UC-NRLF 
 
 *B 2b3 13T 
 
 dljri^fian 
 
 
 LEONARD BACON 
 
GIFT OF 
 THOMAS RUTHERFORD BACOfST 
 
CHRISTIAI^ SELF-CULTURE 
 
 on THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 
 OF A CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 LEOISTAED BACOK 
 
 EDINBUKGH : 
 ANDREW ELLIOT, 15, PRINCES STREET. 
 
 1864. 
 
2)^ 
 
 EDINBURGH : T. CONSTABLE, 
 PRINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
4 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. I. THE BEGINNING, 
 
 IT. WHEN TO BEGIN, . . . . . 
 
 rn. INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS AS RELATED TO A 
 
 RELIGIOUS LITE, 
 IV. FAITH AND MANLINESS, 
 V. ENLIGHTENED C0NSCIENTiOUSNE;SS; 
 VI. FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED, 
 VIL STEADFASTNESS, . 
 VIII. GODLINESS, . 
 IX. BROTHERLY KINDNESS, 
 
 X. CHARITY, 
 XI. CHRISTIAN GROWTH, 
 XIL FRUITFULNESS, 
 
 PAGK 
 1 
 
 
 27 
 
 
 43 
 
 s, 
 
 59 
 
 
 7o 
 
 
 91 
 
 
 105 
 
 
 121 
 
 
 137 
 
 
 153 
 
 
 171 
 
 267982 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The author of this book has had a long experience in 
 the ministry of the gospel. As he looks back to the 
 time when he entered on that ministry, and inquires of 
 himself what progress he has made in the knowledge of 
 the gospel, he finds that in nothing has the habit of his 
 mind undergone a greater change, than in his sense of 
 the freedom with which he may offer salvation to men 
 in the name of Christ. Year after year, without be- 
 coming conscious of any deviation from those views of 
 Christian doctrine which are commonly recognised as 
 " evangelical," he has been acquiring a more enlarged 
 and unembarrassed conception of the gospel, as opening 
 a way in which any man who will can be saved. 
 Surely, if there be any first principle in Christianity, 
 which is to be held at all hazards, and which no theo- 
 logical system or theory may be permitted to darken, it 
 is the principle that salvation from sin, and from the 
 
vi Preface, 
 
 death which is the wages of sin, is offered, frankly and 
 without equivocation, to all men. 
 
 This book, therefore, regards the beginning and pro- 
 gress of the Christian life from that point of view to 
 which the author has been brought by his experience in 
 the ministry of the gospel, as well as by his study of the 
 Scriptures. It assumes that in the case of every reader, 
 whoever he may be, the beginning of a new life is pos- 
 sible by the grace of God in Christ. It assumes that 
 every man may avail himself of all those offers and 
 promises which the gospel sets before him ; may accept 
 and appropriate the offered forgiveness of sins ; may 
 act on the assurance that God is willing to give the 
 Holy Spirit in answer to prayer ; may confidently trust 
 in Christ's presence and friendship ; may immediately 
 undertake to follow Christ, striving to Overcome his owii 
 selfish and unbelieving habits, and hoping to get the 
 victory. Therefore, it offers to the reader, not a psycho- 
 logical explanation of the change which takes place in 
 conversion, nor any metaphysical disquisition about the 
 wiU, but only some practical counsels for the beginning 
 and progress of a Christian life. If it is to do any 
 good, it must be read, not for theological speculation 
 and discussion, nor with the expectation that it will 
 produce its effect by some impression on the feelings, 
 but for the practical purpose of Christian self- culture. 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 It should not be forgotten that in this book the 
 Christian life is considered only in one aspect. The 
 Christian life is the life of one who, at the call of God, 
 under the mediation and leadership of Christ, and in 
 reliance on the promise of the Holy Spirit, has under- 
 taken to be a new creature in Christ, to be progressively 
 transformed by the renewing of his mind, to train him- 
 self in and for the service of God, and so to make the 
 most of himself as a living soul whose chief end is to 
 glorify God and enjoy him for ever. Considered in this 
 aspect, it is Christian self-culture. Considered in an- 
 other aspect, it is Christian experience; and in ^ that 
 aspect it has "often been described and analysed, with 
 careful discrimination between the genuine and the false. 
 Let not this book, because it treats only of Christian 
 self- culture, be considered as denying or doubting the 
 reality of Christian experience. Christian self-culture, 
 earnestly undertaken in reliance on the grace of God, 
 and diligently pursued, wdll involve in its progress all 
 that is essential to a full experience of the gospel as a 
 quickening and transforming power. 
 
 With these explanations the author sends forth his 
 work upon its errand, praying, and asking the prayers 
 of others, that God's blessing may attend the reading 
 of it. 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE BEGINNING. 
 
 THE DESIGN OF THIS BOOK. WHAT ARE YOU IN TOUR OWN CON- 
 SCIOUSNESS ?— YOU ARE A LIVING SOUL ; YOUR DESTINY CANNOT 
 BE COMPLETED IN THIS LIFE ; YOUR FACULTIES ARE PROOF THAT 
 YOU WERE MADE FOR A FREE AND INTELLIGENT SERVICE OF GOD ; 
 YOU ARE CAPABLE OF UNLIMITED PROGRESS. CONNEXION BET^VEEN 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE : — NOW OR NEVER YOU MUST BE 
 TRAINED FOR YOUR HEREAFTER. DIFFICULTIES AND DISADVAN- 
 TAGES : — POWER OF SIN. ENCOURAGEMENT :— OFFERS AND HOPES 
 PRESENTED IN THE GOSPEL. NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN SELF-DIS- 
 CIPLINE :~IT IS A DISCIPLINE IN DUTY, AIDED BY THE MEANS OF 
 GRACE. 
 
'^ Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I 
 will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for 
 I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your 
 souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." — Matt. xi. 
 28-30. 
 
 " Behold, now is the accepted time ; behold, now is the day of 
 salvation."— 2 Cor. vi. 2. 
 
 " It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judg- 
 ment." — Heb. IX. 27. 
 
 " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he 
 that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he 
 that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." 
 Gal. VI. 7, 8. 
 
 *^ Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one 
 receiveth the prize ? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man 
 that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they 
 do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. 1 
 therefore so run, not as uncertainly ; so fight I, not as one that 
 beateth the air." — 1 Cor. ix. 24-26. 
 
 " Exercise thyself unto godliness." — 1 Tim. iv. 7. 
 
 "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." 
 Phil. iv. 13. 
 
Kift Beginning. 
 
 TRULY religious life is often represented in 
 the Scriptures as a life of self-discipline and 
 self-culture. Viewed in this aspect, a really 
 Christian life is the life of one who, under 
 the influence of Christian views and motives, and in the 
 use of those means and helps which God has given him 
 in giving him the gospel, is striving to make the most 
 of himself for the ends for which he was created, and to 
 bring himself into the highest possible conformity to the 
 will and the image of God. Thus the apostle Paul 
 describes the Christian life, and particularly his own 
 life as a Christian man, in words and images borrowed 
 from the discipline by which the candidates for prizes 
 in the athletic games of Greece were exercised and 
 trained to their utmost capability of bodily activity and 
 power. Thus, too, he charges his friend and former 
 pupil, Timothy, ^' Exercise thyself unto godliness." In 
 other words : Train thyself, by a religious discipline, to 
 the knowledge and service of God. A man who has 
 set his heart upon winning the prize in the Olympian 
 or the Isthmian games, trains himself to that end ; he 
 
; 4^ : {''/rj I I 'fHe 'Christian Life. 
 
 goes daily into the gymnasium, to leap, to run, to wrestle, 
 to develop and cultivate the power of his muscles by 
 every sort of practice : so <' exercise thyself unto godli- 
 ness." 
 
 Reader, this book is designed to help you in begin- 
 ning and pursuing a Christian life. It is designed to 
 help you by persuasion and by friendly counsel. The 
 religion which it commends to you is not merely the 
 intellectual reception of a certain doctrinal scheme ; nor 
 is it merely an experience of excited feeling ; it is a life, 
 a thoughtful and earnest way of living, a life of self- 
 discipline. A religious life is not a life of forms, or of 
 outward proprieties and moralities ; it is the interior 
 life of a soul training itself and developing its own 
 nature aright, — a soul humbly, yet with resolute dili- 
 gence, educating its own moral and spiritual faculties 
 into conformity with truth and with God. Think, as 
 you read, that a friend is speaking to you. I wish to 
 bring home to your thoughts the reasonableness, the 
 duty, the necessity of such a life. I am to make you 
 understand, if I can, what is a truly religious life, and 
 what it is to be a religious man, religion being viewed 
 under the form of Christian self-culture. Allow me thus 
 to help you, if I can, in beginning such a life. And 
 may God help me while I write, and help you when 
 you read. 
 
 We begin, then, with this question : Have you ever 
 considered what you are ? In order to any right under- 
 standing of the subject, or any conscious interest in it, 
 
The Beginning, 
 
 you must be willing to think, and to turn your thought 
 upon yourself. You must reflect : for serious thought 
 turned inward is reflection. You must reflect on the 
 nature, the capabilities, and the future of your own 
 existence ; on your faculties of thought and will, and 
 your capacity of progress ; on the career for which you 
 were created, and to which your powers and capabilities, 
 as a living soul, are adapted. 
 
 What are you % Are you an animal merely, with 
 some few faculties that give you the advantage over 
 other animals ; while they, in their turn, have in some 
 other respects the advantage over you % If so, eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow you die. But you start back from 
 such a conclusion : you know that you difl"er from the 
 noblest of brutes, not in degree, not by those incidents 
 and circumstances merely that constitute variety, but in 
 kind. These limbs and organs of yours, this material 
 body and its parts and members, are yours, indeed ; but 
 they are not yourself. You are, in your own conscious- 
 ness, a living spirit, reasonable, voluntary, determining 
 your own course and character. Inferior creatures are 
 bound by laws which they know not, and cannot resist ; 
 but you are bound by laws which speak through your 
 reason to your voluntary nature, and which you resist or 
 obey at your option. You can perceive and grasp truth ; 
 not merely the phenomena that strike your senses as they 
 strike the senses of inferior creatures, — but truth. You 
 can perceive not merely colours, forms, and distances, as 
 inferior creatures see them, but beauty and grandeur 
 
The Christian Life, 
 
 spread like a veil of light over all the creation of God. 
 You can perceive not merely pleasure and pain, conse- 
 quent in various degrees on various acts ; but obligation, 
 duty, the right and the wrong, with the beauty of the 
 one and the hateful ness of the other. Your human 
 body — the frail thing that eats, drinks, sleeps, is weary 
 and sick, decays and is resolved into dust — how small a 
 part is it of yourself ! Yoii^ in your consciousness and 
 personality, are something else than the organization 
 through which you are in communication with material 
 nature. Your being is that which thinks, reasons, 
 knows, inquires, believes, remembers, imagines, loves, 
 hates, hopes, fears, determines, reflects, approves, con- 
 demns, rejoices, repents. You are a living spirit, created 
 in the likeness of God, created for freedom and respon- 
 sibility. Have you ever considered, thoughtfully, what 
 you are % 
 
 Think again. Can such an existence as yours accom- 
 plish all its destiny in this short course of mortal life % 
 You were created for more than this. There was an 
 hour when you began to be ; but when will you cease 
 to be % Death, indeed, is at hand ; there will soon be 
 a great change in your condition, and none can adequately 
 tell you what that change will be ; but the instinct of 
 immortality within you constrains you to look forth into 
 the infinite future with expectation that will not be 
 suppressed. This mortal life, under this material orga- 
 nization, is only the beginning of your history, a history 
 that will have no end. Have you ever thought of this ? 
 
The Beginning, 
 
 Think of it now. Think what it is to be a living soul, 
 rational, responsible, immortal. 
 
 Let your soul thus rouse itself from its unreflective 
 habit to the consciousness of what you are, and another 
 view will open to your thoughts. For what were you 
 made with these capabilities and faculties % The world 
 is full of life, and full of the manifested power and skill 
 and love of its Creator ; but, of all the living creatures 
 that you see, you only, and your fellow-men, are capable of 
 knowing God. Other creatures do his will ignorantly and 
 involuntarily ; you are capable of rendering to him, or of 
 withholding from him, an intelligent and willing service. 
 This, then, is what you were made for, — to know God, 
 to behold with adoring acknowledgment his manifestations 
 of himself, to commune with him in thought and action, 
 to be his willing servant and his loving child, and to be 
 blessed in his service and his love. If you were made 
 for this, as your consciousness assures you that you were, 
 then to this you must be trained, to this your character 
 must be formed, or you miss the " end and aim " for 
 which you came into existence. 
 
 Think also (for just here it is natural for you to think 
 of it) what your progress may be in the future. Take 
 away the limits which are inseparable from the present 
 condition of the soul, bounded on every side by the 
 grossness and the frailty of this material organization, 
 and what limit can be set to the progress which you 
 shall hereafter make in knowledge, in the intensity of 
 love or hate, and in the capacity of blessedness or 
 
The Christian Life, 
 
 wretchedness % With what a treasure, then, are you 
 embarked upon the sea of existence ; and how important 
 is it that your soul be so trained and disciplined as to 
 secure this infinite treasure ! 
 
 Having led you to these reflections on your own 
 nature, with its marvellous powers and capabilities, I 
 now propose another question : Have yon ever considered, 
 with due tlioughtfulnesSj what connexion there may he 
 between your present life and your life hereafter ? 
 Think how far your soul's well-being after death may 
 be dependent on what your soul shall have become 
 before death. 
 
 I am not asking you to occupy your mind with useless 
 conjectures, or with inferences from doubtful speculations. 
 We have a sure word of prophecy. God has given us 
 intelligible certainties. Now is the accepted time. 
 After death is the judgment. Every one shall receive 
 according to that he hath done in the body. You are 
 now sowing that of which you will reap the infinite 
 harvest hereafter ; and what a man soweth that shall 
 he also reap ; he that soweth to the flesh shall of 
 the flesh reap corruption, and he that soweth to the 
 Spirit shall of fhe Spirit reap life everlasting. This life 
 is your probation. All is involved in the result of it. 
 The character which your soul shall bear in the sight of 
 God, at your departure from this mortal life, will deter- 
 mine your course and destiny in the immortal life to 
 come. Now or never your soul must be formed, by fit 
 culture, for the love and service of God, as its chief end 
 
The Beginning. 
 
 and its immortal blessedness. Let this opportunity be 
 wasted, let your soul pass through this period of proba- 
 tion uneducated, undisciplined in God's service, unfitted 
 for that high career to which its faculties and its capacities 
 were destined, and when, in all the cycles of eternity, 
 will you find one opportunity to repair the infinite waste ? 
 
 And here another question presents itself : Have you 
 ever considered how much has been already lost, and 
 under what difficulties and disadvantages the training 
 of your sold, for its immortal life of duty and of 
 blessedness, must be begun ? The fact of your apostasy 
 from God, and of the eflfects which sin has already pro- 
 duced upon your spiritual nature, is a most material 
 fact in the problem of that moral and spiritual self- 
 culture to which you are invited. 
 
 In the education of your soul for the immortal love 
 and service of God, you have not only everything to 
 learn, but everything to unlearn. You must cease to 
 do evil, or you cannot learn to do well ; and this neces- 
 sity of ceasing to do evil is what makes the task of 
 learning to do well so difficulty You are under the 
 power of habits, long-established and confirmed, which 
 it must be the first effort of a religious self-discipline to 
 break up and dislodge. From your earliest remem- 
 brance of yourself you have been governed, consciously 
 or unconsciously, by propensities which must be resisted 
 and subdued. This is not a trivial accident w^hich has 
 befallen you, and which the better forces of your nature 
 must be expected to throw off by their spontaneous 
 
lo The Christimi Life. 
 
 working. You know there is nothing trivial or tran- 
 sient in the corruption which has taken hold of your 
 spiritual nature, and has degraded you so far below 
 what you ought to be, and so far below what you 
 must yet become, unless your soul is wrecked for 
 ever. Our present purpose does not require us to enter 
 into any speculative explanations of the fact ; the fact 
 itself is what concerns us now. The self-discipline to 
 which you are invited is not merely to train the powers, 
 and to unfold and direct the pure susceptibilities of an 
 unfallen spirit ; — it is a remedial discipline, dealing 
 with an apostate soul. It is a discipline designed and 
 conducted for the recovery of a sinful soul ; aiming to 
 humble it, to renew it, to purify it, to set it free from 
 its bondage, to transform it into the resemblance of 
 God's holiness, and thus to make it fit for the inherit- 
 ance of the saints in light. Or rather, it is the life- 
 long, labour of such a soul, led by the grace of God to 
 struggle for its own deliverance, to work out its own 
 salvation with fear and trembling, to purify itself by 
 obeying the truth through the Spirit, to exercise itself 
 unto godliness. .How important is it then to you, that 
 this remedial discipline be undertaken without delay, 
 and be maintained with ceaseless diligence to the end ! 
 
 Here the question comes : /s there any possihility, 
 any reasonable hope of success in such an atteinpt ? In 
 answer to this question, I commend to your attention 
 and your confidence the grace of God that is ofi"ered in 
 the gospel. 
 
The Beginning. 1 1 
 
 The gospel of Christ does not merely propose the re- 
 ward of eternal blessedness to those who are worthy of 
 such an inheritance ; its grace is far ampler and richer 
 than that. Eead what the Saviour says : " If ye con- 
 tinue in my words, then are ye my disciples indeed, and 
 ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
 free." Hear him inviting you : " Come to me, all ye 
 that labour and are heavy laden ; take my yoke upon 
 you, and learn of me." The gospel is rich with pro- 
 mises like these, by which we may escape the corrup- 
 tion that is in the world, and may be made partakers of 
 the divine nature (2 Pet. i. 4). It reveals not only 
 heaven for the holy, but also (what is much more per- 
 tinent to our case) pardon for the guilty. It reveals not 
 only God the Judge of all, but also Jesus the Mediator 
 of the new covenant. Nor is this all, for, with the 
 atoning Saviour, it also reveals and ofi'ers a renewing 
 Spirit. To the believer in Christ, not only is there no 
 more condemnation (Rom. viii. 1), but old things are 
 passed away and all things are become new (2 Cor. 
 vi. 1 7) ; and notwithstanding that corruption of his 
 nature which sin has caused, he may learn to say with 
 humble assurance, " I can do all things through Christ 
 which strengtheneth me." 
 
 ^To you, then, the assurance is offered, that if you 
 will come to God in Christ for pardon and grace ) if 
 you will come, humbling yourself and repenting and 
 asking for the Holy Spirit, you may undertake this 
 course of self-discipline for immortal holiness with a 
 
The Christian Life. 
 
 confident hope of success. The gospel, with all its 
 grace, is set before you expressly for this end, that you 
 may be persuaded and enabled and encouraged to exer- 
 cise yourself now in the service of God, and so to train 
 yourself for that higher and perfect service of God, which 
 will employ for ever the perfected spirits of the just. 
 
 I will now presume that you are ready to ask for 
 yourself, What is the self -discipline to which I am in- 
 vited ? What are the processes and methods, what the 
 means and helps, of this spiritual self-training ] 
 
 Understand, then, that the discipline to which you 
 are summoned is the discipline of duty, of voluntary 
 subjection to truth, of holiness, of the service of God. 
 Just that service of God to which you are called in this 
 world, whatever your particular field of service may be, 
 as determined by your place and your relations in society ; 
 that service, whatever it may be, which the providence 
 of God allots to you, — a service which you are to per- 
 form in the face of innumerable temptations, and which 
 involves a perpetual conflict with whatever is perverse 
 in your own habits and inclinations ; that service of 
 God, in your place and calling, is itself the most mate- 
 rial part of the discipline by which you are to be trained 
 for a higher ministry hereafter. By all those daily duties, 
 then, and all those daily cares, in which God would have 
 you serve Him and your fellow-men, you are to be trained 
 and exercised unto godliness. He who, whether he eats 
 or drinks, or whatever he does, strives to do all to the 
 glory of God ; he who, in any sphere of toil, from the 
 
The Beginning, 
 
 loftiest to the lowliest, learns to do all things heartily 
 to the Lord and not to men, is training himself effec- 
 tually for immortal virtue. 
 
 Subsidiary to this discipline of daily duty, there are 
 the various means of grace, — the means by which the 
 soul is led and assisted in the performance of duty and 
 in the culture of holy aft'ections and habits. You know 
 what these means of grace are. There is prayer, by 
 which the soul comes into immediate communion with 
 God, and receives immediately from him a quickening 
 influence. By prayer you can exercise yourself to godli- 
 ness. There is the religious duty of reflection in order 
 to self-knowledge ; the devotional exercise of communing 
 with your own heart, and inquiring into your own habits 
 and condition before God, so that by growing more and 
 more acquainted with yourself, you may grow in humility 
 and penitence. Tn this way, you are to exercise yourself 
 to godliness. There is also the exercise of an habitual 
 watchfulness against temptation, — the habit of observ- 
 ing one's own weaknesses and spiritual dangers, and of 
 keeping guard against them. By this you are to disci- 
 pline and train your soul till you are always on your 
 guard, incapable of a surprise. Need I insist on the 
 right use of times and seasons, and of all special oppor- 
 tunities for cultivating those afl'ections in which the soul 
 has fellowship with God % Whenever anything occurs 
 that quickens your religious sensibilities — anything that 
 brings God, eternity, heaven, near to your thoughts and 
 feelings, — then is a time in which, if you will use the 
 
14 The Christian Life. 
 
 opportunity aright, you may effectually discipline your 
 soul to godliness. And with all these, yet distinct from 
 them all, there is that special intercourse with God 
 which you may have in the devout and teachable study 
 of his Word ; there is the house of God ; there is the ^ 
 fellowship of those who love God, and who walk by 
 faith. In the use of all these means of grace, you are 
 to train yourself to the blessedness of serving God in 
 love for ever. 
 
 Such is the discipline of your own spiritual faculties 
 and capabilities to which religion calls you. Such are 
 the modes and processes by which you are to exercise 
 yourself to godliness. Think now what sort of a dis- 
 cipline this is. Is it anything servile % Is there any 
 degradation in being subject to it ? Is there anything 
 in it that you need be afraid of it % Is it anything 
 else than the highest and noblest culture of your spiri- 
 tual and immortal nature % To be without such dis- 
 cipline, to be left under the power of the habits and 
 tendencies which this discipline proposes to resist and 
 overcome, that is bondage, that is degradation, that is 
 the .soul's wretchedness and ruin. The great author 
 and finisher of this discipline, the Divine Revealer of 
 its promises and hopes, will make you free. " Come 
 unto me," he says, " all ye that labour and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon 
 you, and learn of me : for I am meek and lowly in 
 heart ; and ye shall find rest to your souls. For my 
 yoke is easy, and my burden is light." 
 
The Beginning. 1 5 
 
 Keader ! have you entered upon this course of self- 
 discipline, under the guidance of Christ % Have you, 
 reflecting on the nature, the capacities, and the destiny 
 of your own soul, realizing the relations which connect 
 this transient life wdth the infinite hereafter, remember- 
 ing the fact of your apostasy and alienation from God, 
 and trusting in the offered grace of the Gospel, — begun 
 with earnest and resolute purpose to exercise yourself to 
 godliness % Are you daily practising this self- discipline, 
 watchfully, diligently, and in the believing spirit of 
 dependence on Christ % 
 
 If you have not yefc begun, begin to-day. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 WHEN TO BEGIN. 
 
 A COMMON EXCUSE. MISTAKES ABOUT CONVERSION. THE MIS- 
 TAKE OF THINKING THAT YOU MUST MAKE SOME PREPARATION. 
 THE MISTAKE OF THINKING THAT YOU MUST NOT TRUST IN CHRIST 
 TILL YOU FEEL YOU HAVE BEEN CONVERTED. THE MISTAKE OF 
 THINKING THAT AFTER CONVERSION EVERYTHING WILL BE EASY. 
 HOW THE CHRISTIAN LIFE REALLY BEGINS. WILL YOU MAKE THIS 
 BEGINNING NOW ? 
 
'' Except a man be born again, lie cannot see tli5 kingdom of 
 God."— John hi. 3. 
 
 " Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to me, 
 except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him. . . . Every man 
 therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh 
 imto me."— John vi. 43-45. 
 
 " If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." — 2 Con. v. 17. 
 
 " This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that 
 Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."—! Tim. i. 15. 
 
 " The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all 
 men, teaching us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we 
 should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world ; 
 looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the 
 great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ ; who gave himself for us, 
 that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself 
 a peculiar people, zealous of good works." — Tit. ii. 11-14. 
 
 " Having therefore these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from 
 all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear 
 of God."— 2 CoE. VII. 1. 
 
tn to Begin. 
 
 T has been shown that the Gospel invites you 
 to a life of moral and spiritual self-dis- 
 cipline in preparation for the life to come. 
 But you perhaps excuse yourself by saying 
 that a Christian life must begin with being born again. 
 You tell me, perhaps, that all counsels and persuasions 
 in reference to a Christian life are properly addressed to 
 the converted, and that you, inasmuch as you have had 
 no experience of the great change in which a Christian 
 life begins, have no present concern in the subject which 
 I am commending to your attention. 
 
 Let us then look this difficulty fairly in the face, and 
 see what becomes of your excuse. I would by no 
 means intimate that there is no difficulty in your way, 
 nor that your conversion from a thoughtless and selfish 
 life to a life of humble and earnest preparation for 
 eternity is dependent simply on your sovereign volition. 
 . I would by no means lessen your sense of your depend- 
 ence on God for those merciful influences of his under 
 which so great a change in you must be effected. But 
 may it not be that you have taken up some erroneous 
 
20 The Christiaji Life, 
 
 conception of what that change is which the Scriptures 
 call being born again % May it not be that if you will 
 deliberately and fairly reconsider what the gospel re- 
 quires- of you and what it offers you, and will cease to 
 resist the influences which at this moment are working 
 within you and moving you to a decision, you will see 
 and feel the fallacy of your excuse % It may help you 
 to understand yourself and the nature and extent of 
 your responsibility for your own wellbeing, if I succeed 
 in explaining to you some of the common mistakes 
 about conversion. Let us inquire a little into your 
 theory about the beginning of a Christian life. 
 
 Perhaps you have fallen into the habit of supposing 
 that your conversion to Christ and your privilege of 
 appropriating as your own the offers and promises which 
 are set before you in his name, must be the result of 
 some preparatory work on your part. I shall not argue 
 with you on this point. What more need I say than 
 that such a habit of mind contradicts and excludes the 
 first right conception of the gospel % Why do you 
 need Christ % Your need is that without him you are 
 helpless. The simplest and most comprehensive state- 
 ment of the gospel is that " Christ Jesus came into the 
 world to save sinners." If you were now just what 
 Saul of Tarsus was when he was on his way from Jeru- 
 salem to Damascus, the first thing for you to do, at the 
 moment of coming to yourself, would be, not a prepara- 
 tion for conversion, but conversion itself, not a getting 
 yourself ready for coming to Christ, but an actual turn- 
 
When to Begin, 2 1 
 
 ing to Christ, with that question of a submissive and 
 confiding soul, " Lord, what wilt thou have nie to do ?" 
 If you were at this hour the guiltiest of men in the 
 sight of God, the first thing for you to do would be, not 
 to establish a new character as a preparation for trust- 
 ing in Christ, but to trust in Christ in order to your 
 becoming a new creature. Remember what the true 
 idea of the gospel is. It is God's way of saving men 
 from their sins. It is God's revealed method of turn- 
 ing men to himself, and of training them in this world 
 for immortal activity and blessedness in the world to 
 come. 
 
 Just here another mistake sometimes occurs to hinder 
 the beginning of the Christian life. Perhaps you are 
 in the habit of thinking that the consciousness of a 
 great change wrought within you by the power of God 
 must precede your act of trusting in Christ. Some 
 such theory of conversion is sometimes deduced, indis- 
 tinctly, or even unconsciously, from the necessity of 
 being born again. The promises and hopes of the 
 gospel, it is said, are only for those who have been 
 born again, and not for the unregenerate or uncon- 
 verted. " The work of saving me from my sins," it is 
 said, " is God's work and not mine ; how then am I to 
 begin unless I am first assured that God has begun his 
 saving work within me ; how can I claim and appropriate 
 the Christian hope of emancipation from sin, and of 
 victory over it ; how can I enter upon the Christian life 
 of self-discipline for immortal holiness, unless I am con- 
 
2 2 The Christian Life, 
 
 scious in some way that God has called me, and that I 
 am born again % " 
 
 The answer to all this is that you are mistaken in 
 your theory of how God works in renewing and saving 
 men. If you will suffer yourself to be taught by the 
 Holy Scriptures, you will find- that they give no support 
 to such a theory. Where or how do the Scriptures 
 teach that you must be born again before you accept 
 the pardon and the grace which God is offering you % 
 They teach you, indeed, that " if any man be in Christ 
 he is a new creature ;" but they do not teach that any 
 man becomes a new creature while he is out of Christ, 
 still less that his being in Christ is because he became 
 a new creature while he was yet out of Christ. They 
 teach, indeed, that " except a man be born again, he 
 cannot see the kingdom of God;" but they do not 
 teach that any man is born again, or can be, hefore he 
 accepts the gospel as his hope, and trusts in Christ as 
 the power that is to save him, still less that he must 
 have the consciousness that he is born again before he 
 can believe in the Saviour of sinners. Christ, indeed, 
 teaches you, " No man can come to me, except the 
 Father, who hath sent me, draw him ; " but he does 
 not teach you that the Father is not at this moment 
 drawing you, nor that you must wait for any new con- 
 sciousness before you accept the hopes and promises 
 which the gospel offers. On the contrary, the Scrip- 
 tures are full of a very opposite sort of doctrine, inviting 
 you and all men to be saved, warning you against the 
 
' When to Begin, 23 
 
 peril of neglecting so great salvation, and urging you to 
 work out your salvation, for the reason that it is God 
 who is working in you to will and to do. 
 
 This error, in regard to the beginning of the Christian 
 life, is closely related to another. Perhaps your theory 
 supposes not only that the consciousness of a great 
 change wrought within you by the power of God must 
 go before, instead of following, your personal confi- 
 dence in Christ as a Saviour for you, but also that the 
 change which you are waiting for will take away the 
 necessity of further effort and conflict in the Christian 
 life. Perhaps the theory which you have indistinctly 
 and unthinkingly adopted, concerning the work of God 
 in drawing you to Christ and making you a new crea- 
 ture, implies that, after you have once passed through 
 that change, your progress in the new life will be, not 
 by thoughtful and resolute diligence, — not by struggles 
 against temptation and the force of old habits, — not by 
 intelligent aspiration and strenuous endeavour, — but by 
 mere propensity, like the propensity to selfishness and 
 unbelief to which you have heretofore yielded the domi- 
 nion over your soul. I apprehend that few mistakes in 
 regard to the change at the beginning of a Christian life 
 are more common than this among those who, having 
 been taught in some form of sound words the great and 
 true doctrine of regeneration and sanctification by the 
 grace of God, have ac(;epted that doctrine in a merely 
 traditionary way, instead of deriving it directly from the 
 Scriptures. They find that now they are worldly, selfish, 
 
24 The Christian Life. 
 
 and thoughtless, without effort ; that they are carried 
 along by mere propensity ; that they are borne, as it 
 were, upon a mighty current ; and they heedlessly pre- 
 sume that, if ever they are born again, the current will 
 be reversed, as in a change of tide ; the propensity will 
 incline the other way, as the inclination of the scale- 
 beam changes with the shifting of the weights ; and that 
 a life of faith and prayer and holy love will be as easy 
 as a worldly life now is. Surely I need not remind any 
 thoughtful soul how contrary all this is to the whole 
 course of God's teaching in his recorded Word. You 
 know well enough, if you will remember what you know, 
 that the beginning of a Christian life — the change which 
 takes place in conversion when God draws the soid to 
 Christ — the change which takes place when the man is 
 born again, and becomes a citizen in the kingdom of 
 God, — is not after such a fashion. The being born again, 
 the coming to Christ, the conversion of the soul to God, 
 the becoming a new creature, the great transition from 
 death in trespasses and sins to a new and spiritual life, — 
 is the beginning of a life-long conflict with inward pro- 
 pensities, as well as with outward temptations. 
 
 Think, then, what that life is to which the gospel 
 invites you, and you will have a clearer knowledge of 
 what the beginning of that life must be. All the words 
 and images by which the greatness of that change is 
 represented to you, or by which God's mercy in bringing 
 that change to pass is commended to your humble and 
 grateful adoration, will become alike intelligible and im- 
 
When to Begin. 25 
 
 pressive, when you remember distinctly what sort of a 
 life it is to which the gospel calls you. Just remember 
 that the gospel calls you to a life of humble, praying, 
 and constant self- discipline, under the guidance of God's 
 Word and with his promised help, preparing you for 
 immortal well-doing and well-being in the life to come ; 
 and you will hardly fail to see what the beginning of 
 such a life must be. Kemember that such a life must 
 needs be a life of free obedience to the will of God, and 
 of earnest self-denial for the sake of pleasing him ; a life 
 of conflict with temptation, and of resolute watchfulness ; 
 a life of trusting dependence on Christ, and of habitual 
 looking for help in time of need ; a life of practical love 
 to God, testified by the doing of his will, and of prac- 
 tical love to men, testified by doing good ; a life, there- 
 fore, of progress, by God's blessing on your diligence in 
 the face of obstacles, and under the consciousness of 
 infirmity. Can you not see, with the offers and pro- 
 mises of the gospel before you, what you are to do, and 
 what is wanting in your case to the commencement of 
 such a life % 
 
 Just this is wanting in your case : not some prepara- 
 tion for beginning such a life, but simply a beginning ; 
 not some preparation that shall make it possible for you 
 to lay hold on the hope set before you, or that shall make 
 it right for you to do so, but simply that you accept the 
 mercy and help which God offers you. That new life 
 to which Christ calls you begins with believing that he 
 calls you. It begins with a practical confidence in that 
 
26 The Christian Life, 
 
 way of being saved which the gospel opens before you. 
 It begins with simply trusting in that ". faithful saying, 
 and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came 
 into the world to save sinners," — ^just such sinners as 
 you are. It begins, therefore, with what we call coming 
 to Christ ; that is, with the act of accepting him, lean- 
 ing upon him, trusting in him that he is and will be 
 all that the gospel testifies concerning him. Christ has 
 come to you, and is waiting before you, as a Saviour 
 from sin by expiation and free forgiveness. You can do 
 nothing for yourself, nor can he do anything more for 
 you, unless you trust in him. He has come to you, and 
 is waiting before you as a teacher and guide ; and his 
 promise is, that he will be with you always in the pre- 
 sence of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Do you not see, then, what it is to begin that life to 
 which the gospel is inviting you % Do you not see 
 that while you wait for some preparation, which you 
 mistakenly call conversion, or which you hope to achieve 
 by your own endeavours, while you hesitate about com- 
 mitting yourself, just as you are, to the divine offer of 
 salvation just as you find that oflfer in the gospel, you 
 are really "neglecting the great salvation," and are 
 resisting the Holy Spirit % Do you not see that there 
 is, and can be, no other way for you to begin than by 
 trusting God's "exceeding great and precious promises " 
 of forgiveness, of help in the conflict with sin, and of 
 final victory and deliverance % Such a beginning of the 
 Christian life %8 conversion. This is what we mean 
 
When to Begin, 2 7 
 
 when we talk of coming to Christ, and this is what 
 Christ himself means when he bids you come to him. 
 He who thus comes to Christ is thenceforth " in Christ," 
 and is therefore "a new creature." The question is 
 before you, whether you will commit yourself frankly to 
 the grace of God in Christ, and in that confidence under- 
 take, with. full purpose of heart, the sublime work of 
 self-discipline for an immortal life of blessedness in the 
 love and service of God. 
 
 You begin, when you " flee for refuge to lay hold upon 
 the hope set before you." You begin, when your heart 
 yields to the force of that argument : " Having therefore 
 these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness 
 of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of 
 God." 
 
 Have you made that beginning % If you have not, 
 will you begin to-day ] Come, then, for there is no 
 real hindrance. Come, without waiting. Now let the 
 blessed covenant, which God in Christ offers to make 
 with you, be established for ever. You are alone with 
 God ; kneel before him, and say, not with your lips 
 only, but with all your heart : — 
 
 " God be merciful to me a sinner ! God, most 
 holy, thou hast been merciful to me. Thou hast met 
 me a great way off, and hast called me to return and be 
 at peace with thee. Behold what manner of love the 
 Father hath bestowed on me, that I should be numbered 
 with the sons of God ! Lord, I believe ; help Thou 
 mine unbelief ! Needy and guilty as I am, I come to 
 
2 8 The Christian Life. 
 
 thy mercy-seat, that I may take the offered mercy, and 
 may find grace to help in time of need. I come to lay 
 hold on the hope set before me. God, who art in 
 Christ, reconciling the world to thyself, I come to thee ! 
 Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world, 
 be thou in me the hope of glory ! To whom can I go 
 but to thee, for thou only hast the words . of eternal 
 life. Let me sit at thy feet henceforth, receiving and 
 obeying all thy words, and trusting in thy power to 
 save. Henceforth be my life a continued conflict with 
 my own infirmities, with the temptations that surround 
 me, with the evil that dwells within me. God, that 
 forgivest my sins, give me the victory ! Let it be my 
 experience, as it is now my humble confidence, that I 
 can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me ! 
 Thou who art not willing that any should perish, and 
 who givest the Holy Spirit to them that ask thee, here 
 am I in my unvvorthiness and helplessness ; I present 
 myself a living sacrifice to thee. Trusting in thy offers 
 and promises, I covenant with thee that I will be no 
 more conformed to this world, and that I will give all 
 diligence to be transformed by the renewing of my mind, 
 and so to prove in my experience what is thy good and 
 perfect and acceptable will that leads me to repentance. 
 Work thou in me of thy good pleasure, while I work 
 out my salvation with fear and trembling ! " 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS AS RELATED TO 
 A RELIGIOUS LIFE. 
 
 RELIGION WITHOUT GOODNESS. A TRULY CHRISTIAN MAN IS THE 
 BETTER FOR HIS RELIGION. MORE WORTHY OF LOVE AND CONFI- 
 DENCE IN ALL THE RELATIONS OP SOCIETY. THE CULTURE OF THE 
 SECULAR VIRTUES IS ONE PART OF THE CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 
 HOW THESE VIRTUES ARE TO BE CULTIVATED. DIFFERENCE IN 
 THIS RESPECT BETWEEN THE BELIEVER IN CHRIST AND THE UN- 
 BELIEVER. 
 
" Provide things honest in the sight of all men." —Rom. xii. 17- 
 '' Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, 
 whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatso- 
 ever tilings are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if 
 there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these 
 things."— Phil. iv. 8. 
 

 
 
 
 ^m/wj^y^ 
 
 W^ 
 
 M^^Mlft',^ 
 
 ijiJl^ 
 
 ^jp^^ 
 
 
 
 cJl^wBil 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 HMMfiiiWwH 
 
 Jntegrtta ^^^^ ^mtalileness as relateti to a 
 Religious Htfe. 
 
 |TEANGELY enough, a religious life is some- 
 times supposed to be quite reconcilable with 
 a most disagreeable deficiency of those 
 social and secular virtues which may exist 
 without the inspiration of Christian faith. Doubtless 
 those men wiio think that mere good-nature, or the 
 graceful play and impulse of natural affections, or the 
 merely secular morality which makes an agreeable 
 neighbour and a wholesome member of society, is an 
 all-sufficient substitute for religion, fall into a fatal 
 error. But, on the other hand, those who make religion 
 an all-sufficient . substitute for the many estimable and 
 amiable qualities of which an unregenerate man is 
 capable, and who therefore undertake to be religious 
 men without undertaking to be good men, are equally 
 mistaken. There is no religious delusion more gross 
 than that of men who expect to be saved by a religious- 
 ness which cares nothing for the things w^hich are 
 '^ honest," estimable, or becoming " in the sight of 
 all men." 
 
32 Tfie Christian Life. 
 
 No reader of the Scriptures can fail to observe how 
 often the apostles, in their letters to " saints and faith- 
 ful brethren in Christ Jesus," urge them to cultivate 
 those ordinary human virtues which the moral sense of 
 all men honours, and of which there may be beautiful 
 examples among men who know nothing of Christ, or 
 who, having heard of Christ, do not believe in him. 
 The thing to be observed is, not that amenity of temper 
 and of manners, or an irreproachable morality in social 
 and civil relations, is represented as a necessary prelimi- 
 nary to the reconciliation of the soul with God, but 
 that the believer in Christ, putting on Christ's likeness 
 and exercising himself unto godliness, cannot neglect 
 these ordinary human virtues. Any man, however un- 
 amiable in his natural temper, and however great his 
 need of moral reformation in order to his being loved 
 or respected among men, may undertake to follow 
 Christ in the confiding hope that, by the grace of God, 
 he shall attain a perfect salvation ; and his undertaking 
 thus to follow Christ is just what is meant by believing 
 in Christ. But if he does thus undertake, he commits 
 himself, intelligently and with all his heart, to become 
 " a new creature ; " new in respect to whatsoever things 
 are " beautiful in the sight of all men," new in respect 
 to w^hatsoever things in human conduct are true or 
 honest, or just, or pure, or lovely, or of good report, as 
 well as in respect to spiritual exercises and experiences. 
 
 Assuming, then, that you to whom I am speaking 
 from this page have undertaken, or are in the act of 
 
Integrity and Amiadleness. 33 
 
 undertaking thus to follow Christ, I have some things 
 to say about this particular side or aspect of the Chris- 
 tian life. What I say will have^'no other purpose than 
 to help you in a life of faith and of devout and spiritual 
 self- discipline. 
 
 First, then, let this be distinctly understood : The 
 interior life of the man who follows Christ, must have 
 for one of its manifestations that character of integrity 
 and amiableness in social and civil relations which the 
 common moral sense of men instinctively honours. A 
 naturally amiable temper, a good education, and the 
 power of merely secular motives, may indeed go far to- 
 wards forming such a character ; and often a man for- 
 tunately constituted by nature, brought up under salutary 
 restraints and influences, and accustomed to cherish 
 every honourable and amiable impulse, may be greatly 
 beloved and honoured without any inward experience of 
 the gospel as a renewing power. But if religion — that 
 is, the power of the gospel applied by the Holy Spirit 
 to renew the heart in holiness — does not find the man 
 already formed to such a character, it must reform him, 
 and it will. He in whom the religion which he pro- 
 fesses to have experienced does not thus manifest itself ; 
 — he in whom the Spirit of grace and holiness does not 
 actually produce these ordinary human virtues, — lacks 
 an essential part of the character which belongs to a 
 renewed and religious man. Whatever else he may 
 have, this deficiency vitiates his pretensions and forbids 
 his hopes. He in whose outward life there is not, in 
 c 
 
34 ^>^^ Christian Life, 
 
 consequence of his religious experience, more of whatso- 
 ever things are true, — that is, who is not manifestly 
 more to be trusted and depended on in every relation, — 
 is a deceiver. He in whose outward life there is not, 
 in consequence of his following Christ, more of whatso- 
 ever things are serious and dignified, — that is, who is 
 not more sure to rise above what is trifling and low, — 
 is a deceiver. He in whose outward life there is not, 
 in consequence of his reconciliation to God, more of 
 whatsoever things are just, — that is, who is not more 
 inflexibly upright in his intercourse with men, — is a 
 deceiver. He in whose life there is not, in consequence 
 of his being born again, more of whatsoever things are 
 pure, — that is, whose words and actions do not indicate 
 a growing purity of thought and feeling, — is a deceiver. 
 He whose life does not exhibit, in consequence of the 
 work of the Holy Spirit upon his soul, more of whatso- 
 ever things are lovely, — that is, who is not more 
 amiable, more gentle, more patient, more kind, or who 
 has not more of that which wins and fixes the afl'ec- 
 tionate regard of those with whom he has to do, — is a 
 deceiver. He in whose life there is not, in consequence 
 of his emancipation from bondage to sin, more of what- 
 soever things are of good report, — that is, whose out- 
 ward life does not exhibit, on the whole, more of those 
 qualities which command the approving testimony of 
 men's moral sense, — is a deceiver. All this is too plain 
 to need any argument. 
 
 But we may take a higher and wider view of the 
 
Integrity and Amiableness. 35 
 
 connexion between the interior life of Christian faith 
 and the cultivation of these ordinary human virtues. 
 The culture of the secular and social virtues, the habitual 
 study to acquire those moral qualities which are " beauti- 
 ful in the sight of all men," and to acquire them, not 
 for the sake of the secular advantages which attend them, 
 but for their own sake, is no unimportant part of the 
 soul's self-discipline for immortality. A truly Christian 
 life, a life inspired and guided by the knowledge of 
 Christ, is the life of a redeemed soul educating and 
 training itself for God's service here, and for that 
 boundless existence to which it is destined hereafter. 
 Regarding religion in this light, we may say that the 
 conscientious cultivation of these moral qualities and 
 habits, being a part^ of religion, is a part of the soul's 
 self-discipline for immortality. 
 
 It is not to be assumed that these qualities and habits, 
 because they are in some sense a natural outgrowth of 
 the new life within, will therefore come spontaneously 
 and of course. A voluntary diligence, a conscientious 
 watchfulness of efibrt, is necessary to the formation of a 
 character that shall exhibit and illustrate all that is 
 true and dignified, and just and pure, and lovely and 
 of good report. ^' If there be any virtue, and if there 
 be any praise, tliinh on these things." If virtue itself 
 be anything more than an empty name, if the distinction 
 between that which the m.oral sense approves and praises, 
 and that which it condemns and abhors, be anything 
 more than a dream, "think on these things." Think 
 
36 The Christian Life, 1 
 
 on them ; that is, more accurately, hold them in estima- 
 tion, reckon them at their real worth. In other words, 
 seek for these traits of character ; make them your study 
 and pursuit j cultivate them as of inestimable value. 
 If you would be fully qualified for the service of God in 
 this life, if you would be prepared for that higher career 
 of service to which he calls you in the life to come, 
 cultivate these virtues. 
 
 But you ask, perhaps, what connexion is there 
 between the culture of these secular virtues, and of these 
 affections that have their sphere and being only in the 
 present life, and the discipline of my soul for the higher 
 career of its immortality % So have I known a thought- 
 less boy refusing to believe that the discipline and 
 instruction of the school had any connexion with his 
 being prepared for the career which he was destined to run 
 in the years of his manhood. The Author of our im- 
 mortal nature has jjlaced us here for a while, in his own 
 wisdom, and in the prosecution of the ends for which he 
 gave us being ; and here, in the brief span of life, we 
 must be educated for an immortal career of holiness, or 
 else we must go to our eternity, at the end, unfitted, 
 and with an account to give of life misspent, and blessed 
 opportunities and privileges abused. Of the life to come 
 we know little beyond the fact that it is, and that its 
 course, whether of endless and joyful advancement in 
 purity, love, and blessedness, or of endless darkness and 
 despair, is to be determined by the results of this pre- 
 paratory stage of being. But of this present life, we 
 
integrity a7id A miableness. 3 7 
 
 know that, in one way or another, all the elements and 
 conditions of it are ordered and combined by infinite 
 wisdom, with reference to that life to come. We know 
 that, however duty here may differ in its details from 
 duty hereafter, these duties here, all of them — the duties 
 which grow out of relations soon to be dissolved, the 
 duties which have respect to interests transient in their 
 nature — are dtiiies not less really than the duties which 
 have respect immediately and exclusively to God, and 
 which grow directly out of our relations to him ; and 
 that, if performed as duties, they may be the best of all 
 methods for disciplining the soul, and training it into 
 fitness for the performance of higher, yet analogous and 
 kindred duties, in eternity. For example : the relation 
 of property or possession may not exist hereafter in any 
 form in which we can now conceive of it ; but how easy 
 is it to understand that the duties growing out of this 
 relation here, disciplining the soul to justice^ to self- 
 denial, to industry, to beneficence, may be essential as 
 a preparatory discipline for the exercise of the same 
 virtues in duties and relations now unknown and un con- 
 conceived. For another example : the daily household 
 duties that press upon us, in the homely and humble 
 form of care and toil for bodily support and comfort — 
 the father and mother feeding the children, clothing 
 them, guarding them from danger, ministering to them 
 in sickness, — may be quite unknown hereafter. We may 
 even imagine that, among the members of one family on 
 earth, there will be in eternity no mutual dependence, 
 
o 
 
 8 The Christian Life, 
 
 no relation of peculiar duties and affections ; but who 
 cannot see that, even in such a case, the love, the patience, 
 the gentleness, the confidence, and the gratitude, which 
 are learned, or ought to be learned in the family, and in 
 the performance of the humblest family labour, may be 
 of incalculable importance as a part of the soul's educa- 
 tion for the exercise of the same virtues in relations of 
 which we have now no conception, but to which our 
 approaching change will introduce us % 
 
 Eem ember, then, that the devout and habitual culture 
 of all these secular virtues, domestic, social, and civil, is 
 essential to the soul's self-discipline for the immortal 
 life to come. 
 
 Here we come to a view still more practical. How 
 is such a character to be formed and cultivated % How 
 may I promote in myself the growth of whatever in 
 human affection and conduct is true, and whatever is 
 noble, and whatever is just, and whatever is pure, and 
 whatever is amiable and attractive, and whatever is of 
 good report % The answer to this question divides itself 
 into two parts, neither of which is complete by itself. 
 
 First, the character in question may be cultivated by 
 cultivating the constitutional sensibilities on which it 
 depends. These sensibilities are natural to all men, not 
 indeed in the same degree, but in various degrees \ and 
 in all men they may be cultivated, or they may be sup- 
 pressed. There is in all men, for example, a natural 
 sensibility to whatsoever things are true, a sensibility 
 which is the foundation of the virtue of mutual fidelity 
 
Integrity and Amiableness. 
 
 amoug men. There is a sensibility in your nature 
 prompting you to fulfil your engagements. Whatever 
 you know that your dependants, your friends, your 
 fellow- men in whatever relation, may reasonably expect 
 of you, that the sensibility I speak of prompts you to 
 do. The sensibility may be stronger in you, naturally, 
 than it is in some men ; it may be weaker than it is in 
 some other men ; but, in one degree or another, it is an 
 element of your constitution, and of the constitution of 
 every human being. This sensibility may be cultivated 
 and developed, till it shall move as with the precision 
 and force of an instinct ; and, on the other hand, it may 
 be resisted, kept under, and suppressed, till you shall 
 become almost unconscious of it. In like manner (to 
 take another example) you are so constituted by the 
 Author of your nature that you feel yourself moved — 
 not irresistibly impelled, but moved — to whatsoever 
 things are amiable, kind, and winning. All men have 
 naturally the same feeling, not in the same degree, but 
 in various degrees, according to the individual peculiarities 
 with which they are born. In you, in all men, this 
 sensibility may be cultivated and increased, or may be 
 stifled and suppressed. 
 
 These sensibilities are suppressed, subdued, and in a 
 measure extinguished, by being resisted and counteracted. 
 No fact in the natural history of the human mind is 
 more familiarly known than this. Every natural sen- 
 sibility may be gradually extinguished by resistance and 
 by disuse. The robber, at first, struggled against his 
 
40 The Christian Life. 
 
 inborn sense of justice to bring himself to the crime 
 which he meditated \ but, by familiarity with crime, 
 that better sensibility, which at first revolted at the 
 thought of plundering his neighbour, grows faint and 
 ineffective. So each of the human sensibilities related 
 to these secular virtues may be deadened by habitual 
 suppression, or by the habitual indulgence of antagonist 
 passions. You may resist the impulse wdiich moves you 
 to w^hatsoever things are true ; and, by the resistance, 
 the spring from which that impulse comes is w^eakened. 
 You may refuse to act in accordance with the impulse 
 which moves you to act in accordance with whatsoever 
 things are honourable, and at each refusal that impulse 
 loses somewhat of its power. You may hold back from 
 whatsoever things are demanded by an ingenuous sense 
 of justice, or from whatsoever things are pure, or lovely, 
 or of good report ; and all those things will become, 
 gradually yet infallibly, more and more alien to your 
 nature. Just so, on the other hand, these impulses, by 
 yielding to them and bringing to their aid the power of 
 habit, may be made continually more effectual. Let 
 your thoughts be accustomed to observe, and your will 
 to honour with its free homage, the beauty of whatsoever 
 things are true, or honest, or just, or lovely, or of good 
 report ; and the sensibilities which recognise these things 
 and move you to pursue them, will become more vivid, 
 more distinct, more prompt and powerful in their 
 impulse on the soul. Think on these things. Culti- 
 vate the sense of their worth and their beauty. Let the 
 
hitegrity and A miableness. 4 1 
 
 habits of your mind be formed to obey these sensibilities ; 
 be careful to allow in yourself nothing that is unamiable, 
 ungenerous, or mean, and you will find that you are 
 training yourself to do, as if by an unconscious instinct, 
 whatsoever things are true, or dignified, or just, or pure, 
 or lovely, or of good report. 
 
 But I do not forget that I am dealing with you to 
 help you in the beginning and progress of a religious 
 life. I say then, secondly, that the secular and social 
 virtues which I am now commending to your attention, 
 cannot be cultivated in their due relation to the Chris- 
 tian life and spirit, unless the natural sensibilities which 
 prompt them are associated with higher aff'ections. These 
 sensibilities are a constituent part of that curiously- 
 wrought and complicated nature which was created in 
 the image of God. They are a portion of that nature 
 which was designed to attain its highest dignity and 
 blessedness in the conscious service of God, and in a 
 willing conformity to him. These sensibilities, therefore, 
 can have their best culture and their fairest and thriftiest 
 growth only when they have their life in a natural and 
 healthy connexion with nobler principles. If you would 
 cultivate in your own conduct, amid the temptations of 
 this world, whatsoever things are true, you must learn 
 to adore, to fear, to love in filial confidence, the God of 
 truth. If you would exhibit in your own character and 
 life whatsoever things are worthy of reverent regard, you 
 must learn to walk with God by faith, and to live in the 
 habit of a high and blessed intercourse with him. Would 
 
42 The Christian Life, 
 
 you cultivate in your soul the sense and love of justice, 
 you must find your ideal of justice in God. Would 
 you wear the image of whatsoever is pure or lovely, you 
 must sit at the feet of Jesus, and be led by him to the 
 knowledge of infinite purity and infinite love. 
 
 You see what difference there is in this respect be- 
 tween the man who has learned to trust in Christ, as a 
 Saviour from sin, and the man, however amiable or 
 generous, who is living without God in the world. The 
 latter is just what his constitutional impulses and his 
 early education have made him, and he has no expectation 
 of becoming better than he is. The other confesses to 
 himself that he is not what he ought to be ; he asks to 
 understand his errors ; he prays to be delivered even from 
 the faults of which he is unconscious ; he is watchful 
 against his own infirmities ; and, depending on the offers 
 and promises of God in the gospel, he is devoutly aspiring 
 to become like Christ, and so to be conformed to the will 
 and image of God. In his habitual thought, all secular 
 and social duties — all the duties of industry and fidelity, 
 of kindness and courtesy, of justice and of mercy — are 
 hallowed and elevated by their relation to God, to his 
 own emancipation from sin, and to eternity. By all the 
 discipline of duty in this life — by all the affections and 
 responsibilities that connect him with human society — 
 the care of a redeeming God is training him ; and he, 
 entering into God's plan, is training himself for an im- 
 mortal life of duty and of love. 
 
 Are you thus training your soul for immortality ] 
 
CHAPTEK lY. 
 
 FAITH AND MANLINESS. 
 
 WHY THE GOSPEL IS GIVEN TO YOU. ENCOURAGEMENTS TO DILI- 
 GENCE IN SELF-DISCIPLINE. FAITH WITHOUT VIRTUE— NOT NECES- 
 SARILY LICENTIOUS — MAY BE INTELLECTUAL — MAY BE SENTI- 
 MENTAL AND ESTHETIC. VIRTUE ADDED TO FAITH. HOW ? 
 
'^ Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling : for it 
 is God wliicli worketh in you, both to will and to do of his good 
 pleasure." — Phil. ii. 12, 13. 
 
 ^' Building up yourselves on your most holy faith." — Jude 20. 
 
 *' According as his divine power hath given unto us all things 
 that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of 
 him that hath called us to glory and virtue : whereby are given 
 unto us exceeding great and precious promises ; that by these ye 
 might be made partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the 
 corruption that is in the world through lust. And besides this, 
 giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue."— 2 Pet. i. 3-5. 
 
jFaitfj anl» JWanltness. 
 
 |F you are ready to accept that salvation 
 which is offered to you in the name of 
 Christ ; if you are ready to ask, not merely, 
 What shall I do to be saved from the fear- 
 ful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation 1 but 
 also. What shall I do to be saved from sin ] it will be 
 easy to lead you, by God's help, in the right way. Your 
 desire is to attain a truly and thoroughly Christian char- 
 acter ; and you have made a covenant with yourself and 
 with God that you will use all diligence to that end. 
 What I propose, therefore, is not to argue with you, nor 
 to expostulate, nor to ply you with exciting appeals to 
 sensibility, but to help you, by showing you what it is 
 which constitutes a truly and thoroughly Christian 
 character, and by w^hat means and endeavours you may 
 attain to it. 
 
 Sometimes in the Scriptures the entire Christian 
 character is summed up in a single word or phrase ; 
 such as faith, or love, or the knowledge of God, or obe- 
 dience to the truth. In that mode of speech, it seems 
 to be assumed that any one trait of holiness must of 
 
46 The Christian Life. 
 
 course involve and imply every other. In other pas- 
 sages, we have a catalogue of Christian graces, " fruits 
 of the Spirit^" the elements of character, which, in their 
 union, are Christian holiness, and which are to be sever- 
 ally cultivated by him who would be saved through 
 Christ. These two modes of speaking are by no means 
 inconsistent with each other. All the Christian graces 
 may grow naturally from one stock, and the existence of 
 any one of them, in reality and simplicity, may involve 
 the existence, in some degree, of all the rest ; and yet 
 each of these graces may need, in order to its growth 
 and its full manifestation in the life, a diligent cultiva- 
 tion on the part of the renewed and struggling soul. 
 
 I have already reminded you, more than once, of the 
 cardinal fact, that the gospel is given to you for the 
 express purpose of calling you, and helping you to be 
 saved. That fact is the reason why your salvation, from 
 first to last, depends on your believing the gospel. Your 
 believing the gospel, in the sense of accepting it and 
 trusting in it, implies that you are to avail yourself of 
 its offers. No man can really accept the gospel and 
 avail himself of it as a way of salvation from sin, who 
 does not undertake to follow Christ in newness of life. 
 His believing the gospel implies, of course, that he is to 
 build up himself on his most holy faith ; and that he is 
 to add to his faith virtue, or a manly well-doing. 
 
 All that God has done to save you — first by provid- 
 ing and proclaiming a free forgiveness through Christ, 
 and then by the promise and the gift of the Holy 
 
Faith and Manliness. 47 
 
 Spirit — encourages you, and summons you to diligence, 
 that you may make your calling and election sure. One 
 apostle says, " Work out your own salvation with fear 
 and trembling, for it is God who worketh in you." An- 
 other expands the same thought into particulars. First, 
 The divine power has enriched us with all things neces- 
 sary to spiritual life, by giving' us the knowledge of a 
 Saviour. Secondly, Christ calls us, by bringing life and 
 immortality to light \ by setting before us glory and 
 virtue as one and inseparable. Thirdly, There are given 
 to us exceeding great and precious promises, that by 
 them we, fleeing from the corruption that is in the 
 world, may become partakers of a divine nature. Look 
 at these several considerations, and think how they urge 
 you to work out your own salvation in a diligent self- 
 discipline. 
 
 Whatever pertains to life and godliness — whatever is 
 necessary to your beginning and pursuing such a life — 
 that God has given you, by giving you a knowledge of 
 Christ. He who knows Christ, knows that there is 
 pardon for sinners ; that a reconciliation and perpetual 
 friendship between his own soul and the holy God is a 
 practicable thing ; that his guilt, and all the infirmity 
 and perverseness of which he is conscious, need not hinder 
 him from coming to God in a penitent submission, nor 
 from being owned of God as a forgiven and beloved 
 child. 
 
 Christ calls you, by the glory and virtue which he sets 
 before you. Think who calls you. He who is himself 
 
48 The Ckristian Life. 
 
 " the brightness of the Father's glory." He who, in 
 your nature, compassed about with human temptations 
 like as you are, has magnified and honoured the law of 
 perfect holiness, and who thus shows you in his own per- 
 son all true glory and virtue. He calls you, not only by 
 his word of invitation, but by his example and by his 
 mediation. He calls you to a glory like his own : a 
 glory not fictitious nor dependent on circumstances ; not 
 in any way external to yourself, but the glory or virtue 
 of true manliness : a glory which is simply the realiza- 
 tion of the dignity and blessedness for which your spirit, 
 with its immortal powers of thought, affection, and 
 activity, was created : a glory which is in truth the 
 glory of God himself shining forth from within you. 
 Under such a call, — when Christ the Redeemer calls 
 you, by setting before you the hope of immortal glory and 
 virtue, — how urgently does the deep sense of what you are, 
 and of what you may become, move you to give yourself 
 at once to the diligent training of yourself in holiness ! 
 
 There are given to you exceeding great and precious 
 promises. What are they % The promise of the Holy 
 Spirit, the inward teacher, comforter, and guide of those 
 who trust in Christ. The promise from the ascending 
 Saviour, " Lo, I am with you always !" The promise 
 from the bosom of Almighty love, " My grace shall be 
 sufficient for thee ;" *' I will never leave thee, nor 
 forsake thee. " The promise, " No good thing will he 
 withhold from them that walk uprightly." Such pro- 
 mises are given to you, that by them, overcoming the 
 
Faith and Manliness, 49 
 
 temptations that address themselves to so many inferior 
 sensibilities, you may escape the corruption that is in the 
 world through lust, and may be transformed into the 
 likeness of God's own purity and love. Having, there- 
 fore, these promises, how cogent is the inference : " Let 
 us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and 
 spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." 
 
 You believe, then, the *' faithful saying and worthy 
 of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world 
 to save sinners." Trusting in that testimony and in the 
 exceeding great and precious promises which it includes, 
 you desire to build up yourself on that most holy faith. 
 The question is. How you are to build ; what you are to 
 do in the process of working out your salvation ? You 
 are resolved and ready to use all diligence that you may 
 make your calling and election sure ; and the question 
 is, how you are to do it 1 You tell me that you believe 
 the gospel, that you are not hindered by doubts on the 
 question whether God is in Christ reconciling the world 
 to himself; but you ask, " What am I to do ?" Just 
 here I meet you, in Christ's name, with an answer which 
 cannot be disputed : — 
 
 '' ADD TO YOUR FAITH VIETUE." 
 
 Such a precept implies that, in some sense, there may 
 be faith without virtue ; or at least that faith may be 
 contemplated as disjoined from virtue, even when it is 
 in some sense Christian faith. What is that faith to 
 which- virtue is not supplied ^ 
 
 D 
 
50 The Christian Life. 
 
 It is not, necessarily, a licentious religion like that 
 antinomianism, theoretical and practical, which some- 
 times appears in the garb of zeal for the gospel of salva- 
 tion by grace alone. It may be something more than 
 that gross caricature of religion which satisfies itself with 
 its own dogmas, and despises the restraints of morality. 
 Virtue, as the word is now currently used, is often re- 
 garded as a merely negative quality, — an exemption from 
 certain outward vices, particularly fraud and impurity. 
 The word, however, in its ancient and proper meaning, 
 implies much more than this ; it means something posi- 
 tive ; it means strength, manliness, worth. In its pri- 
 mitive sense, the word virtue (and also the Greek word 
 thus translated) includes the idea of valour, or courage 
 and strength for war, — the quality most appreciated and 
 honoured in that state of society in which war is the 
 chief test of manhood. Faith, then, though it happens 
 to co-exist with outward decency and negative morality, 
 may yet be faith without virtue. Faith without virtue, 
 in the true sense of the words, is faith without real man- 
 liness, — faith which imparts no positive strength or 
 worth to the soul. 
 
 Christian faith, in its largest sense, and indeed in 
 every sense, is the opposite of infidelity, or of the un- 
 belief which rejects Christ and the Word of God. Faith, 
 in whatever sense, is the belief of Christian truth. Bear- 
 ing this in mind, you may see more distinctly what faith 
 is when disjoined from its proper relation to virtue. 
 
 There may be a merely intellectual state of mind, 
 
Faith and Manliness. 5 1 
 
 which, under the force of tradition or authority, or in 
 view of historical or other arguments, recognises the 
 gospel of Christ as from God, and recognises the Scrip- 
 tures as a true record of God's revelations to men, and 
 recognises certain propositions as revealed and recorded 
 in the Scriptures. Undoubtedly, this is faith or belief, 
 so far as it goes. So far, it is the same thing with the 
 faith of the humblest, most penitent, and most devoted 
 believer. But if it go no further, it is faith without 
 virtue, — it is dead ; it is not faith in that higher and 
 more complex sense in which the gospel tells us, " He 
 that believeth shall be saved ;" it is not faith in that 
 less analytic and more Christian use of the word, in 
 which " faith is the substance of things hoped for, and 
 the evidence of things not seen." The faith which is 
 only orthodox, however logical, however intelligent and 
 exact, is faith without virtue. 
 
 But faith without virtue may be something more than 
 this. There may be a habit of mind, not simply intel- 
 lectual but sentimental, which is only another style of 
 the faith to which virtue has not been added. In the 
 intellectual apprehension of God, the eternal source of 
 being, the wise and beneficent Creator, the ever-present, 
 sustaining, and guiding energy of the universe, the ruler 
 and judge of his responsible creatures in all the worlds 
 of his infinite empire ; in the mere idea of God as the 
 Bible reveals him to -our faculty of knowledge, — there 
 is something which kindles the natural sensibilities of 
 wonder and awe, and wakens even a sluggish soul to 
 
52 The Christian Life. 
 
 emotion. In tlie idea of eternity, and especially in the 
 thought of a personal immortality, there is something 
 which dilates the mind with the sense of grandeur, and 
 thrills it with the feeling of an infinite deed. In the 
 thought of responsibility and of eternal retributions, there 
 is something which compels the soul to tremble. So in 
 the history and character of Jesus Christ, there is some- 
 thing which speaks to the tenderest and the sublimest 
 sensibilities of every human being. No man can in- 
 telligently trace the story of redemption, — from the 
 manger-cradle at Bethlehem to the cross and the tomb, 
 and thence to the ascension from the Mount of Olives, 
 — and not feel, to some extent, the power of it on his 
 human sensibilities. All this awakened sensibility may 
 be added to the intellectual recognition of Christianity 
 as historically and doctrinally true, while yet the virtue 
 of which we are speaking is absent. This, so far as it 
 goes, is faith. So far as it goes, it is identical with the 
 faith of the humblest and holiest mind. But all this, if 
 it stop here, exhausting itself in mere feeling, however 
 intense or however refined, is not faith, in that more 
 complex sense in which faith accompanies salvation. 
 Even at this point, though the feeling be ever so deep 
 and strong, and ever so delightful, the mind's reception 
 of the truth is faith only in that analytic sense in which 
 faith is dead. The faith of mere sentiment and emotion, 
 as really as the faith of mere logic and doctrine, is faith 
 without virtue, belief without true manliness. 
 
 You are to remember, then, that faith is complete. 
 
Faith and Manliness, 53 
 
 and is really itself, only when it stands in its proper 
 relation to virtue, that is, when it lives in a vital con- 
 nexion with true worth, with active strength, with 
 manliness of soul. In other words, faith is an un- 
 finished and fragmentary, and therefore an unnatural 
 thing, unless to faith be added virtue. But how is it 
 that, when virtue is added to faith, the faith is com- 
 pleted and becomes itself? How is it that faith is 
 developed into virtue % What is the vital relation of 
 the one to the other % 
 
 I answer, faith hegins to be unfolded into virtue, 
 when the intellectual reception of the gospel as true, 
 with the naturally attendant feeling, is accompanied by 
 the appropriate action of the moral powers. There may 
 be, in some sense, just conceptions or intellectual views 
 of things not seen ; and there may be emotions of won- 
 der and awe, of fear, of desire, of hope, and even of 
 delight, while yet there is no sovereignty of right prin- 
 ciple and purpose within the soul, no force of restraining 
 and controlling conscience, no action of the moral powers 
 in conformity with truth and obligation. But when these 
 sensibilities, fed by the contemplation of the truth, serve 
 to quicken and invigorate the conscience, and when, in- 
 stead of terminating in mere emotion, they terminate in 
 right action, swaying the will and all the moral and re- 
 sponsible nature to those inclinations and affections, and 
 to those aims and efforts in life, which constitute true 
 manhood, — when thus all that the gospel reveals of 
 majesty and glory, of terror and mercy, of pity and of 
 
54 The Christian Life, 
 
 love, begins to be the spring of action in the soul, — 
 then to faith is added something of virtue, and faith 
 begins to show itself in its completeness — not dead but 
 living — a vital force. Then it is, and not till then, that 
 faith begins to " work by love," and to take hold upon 
 eternal life. 
 
 The ^progress of faith, as it is unfolded into virtue, 
 may be delineated by tracing the progressive subjuga- 
 tion of the soul in all its habits to the power of con- 
 science and to the will of God. When the soul is not 
 only impelled to individual acts of manliness by over- 
 mastering appeals, but is formed to habits of manliness 
 by the steady influence of eternal things upon the 
 thoughts and the unexcited feelings, when, through the 
 long-accustomed regard of things not seen, temptation 
 gradually loses its power, and duty is performed ; not 
 reluctantly, not as the result of a struggle against old 
 propensities, but promptly, gladly, with undivided 
 energy ; then virtue is added to faith. Then it is 
 that faith is complete, by being the source from which 
 the soul is supplied, unfailingly, with manly strength 
 for all responsibility, and with a spontaneous earnest- 
 ness in duty. 
 
 We are now prepared for the more immediately prac- 
 tical question : How, by what diligence, is this result 
 to be realized % I will suppose that this question is 
 your question. I will suppose that you, to whom I 
 am speaking from this page, are asking how you may 
 thus build up yourself on your most holy faith ; by 
 
Faith a7id Manliness. 55 
 
 what endeavours of self-discipline your belief of the 
 gospel may be unfolded into virtue. Assuming, that 
 you are in earnest, I will answer your question, not by 
 propounding particular rules of self-discipline, but rather 
 by suggesting to you some general views, which, if you 
 receive them and act upon them, may be better to you 
 than much minute instruction. 
 
 1. Remember, then, that to perform all the duties 
 of your allotted place and relations in this life is the 
 service to which God is calling you. This is the way 
 in which you are to serve the will of God in your 
 generation. God has made you, not for mere contem- 
 plation, not for the acquisition and enjoyment of know- 
 ledge alone, not merely to see and to know even the 
 highest and most glorious of all themes of thought ; 
 but for something better and nobler. God has made 
 you, not for mere feeling, and that kind of enjoyment 
 which consists in feeling only, but for something higher 
 and better. God has made you for work, and he has 
 given you work to do. The end for which all your 
 powers are given is not thought, nor emotion, but duty, 
 — work to be done for God, the infinite and universal 
 worker. Remember God has placed you here not 
 merely to know and to feel, not merely to worship in 
 prayer and praise, not merely to be enraptured with the 
 sublime and the beautiful in God, and in his w^orks and 
 ways, — but to work. And what is the work which God 
 has given you to do % What is the work which he puts to 
 your hand day by day % That work you are to do for 
 
56 The Christian Life, 
 
 liim. That work is duty, and duty — however humble 
 may be the sphere in which it is to be performed — 
 is something higher than all the activity of mere 
 thought, or all the rapture of emotion. The duties of 
 your allotted place and relations in this world, the 
 work which he gives you the opportunity of doing, 
 the honest and useful work (honest because useful) 
 which belongs to your position as a member of the great 
 human family, — the whole of it, including all that you 
 can do to make any human being better or happier, — 
 is the service to which God is now calling you. Re- 
 member this, and you will never fail to realize that the 
 religion of mere knowledge and intellectual belief is 
 worthless, and that the religion of mere sentimentalism is 
 no better. Remember this ; remember that the service to 
 which God calls you is not mere meditation or emotion, 
 but duty, — duty in every relation of man to man, or of 
 man to God ; and all the grandeur and impressiveness 
 that there is in the objects of faith becomes a living 
 power to waken and impel the conscience. 
 
 2. Remember, that unless religion has this efficacy 
 upon your conscience, and through your conscience upon 
 your entire character, the whole apparatus and discipline 
 of religion is in your case a failure. The Bible, prayer, 
 the Sabbath, the house of God, the preaching of the 
 Word, and the formal communion of God's people with 
 each other and with Christ, are what I mean by the 
 apparatus and discipline of religion. The end at which 
 all these things aim is, that the soul may be brought 
 
Faith and Manliness, 5 7 
 
 under the dominion of the high and holy will of God. 
 Subjection to God, or, what is the same thing, subjec- 
 tion to duty, is the only true manliness, for it is the 
 chief end of man. Conscience, echoing the voice of 
 God, and swaying the soul to a willing obedience ; con- 
 science, communing with God, and drinking in light 
 and life from the glory of his countenance ; conscience, 
 acting not as an accuser only, to terrify the soul with a 
 certain fearful looking for of judgment, but as guide, to 
 lead the soul in paths of wisdom and of peace, — is the 
 highest nobleness of man. And all religion, or rather 
 all religiousness, whether it be the religiousness of 
 formalism, or the religiousness of dogmatism, or the 
 religiousness of sentimentalism ; all religious service 
 and ceremony, all religious knowledge, all religious 
 feeling, which does not quicken the conscience into 
 activity and dominion in the soul, is a failure. 
 
 3. I may answer your question, then, in this one 
 comprehensive precept : If you would build up yourself 
 on your most holy faith, adding to your faith virtue, 
 xvalk hy faith. You say that you believe the gospel ; 
 then let that which you believe inspire and control your 
 daily activity. Faith, in the most analytic sense, is the 
 knowledge and belief of things not seen. He who 
 walks by sight, no matter how much he knows or hov/ 
 much he feels of things beyond the veil, he who in the 
 daily work of life, in the toils and struggles through 
 which the providence of God is leading him, governs 
 himself only by considerations from the sphere of the 
 
58 The Christian Life, 
 
 things which are transient and visible, will never add to 
 Ids faith virtue. But if you will, from this time forward, 
 walk by faith : if you will henceforth bring your employ- 
 ments, your plans and undertakings, your hopes and 
 aims, your pleasures and amusements, into the light of 
 those invisible and eternal things which your belief 
 recognises, and will govern yourself accordingly, — your 
 faith, instead of lying fruitless and dead in the mind, 
 a matter of mere intelligence or mere sentiment, will 
 henceforth be a practical thing, translating thought and 
 emotion into manly action, and finding itself completed 
 in virtue. 
 
CHAPTEE y. 
 
 ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 
 
 ADD TO VIRTUE KNOWLEDGE. RELATION OF RELIGIOUS KNOW- 
 LEDGE TO CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. NECESSITY OF KNOWING WHAT 
 IS RIGHT, IN ORDER TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT. AN ILLUSTRATION 
 FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. DEFECTS OF VIRTUE WITHOUT KNOW- 
 LEDGE. MORBID SCRUPULOUSNESS — A SERVILE SPIRIT— BIGOTRY. 
 WHEN VIRTUE IS COMPLETED IN KNOWLEDGE, THE PURPOSE OF 
 WELL-DOING IS ENLIVENED AND INVIGORATED, AND BECOMES AN 
 ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 
 
" As concerning, therefore, the eating of those things that are 
 offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the 
 world, and that there is none other God but one. For though there 
 be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be 
 gods many, and lords many,) but to us there is but one God, the 
 Father, of whom are all things, and we in him ; and one Lord 
 Jesus Christ, by Whom are all things, and we by him. How- 
 beit there is not in every man that knowledge : for some, with 
 conscience of the idol unto this hour, eat it as a thing offered un- 
 to an idol ; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled." — 1 Cor. 
 VIII. 4-7. 
 
 " Brethren, be not children in understanding : howbeit in 
 malice be ye children, but in understanding be ye men." — 
 1 Cor. XIV. 20. 
 
 "Be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the 
 Lord is." — Eph. v. 17. 
 
 " And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and 
 more in knowledge and in all judgment."— Phil. i. 9. 
 
 " Giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue ; and to virtue, 
 knowledge."— 2 Pet. i. 5. 
 
1EnlisJ)tenelr Conscientiousness. 
 
 nSSUMING now, that you humbly trust in 
 the grace of God, and that, depending on 
 Christ for reconciliation to God and for 
 strength and victory in the conflict with evil, 
 you have heartily undertaken to follow Christ in all 
 well-doing, I ask for your serious attention while I 
 attempt to show you another aspect of progress in the 
 Christian life. Y9U have undertaken a life-long work 
 of self- discipline. You are resolved that henceforth the 
 great business of your life shall be to do God's will, 
 trusting in his mercy and his promised help, and so 
 training yourself for your immortality. Thus you hope 
 to be progressively emancipated from the power of sin, 
 and transformed by the renewing of your mind. 
 
 Such progress cannot be achieved by mere strength 
 of will. The purpose to do right, always and in all 
 things, is not all that is necessary to a perfect well-doing. 
 Tn order to do right, you must know what is right. 
 The manliest, most strenuous, and most conscientious 
 purpose will often err, unless it be guided by intelli- 
 gence. It is not enough that you add to your faith 
 
62 The Christian Life, 
 
 virtue, your mauly purpose of well-doing must be divinely 
 enlightened. You must 
 
 " ADD TO VIRTUE KNOWLEDGE." 
 
 If we take the word knowledge in its widest sense, 
 there is a beautiful fitness in the conjunction of know- 
 ledge with that manly conscientiousness which is the 
 legitimate consequence of faith in the Word of God. 
 The man who receives the gospel as his hope, and who, 
 with a quickened conscience and a resolute determination, 
 undertakes to obey and follow Christ, must be, in pro- 
 portion to. his faculties, his opportunities, and his means 
 of acquiring knowledge, an intelligent man. Especially 
 is he bound to be intelligent in the things which imme- 
 diately concern his faith and duty as a follower of Christ. 
 From the beginning of his confidence and hope, from his 
 first experience of the work of the Holy Spirit, onward 
 through all his progress as a believer, he is to grow in 
 grace and in the knowledge of his Lord and Saviour. 
 It is true that no eminent intelligence is necessary to 
 the beginning of discipleship in the school of Christ, 
 nothing more than the childlike belief that Christ is 
 able to teach and to save, and the humble purpose to 
 learn of him and to obey him ; but from that beginning 
 the disciple follows on to know the Lord, and to know 
 all that God has revealed to men. True religion dis- 
 tinguishes itself from superstition by its alliance with 
 light, and by its genial influence on all the powers of 
 thought. It says to all who receive its lessons, " Be not 
 
Enlightened Conscientiousness. 6 
 
 o 
 
 children in understandiDg ; in malice be ye children, but 
 in understanding be ye men." 
 
 At present, however, let us take this word " know- 
 ledge" in a more limited meaning. The spontaneous 
 utterance of faith unfolding itself into virtue is in the 
 question which came from the heart of Saul in the hour 
 of his conversion : " Lord, what wilt thou have me to 
 do f That question w^as a cry for knowledge : " How 
 can I rightly serve thee whom I have persecuted V The 
 converted mind, turning to follow Christ in newness of 
 life, longs for the knowledge of all duty. Such is the 
 knowledge which must be added to virtue, as virtue is 
 added to faith. 
 
 For the sake of giving you a more definite idea of 
 what the knowledge is without which conscientiousness is 
 incomplete and unbalanced, let me illustrate my meaning 
 by a historic instance from the New Testament. 
 
 One great error of Judaism, in the time of Christ and 
 the apostles, was that, in its attention to external and 
 ceremonial institutions, it had lost sight of higher prin- 
 ciples, and had ceased to honour with due regard the 
 eternal distinctions between right and wrong. Those 
 among them who aspired to eminent sanctity were ex- 
 tremely scrupulous about the payment of tithes and the 
 practice of ceremonial washings, and extremely sensitive 
 to the forms of sanctity as they understood it ; but withal 
 they were prone to neglect the weightier matters of in- 
 ward purity and faithfulness, and of spiritual religion. 
 On the other hand, one grand characteristic of the re- 
 
64 The Christian Life, 
 
 ligion taught by Christ and his apostles was, that it 
 insisted on the universal and eternal first principle of 
 holiness, — love to God and love to man, — love in the 
 heart, flowing out spontaneously into all outward duties 
 of morality and of piety. All outward performances, 
 not springing from the perception and recognition of 
 the^ great objects of faith, were worthless in the view of 
 Christ, and of the apostles who spoke in his name and 
 by his Spirit. Yet those who accepted the gospel, and 
 trusted in Christ as the one Mediator between God and 
 men, did not all throw off at once and equally their 
 former habits of thinkmg. The converted Jew was often 
 prone to think that ceremonial observances were of much 
 importance, and to cramp the freedom of the gospel with 
 the fetters of Jewish scrupulousness. 
 
 Thus it came to pass, that wherever there were 
 churches consisting partly of Jews and partly of Gentiles, 
 the relations of Christians to the superstitions of the 
 heathen arouiid them were complicated and often per- 
 plexing. The abhorred idolatry of the heathen was not 
 confined to their temples, nor to acts of public and for- 
 mal worship, but was mingled with all the concerns of 
 life. When victims were slain in sacrifice at the temples, 
 only a part of the flesh was ordinarily consumed on the 
 altar ; another portion was reserved by the offerer to 
 be a feast for his family and friends, either in the temple 
 or in his own dwelling ; and another portion became the 
 perquisite of the priest, and was often sent to be sold in 
 the public market. Thus, and in many other ways, 
 
Enlightened Conscientiousness. 65 
 
 the Christian, and especially tlie converted Gentile, was 
 surrounded by temptations to some sort of communion 
 with idolatry ; and w^hat he might do, and what he 
 might not do, without contracting the guilt of idol wor- 
 ship, was sometimes a perplexing question. Some^ espe- 
 cially those of Jewish birth and education, had a strong 
 feeling as if some moral pollution was attached to the very 
 flesh of an idol sacrifice, and would purchase nothing in 
 the market, would eat nothing anywhere, without being 
 first certified that it had no taint of idolatry about it. In 
 this way they brought themselves under a yoke of bond- 
 age. Forgetting that the earth is the Lord's and the 
 fulness thereof, — forgetting that it is not that which 
 entereth into a man that defileth him, — their virtue, or 
 strength of character and strenuous purpose to do right, 
 though prompted and sustained by faith, was misdirected. 
 Others there were who looked on the whole matter in a 
 diff'erent view. " The idol," they said, ^' is nothing, and 
 to me, therefore, the circumstance that this food which I 
 find in the market-place, or which is set before me at 
 the table of a friend, has been off'ered to an idol, is of no 
 consequence. I do not off'er it to the idol ; and in eat- 
 ing it, I give God thanks and commit no idolatry." 
 This difference of views among imperfectly instructed 
 disciples was one of the many sources of difficulty in the 
 church at Corinth ; and the question was referred to the 
 apostle Paul for his advice. The apostle in his answer 
 (I Cor. viii.), speaks of " knowledge," and the want of 
 "knowledge" as having caused the difference. "We 
 
 E 
 
66 The CJwistian Life. 
 
 knou\'' he says, " that an idol is nothing in the worlds 
 and that there is none other God but one," " of whom 
 are all things, and we in him ;" and therefore he whose 
 mind is completely emancipated from all reverence for 
 idols, and who eats this food merely as food, not asking 
 any questions as to whence it came, and giving thanks 
 through Jesus Christ to God the author of all good, is 
 free from the guilt of idolatry. " Howbeit," adds the 
 apostle, " there is not in every man that knowledge ; for 
 some, with conscience of the idol to this hour, eat it as 
 a thing offered to an idol, and their conscience being 
 weak is defiled ;" and from that point, he proceeds to 
 show that a good man's conduct, in such cases, should 
 be regulated by a benevolent regard for the welfare of 
 others. 
 
 You see, then, what I mean when I say that, if you 
 are to advance in the moral and spiritual self-discipline 
 to which the gospel calls you, your believing manliness 
 in duty must be enlightened by knowledge. Those who 
 were most scrupulous, most superstitious, most censorious, 
 in regard to the indiscriminate use of meats sold in the 
 markets at Oorinth, had faith ; they believed in Christ ; 
 they trusted in him for acceptance with God ; they received 
 with full confidence the truth that God hath appointed 
 a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness. 
 Nor was their belief inoperative, for to faith they added 
 virtue. Their faith was not mere theory or imagination, 
 nor mere feeling; it was to them the mainspring of 
 action. They combined with it an active conscientious- 
 
Enlightened Coiiscie7itiousness, 67 
 
 ness. They intended to do right, whatever it might 
 cost them. But their Christian manliness, not being 
 conjoined with knowledge, was incomplete ; it was virtue 
 without guidance ; and therefore, with all their con- 
 scientiousness, and their determination to do right at all 
 hazards, they erred, and so erred as to be deserving of 
 censure for the dishonour which they brought on the 
 name of Christ. 
 
 No wonder, then, that knowledge is so often insisted 
 on in the Scriptures as an element of Christian character. 
 Knowledge, wherever it is spoken of in a catalogue of 
 spiritual graces or of spiritual gifts, means just what it 
 means in the instance to which I have referred you for 
 an illustration ; it means not speculative science, natural 
 or even theological, but moral discrimination. Thus, 
 when the apostle Paul prays for the Philippians that 
 their love " may abound yet more and more in know- 
 ledge and in all judgment," it is that they ^' may approve 
 things that are excellent," that they " may be sincere'' 
 (that is, reproachless, such that the sun may shine upon 
 without discovering any flaw or fault), " and without 
 offence till the day of Christ." 
 
 You see then, already, that as virtue is necessary to 
 the completeness of faith, so knowledge, in the New 
 Testament meaning of the word, is necessary to the com- 
 pleteness of virtue. As faith is the first element, and 
 practical conscientiousness the second, so this knowledge 
 is the third element in a well-proportioned Christian 
 character. It is distinct from faith and virtue, inasmuch 
 
68 The Christian Life. 
 
 as, in the analysis of character, it may be distinctly con- 
 templated, and a lack of it is sometimes manifest where 
 faith and virtue are conspicuous. Yet, if we take an- 
 other view, it is in fact inseparable from faith and virtue, 
 and something of it must be implied in the very exist- 
 ence of true virtue sustained by Christian faith. Virtue, 
 in the New Testament meaning of the word, is the man- 
 liness of faith, the soul's activity under the dictates and 
 the impulse of those moral sensibilities which faith has 
 quickened. Knowledge is that illumination and enlarge- 
 ment of mind, that habit and disciplined faculty of moral 
 discrimination, which gives force and direction to virtue. 
 Virtue without knowledge is fragmentary ; virtue in its 
 just combination with knowledge is a whole, rounded 
 and complete. 
 
 You understand, then, what that knowledge is with- 
 out which virtue, or religious conscientiousness, however 
 strenuous, is imperfect. But I would have you under- 
 stand more distinctly what are the defects of that im- 
 perfect virtue. I do not imply that such virtue is only 
 a formal morality, for it is a virtue in which faith is 
 pre-supposed. It is a living conscientiousness, inspired 
 and sustained by the habitual contemplation of things 
 not seen. It is an earnest purpose, inspired and sus- 
 tained by the habitual contemplation of God and eter- 
 nity, of the soul's infinite need and infinite ruin, and of 
 redemption by the power and the sacrifice of Christ. 
 Such virtue, however feeble and however erring, implies 
 something of the faculty and of the habit of moral dis- 
 
Enlightened Conscientiousness, 69 
 
 crimination, some discerning of things that are excellent, 
 some perception of the moral relations and tendencies of 
 actions, and some sense of the grand principles of Chris- 
 tian duty. But how often do we actually find such 
 virtue erring, and missing its mark, and starving itself, 
 and dishonouring its own name, for the lack of know- 
 ledge % Conscientiousness without knowledge may be 
 earnest and devout, but it betrays its weakness ; it is, 
 at the best, a lame and unfinished virtue. 
 
 1. It is often characterized by a morbid scrupulous- 
 ness. " Tenderness of conscience," says a most acute 
 observer, " is always to be distinguished from scrupu- 
 lousness. The conscience cannot be kept too sensible and 
 tender ; but scrupulousness arises from bodily or mental 
 infirmity, and discovers itself in a multitude of ridi- 
 culous, and superstitious, and painful feelings." When- 
 ever that moral discernment, which the New Testament 
 calls knowledge, is wanting, there virtue, however con- 
 scientious and religious, is prone to exhaust itself on 
 little things. So much of its time and thought and 
 zeal is occupied with tithing mint, anise, and cummin — 
 so much of its force is directed to the circumstances of 
 duty — that it cannot expand into the graceful and com- 
 manding proportions of the perfect man in Christ Jesus. 
 
 2. Virtue without knowledge is naturally servile in 
 its spirit. It walks in the oldness of the letter, and not 
 in the newness of emancipated life. It brings itself 
 under bondage to forms, and acts more from the fear of 
 doing wrong, than from the fearless and joyous con- 
 
JO The Christian Life. 
 
 sciousness of right. It lacks the inspiring sense of 
 freedom. Confounding duty itself with the form or 
 circumstances of duty, it moves under constraint, and 
 cannot mount up as with wings. As it cannot see the 
 right and the wrong in the light of the highest and 
 most comprehensive principles, it naturally falls back 
 upon some narrow^ formula, and guides itself by specific 
 rules blindly applied. It depends upon some authority 
 which is not the authority of God himself speaking to 
 the soul which he has made. It asks not, simply and 
 directly. What is right % what is the application of the 
 law of love % what the spontaneous impulse of a soul 
 moving in free and blessed accordance with the mind of 
 God ? — but, what is it which the Church, as taught by 
 the fathers or by councils, pronounces wrong % or, what 
 is it which this or that dictator to conscience i^rohibits % 
 or, what is it which has been voted into the catalogue 
 of immoralities by this or that reforming society? or, 
 what is it which in some particular clique or circle is 
 considered to be inconsistent with religion ? Virtue 
 without knowledge may be earnest and true, sustained 
 by an inspiring conviction of the reality of things not 
 seen ; it may thus have a zeal which will compass sea 
 and land with its heroic enterprises ; it may have the 
 sturdy inflexibility that will stand up against a world of 
 opposition, that will not be daunted by the gloom of 
 the prison, that will raise the hymn of victory at the 
 stake amid the crackling fagots ; but after all it is prone 
 to be servile. 
 
Enlighte^ied Conscientiotisness, 7 1 
 
 3. It follows that the virtue which has this defect is 
 often, not to say always bigoted. The man who, while 
 to faith he adds virtue, does not add to virtue know- 
 ledge, is not only naturally scrupulous in respect to his 
 own actions, and servile in the subjection of his con- 
 science to his leader, or his party, or to his narrow rule, 
 but he can hardly avoid some taint of bigotry in his 
 judgment of those whose consciences differ in anything 
 from his. That particular form of doing a thing, those 
 particular circumstances, just that drapery, may be, to 
 such a man, in all his conscientiousness, the very essence 
 of the duty, and the test by which he judges all men. 
 If he were to neglect that form or those circumstances, 
 he would condemn himself severely; and when he sees 
 such neglect in others, he judges them with the same . 
 severity. As he guides his own conduct, so he judges 
 the conduct of others, by forms, by traditions, perhaps, 
 which he has received from those around him, and not 
 by principles clearly discerned and freely applied. 
 
 Understanding thus the defects of virtue without 
 knowledge, you are prepared to understand how it is 
 that knowledge is the complement or completeness of 
 virtue. Think what that virtue is which is combined 
 with the faculty and habit of moral discrimination. 
 
 (1.) It is virtue enlivened and invigorated by an en- 
 larged acquaintance with the objects of faith. There is 
 a difference between that simple conviction of the reality 
 of things not seen, which lies at the foundation of all 
 Christian character, and that clear, discriminating, ex- 
 
72 The Christian Life, 
 
 panded acquaintance with things pertaining to God and 
 salvation, which is acquired in the progress of religious 
 experience. The one is faith ; the other is knowledge. 
 Some knowledge, some idea or conception of eternal 
 things as real, is indispensable to faith ; but as the 
 believing soul carries out its convictions, and translates 
 them into action, and thus follows on to know the Lord, 
 as, in a devout and obedient attention to God's Word, 
 it walks with God, and holds communion with infinite 
 purity, that soul grows not only in gracious affection, 
 but in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ, and of course in the knowledge of all that 
 concerns his dignity, his office, and the salvation he 
 accomplishes. Thus as virtue springs from faith, and is 
 nourished by it, so faith and virtue furnish the soul with 
 knowledge ; and the more familiarly a truly Christian 
 man is acquainted with Christianity as a whole, and in 
 all its parts, with God in his revealed majesty and holi- 
 ness, with Christ in the glory which he had with the 
 Father before the world was, and in the glory of his 
 humiliation and death as a partaker of our nature, the 
 more will his resolute purpose to do right be instructed 
 and strengthened. The virtue which has ripened into 
 knowledge is an earnest conscientiousness, strengthened 
 and cheered by familiar acquaintance with things not 
 seen. 
 
 (2.) It is more than this. It is virtue enlightened 
 and free. It is the virtue or manliness of a mind ac- 
 customed to regard the principles of duty and the rela- 
 
Enlightened Conscientiousness. 73 
 
 tions and tendencies of actions. There may be a true 
 conscientiousness, resolute and strenuous, that moves in 
 bondage to rules inadequately comprehended by the 
 mind, and applied without just discrimination. But 
 as the disciple whose faith inspires and sustains his 
 manly purpose of well-doing, advances in Christian 
 knowledge, he becomes familiar, not with rules alone, 
 but with grand principles of duty. He sees everywhere, 
 in whatever work or duty, the application of that para- 
 mount law, the law of love to God and to man, the law 
 of doing good, always and everywhere, for time and for 
 eternity, in communion with the God of love. The 
 more familiar he becomes with this first principle of all 
 duty, and with its leading applications, the more accus- 
 tomed he is to see, in every particular rule of right, the 
 sanctity,, and beauty of this universal law ; the more 
 spontaneously will his sense of right distinguish the 
 things that are excellent ; and the more effectually will 
 he be brought into the illuminated freedom of those 
 whose inmost life is holiness and love. 
 
 " Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and 
 to virtue knowledge." Remember this. Knowledge, 
 the completeness of virtue, is to be attained by dili- 
 gence. Eem ember that the disciple must give all dili- 
 gence if he would build up, on the basis of his faith, a 
 true and manly character. Remember that, in order 
 to the completeness of virtue and of the soul's con- 
 formity to Christ, there must be a steady, earnest, per- 
 severing self- discipline. And is not the attainment 
 
74 The Christian Life. 
 
 worth the effort % Think not that the attainment is 
 too high for you. Remember those exceeding great and 
 precious promises whereby you may escape the corrup- 
 tion that is in the world, and become partaker of a 
 divine nature. Remember that those promises avail not 
 for the indifferent and the slothful, but for those who 
 give all diligence that they may add to their faith virtue, 
 and to virtue knowledge. 
 
CHAPTEE VT. 
 
 FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED. 
 
 ONE-SIDEDNESS. TWO SORTS OF ONE-SIDED MEN AT CORINTH. 
 KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT TEMPERANCE TENDS TO SENSUAL INDUL- 
 GENCE—TO CONTEMPT OF THE WEAK— TO LAX OPINIONS TERMINAT- 
 ING IN APOSTASY. KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPED INTO TEMPERANCE- 
 PUTS THE DISCIPLE ON HIS GUARD AGAINST ALL SELF-INDULGENCE 
 —MAKES HIM HUMBLE AND GENTLE — TRAINS HIS INCLINATIONS 
 AND EMOTIONS INTO HARMONY WITH DUTY. HOW TO ACQUIRE 
 A CHRISTIAN SELF-CONTROL. 
 
" But take heed, lest by any means tins liberty of yours become 
 a stumbling-block to them that are weak. For if any man see 
 thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall 
 not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those 
 things which are offered to idols ; and through thy knowledge shall 
 the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died ?"— 1 Cor. viii. 9-11. 
 
 " You know that in the races of the stadium, though all may 
 run, yet but one can gain the prize ; — (so run that you may win.) 
 And every man who strives in the matches, trains himself by all 
 manner of self-restraint ; yet they do it to win a crown of fading 
 leaves,— we a crown that cannot fade. I, therefore, run not like 
 the racer who is uncertain of his goal ; I fight, not as the pugilist 
 who strikes out into the air ; but I bring my body into bondage, 
 crushing it with heavy blows, lest, perchance, having called others 
 to the contest, I should myself fail shamefully of the prize." — 
 
 1 Cor. IX. 24-27. (Conybeare's version.) 
 
 " Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, 
 how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed 
 through the sea. . . . But with many of them God was not well 
 pleased ; for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these 
 things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after 
 evil things, as they also lusted. . . . Wherefore, let him that 
 thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. . . . All things are 
 lawful for me, but all things are not expedient : all things are 
 lawful for me, but all things edify not."— 1 Cor. x. 1, 5, 6, 12, 23. 
 
 " Giving all diligence, add ... to knowledge, temperance." — 
 
 2 Pet. i. 5, 6. 
 
I HERE is great need of watching against one- 
 sidedness in the formation and growth of 
 religious character. Faith is the basis of 
 all religion ; and faith in Christ, or a 
 simple reliance on him as the only sacrifice for sin, and 
 a simple confidence in his promises of free and full sal- 
 vation, is what makes a Christian. It is here that you 
 are to begin. You are to receive Christ and justifica- 
 tion before God by faith ; you are to live by faith ; 
 you are to walk by faith ; and your faith is to save 
 yoii. But, as " James, the servant of God," assures 
 you, " faith without works is dead." The faith which 
 does not quicken the conscience, and strengthen the soul 
 in all well-doing, is worthless. Faith, then, or confid- 
 ence in the gospel, must be completed and balanced by 
 what the apostle Peter calls " virtue," or the strenu- 
 ous purpose to perform, all duty ; for otherwise it is 
 one-sided and monstrous, — a mere perversion of faith 
 rather than faith itself In like manner, that resolute 
 conscientiousness — as I have already shown you — needs 
 the guidance and strength, and the enlargement and 
 
78 The Christian Life, 
 
 freedom, which come from knowledge ; or it is in 
 danger of becoming a servile and timid scrupulousness 
 or a narrow and contentious bigotry. 
 
 I am now to warn you against one-sidedness in 
 another direction. Even when we add to faith virtue, 
 and to virtue knowledge, we have not yet formed the 
 perfect man in Jesus Christ. We have, indeed, guarded 
 the conscientious purpose to do right against the danger 
 of becoming bigoted and timorous. We have released 
 it from the bondage of mere forms and mechanical rules, 
 and have brought it forth to breathe the invigorat- 
 ing air, and move in the cheering light of Christian 
 freedom. But just at this point the believer seeking to 
 form his soul by grace into the image of Christ needs 
 another caution. He must — 
 
 " ADD TO KNOWLEDGE TEMPERANCE." 
 
 Let your mind again revert to those circumstances in 
 the early history of the gospel, and especially of the 
 Corinthian church, from which we have already derived 
 an illustration of the necessity of knowledge to guide 
 and strengthen virtue. Those believers at Corinth whose 
 zeal against idolatry, and whose dread of the moral pol- 
 lution inseparable from it, would not let them purchase 
 what was offered in the market, or eat what was set 
 before them at the table of a friend, unless they could 
 first obtain positive evidence that it had no taint of 
 idolatry about it, had added virtue to their faith. They 
 had conjoined with their confidence in Christ an earnest 
 
Freedom Self-Governed, 79 
 
 purpose to do right. The practical error into which 
 they fell was the error of strenuous virtue not rightly 
 directed. It was the error of that conscientiousness 
 which lacks the guidance of knowledge. Others there 
 were in Corinth who had the knowledge in which those 
 over-scrupulous brethren were deficient ; but for that 
 very reason, they, on their part, needed to be put upon 
 their guard against an opposite danger. They saw and 
 understood that an idol is nothing in the world. They 
 knew that it was only by the consent and act of the 
 mind that the guilt of idol-worship could be contracted. 
 Thus they were free from the bondage of a morbid scru- 
 pulousness. Whatever was set before them, whatever 
 was sold in the market, they could freely eat, asking no 
 questions for conscience' sake, and offering thanks to 
 God the giver. They added to their virtue knowledge. 
 But they were not, therefore, free from danger even in 
 that matter of things offered to idols. On the contrary, 
 their strong sense of the freedom of the gospel — that 
 very elevation of their minds above mere forms and out- 
 ward rules — involved some special perils. Let us see 
 what those perils were, and what they must be in all 
 similar cases. 
 
 1. The man of knowledge, in the sense in which know- 
 ledge is now spoken of, is in danger from temptations to 
 sensual indulgence. He knows that "it is not that which 
 goeth into the mouth that defileth a man." He knows 
 that in mere abstinence from this or that particular kind 
 of food, in merely denying a natural and healthy appetite 
 
8o The Christian Life. 
 
 or taste, in mere fastings and vigils, or in any other self- 
 imposed privation or infliction, there is no righteousness 
 nor anything that can commend the ascetic to God. He 
 knows that " every creature of God is good, and to he 
 received with thankfulness." He is emancipated from 
 the narrow scruples by which some men are fettered. 
 He has overcome the slavish spirit of subjection to dead 
 forms. The gospel is to him a law of liberty. On this 
 side, then ; even in the direction of that knowledge 
 which emancipates him, and of that enlargement and 
 elevation of mind which rises above little scruples and 
 looks exclusively to great principles, ^in just this quar- 
 ter, he is exposed to danger from the temptations which 
 address themselves to his inferior nature. He is in 
 danger of falling into practices and habits which will be 
 more pernicious to his soul than all the over-scrupulous- 
 ness of an unenlightened conscience. 
 
 It seems to have been so with some at Corinth. The 
 apostle Paul, in his first Epistle to that church, found it 
 necessary to caution them in this particular. He warned 
 them against " lusting after evil things" (x. 6), and most 
 earnestly put them on their guard against drunkenness 
 and other gross sensualities (vi. 9-20), in comparison 
 with which the most timid and bigoted scrupulousness 
 would only be a trifling error. You may pity the man 
 who is afraid to taste even of the sacramental cup lest 
 it should happen to contain something fermented. No 
 doubt the addition of more knowledge to his virtue 
 would be a great improvement in his religious character. 
 
Freedom Self-Governed, 8i 
 
 But, on the other hand, that man who, having added to 
 his virtue knowledge, rises far above all scruples about self- 
 indulgence, — that man who, having learned that " Chris- 
 tianity is neither ascetic nor fanatic," puts the sparkling 
 wine freely and daily to his lips, and becomes discrimi- 
 nating and learned in the science of good eating and 
 good drinking, and feels that to lose anything of the 
 daily indulgence of his cultivated and fastidious appetite 
 is a serious encroachment on his happiness, — that man 
 needs something else, far more than the most timid 
 slave of petty scruples needs knowledge. While he is 
 rejoicing in his freedom from a scruple, he is beco^ning 
 the slave of a lust, — bound and led captive by habits of 
 sensual indulgence. There are men who abstain from 
 the use of sugar, and wear no cotton in their clothing, 
 lest they be compromised with the guilt of slavery. 
 There are men to whose sensitive conscience the odour 
 of burning tobacco is as offensive as it is to unsophisti- 
 cated human nostrils. We may be sorry for the weak- 
 ness of their consciences, — especially if they insist that 
 their scruples shall be a rule by which to pronounce on 
 other men's religious sincerity. But, after all, dare we 
 say that those men, or any others equally scrupulous in 
 other and similar matters, need the emancipating and 
 liberalizing influence of knowledge more than he who is 
 enslaved to the continual use of tobacco, and cannot be 
 persuaded to throw off his fetters, needs something better 
 than mere knowledge % The slave of a scrupulous con- 
 science, much as he needs to add to his virtue know- 
 
82 The Christian Life. 
 
 ledge, holds a position of moral dignity when compared 
 with one who, rejoicing in the freedom which his know- 
 ledge gives him, is enslaved by a factitious appetite. 
 
 This, then, is the first danger w^iich besets the man of 
 knowledge, rising above petty scruples : He is in danger 
 on the side of self-indulgence. At the same time — 
 
 2. He is also in danger of acquiring a contemptuous 
 feeling toward those whose consciences are more timid 
 and sensitive than his own. His knowledge shows him 
 the weakness of other men's scruples ; and he is likely 
 to have little sympathy with them on some points, at 
 least, on which their conscientious feelings are deep and 
 strong. While he seems to them to be wanting in virtue, 
 or the will to do right, they seem to him to be deficient 
 in common sense \ and while they, perhaps, censure him 
 in their bigotry, he, in his pride, with knowledge that 
 " pufi*eth up," despises them. 
 
 Such seem to have been the reciprocal feelings of 
 parties in the Corinthian church. While those who fell 
 into the error of excessive scrupulousness, in regard to 
 things offered to idols, could hardly avoid condemning 
 others for what seemed to them a participation in the 
 guilt of idolatry ; some, on the other hand, of those 
 whose knowledge emancipated them from all supersti- 
 tious regard for the idol, and who felt that they could 
 eat of anything, anywhere, in the spirit of thankfulness 
 to the living and true God, were proud of their know- 
 ledge, and despised the weakness of their brethren. As 
 to the effect of their conduct on other people, what was 
 
Freedom Self -Governed. 83 
 
 that to them % " Why," said they, " is my liberty judged 
 of another man's conscience % " They felt that they could 
 eat, even in an idol!s temple, without any inward homage 
 to the idol ; and as long as they kept their own conscience 
 pure, they esteemed it of little consequence what effect 
 their conduct might produce on the weak minds of others. 
 In reference to such results, the apostle said, ^' Know- 
 ledge pufFeth up," — that is, inflates the mind with pride, 
 
 -" but love edifieth. And if any man think that he 
 knoweth anything," — that is, if he value himself upon 
 his knowledge, — " he knoweth nothing yet as he ought 
 to know." Knowledge that has this effect is all in vain. 
 Alas for that man whose supposed enlargement and ele- 
 vation of views has broken the chain of sympathy be- 
 tween him and those whom he regards as his w^eaker 
 brethren ! 
 
 3. It is also to be observed that this man of know- 
 ledge is in danger of adopting lax opinions in regard to 
 duty, and thus gradually blunting and benumbing his 
 moral sensibilities till he becomes an apostate. He 
 thinks much of his Christian liberty, his superiority to 
 merely outward rules, his illumination and guidance by 
 great principles living within him. To him, if the heart 
 be right — that is, if the disposition and ultimate aim of 
 the mind be right — the particulars of outward conduct 
 seem to be of little consequence. His religion, he says, is 
 of the heart and spirit ; it does not consist in conform- 
 ing to the customs or the prejudices of other religiou 
 people, in wearing a particular style of dress or a parti 
 
84 The Christian Life, 
 
 cular cast of countenance, in avoiding particular sorts of 
 company or particular amusements, in going to prayer- 
 meetings, no, nor in any special times or rules of private 
 prayer. Surely there is danger for him. Surely he needs 
 something for ballast to his knowledge. The danger is 
 that his religion will be a mere ethereal essence which 
 evaporates and is gone. The danger is that, in his self- 
 reliance and his freedom from prejudices, he will throw 
 himself into one temptation and another, will be con- 
 formed to this world in one particular and another, will 
 fall into one worldly folly and another, till his devotional 
 habits and feelings are entirely gone ; till his sympathies 
 with Christ and with Christ's work in the world, and 
 the communion of his heart with the people of God, are 
 broken ; till his conscience, sophisticated and blinded by 
 false reasonings, is seared j till he becomes at last an 
 apostate from the gospel. How many instances have 
 there been of such backsliding and ultimate apostasy, 
 which began in petty self-indulgences and the contempt 
 of petty scruples ! 
 
 On this part of the subject, the apostle Paul warns 
 his Corinthian friends most distinctly and impressively. 
 He warns those who, with an undue reliance upon their 
 knowledge and upon the consciousness of a right inten- 
 tion, were not afraid to sit down at an idolatrous feast, 
 or even in the idol's temple. He warns them by the 
 example of those Israelites who, in the journeying under 
 Moses through the desert, were tempted into intercourse 
 and conformity with idolaters. " All these things," he 
 
Frecdoin Self-Governed. 85 
 
 says, ^' happened to tbein for ensamples, and they are 
 written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the 
 work! are come. Wherefore, let him who thinketh he 
 standeth take heed lest he fall." 
 
 These are some of the dangers which beset the man 
 of knowledge, as the word knowledge is here used ; the 
 man whose enlarged views of moral questions have freed 
 him from the power of superstitious or unenlightened 
 scruples. To guard him against such dangers, he needs 
 something else \ something without which knowledge is 
 unbalanced ; something without which his knowledge, 
 in its highest attainments, is incomplete. • That some- 
 thing else is Christian Self-control. He must add to 
 knowledge, temperance. 
 
 What, then, do I mean by Temperance ? Of course, 
 we need not take the word in any technical or narrow 
 sense. Temperance, as a Christian grace, is not the mere 
 opposite of drunkenness. It is not mere abstinence from 
 intoxicating drinks and drugs. It is not merely a wise 
 and liealth-preserving moderation in the use of food and 
 drink. The word has a broader and higher meaning. 
 Temperance, in the Christian sense, is the habitual 
 and manful struggle of the soul against inferior and 
 sensual appetites. It is the purpose and habit of striv- 
 ing to subdue the passions. It is the quickened spirit's 
 watching, toil, and strife to keep the body in due sub- 
 jection, and to conquer the propensities that war against 
 the soul. This, as we see at once, is a veiy different 
 thing from oriental, Jewish, or monkish asceticism, and 
 
86 The Christian Life. 
 
 from the scrupulousness which ascetic notions generate. 
 It does not regard the infliction of bodily penances as 
 meritorious or holy, or as the condition or method of 
 acceptance with God. It only sets itself in watchful- 
 ness and conflict against those temptations which assail 
 the soul, and seek to bring it into subjection to sin, 
 through the appetites of the inferior nature. Chris- 
 tian temperance is self-control, inspired by faith, animated 
 by manly conscientiousness, and guided by knowledge. 
 
 Let us, then, call up before our thoughts, and por- 
 tray to ourselves if we can, the man who, having added 
 virtue to faith and knowledge to virtue, adds to know- 
 ledge temperance. Look at him under the influence 
 of this disposition or habit, and see how he is guarded 
 against the perils which beset the man to whose know- 
 ledge temperance is not added. 
 
 1. The first element in the idea of this temperance is 
 that it puts the man on his guard against all the forms 
 of self-indulgence. He feels, not blindly and supersti- 
 tiously, but intelligently, that the indulgence of any ap- 
 petite, in such a way or to such an extent as to bring 
 him under its power, is full of peril to his soul's pros- 
 perity. He is therefore fixed upon securing, by the help 
 of Christ, the just dominion of his spiritual hature over ■ 
 all inferior desires. His body, with its organs, senses, 
 and appetites, is to him his vehicle, his instrument, his 
 temporary tenement, not himself ; and it is a great and 
 constant care with him not to be degraded or fettered 
 by it. The ascetic or the mystic — for asceticism and 
 
Freedom Self -Governed, 87 
 
 mysticism are ordinarily related to each other — regards 
 the body as a clog^a burden, a prison, an enemy. His 
 theory, with the practice founded on it, puts dishonour 
 on his Maker, and cuts him off from the sources of spiri- 
 tual strength. But the believer, adding to knowledge 
 temperance, regards the complex constitution of his 
 mortal existence, and all the circumstances of his proba- 
 tion as arranged in the wisdom and the love of God. 
 He is in the body not for the sake of penance and suffer- 
 ing, but that in the body he may serve his Maker : that 
 through these senses he may become acquainted with the 
 outward and material creation ; that by these organs he 
 may come into active communication with the world in 
 which God has placed him, and in which he has a work 
 to do for God \ and that by the discipline of temptation 
 and of suffering, which the conditions of this life involve, 
 he may be trained for a better life to come. Thus he 
 puts himself intelligently on his guard, lest, by the temp- 
 tations incident to his residence in the body, his soul be 
 brought into bondage. 
 
 2. As he thus adds to knowledge temperance, he 
 grows in humility and gentleness. Habitually watch- 
 ful, he becomes habitually aware of his own weakness, 
 his dangers, and his unworthiness. He may understand, 
 he may pity his brother's indiscriminating and unguided 
 scrupulousness ; but he does not therefore despise that 
 brother, nor withhold from him a brother's sympathy. 
 That his brother is afraid of the very food which idola- 
 trous priests have handled, — that "his brother, unable to 
 
88 The Christian Life. 
 
 distinguish the circumstances of an evil thing from the 
 thing itself, hates even " the garment spotted by the 
 flesh," and runs into weak excesses of conscientious 
 antipathy, — does not seem to him so unreasonable, nor 
 is it so offensive to his feelings, as the proud and self- 
 conceited foolhardiness that rushes into perilous tempta- 
 tions without fear. Thus his knowledge, completed and 
 balanced by temperance, instead of puffing him up and 
 separating him from a salutary sympathy with less en- 
 lightened brethren, makes him more and more helpful 
 to them. Not having lost his syi^pathy with them, he 
 does not lose their confidence, and therefore he does not 
 lose the natural and unresisted influence over them which 
 knowledge ought to give him. His knowledge becomes, 
 in a sense, available for their use. His intelligent habit 
 of moral discrimination helps to guide them. 
 
 3. In proportion to his proficiency in the habit of 
 watchful self-restraint, his inclinations and impulses, 
 instead of controlling his judgment of what is duty, and 
 thus blinding his conscience, become themselves subject 
 to the rule of truth and the sense of obligation. Such 
 is the constitution of our nature, that when the passions 
 are held in subjection to reason and to faith, they gradu- 
 ally learn to bear the yoke without resistance. At first, 
 there may be many a conflict between the holy purpose 
 of self-denial and the untamed passion excited by temp- 
 tation and struggling for the mastery over conscience. 
 But each victory over temptation weakens the enemy 
 within ; each effectual curbing of wayward and grovel- 
 
Freedom Self -Governed. 89 
 
 ling inclinations gives the man more power of self-con- 
 trol ; his nature, perverted, corrupted, and in a sense 
 deranged and disorganized by sin, recovers more and 
 more of the just balance of his power ; he approaches 
 ever nearer to a full experience of that apostolic bene- 
 diction : ^' The very God of peace sanctify you wholly : 
 and your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved 
 blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 This Christian temperance — this holy and vigilant 
 self-restraint — is what the apostle Paul commends, most 
 seriously, to those knowing ones at Corinth, whose 
 knowledge had inflated them, and led them into fearful 
 perils. " Know ye not that they which run in a race, run 
 all, but one receiveth the prize % So run, that ye may 
 obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery 
 (in the public games) is temperate in all things. Now 
 they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an in- 
 corruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly ; so 
 fight I, not as one that beateth the air : but I keep under 
 my body, and bring it into subjection ; lest that by any 
 means, when I have preached to others, I myself should 
 be a castaway." Such is Paul's commentary on adding 
 to knowledge temperance. 
 
 Let me now give you a few brief rules that may help 
 you in your endeavour to cultivate this self-control. 
 
 (1.) Fill your mind with just views of the dignity of 
 your nature as created in God's irn age, and of the gran- 
 deur of your destiny as made for immortality. Be always 
 conscious of what you are and what you were made for. 
 
90 The Clunstimi Life, 
 
 (2.) Be watchful against occasional temptations and 
 against the formation of self-indulgent habits. Occa- 
 sional temptations carry away the unwatchful and there- 
 fore unguarded soul ; and as they come, one after another, 
 they bind that soul, ere it is aware, as with a chain of 
 iron. Be watchful. Have you any self-indulgent prac- 
 tice or habit which it would be better for you to renounce ? 
 Have you any circle of companions whose example and 
 whose society tempts you to self-indulgence % When I see 
 a young ipan undertaking to be a Christian, and yet 
 spending annually a larger amount in cigars than he can 
 afiPord to give away, I am afraid' for him. 
 
 (3.) Embrace such opportunities of self-denial as God 
 gives you. Opportunities of self-denial are to be found, 
 not made. You have no need to go out of the world into 
 a desert or a cell, in order to deny yourself. God will 
 take care that your moral nature suffers no harm for want 
 of opportunities to deny itself, and to bring your impul- 
 sive and wayward passions into subjection. 
 
 (4.) Keep the end of life in view, and the end of all 
 things. This will help you in your watchfulness. This 
 will stimulate you to seize upon every legitimate oppor- 
 tunity of self-denial. This will quicken your conscious- 
 ness of what you are and what you are made for. To 
 remember that your life is only a vapour, and that the 
 visible world itself is passing away like a shadow, will 
 take away the glare and show of the things that deceive 
 you, — will help you to see things as they are, and to 
 walk as in the light of an opening eternity. 
 
CHAPTEE YII. 
 
 STEADFASTNESS. 
 
 READING THE BIBLE. UNDERSTANDEST THOU WHAT THOU 
 
 READEST ? THE WORD " PATIENCE " IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 STEADFASTNESS A DISTINCT ELEMENT OP CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 
 HOW IT MAY BE ATTAINED : I. AS THE LEGITIMATE RESULT OF 
 FAITH, VIRTUE, KNOWLEDGE, AND SELF-CONTROL ; II. BY WATCH- 
 ING AGAINST TEMPTATIONS TO INSTABILITY ; III. BY HABITUALLY 
 REGARDING THE THINGS WHICH ARE NOT SEEN. 
 
'' He that endureth to the end shall be saved."— Matt. x. 22. 
 
 " 111 your patience possess ye your souls."— Luke xxi. 19. 
 
 " Tribulation worketh patience ; and patience, experience."— 
 Rom. v. 3, 4. 
 
 " Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, 
 unto all patience." — Col. i. 11. 
 
 "Not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and 
 patience inherit the promises." — Heb. vi. 12. 
 
 "Cast not away therefore your confidence, wiiich hath great 
 recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after 
 ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise." — 
 Heb. X. 35, 36. 
 
 " Let us run with patience the race that is set before us."— 
 Heb. XII. 1. 
 
 " Giving all diligence .... add to temperance, patience."— 
 2 Pet. i. 5, 6. 
 
Steadfastness. 
 
 CANNOT undertake to lead you and 
 help you in the endeavour to attain the 
 completeness and symmetry of a truly 
 Christian character, unless I may assume 
 that you are carefully and teachably reading the Bible. 
 Such reading of the Bible, more than anything else, 
 brings you into communication with the mind of Christ, 
 and with the influence of the Holy Spirit. Yet, in your 
 reading of the Bible, you may often feel the need of 
 some friendly guidance and explanation. It will not be 
 strange if sometimes you find yourself in sympathy with 
 the Ethiopian courtier, who, when Philip asked him, 
 '< Understandest thou what thou readesf?" replied, 
 ^' How can I, except some man should guide, me ? " 
 
 For example, in your reading of the New Testament, 
 you find that "patience" is frequently spoken of as 
 something essential to the formation of a Christian 
 character and the progress of a Christian life. What is 
 the meaning of that word " patience," w^hen it is thus 
 used in the New Testament ? If I can help you to a 
 clearer understanding of that word, as it meets you so 
 
94 The Christian Life. 
 
 often in the reading of the Bible, perhaps I may bring 
 your mind into a closer contact with the mind of Christ 
 and the teaching of the Spirit. 
 
 Let me say, then, that there are two words in the 
 New Testament Avhich are sometimes translated patience. 
 One of those two words signifies slowness to anger, 
 indisposition to sudden resentment or complaint ; and 
 this is very nearly what we call patience, in our ordinary 
 use of the word. The other, which is much more 
 frequently used in describing the Christian character 
 and life, signifies rather what we mean by such expres- 
 sions as " continuing," " holding out," ^' enduring," 
 '^ persevering " against opposition or temptation of 
 whatever sort. The idea of steadfastness or persever- 
 ance rarely occurs in the New Testament under any 
 other form than this. It is the idea of enduring and 
 holding out in the face of adverse influences. Kead 
 the words in which our Saviour explauis his own parable 
 of the sower : '' They on the rock are they, which, when 
 they hear, receive the word with joy ; and these have 
 no root, which for a while believe, and in time of tempta- 
 tion fall away. And that which fell among thorns are 
 they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are 
 choked with cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life, 
 and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good 
 ground are they, which, in an honest and good heart, 
 having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit 
 with patience.'' In other words, they bring forth fruit 
 by persevering in their faith, their virtue, their know- 
 
Steadfastness, 95 
 
 ledge, and their earnest and watchful self-control. 
 Observe how the apostle Paul represents God as award- 
 ing eternal life to them who seek for glory and honour 
 and immortality " by imtient continuance in well-doing." 
 That " patient continuance " is simply perseverance ; 
 and what the apostle says is nothing else than what 
 Christ himself says, using essentially the same word, 
 '^ He that shall endure to the end, the same shall be 
 saved." Just this is the " patience " which the apostle 
 speaks of when he says, " We glory in tribulations also, 
 knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience 
 experience." He and his fellow-believers, •' rejoicing 
 in hope of the glory of God," exulted even in their 
 tribulations, knowing that through the grace to which 
 they had been introduced by faith, tribulation would be 
 the occasion and the means of disciplining them to 
 patience, or, in other words, would call them to exercfse, 
 and thus to confirm their steadfastness in the Christian 
 life. They knew that from this patience or principle of 
 perseverance, tried and manifested by tribulation, there 
 would come " experience," or the experimental know- 
 ledge of the gospel, and the consequent conviction of its 
 truth. In the same sense of the word, it was the same 
 apostle's unceasing prayer for the brethren whom he 
 especially remembered before God, that they might be 
 '^ strengthened with all might, according to God's glori- 
 ous power, to all patience and long-suffering ; " that is, to 
 steadfastness combined with meekness under injuries 
 and sorrows. So, when he gave thanks for the spiritual 
 
96 The Christian Life. 
 
 prosperity and fruitfalness of those who had believed 
 under his ministry, he "remembered without ceasing," 
 not only their " work of faith and labour of love," but 
 also their "patience [or steadfastness] of hope in our 
 Lord Jesus Christ ; " for it was evidently his belief 
 that as works of Christian duty spring naturally from a 
 living faith, and as love naturally manifests itself in 
 labour for those beloved, so steadfastness, or an un- 
 wearied perseverance, is the appropriate manifestation 
 and result of Christian hope. In the same sense of the 
 word, the believer, compassed about with the great 
 cloud of witnesses, is to run his appointed race " with 
 patience,'' that is. with steady perseverance, "looking to 
 Jesus, who, for the joy that was set before him, 
 endured the cross, despising the shame : " — endurance 
 is patience ; he was crucified without being turned from 
 \n§ purpose. Where such " patience has its perfect 
 work," there, in the estimation of the apostle James, 
 the Christian character is "perfect and entire, wanting 
 nothing," — as if all the graces of holiness were 
 formed and manifested by the discipline that tries the 
 believer's steadfastness. The same writer, in another 
 passage, having exhorted his readers to equanimity and 
 cheerfulness under vexation, persecution, and the pains 
 of hope deferred, by reminding them of the nearness and 
 certainty of eternal things, proceeds to speak again of 
 the same " patience : " " Behold, we count them happy 
 who endure,'^ that is, who are steadfast when tried. 
 " Ye have heard of the patience " — the steadfastness — 
 
Steadfastness. 97 
 
 '^ of Job, and have seen " — in his case — " the end of 
 the Lord," — the completion of God's plan, — ^' how the 
 Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." So, in the 
 visions of God that were granted to his servant in 
 Patmos, when the veil of time was torn awa,y, and he 
 looked down the long reach of coming ages, he exclaimed, 
 once and again, as he foresaw the successive outbreaks 
 of the powers of darkness against the redeemed, " Here 
 is the 'patience and faith of the saints ! " '' Here is the 
 patience of the saints ! Here are they that keep the 
 commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." That 
 " patience of the saints" is their constant steadfastness. 
 It is not strange, then, that the apostle Peter finds a 
 place for this " patience" in his catalogue of the quali- 
 ties that make the completeness and symmetry of Chris- 
 tian character. ISTor is it difficult to see what he means 
 by " patience." He means steadfastness. He means 
 that weight and force of purpose which holds out in the 
 face of all opposing influences. Having admonished his 
 readers not to let their faith be that maimed, dead faith 
 which is disjoined from the manly purpose of well-doing; 
 and not to let their virtue be that erring, servile, bigoted 
 consciousness, which is disjoined from knowledge ; and 
 again, not to let their knowledge be that proud, reckless, 
 dangerous knowledge which is disjoined from temperance, 
 or the purpose and habit of self-control, — he proceeds to 
 counsel them that to their temperance, to this combina- 
 tion of qualities, they add steadfastness, stability of char- 
 acter, the element and force of perseverance in well-doing. 
 
 G 
 
98 The Christian Life. 
 
 But here, perhaps, a question arises in your mind : If 
 the " patience " on which the Scriptures insist so much 
 is nothing else than steadfastness or perseverance, how 
 is it that ^' patience" in this sense of the word is set 
 down distinctly as one of the elements of a Christian 
 character % How can it be made out that perseverance 
 is a distinct thing from faith, or virtue, or spiritual in- 
 telligence, or temperance, or godliness, or brotherly affec- 
 tion, or charity % Is it not rather something essential 
 to the very being of faith, of virtue, and of all the rest, 
 and, therefore, indistinguishable from them % I answer : 
 It is true, no doubt, that the commencement of a really 
 Christian life does, by the grace of God, involve the cer- 
 tainty of its continuance to the end. Yet this certainty 
 depends not on the intrinsic nature of the Christian life, 
 but on the gracious purpose and promise of God. There 
 is no contradiction and no absurdity in supposing that 
 there may be faith and virtue, and knowledge and tem- 
 perance, and every other trait of Christian character, 
 and, after all, a fatal defect of perseverance. Hence it is 
 that perseverance is as distinctly insisted on by the Holy 
 Spirit in the Scriptures, and is made as really a condi- 
 tion of final salvation as faith or repentance. A man 
 may make ever so much proficiency for a season ; he 
 may advance ever so near to the goal ; but if to all this 
 he does not add steadfastness — if he dogs not continue to 
 the end — he falls with them who draw back to perdition. 
 
 This, however, does not complete the answer. When 
 w^e see a man drawing back to perdition from what 
 
Steadfastness, 99 
 
 seemed to be the beginning of a Christian life, we may 
 indeed infer (and the Scriptures authorize us to infer), 
 from the fact of his falling away, that all his religious- 
 ness was, in some respect, unsound and hollow from the 
 beginning. In this sense, it may be admitted that a 
 true repentance will be a persevering repentance ; a true 
 faith will be a persevering faith ; a true discipleship will 
 manifest itself in the end as a discipleship which endures 
 to the end. But, at the same time, it is true that there 
 may be faith, and with faith virtue, and with virtue 
 knowledge, and with knowledge temperance, without all 
 that stability which Christ and his apostles mean when 
 they speak of " patience." There may be an instability 
 not amounting to actual and final apostasy, — a deficiency 
 of weight and force in the character of the man, — an 
 unsteadiness of aim and purpose, — which weakens all 
 the elements of Christian character. Temperance — the 
 attemjjt to subdue the appetites and passions, and to 
 bring the whole man under the control of truth — may 
 be irregular and unsteady. Virtue — the living conscien- 
 tiousness — may act now and then with power, and at 
 other times the mind may be diverted from its purpose, 
 and the conscience become less active and controlling. 
 This shows us what the apostle Peter means by faith, 
 virtue, knowledge, and temperance, without steadfastness. 
 He means that sort of Christian character which is go- 
 verned by impulses, occasions, sympathies, and excite- 
 ments, rather than by the force of inflexible principles 
 and well-formed habits. How many instances are there 
 
loo The Christian Life, 
 
 of that sort in every place ! How many professed dis- 
 ciples, who are zealous and joyful for a while in a time 
 of general reviving, and seemingly earnest in every good 
 word and work, but whose religious life, like the phy- 
 sical life of those animals which have their winter of 
 torpor, hibernates through the interval from one revived 
 and joyful season to another ! How many hopeful con- 
 verts are there, who seem to run well for a season, but 
 are strangely and sadly hindered ! How many who re- 
 ceived the word with joy, and, as we thought, were 
 adding virtue to faith, and knowledge to virtue, and 
 temperance to knowledge, but after a while, when spe- 
 cial excitements and sympathies had become less effec- 
 tive, relaxed their diligence ! How many who have no 
 root in themselves, and so endure only for a time ! 
 
 You see, then, how it is that steadfastness, or pa- 
 tience, is a different thing from temperance, and different 
 from those other elements of Christian character with 
 which it is associated. Virtue, or manly well-doing, is 
 the legitimate attendant and the natural product oi 
 faith, and yet there may be a faith in which the element 
 of virtue has not yet been fairly brought out. Know- 
 ledge, or the power of moral discrimination — which acts 
 intelligently and with the sense of freedom, instead ox 
 acting in a purblind subjection to formulas — is necessary 
 to the completeness of the virtue which springs from 
 faith ; and virtue itself, in its own legitimate influence, 
 leads the mind on to this sort of knowledge. Yet there 
 may be virtue which is defective in this respect, not 
 
Steadfastness. loi 
 
 having been developed into knowledge ; and which is, 
 therefore, narrow, censorious, and servile. In like man- 
 ner, knowledge, with all its power of discrimination, is 
 incomplete, if it does not include a vivid sense of the 
 duty and necessity of self-control, or if it does not ac- 
 tually hold in check the inferior impulses and passions ; 
 and the man who has added to virtue knowledge will 
 naturally watch against temptations of this kind. Yet 
 there may be knowledge to which temperance is not 
 joined, and which is, therefore, so one-sided and unbal- 
 anced as to be dangerous, by tending to licentiousness of 
 living. Just so temperance, or the purpose and attempt 
 to subjugate the inferior passions, is incomplete, feeble, 
 and fruitless, without steadfastness ; and it naturally 
 tends to complete itself by working itself out into a firm 
 stability of soul. Yet there may be a fervent temper- 
 ance, striving to discipline the desires of the flesh and of 
 the mind, and to bring them into subjection, which, not 
 having yet achieved its victory, is too dependent on im- 
 pulses, occasions, and sympathies, and which is, there- 
 fore, fitful and unstable ; a temperance to which the 
 grace of steadfastness has not been added. 
 
 We come, then, to the more directly practical ques- 
 tion. How shall we add to the purpose of self-control 
 this grace of steadfastness*? What method and mea- 
 sures can we use with ourselves to develop, in the 
 beautiful combination of faith, virtue, knowledge, and 
 temperance, that higher form of a symmetrical Christian 
 character, which is seen when to all the rest is added, or 
 
I02 The Christian Life. 
 
 rather when from all the rest there is produced, stability 
 or perseverance, as opposed to a mere impulsiveness 
 that moves or stops, like the wheels of the windmill 
 that cease to revolve when the breezes are still, or that 
 rises and falls, like the mercury in the barometer, with 
 the variations of the atmospheric pressure. This sta- 
 bility is properly a distinct aim and purpose of the 
 Christian self-discipline. This weight and firmness of 
 character, with its steadiness of movement in the Chris- 
 tian life, is not to be attained without attentive effort, 
 and may be attained by diligence in the use of the " all 
 things necessary to life and godliness " which are given 
 to us *' through the knowledge of him that hath called 
 us to glory and virtue." 
 
 I offer, then, these practical suggestions : — 
 1. Stability of Christian character is, in one sense, a 
 natural result of faith, virtue, knowledge, and temper- 
 ance, as these qualities have been heretofore illustrated. 
 The character that is to stand immovable amid the 
 fluctuations of external influence, like a lighthouse amid 
 the waves, must have for its foundation a firm belief in 
 the great disclosures which God has made concerning 
 things eternal. On that foundation there must stand 
 an earnest and strenuous purpose to do God's will ; a 
 purpose that sets the whole man at work. That pur- 
 pose of well-doing must enrich the mind with a practical 
 knowledge of the great principles by which the moral 
 sense is guided to the discernment of duty, and is eman- 
 cipated from bondage to narrow, slavish, blinding for- 
 
Steadfastness. 
 
 mulas. That knowledge, the enlightened and cultivated 
 power of moral discernment, must put the man upon 
 his guard against the misleading and degrading power 
 of inferior appetites ; and, while teaching him the neces- 
 sity, must train him to the habit of a free and Christian 
 self-control. Such a character, growing up from faith 
 into virtue, from virtue into knowledge, and from know- 
 ledge into temperance, grows naturally, though not 
 without diligence to that end, into a steadfastness 
 which no changes of condition, no caprices of fashion, 
 no ebb or flow of popular opinion or popular excite- 
 ment, shall be able to overcome. Remember, then, 
 that your stability of Christian character must not be a 
 mere appliance of external props and aids, but some- 
 thing intrinsic in the character itself, like the stability 
 of an oak, that holds with a living grasp to the soil in 
 which it grew from the acorn, and that stands the 
 stronger for all the winds that blow upon it. Let yours 
 be the stability of that self-balanced character which is 
 formed by the union and cohesion of these great moral 
 forces : faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance. 
 
 2. At the same time, it is not unimportant to say 
 that the temptations to instability must be watchfully 
 avoided and resisted. A little thought fulness will make 
 you know what those temptations are, and how easily 
 they beset you. Beware of them, whatever they may 
 be in your case. Beware of a frivolous and trifling habit 
 of mind. Many a painful instance of religious instabi- 
 lity comes from negligence on this point. Kemember 
 
I04 The Christian Life. 
 
 that life, in this world of probation, is a serious and 
 earnest affair ; and beware of those companions, those 
 books, those amusements, those views of life and duty, 
 that make you thoughtless when you ought to be in 
 earnest. Know what your weaknesses are. Know on 
 what side you are likely to be assailed. Know on what 
 point it is that, in your mind, the principle of self-in- 
 dulgence and self-pleasing is likely to prevail over the 
 principle of duty. Then to that self-knowledge add a 
 more jealous self- watchfulness and a more resolute self- 
 control. Thus temperance, in the large and Christian 
 sense, shall be, in the growth of your religious character, 
 the parent of stability and perseverance. Self-indul- 
 gence, in one form or another — a habit of pleasing one's 
 self, a yielding of the mind to impulses and dispositions 
 that ought to be held in subjection — is the chief and 
 proximate cause of religious instability. It is not by 
 accident, nor without a serious meaning, that the grace 
 of steadfastness is named by an apostle in close con- 
 nexion with the grace of self-control. Kemember her 
 who lingered and looked back, when God's angel was 
 leading her to safety. Forget the things which are be- 
 hind, if you would press toward the mark for the prize. 
 3. Above all, let your faith, your conscientiousness, 
 your knowledge, your self-denial, be continually rein- 
 forced by the contemplation of God and of things in- 
 visible and eternal. This habit of mind, and nothing 
 else when this is wanting, gives seriousness, gravity, and 
 immovable strength to religious purposes and affections. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 GODLINESS. 
 
 INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. CHRISTIANITY IS '^ GODLINESS." THE 
 llE-ENTHRONEMENT OF GOD IN THE SOUL. PROGRESS FROM FAITH 
 ONWARD. ELEMENTS OF GODLINESS: THE ''FEAR OF GOD;" THE 
 HABIT OF PRAYER ; THE HABIT OF PRAISE. GODLINESS, IF GENUINE, 
 PRESUPPOSES FAITH, VIRTUE, KNOWLEDGE, TEMPERANCE, STEAD- 
 FASTNESS, AND IS THEIR VITAL POWER. HOW GODLINESS IS ADDED 
 TO PATIENCE. 
 
'^ Behold, he prayeth."— Acts ix. 11. 
 
 " Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet ; and when 
 thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret ; 
 and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." — 
 Matt. vi. 6. 
 
 "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, 
 and watching thereunto with all perseverance."— Eph. vi. 18. 
 
 " Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiv- 
 ing."— Col. IV. 2. 
 
 " Exercise thyself unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth 
 little ; but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise 
 of the life that now is, and of that which is to come."— 1 Tim. 
 IV. 7, 8. 
 
 " Giving all diligence, add ... to patience, godliness." -2 Pet. 
 I. 6. 
 
 ''The doctrine which is according to godliness."—! TrM. vi. 3. 
 
ffiotrltness^ 
 
 HE Christian life is a life of intercourse with 
 God. " Behold, he prayeth," as it was said 
 of Saul when he had submitted himself to 
 Christ, may be said of every one in whom 
 the life of spiritual renovation and progress has begun. 
 Tf you have entered on a Christian course, yau have 
 already begun to pray, believing that God is the re- 
 warder of them who diligently seek him. You acknow- 
 ledge the authority and embrace the promise of that 
 saying, *' Thou, when thou pray est, enter into thy closet ; 
 and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father 
 which is in secret ; and thy Father which seeth in secret 
 shall reward thee openly." A praying man, " praying 
 always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, 
 and watching thereunto with all perseverance and sup- 
 plication," is a godly man. 
 
 " In all thy ways acknowledge God." Look to him 
 continually, cherishing the sense of your relation to him, 
 and of his holy and loving presence ever surrounding 
 you. Let all your undertakings be " begun, continued, 
 and ended in him." This is godliness. 
 
io8 The Christian Life, 
 
 The word which in the New Testament is translated 
 " godliness" signifies worship, or the sentiment and habit 
 of reverence, with the added idea that is the right kind 
 of worship. Sometimes the word is used as a name for 
 the true religion, — the religion which acknowledges and 
 honours the living and true God, revealed in the person of 
 Christ his Son ; and sometimes it is used as denoting that 
 particular trait or habit of a religious life which the word 
 particulaiiy describes, — the habit of recognising God, and 
 communing with him in acts of spiritual worship. 
 
 In the former application, the word is beautifully 
 suggestive. The religion which the gospel proclaims 
 and establishes ; the religion to which Christ recovers 
 men by his redeeming and renewing work ; the religion 
 of the kingdom of God on earth ; the religion which 
 the Church, made up of all the redeemed and holy, 
 maintains in its faith, in its teaching and testimony, 
 and in its practice, is godliness, the reverent knowledge 
 and service of the living God. Coming into a world 
 long darkened by estrangement from God and ignorance 
 of him, it dispels that darkness by restoring the know- 
 ledge and the free and loving worship of him whose 
 presence, seen by faith, illuminates all worlds. It re-en- 
 thrones God in human thoughts and affections. Where- 
 ever it goes, with its victories over unbelief and sin, 
 voices as of herald angels proclaim, " Behold, the taber- 
 nacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, 
 and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be 
 with them, and be their God." 
 
Godliness, 109 
 
 Godliness, then, in the more definite use of the word 
 as descriptive of personal character, is nothing else than 
 the same re-enthronement of God in an individual soul. 
 It is that particular aspect of a Christian life which is 
 seen in the intercourse of thought and affection between 
 the individual soul and God. As the world lying in 
 wickedness is a profaned and dishonoured temple which 
 the gospel, in its progress, is to cleanse, and in which it 
 is to re-establish God's spiritual and accepted worship, 
 so the individual soul, in its apostate condition, is a 
 desecrated temple ; and when the lustration of that 
 living temple has been performed, when the fire of 
 sacrifice has been kindled within on the re-established 
 altar, when the thoughts and affections of that soul 
 have become habitually fragrant to God with sweet in- 
 cense of a penitent and loving worship, — that is godli- 
 ness. It is the conscious intercourse of the soul with 
 God. As distinguished from the other elements of a 
 Christian character, it is the habit and spirit of devo- 
 tion j that state of mind in which God is consciously 
 present, the object of trust and love, as well as of awe. 
 It is the soul's obedience to the precept, " Pray without 
 ceasing : in everything give thanks." 
 
 Perhaps I may show you how the habit and the 
 living spirit of devotion are related to other elements of 
 Christian character, by representing to you, if I can, 
 the progress of an earnest mind, as the characteristics of 
 the new man are successively formed in the heart and 
 manifested in the life. The man, we will suppose, has 
 
I lo The Christian Life. 
 
 been made to feel, with some degree of distinctness, his 
 own estrangement from God, and his need of a Saviour 
 who can bring him back to the fountain of light and 
 life. To him, in that state of mind, the gospel comes. 
 It unveils before him the character of God, the dread 
 realities of the infinite hereafter, and the way of salva- 
 tion by the reconciling blood of Christ and the renewing 
 grace of the Holy Spirit. He receives that gospel as 
 true ; he accepts its offers as his hope for eternity ; he 
 yields himself to be guided by its teachings ; he becomes 
 a believer. This is the beginning of his Christian pro- 
 gress. He has faith — not a merely speculative reception 
 of the gospel, but a confidence in it — a living faith, 
 which, from the moment of its commencement in his 
 soul, is the commencement of a new and spiritual life. 
 In such a faith is involved, undoubtedly, all that makes, 
 when fully developed, a matured and completed Christian 
 character ; just as the oak that has braved the storms 
 of a thousand winters was once included in a tender 
 sprout from a half-buried acorn, so tender that it might 
 have been crushed by an infant's foot. But his faith 
 will grow into that matured and completed Christian 
 character, only as he gives all diligence to a course of 
 continued and divinely guided self-discipline. To such 
 diligence his faith is prompting him. And now as he 
 inquires what God, what Christ would have him do, his 
 conscience is quickened by the impulse of this new 
 principle of faith ; his moral sense acquires new sen- 
 sibility and power ; he forms not the purpose only, but 
 
Godliness, 1 1 1 
 
 the habit also, of doing always that which he under- 
 stands to be the will of God ; and thus he adds to his 
 faith virtue. As he pursues this course, training 
 himself to the habit of well-doing, his mind, already 
 touched and stimulated in its int^lectual faculty by the 
 power of faith in things not seen, acquires a more 
 familiar acquaintance with the comprehensive principles 
 of duty ; and, by the practice of inquiring what is right 
 in order to do right, he rises above mere forms, and 
 narrow unintelligent rules of duty, and learns to act 
 under the guidance of great principles clearly discerned 
 and readily applied. Thus he adds to his virtue know- 
 ledge. Still going on toward the measure of the stature 
 of a perfect man in Christ, he becomes conscious that 
 nothing is more adverse to his progrcKS, or tends more 
 to pervert his moral judgment, and to lead him through 
 freedom into licentiousness, than the remaining power 
 of those desires and impulses which reign unresisted in 
 the natural man. He therefore sets himself to subdue 
 those desires and impulses, to get the command over 
 himself in all his feelings, and to bring his whole nature 
 into a cherished subjection to truth and God. He adds 
 to his knowledge temperance. As he becomes more 
 acquainted with himself and with the dangers that beset 
 his way, he feels more deeply that he must never parley 
 with temptation ; that, if he is to escape the fate of 
 those who draw back to perdition, he must maintain a 
 watchful steadfastness, and that he cannot depend on 
 impulses and feeluigs merely. He gives all diligence to 
 
1 1 2 The Christian Life. 
 
 be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work 
 of the Lord. Thus he adds to temperance patience, or 
 holy constancy, the patience of the saints. 
 
 But this is not the complete analysis of Christian 
 character or of Christian progress. Faith, virtue, know- 
 ledge, temperance, and constancy, must be supported and 
 enlivened, each of them and all of them, by conscious 
 and constant intercourse with God. To every one of 
 them, regarded as Christian qualities, the recognition of 
 God, as the object of the soul's confidence and homage, 
 is essential. A holy constancy of purpose to follow 
 Christ, and to obey his words, is impossible, without 
 constancy of intercourse with God. He who would add 
 to faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to know- 
 ledge temperance, and to temperance steadfastness, must 
 add to that steadfastness, and incorporate with it, the 
 habit of reverent and affectionate communion with God, 
 or his diligence in other respects will be to little purpose. 
 He must 
 
 " ADD TO PATIENCE GODLINESS." 
 
 The idea of godliness as distinguished from other 
 Christian qualities, and the relation of godliness in that 
 sense to spiritual life and growth, may be set in a clearer 
 light, by recollecting what particulars are included in 
 this meaning of the word. 
 
 One part of godliness is the habitually-cherished 
 sentiment so often spoken of in the Scriptures as " the 
 fear of God." The godly man is one who carries in his 
 
Godliness. 113 
 
 mind a reverent sense of what God is. He cherishes 
 the awing and subduing thought of his own relation to 
 that eternal majesty and purity. He realizes, in every 
 place and in every employment, the presence of that 
 Holiness to which all must give account. He learns to 
 see God in all the works of creative power and wisdom, 
 and to acknowledge him in all the unfolding of his 
 universal providence. 
 
 In a true and Christian godliness, the sentiment of 
 veneration toward God carries with it a sentiment of 
 love, or of affectionate and obedient confidence. The 
 *^ fear of God," prompted by faith, is something very 
 different from a slavish dread. It is a loving and 
 adoring awe. It has no place where there is not a con- 
 fiding and cheerful complacency in God, an elevating 
 and inspiring fellowship with his holiness. The godly 
 man, he who has effectually received " the doctrine 
 which is according to godliness," looks up to his Father 
 in heaven, not in dumb terror, but with a humble trust, 
 a free and filial spirit, a mind rejoicing in God's power 
 and universal dominion ; and this is love toward God. 
 
 Prayer is a part of godliness, and is essential to it. 
 Mere contemplation is not godliness, nor is mere senti- 
 ment and feeling. A man may have a philosopher's 
 reach and depth of thought, and may meditate sublimely 
 on the being and the works of God, and yet not be a 
 godly man. He may have a poet's splendour of ima- 
 gination and tenderness of sensibility ; the beauty of 
 God's slightest and meanest workmanship may fill his 
 
1 14 The Christian Life, 
 
 eye with tears ; and yet he may come far short of 
 being a godly man. The devoutness of a Christian life 
 includes positive worship. It is not merely the flight 
 of lofty thought, nor the flight of raptured feeling. It 
 is the soul addressing itself directly and expressly to 
 God, in the simplicity of the belief " that God is, and 
 that he is the rewarder of them who diligently seek 
 him." The godly man regards God as his Father, to 
 whose kind ear he can have secret and familiar access ; 
 and to that Father he addresses himself in all his weak- 
 ness and in all his wants. 
 
 Nor does he come to God with his petitions only ; he 
 has thanks, adoration, praise, to offer at the mercy-seat. 
 He loves to breathe out before God his reverence, his 
 gratitude, his confidence, and his joy, as well as his 
 desires and fears. The true description of this godliness 
 is in the Bible, full of the thoughts which godly men 
 have ever loved to utter in the ear of God. Surely 
 there is no need of my taking pains to show you, from 
 the examples which the Bible gives you, how large a 
 place there is for adoration and joyful praise in the soul's 
 intercourse with God. 
 
 Observe, then, how obvious is the mutual dependence 
 between godliness, or devoutness, and the other elements 
 of Christian character. 
 
 A genuine godliness is impossible, except in connexion 
 with the other elements of Christian life and progress, 
 and especially with those which have been illustrated in 
 the foregoing chapters. Godliness is something to be 
 
Godliness. 1 1 ^ 
 
 '' added " not only to faith, but to virtue, knowledge, 
 temperance, and stability. These are, in some sort, the 
 indispensable pre-requisites to a real and habitual com- 
 munion with God. We sometimes see a man setting 
 out to be very godly, a great example of devoutness, 
 without conscientiousness, or moral discrimination, or 
 self-control, or steadfastness of character. He under- 
 takes to add to his faith godliness, omitting those graces, 
 intermediate in the catalogue, which are the preliminary 
 conditions of a developed and thriving godliness. He 
 does not add to faith virtue ; he has no strong and 
 earnest conscientiousness, no fervent purpose to do 
 ahvays all that is right, and to avoid always all that is 
 wTong. He does not add to virtue knowledge ; he 
 does not apply habitually in his life those great prin- 
 ciples of evangelical obedience which make the believer 
 free indeed. He does not add to knowledge temperance \ 
 he has never entered upon that conflict with himself by 
 which he is to acquire the control over the passions 
 that pervert the moral judgment, and sear the moral 
 sensibilities of self-pleasing men. He does not add to 
 temperance constancy ; he does not combine with his 
 attempt or profession of well-doing that steadiness of 
 purpose, which, having once put the hand to the plough, 
 refuses to turn back, or to look back, from the furrow ; 
 and which, instead of yielding the soul to the power of 
 emotions changing like the wind, and of impulses fluc- 
 tuating as the sea, keeps it under the direction of 
 principle fixed as the north star. All these things he 
 
1 1 6 The Christian Life. 
 
 deems of little moment ; but before these, and instead 
 of these, is to be his godliness. A devotional habit, 
 such as it is, he holds to be the whole of Christian cha- 
 racter. Such godliness is unreal. That man's religion 
 is vain. He may deceive himself ; he may not be that 
 gross, low hypocrite who knows his own hypocrisy, 
 but, by and by, he will be found to be a pretender. 
 
 Godliness, in order to be real, must have some foun- 
 dation in the character. It cannot stand by itself where 
 other elements of Christian progress are wanting. Godli- 
 ness IS a renewed and holy mind manifesting itself in 
 those affections and duties of which God is the imme- 
 diate object. But will the mind exercise itself aright 
 in those affections and duties which relate immediately 
 to God, if virtue, knowledge, temperance, and constancy 
 are wanting % Godliness is the soul's communion with 
 God. But how can a man commune with God, how 
 can he add to his faith godliness, when his faith does 
 not quicken his conscience to virtue, and make him 
 alive to all his daily duties in all human relations ? — 
 when his faith does not inform and enliven his soul with 
 the active power of that knowledge which is the inspira- 
 tion of free obedience % — when his faith does not bring 
 him into conflict with all the infirmities of his corrupted 
 nature % — when his faith imparts to his character no 
 gravity nor constancy % That man's devoutness, fervent 
 as it may seem, much as he may talk of it, much as he 
 may rejoice in it, is all pretence or all delusion. 
 
 So, on the other hand, the foregoing traits of charac- 
 
Godliness, 1 1 7 
 
 ter are of no worth, unless they lead on to godliness or 
 are connected with it. Let there be virtue, knowledge, 
 temperance, and constancy, all connected with faith and 
 with each other, as they must be in a mind that is truly 
 renewed ; and that renewed mind will add to them 
 godliness, for without the habit of intercourse with God, 
 they are all dead. In such intercourse with God, faith 
 finds its most invigorating exercise. In such intercourse 
 with God, conscience becomes more sensitive to evil, and 
 more efficient in its dominion over the voluntary powers. 
 In such intercourse with God, the soul beholding the 
 countenance of him who is infinite purity and infinite 
 love, is inspired with clearer perceptions of the law of 
 love ; and enlarged with such knowledge, it learns to 
 walk in the manly freedom of the sons of God.' In such 
 intercourse with God, the soul is strengthened for con- 
 flict with its own infirmities, and learns to strive more 
 earnestly and more eflfectually for the mastery over itself. 
 In such communion with God, the soul grows strong in 
 the Lord and in the power of his might, and thus the 
 believer, divinely armed and strengthened, learns to stand 
 above dependence upon varying impulses, " steadfast, 
 unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." 
 It is important, then, to a full and well-proportioned 
 Christian growth, that while you use all diligence to make 
 your faith complete in a manly well-doing, and your 
 virtue in knowledge, and your knowledge in temperance, 
 and your temperance in a Christian constancy, you use 
 the same diligence to develop, as the completeness and 
 
1 1 8 The Christian Life. 
 
 beauty of your constancy, and in vital connexion with 
 it, godliness, or the habit and spirit of intercourse 
 with God. 
 
 But here you may reasonably ask. How shall I add 
 to patience, godliness % By what care and pains may I 
 acquire these devotional habits of thought, of feeling, 
 and of action % How shall this element of a well-pro- 
 portioned Christian character — an element so essential 
 to the completeness and the life of every other — be so 
 formed in me that it shall be self- manifested in my life % 
 There is a simple way of answering such inquiries. 
 
 1. In all thy ways acknowledge God. If you would 
 have your constancy in the Christian profession, and the 
 steadfastness of your well-doing, adorned and completed 
 in the beauty of a devotional spirit, so that your face 
 shall shine with an unconscious glory caught from inter- 
 course with heaven, you must be careful to acknowledge 
 God in all your ways, remembering distinctly his presence 
 and your relations of dependence and responsibility. Let 
 every duty, — not religious duties only, but duties of every 
 class — not great and arduous duties only, but all those 
 seemingly less important acts of duty which make up 
 so much of the labour and discipline of this life, — be per- 
 formed with a distinct reference to God's will, and as 
 under his eye. Let every temptation — the least as well 
 as the greatest — be encountered not in the unsupported 
 strength of a sturdy and steadfast will, not by inferior 
 and merely prudential considerations, but by throwing 
 the mind upon its consciousness of God's presence, and 
 
Godliness. 1 1 9 
 
 its assurance of his gracious help. Thus learn by prac- 
 tice and experience the beauty of that rule : " Whether 
 therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to 
 the glory of God." 
 
 2. Cultivate the habit of observing God in his works. 
 The whole creation is full of the Creator. Eyes blinded 
 by unbelief can indeed explore the creation without dis- 
 covering the impress of God's hand and the gleams of 
 his glory that linger upon everything that he has made. 
 But let not your eye be so heedless or so undiscerning. 
 Learn to see God as he reveals himself in nature. See 
 him in the morning and the evening ; in the beauty of 
 the earth, and the radiance of the sky. See him in the 
 swelling bud, in the opening blossom, in the fruit that 
 blushes as it ripens. See him in the rainbow, the shower, 
 the dew, the falling snow-flake. See him ; oh, where 
 can you not see him, if your eye be once opened to dis- 
 cern his glory ! Thus shall you find yourself ever more 
 and more encompassed with God. Nor is God to be re- 
 garded as manifested in creation only ; to the believing 
 mind, he is continually exhibiting himself in his works 
 of providence. Learn to acknowledge him as the Supreme 
 Disposer of events, without whom no revolution of 
 empire shakes and confounds the nations, and without 
 whom no sparrow falleth to the ground. See him in 
 all the changes that affect your welfare or your duties. 
 He gives you daily bread. He appoints your daily tasks. 
 He permits, for his own wise purposes connected with 
 your highest welfare, the temptations that make your 
 
1 20 The Christian Life. 
 
 daily conflicts. When the floods of sorrow overwhelm 
 you, and deep calleth to deep, it is the noise of his water- 
 spouts that you hear, it is his waves that have gone over 
 you. Learn to observe him, and acknowledge him in 
 nature and in providence. 
 
 3. Study to become more and more acquainted with 
 God in the Bible. See how he reveals himself there to 
 your admiration, your confidence, your grateful affection ! 
 See the illustrations of his goodness, his mercy, his faith- 
 fulness, his loving-kindness ! See his glory shining upon 
 you from the face of Christ ! Trust in him. Commit 
 yourself, in all your interests to his love and power. Fill 
 your mind with his thoughts, as he communicates them 
 to you in his Word. Let his aff*ections reign in your 
 heart. Let his in-dwelling Spirit be the life of your 
 soul. So shall you walk with God. So shall you dwell 
 in the secret place of the Most High, and abide under 
 the shadow of the Almighty. 
 
CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 BROTHERLY KINDNESS. 
 
 NATURAL AFFECTIONS— THEIR PLACE IN THE FORMATION OF A 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. BROTHERLY KINDNESS IN THE NEW TES- 
 TAMENT. THE CHRISTIAN SELF-DISCIPLINE ADDS TO GODLINESS 
 BROTHERLY KINDNESS. GODLINESS WITHOUT HUMAN SrMPATHTES 
 —ITS DEFECTS AND DANGERS. HEALTHFUL INFLUENCE OP HUMAN 
 SYMPATHIES ON THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 
 
''Be kindly afFectioned one to another with brotherly love." — 
 Rum. XII. 10. 
 
 "As touching brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto 
 you ; for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another." — 
 1 Thess. IV. 9. 
 
 " Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through 
 the*Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one 
 another with a pure heart fervently." — 1 Pet. i. 22. 
 
 " Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, 
 bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long- 
 suflfering ; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if 
 any man have a quarrel against any : even as Christ forgave you, 
 so also do ye."— Col. hi. 12, 13. 
 
 "Giving all diligence, - add ... to godliness, brotherly kind- 
 ness."— 2 Pet. l 5, 7. 
 
BrotJjerlg Mintintss. 
 
 ITHOUT natural affection" is the lowest 
 deep of human degradation. It is always 
 to be assumed, in dealing even with the 
 most hardened of outcasts from society, 
 that however insensible he may be to moral obligation 
 and to the fear of God, there is somewhere within him 
 a remnant of natural affection. If it turn out other- 
 wise, if there be no lingering memory of mother or sister, 
 living or dead, of father or brother, of wife or child, of 
 teacher or friend, which can be wakened into tenderness, 
 there is no hope for him ; he is more than " twice 
 dead ; " his moral nature is "plucked up by the roots;" 
 for these natural affections, the ties of sympathy and 
 instinctive love which bind us to each other in the 
 special relations of human society, are at once the earliest 
 and the latest of the divinely-provided restraints on 
 human selfishness — the earliest to be felt, the latest to 
 lose their power. 
 
 It would be strange, then, if those natural affections 
 had no place or part in the formation of a Christian 
 character, and the progress of the Christian life. It 
 
124 The Christian Life. 
 
 would be strange if we did not find the apostles, in 
 those Scriptures which have come down to us from them, 
 warning us against " bitterness, and wrath, and anger, 
 and clamour, and evil-speakiDg," and whatever tends to 
 disturb the interchange of kindly feeling in the relations 
 that constitute families, and friendships, and neighbour- 
 hoods, and churches, and commonwealths, and exhorting 
 us to " put on, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, 
 deep feelings of sympathy, kindness, humbleness of 
 mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, 
 and forgiving one another, if any man have a complaint 
 against any." It would be strange if we did not find 
 them counselling husbands and wives, parents and chil- 
 dren, masters and servants, to an affectionate well-doing 
 in the relations that bind them to each other. Most of 
 all would it be strange if we did not find them, and the 
 Master, too, insisting with special distinctness on the 
 affection which naturally springs up between fellow- 
 disciples, partakers in a common salvation, worshipping 
 at the same mercy-seat, working together in the same 
 blessed service, and recognising each other as brethren 
 in Christ. If you would '■'• grow in grace, and in the 
 knowledge of our Lord and Saviour," you must take 
 care not to be wanting in this element of the Christian 
 character and of the Christian life. 
 
 The term "brotherly kindness," or "brotherly love," 
 as used in the New Testament, seems to mean social 
 affection or sympathy, as that principle of human nature 
 is elevated and sanctified by grace in the believer, and 
 
Brotherly Kindness. 125 
 
 particularly as it exists among believers in their relation 
 to each other. I need not undertake to prove that 
 there is such a principle in human nature as God made 
 it ; a principle of special kindness and sympathy between 
 those who are specially connected with each other in 
 the bonds that constitute society; a principle by which 
 those w^ho are brought into such relations, whether in 
 the family or in the neighbourhood, whether in the daily 
 studies and sports of childhood or in the daily labours 
 of maturer years, whether as inhabitants of the same 
 village or as citizens in the same commonwealth, — are 
 bound together, not merely in the sympathies of a com- 
 mon humanity and the vague sentiment of philanthropy, 
 but in ties of special affection. That there is such a 
 principle in our nature, and that God must have designed 
 it for a good purpose, is too obvious to be disputed. 
 Whether this principle of special attachment can be 
 analysed into other and simpler elements, is a question 
 of no consequence here. Let it suffice that there is such 
 a principle, and that it belongs to our nature by the will 
 of our Creator. This principle, elevated and sanctified 
 by the grace of God, and especially in the form of that 
 special aflPection which springs up between Christian 
 believers in their relation to each other as members of 
 the household of faith, is what is meant in the New 
 Testament by "brotherly kindness," or "brotherly love." 
 You, then, if you would " live godly in Christ 
 Jesus," must take care that your godliness be completed 
 and adorned, by adding to it brotherly kindness. For 
 
126 The Christian Life, 
 
 • • 
 
 the guidance of those who undertook to be Christians 
 when Christianity was new, it was not enough to ad- 
 monish them that their reception of the gospel should 
 not be left incomplete, by being without virtue, or a 
 resolute and conscientious purpose to do right ; that 
 their conscientiousness should not be misguided, by being 
 without the enlightening and emancipating effect of 
 knowledge ; that their knowledge should not be per- 
 mitted to make them reckless and self-indulgent, by 
 being without temperance or manly self-control ; that 
 their temperance should not be the fluctuating conflict 
 with inclination, which it will be if it be temperance 
 without steadfastness ; that their steadfastness should 
 not be mere strength of will or force of habit, as it must 
 be, unless, by being conjoined with godliness, it becomes 
 a steadfast walking with God ; — it was also needful to 
 admonish them that their godliness or devoutness should 
 not be without the softening influence of social affection 
 and sympathy. / 
 
 Is it then possible that godliness, or even what seems 
 to be godliness, may be separated from brotherly kind- 
 ness % Ought we not rather to presume that, inasmuch 
 as man is made for society, and is connected with his 
 fellow-men around him by instinctive affections, piety 
 towards God must of course be social ; and that the 
 separation of it from social sympathies and duties cannot 
 really be % Tn some sense, doubtless, it is true that* 
 worship asks for society and sympathy ; yet, in another 
 sense, the godliness or devoutness of the recluse, who 
 
Brotherly Kindness. 127 
 
 shuts himself up for the sake of being religious alone, is 
 not altogether unnatural. That particular trait or habit 
 of a religious life which we distinguish by the name of 
 godliness, is the intercourse of the soul with God. It is 
 the soul looking up to God, habitually, in veneration, 
 love, prayer, praise. In a word, it is worship. And 
 wherever worship is really offered — whether in the wil- 
 derness or in the city, whether in the closet or in the 
 great congregation — it is nothing else than the thoughts 
 and emotions of individual minds, offered, consciously 
 and directly, to God. All that there is in united wor- 
 ship to guide and quicken the mind is without effect, 
 unless the mind thus quickened and guided does itself, 
 as an individual worshipper, address to God its own 
 thought and emotion. All is in vain, unless the indi- 
 vidual mind, by its own act, is brought into communi- 
 cation with God, not through the minister or the congre- 
 gation, but directly. Devoutness, then, or worship, which 
 is what we mean by godliness as an element in a reli- 
 gious life, may easily tend to withdraw itself from social 
 affections and duties. Inasmuch as private devotion, or 
 the solitary communion of the soul with God, is a ne- 
 cessary preparation for public worship ; and, on the 
 other hand, a participation in public worship, if it be 
 true and fervent, sends the worshipper back to his retire- 
 ment, there to renew and pursue his personal intercourse 
 with Heaven ; we need not wonder if sometimes the 
 devout man begins to feel as if no duty were to be 
 thought of in comparison with the duty of prayer and 
 
128 The Christian Life. 
 
 meditation, and as if the one great business of his life 
 were to contemplate, with adoring ^thoughts, the mani- 
 festations of God in revelation and in nature. When 
 his mind has fallen into such a habit, he will naturally 
 begin to feel, ere long, as if his human affections and 
 sympathies, and the relations which bind him to society, 
 were a disadvantage to him ; as if solitude were better 
 than society for his religious progress and enjoyment ; 
 and as if he ought to withdraw as much as he may from 
 human fellowship, that he may spend his life in waiting 
 upon God. Thus his religion, if such feelings continue 
 to grow upon him, becomes unsocial. He cherishes the 
 dream of some retirement where he may be with God, 
 and be responsible for no man's welfare but his own. 
 The actual character of those around him who bear the 
 Christian name is painfully incongruous with his ideal ; 
 he sees no benefit to be derived from fellowship with 
 them ; and he thinks that, if he could be freed from 
 the entanglements of human sympathies and social 
 duties, he could gTow in grace. His godliness is honest 
 and earnest ; but it is one-sided, and therefore incom- 
 plete. 
 
 But what are the defects and dangers of such a godli- 
 ness % This religion, in which the devotional sentiment 
 is not properly united with human affections and sym- 
 pathies, — this self-isolating godliness, that enjoys itself 
 only in the shade, and lives only in its own musings, — 
 what are its tendencies in respect to the completeness of 
 Christian character % Can it attain to the stature of a 
 
Brotherly Kind7iess. 129 
 
 perfect man in Christ % You may learn something from 
 an intelligent answer to this inquiry. 
 
 The most obvious answer is, that godliness, disjoined 
 from brotherly kindness, tends to an inactive and indo- 
 lent type of religion. It muses and thinks ; it kindles 
 with the fervour of its own meditations ; it prays and 
 adores, and mounts up as into heaven on the wings of 
 contemplation ; — or, what is quite as likely, it walks 
 sadly and tremblingly ; it weeps in secret places ; it sees 
 not the light of God's countenance ; it moans over its 
 own sorrows ; it is distressed both with some dim feel- 
 ing of its own deficiencies, and with the sight of wicked- 
 ness and sorrow ; it often repeats to itself, " Oh that I 
 had wings like a dove ! for then would I fly away, and be 
 at rest ;" but it forgets to ask, " Lord, what wilt thou 
 have me to do f ' Disjoined as it is from human sym- 
 pathies, failing to recognise the ties that connect each 
 soul with kindred souls around, it does not feel the im- 
 pulses which prompt our nature to activity, and to the 
 putting forth of influence upon others ; or if it feels 
 those impulses, it does not recognise them as proceeding 
 from God, and essential to mental and spiritual health, 
 but rather as something with which godliness has no 
 alliance. A religion thus imperfect and one-sided is defi- 
 cient in respect to usefulness. Because it lacks brotherly 
 kindness, it tends to the neglect of that great precept,. 
 *' Let us do good to all men as w^e have opportunity, and 
 especially to those of the household of faith." It is un- 
 conscious of having been kindled to shine as a light in 
 I 
 
130 The Christian Life. 
 
 the world. It is like a lamp lighted in a tomb and left 
 to bum itself away. 
 
 You see, then, that such a godliness is not in harmony 
 with the divine constitution of our nature. Godliness 
 disjoined from the special sympathies and affections of 
 human society, is not such a godliness as man was made 
 for. Man was not made to think merely and to feel, 
 but to work under the guidance of thought and the im- 
 pulse of feeling. He was not made for solitude ; that 
 judgment of his Creator, " It is not good for man to be 
 alone," is written on every part of his complex nature. 
 If we look at him in his relation to God, he was made 
 not for worship merely but for service. The powers with 
 which he is endowed, — the natural bonds which connect 
 him with his fellow-men, — the affections and sympathies 
 which make those bonds a joy, and cannot be suppressed 
 without some violence done to nature, — all show that 
 God has made man, and placed him in this world, not 
 to worship only but to serve. That godliness, then, to 
 which brotherly kindness in every brotherly relation has 
 not been added as by a vital growth, is not in harmony 
 with the nature of man, as made for activity or as made 
 for society. Thus it soon parts with common sense ; for 
 common sense is simply practical sense, — that kind of 
 sense which takes things as they are, and deals with 
 .them as they are, — that kind of sense which God has 
 given to man, as a social, active, working creature, to tell 
 him what to do and how to do it. And when godliness, 
 or the sentiment of devotion, has parted with common 
 
Brotherly Kindness, 
 
 sense, it debilitates the soul instead of giving it strength ; 
 it misleads the judgment ; it becomes itself a morbid 
 thing ; it fails of honouring God. 
 
 Here let me tell you that the godliness which is sepa- 
 rated from a healthy connexion with human sympathies 
 and affections tends to all sorts of errors in religion. 
 The whole history of religion is full of instruction on this 
 point. Godliness without brotherly kindness is essenti- 
 ally enthusiastic. It lives in the element of feeling. It 
 is imaginative and speculative. It has to do, not with 
 the tangible and every- day realities of sober duty, but 
 rather with the world in which it walks alone, musing, 
 communing with itself, kindling itself into excitement 
 for excitement's sake. Thus becoming itself unhealthy 
 and erratic, it tends to all sorts of error. It is likely to 
 misinterpret and misapply the Word of God ; for the 
 glory of the Bible is that it is so wonderfully a book of 
 common sense and common life. The recluse poring 
 over it in his cell, separated from all human activities 
 and duties, cannot understand it aright. The Bible was 
 given for the support and guidance of man in society ; 
 it was given that it might help us in the duties, cares, 
 sorrows, perils, and conflicts of this actual human life ; 
 and in the cell of a hermit, who has fled from the duties 
 and the sympathies of manhood, it is as much out of 
 place as a sun-dial in a dungeon. For the uses of that 
 unpractical and self-secluding devotion, the Bible, in its 
 common-sense interpretation, is altogether insufficient. 
 And, therefore, that such devotion may find its aliment 
 
The Christian Life. 
 
 and stimulus, the Bible, studied under the guidance of a 
 morbid imagination, is converted into a book of riddles 
 ai?d dreams. The devotion of the cell, — the devotion 
 that flees from the homely sympathies and duties of 
 society, — is the parent of mystical interpretation and 
 of mystical theology. An exaggerated and unpractical 
 sentiment of devotion sees every truth through a dis- 
 colouring and distorting medium, and so builds up its 
 own systems of faith, mystical or metaphysical, as far re- 
 moved from any sound interpretation of the Scriptures 
 as they are from the actual need of human nature in its 
 appointed sphere of duty and of trial. 
 
 It will not be difficult for you to see what advantages 
 the devotional spirit derives from its legitimate associa- 
 tion with the sympathies and affections that belong to 
 man in society. In what way is devoutness, or that 
 part of religion which is the direct intercourse of the 
 soul with God, benefited by being joined with brotherly 
 kindness or the social affections ? 
 
 First, those social affections, ennobled and elevated 
 by devotion, react to enliven, to guide, and to strengthen 
 the sentiment or principle of devotion. Godliness, to 
 which brotherly kindness has been added, says, " Our 
 Father who art in heaven." It says, " Give us this day 
 our daily bread." It prays, " Forgive U8 our debts, as 
 we forgive our debtors." It cries, '^ Lead U8 not into 
 temptation, but deliver us from evil." Godliness without 
 brotherly kindness is godliness in the singular number 
 only. It prays, it confesses, it adores, only by itself 
 
Brotherly Kindness. 133 
 
 and for itself. Such godliness sees nothing, and knows 
 nothing, save itself and God ) and, therefore, it knows 
 neither itself nor God aright. But godliness, in its 
 legitimate union with the sympathies and affections that 
 belong to man in his relations to his fellow-men, 
 strengthens itself by all the natural strength of those 
 affections and sympathies. The feeble voice of lonely 
 devotion sw^ells to a manlier tone when loving hearts 
 are mingled in household worship, or when many 
 gathered households in the Sabbath congregation, friends 
 and neighbours, compassed about with the same perils, 
 struggling in the same conflicts and labours, and sharing 
 the same joys and sorrows, fill the temple with their 
 united songs and prayers. 
 
 Thus godliness, in its legitimate union with the social 
 affections, becomes an active principle, and rises to a 
 just ascendency over all the powers and habits of the 
 soul. Instead of living in silent musings only, or in 
 lonely communings with the Infinite, it comes forth into 
 the sphere of human duties and sympathies, to sanctify 
 all that it touches. When that natural sentiment of 
 worship, which exercises itself in the immediate addresses 
 of the soul to God, is not only enlightened and directed 
 by Christian faith, but strengthened by being blended 
 with the sentiment of brotherly kindness in the special 
 relations of human society, it becomes an active force in 
 all the soul's activity. The man whose godliness is of 
 such a sort carries, not merely the form nor merely the 
 savour of godliness, but something of its power, into all 
 
134 The Christian Life, 
 
 his intercourse with men. Familiar with Christ, through 
 whom he finds access to God, he communes with Christ, 
 and attains to more and more of his spirit and likeness, 
 by following him in daily acts of brotherly kindness. 
 He is the godly man in spirit and in truth, whose 
 godliness is not a mere sentiment, uttering itself in 
 prayer and song, or feeding itself in tranquil meditation, 
 but a practical habit, blending its influence with all 
 household love and duty, and making home a blessed 
 sanctuary, the house of God, the gate of heaven. He is 
 in truth the godly man whose godliness, instead of being 
 isolated and unsympathizing, goes forth spontaneously 
 to offer the right hand of brotherhood to fellow-wor- 
 shippers and fellow-believers in Christ, loving to work 
 with them, loving them because they love the Lord, and 
 loving to comfort and to help them for Christ's sake. 
 He is the godly man whose godliness mingles unaffectedly, 
 yet powerfully, with all his friendships ; who cannot 
 but pray for his friends because he loves them, and 
 cannot but love them the more because he prays for 
 them. He is the godly man whose godliness, instead of 
 being a sabbath-day godliness only, or limiting itself to 
 some particular aspect of this complex human life, 
 hallows all his patriotic sympathies, and guides him 
 with a steady force in all the duties of citizenship and 
 public spirit. This is true godliness, when the acknow- 
 ledgment of God, the religious or devotional sentiment 
 w^hich Christ has awakened and enlightened, the feeling 
 of worship — humbled and contrite, yet confiding ; awed, 
 
Brotherly Kindness. 1 35 
 
 yet full of hope and love — invests all the legitimate 
 sympathies and duties of this life with the awfulness of 
 their relation to eternity and to God, and lifts up this 
 whole mortal life into the sphere of heavenly influences. 
 Learn, then, to correct in your own mind, if you find 
 it there, that unworthy prejudice which represents re- 
 ligion as consisting exclusively in acts and exercises of 
 devotion. That prejudice, so widely entertained, dis- 
 honours religion, dishonours the soul of man, dishonours 
 God. Eeligion is not a separate and disconnected thing, 
 arbitrarily appended, as it were, to the character of the 
 man ; it is not some single act in which the effect of 
 God's grace begins and is finished ; it is not merely 
 some distinct series of devout actions, running like a 
 golden thread through the complicated tissue of the 
 man's various activity ; it is not the effect of God's 
 grace upon some single sentiment or faculty of our fallen 
 nature : it is a new life breathed into the soul by the 
 renewing spirit ; a new creation, in which old things 
 pass away and all things become new ; a continued and 
 all-transforming process, in which the whole body, soul, 
 and spirit, all faculties, all sensibilities, all affections and 
 activities, are sanctified to the service and the praise 
 of God. 
 
CHAPTEE X. 
 
 CHARITY. 
 
 THE GREAT COMMANDMENT. LOVE, OR HOLY BENEVOLENCE, 
 IMPLIED IN EVERY ELEMENT OP CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. YET, IN 
 ANOTHER VIEW, IT IS THE CONSUMMATION OF PROGRESS IN THE 
 NEW LIFE. BROTHERLY KINDNESS, OR INSTINCTIVE SPECIAL 
 
 AFFECTION IN SOCIAL RELATIONS, NEEDS TO BE ELEVATED, EX- 
 PANDED, AND COMPLETED BY THE SPIRIT OF UNIVERSAL LOVE. 
 THE SELF-DISCIPLINE WHICH TRAINS THE SOUL TO CHARITY. 
 
" Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and 
 have not chanty, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling 
 cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand 
 all mysteries and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so 
 that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am no- 
 thing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and 
 though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it 
 profiteth me nothing. . . . And now abideth faith, hope, charity, 
 these three ; but the greatest of these is charity." — 1 Cor. xui. 
 1-3, 13. 
 
 "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and 
 every one that loveth i^ born of God, and knoweth God. . . . He that 
 loveth not knoweth not God ; for God is love. ... No man hath 
 seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in 
 us, and his love is perfected in us. ... If a man say, I love God, 
 and hateth his brother, he is a liar : for he that loveth not his 
 brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath 
 not seen?"— 1 John iv. 7, 8, 12, 20. 
 
 " And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond 
 of perfectness." — Col. hi. li. 
 
 "Giving all diligence, add ... to brotherly kindness, 
 CHARITY."— 2 Pet. i. 5, 7. 
 
Cfjarttg. 
 
 IROTHERLY kindness is always beautiful. 
 It not only wins our sympathy, but com- 
 mands respect and honour, especially when 
 it is visibly associated with religious con- 
 scientiousness. Yet the precept, "Add to brotherly 
 kindness charity," gives us to understand that in a 
 completed Christian character there is a higher principle 
 of benevolence. Charity, as the word is used in the 
 New Testament, is the same thing with that love which 
 is required by the great commandment, "Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself." It is love, not in the 
 limited and inferior sense, not in the form of those 
 special attachments which exist by the instinct of nature 
 between human beings connected with each other by 
 relations of special dependence and duty, but in the 
 higher form of universal benevolence, love to all, without 
 limitation or partiality. This universal benevolence, 
 which is to brotherly kindness or the special affections 
 what virtue is to faith, what knowledge is to virtue, 
 what temperance is to knowledge, namely, its com- 
 pleteness and its security against being perverted and 
 
140 The ChiHstian Life. 
 
 corrupted, is represented as the consummation and the 
 crowning beauty of a truly Christian character. Thus 
 the apostle Paul, having exhorted his friends at Colosse 
 to all the acts and manifestations of brotherly kindness, 
 or of that special affection which they owed to each 
 other as members of the same Christian fellowship, 
 proceeds to urge upon them the higher and more com- 
 prehensive duty of universal love. Having entreated 
 them to " put on " sympathy, kindness, humility, meek- 
 ness, slowness to anger, and readiness to forgive, he 
 adds, " And above all these things " — that is, upon 
 them, like a girdle — " put on charity, which is the bond 
 of perfectness." It is of this love that the apostle John 
 speaks when he says, "If we love one another," with a 
 love like that with which God loved us, and in which 
 he sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins, 
 '* God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." 
 Thus it is that, in the passage which above all others 
 illustrates so beautifully the meaning of this word 
 charity, the apostle, while insisting on the unspeakable 
 superiority of personal holiness over all gifts, however 
 wonderful, and showing how prophecies shall cease, and 
 tongues shall fail, and knowledge shall vanish away, says, 
 " Charity never faileth ; " and again, " Now abideth 
 faith, hope, charity, these three ; " these are the per- 
 manent things, permanent as religion itself, permanent 
 as the soul which they quicken and adorn, " but the 
 greatest of these is charity." 
 
 Yet it is not to be supposed that because this love, or 
 
Charity. 141 
 
 charity, is the crowning grace of a completed Christian 
 character, therefore there are some forms and degrees of 
 Christian character in which this element is wholly want- 
 ing. On the contrary, there is no true Christian profes- 
 sion, no renovation to holiness, no effectual experience of 
 Christ's saving work, without love in this highest mean- 
 ing of the word. Thus our Lord himself taught, on 
 many occasions, that there is no true obedience to God 
 where the heart does not obey that great command, 
 " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Thus Paul 
 says, " He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law ;" 
 for every commandment in respect to your neighbour, 
 everything forbidden, and everything required, is briefly 
 comprehended in this saying, " Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neigh- 
 bour ; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." And 
 again, he says, " Though I speak with the tongues of men 
 and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as 
 sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have 
 the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and 
 all knowledge ; and though I have all faith so that I 
 could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am 
 nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed 
 the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and 
 have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." All works 
 and sacrifices of zeal, even in the service of religion, are 
 worthless if they are not inspired by love. In another 
 way, but with the same purport, the apostle John says, 
 " Every one that loveth is born of God \ he that loveth 
 
142 The Christian Life, 
 
 not knoweth not God, for God is love." ^' If a man say, 
 I love God, and liateth his brother," — not his brother 
 Christian merely, but his brother man, — " he is a liar ; 
 for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, 
 how can he love God whom he hath not seen T' We 
 may set it down, then, as a first principle, that there is 
 no truly Christian character in which love, charity, uni- 
 versal benevolence, is not an element. Wherever there 
 is faith, a true and active faith, it is faith that works 
 by love. Wherever there is virtue springing from faith, 
 it is conscience owning the obligation of the law of love. 
 Wherever there is knowledge or moral discrimination, it 
 is a mind enlightened and trained to see spontaneously 
 what the law of love requires. Wherever there is a 
 Christian self-control, it is a mind struggling against its 
 own infirmities and passions, that it may be what God 
 would have it be, and may thus fulfil his benevolent de- 
 signs. Wherever there is the principle of Christian 
 steadfastness, it is the perseverance of a mind in which 
 selfish impulses and habits are progressively subdued by 
 the new spirit within, — the indwelling spirit of God's 
 love. Wherever there is a true communion with God 
 in worship, it is a mind that beholds and adores the 
 glory of God as the loving Creator and Ruler of the 
 universe. And wherever there is a Christian brotherly 
 kindness, it is that special affection toward members of 
 the household of faith, or toward others in relations of 
 special sympathy and duty, which is felt and cherished 
 by a mind that pays its willing homage to the law of 
 
Charity. 1 43 
 
 universal love. Without a mind obedient to the law 
 which says, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," 
 there can be neither repentance toward God nor faith 
 toward our Lord Jesus Christ. It will not be safe for 
 you to forget that such charity is essential to the begin- 
 ning of a Christian life, and equally essential to every 
 stage of Christian progress. 
 
 Yet it is not the less to be remembered that charity, 
 considered as the completeness of Christian character, 
 " the bond of perfectness," must be the result of growth 
 in grace. As related to other elements of Christian life 
 and progress, it is the consummation of them all. In 
 one who has just been converted from entire worldliness 
 and unbelief, the new mind may naturally make itself 
 known chiefly in the simplicity with which it relies on 
 the reality of things not seen, and lays hold on the offers 
 and hopes of the gospel. It may be exhibited in a new 
 tenderness of conscience, and a manly purpose to do 
 right, — adding to faith virtue. As it advances, it will 
 naturally become more familiar with the principles of the 
 new life, will see with a more prompt and accurate judg- 
 ment what is right, and will act in the spirit of a larger 
 freedom, — adding to virtue knowledge. Still advancing, 
 it becomes acquainted with the need of a vigilant self- 
 control, and manifests itself in the endeavour to subdue 
 every wayward impulse, and to live and walk in the 
 pure light of truth, — and so it adds to knowledge tem- 
 perance. As the same new mind goes on from strength 
 to strength, the disciple who was at first dependent upon 
 
144 The Christian Life, 
 
 frames and feelings becomes steadfast, a firm and perse- 
 vering Christian, strong in the stability of principle, — 
 having added to temperance patience. Then, you may 
 see him in another stage of his spiritual growth \ he 
 walks with God, day by day, in calm and heavenly in- 
 tercourse \ he dwells as in the secret place of the Most 
 High, — for to patience he has added godliness. Observ- 
 ing still the progress of his character, you see that his 
 devoutness, instead of making him unsocial and austere, 
 quickens his natural sympathies with those around him, 
 and especially with his fellow-disciples, and the grace of 
 God within him shows itself in the sympathies and duties 
 which connect him with brethren and friends, with home 
 and country, with the church and with the civil common- 
 wealth, — for he adds to godliness brotherly kindness. 
 Nor is this all. In that brotherly kindness there is 
 something more than the mere play of natural sympa- 
 thies. Inasmuch as it is Christian, the brotherly kind- 
 ness of a soul that w^alks with God, there is in it 
 continually something of the spirit of God's love ; and 
 thus brotherly kindness, in the various forms of special 
 sympathy and affection, grows into charity. The circles 
 of that love, obedient to the elastic force that shapes 
 them, spread and widen till they include the world. The 
 disciple w^hose conversion was first seen in the simple 
 faith with which he laid hold on God's word of grace 
 and hope, and in the humble, scrupulous, yet resolute 
 conscientiousness with which he set himself to the per- 
 formance of all duty, stands up at last in the manifest 
 
Charity, 145 
 
 likeness of his Father in heaven, who maketh his sun 
 to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain 
 on the just and on the unjust. 
 
 I have represented all this as if it were a natural 
 growth, and in one sense it is entirely natural. Yet 
 you must not forget that there is another view. In all 
 the progress of the new and spiritual nature there is 
 need of diligence. This charity, which so beautifully 
 completes and crowns the combination of Christian 
 graces, cannot be attained without diligent self-culture. 
 All spiritual growth is simply the progress which the 
 soul makes when, forgetting the things which are behind, 
 and reaching forth to those things which are before, it 
 presses toward the mark for the prize of the high calling 
 of God in Jesus Christ. Charity grows out of brotherly 
 kindness only in that soul which, moved by the Holy 
 Spirit and living in fellowship with Christ, is humbly 
 and earnestly endeavouring to become continually more 
 like God. In other minds, the instinctive sentiment 
 which connects them with the family, with kindred and 
 friends, with countrymen, and with associates in the 
 same religious body, is often seen to be the antagonist 
 of charity. 
 
 Think, then, what these instinctive affections are 
 when separated from the spirit of universal love. In 
 other words, what becomes of brotherly kindness, in 
 whatever form, when charity is not added to it % For 
 example : What is patriotism without charity % The 
 love of one's own native land, and of one's own country- 
 
 K 
 
146 The Christian Life. 
 
 men as distiDguished from the men of other lands, is a 
 natural affection, and there is something generous in it, 
 as there is in every human sympathy. But is it of 
 course, and always, a benevolent affection % Does it, of 
 course, expand into benevolence % On the contrary, is 
 there not in every land a vulgar and heathenish patriot- 
 ism, essentially malignant in its tendency % In the 
 language of such patriotism, as in the language of an- 
 cient Eome, a foreigner is the same thing with an enemy ; 
 or, as in the language of ancient Greece, a foreigner 
 is the same thing with a barbarian. * Such patriotism 
 breathes hatred and contempt toward all mankind. How 
 plain is it that the instinctive human sentiment of affec- 
 tion toward one's own country and countrymen, instead 
 of being essentially benevolent, is often — nay, when de- 
 tached from Christian principle, is naturally — nothing 
 else than an extended and exaggerated selfishness, the 
 more odious for the grandeur of the scale on w^hich it 
 operates. So of a man's instinctive affection for his 
 family : how often do you see that affection, instead of 
 wakening the man to higher and better sentiments, and 
 making him feel (as his Creator designed it should make 
 him feel) his position in the universal family of God, 
 actually tending the other way, and making him more 
 and more selfish toward all to whom he is not bound by 
 this instinctive passion. Just so the sentiment of spe- 
 cial affection which naturally springs up among those 
 who hold the same religious doctrines, and cherish the 
 same traditions, — which makes them feel that they have 
 
Charity. 147 
 
 common interests, and which brings them together in a 
 special communion both of worship and of enterprise and 
 effort, — needs to be watched, lest it become uncharitable, 
 narrow, bigoted, the antagonist more than the support 
 of that higher sentiment which is kindred to the uni- 
 versal love of God and the infinite pity of Christ. The 
 very sympathy of brother with brother in the same 
 church, unless each, giving all diligence, adds to brotherly 
 kindness charity, may degenerate into a sectarian nar- 
 rowness of feeling. Who will tell us that it does not 
 often so degenerate, till it becomes, in God's sight, 
 hardly better or holier than the sympathy which connects 
 the members of a political faction or of a masonic frater- 
 nity % Brotherly kindness, thus degenerate and corrupt 
 by unhallowed separation from the principle of universal 
 love, becomes a 'most unchristian clannishness. 
 
 But, on the other hand, where the believer, walking 
 humbly with God, and loving his brethren of the house- 
 hold of faith, gives diligence that he may add to bro- 
 therly kindness charity, there brotherly kindness, in all 
 its sympathies and impulses, is hallowed and exalted by 
 that higher principle of universal love to which it mini- 
 sters. In the churchy the kindly sympathy of brothei- 
 with brother being thus ennobled, is a sympathy by 
 which they incite each other to aspirations and works of 
 Christ-like love. The affection which binds such an one 
 to his own family^ being sanctified by its alliance with 
 the higher principle of universal love, is an affection 
 which makes him more ready to feel for the welfare of 
 
148 The Chris tia7i Life. 
 
 all ; as when a woman was once asked, ^' Is that your 
 son for whom you are so interested in his danger f and 
 she made answer, " No, but he is somebod^^'s son." 
 Such an one's love of country swells by a natural expan- 
 sion into universal philanthropy : not that he loves his 
 country less, or is less ready to labour and to suffer for 
 its welfare ; but the circles of his benevolence still ex- 
 pand beyond the habitations of his kindred, beyond the 
 limits of his native land, beyond the mountains and the 
 seas, in fellowship w^ith the all-embracing love of God. 
 
 By what kind of diligence, then, and in what methods, 
 may you make this grace of charity the completeness of 
 your Christian character % i 
 
 1. Cultivate the spirit of universal love, by a devout 
 and intelligent communion with God. The Creator of 
 the universe, who has filled it with life and with riches, 
 and whose presence and character are everywhere mani- 
 fested to the eye of faith, is the God of universal love. 
 The controlling and upholding power of the universe, 
 watching everywhere over the welfare of his creatures, 
 and overruling all events into subserviency to his designs, 
 is the God of universal love. The holy Lawgiver and 
 Judge of the universe, who has hedged up the way of 
 sin with dreadful penalties, and who makes himself 
 known in all worlds as the protector of innocence and 
 goodness, and the adversary of wrong, is the God of 
 universal love. The great Author of forgiveness and 
 salvation for sinners ; he who so loved the w^orld that 
 he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
 
Chm^ity. 149 
 
 on him may not perish, but may have everlasting life ; 
 he who is not willing that any should perish, but that 
 all should come to repentance, — is the God of universal 
 love. Acquaint yourself, then, with God. Have com- 
 munion with him in all those acts of homage and devo- 
 tion which he has appointed as the modes of intercourse 
 between earth and heaven. Behold him in all the rela- 
 tions in which he manifests himself to the adoring and 
 obedient mind. Behold his glory as it shines in the 
 person of the world's Kedeemer, that so you may be 
 changed into his image. Bring down upon your soul by 
 prayer the Holy Spirit, which he gives to them that ask 
 him, that so you may be elevated to fellowship with him 
 in his thoughts and affections. So surely as God is 
 love — eternal, universal, infinite love — so surely the 
 soul that lives in a devout and loving intercourse with 
 him will be adorned with the beauty of resemblance to 
 him, and will become a partaker of the Divine nature ; 
 for God is love, and he that dwxlleth in God dwelleth 
 in love. 
 
 2. But in order that you may have such intercourse 
 with God, you must also discipline your soul to charity 
 by diligent well-doing in a life of usefulness. Observe 
 what is necessary to such a life. 
 
 Your employment in the world, whatever it may be, 
 should be such as is in itself useful to mankind. No 
 matter how humble, or how ill-rewarded in this world, 
 is the daily labour by which you live ; if it is only 
 useful, it may serve to discipline your soul in love. It 
 
150 The Chris tia7t Life, 
 
 is not enough that your employment is a hicrative one, 
 and that with the gain which it brings you may hope 
 to accumulate the means of usefulness. You will never 
 .i^row into the likeness of God's charity in this way. 
 Your employment must be itself a daily contribution of 
 your labour to the great aggregate of human happiness. 
 Never permit yourself to be drawn, by any consideration, 
 into an employment or enterprise in which you cannot 
 have the consciousness that you are doing good. And 
 if you find that the occupation into which you have 
 entered unthinkingly, is of such a nature that it has no 
 tendency to promote the welfare of your fellow-men, 
 still more, if you find . that the more you labour in it 
 the more are you doing to make men wicked and 
 wretched, you must abandon it and betake yourself to 
 some useful employment. Do you think that the man 
 whose daily activity in business goes to swell the dread- 
 ful aggregate of human guilt and sorrow, can be at the 
 same time adding to brotherly kindness charity % No ; 
 if you would put on charity as the bond of perfectness, 
 your employment must be such that, in pursuing it day 
 by day, you may be conscious of doing good as the 
 servant of Him who is love. Pursue your business in 
 this spirit, and all your daily labour, like the service of 
 a ministering angel, is exalted into religion. Such 
 labour, in whatever station, though it be no higher than 
 the labour of a rag-picker in the streets, or of the bare- 
 footed child that sweeps a crossing, may become a blessed 
 ordinance by which the soul is disciplined to charity. 
 
Charity, 1 5 1 
 
 This, however, is not the only diligence which is 
 necessary to a life of usefulness. Your daily employ- 
 ment, be it ever so useful in itself, is not a sufficient 
 discipline for the training of your soul into conscious 
 fellowship with God's love. Therefore God surrounds 
 you with means and opportunities of special usefulness, 
 additional to the general usefulness of your lawful 
 industry. You have many opportunities of doing good, 
 not only incidentally and in the general result of that 
 employment by which you live, but directly and for the 
 sake of the good to be done. In such opportunities 
 only is there the consciousness of doing good by self- 
 denial. You must use such opportunities in the spirit 
 of self-denial, if you would discipline your soul to charity. 
 Remember that word, " To do good, and to communicate, 
 forget not." Do good, as you have opportunity, to all 
 men. Do good, not to your own family and kindred 
 only, not only to those of your own church or sect, not 
 only to those of your own " order " or fraternity, not 
 only to those of your opinion or party, not only to those 
 of your own country, but to all men, everywhere, as you 
 have opportunity. And how many opportunities have 
 you of doing good to men of every sort, and of every 
 land and lineage % Seize these opportunities ; and so 
 learn to open your heart, and to enlarge the sphere and 
 reach of your affections. Thus learning freely, under 
 God's kind discipline, and by communion with his 
 Spirit, you may become a partaker of the Divine nature. 
 
CHAPTEE XL 
 
 ■ CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 
 
 A CAUTION. CHRISTIAN CHARACTER NOT A MECHANICAL STRUC- 
 TURE, BUT A LIVING GROWTH. MYSTERIOUSNESS OF LIFE. GROWTH 
 OF A HUMAN MIND FROM INFANCY. GROWTH IN GRACE, BEGINNING 
 WITH THE NEW BIRTH. DEPENDENCE OF GROWTH ON FOOD. " SIN- 
 CERE MILK OF THE WORD." RELATION OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH TO 
 CHRISTIAN SELF-DISCIPLINE. CONDITIONS WITHOUT WHICH THERE 
 CAN BE NO SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 
 
*' Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of 
 itself, except it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide 
 in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches." — John xv. 4, 5. 
 
 " Wherefore, lay aside all filthiness, and superfluity of naughti- 
 ness, and receive Avith meekness the ingrafted word, which is able 
 to save your souls : but be ye doers of the word, and not hearers 
 only, deceiving your own selves." — James i. 21, 22, 
 
 " Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocri- 
 sies, and envies, and all evil-speakings, as new-born babes, desire 
 the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby." — 1 Pet. 
 ir. 1, 2. 
 
Cfjristtan ©rotot|). 
 
 HAVE been describing a religious life as a 
 life of self- discipline. I have been showing 
 you that the gospel, rousing you to a con- 
 sciousness of your capabilities and of your 
 need, calls you to make the most of yourself for time 
 and for eternity ; and that it comes to your aid with 
 infinite offers and promises. Viewing the Christian life 
 in this particular aspect, I have been describing to you 
 the separate features of a truly religious character, and 
 have been showing you how one Christian habit or 
 quality must be added to another. Perhaps I have not 
 suflBciently guarded you against the impression that 
 there is or may be some series of exercises by which 
 any man, if he will only put himself through the course, 
 may attain to any degree of religious proficiency, some 
 drill like that by which the raw recruit is trained into 
 familiarity with the details of soldiership. Perhaps I 
 have not sufiiciently warned you not to press too far 
 the analogy between that progressive renovation of your 
 soul, in conformity with a divine model, and the process 
 of building a house, or constructing a machine, or of 
 
156 The Christian Life. 
 
 hewing and chiselling a statue. Therefore would I now 
 distinctly remind you that, from first to last, the forma- 
 tion of a truly Christian character is not so much a con- 
 struction as it is a living growth. The Scriptures 
 recognise, indeed, the analogy between the progress of 
 religious improvement and the construction of a building ; 
 they call on believers to build up themselves on their 
 most holy faith, as well as to edify one another ; but, 
 on the other hand, they also use, and with much greater 
 force and variety of expression, the analogies which they 
 find between the spiritual life, from its beginning 
 onward, and the vital processes of nature. With them, 
 the beginning of Christian character is a birth, an in- 
 grafting, the sprouting of a seed : and its progress 
 toward perfection is the growth, now of a plant from 
 the germ to the blade, and the ear, and the full corn in 
 the ear ; now of a branch drawing its sap from the 
 stock, and bourgeoning into fruitfulness ; now of a 
 human soul and body from infancy to maturity. Yet it 
 should be observed that, when the Scriptures use the 
 idea of growth to represent the progressive renovation 
 of the Christian believer, the nature of that growth — as 
 moral and spiritual, and not physical — as the result of 
 thoughtful and diligent self-culture, and not of mere 
 spontaneity — is never forgotten. '' As the branch can- 
 not bear fruit of itself," saith Christ, " except it abide 
 in the vine : no more can ye, except ye abide in me." 
 " Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ." ''As new-born babes, 
 
Christian Growth. 157 
 
 desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow 
 thereby." 
 
 Christian growth, then, by the mysterious forces of the 
 spiritual life, is what Christian self-culture aims at. If 
 you enter upon that self-discipline to which Christ in- 
 vites you, and in which you may expect that God, accord- 
 ing to his promises, will work in you, of his good pleasure 
 to will and to do, all your proficiency will be a growth 
 in grace. Doubtless your own thoughtful diligence will 
 be, from first to last, an essential condition of that pro- 
 ficiency ; yet, in all your proficiency, you will be con- 
 scious of dependence on higher forces than any force of 
 your own will. You are to grow as the plant grows 
 under the gardener's hand. He waters it, he watches 
 it, he trains and prunes it ; but in all its growth there 
 is a power at work which is not his, and which giveth 
 the increase. Think, then, on the mysteriousness of a 
 living growth ; for with all your diligence to put on 
 Christ, and to train yourself into conformity with him, 
 the same mystery will be inseparable from your growth 
 in grace. 
 
 You look upon a new-born babe, — how helpless a crea- 
 ture is it, and how frail ! But that weak, helpless thing 
 is born for progress. Guarded and fed by a care of which 
 it is at first unconscious, it not only lives_, but grows. 
 The food provided for it by the all-providing hand of its 
 Creator, and received into its healthy system, is mysteri- 
 ously transmuted into the blood, the muscle, the nerves, 
 the bones, the entire strength and beauty of the body it 
 
158 The Christian Life, 
 
 nourishes. Thus, in due time, the babe by slow degrees, 
 quite imperceptible from day to day, grows to the sta- 
 ture and the strength of manhood. 
 
 Analogous to this is the growth of the mind. In 
 that new-born babe, the mind with all its capacities un- 
 developed, and with fewer instincts in operation than 
 belong to the chicken breaking from the shell, is nothing 
 more than the germ or the folded bud of an intellectual 
 being. What is there of thought, of desire, of volition, in • 
 that mind just entering upon this mortal life % How entire 
 a blank is its consciousness ! But from the moment in 
 which the eye first opens to the light, from the moment 
 in which the ear receives the first impulse of sound, from 
 the moment in which the sense of touch first encounters 
 resistance, from the moment in which the instinct of 
 hunger or of pain first makes itself felt in that germ of 
 human life, the mind begins to know, to think, to feel. 
 In other words, it begins to receive into itself, and to 
 incorporate into its own being, inadequately no doubt, 
 and as it were in merely infinitesimal portions, — truth, 
 the perceived reality of things. Thus the mind grows : 
 — its various and marvellous capacities, which at first 
 were folded up, as the leaves, the flower, and the fruit 
 are folded up together in the bud, are expanded and 
 brought out, as the leaves and blossom and then the 
 fruit come forth to light and air from the opening 
 bud. It is by such a growth that the mind advances. 
 The intellectual being grows not, indeed, by the same 
 process or the same means with the material organi- 
 
Christian Growth. 159 
 
 zation which it inhabits, but by means and by a 
 process suited to its nature. It grows by acquiring 
 knowledge, by being warmed and expanded with emo- 
 tion, by putting itself forth in choice and action. It 
 grows by taking into itself and digesting, and so incor 
 porating with its own existence, that manifested and 
 perceived reality of things which we call truth. Truth 
 is that after which the mind instinctively hungers, and 
 by which it grows. 
 
 When once the mind has begun to receive truth into 
 itself, and its powers have thus begun to be unfolded, it 
 it is thenceforth for ever another thing from what it was 
 before. With the first access of knowledge to its faculty 
 of knowing, — with the first movement of its powers, 
 spontaneously unfolding to meet and to receive the access 
 of knowledge, — begins its experience as an intellectual 
 being ; and that first experience is the beginning of its 
 growth. Thenceforth that experience is never lost. 
 Consciousness may not analyse it ; memory may not re- 
 tain it ; no image of it may be reproduced ; yet it is 
 not lost. All that mind's after-history proceeds from 
 this point. Whatever that mind knows, feels, does, or 
 is, for ever afterwards, is blended with this first experi- 
 ence. So every subsequent experience from moment to 
 moment, from year to year, — every perception, thought, 
 feeling, or action, — is a part of the mind's growth, 
 whether for good or evil. It may be soon forgotten, 
 and never recalled, but it is not lost ; as a part of the 
 mind's experience, it is incorporated with the mind itself 
 
i6o The Chins tian Life. 
 
 The body which we here inhabit, constructed as it is 
 for temporary use, comes to the limit of its growth and 
 strength, and then begins to decay. But the mind is of 
 another nature. Created for immortality, it is created 
 for unlimited progress. Its growth may be retarded or 
 quickened, may be perverted or rightly directed ; yet it 
 grows, and there is no reason why it may not, in some 
 sense grow for ever. Its progress may be clogged by the 
 infirmities of the body, or may be arrested and appa- 
 rently suppressed by its decay ; but progress is the first 
 law of the mind's existence. So long as the immortal 
 spirit continues to think, to feel, to act, it continues to 
 grow in some sort ; each act, each emotion, each thought, 
 throughout its immortality, is, as it were, some little 
 line or particle added to the previous amount of its ex- 
 istence. 
 
 The quality of the mind's growth depends on the 
 quality of the nutriment by which it grows. Truth, 
 simple and pure, — the reality of things, fairly and rightly 
 apprehended, — is the soul's fit aliment ; and when the 
 soul is thus fed, its growth is sound. But when the 
 truth is mixed with false apprehensions of things, or 
 when from whatever cause it is not fairly and simply 
 received into the mind as truth, the growth becomes dis- 
 eased, deformed, monstrous, or dwarfish. When the 
 mind, instead of desiring the truth and accepting it, rejects 
 it and yields itself to folly, its growth, instead of being 
 a joyful progress from one degree of wisdom and manli- 
 ness to another, is a growth in folly and madness. He 
 
Christian Growth. i6i 
 
 that "feedeth on wind, and followeth after the east wind," 
 " daily increaseth lies and desolation." He that "feedeth 
 on ashes" is he whom "a deceived heart hath turned aside/' 
 Such is the growth of the mind in general. I have 
 described it to you for the sake of illustrating that 
 Christian growth to which I would have you aspire. 
 That growth in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ is the progress and develop- 
 ment of spiritual life. It is the growth of the regenerate 
 soul in likeness to God, and in fellowship with him. 
 I say the regenerate soul, because progress presupposes a 
 beginning, growth presupposes a birth ; and because the 
 beginning of this spiritual life is not by mere nature, 
 but by grace, not by being born of the flesh, but by 
 being born of the Spirit. The soul, awaking from the 
 torpor of its native ungodliness, led to repentance, led to 
 Christ, trusting in him, and sitting at his feet to learn 
 of him, becomes a new creature ; and thus there begins 
 in that soul a new life, a life which has its being and its 
 blessedness in a willing subjection to God. In that life 
 the soul is conscious of its relation to God through 
 Christ, and conscious of living for eternity. The soul 
 thus born again is born to progress. That soul's con- 
 tinual experience, tasting that the Lord is gracious, is a 
 continual growth in grace ; a growth in which the nature 
 of the soul, as created for conscious and willing subjec- 
 tion to God, becomes more and more unfolded \ a growth 
 in which the soul is habitually approaching toward a 
 perfect conformity to God's moral image. 
 
 L 
 
1 62 The Christian Life. 
 
 The food that nourishes the soul for spiritual growth 
 is the Word of God, or, in the phrase of an apostle, 
 "the sincere [or unadulterated] milk of the word." It 
 is truth, such truth as is suited to sustain the soul in a 
 life of fellowship wdth God. It is that truth which God 
 has revealed concerning himself, all the gospel of his 
 grace, and especially the true and faithful saying in 
 which all is comprehended, " Christ Jesus came into the 
 world to save sinners." It is the truth in its simplicity, 
 " the sincere milk of the word ; " the Word, not as 
 conveyed by mouldy and corrupting traditions ; not as 
 coagulated by metaphysical discussion, and pressed into 
 scientific propositions dry and hard ; not as embittered, 
 and perhaps made poisonous by controversial and sec- 
 tarian passions ; not as diluted by the tricks of fancy, 
 and the deceitfulness of a heart unwilling to encounter 
 and recognise the plain reality of things ; but simply 
 "the v/ord which by the gospel is preached to you." 
 In the gospel no truth is set forth merely as an abstract 
 proposition, to be received into the understanding and 
 to lie unproductive in the memory ; but, on the contrary, 
 every truth is given out as an appeal to conscience, or 
 to some affection of the soul ; every truth stands as a 
 motive to repentance, to submission, to holy confidence 
 in God, to adoration, to obedience, to love. Thus in 
 the gospel every truth is vital, giving and sustaining 
 life in the believing, soul. He who has once "tasted 
 that the Lord is gracious " must needs hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness ; nor can he find anything else than 
 
Ch7Hstian Growth, 163 
 
 the sincere milk of the Word to satisfy that craving. 
 '^ How sweet are thy words unto my taste ! " Tiie 
 soul, feeding upon immortal truth, becoming more and 
 more familiar with what God has made known concern- 
 ing himself and his etetnal counsels of love ; drawing 
 nearer and nearer to the glory of God in Christ ; ani- 
 mated and inspired more and more with thoughts of 
 eternity and heaven, of the cross, the conflict and the 
 victory ; apprehending and taking in more completely 
 the exceeding great and precious promises ; becomes 
 more holy and heavenly, bears more of God's likeness, 
 partakes more gloriously of his nature, grows daily 
 toward the perfect stature and the Christ-like beauty of 
 its approaching immortality. 
 
 But what connexion is there between this spiritual 
 growth and that Christian self-discipline to which you 
 are invited ? Perhaps you are ready to ask whether a 
 vital growth is not necessarily spontaneous and uncon- 
 scious, and whether this idea of Christian progress is 
 not simply irreconcilable with the idea of progress by 
 self-discipline. I have already touched upon this thought ; 
 but let us now return to it, and see how spiritual growth, 
 in all its spontaneousness and unconsciousness, may be 
 the result of conscious and resolute endeavour. The 
 idea of growth is not incongruous with the idea of 
 culture ; and self- culture is self-discipline. 
 
 What is the representation of the Scriptures concern- 
 ing Christian progress, considered as a vital growth % 
 They clearly teach us that certain conditions are neces- 
 
164 The Christian Life. 
 
 sary to this spiritual growth, and those conditions are 
 such as cannot take place unconsciously or involuntarily. 
 " Wherefore, laying aside all malice [or wickedness], 
 and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil- 
 speakings, as new-born babes [that is, with all simplicity], 
 desire the sincere milk of the w^ord, that ye may grow 
 thereby." That the Word may have its effect, the mind 
 must be in a state to receive it and relish it, and thus 
 to be nourished by it. 
 
 Another apostle uses another comparison to illustrate 
 the same idea. " Wherefore lay apart all filthiness, and 
 superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness 
 the ingrafted word, which is able to save your souls." 
 When the vine-dresser would insert into a worthless 
 stock a graft of fruitful and generous nature, he begins 
 by pruning off the superfluous growth of the old stock ; 
 he removes those w^orthless shoots and branches, that 
 the graft, drawing to itself the sap and life of the stock, 
 may have the opportunity to bring forth fruit, according 
 to its nature, from the root which yielded no good fruit 
 before. So if the Word of God is to be grafted effec- 
 tually into your soul, and if the ingrafted Word is to 
 live within you and bear fruit according to its nature, 
 the process must begin with the pruning-oif of the 
 superfluous vrild growth. In other language, dropping 
 the figure, you must renounce and resist the wayward 
 affections that reign within you by nature ; you must deny 
 yourself; you must overcome those habits of affection, 
 of action, and of thought, which are contrary to truth 
 
Christian Growth. 165 
 
 and holiness ; and thus you must receive the Word " with 
 meekness," that is, with a mind so simple, so calm, so 
 humble, that w^ayward passions and wild affections shall 
 not choke the Word, and cause it to become unfruitful. 
 
 Returning now to the figure which the apostle Peter 
 uses, we find it setting forth the same idea of the con- 
 ditions without which there is no spiritual growth. If 
 you would relish the pure milk of the Word, and grow 
 thereby, as the new-born babe lives and grows by its 
 appropriate food, you must become like that new-born 
 babe ) you must " lay aside all malice, and all guile, 
 and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil-speakings ;" you 
 must suppress all selfish habits and impulses, all deceit 
 and aff'ectation, all that disposition which hungers and 
 thirsts after the seeming and advantages of righteousness 
 rather than after righteousness itself, — all that spirit of 
 self-exaltation which moves you to envy, and makes an- 
 other's welfare or progress less desirable to you than your 
 own, and especially all those evil and unloving w^ords in 
 which the spirit of selfishness seeks to express itself 
 The necessary condition of the soul's growth in holiness 
 — the condition without which the Word of God cannot 
 be eff'ectual to spiritual growth — is, that the soul shall 
 diligently resist all those propensities wdiich are contrary 
 to the Word, and to that life which the Word nourishes. 
 The order of nature and of grace is — the order of all 
 experience is — " Cease to do evil ; learn to do well." 
 You cannot learn to do wx41, unless you begin by ceasing 
 to do evil. 
 
1 66 The Christian Life. 
 
 You see, then, how it is that men may hear the Word 
 of God and read it, may find their thoughts and feelings 
 deeply interested in it, may even make it the subject- 
 matter of their studies and of the profoundest specula- 
 tive inquiry, and may yet remain without God in the 
 world. It is not that there is no eificacy in the Word. 
 It is not that the Word is not suited to their nature and 
 capacities. It is that they will not truly and frankly 
 cease to do evil, in order that they may learn to do well. 
 It is that they will not repent, in order to obey. It is 
 that they will not prune off the irregular, worthless, 
 thorny growth of selfishness and ungodliness, in order 
 to receive with meekness the ingrafted Word. It is 
 that they will not lay aside all malice, and all guile, and 
 hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil-speakings, in order 
 to receive the Word, and to be nourished by it into holi- 
 ness. They will not receive the kingdom of God as a 
 little child may receive it. They will not turn and 
 become as little children. A little child in its simplicity 
 may receive the kingdom of God. The renewing effi- 
 cacy of the gospel may enter into the mind with the 
 earliest rudiments of intellectual and moral instruction. 
 In that little child, bending at its mother's. knee to pray, 
 and hearing from its mother's lips *^ that sweet story 
 of old," how Jesus took little children into his arms and 
 blessed them, a new and spiritual life may begin ; an 
 infant life at first, but growing with the child's growth, 
 and strengthening with its strength. The mind, the 
 heart, the entire soul of that child may be moulded in 
 
Christian Growth. 167 
 
 all the process of growth, from infancy onward, by the 
 power of truth quickening the sense of duty and the 
 consciousness of relations to eternity, and by the power 
 of God's love made manifest in Christ ; w^hile the man 
 of high and various intelligence, speculating profoundly 
 and inquiring accurately, reads and hears the Word of 
 life, and even studies it attentively, without once tasting 
 that the Lord is gracious. The spiritual life begins even 
 in a little child that is simply and humbly obedient to 
 the truth ; but it can have no beginning in the maturest 
 and most enlightened mind that will not resolutely deny 
 ungodliness, turning with earnest purpose to obey and 
 follow Christ. 
 
 In the same way you see how it is that in many 
 regenerate souls (as in a charitable judgment we may 
 presume them to be) there is so little evidence of spiri- 
 tual growth. It is not because the Word cannot nourish 
 them. It is not because the promises of God are of no 
 validity. It is because they are not diligent to overcome 
 and suppress that which remains within them of ungodly 
 habits and affections. They have no adequate sense or 
 resolution of what is necessaiy on their part in order 
 that the Word with which they are fed may have its 
 effect in causing them to grow into more of the likeness 
 of God, and more of the beauty and strength of spiritual 
 life. In other words, they disregard the great principle 
 w^hich underlies those warnings : " Quench not the 
 Spirit ;" '' Grieve not the Spirit ;" " that Holy Spirit 
 of promise." Growth in grace, while it is in one sense 
 
1 68 The Christian Life, 
 
 spontaneous, and even unconscious, is in another sense 
 the effect of self-culture and self-discipline. While it is 
 in one aspect the work of the informing Word and 
 quickening Spirit of God, it is also, in another aspect, 
 the achievement of the soul itself struggling in God's 
 strength, and under his guidance, against its own cor- 
 ruptions. 
 
 Thus have I shown you what is necessary on your 
 part to your spiritual growth. You must be willing to 
 know and to condemn your own deficiencies. You must 
 diligently endeavour to understand your errors, and to 
 escape from them. As under the eye of God, and with 
 prayer for his illumination, you must search out your 
 secret faults, confessing them to him, and forsaking 
 them. You must " purify your soul in obeying the truth 
 through the Spirit." So shall you " grow in grace, and 
 in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." 
 Your soul shall be nourished with angels' food, the Word 
 of God, and shall grow toward " the measure of the 
 stature of the fulness of Christ." 
 
CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 FRUITFULNESS. 
 
 SELF-CULTURE EESULTING IN FRUITFULNESS. YOU MUST NOT 
 CONFOUND FRUITFULNESS WITH USEFULNESS, NOR WITH ZEAL FOR 
 DOING GOOD. SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF CHRISTIAN FRUITFULNESS ILLUS- 
 TRATED IN CHRIST'S PARABLE OF THE SOWER, IN HIS ALLEGORY OF 
 THE VINE, IN THE APOSTLE PETER'S SYNTHESIS OF CHRISTIAN 
 CHARACTER. PRACTICAL ERRORS IN CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE 
 ARISING FROM A MISTAKEN CONCEPTION OF FRUITFULNESS. 
 
** I am the vine, ye are the branches : he that abideth in me, 
 and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit ; for without me 
 ye can do -nothing. "—John xv. 5. 
 
 '^ Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit ; so 
 shall ye be my disciples."— John xv. 8. 
 
 " Giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue ; and to virtue, 
 knowledge ; and to knowledge, temperance ; and to temperance, 
 patience ; and to patience, godliness ; and to godliness, brotherly 
 kindness ; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things 
 be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be 
 barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 2 Pet. i. 5-8. 
 
jFruttfulness. 
 
 |0 man should think of being Christ's dis- 
 ciple, unless it be his aim and aspiration to 
 become one of those disciples in whom the 
 word of Christ brings forth fruit to eternal 
 life. Christian fruitfidness is the end for which all 
 the means of grace are appointed, and for which grace 
 itself is given. It is the end, therefore, of all Christian 
 self-discipline. 
 
 What is the true idea of Christian fruitfulness 1 A 
 mistaken conception of it cannot but mislead your en- 
 deavours and your aspirations. For example, if you 
 assume that fruitfulness in the knowledge of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ is identical with visible or traceable use- 
 fulness in the Church, you will be likely to err, . not 
 only in your judgment of yourself and of others, but 
 also in your thoughts and hopes of Christian progress. 
 Special usefulness is in a great measure dependent on 
 special gifts and special opportunities. Nay, as the 
 apostle Paul suggests, a man may be greatly useful, 
 though in his own soul the gospel brings forth no fruit 
 to perfection ; he may preach to others with as wide a 
 
172 The Christian Life. 
 
 success as that which attended the Apostle of the Gen- 
 tiles, and yet be himself a castaway. In like manner, 
 if you identify the idea of fruitfulness with the one idea 
 of zeal in some particular department of religious or 
 philanthropic activity, or even with the one idea of zeal 
 for doing good in general, as if that were the sum-total 
 of the Christian life, your judgment of yourself and of 
 others will be narrow and often erroneous, and your 
 aspirations after higher attainments in personal holiness 
 will be often misdirected. 
 
 Observe, then, carefully, what idea of Christian fruit- 
 fulness is given in the Scriptures. Begin with the 
 parable of the sower, in which the great Teacher seems 
 to have used this figure for the first time. His in- 
 stances and illustrations of unfruitfulness are significant. 
 First, " When any one heareth the word of the king- 
 dom, and understandeth it not," — that is, does not re- 
 ceive it into his mind, — " then cometh the wicked one, 
 and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. 
 This is he which received seed by the wayside." The 
 word of the kingdom has no effect upon him. Next, 
 *' He that received the seed into stony places, the same 
 is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth 
 it ; yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a 
 while." The word in his case is what the seed was 
 that fell upon stony places, springing up suddenly, but 
 withering in the first heat, and so producing nothing. 
 Another instance of unfruitfulness is, " he that heareth 
 the word, and the cares of this world, and the deceitful- 
 
Fruit/ulness. 173 
 
 ness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruit- 
 ful." The opposite of all this is fruitfulness, — the 
 fruitfulness of him who " heareth the word and under- 
 standeth it," or takes it into his mind and digests it 
 into thought and life, — the fruitfulness of them who 
 " in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, 
 keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience." Fruitful- 
 ness, according to the illustrations given in the parable 
 of the sower, is nothing less than the entire effect of 
 the gospel on the believing and obedient soul. 
 
 On another occasion, Christ employed a different 
 analogy to set forth the idea of fruitfulness in his dis- 
 ciples. It was when he spoke of himself as the true 
 vine, of which his Father is the husbandman, and in 
 which his disciples are the branches. " As the branch," 
 said he, " cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in 
 the vine : no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I 
 am ihe vine, ye are the branches : he that abideth in 
 me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit : 
 for without me ye can do nothing." " Herein is my 
 Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit : so shall ye 
 be my disciples," — that is, the fact that you are indeed 
 my disciples shall be evidenced by your fruitfulness. 
 In this illustration, fruitfulness is nothing less than the 
 entire effect wrought in the soul and life of the believer 
 by that vital relation to Christ which is represented in 
 the words, " Abide in me, and I in you." 
 
 Christian fruitfulness is mentioned in yet another 
 connexion. Turn once more to that remarkable passage 
 
1 74 The Christian Life. 
 
 wliicli I have already so often commended to your atten- 
 tion, and in which the exceeding great and precious 
 promises are referred to as an encouragement to diligence 
 in a spiritual self-discipline. " For this very reason 
 [because such promises are given to us], add to your 
 fiiith, virtue ; and to virtue, knowledge ; and to know- 
 ledge, temperance ; and to temperance, patience ; and 
 to patience, godliness ; and to godliness, brotherly kind- 
 ness ; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these 
 things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye 
 shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ." The meaning is, not that 
 these things are to be the cause of fruitfulness, but that 
 they are fruitfulness itself. It is in these things that 
 fruitfulness consists. They shall constitute you '* neither 
 barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord." 
 
 Your mind already adverts to passages in which " the 
 fruit of the Spirit " is described. " The fruit of the 
 Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, good- 
 ness, faith, meekness, temperance." " The fruit of the 
 Spirit is in all goodness, and righteousness, and truth." 
 Fruitfulness, as thus described, is the aim and appro- 
 priate result of those Divine influences by which the 
 soul is renewed in the likeness of God. 
 
 It is evident, then, what Christ means when he says 
 to his disciples, " Herein is my Father glorified, that ye 
 bear much fruit." Christian fruitfulness may be re- 
 garded as the effect of Divine truth received into a 
 believing mind, and incorporated into the soul's life. 
 
F^niitfulness. 1 7 5 
 
 It may be regarded as resulting from that spiritual 
 union between Christ and his disciples, which he 
 represents when he calls himself the vine, and them 
 the branches. It may be regarded as the true pro- 
 ficiency of a disciple in the knowledge of his Lord and 
 Saviour. It may be regarded as the fruit of that Holy 
 Spirit of promise by whom believers are sealed, and 
 who is the earnest of their inheritance. But under all 
 these aspects it is one and the same thing, — nothing 
 else than the maturity, the beauty, the worth, and the 
 blessedness of a complete Christian character. 
 
 I have already warned you, that a mistaken concep- 
 tion of what is meant by fruitfulness, may have the 
 effect of misdirecting your aspirations and endeavours 
 in the Christian life. Be careful, then, to set before 
 yourself a full and clear idea of what it is which con- 
 stitutes productiveness and fruitfulness in the knowledge 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a too common error to 
 suppose that the fruitfulness of a Christian is to be 
 found, not simply in his own interior life, but rather in 
 results external to himself; not simply in what he 
 becomes under God's renewing and sanctifying work, 
 but rather in what he brings to pass, and in the con- 
 viction which he produces on other minds ; not so much 
 in the reality of a life which is hid with Christ in God, 
 as in the outward manifestation and visibility of such a 
 life, in the impression which it makes on beholders, and 
 in the efficacy of its influence on the church or on the 
 world. If you take up such a notion of what you are 
 
176 The Christian Life, 
 
 to aim at in undertaking and professing to follow Christ, 
 you will be in danger of striving to seem holy instead 
 of striving to he holy. You will be in danger of sub- 
 stituting the formalisms and conventionalisms that hap- 
 pen to be in vogue among the religious people of your 
 acquaintance, for the simple reality of trusting in Christ 
 and walking humbly with God. You will be in danger 
 of falling into habits of religious affectation in manners 
 and speech, and in demonstrations of sanctimony or of 
 zeal, instead of simply striving to receive and obey the 
 Word of Christ, to grasp the hope he sets before you, 
 and to become like him in the temper and spirit of your 
 mind. Instead of asking, in the simplicity of a believing 
 and obedient spirit, what the God in whom you trust 
 would have you do, and doing all things heartily as to 
 the Lord and not to men, you will be continually and 
 irresistibly tempted to ask, What will men say or think 
 about me ? how shall I make the right impression upon 
 them ? how shall I make them feel that my religion is 
 a reality % All this tends to fix your mind more upon 
 how you appear than upon what you are, and to make 
 you more solicitous about the impressions and opinions 
 of men than about what your own heart is in the sight 
 of God. Thus it is that many a man falls by degrees 
 into an unintended and unconscious hypocrisy ; acquires 
 a habit of using religious words and phrases by rote, 
 and with little recollection or sense of what they mean ; 
 gradually assumes in his countenance and manner an 
 expression which, being designed for impression, is un- 
 
Fruitfulness, 177 
 
 natural, and perhaps repulsive. I do not warn you 
 against seriousness and gravity of speech or of deport- 
 ment, but this I say, watch and pray that you enter 
 not into temptation ; watch and pray that you may 
 he always under the full power of things unseen and 
 eternal, rather than that you may seem so. 
 
 By the same sort of misconception you may be led to 
 undervalue many of the most important elements of 
 Christian character. It is easy for you to take up the 
 notion that if only you can be what is called an active 
 Christian, you will be of course a complete and eminent 
 Christian. Sometimes we see a man who is conspicuous 
 in efforts of one sort or another for the advancement of 
 religion, zealous for the church, or for this or that re- 
 ligious enterprise, but who, in exercising himself unto 
 godliness, is far from giving due attention to the things 
 that are true and honest and just and lovely and of good 
 report. It is easy for you to fall into just that error, 
 and to assume that what Christ looks for in you is nothing 
 else than zeal for the church, or zeal for the interest of 
 religion. Do not think that I disparage religious activity 
 as an element of Christian character, nor that I would 
 in any way discourage or check your zeal to do all you 
 can for Christ, and for the souls of men. On the con- 
 trary, I would have you understand distinctly, and re- 
 member, that the spirit of Christ in all his disciples is 
 essentially a beneficent and active spirit, a spirit of zeal 
 for God, and of aggression against the darkness and 
 wickedness of this world. I would have you understand 
 
 M 
 
1 78 The Christian Life. 
 
 that where there is no sympathy with Christ in his re- 
 deeming work, no compassion for those who are dead in 
 trespasses and sins, no love for the church and kingdom 
 of Christ, no readiness for self-denial in the service of 
 Christ, the spirit of Christ is not manifest. There may 
 be an unblamed and unsuspected uprightness iu all human 
 relations, and with it there may be combined a most at- 
 tractive personal amiableness like that of the young man 
 whom Jesus loved ; and yet, if there be no sympathy 
 with Christ and no readiness for self-sacrifice in his 
 service, the one thing lacking, as in the case of that 
 young man^ implies a fatal deficiency. But I would 
 have you understand also, and remember, that no mani- 
 festation of zeal for the Lord, no bustle or eclat of reli- 
 gious activity, no restlessiiess of endeavour in enterprises 
 of philanthroiDy, or of moral or religious propagandism, 
 no readiness to give, to suffer, or to die in behalf of a 
 principle, can turn the balance against the want of per- 
 sonal integrity, of strict veracity and honesty, of thorough 
 purity, of conscientiousness in all those ordinary and 
 homely virtues without which the profession of saintli- 
 ness is an abhorrence to God. A man may not only have 
 the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all 
 knowledge without the principle of holy love ; he may 
 not only preach to others and be himself a castaway ; 
 he may even bestow all his goods to feed the poor, and 
 give his body to be burned, in the fervour of a zeal which 
 is not holy love and has no fellowship with Christ. If 
 there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on what- 
 
Fruitfulness. 1 79 
 
 soever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, 
 whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
 whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of 
 good report. Remember that '' the fruit of the Spirit 
 is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
 faith, meekness, temperance." Remember that charity 
 needs no conspicuousness of position, no celebrity or 
 notoriety, no trophies of success, as essential to its 
 reality. It suffereth long and is kind ; it envieth not ; 
 it vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave 
 itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not easily pro- 
 voked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but 
 rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth all things, believeth all 
 things, hopeth all things, endureth all things ; and in 
 order to this it needs no splendour of gifts, no rare feli- 
 city of opportunities, no great cloud of mortal witnesses, 
 no plaudits of this world's admiration. It may be as 
 complete, as beautiful to the eye of God, and as true a 
 manifestation of his glory, in the humblest position as 
 anywhere else. 
 
 Some really conscientious persons, whose desire and 
 purpose to follow Christ need not be doubted, seem to 
 misunderstand, in part, the application of that precept : 
 " Let your light so shine before men, that they may see 
 your good works, and glorify your Father which is in 
 heaven." Forgetful that it is the nature of light to 
 shine, they do not observe that what the precept requires 
 of them is simply that interior life of purity and love, 
 that inward holiness which cannot but shine. If it be 
 
1 80 The Christian Life, 
 
 said to the watchman on the mountain-top, " Let your 
 light shine," he has only to kindle his beacon, and its 
 warning flame flashes across the valleys. If it be said 
 to the keeper of a lighthouse, '^ Let your light shine," 
 he has only to light up the lamp in his turret, and far 
 over the waves it shines. So when Christ says to us, 
 " Let your light shine before men, — let it so shine, that 
 they may see your good works, and glorify your Father 
 which is in heaven," we need not concern ourselves about 
 the impression which our conduct may make on other 
 minds ; we need only take care that in thought, as well 
 as in word and deed, our lives are humble, holy. Christ- 
 like ; and our light will shine, the self-same light that 
 shone in Christ. If we begin to be anxious about the 
 impression we are making upon men, we are immedi- 
 ately in danger of becoming like the hypocrites, whose 
 ruling motive in their works of outward goodness, or of 
 outward godliness, is that they may be seen of men. The 
 habit of doing things for effect or impression is danger- 
 ous. It is affectation ; and affectation is, in its degree, 
 hypocrisy. 
 
 " Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ." 
 It seems almost irreverent even to inquire what the effect 
 would be on our estimate of Christ's human character, 
 if w^e could imagine him as doing anything for the sake 
 of appearances. Who does not feel that the glory that 
 shines in the human life of our Redeemer would not be 
 there, but for his perfect unaffectedness % The glory of 
 Christ in his followers is dimmed, if it does not shine 
 
Fruitf Illness. 1 8 1 
 
 naturally, and, as it were, unconsciously, " in simplicity 
 and godly sincerity." So let your light shine. 
 
 Kemember, then, that the aim of all your self-culture 
 as a •disciple of Christ must be, not the show and seem- 
 ing of a Christian life, but the reality. A completely 
 Christ-like character is to be valued for its own sake, 
 and not for the sake of what men may think of it. 
 God values it for what it is, and not for the impression 
 which it makes. A truly and completely Christian cha- 
 racter is nothing else than a Christ-like soul. 
 
 A Christ-like soul ! Think, you whose eye is on this 
 page, how blessed it is to be like Christ, not in profes-, 
 sion only, but in reality ; not only in the show and 
 seeming of a Christian character, but in the soul's life. 
 Think how possible it is for you to be thus blessed. 
 Think of God's love to you, testified in Christ's self- 
 sacrifice for you. Think of God's willingness to give 
 the Holy Spirit to them that ask him. Think of those 
 exceeding great and precious promises which are given 
 to you in the gospel, that by them you may be a par- 
 taker of the Divine nature. It is possible for you to 
 become — by God's mercy and gracious help, by his 
 blessing on your diligence, by his answer to your 
 prayers, by his performance of his promises — a Christ- 
 like soul. 
 
 Is this your aspiration % Are you hoping, praying, 
 and striving to realize in your own experience the 
 blessedness of a Christ-like souH There is no really 
 Christian self-culture which aspires to anything less 
 
1 82 The Christian Life, 
 
 than this. Assuming that such is your aspiration, I 
 have endeavoured to help you by these friendly coun- 
 sels, and to encourage you by showing that this is the 
 hope which the gospel sets before you. All that I have 
 written is worthless to you, if you are not striving to 
 " put on the Lord Jesus Christ," and to be transformed 
 into his likeness " by the renewing of your mind." 
 
 Be assured that there is nothing extravagant or un- 
 warranted in your aspiring to all the dignity and bless- 
 edness of a Christ-like soul. In truth, there is no other 
 just conception of a Christian life than this, that it is 
 the life of a renewed soul growing more and more like 
 Christ. To " put on the new man" is nothing else than 
 to " put on Christ : " and the new life is in us only 
 as that mind is in us which was also in Christ. Ask 
 what the blessedness is to which they that love God 
 are " called according to his purpose." Let an apostle 
 answ^er. " Whom he did foreknow, he also did pre- 
 destinate" — to what? — "to be conformed to the 
 image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among 
 many brethren" (Rom. viii. 28, 29). It is to this that 
 you are invited. <' That ye might be partakers of the 
 divine nature," is the end for which are given all the 
 ofiers and promises which constitute ther gospel. 
 
 If you have heartily undertaken the self-culture to 
 which the gospel calls us, you are already becoming a 
 Christ-like soul. If you have received Christ, you are 
 of those whom he has made the sons of God, — ^him- 
 self the first-born among many brethren. " Behold what 
 
Fruitfulness, 1 8 3 
 
 manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us, that we 
 should be called the sons of God !" " It doth not yet 
 appear what we shall be ; but we know that, when he 
 shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him 
 as he is." A Christ-like soul is a God-like soul : and 
 that likeness to God, perfected in the soul, is the con- 
 summation of blessedness. Your assurance of hope is : 
 " I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." 
 Meanwhile, all the progress of your Christian self-culture 
 is a progress in likeness to Christ, '-^ whom not having 
 seen ye love ; in whom, though now ye see him not, 
 yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full 
 
 of glory, EECEIVING THE END OF YOUE FAITH, THE 
 SALVATION OF YOUR SOULS." 
 
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