christ is he who has the rarest perception of the moral trifle. “He that doeth the least of these commandments is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Therefore, exercise thy moral senses, lest the hordes of evil should enter through the gates of unperceived neglects. “Be watchful.”

“Stedfast in the faith.” [Verse 9] The culture of faith! Our faith has to be “stedfast,” firm, solid, impenetrable like a wall. Our faith has to be “stedfast,” a rampart of assurance, close, compact, and invulnerable. I have spoken of the cultivation of the moral sense, and of its progress in the detection of the trine. Here we are taken to a plane of still higher education, the culture of the spiritual sense, the apprehension of God, proceeding toward the goal of calm and invincible assurance. To be stedfast in faith is to be sure of God. The grand attainment necessitates continual exercise, the “practice of the presence of God.” We must exercise our spiritual muscles in the ministry of communion with God, in praise and prayer and supplication and intercession; the exercise must be a wrestling, determined and continuous, until there steals into our life an awed sense of the Divine presence, and in the calmness of assurance we can confidently say, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” How, then, shall we resist the devil, in whatsoever guise he may appear to us? By the culture of sobriety; by the culture of moral perceptiveness; and by that culture of spiritual apprehension which will lead us into the peace which is strength—“the peace of God which passeth all understanding.”

Now, let me carry your minds forward a moment to the contemplation of the all-sufficient dynamic, which may be ours in this inevitable conflict with the powers of evil and night. The culture of sobriety, the culture of perceptiveness, the culture of faith will open out our lives to Him whom the apostle calls “the God of all grace,” [Verse 10] and by His presence we shall be energised. “The God of all grace!” It is a beautiful and wealthy phrase, suggestive of varied endowment for varied and changing need. My need is manifold; the grace of God is also “manifold.” It will fit itself to my need as light or heat, as water or bread. My God is “the God of all grace,” now like sweet sunshine, now like burning flame, now like refreshing dew, now like the falling, softening rain. “The God of all grace,” a tower and a sword, my refuge and my shield. “My grace is sufficient for thee”; sufficient amid the beguilements and fascinations of the serpents; sufficient amid the plausible refinements of the angel of light; sufficient amid the apparently destructive forces of the lion of violence and persecution. The whole personality, in every faculty and power, shall be pervaded with Divine forces, and in thy God thou shalt find an exuberant fountain of mercy, goodness, and compassion. “My God shall make all grace to abound towards you.”

And what is to be the ultimate glory? “The God of all grace . . . shall Himself perfect, stablish, strengthen you.” [Verse 10] Perfected! Established! Strengthened! Settled! They are all architectural metaphors, and are massed together to suggest the fine wholeness, consistency, finish and security of the grace-blessed character as it will appear upon the glorious fields of light! “Established,” every layer firmly and securely based! “Strengthened,” splendidly seasoned, with no danger of splitting or of warping! “Settled,” the entire structure resting evenly, comfortably, upon the best and surest foundation! These are the metaphors, and they unveil before me future attainments of blessedness, when the grace-filled character shall appear before God like a firm, well-finished, and gloriously proportioned building; all the manifold faculties co-operating in rare association; every power firm, decisive, and sanctified, and the entire life settled in holy calm and comfort on “the one foundation, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Now, see the glorious range of the entire passage. “The God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory.” [Verse 10] That glory is not altogether remote. Even now we are beginning to share it. The spring is not yet here, but the lark is up! Glory awaits us in Emmanuel’s land; but we are finding heavenly tokens by the way.