THE CHANGED LIFE
 
 1 The earth is full of the glory of the Lord
 
 , ox>la 0*015 gX3 (S a ^3ta cxXJo 0X313 ..gN3o aN3l5 gX}lS oxala gNala o 
 
 THE CHANGED LIFE 
 
 l ^ 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 F.R.S.1C F.G.S. 
 
 NEW YORK: JAMES POTT AND 
 COMPANY & * & * & * MCM 
 
 h~*-r 
 
 Q QsS-^) ^vS.^) ^vSJD'^sS-^:) ^vS^) ^s^Ji?^Sv 
 
 b )E<O 0)3 <o o) <b o) o <o 0)0 X o) o X oifirt ojo ^
 
 COHVRKJHT 
 
 JAMES POTT & CO. 
 
 1891
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 LAST autumn, in a book-shop in California, the 
 author found a little book with his name upon 
 the title-page a book which he did not know 
 existed ; which he never wrote ; nor baptized 
 with the title which it bore. This stray publi- 
 cation taken from shorthand notes of a spoken 
 Address he does not grudge. Already, it 
 seems, it has done its small measure of good. 
 But owing to the imperfections which it con- 
 tains it has been thought right to issue a more 
 complete edition. 
 
 The theme, like its predecessors in this se- 
 ries, represents but a single aspect of its great
 
 6 PREFACE. 
 
 subject the man-ward side. The light and 
 shade is apportioned with this in view. And 
 the reader's kind attention is asked to this 
 limitation, lest he wonder at points being left 
 in shadow, which theology has always, and 
 rightly, taught us to emphasize. 
 
 It was the hearing of a simple talk by a 
 friend to some plain people in a Highland 
 deer-forest which first called the author's atten- 
 tion to the practicalness of this solution of 
 the cardinal problem of Christian experience. 
 What follows owes a large debt to that Sun- 
 day morning.
 
 Tide . alt 
 TKIlitb . unveileo . face 
 
 Reflecting 
 
 &s . a . Mirror 
 
 . (Slorg . of . tbe . Xoro 
 
 Zlre . transformed 
 
 ffnto . tbe . same Image 
 
 ffrom . (Slorg . to . <5lorg 
 
 Even . as . from . tbe . XorD 
 
 Sbe . Spirit.
 
 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 " I PROTEST that if some great Power would agree to 
 make me always think what is true and do what is 
 right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock 
 and wound up every morning, I should instantly close 
 with the offer." 
 
 THESE are the words of Mr. Huxley. The 
 infinite desirability, the infinite difficulty of 
 being good the theme is as old as humanity. 
 The man does not live from whose deeper 
 being the same confession has not risen, or 
 who would not give his all to-morrow, if he 
 could "close with the offer" of becoming a 
 better man.
 
 IO THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 I propose to make that offer now. In all 
 seriousness, without being "turned into a sort 
 of clock," the end can be attained. Under 
 the right conditions it is as natural for char- 
 acter to become beautiful as for a flower; and 
 if on God's earth there is not some machinery 
 for effecting it, the supreme gift to the world 
 has been forgotten. This is simply what 
 man was made for. With Browning: "I say 
 that Man was made to grow, not stop." Or 
 in the deeper words of an older Book : " Whom 
 He did foreknow, He also did predestinate 
 . . . to be conformed to the Image of His 
 Son." 
 
 Let me begin by naming, and in part dis- 
 carding, some processes in vogue already, for 
 producing better lives. These processes are 
 far from wrong ; in their place they may even 
 be essential. One ventures to disparage them 
 only because they do not turn out the most 
 perfect possible work.
 
 THE CHANGED LIFE. II 
 
 The first imperfect method is to rely on 
 Resolution. In will-power, in mere spasms of 
 earnestness there is no salvation. Struggle, 
 effort, even agony, have their place in Chris- 
 tianity, as we shall see ; but this is not where 
 they come in. In mid-Atlantic the other day, 
 the Etruria, in which I was sailing, suddenly 
 stopped. Something had gone wrong with 
 the engines. There were five hundred able- 
 bodied men on board the ship. Do you think 
 if we had gathered together and pushed against 
 the mast we could have pushed it on ? When 
 one attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he 
 is trying to make his boat go by pushing 
 against the mast. He is like a drowning man 
 trying to lift himself out of the water by pull- 
 ing at the hair of his own head. Christ held 
 up this method almost to ridicule when He 
 said, " Which of you by taking thought can 
 add a cubit to his stature ? " The one redeem- 
 ing feature of the self-sufficient method is this
 
 12 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 that those who try it find out almost at once 
 that it will not gain the goal. 
 
 Another experimenter says : " But that is 
 not my method. I have seen the folly of a 
 mere wild struggle in the dark. I work on a 
 principle. My plan is not to waste power on 
 random effort, but to concentrate on a single 
 sin. By taking one at a time, and crucifying it 
 steadily, I hope in the end to extirpate all." 
 To this, unfortunately, there are four objections: 
 For one thing, life is too short ; the name of 
 sin is Legion. For another thing, to deal with 
 individual sins is to leave the rest of the nature 
 for the time untouched. In the third place, a 
 single combat with a special sin does not affect 
 the root and spring of the disease. If one only 
 of the channels of sin be obstructed, experience 
 points to an almost certain overflow through 
 some other part of the nature. Partial con- 
 version is almost always accompanied by such 
 moral leakage, for the pent-up energies accumu-
 
 THE CHANGED LIFE. 13 
 
 late to the bursting point, and the last state of 
 that soul may be worse than the first. In the 
 last place, religion does not consist in negatives, 
 in stopping this sin and stopping that. The 
 perfect character can never be produced with a 
 pruning-knife. " 
 
 But a third protests : " So be it. I make 
 no attempt to stop sins one by one. My 
 method is just the opposite. I copy the 
 virtues one by one." The difficulty about the 
 copying method is that it is apt to be 
 mechanical. One can always tell an engrav- 
 ing from a picture, an artificial flower from a 
 real flower. To copy virtues one by one has 
 somewhat the same effect as eradicating the 
 vices one by one ; the temporary result is 
 an overbalanced and incongruous character. 
 Someone defines zprig as " a creature that 
 is over-fed for its size." One sometimes finds 
 Christians of this species over-fed on one 
 side of their nature, but dismally thin and
 
 14 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 starved-looking on the other. The result, for 
 instance, of copying Humility, and adding it 
 on to an otherwise worldly life, is simply 
 grotesque. A rabid Temperance advocate, 
 for the same reason, is often the poorest of 
 creatures, flourishing on a single virtue, and 
 quite oblivious that his Temperance is making 
 a worse man of him and not a better. These 
 are examples of fine virtues spoiled by as- 
 sociation with mean companions. Character 
 is a unity, and all the virtues must advance 
 together to make the perfect man. This 
 method of sanctification, nevertheless, is in 
 the true direction. It is only in the details 
 of execution that it fails. 
 
 A fourth method I need scarcely mention, 
 for it is a variation on those already named. 
 It is the very young man's method ; and 
 the pure earnestness of it makes it almost 
 desecration to touch it. It is to keep a pri- 
 vate note-book with columns for the days
 
 THE CHANGED LIFE. 1 5 
 
 of the week, and a list of virtues with 
 spaces against each for marks. This, with 
 many stern rules for preface, is stored away 
 in a secret place, and from time to time, at 
 nightfall, the soul is arraigned before it as 
 before a private judgment bar. This living 
 by code was Franklin's method ; and I sup- 
 pose thousands more could tell how they had 
 hung up in their bedrooms, or hid in lock- 
 fast drawers, the rules which one solemn day 
 they drew up to shape their lives. This 
 method is not erroneous, only somehow its 
 success is poor. You bear me witness that it 
 fails ? And it fails generally for very matter- 
 of-fact reasons most likely because one day 
 we forget the rules. 
 
 All these methods that have been named 
 the self-sufficient method, the self-crucifixion 
 method, the mimetic method, and the diary 
 method are perfectly human, perfectly natu- 
 ral, perfectly ignorant, and, as they stand, per-
 
 l6 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 fectly inadequate. It is not argued, I repeat, 
 that they must be abandoned. Their harm 
 is rather that they distract attention from the 
 true working method, and secure a fair result 
 at the expense of the perfect one. What 
 that perfect method is we shall now go on 
 to ask.
 
 THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICA- 
 TION. 
 
 A FORMULA, a receipt, for Sanctification 
 can one seriously speak of this mighty 
 change as if the process were as definite as 
 for the production of so many volts of elec- 
 tricity ? It is impossible to doubt it. Shall 
 a mechanical experiment succeed infallibly, 
 and the one vital experiment of humanity 
 remain a chance ? Is corn to grow by 
 method, and character by caprice ? If we 
 cannot calculate to a certainty that the forces 
 of religion will do their work, then is religion 
 vain. And if we cannot express the law of 
 these forces in simple words, then is Chris-
 
 1 8 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 tianity not the world's religion but the 
 world's conundrum. 
 
 Where, then, shall one look for such a 
 formula ? Where one would look for any 
 formula among the text-books. And if we 
 turn to the text-books of Christianity we 
 shall find a formula for this problem as 
 clear and precise as any in the mechanical 
 sciences. If this simple rule, moreover, be 
 but followed fearlessly, it will yield the result 
 of a perfect character as surely as any result 
 that is guaranteed by the laws of nature. 
 The finest expression of this rule in Scripture, 
 or indeed in any literature, is probably one 
 drawn up and condensed into a single verse 
 by Paul. You will find it in a letter the 
 second to the Corinthians written by him 
 to some Christian people who, in a city which 
 was a byword for depravity and licentious- 
 ness, were seeking the higher life. To see 
 the point of the words we must take them
 
 THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 19 
 
 from the immensely improved rendering of 
 the Revised translation, for the older Version 
 in this case greatly obscures the sense. They 
 are these : " We all, with unveiled face re- 
 flecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, 
 are transformed into the same image from 
 glory to glory, even as from the Lord the 
 Spirit." 
 
 - Now observe at the outset the entire con- 
 tradiction of all. our previous efforts, in the 
 simple passive " we are transformed." We 
 are changed, as the Old Version has it 
 we do not change ourselves. No man can 
 change himself. Throughout the New Testa- 
 ment you will find that wherever these moral 
 and spiritual transformations are described 
 the verbs are in the passive. Presently it 
 will be pointed out that there is a rationale 
 in this ; but meantime do not toss these 
 words aside as if this passivity denied all 
 human effort or ignored intelligible law. What
 
 2O THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 is implied for the soul here is no more than 
 is everywhere claimed for the body. In 
 physiology the verbs describing the processes 
 of growth are in the passive. Growth is not 
 voluntary ; it takes place, it happens, it 
 is wrought upon matter. So here. " Ye 
 must be born again" we cannot born our- 
 selves. " Be not conformed to this world but 
 be ye transformed" we are subjects to a 
 transforming influence, we do not transform 
 ourselves. Not more certain is it that it is 
 something outside the thermometer that pro- 
 duces a change in the thermometer, than it 
 is something outside the soul of man that 
 produces a moral change upon him. That 
 he must be susceptible to that change, that 
 he must be a party to it, goes without saying ; 
 but that neither his aptitude nor his will can 
 produce it, is equally certain. 
 
 Obvious as it ought to seem, this may be 
 to some an almost startling revelation. The
 
 THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 21 
 
 change we have been striving after is not to 
 be produced by any more striving after. It is 
 to be wrought upon us by the moulding of 
 hands beyond our own. As the branch ascends, 
 and the bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under 
 the co-operation of influences from the outside 
 air, so man rises to the higher stature under 
 invisible pressures from without. The radical 
 defect of all our former methods of sanctifica- 
 tion was the attempt to generate from within 
 that which can only be wrought upon us from 
 without. According to the first Law of Mo- 
 tion : Every body continues in its state of rest, 
 or of uniform motion in a straight line, except 
 in so far as it may be compelled by impressed 
 forces to change that state. This is also a first 
 law of Christianity. Every man's character 
 remains as it is, or continues in the direction in 
 which it is going, until it is compelled by im- 
 pressed forces to change that state. Our fail- 
 ure has been the failure to put ourselves in the
 
 22 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 way of the impressed forces. There is a clay, 
 and there is a Potter ; we have tried to get the 
 clay to mould the clay. 
 
 Whence, then, these pressures, and where 
 this Potter? The answer of the formula is 
 " By reflecting as a mirror the glory of the 
 Lord we are changed." But this is not very 
 clear. What is the " glory " of the Lord, and 
 how can mortal man reflect it, and how can 
 that act as an " impressed force " in moulding 
 him to a nobler form ? The word " glory " 
 the word which has to bear the weight of 
 holding those " impressed forces " is a stran- 
 ger in current speech, and our first duty is to 
 seek out its equivalent in working English. 
 It suggests at first a radiance of some kind, 
 something dazzling or glittering, some halo 
 such as the old masters loved to paint round the 
 heads of their Ecce Homos. But that is paint, 
 mere matter, the visible symbol of some unseen 
 thing. What is that unseen thing ? It is that of
 
 THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 23 
 
 all unseen things the most radiant, the most 
 beautiful, the most Divine, and that is Char- 
 acter. On earth, in Heaven, there is nothing 
 so great, so glorious as this. The word has 
 many meanings ; in ethics it can have but one. 
 Glory is character and nothing less, and it can 
 be nothing more. The earth is " full of the 
 glory of the Lord," because it is full of His 
 character. The " Beauty of the Lord " is 
 character. " The effulgence of His Glory " is 
 character. " The Glory of the Only Begotten " 
 is character, the character which is " fulness of 
 grace and truth." And when God told His 
 people His name He simply gave them His 
 character, His character which was Himself : 
 " And the Lord proclaimed the Name of the 
 Lord ... the Lord, the Lord God, mer- 
 ciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant 
 in goodness and truth." Glory then is not 
 something intangible, or ghostly, or transcen- 
 dental. If it were this how could Paul ask
 
 24 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 men to reflect it ? Stripped of its physical 
 enswathement it is Beauty, moral and spiritual 
 Beauty, Beauty infinitely real, infinitely ex- 
 alted, yet infinitely near and infinitely com- 
 municable. 
 
 With this explanation read over the sentence 
 once more in paraphrase : We all reflecting as 
 a mirror the character of Christ are transformed 
 into the same Image from character to char- 
 acter from a poor character to a better one, 
 from a better one to one a little better still, 
 from that to one still more complete, until 
 by slow degrees the Perfect Image is attained. 
 Here the solution of the problem of sanctifica- 
 tion is compressed into a sentence : Reflect the 
 character of Christ and you will become like 
 Christ. 
 
 All men are mirrors that is the first law on 
 which this formula is based. One of the 
 aptest descriptions of a human being is that he 
 is a mirror. As we sat at table to-night the
 
 THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 25 
 
 world in which each of us lived and moved 
 throughout this day was focussed in the room. 
 What we saw as we looked at one another was 
 not one another, but one another's world. We 
 were an arrangement of mirrors. The scenes 
 we saw were all reproduced; the people we met 
 walked to and fro ; they spoke, they bowed, 
 they passed us by, did everything over again as 
 if it had been real. When we talked, we were 
 but looking at our own mirror and describing 
 what flitted across it ; our listening was not 
 hearing, but seeing we but looked on our 
 neighbour's mirror. All human intercourse is a 
 seeing of reflections. I meet a stranger in a 
 railway carriage. The cadence of his first word 
 tells me he is English, and comes from York- 
 shire. Without knowing it he has reflected 
 his birthplace, his parents, and the long history 
 of their race. Even physiologically he is a mir- 
 ror. His second sentence records that he is a 
 politician, and a faint inflexion in the way he
 
 26 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 pronounces The Times reveals his party. In 
 his next remarks I see reflected a whole world 
 of experiences. The books he has read, the 
 people he has met, the influences that have 
 played upon him and made him the man he is 
 these are all registered there by a pen which 
 lets nothing pass, and whose writing can never 
 be blotted out. What I am reading in him 
 meantime he also is reading in me ; and before 
 the journey is over we could half write each 
 other's lives. Whether we like it or not, we 
 live in glass houses. The mind, the memory, 
 the soul, is simply a vast chamber panelled 
 with looking-glass. And upon this miraculous 
 arrangement and endowment depends the 
 capacity of mortal souls to " reflect the char- 
 acter of the Lord." 
 
 But this is not all. If all these varied re- 
 flections from our so-called secret life are pat- 
 ent to the world, how close the writing, how 
 complete the record, within the soul itself ?
 
 THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 2/ 
 
 For the influences we meet are not simply 
 held for a moment on the polished surface and 
 thrown off again into space. Each is retained 
 where first it fell, and stored up in the soul for 
 ever. 
 
 This law of Assimilation is the second, and 
 by far the most impressive truth which under- 
 lies the formula of sanctification the truth 
 that men are not only mirrors, but that these 
 mirrors, so far from being mere reflectors of the 
 fleeting things they see, transfer into their own 
 inmost substance, and hold in permanent pres- 
 ervation, the things that they reflect. No one 
 knows how the soul can hold these things. 
 No one knows how the miracle is done. No 
 phenomenon in nature, no process in chemistry, 
 no chapter in necromancy can even help us to 
 begin to understand this amazing operation. 
 For, think of it, the past is not only focussed 
 there, in a man's soul, it is there. How could 
 it be reflected from there if it were not there ?
 
 28 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 All things that he has ever seen, known, felt, 
 believed of the surrounding world are now 
 within him, have become part of him, in part 
 are him he has been changed into their 
 image. He may deny it, he may resent it, 
 but they are there. They do not adhere to 
 him, they are transfused through him. He 
 cannot alter or rub them out. They are 
 not in his memory, they are in him. His 
 soul is as they have filled it, made it, left it. 
 These things, these books, these events, these 
 influences are his makers. In their hands are 
 life and death, beauty and deformity. When 
 once the image or likeness of any of these is 
 fairly presented to the soul, no power on 
 earth can hinder two things happening it 
 must be absorbed into the soul, and for ever 
 reflected back again from character. 
 
 Upon these astounding yet perfectly obvious 
 psychological facts, Paul bases his doctrine of 
 sanctification. He sees that character is a
 
 THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 29 
 
 thing built up by slow degrees, that it is 
 hourly changing for better or for worse ac- 
 cording to the images which flit across it. One 
 step further and the whole length and breadth 
 of the application of these ideas to the central 
 problem of religion will stand before us.
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 
 
 IF events change men, much more persons. 
 No man can meet another on the street with- 
 out making some mark upon him. We say 
 we exchange words when we meet ; what we 
 exchange is souls. And when intercourse is 
 very close and very frequent, so complete is 
 this exchange that recognizable bits of the 
 one soul begin to show in the other's nature, 
 and the second is conscious of a similar and 
 growing debt to the first. This mysterious 
 approximating of two souls who has not wit- 
 nessed ? Who has not watched some old 
 couple come down life's pilgrimage hand in 
 hand, with such gentle trust and joy in one
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 31 
 
 another that their very faces wore the self- 
 same look ? These were not two souls ; it 
 was a composite soul. It did not matter to 
 which of the two you spoke, you would have 
 said the same words to either. It was quite 
 indifferent which replied, each would have said 
 the same. Half a century's reflecting had told 
 upon them ; they were changed into the same 
 image. It is the Law of Influence that we 
 become like those whom we habitually admire : 
 these had become like because they habitually 
 admired. Through all the range of literature, 
 of history, and biography this law presides. 
 Men are all mosaics of other men. There 
 was a savour of David about Jonathan and a 
 savour of Jonathan about David. Jean Val- 
 jean, in the masterpiece of Victor Hugo, is 
 Bishop Bienvenu risen from the dead. Me- 
 tempsychosis is a fact. George Eliot's message 
 to the world was that men and women make 
 men and women. The Family, the cradle of
 
 32 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 mankind, has no meaning apart from this. 
 Society itself is nothing but a rallying point 
 for these omnipotent forces to do their work. 
 On the doctrine of Influence, in short, the 
 whole vast pyramid of humanity is built. 
 
 But it was reserved for Paul to make the 
 supreme application of the Law of Influence. 
 It was a tremendous inference to make, but 
 he never hesitated. He himself was a changed 
 man ; he knew exactly what had done it ; it 
 was Christ. On the Damascus road they met, 
 and from that hour his life was absorbed in His. 
 The effect could not but follow on words, 
 on deeds, on career, on creed. The " impressed 
 forces " did their vital work. He became like 
 Him Whom he habitually loved. " So we 
 all," he writes, " reflecting as a mirror the glory 
 of Christ, are changed into the same image." 
 
 Nothing could be more simple, more intel- 
 ligible, more natural, more supernatural. It is 
 an analogy from an everyday fact. Since we
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 33 
 
 are what we are by the impacts of those who 
 surround us, those who surround themselves 
 with the highest will be those who change 
 into the highest. There are some men and 
 some women in whose company we are al- 
 ways at our best. While with them we can- 
 not think mean thoughts or speak ungenerous 
 words. Their mere presence is elevation, 
 purification, sanctity. All the best stops in 
 our nature are drawn out by their intercourse, 
 and we find a music in our souls that was 
 never there before. Suppose even that influ- 
 ence prolonged through a month, a year, a 
 lifetime, and what could not life become ? 
 Here, even on the common plane of life, 
 talking our language, walking our streets, 
 working side by side, are sanctifiers of souls ; 
 here, breathing through common clay, is Hea- 
 ven ; here, energies charged even through a 
 temporal medium with the virtue of regenera- 
 tion. If to live with men, diluted to the 
 3
 
 34 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 millionth degree with the virtue of the High- 
 est, can exalt and purify the nature, what 
 bounds can be set to the influence of Christ ? 
 To live with Socrates with unveiled face 
 must have made one wise ; with Aristides, 
 just. Francis of Assisi must have made one 
 gentle ; Savonarola, strong. But to have lived 
 with Christ ? To have lived with Christ must 
 have made one like Christ ; that is to say, 
 A Christian. 
 
 As a matter of fact, to live with Christ did 
 produce this effect. It produced it in the case 
 of Paul. And during Christ's lifetime the ex- 
 periment was tried in an even more startling 
 form. A few raw, unspiritual, uninspiring men, 
 were admitted to the inner circle of His friend- 
 ship. The change began at once. Day by day 
 we can almost see the first disciples grow. 
 First there steals over them the faintest possible 
 adumbration of His character, and occasionally, 
 very occasionally, they do a thing, or say a
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 35 
 
 thing that they could not have done or said had 
 they not been living there. Slowly the spell of 
 His Life deepens. Reach after reach of their 
 nature is overtaken, thawed, subjugated, sanc- 
 tified. Their manners soften, their words be- 
 come more gentle, their conduct more unselfish. 
 As swallows who have found a summer, as 
 frozen buds the spring, their starved humanity 
 bursts into a fuller life. They do not know 
 how it is, but they are different men. One day 
 they find themselves like their Master, going 
 about and doing good. To themselves it is un- 
 accountable, but they cannot do otherwise. 
 They were not told to do it, it came to them to 
 do it. But the people who watch them know 
 well how to account for it " They have been," 
 they whisper, "with Jesus." Already even, 
 the mark and seal of His character is upon 
 them " They have been with Jesus." Un- 
 paralleled phenomenon, that these poor fisher- 
 men should remind other men of Christ !
 
 36 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 Stupendous victory and mystery of regenera- 
 tion that mortal men should suggest to the 
 world, God ! 
 
 There is something almost melting in the 
 way His contemporaries, and John especially, 
 speak of the Influence of Christ. John lived 
 himself in daily wonder at Him ; he was over- 
 powered, overawed, entranced, transfigured. To 
 his mind it was impossible for anyone to come 
 under this influence and ever be the same 
 again. " Whosoever abideth in Him sin- 
 neth not," he said. It was inconceivable 
 that he should sin, as inconceivable as that ice 
 should live in a burning sun, or darkness co- 
 exist with noon. If anyone did sin, it was to 
 John the simple proof that he could never have 
 met Christ. "Whosoever sinneth," he ex- 
 claims, "hath not seen Him, neither known 
 Him." Sin was abashed in this Presence. Its 
 roots withered. Its sway and victory were for 
 ever at an end.
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 37 
 
 But these were His contemporaries. It was 
 easy for them to be influenced by Him, for they 
 were every day and all the day together. But 
 how can we mirror that which we have never 
 seen ? How can all this stupendous result be 
 produced by a Memory, by the scantiest of all 
 Biographies, by One who lived and left this 
 earth eighteen hundred years ago ? How can 
 modern men to-day make Christ, the absent 
 Christ, their most constant companion still ? 
 The answer is that Friendship is a spiritual 
 thing. It is independent of Matter, or Space, 
 or Time. That which I love in my friend is 
 not that which I see. What influences me in 
 my friend is not his body but his spirit. It 
 would have been an ineffable experience truly 
 to have lived at that time 
 
 " I think when I read the sweet story of old, 
 
 How when Jesus was here among men, 
 He took little children like lambs to His fold, 
 I should like to have been with Him then.
 
 38 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 " I wish that His hand had been laid on my head, 
 
 That His arms had been thrown around me, 
 And that I had seen His kind look when He said, 
 ' Let the little ones come unto Me.' " 
 
 And yet, if Christ were to come into the world 
 again few of us probably would ever have a 
 chance of seeing Him. Millions of her subjects, 
 in this little country, have never seen their own 
 Queen. And there would be millions of the 
 subjects of Christ who could never get within 
 speaking distance of Him if He were here. 
 Our companionship with Him, like all true 
 companionship, is a spiritual communion. All 
 friendship, all love, human and Divine, is pure- 
 ly spiritual. It was after He was risen that 
 He influenced even the disciples most. Hence 
 in reflecting the character of Christ, it is no 
 real obstacle that we may never have been in 
 visible contact with Himself. 
 
 There lived once a young girl whose perfect 
 grace of character was the wonder of those who
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 39 
 
 knew her. She wore on her neck a gold locket 
 which no one was ever allowed to open. One 
 day, in a moment of unusual confidence, one 
 of her companions was allowed to touch 
 its spring and learn its secret. She saw 
 written these words " Whom having not 
 seen, I love" That was the secret of her 
 beautiful life. She had been changed into 
 the Same Image. 
 
 Now this is not imitation, but a much deeper 
 thing. Mark this distinction. For the differ- 
 ence in the process, as well as in the result, may 
 be as great as that between a photograph se- 
 cured by the infallible pencil of the sun, and the 
 rude outline from a school-boy's chalk. Imita- 
 tion is mechanical, reflection organic. The one 
 is occasional, the other habitual. In the one 
 case, man comes to God and imitates Him ; in 
 the other, God comes to man and imprints 
 Himself upon Him. It is quite true that there 
 is an imitation of Christ which amounts to
 
 40 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 reflection. But Paul's term includes all that 
 the other holds, and is open to no mistake. 
 
 " Make Christ your most constant compan- 
 ion " this is what it practically means for us. 
 Be more under His influence than under any 
 other influence. Ten minutes spent in His 
 society every day, ay, two minutes if it be face 
 to face, and heart to heart, will make the whole 
 day different. Every character has an inward 
 spring, let Christ be it. Every action has a 
 key-note, let Christ set it. Yesterday you got 
 a certain letter. You sat down and wrote a 
 reply which almost scorched the paper. You 
 picked the cruellest adjectives you knew and 
 sent it forth, without a pang, to do its ruthless 
 work. You did that because your life was set 
 in the wrong key. You began the day with 
 the mirror placed at the wrong angle. To- 
 morrow, at daybreak, turn it towards Him, and 
 even to your enemy the fashion of your coun- 
 tenance will be changed. Whatever you then
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 41 
 
 do, one thing you will find you could not do 
 you could not write that letter. Your first im- 
 pulse may be the same, your judgment may be 
 unchanged but if you try it the ink will dry on 
 your pen, and you will rise from your desk an 
 unavenged, but a greater and more Christian, 
 man. Throughout the whole day your actions, 
 down to the last detail, will do homage to that 
 early vision. Yesterday you thought mostly 
 about yourself. To-day the poor will meet 
 you, and you will feed them. The helpless, the 
 tempted, the sad, will throng about you, and 
 each you will befriend. Where were all these 
 people yesterday ? Where they are to-day, but 
 you did not see them. It is in reflected light that 
 the poor are seen. But your soul to-day is not at 
 the ordinary angle. " Things which are not seen " 
 are visible. For a few short hours you live the 
 Eternal Life. The eternal life, the life of faith, 
 is simply the life of the higher vision. Faith 
 is an attitude a mirror set at the right angle.
 
 42 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 When to-morrow is over, and in the evening 
 you review it, you will wonder how you did it. 
 You will not be conscious that you strove for 
 anything, or imitated anything, or crucified 
 anything. You will be conscious of Christ ; 
 that He was with you, that without compulsion 
 you were yet compelled, that without force, or 
 noise, or proclamation, the revolution was ac- 
 complished. You do not congratulate your- 
 self as one who has done a mighty deed, or 
 achieved a personal success, or stored up a fund 
 of " Christian experience " to ensure the same 
 result again. What you are conscious of is 
 " the glory of the Lord." And what the world 
 is conscious of, if the result be a true one, is 
 also "the glory of the Lord." In looking at a 
 mirror one does not see the mirror, or think of 
 it, but only of what it reflects. For a mirror 
 never calls attention to itself except when 
 there are flaws in it. 
 
 That this is a real experience and not a
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 43 
 
 vision, that this life is possible to men, is be- 
 ing lived by men to-day, is simple biographical 
 fact. From a thousand witnesses I cannot for- 
 bear to summon one. The following are the 
 words of one of the highest intellects this age 
 has known, a man who shared the burdens of 
 his country as few have done, and who, not in 
 the shadows of old age, but in the high noon 
 of his success, gave this confession I quote it 
 with only a few abridgments to the world 
 
 " I want to speak to-night only a little, but 
 that little I desire to speak of the sacred name 
 of Christ, who is my life, my inspiration, my 
 hope, and my surety. I cannot help stopping 
 and looking back upon the past. And I wish, 
 as if I had never done it before, to bear witness, 
 not only that it is by the grace of God, but that 
 it is by the grace of God as manifested in 
 Christ Jesus, that I am what I am. I recognize 
 the sublimity and grandeur of the revelation of 
 God in His eternal fatherhood as one that
 
 44 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 made the heavens, that founded the earth, and 
 that regards all the tribes of the earth, compre- 
 hending them in one universal mercy; but it is 
 the God that is manifested in Jesus Christ, re- 
 vealed by His life, made known by the inflec- 
 tions of His feelings, by His discourse, and by 
 His deeds it is that God that I desire to con- 
 fess to-night, and of whom I desire to say, ' By 
 the love of God in Christ Jesus I am what I 
 am.' 
 
 " If you ask me precisely what I mean by 
 that, I say, frankly, that more than any recog- 
 nized influence of my father or my mother upon 
 me ; more than the social influence of all the 
 members of my father's household ; more, so far 
 as I can trace it, or so far as I am made aware 
 of it, than all the social influences of every 
 kind, Christ has had the formation of my mind 
 and my disposition. My hidden ideals of what 
 is beautiful I have drawn from Christ. My 
 thoughts of what is manly, and noble, and pure, 
 have almost all of them arisen from the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. Many men have educated them- 
 selves by reading Plutarch's Lives of the An-
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 45 
 
 cient Worthies, and setting before themselves 
 one and another of these that in different ages 
 have achieved celebrity; and they have recog- 
 nized the great power of these men on them- 
 selves. Now I do not perceive that poet, or 
 philosopher, or reformer, or general, or any 
 other great man, ever has dwelt in my imagina- 
 tion and in my thought as the simple Jesus has. 
 For more than twenty-five years I instinctively 
 have gone to Christ to draw a measure and a 
 rule for everything. Whenever there has been 
 a necessity for it, I have sought and at last al- 
 most spontaneously to throw myself into the 
 companionship of Christ ; and early, by my im- 
 agination, I could see Him standing and look- 
 ing quietly and lovingly upon me. There 
 seemed almost to drop from His face an influ- 
 ence upon me that suggested what was the 
 right thing in the controlling of passion, in the 
 subduing of pride, in the overcoming of selfish- 
 ness; and it is from Christ, manifested to my 
 inward eye, that I have consciously derived 
 more ideals, more models, more influences, than 
 from any human character whatever.
 
 46 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 " That is not all. I feel conscious that I have 
 derived from the Lord Jesus Christ every 
 thought that makes heaven a reality to me, and 
 every thought that paves the road that lies be- 
 tween me and heaven. All my conceptions 
 of the progress of grace in the soul ; all the 
 steps by which divine life is evolved ; all the 
 ideals that overhang the blessed sphere which 
 awaits us beyond this world these are de- 
 rived from the Saviour. The life that I now 
 live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son 
 of God. 
 
 " That is not all. Much as my future includes 
 all these elements which go to make the blessed 
 fabric of earthly life, yet, after all, what the 
 summer is compared with all its earthly pro- 
 ducts flowers, and leaves, and grass that is 
 Christ compared with all the products of Christ 
 in my mind and in my soul. All the flowers 
 and leaves of sympathy ; all the twining joys 
 that come from my heart as a Christian these 
 I take and hold in the future, but they are to 
 me what the flowers and leaves of summer are 
 compared with the sun that makes the summer.
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 47 
 
 Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning 
 and the end of my better life. 
 
 " When I read the Bible, I gather a great 
 deal from the Old Testament, and from the 
 Pauline portions of the New Testament ; but 
 after all, I am conscious that the fruit of the 
 Bible is Christ. That is what I read it for, and 
 that is what I find that is worth reading. I 
 have had a hunger to be loved of Christ. You 
 all know, in some relations, what it is to be 
 hungry for love. Your heart seems unsatisfied 
 till you can draw something more toward you 
 from those that are dearest to you. There have 
 been times when I have had an unspeakable 
 heart-hunger for Christ's love. My sense of sin 
 is never strong when I think of the law ; my 
 sense of sin is strong when I think of love if 
 there is any difference between law and love. 
 It is when drawing near the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and longing to be loved, that I have the most 
 vivid sense of unsymmetry, of imperfection, of 
 absolute unworthiness, and of my sinfulness. 
 Character and conduct are never so vividly set 
 before me as when in silence I bend in the pres-
 
 48 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 ence of Christ, revealed not in wrath, but in 
 love to me. I never so much long to be lovely, 
 that I may be loved, as when I have this revela- 
 tion of Christ before my mind. 
 
 " In looking back upon my experience, that 
 part of my life which stands out, and which I 
 remember most vividly, is just that part that 
 has had some conscious association with Christ. 
 All the rest is pale, and thin, and lies like 
 clouds on the horizon. Doctrines, systems, 
 measures, methods what may be called the 
 necessary mechanical and external part of wor- 
 ship ; the part which the senses would recog- 
 nize this seems to have withered and fallen off 
 like leaves of last summer ; but that part which 
 has taken hold of Christ abides." 
 
 Can anyone hear this life-music, with its 
 throbbing refrain of Christ, and remain un- 
 moved by envy or desire ? Yet, till we have 
 lived like this we have never lived at all.
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 
 
 THEN you reduce religion to a common 
 Friendship ? A common Friendship Who 
 talks of a common Friendship ? There is no 
 such thing in the world. On earth no word is 
 more sublime. Friendship is the nearest thing 
 we know to what religion is. God is love. 
 And to make religion akin to Friendship is 
 simply to give it the highest expression con- 
 ceivable by man. But if by demurring to " a 
 common friendship " is meant a protest against 
 the greatest and the holiest in religion being 
 spoken of in intelligible terms, then I am afraid 
 the objection is all too real. Men always look 
 for a mystery when one talks of sanctification ;
 
 50 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 some mystery apart from that which must ever 
 be mysterious wherever Spirit works. It is 
 thought some peculiar secret lies behind it, 
 some occult experience which only the initiated 
 know. Thousands of persons go to church 
 every Sunday hoping to solve this mystery. 
 At meetings, at conferences, many a time they 
 have reached what they thought was the very 
 brink of it, but somehow no further revelation 
 came. Poring over religious books, how often 
 were they not within a paragraph of it ; the 
 next page, the next sentence, would discover 
 all, and they would be borne on a flowing tide 
 for ever. But nothing happened. The next 
 sentence and the next page were read, and still 
 it eluded them ; and though the promise of its 
 coming kept faithfully up to the end, the last 
 chapter found them still pursuing. Why did 
 nothing happen ? Because there was nothing 
 to happen nothing of the kind they were 
 looking for. Why did it elude them ? Because
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 5 1 
 
 there was no " it." When shall we learn that 
 the pursuit of holiness is simply the pursuit of 
 Christ ? When shall we substitute for the " it " 
 of a fictitious aspiration } the approach to a 
 Living Friend ? Sanctity is in character and 
 not in moods ; Divinity in our own plain calm 
 humanity, and in no mystic rapture of the 
 soul. 
 
 And yet there are others who, -for exactly 
 a contrary reason, will find scant satisfaction 
 here. Their complaint is not that a religion 
 expressed in terms of Friendship is too homely, 
 but that it is still too mystical. To "abide" 
 in Christ, to " make Christ our most constant 
 companion," is to them the purest mysticism. 
 They want something absolutely tangible and 
 absolutely direct. These are not the poetical 
 souls who seek a sign, a mysticism in excess ; 
 but the prosaic natures whose want is mathe- 
 matical definition in details. Yet it is perhaps 
 not possible to reduce this problem to much
 
 52 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 more rigid elements. The beauty of Friendship 
 is its infinity. One can never evacuate life of 
 mysticism. Home is full of it, love is full of it, 
 religion is full of it. Why stumble at that in 
 the relation of man to Christ which is natural 
 in the relation of man to man ? 
 
 If anyone cannot conceive or realize a mysti- 
 cal relation with Christ, perhaps all that can be 
 done is to help him to step on to it by still 
 plainer analogies from common life. How do I 
 know Shakespeare or Dante ? By communing 
 with their words and thoughts. Many men 
 know Dante better than their own fathers. He 
 influences them more. As a spiritual presence 
 he is more near to them, as a spiritual force 
 more real. Is there any reason why a greater 
 than Shakespeare or Dante, who also walked 
 this earth, who left great words behind Him, 
 who has great works everywhere in the world 
 now, should not also instruct, inspire, and 
 mould the characters of men ? I do not limit
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 53 
 
 Christ's influence to this. It is this, and it is 
 more. But Christ, so far from resenting or 
 discouraging this relation of Friendship, Him- 
 self proposed it. " Abide in Me " was almost 
 His last word to the world. And He partly 
 met the difficulty of those who feel its intan- 
 gibleness by adding the practical clause, " If ye 
 abide in Me and My tvords abide in yon" 
 
 Begin with His words. Words can scarcely 
 ever be long impersonal. Christ Himself was 
 a Word, a word made Flesh. Make His words 
 flesh; do them, live them, and you must live 
 Christ. " He that keepeth My commandments^ 
 he it is^that loveth Me." Obey Him and you 
 must love Him. Abide in Him and you must 
 obey Him. Cultivate His Friendship. Live 
 after Christ, in His Spirit, as in His Presence, 
 and it is difficult to think what more you can 
 do. Take this at least as a first lesson, as in- 
 troduction. If you cannot at once and always 
 feel the play of His life upon yours, watch for
 
 54 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 it also indirectly. " The whole earth is full of 
 the character of the Lord." Christ is the Light 
 of the world, and much of His Light is reflected 
 from things in the world even from clouds. 
 Sunlight is stored in every leaf, from leaf 
 through coal, and it comforts us thence when 
 days are dark and we cannot see the sun. 
 Christ shines through men, through books, 
 through history, through nature, music, art. 
 Look for Him there. " Every day one should 
 either look at a beautiful picture, or hear beau- 
 tiful music, or read a beautiful poem." The 
 real danger of mysticism is not making it broad 
 enough. 
 
 Do not think that nothing is happening be- 
 cause you do not see yourself grow, or hear 
 the whirr of the machinery. All great things 
 grow noiselessly. You can see a mushroom 
 grow, but never a child. Mr. Darwin tells us 
 that Evolution proceeds by li numerous, success- 
 ive, and slight modifications." Paul knew
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 55 
 
 that, and put it, only in more beautiful words, 
 into the heart of his formula. He said for the 
 comforting of all slowly perfecting souls that 
 they grew " from character to character." " The 
 inward man," he says elsewhere, " is renewed 
 from day to day." All thorough work is slow ; 
 all true development by minute, slight, and 
 insensible metamorphoses. The higher the 
 structure, moreover, the slower the progress. 
 As the biologist runs his eye over the long 
 Ascent of Life he sees the lowest forms of ani- 
 mals develop in an hour ; the next above these 
 reach maturity in a day; those higher still 
 take weeks or months to perfect ; but the few 
 at the top demand the long experiment of 
 years. If a child and an ape are born on the 
 same day the last will be in full possession of 
 its faculties and doing the active work of 
 life before the child has left its cradle. Life is 
 the cradle of eternity. As the man is to the 
 animal in the slowness of his evolution, so is
 
 56 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 the spiritual man to the natural man. Founda- 
 tions which have to bear the weight of an eter- 
 nal life must be surely laid. Character is to 
 wear for ever; who will wonder or grudge that 
 it cannot be developed in a day ? 
 
 To await the growing of a soul, neverthe- 
 less, is an almost Divine act of faith. How 
 pardonable, surely, the impatience of deformity 
 with itself, of a consciously despicable charac- 
 ter standing before Christ, wondering, yearn- 
 ing, hungering to be like that ? Yet must 
 one trust the process fearlessly, and without 
 misgiving. "The Lord the Spirit" will do 
 His part. The tempting expedient is, in 
 haste for abrupt or visible progress, to try 
 some method less spiritual, or to defeat the 
 end by watching for effects instead of keep- 
 ing the eye on the Cause. A photograph 
 prints from the negative only while exposed 
 to the sun. While the artist is looking to see 
 how it is getting on he simply stops the get-
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 57 
 
 ting on. Whatever of wise supervision the 
 soul may need, it is certain it can never be 
 over-exposed, or that, being exposed, any- 
 thing else in the world can improve the result 
 or quicken it. The creation of a new heart, 
 the renewing of a right spirit is an omnipotent 
 work of God. Leave it to the Creator. " He 
 which hath begun a good work in you will 
 perfect it unto that day." 
 
 No man, nevertheless, who feels the worth 
 and solemnity of what is at stake will be 
 careless as to his progress. To become like 
 Christ is the only thing in the world worth 
 caring for, the thing before which every ambi- 
 tion of man is folly, and all lower achieve- 
 ment vain. Those only who make this quest 
 the supreme desire and passion of their lives 
 can even begin to hope to reach it. If, there- 
 fore, it has seemed up to this point as if all 
 depended on passivity, let me now assert, with 
 conviction more intense, that all depends on
 
 58 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 activity. A religion of effortless adoration 
 may be a religion for an angel but never for 
 a man. Not in the contemplative, but in the 
 active, lies true hope; not in rapture, but in 
 reality, lies true life ; not in the realm of 
 ideals, but among tangible things, is man's 
 sanctification wrought. Resolution, effort, 
 pain, self-crucifixion, agony all the things 
 already dismissed as futile in themselves must 
 now be restored to office, and a tenfold re- 
 sponsibility laid upon them. For what is 
 their office ? Nothing less than to move the 
 vast inertia of the soul, and place it, and 
 keep it where the spiritual forces will act 
 upon it. It is to rally the forces of the will, 
 and keep the surface of the mirror bright and 
 ever in position. It is to uncover the face 
 which is to look at Christ, and draw down the 
 veil when unhallowed sights are near. You 
 have, perhaps, gone with an astronomer to 
 watch him photograph the spectrum of a star.
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 59 
 
 As you entered the dark vault of the ob- 
 servatory you saw him begin by lighting 
 a candle. To see the star with ? No ; but 
 to see to adjust the instrument to see the 
 star with. It was the star that was going 
 to take the photograph ; it was, also, the 
 astronomer. For a long time he worked in 
 the dimness, screwing tubes and polishing 
 lenses and adjusting reflectors, and only after 
 much labour the finely focussed instrument 
 was brought to bear. Then he blew out the 
 light, and left the star to do its work upon 
 the plate alone. The day's task for the 
 Christian is to bring his instrument to bear. 
 Having done that he may blow out his candle. 
 All the evidences of Christianity which have 
 brought him there, all aids to Faith, all acts 
 of Worship, all the leverages of the Church, 
 all Prayer and Meditation, all girding of the 
 Will these lesser processes, these candle-light 
 activities for that supreme hour may be set
 
 6O THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 aside. But, remember, it is but for an hour. 
 The wise man will be he who quickest lights 
 his candle ; the wisest he who never lets it out. 
 To-morrow, the next moment, he, a poor, dark- 
 ened, blurred soul, may need it again to 
 focus the Image better, to take a mote off the 
 lens, to clear the mirror from a breath with 
 which the world has dulled it. 
 
 No readjustment is ever required on behalf 
 of the Star. That is one great fixed point in 
 this shifting universe. But the world moves. 
 And each day, each hour, demands a further 
 motion and readjustment for the soul. A 
 telescope in an observatory follows a star by 
 clockwork, but the clockwork of the soul is 
 called the Will. Hence, while the soul in 
 passivity reflects the Image of the Lord, the 
 Will in intense activity holds the mirror in 
 position lest the drifting motion of the world 
 bear it beyond the line of vision. To " follow 
 Christ" is largely to keep the soul in such
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 6l 
 
 position as will allow for the motion of the 
 earth. And this calculated counteracting of 
 the movements of a world, this holding of 
 the mirror exactly opposite to the Mirrored, 
 this steadying of the faculties unerringly, 
 through cloud and earthquake, fire and sword, 
 is the stupendous co-operating labour of the 
 Will. It is all man's work. It is all Christ's 
 work. In practice it is both ; in theory it is 
 both. But the wise man will say in practice, 
 " It depends upon myself." 
 
 In the Galerie des Beaux Arts in Paris 
 there stands a famous statue. It was the 
 last work of a great genius, who, like many 
 a genius, was very poor and lived in a garret, 
 which served as studio and sleeping-room 
 alike. When the statue was all but finished, 
 one midnight a sudden frost fell upon Paris. 
 The sculptor lay awake in the fireless room 
 and thought of the still moist clay, thought 
 how the water would freeze in the pores and
 
 62 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 destroy in an hour the dream of his life. So 
 the old man rose from his couch and heaped 
 the bed-clothes reverently round his work. In 
 the morning, when the neighbours entered the 
 room the sculptor was dead. But the statue 
 lived. 
 
 The Image of Christ that is forming within 
 us that is life's one charge. Let every proj- 
 ect stand aside for that. " Till Christ be 
 formed," no man's work is finished, no re- 
 ligion crowned, no life has fulfilled its end. 
 Is the infinite task begun ? When, how, 
 are we to be different ? Time cannot change 
 men. Death cannot change men. Christ can. 
 Wherefore put on Christ. 
 
 THE END.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.
 
 A "'!' 'jjll Hill lilll I/HI (III/ I Jll IIJll 11