The Epistles of St. Peter [ThML]
<generalInfo> <description><i>Epistle of St. Peter</i> is a commentary written by English pastor John Henry Jowett on 1 and 2 Peter. He writes 18 entries on 1 Peter and 11 on 2 Peter, moving chronologically through the letters. He engages each verse of the section and attempts to further explain or add to what the Apostle Peter has written. Jowett explains metaphors and events, characterizes God, and outlines the commands given in the letters. This commentary will always remain fresh due to Jowett's clean and sincere writing and his attention to detail. This online edition also includes an index of scripture verses, making it easy to locate commentary on the desired verse.<br></br><br></br>Abby Zwart<br></br>CCEL Staff Writer </description> <pubHistory></pubHistory> <comments>page images provided by Internet Archive</comments> </generalInfo> <printSourceInfo> <published>London: Hodder and Stoughton (1910)</published> </printSourceInfo> <electronicEdInfo> <publisherID>ccel</publisherID> <authorID>jowett</authorID> <bookID>epistpeter</bookID> <version></version> <series></series> <DC> <DC.Title>The Epistles of St. Peter</DC.Title> <DC.Creator sub="Author">John Henry Jowett</DC.Creator> <DC.Creator sub="Author" scheme="file-as">Jowett, John Henry (1817-1893)</DC.Creator> <DC.Publisher>Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library</DC.Publisher> <DC.Subject scheme="ccel">All; Bible </DC.Subject> <DC.Date sub="Created">2007-07-25</DC.Date> <DC.Type>Text.Monograph</DC.Type> <DC.Format scheme="IMT">text/html</DC.Format> <DC.Identifier scheme="URL">/ccel/jowett/epistpeter.html</DC.Identifier> <DC.Source></DC.Source> <DC.Source scheme="URL"></DC.Source> <DC.Language>en</DC.Language> <DC.Rights></DC.Rights> </DC> </electronicEdInfo>
Title Page
iThe Devotional
and Practical
Commentary
Edited by
W. Robertson Nicoll
M.A., LL.D.
THEDEVOTIONAL AND PRACTICALCOMMENTARYCrown 8vo, Cloth, 5s. each. ST. PAUL’S EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. By JOSEPH PARKER, D.D. ST PAUL’S EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND THESSALONIANS. By the Same Author. THE EPISTLES OF ST. Peter. By J. H. JOWETT, M.A. LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON |
iii
Prefatory Material.
Works by the Same Author.
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHORAPOSTOLIC OPTIMISM5th Edition. Cloth, 6s. FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTHONE OF THE “LITTLE BOOKS ON RELIGION”Cloth, 1s. net. LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON |
Contents
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF Peter |
|||
CHAP. | VERSE | PAGE | |
I. | 3-5. | THE POSSIBILITIES AND DYNAMICS OF THE REGENERATE LIFE |
1 |
I. | 6, 7. | SORROWFUL, YET ALWAYS REJOICING |
11 |
I. | 8, 9. | A TWOFOLD RELATIONSHIP AND ITS FRUITS |
24 |
I. | 13-16. | BEING FASHIONED |
34 |
I. | 17-21. | THE HOLINESS OF THE FATHER |
45 |
I. | 22-25. | THE CREATION OF CULTURE AND AFFECTION |
56 |
II. | 1-10. | THE LIVING STONES AND THE SPIRITUAL HOUSE |
67 |
II. | 11-17. | THE MINISTRY OF SEEMLY BEHAVIOUR |
78 |
viII. | 21-25. | THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST |
90 |
III. | 1-8. | WIVES AND HUSBANDS |
102 |
III. | 8. | “BE PITIFUL” (“TENDERHEARTED”) |
114 |
III. | 8-15. | CHRIST SANCTIFIED AS LORD |
126 |
III. | 18-22. | BRINGING us TO GOD |
138 |
IV. | 1-6. | THE SUFFERING WHICH MEANS TRIUMPH |
150 |
IV. | 7-11. | GETTING READY FOR THE END |
161 |
IV. | 12-19. | THE FIERY TRIAL |
173 |
V. | 1-7. | TENDING THE FLOCK |
181 |
V. | 8-10. | THROUGH ANTAGONISMS TO PERFECTNESS |
193 |
THE SECOND EPISTLE OF Peter |
|||
I. | 1, 2. | LIBERTY! EQUALITY! FRATERNITY! |
205 |
I. | 1-4. | THE CHRISTIAN’S RESOURCES |
213 |
I. | 5-9. | DILIGENCE IN THE SPIRIT |
227 |
I. | 12-15. | THE SANCTIFICATION OF THE MEMORY |
237 |
I. | 16-18. | THE TRANSFIGURED JESUS |
249 |
I. | 19-21. | THE MYSTERY or THE PROPHET |
263 |
II. | 1. | DESTRUCTIVE HERESIES |
279 |
II. | 20, 21. | WORSE THAN THE FIRST |
296 |
III. | 3, 4, 8, 9. | THE LEISURELINESS OF GOD |
307 |
III. | 10-14. | PREPARING FOR THE JUDGMENT |
321 |
III. | 18. | GROWING IN GRACE |
334 |
The First Epistle of Peter
The Possibilities and Dynamics of the Regenerate Life
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 1:3-5" parsed="|1Pet|1|3|1|5" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.1.3-1Pet.1.5" />Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
How easily these early disciples break into doxology! Whenever some winding in the way of their thought brings the grace of God into view, the song leaps to their lips. The glory of grace strikes the chords of their hearts into music, and life resounds with exuberant praise. It is a stimulating research to study the birthplaces of doxologies in the apostolic writings. Sometimes the march of an argument is stayed while the doxology is sung. Sometimes the Te Deum is heard in the midst of a procession of moral maxims. The environment of the doxology varies, but the operative cause which gives it birth is ever the same. From 2the height of some ascending argument, or through the lens of some ethical maxim, the soul catches a glimpse of the “riches of His grace,” and the wonderful vision moves it to inevitable and immediate praise. I am not surprised, therefore, to find the doxology forming the accompaniment of a passage which contemplates the glory and the privileges of the re-created life. It is a Te Deum sung during the unveiling of the splendours of redeeming grace. Let us turn our eyes to the vision which has aroused the grateful song.
“Blessed
be the God and Father . . . who begat us again.” [
Now, man is not enamoured of that dogmatic postulate. It smites his pride in the forehead. It lays himself and his counsels in the dust. 4It expresses itself in an alien speech. Men are familiar with the word “educate”; the alien word is “regenerate.” Political controversy has familiarised them with the word “reform”; the alien word is “transfigure.” They have made a commonplace of the word “organise”; the alien word is “vitalise.” They have made almost a fetish of the phrase “moral growth”; the alien word is “new birth.” And so we do not like the strange and humbling postulate; but whether we like it or not, the heart of every man bears witness to the truth and necessity of its imperative demand. Man be comes incredulous of the necessity of the new birth when he surveys the lives of others, but not when he contemplates his own. We gaze upon the conduct and behaviour of some man who is dissociated from the Christian Church, or who indeed is hostile or indifferent to the Christian faith. “We mark the integrity of his walk, the seemliness of his behaviour, the purity of all his relationships, the evident loftiness of his ideals, and we then project the sceptical inquiry, Does this man need to be begotten again? I do not accept one man’s judgment as to the necessity of another man’s regeneration. I wish to hear a man’s judgment concerning himself. I would like a man to be brought face to face with the life of Jesus, 5with all its searching and piercing demands, and with all its marvellous ideals, so marvellously attained, and I would like the man’s own judgment as to what would be required before he himself, in the most secret parts of his life, is clothed in the same superlative glory. I think it is impossible to meet with a single unconverted man who does not know that, if ever he is to wear the glory of the Son of God, and to be chaste and illumined in his most hidden thoughts and dispositions, there will have to take place some marvellous and inconceivable transformation. Let any man gaze long on “the unsearchable riches of Christ,” and then let him slowly and deliberately take the inventory of his own life, and I am persuaded he will come to regard the vaunted panaceas of the world as altogether secondary, he will relegate its vocabulary to the secondary, and he will welcome as the only pertinent and adequate speech, “Ye must be born again.”
Into what manner of life are we begotten again? What is the range of its possibilities, and the spaciousness of its prospects? The apostolic doxology winds its way among a wealth of unveiled glories.
“Blessed be the God . . . who begat us again unto a living hope.” [
“Begat us again . . . unto an inheritance.” [
“Begat us again . . . unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” [
“We have searched this glowing doxology for glimpses of the new-begotten life. We have gazed upon its fascinating range of possibilities. Has it any suggestion to offer of the dynamics by which these alluring possibilities may be achieved? I have already dwelt upon the vitalising energy which flows from its living hope. Are there other suggestions of empowering dynamics by which even the loftiest spiritual height may be scaled? Let us glance at some of these suggested powers.
“According to His great mercy.” [
“Begat us again . . . by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” [
“By the power of God guarded unto salvation.” [
Sorrowful, Yet Always Rejoicing
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 1:6-7" parsed="|1Pet|1|6|1|7" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.1.6-1Pet.1.7" />Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, might be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
“WHEREIN ye greatly rejoice!” These fountains of spiritual joy shoot into the light at
most startling and unexpected places. Their
favourite haunt seems to be the heart of the
desert. They are commonly associated with
a land of drought. In these Scriptural records
I so often find the fountain bursting through
the sand, the song lifting its pæan out of
the night. If the text is a well of cool and
delicious water, the context is frequently
and waste. “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now . . . ye have been put to grief.”
[
“Wherein ye greatly rejoice.” [
“Though now for a little while, if need be,
ye have been put to grief in manifold trials.” [
Now, these “manifold trials” assume many guises and employ varied weapons of painful inquisition. Some of them may be found in the antagonism of men. Loyalty to truth may be confronted with persecution. A beautiful ministry may be given an evil interpretation. Our beneficence may be maligned. Our very leniency may be vituperated and proclaimed as a device of the devil. This may be one of the guises of “the manifold trials.” Or our antagonism may be found in the apparent hostility of our circumstances. Success is denied us. Every way we take seems to bristle with difficulties. Every street we enter proves to be a cul de sac. We never emerge into an airy and spacious prosperity. We pass our days in material straits. Such may be another of the guises of “the manifold trials.” Or it may be that our antagonist dwells in the realm of our own flesh. We suffer incessant pain. We are just a bundle of exquisite nerves. The streets of the city are instruments of torture. The bang of a door shakes the frail house to its base. We are the easy victims of physical depression. Who knows but that this may have been Paul’s “thorn in the flesh”? At any 18rate, it is one of “the manifold trials” by which many of our brethren are put to grief. I will go no further with the enumeration, because I am almost impatient to once again declare the evangel which proclaims that be hind all these apparent antagonisms we may have the unceasing benediction of the joy of our Lord. It is possible—I declare it, not as my personal attainment, but as a glorious possibility which is both yours and mine—it is possible to get so deep into the thought and purpose of God, and to dwell so near His very heart, as to “count it all joy” when we “fall into manifold trials,” because of that mystic spiritual alchemy by which trials are changed into blessings and our antagonists transformed into our slaves.
Can we just now nestle a little more closely
into the loving purpose of God? Why are
antagonisms allowed to range themselves across
our way? Why are there any blind streets
which bar our progress? Why does not labour
always issue in success? Why are “manifold
trials” permitted? We may find a partial
response in the words of my text. They are permitted for “the proof” [
But “the manifold trials” do more than
reveal the faith. There is another ministry
wrapped up in this suggestive word “prove.”
The trial that reveals the faith also strengthens
and confirms it. [
And, finally, there is one other radiant
glimpse of the resplendent issues of a “proved” and invigorated faith: “That the proof of your
faith . . . might be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation
of Jesus Christ.” [
Our “proved” faith is to come to its crown in a manifestation of praise and glory and honour. When Jesus appears, these things are to appear with Him. The trial of our faith is to issue in “praise.” And what shall be the praise? On that great day of unveiling, when all things are made clear, I shall discover what my trials have accomplished. I shall perceive that they were all the time the instruments of a gracious ministry, strengthening 22me even when I thought I was being impoverished. The wonderful discovery will urge my soul into song, and praise will break upon my lips. “Found unto praise and glory.” And whose shall be the glory? When the Lord appears, many other things will become apparent. What I thought hard will now appear as gracious. What I recoiled from as severe I shall find to be merciful. What I esteemed as forgetfulness will reveal itself as faith fulness. He was nearest when I thought Him farthest away. He was faithful even when I was faithless. At His appearing I shall apprehend and appreciate my Lord. “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” “Found unto praise and glory and honour.” And whence shall flow the honour? I shall find that when the Lord sent a trial, and by the trial revealed my faith, many a fainting heart took courage, and by the beauty of my devotion many a shy soul was secretly wooed into the kingdom of God. I never knew it, but at His appearing this shall also appear. This discovery shall be my coronation. The supreme honours of heaven are reserved for those who have brought others there. “They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.” And so by the cloud of manifold trials God leads me into 23the spacious sovereignty of glory, praise, and honour.
<verse> <l class="t1">God moves in a mysterious way</l> <l class="t2">His wonders to perform; </l> <l class="t1">He plants His footsteps in the sea,</l> <l class="t2">And rides upon the storm.</l> </verse> <verse> <l class="t1">Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;</l> <l class="t2">The clouds ye so much dread </l> <l class="t1">Are big with mercy, and shall break</l> <l class="t2">With blessings on your head.</l></verse> 24A Twofold Relationship and Its Fruits.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 1:8-9" parsed="|1Pet|1|8|1|9" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.1.8-1Pet.1.9" />Whom not having seen ye love; on whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
“Whom not having seen ye love.” [
The fair vision came, and its gentle impression awoke the sleeping love and stirred it into fervent and vigilant life. It was “love at first sight.”
25But love is not always aroused by the first eight. The “first sight” may not stir the heart to even a languid interest. The vision may be as uninfluential as a cipher. Or the “first sight” may create a repulsion. It may excite my dislike. It may rather rouse the critic than wake the lover. But love that remains sleeping at the “first sight” may be aroused by more intimate communion. The ministries of the spirit may triumph where the allurements of the countenance failed. Love may be born, not of sight, but of fellowship. It may spring into being amid the intimacies of a deepening companionship. You remember the story of Othello and Desdemona, and how their hearts were drawn into affectionate communion. It Was not love at “first sight,” but love at heart sight. He told her the story of his chequered life, of “battles, sieges, fortunes” he had passed, of disastrous chances, of moving accidents by flood and field. “This to hear would Desdemona seriously incline.”
<verse> <l class="t4">My story being done</l> <l class="t1">She gave me for my pains a world of sighs; </l> <l class="t1">She swore, in faith, ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange; </l> <l class="t1">’Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful.</l> </verse>* * * * * *
<verse> <l class="t1">She loved me for the dangers I had passed, </l> <l class="t1">And I loved her that she did pity them.</l> </verse> 26It was the communion of spirit with spirit which unsealed the springs of their affection. We recognise the principle in common life. A number of young people are thrown together in frequent fellowship. For months, and perhaps for years, their association does not pass beyond the sphere of friendship. But one day the fellowship of two of them opened into intimacy, and the sober servant, friendship, made way for the master passion, love. They had seen each other’s faces for years, and they remained companions; they caught a glimpse of each other’s hearts, and they were trans formed into lovers. So love may be the child of spiritual intimacy. It may wait on knowledge. It may wake into being through the ministry of a deep communion.
“Whom not having seen ye love.” Theirs was not the love born of gazing upon Christ’s face, but the love begotten by communion with His heart. Love may be born of spiritual fellowship. If only we can get into intimacy with the Master’s spirit, love may wake into being and song. It is just for this opportunity of individual communion that the Master is craving. He has little fear of our not falling in love with Him, if we will only listen to His story. He wants to visit the heart and whisper His evangel in the secret place. 27Do I debase the sublime quest when I say He yearns to “court” the soul, to woo and to win it? “If any man will open the door, I will come in and sup with him.” That is what He asks—an open door. He asks to be allowed to visit the soul, to pay His attentions, to declare His aims and purposes, and to whisper the Gospel of His own unsearchable love. He wants to talk to us separately in individual wooings. He wants us to find a little time to listen to Him while He talks about the Father and Sonship, and life and its resources, and heaven and its rest and glory. He wants to talk to us about the burden of sin and guilt, and the exhaustion of weakness. He wants to whisper something to us about our newly born child and about our newly made grave. He would like to come very near to us and tell us what He knows about sorrow and death, and the morrow which begins at the shadow we fear. I say He wants to tell it all to thee and to me—to thee, my brother, as though there were no other soul to woo beneath God’s heaven. The winsome story shall wind its wonderful way around Christ and Bethlehem and thee, around Christ and Gethsemane and thee, around Christ and Calvary and thee, around Christ and heaven and thee! He will tell thee of His agonies and tears, and He will 28show thee the scars He received in the quest of thy redemption.
<verse> <l class="t1">Hath He marks to lead me to Him</l> <l class="t3">If He be my guide? </l> <l class="t1">In His hands and feet are wound-prints,</l> <l class="t3">And His side.</l> </verse>He will tell thee all His story. And the sublime purpose of the communion shall be to woo thee, that in His tender fellowship the springs of thine own love may be unsealed and thou mayest become engaged, by the bonds of an eternal covenant, to the Lord of life and glory. “We love him because he first” wooed us The early love may be timid and shy, half afraid of itself, and trembling in some un certainty, but it shall put on strength and sweetness in the deeper and riper fellowships of your wedded life. Wedded to the King, you shall come to realise more and more the freedom of His forgiveness, the triumph of His power, the sweet pressure of His presence, the alluring glory of the living hope, and with this enrichment of your intimacies your heart will become possessed by a more intense and fervent affection for Him “whom not having seen ye love.”
“On whom . . . believing.” [
“Whom not having seen ye love; on whom . . .
believing, ye rejoice.” [
How unlike that other soul of whom we read in the Sacred Word, “I remembered God, and was troubled.” A thought that rang an alarm-bell.
<verse><l class="t1">Jesus, the very thought of Thee </l> <l class="t1">With sweetness fills my breast.</l> </verse>A remembrance that rang anew the wedding-bells. “Whom not having seen ye love.” Then it is daytime in the soul. “On whom . . . believing.” Then there is no cloud over the communion. Daytime and no cloud! Then there must be sunshine in the soul. “Ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
“With joy unspeakable.” [
It is unspeakable. A bleeding sympathy! Has it not just to remain dumb? “We stand or sit with interlocked hands, bereft of all adequate expression! It is unspeakable. A spiritual joy! How shall we tell it? Where is the mould of speech which can catch and hold the ethereal presence? It is unspeakable.
<verse> <l class="t1">But what to those who find? Ah! this</l> <l class="t2">Nor tongue nor pen can show:</l> <l class="t1">The love of Jesus, what it is </l> <l class="t2">None but His loved ones know.</l> </verse>“With joy unspeakable and full of glory.” [
“Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation
of your souls.” [
Being Fashioned.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 1:13-16" parsed="|1Pet|1|13|1|16" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.1.13-1Pet.1.16" />Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind, be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is being brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as children of obedience, not fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts in the time of your ignorance: but like as He which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living; because it is written, Ye shall be holy; for I am holy.
“Wherefore!” [
The “wherefore” is thus suggestive of the bases of this urgent and practical appeal. Our life is purposed to shine in Divine dignity. Our prospects are glorious. Our resources are abounding. We should therefore lay aside our laxity. Life should not be spent in idle reverie. Our movement should not be a careless sauntering. Our rest should not be a thought less lounging. Life should be characterised by clear sight, definite thought, eager purpose, and decided ends.
“Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind.” [
As it is with the element of thought, so it is with the power of affection; for perhaps in the spiritual term “mind” both thought and affection are included. We speak of “wandering affections,” and truly affection may become an appalling vagrant. Affection is easily allured, easily entangled, easily snared by the worldly glitter which gleams by the side of the common way. Or, if we recur to the apostle’s figure, our loose affections, like flowing garments that are blown about by the wind, entangle our faculties and make havoc of our moral and spiritual progress. We must “gird up the loins” of our affection. It will not be child’s play, but he who wants a religion of child’s play must not seek the companionship of Christ. The Master spake of cutting off the right hand and plucking out the right eye, and the bleeding figure has reference to the severing of relationships and the disentangling of well-established affections. To free a flowing garment which has been caught in a thorn hedge may necessitate rents, and to disentangle 38an unworthy affection may necessitate pain, but even at the cost of rent and pain the deliverance must be effected. We must gird up the loins of our trailing affections. We must not hold them so cheaply. We must not permit them to sweep the broad road and to expose themselves to the entanglement of every obtruding thorn. We must “set” our “affections upon things above,” and for that sublime purpose we must gather them together in strenuous concentration. This exhortation is therefore an appeal for collectedness both of thought and of feeling. It is a warning against mental and affectional looseness, and with loving urgency the apostle pleads with his readers to pull themselves together, to gird up their loins, and with full energy of thought and feeling devote themselves to the worship and service of God.
“Be sober.” [
“And set your hope perfectly on the grace that is being brought unto you in the revelation of Jesus
Christ.” [
The apostle now probes more deeply into the mode of godly living, and unveils a little more clearly the principle by which the holy life is fashioned. Life is formed by conformity. There is always a something towards which we tend and approximate, and “we take hue from that to which we cling.” There is always a something “according to” which we are being shaped. “According to Thy word,” “according to this world,” “according to the former lusts.” We are for ever coming into accord with some thing, and that something determines the fashion 41of our lives. Now, this principle of “forming by conforming” is proclaimed by the apostle in the succeeding words of this great passage; and as “children of obedience” we are called to a manner of life which at once demands a stern nonconformity and a strong and fervent conformity.
“Not fashioning yourselves according to your former
lusts in the time of your ignorance.” [
In many lives this lust is the determining and formative force; everything is made to bow to it; all the affairs of life are fashioned by it. It occupies the throne and moulds all life’s concerns into its own accord. The apostle vehemently counsels his readers against this conformity. He pleads that the children of liberty should not retain the governing powers of their servitude. The night should not provide the patterns for the day. The season of “ignorance” should not create the ruling powers for the season of knowledge and revelation. He urges them to revolt against the old forces, to become spiritual nonconformists, not fashioning themselves after their former lusts.
“But like as He which called you is holy, be 43ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living.” [
“Because it is written, Ye shall be holy; for I
am holy.” [
The Holiness of the Father.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 1:17-21" parsed="|1Pet|1|17|1|21" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.1.17-1Pet.1.21" />And if ye call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to each man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear: knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers; but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ: who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was manifested at the end of the times for your sake, who through Him are believers in God, which raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God.
“If ye call on Him as Father, who . . . judgeth.” [
“If ye call on Him as Father, who judgeth.” Then the element of holy sovereignty must be a cardinal content in our conception of the Fatherhood of God. What does the term “Father” immediately suggest to me? Good nature or holiness; laxity or righteousness; a hearthstone or a great white throne? The primary element in my conception will determine the quality of my religious life. If the holiness of Fatherhood be minimised or obscured, every other attribute will be impoverished. Denude your conception of holiness, and it is like withdrawing the ozone from the invigorating air, or detracting the freshening salt from the healthy sea. Suppress or ignore the element of holiness, and think of the Father as affectionate, and the love that you attribute to Him 47will be only as a close and enervating air. Love without holiness is deoxygenated, and its ministry is that of an opiate or narcotic. Pity without holiness is a bloodless sentiment destitute of all healing efficiency. Forgiveness without holiness is the granting of a cheap and superficial excuse, in which there is nothing of the saving strength of sacrifice. Begin with pity or forgiveness, or forbearance or gentleness, and you have dispositions without dynamics, poor limp things, which afford no resource for the uplifting and salvation of the race. But begin with holiness, and you put a dynamic into every disposition which makes it an engine of spiritual health. Forgiveness with holiness behind it is a medicated sentiment, fraught with healing and bracing ministry. Gentleness with holiness behind it touches the aches and sores of the world with the firm and delicate hand of a discerning and experienced nurse. Exalt the element of holiness, and you enrich your entire conception of the Fatherhood of God. The “river of water of life” flows “out of the throne.” “The Father who judgeth.” “Our Father, hallowed be Thy name.”
And now the apostle proceeds to tell us how his conception of the holiness of God is fostered and enriched. Wherever he turns it is God’s holiness, and not God’s pity, which smites and 48arrests his attention. He is never permitted to become irreverent, for lie is never out of sight of “the great white throne.” He moves in fruitful wonder, ever contemplating the glory of the burning holiness of God. If he meditates upon the character of the Father’s judgments, it is their holiness by which he is possessed. If he moves with breathless steps amid the mysteries of redemption, even beneath the blackness of the cross he discovers the whiteness of the throne. If he dwells upon the purposes of the Divine yearning, it is the holiness of the Father’s ambition for His children which holds him entranced. The holiness of the Father emerges everywhere. It is expressed and placarded in all His doings. Everywhere could the apostle take upon his lips the words of another wondering spirit who gazed and worshipped in a far-off day: “I saw the Lord, high and lifted up! Holy, holy, holy is the LORD.”
“The Father, who without respect of persons
judgeth according to each man’s work.” [
The apostle now turns to another expression of the holiness of the Father, and he finds it in the character of our redemption. “Knowing that,” reflecting that, “ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things . . . but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even
51the blood of Christ.” [
Redemption is more than the search of
Father for child; it is a tremendous wrestle of
holiness with sin. Have we felt only the
tenderness of the search, and partially over
looked the terribleness of the conflict? The
fear is that we may feel the geniality of the one
without experiencing the consuming heat of
the other. I proclaim it as a modern peril.
We do not open our eyes to the holiness that
battles in our redemption, and so we gain only
an enervated conception of redemptive love.
Is not this a characteristic of many of the 52popular hymns which gather round about the
facts of redemption? They are sweet, sentimental, almost gushing; the light, lilting songs
of a thoughtless courtship: deep in their depths
I discern no sense of bloody conflict, nor do I
taste any tang of the bitter cup which made
our Saviour shrink. And so, because we do not
discern the majestic crusade of holiness, we do
not realise the enormity of sin. If we look into
the mystery of redemption, and do not see the
august holiness of God, we can never see the
blackness of the sovereignty of sin. Dim your
sense of holiness, and you lighten the colour of
sin. Now see what follows. Obscure the holiness and you relieve the blackness of sin.
Relieve the blackness of sin and you impoverish
the glory of redemption. The more we lighten
sin the more we uncrown our Redeemer. If
sin be a light thing, the Redeemer was superfluous. And so, with holiness hidden and sin
relieved, we come to hold a cheap redemption,
and it is against the conception of a cheap
redemption that the apostle raises an eager and
urgent warning—“There was nothing cheap
about your redemption. It was not a light
ministry which cost a mere trifle. Ye were
redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver
and gold, but with precious blood, even the
blood of Christ.” Reason from the cost of 53redemption to the nature of the conflict;
reason from the nature of the conflict to the
black enormity of sin; reason from the enormity
of sin to the glory of holiness! A lax God
could have given us licence and so redeemed us
cheaply! A cheap redemption might have
made us feel easy; it would never have made
us good. A cheap forgiveness would only have
confirmed the sin it forgave. If we are to see
sin we must behold holiness, unveiled for us as
in a “lamb without blemish and without spot.” [
Out of this large conception of a holy Father
hood there will arise a worthy conception of
sonship. If God be holy, expressing His
holiness in all His dealings, and “if ye call on
Him as Father,” what manner of children ought
ye to be? If I call the holy God “my Father,”
the assumption of kinship implies obligation to
holiness. If I say “Father,” I may not ignore
holiness. “If God were your father,” ye would
bear His likeness. “Ye shall be holy; for I am
holy.” If then ye call on Him as “Father,”
put yourselves in the way of appropriating His
glory, and of becoming radiant with the beauty
of His holiness: “pass the time of your sojourning in fear.”
[
The Creation of Culture and Affection.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 1:22-25" parsed="|1Pet|1|22|1|25" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.1.22-1Pet.1.25" />Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from a clean heart fervently: having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth. For, All flesh is as grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower falleth: but the word of the, Lord abideth for ever.
IN the very heart of this passage there lies a fair and exquisite flower—the flower of an in tense and fervent affection. Its surroundings reveal to us the means of its production. The earlier clauses of the passage describe the mode of its growth; the later clauses describe the cause of its growth. The first part is descriptive of the rootage and the preliminary life of the flower of love; the second part proclaims the all-enswathing atmosphere in which growth is rendered possible and sure. On the one hand, there are revealed to us the successive and progressive stages of spiritual culture; on the other hand, we are introduced to the all-pervading 57power which determines their evolution. The earlier part centres round about “obedience”; the latter part gathers round about “the word of God.” The first half emphasises the human; the second half emphasises the Divine. The human and the Divine combine and co-operate, and in their mingled ministry create the sweet and unpolluted flower of love.
“Love one another from a clean heart fervently.”
[
The apostle uses a very graphic word to 60further describe the healthy pose of a soul in reference to “the truth.” We are to be in “obedience to the truth.” There is a stoop in the word. It is a kneeling at attention. It is an eager inclining of the ear to catch the whisper of the Holy God. But it is more than that. It is the attention of a soul that is girt and ready for service. The wings are plumed for ministering flight. It is a listening, for the purpose of a doing. “Whosoever heareth these sayings of Mine and doeth them.” It is a soul waiting consciously and eagerly upon the Holy Father with the intent of hearing and doing His will. This is “obedience to the truth,” and this is the preliminary step in the creation and culture of God.
Now, let us pass to the vital succession
described in the text. We enter a second stage
of this progressive gradation. “Ye have purified
your souls in your obedience to the truth.” [
Now, mark the next stage in this brightening
sequence. “Ye have purified your souls . . . unto unfeigned love.”
[
But now it may occasion a little surprise
that, having reached this apparent climax in
the thought, the affluence of a spontaneous
affection, the apostle should add the injunction, “love one another from a clean heart fervently!”
[
How can we depend upon this succession in
the processes? How can we be assured that
one stage will lead to another in inevitable
spiritual gradation? What is the nature of the
bond and the quality of the guarantee? What
is our assurance that “obedience to truth” will
issue in chaste refinement of spirit, and that
spiritual refinement will be crowned by a rare 65and fervent affection? The basis of our reliance is “the word of God.”
[
The Living Stones and the Spiritual House.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 2:1-10" parsed="|1Pet|2|1|2|10" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.2.1-1Pet.2.10" />Putting away therefore all wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation; if ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious: unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Because it is contained in scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame. For you therefore which believe is the preciousness: but for such as disbelieve, The stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner; and, A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence; for they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed. But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that ye may shew forth the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light: which in time past were no people, but now are the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.
THERE is a wonderful ascending gradation in the earlier portions of this great chapter. It begins in the darkness, amid “wickedness” and 67“guile” and “hypocrisies,” and it winds its way through the wealthy, refining processes of grace, until it issues in the “marvellous light” of perfected redemption. It begins with individuals, who are possessed by uncleanness, holding aloof from one another in the bondage of “guile “and “envies “and “evil speakings”; it ends in the creation of glorious families, sanctified communities, elect races, “showing forth the excellencies” of the redeeming Lord. We pass from the corrupt and isolated individual to a redeemed and perfected fellowship. We begin with an indiscriminate heap of unclean and undressed stones; we find their consummation in a “spiritual house,” standing consistent and majestic in the light of the glory of God. We begin with scattered units; we end with co-operative communions. The subject of the passage is therefore clearly defined. It is concerned with the making of true society, the creation of spiritual fellowship, the realisation of the family, the welding of antagonistic units into a pure and lovely communion.
Where must we begin in the creation of this communion? The building of the house, says the apostle, must begin in the preparation of the stones. If the family is to be glorified, the individual must be purified. A choir is no richer than its individual voices, and if we wish 68to enrich the harmony we must refine the constituent notes. The basis of all social reformation is individual redemption. And so I am not surprised that the apostle, who is contemplating the creation of beautified brotherhoods, should primarily concern himself with the preparation of the individual. But how are the stones to be cleaned and shaped and dressed for the house? How is the individual to be prepared? By what spiritual processes is he to be fitted for larger fellowships and family communion? I think the apostle gives us a threefold answer.
“If ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.”
[
All delights imply repulsions. All likes necessitate dislikes. A strong taste for God implies a
strong distaste for the ungodly. The more refined
my taste, the more exacting becomes my standard.
The more I appreciate God, the more shall I depreciate the godless. I do not wonder, therefore,
that in the chapter before us the “tasting” of
grace is accompanied by a “putting away” [
“As newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk.” [
Here, then, is the threefold preparation of the individual for a family life of intimate and fruitful fellowship—a personal experience of grace, the expulsion from the life of all uncleanness, and the adoption of a rigorous and uncompromising ideal. The whole preparatory process is begun, continued, and ended in Christ. 73In Christ the individual is lodged, and in His grace, which is all-sufficient, he finds an abundant equipment for the spacious purpose of his perfected redemption.
Now, let us assume that the individual is ready
for the fellowship. We have got the unit of
the family. We have got the “living stone.”
cleansed, shaped, dressed, ready to be built into
the “spiritual house.” How, now, shall the
society be formed? What shall be its cement?
What shall be its binding medium, and the
secret of its consistency? Here are the “living
stones”; what shall we do with them? “Unto whom coming . . . as
living stones ye are built up a spiritual house.” [
And what is to be the mission of the glorified
fellowship? If even two or three are gathered
together, by common possession of the Spirit
of Christ, into a sanctified society, what purpose
is to be achieved by their communion? They
are to “shew forth the excellencies of Him who
called them out of darkness into His marvellous
light.” [
The Ministry of Seemly Behaviour.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 2:11-17" parsed="|1Pet|2|11|2|17" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.2.11-1Pet.2.17" />Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul; having your behaviour seemly among the Gentiles; that, wherein they speak against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works, which they behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. Be subject to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as sent by him for vengeance on evil-doers and for praise to them that do well. For so is the will of God, that by well-doing ye should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your freedom for a cloke of wickedness, but as bondservants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.
THIS is an appeal for the evangelising influences of a chaste and winsome character. It is an apostolic entreaty to consider the immeasurable momentum of a beautiful life. It is a glorification of the silent witness of saintliness. It is not given to all men to have the faculty and function of the prophet, his clear sight, and his power of fruitful interpretation, The persuasive, 79wooing speech, of the evangelist is not an element in the common endowment. The evangelist and the prophet may be only infrequent creations, and their gifts may have only a limited distribution. But we may all exercise the ministry of beauty. Every man may be an ambassador of life, discharging his office through the medium of holiness. Every man may be an evangelist in the domain of character, distributing his influence through the odour of sanctity, in seemliness of behaviour, in exquisite fitness of speech, in finely finished and well-proportioned life. This is a ministry for every body, the apostleship of spiritual beauty. And so in the passage before us the apostle is engaged in delineating the features of the character that tells. He is depicting a forceful life. He is exhibiting the behaviour which is influential in leading men to reverent thought and religious inquiry and spiritual conviction. What are these public aspects of the sanctified life? By what kind of living can we best arouse the interest of the world in the claims and kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? How may we become powerful evangelists, even though we have been denied the gift of tongues? How may we arrest the world in fruitful wonder? Let us seek the answer in the apostolic word.
80“Abstain from fleshly lusts.” [
Now, what is this but a plea for the ascendency of spirit? It is a plea for the magnificent passion of moderation, and for the imposing grace of a noble self-restraint. “Abstain from fleshly lusts.” Do not let any fire get outside the bars. Do not let the flames reach the furniture. Hold everything in its place. Suffer no usurpation. Do not let the lower supplant the higher. Rigidly observe the distinction of subject and sovereign, and 81preserve the purity of the throne. Such is the all-inclusive meaning of the apostolic counsel. In the constitution of man there is a Divine order. His powers are arranged in ranks and gradations. The science of life is the doctrine of gradation; the art of living is the recognition of gradation. I suppose that George Combe did a great service to the cause of practical thinking when, seventy years ago, he wrote his work on The Constitution of Man. I am not aware that there was anything new in the philosophy of the book. It only confirmed the teaching of the entire range of philosophy stretching back from his own day to the days of Socrates and Plato. And what was the teaching? That the powers of the human personality are arranged in heightening gradation, and that the secret of beautiful living consists in awarding to each rank its own precise and peculiar value. The service rendered by George Combe consisted in the attempt to make this philosophy a plain, practical rule for common life. I find in the resources of my personality regiments of diverse, powers. I find vital forces, affectional forces, social forces, moral forces, spiritual forces. I find elements whose kinship is with the swine, and I find elements which have the lustre and the preciousness of pearls. “What is 82the art of successful and forceful living. “Give not that which, is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.” Do not treat swine and pearls as though they were of equal value. Recognise an aristocracy among the powers, and to them give the preference and the sovereignty. When there are two calls in the life, the bark of the dog and a voice from the sanctuary, “give not that which is holy unto the dogs,” but ever keep the lowest under the severe jurisdiction of the highest. “Abstain from fleshly lusts.” Do not allow any lower power to prowl about in loose licentiousness. Keep the chain on. “Let your moderation be known unto all men.” Exercise the ministry of a well-ordered life. Let all the powers in the life be well drilled, well disciplined, healthily ranked, each one in its place, from the private soldier up to the commander-in-chief. “Abstain from fleshly lusts.” The primary characteristic of forceful, influential character is the ascendency of the spirit.
[
If this be evangelistic character, the character that tells upon “the Gentiles,” then Christian life is not perfected and beautified where the hallowing of the social order is ignored. When civic duty is neglected, and national obligation is overlooked, the fair circle of spiritual devotion is broken. “Be subject to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake . . . to the king . . . or unto governors.” Bend your strength into an intelligent obedience which will be creative 85of a larger and more fruitful corporate life. I have no personal doubt as to what we should do with kings and governors if their rule minister to moral chaos and disorder. The sovereignty is only hallowed when it works to hallowed ends. If this predominant purpose is violated by the supreme king or governor, a man’s very reverence for social sanctities will transform him into a rebel. It was because our fathers were possessed by hallowed civic instincts, and by a burning eagerness for pure and righteous corporate life, that they hurled Charles I. from the throne, and in his rejection and dethronement pledged their souls to a deepened devotion to the sovereignty of God. A primary characteristic of forceful, evangelistic character is the serious recognition of the sanctity of corporate life.
“As free, and not using your freedom for a cloke of wickedness, but as bondservants of God.”
[
“Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God.
Honour the king.” [
These, then, are some of the characteristics of
the “seemly behaviour,” which, working through
the medium of holiness, proclaim the glory of
God the ascendency of spirit, the aspiration
after social sanctity, the responsible use of
freedom, and the ceaseless exercise of reverence.
These are the primary aspects of the forceful life
which works mightily in the evangelisation of
the world. As to what would be the issues of
such a life the apostle proclaims a triumphant
hope. “The Gentiles,” [
The Sufferings of Christ.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 2:21-25" parsed="|1Pet|2|21|2|25" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.2.21-1Pet.2.25" />For hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow His steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously: who His own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were going astray like sheep; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.
“Christ also suffered . . . who did no sin.” [
I do not limit the principle to the domain of the flesh. It is a matter of familiar knowledge that in the body it is regnant. There are bodies in which the nerves seem atrophied or still-born, and there are bodies in which the nerves abound like masses of exquisitely sensitive pulp. But the diversity runs up into the higher endowments of the life, into the aesthetic and affectional and spiritual domains of the being. The man of little aesthetic refinement knows nothing of the aches and pains created by ugliness and discord. The rarer organisation is pierced and wounded by every jar and obliquity. It is even so in the realm of the affections. Where affection burns low, neglect and inattention are unnoticed; where love burns fervently, neglect is a martyrdom. If we rise still higher into the coronal dominions of the life, into the domain of moral and spiritual sentiments, we shall find that the degree of rectitude and holiness determines the area of exposure to the wounding, crucifying ministry of vulgarity and sin.
92“Christ also suffered . . . who did no sin.” We must interpret the rarity and refinement of
His spirit if we would even faintly realise the intensity of His sufferings. “Who did no sin,
[
Now, it is a Scriptural principle that all sin is creative of insensitiveness. “The wages of sin 93is death,” deadened faculty, impaired perception. “His leaf shall wither!” Sin is a blasting presence, and every fine power shrinks and withers in the destructive heat. Every spiritual delicacy succumbs to its malignant touch. I suppose that Scripture has drawn upon every sense for analogies in which to express the ravages of sin in the region of perception. Sin impairs the sight, and works towards blindness. Sin benumbs the hearing and tends to make men deaf. Sin perverts the taste, causing men to confound the sweet with the bitter, and the bitter with the sweet. Sin hardens the touch, and eventually renders a man “past feeling.” All these are Scriptural analogies, and their common significance appears to be this—sin blocks and chokes the fine senses of the spirit; by sin we are desensitised, rendered imperceptive, and the range of our correspondence is diminished. Sin creates callosity. It hoofs the spirit, and so reduces the area of our exposure to pain.
“Who did no sin!” No part of His being had been rendered insensitive. No perception had been benumbed by any callous overgrowth. Put the slightest pressure upon the Master’s life, and you awoke an exquisite nerve. “And they disputed one with another who should be greatest.” . . . “And Jesus perceiving their thoughts!” How sensitive the perception! The 94touch of a selfish thought crushed upon the nerve, and stirred it into agony. Such is the sensitiveness of sinlessness, and in this vulgar, selfish, and sinful world it could not be but that the Sinless One should be “a Man of Sorrows,” and that He should pass through pangs and martyrdoms long before He reached the appalling midnight of Gethsemane and Calvary. “Christ also suffered . . . who did no sin.”
Now, let us watch this sensitive Sufferer, so
quick and apprehensive in every nerve, and let
us contemplate the nature of some of the sufferings He endured. “He was reviled.”
[
How did the Lord endure His sufferings?
“When He was reviled, He reviled not again.”
[
Such was the Sufferer, such were His sufferings, and such the way in which He endured
them. What were the fruits of this transcendent endurance? If I were even to attempt
to give an exhaustive reply to the great inquiry,
I should have to quote the New Testament
record from end to end. On every page one
can find the enumeration and catalogue of
the gracious fruits. Their proclamation is the
New Testament glory. But just look at the
pregnant summary given by the apostle Peter
in the passage of our text. “Christ also suffered . . . that we might live.”
[
And now this unspeakable ministry of suffering is proclaimed as an example to all men.
“Christ also suffered, leaving you an example,
that ye should follow His steps.”
[
Wives and Husbands.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 3:1-8" parsed="|1Pet|3|1|3|8" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.3.1-1Pet.3.8" />In like manner, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, even if any obey not the word, they may without the word be gained by the behaviour of their wives; beholding your chaste behaviour coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it not be the outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner aforetime the holy women also, who hoped in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands: as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose children ye now are, if ye do well, and are not put in fear by any terror. Ye husbands, in like manner, dwell with your wives according to knowledge, giving honour unto the woman, as unto the weaker vessel, as being also joint-heirs of the grace of life; to the end that your prayers be not hindered. Finally, be ye all likeminded, compassionate, loving as brethren, tenderhearted, humbleminded.
WHERE shall we begin our interpretation of this influential passage? The starting-place of the exposition has much to do with the character and quality of its issues. Everybody knows the starting-place of a superficial and short-sighted curiosity. It fastens its primary attention upon 103the words “subjection,” “fear,” “obedience.” These are the words which are regarded as the points of emphasis. Around these words the interest gathers and culminates. The rest of the broad passage is secondary, and takes its colour from their determination. I propose to reverse the order. We will begin with the broad significance of the passage, and then reason backwards to the content of the individual words. We will gaze upon the entire face, and then take up the interpretation of single features. If we begin with the words “subjection,” “fear,” “obedience,” with no helpful clue of interpretation, we shall have a perverted and destructive conception of the dignity of womanhood. But if we begin with the broad, general portraiture of the wife and the husband, their mutual relationships will stand revealed as in the clear light of a radiant noon. In the passage for exposition the apostle delineates some of the spiritual characteristics of the ideal husband and the ideal wife. Let us quietly gaze at the portraiture, if perchance some of its beauty may steal into our spirits, and hallow common life with the light and glory of the blessed God.
Where does the apostle begin in his portraiture of the ideal wife? “Chaste behaviour.”
[
Refined purity is therefore the primary element in the ideal wife, and it is the first essential in human communion. There can be no vital communion where both the communicants are not clean. “When dirt intrudes, fellowship is destroyed. Corruption is the antagonist of cohesion. “The wicked shall not stand.” Their very uncleanness eats up the consistency and brings the structure to ruin. “When uncleanness breaks out in the family circle, the family cannot “stand.” If envy take up its abode, or jealousy, or any type of carnal desire, the fair and beautiful circle is broken. The great family of the redeemed, “the multitude whom no man can number,” are one in the wearing of the “white robe.” Their consistency and solidarity are found in their purity, and in the absence of all the alienating forces of uncleanness and defilement. It is not otherwise in the relationship of husband and wife. The wearing of the white robe is the primary essential to their communion. “Keep thy garments always white”! Does the ideal appear insuperable? Then let me proclaim another word: “They shall walk with Me in white!” That is not a command; the words enshrine a promise. “Walking with Me, they shall be white.” The 106whiteness is the result of the companionship. “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean.” The sprinkling is not a transitory act; it is a permanent shower. The forces of the cleansing Spirit are sprayed upon our powers just as the antiseptic is sprayed upon the exposed wound to ward off and destroy the subtle forces of contamination and defilement. To be a companion of the Lord is to have the assurance of purity. “The fear of the Lord is clean.”
What is the second element in the portraiture
Verse 4 of the ideal wife? “A meek and quiet spirit.”
[
“A meek and quiet spirit.” A quiet spirit! The opposite to that which we describe as “loud.” The “loud” woman is the ostentatious woman, moving about in broad sensations. “He shall not cry”; there was nothing loud about Him, quite an absence of the scream: “neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets”; there shall be nothing about Him of the artifice of self-advertisement. The Master was never “loud,” and so He was a most winsome and welcome companion. The “loud” woman is never companionable. The difference between a “loud” woman and a woman of “quiet spirit” is the difference between fireworks and sunshine, between a quiet, genial glow and a crackling bonfire. The apostle contrasts the “quiet spirit” with the love of sensational 108attire and loud adornments, the disposition to arrest attention by vulgar dazzle and display. The disposition is a fatal foe to real communion. After all, we cannot bask in the glare of fireworks; we rejoice in the quiet sunlight. Home is made of quiet materials, and one of the elements in the constitution of beautiful wedded fellowship is “a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.”
What is the third element in the portraiture of the ideal wife? “Not put in fear
by any terror” How shall I describe the
disposition? Let me call it the grace of
repose. “Not put in fear by any terror.”
[
What are the lineaments of the ideal husband? “Dwell with your wives according to knowledge.”
[
“Giving honour unto the woman, as unto the 110
weaker vessel.”
[
“What is the last lineament in this ideal
portraiture? How else must the husband live? “That your payers be not hindered.”
[
Here, then, are the spiritual portraitures of the wife and the husband: on the one hand, the robe of purity, the ornament of modesty, the grace of repose; on the other hand, an atmosphere of reasonableness, the temper of reverence, and the conformity of conduct and prayer. What, now, in the light of such relationships, can be the content of such terms as “subjection,” “obedience,” “fear”? The partners are a wife, clothed in purity, walking in modesty, with a reposefulness of spirit which reflects the very glory of God; and a husband, walking with his wife according to knowledge, bowing before her in reverence, and pervading all his behaviour with the temper of his secret communion with the Lord. There is no room for lordship, there is no room for servility. The subjection of the 113one is paralleled by the reverence of the other. I say there is no lordship, only eager helpfulness; there is no subjection, only the delightful ministry of fervent affection. The relationship is a mutual ministry of honour, each willing to be lost in the good and happiness of the other. Wherefore, “subject yourselves one to the other in the fear of Christ,” that in the communion of sanctified affection you may help one another into the light and joy and blessedness of the Christian.
114Be Pitiful.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 3:8" parsed="|1Pet|3|8|0|0" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.3.8" />Finally, be ye all likeminded, compassionate, loving as brethren, tenderhearted, humbleminded.
“BE PITIFUL!” Here the standard of authority is set up in the realm of sentiment, and obedience is demanded in the domain of feeling! I did not anticipate that the Christian imperative would intrude into the kingdom of the feelings. I thought that feelings would lie quite outside the sphere of authority. I thought that feelings could not be made to order, and yet here is an order in which their creation is commanded! “Be pitiful!” I could have understood a commandment which dealt with the external incidents and manifestations of life. I should not have been surprised had there been laid upon me the obligation of hospitality—hospitality may be commanded. But then, hospitality need not touch the border lands of feeling. Hospitality may be generous and plentiful, and yet noble and worthy feeling 115may be absent. Hospitality may be a matter of form, and therefore it can be done to order. I should not have been surprised had I been commanded to show beneficence. Beneficence may be exercised while sentiment is numb. It is possible to have such a combination as callous prodigality. Beneficence may therefore be created by authority. But here in my text the imperative command enters the secret sanctuary of feeling. It is not concerned with external acts: it is concerned with internal disposition. It is not primarily a service which is commanded, but a feeling. But can feelings be made to order? Charity can: can pity? Labour can: can love? “This is My commandment, that ye love one another.” “Love one another with a pure heart fervently.” “Be kindly affectioned one to another.” “Be pitiful.” The order is clear and imperative: can I obey it? Authority commands me to be pitiful: then can pity be created by an immediate personal fiat? Can I say to my soul, “Soul, the great King commands thee to be arrayed in pity; bring out, therefore, the tender sentiment and adorn thyself with it as with a robe”? Or can a man say to himself, “Go to; this day I will array myself in love, and I will distribute influences of sweet and pure affection! I will unseal my springs of pity, and the gentle waters 116shall flow softly through all my common affairs”? Such mechanicalised affection would have no vitality, and such pity would be merely theatrical—of no more reality or efficacy than the acted pity of the stage. Feelings cannot rise matured at the mere command of the will.
But, now, while I may not be able to produce the sentiment of pity by an act of immediate creation, can I rear it by a thoughtful and reasonable process? I cannot create an apple, but I can plant an apple-tree. I cannot create a flower, but I can create the requisite conditions. I can sow the seed, I can give the water, I can even arrange the light. I can devote to the culture thoughtful and ceaseless care; and he who sows and plants and waters and tends is a fellow-labourer with the Eternal in the creation of floral beauty. What we cannot create by a fiat we may produce by a process. It is even so with the sentiments. Feelings cannot be effected at a stroke; they emerge from prepared conditions. Pity is not the summary creation of the stage; it is the long-sought product of the school. It is not the offspring of a spasm; it is the child of discipline. Pity is the culmination of a process; it is not stamped as with a die, it is grown as a fruit. The obligation therefore centres round about 117the process; the issues belong to my Lord. Mine is the planting, mine the watering, mine the tending; God giveth the increase. When, therefore, I hear the apostolic imperative, “Be pitiful!” I do not think of a stage, I think of a garden; I do not think of a manufactory, I think of a school.
Let us now consider the process. “Be pitiful!” That is the expression of a fine feeling; and if life is to be touched to such exquisite issues, life itself must be of fine material. Fine characteristics imply fine character. You will not get fine porcelain out of pudding-stone. The exquisiteness of the result must be hidden in the original substance. If you want rare issues, you must have fine organic quality. Some things are naturally coarser than others, and there are varying scales of refinement in their products. The timber that would make a good railway sleeper would not be of the requisite texture for the making of violins. I saw, only a little while ago, the exposed hearts of many varieties of Canadian timber. In some the grain was coarse and rough; in others the grain was indescribably close and compact, presenting a surface almost as fine as the rarest marble. Their organic qualities were manifold, and their destinations were as manifold as their 118grain. Some passed to rough-and-tumble usage; others passed to the ministry and expression of the finest art. These organic distinctions are equally pronounced when we ascend to the plane of animal life. The differing grains of timber find their analogy in the differing constitutions of an ordinary dray-horse and an Arab steed. You cannot harness the two beasts to the same burden and work. The sensitive responsiveness of the one, its quivering, trembling alertness, makes it fitted for ministries in which the other would find no place. It is again the repetition of the chaste porcelain and the common mug. It is not otherwise when we reach the plane of man. There is the same difference in grain. Our organic qualities are manifold. Look at the difference in our bodies. Some have bodies that are coarse and rough, dull and heavy, with little or no fine apprehension of the beauty and perfume and essences of the material world. Others have bodies of the finest qualities, alert and sensitive, responding readily to the coming and going of the exquisite visitors who move in sky or earth, on land and sea. In our bodies we appear to differ as widely as Caliban and Ariel—the thing of the ditch, and the light and buoyant creature of the air. Now, dare we push our 119investigation further? Do these organic differences appertain to the realm of the soul? Are there not souls which seem to be rough-grained, organically and spiritually coarse? The very substance of their being, the basis of motive and thought and feeling and ambition, is inherently vulgar, and they seem incapable of these finer issues of tender pity and chaste affection. Now, where character is rough-grained fine sentiments are impossible. You can no more elicit pity from vulgarity than you can elicit Beethoven’s Sonatas from undressed cat-gut. If we would have fine issues, we must have rare character. If we would have rare pity, we must become refined men.
“What, then, can be done? Can we do anything in the way of culture? Can the organic quality be changed? Can we make coarseness retire before the genius of refinement? It is surprising how much we can do in the kingdom of nature. By assiduous care we can transform the harsh and rasping crab-apple into the mild and genial fruit of the table; and we can, by persistent neglect, drive it back again into the coarseness of the wilderness. It is amazing how you can bring a grass-plot under discipline, until even the rank grass seems to seek conformity with the gentler turf; and it is equally amazing how 120by neglect and indifference you can degrade a lawn into a common field. In the realm of garden and field organic qualities can be changed. Does the possible transformation cease when we reach the kingdom of man? Can dull and heavy bodies be refined? Is it possible to alter the organic quality of a man’s flesh? It is much more possible than the majority of people assume. By thoughtful exercise, by reasonable diet, by firm restraint, by “plain living and high thinking,” it is possible to drive the heaviness out of our bodies, and to endow them with that organic refinement which will be the revealing minister of a new world. Can the transformation proceed further? Let me propound the question which is perhaps one of the greatest questions that can come from human lips: Is it possible to go into the roots and springs of character, into the primary spiritual substance which lies behind thought and feeling, and change the organic quality of the soul? If this can be done, the creation of pity is assured! If the coarse fibres of the soul can be transformed into delicate harp-strings, we shall soon have the sweet and responsive music of sympathy and affection! Can it be done? Why, this transformation is the very glory of the Christian evangel! What do we want accomplishing? We 121want the secret substance of the life chastened and refined, that it may become vibratory to the lives of our fellows. What think you then of this evangel? “He sits as a refiner.” And what is the purpose of the Refiner? Let the Apostle Paul supply the answer, “We are renewed by His Spirit in the inner man.” The Refiner renews our basal spiritual sub stance, takes away our drossy coarseness, and makes our spirits the ministers of refinement. And what are the conditions of obtaining refinement? The conditions are found in communion: “His Spirit in the inner man”: it is fellowship between man and his Maker; it is the companionship of the soul and God. All lofty communion is refining! All elevated companionships tend to make me chaste! What, then, must be the transforming influence of the companionship of the Highest? We can see its ministry in the lives of the saints. Lay your hand upon any one, man or woman, who walks in closest fellowship with the risen Lord, and you will find that the texture of their life is as the choicest porcelain, compared with which all irreligious lives are as coarse and common clay. By communion with the Divine we become “partakers of the Divine nature.” In fellowship we find the secret of spiritual refinement, and in spiritual refinement are 122found the springs of sympathy. To be pitiful we must become good. Our pity is born of our piety.
But there is a second step in the process to which I must briefly direct your thought. It is not enough to be organically refined. Refined faculties must be exercised. A man may have a brain of very rare organic quality, and yet the particular function of the brain may be allowed to remain inactive and immature. It is not enough for me to become spiritually refined; I must exercise my refined spirit in the ministry of a large discernment. Now, for the creation of a wise and ready sympathy, there is no power which needs more continuous use than the power of the Imagination. I sometimes think, looking over the wide breadths of common life, that there is no faculty which is more persistently denied its appropriate work. “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” Such vision calls for the exercise of the imagination. “Put yourself in his place.” Such transposition demands the ministry of the imagination. If the imagination be not exercised, we offer hospitality to the shrieking sisterhood of bigotry and intolerance. If a pure and refined imagination had been at work, how could an Anglican clergyman have declared that the Nonconformists are “in mad 123alliance with Anarchists”? And if a refined imagination had been in exercise, how could a Nonconformist have spoken of the Bishops as “caring little for the cause of Christ so long as they could suffocate Dissenters”? How much a refined imagination would have helped in the mutually sympathetic understanding of Pro-Boers and Anti-Boers? When this faculty is sleeping, evil things are very much awake! But for my immediate purpose I am asking for the exercise of the imagination in respect to things which would be otherwise insignificant. Imagination is second sight. Imagination is the eye which sees the unseen. Imagination does for the absent what the eye does for the present. Imagination does for the distant what the eye does for the near. The eye is concerned with surfaces; imagination is busied with depths. The dominion of the eye terminates at the horizon; at the horizon, imagination begins. Imagination is the faculty of realisation; it takes a surface and constructs a cube; it takes statistics, and fashions a life. Here is a surface fact: “Total of patients treated in the Queen’s Hospital during 1901, 31,064.” The eye observes the surface fact and passes on, and pity is unstirred. The imagination pauses at the surface, lingers long, if perchance she may comprehend something of its saddening 124significance. Imagination turns the figures over; 31,064! Then these afflicted folk would fill twenty buildings, each of them the size of the chapel at Carrs Lane. Says Imagination, “I will marshal the pain-ridden, bruised crowd in procession, and they shall pass my window and door, one a minute, one a minute, one a minute! How long will it take the procession to pass? Twenty-one days!” But what of the units of the dark and tearful procession? Imagination gets to work again. Have you a child down? They are like him. Have you a brother falling, or a sister faint and spent? They are like them. Have you known a mother torn and agonised with pain, or a father crushed and broken in his prime? They are like him. Have you gone down the steep way to the death-brink, and left a loved one there? Some of these, too, have been left at the brink, and their near ones are climbing up the steep way again alone! This is how refined imagination works, and, while she works, her sister, Pity, awakes and weeps! But if pity is not to be smothered again, the aroused impulse must be gratified and fed. I know that pity can give “ere charity begins,” but charity confirms pity, and strengthens and enriches it. Feelings of pity, which do not receive fulfilment in charity or service, may become ministers 125of petrifaction. Let our piety be the basis of our pity; let our imagination extend our vision; and from this area of hallowed out look there will arise rivers of gracious sympathy, abundantly succouring the children of pain and grief.
126Christ Sanctified as Lord.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 3:8-15" parsed="|1Pet|3|8|3|15" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.3.8-1Pet.3.15" />Finally, be ye all likeminded, compassionate, loving as brethren, tenderhearted, humbleminded: not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but contrariwise blessing; for hereunto were ye called, that ye should inherit a blessing. For, He that would love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: and let him turn away from evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears unto their supplication: but the face of the Lord is upon them that do evil. And who is he that will harm you, if ye be zealous of that which is good? But and if ye should suffer for righteousness sake, blessed are ye: and fear not their fear, neither be troubled; but sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord: being ready always to give answer to every man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, yet with meekness and fear.
“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.” [
“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.” [
Are you surprised that the apostle’s answer
begins with an enumeration of the softer graces: “compassionate, tenderhearted, humbleminded”? [
“Compassion” [
“Tenderheartedness.” [
“Humblemindedness” [
“Not Tendering evil for evil, or reviling for
reviling; but contrariwise blessing.” [
Now let us turn to the sterner products of the sanctified life. Let us turn to the hearts-of-oak of which the softer graces are the perfected fruit. Let us contemplate the severer virtues, the more commanding strength.
“Zealous of that which is good.” [
“Suffering for righteousness sake.”
[
Now, let me sum up my exposition. The
fruits of the sanctified life are to be found in
the tender graces and in commanding virtues, in
compassion, sensitive and humbleminded, and
in moral and spiritual enthusiasm which is
perfectly devoid of fear. Now, do you not
think that where these soft compassions flow
and these sterner virtues dwell—river and rock—a man will be able to “give answer to every
man that asketh a reason concerning the hope that
is in him”? [
Bringing Us to God.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 3:18-22" parsed="|1Pet|3|18|3|22" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.3.18-1Pet.3.22" />Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit; in which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient, when the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water: which also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ; who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him.
THE concluding passage of this great chapter
is like a landscape in the uncertain light of the
early morning. Here and there the black
shadows still linger and prolong the night. The
hollows are filled with mist. A prevailing
dimness possesses the scene. From only a few
things has the veil dropped, and their lineaments
are seen in suggestive outline. On the whole,
we are dealing with obscure hints, with partial
unveilings, which awaken wonder, rather than
convey enlightenment. Perhaps, in the present 139stage of our pilgrimage, an open-eyed wonder is
more fruitful than an assurance begotten of
broader light. Assurance may nourish sluggishness; an expectant wonder disciplines the powers
to a rare perceptiveness. But amid all the
indefiniteness of the revelation, there are two
or three visions which are sufficiently clear to
enrich our thought and life. We have glimpses
of the Lord in a threefold activity. We see
Him engaged in His redemptive work among
men upon earth: “Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He
might bring us to God.” [
“Christ also suffered for sins ONCE.” [
“Christ suffered for sins once.” But could not sin have been forgiven without the sufferings? Could not sin have been forgiven without abandonment? Might we not have had our forgiveness without that cry of “forsaken”? I ask these questions not because I can answer them, but in order to awake a reverent wonder and a fruitful awe. This I know, that cheap forgiveness always lightens sin. Flippant forgiveness gilds the sin it forgives, and the sorest injury we can do to any man is to lighten his conception of the enormity of sin. The only really healthy forgiveness is the forgiveness which pardons sin while at the same time it reveals it. This, at any rate, is one of the commanding glories of evangelical religion—it never makes light of sin. Nowhere does forgiveness shine more resplendently, and nowhere does sin gloom more repulsively, than in the 142redemptive love of Christ. In that love we behold both the horrors of the midnight and the quiet, sunny glories of the noontide. “Christ suffered for sins once,” in order that sin might never be glozed and veneered. In obtaining our forgiveness by His death, the Lord Christ revealed His love and unveiled our sin.
“Christ suffered for sins . . .
that He might bring us to God.” [
And now the sphere of our vision is
changed. Our minds are turned to another aspect of the saving ministry of Christ. The
Saviour has died. “The great transaction’s done.” He has suffered for sins “once.” Forgiveness is offered to all. What of those
who have departed this life, and have never
heard the news of the great redemption? Men
have sinned against their light, they have
revolted against the Master. But they have
lacked the unspeakable advantage of hearing
the story of redemptive love. Are they to have
no chance? The souls “which aforetime were disobedient . . . in the days of Noah,”
[
The real missionary motive is not to save from hell, but to reveal the Christ; not to save from a peril, but to proclaim and create a glorious companionship. Here is the marrow of the controversy, concentrated into one pressing question: Is it of infinite moment to know Christ now? Assume that there are now men and women in the heathen world who are to remain upon the earth for the next twenty years, and it is in our power to make those twenty years a season of hallowed fellowship with the Lord, is it worth the doing? Even further assuming that if they pass through death unenlightened, they will hear the message of reconciliation in the beyond, is it worth our while to light up those twenty years with the gracious light of redemptive grace? What is the money-value of an hour with the Lord? I do not address my question to the unredeemed, for the unredeemed have no answer, and in them the missionary-motive has no place. I speak to those who have accepted the offer of reconciling love, and who know the power of the Lord’s salvation, and of them I ask—What is the money-value of an hour with the Lord? “Beyond all knowledge and all thought.” Carry your values across to the regions of ignorance and night. To be able to give one 147“day of the Son of Man” to some poor old soul in heathendom: to lighten one day’s load; to transfigure one day’s sorrow; to lift the burden of his passion; to create a river of kindliness; to light his lamp in the evening-time, and to send him through the shadows in the assurance of immortal hope,—is it worth the doing? “A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand.” Such is the value of a day with the Lord. “We are stewards of the mysteries of grace. Because we have them we owe them. Woe be to us if through our thoughtlessness we leave our fellowmen in days of burdensome terror and night, when by our ministry we might have led them into the peace and liberty of the children of light.
And now the sphere of the Lord’s activity
is again changed. The apostle next turns our
minds to the Lord’s enthronement and dominion.
He “is on the right hand of God, having gone Verse
into heaven; angels and authorities and powers
being made subject unto Him.” [
All this redemptive power may become ours by baptism, but not the baptism that consists in any outward sprinkling of external cleansing. “Not by the putting away of the filth of the flesh.” We need to be lifted above the filth of the spirit, and so the baptism must be an inspiration. There must be poured into our life rivers of energy from the risen Lord.
That cleansing flood will create within us moral soundness. We shall attain unto “a good conscience.” Our lives will be set in “interrogation toward God.” Our souls will be possessed by a reverent inquisitiveness, and they will be ever searching among the deep things of God.
150The Suffering Which Means Triumph.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 4:1-6" parsed="|1Pet|4|1|4|6" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.4.1-1Pet.4.6" />Forasmuch then as Christ suffered in the flesh, arm ye yourselves also with the same mind; for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; that ye no longer should live the rest of your time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past may suffice to have wrought the desire of the Gentiles, and to have walked in lasciviousness, lusts, winebibbings, revellings, carousings, and abominable idolatries: wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them into the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: who shall give account to Him that is ready to fudge the quick and the dead. For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.
“Forasmuch then as Christ suffered in the flesh.” [
It is well to mark these appalling hours by the distinctive term, “the passion.” But we must not allow “the passion” to eclipse the sufferings of the earlier days. Christ always “suffered in the flesh.” The streak of blood lay like a red track across the years. The marks of sacrifice were everywhere pronounced. What occasioned the common sufferings? Here is the explanation. His life was dominated by a supreme thought; it was controlled by an all-commanding purpose. What was the purpose? What was the prevailing characteristic of His mind? “I do always those things that please Him.” He has translated that purpose of obedience into counsel for His disciples: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” That was the mind of the Master. He made his abode in the unseen. He sought His gratifications in the eternal. He rejected the sovereignty of the flesh. He subordinated the temporal. He uncrowned the body, making it a common subject, and compelling it into obeisance to high commands. In all the 152competing alternatives that presented themselves, priority was given to the spiritual. The allurements of ease, the piquant flavours of pleasurable sensations, the feverish delights of passion, the delicious thrill of popular acclamation, the sweetness of immediate triumph: all these many and varied offspring of the temporal were not permitted to be regnant; they were not allowed to usurp the place of executive and determining forces; they were muzzled and restrained, and kept to the rear of the life. Christ looked “not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.” Such was the mind of the Master.
Now, emphasis of this kind inevitably necessitates suffering. No man can give pre-eminence to the unseen without the shedding of blood. When the immediate contends with the apparently remote, the immediate is so urgently obtrusive that to hold it down entails a crucifixion. When carnality contends with conscience, the healthy settling of the contention necessitates suffering. When ease opposes duty, the putting down of the fascinating enemy necessitates suffering. When mere sharpness comes into conflict with truth, when money seeks to usurp the throne of righteousness, when the glitter of immediate success ranges itself against the fixed and glorious 153constellation of holiness, the controversies will not be settled in bloodless reveries and in unexhausting dreams. To put down the immediate and to prefer the remote, to subject the temporal and to choose the eternal, demands a continual crucifixion. Christ also suffered, being tempted! Alternatives were presented to Him, and the preference occasioned the shedding of blood. Christ suffered, being tempted! The temptations were not bloodless probings of the invulnerable air. They were searching appeals to vital susceptibilities, and resistance was pain. “Christ also suffered in the flesh.” All through the years He had been exercising the higher choice. Before He emerged into the public gaze, in the obscure years at Nazareth, in His early youth in the village, in the social life of the community, in the little affairs of the carpenter’s shop, He had been denying Himself and taking up His cross. He had preferred the eternal to the temporal, and His clear, commanding conscience had dominated the clamours of the flesh. This was the emphasis of the Master’s life; He “suffered in the flesh.” Now such emphasis spells sinlessness. When the eternal rules the temporal, when the remotely glorious is preferred before the immediately bewitching, when suffering is chosen before the violation of the 154moral and spiritual ideal, the soul is already wearing the crown of the sinless life.
“He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased
from sin.” [
From the contemplation of the Master’s “sufferings in the flesh” the apostle now turns
the minds of his readers to the contemplation
of their own yesterdays, if perchance they may
find in the retrospect an added force to constrain them to a life of triumphant suffering.
He has sought to allure them to exalted, spiritual
living by the example of the Lord; now he
will seek to drive them into the same lofty
tendency by causing them to dwell upon their
own loathsome and appalling past. The repulsion obtained from our yesterdays will
give impetus to the inclination to live “to
the will of God” to-day. “For the time past may suffice to have wrought the desire of the
Gentiles, and to have walked in lasciviousness, 156lusts, winebibbings, revellings, carousings, and
abominable idolatries.” [
That last prayer is just the cry of an aching and broken heart! The retrospect made him a humble and wrestling suppliant. That is the motive of the apostle in reminding his readers of “the times past” in their lives. He longed to corroborate their new-born spirituality by the rebound acquired from the contemplation of their own past. “I thought over my ways, and turned my feet unto Thy testimonies.”
Now, let us assume that a man has become “armed with the mind” of Christ, that his 158own wasted past gives impetus to his renewed
present, that he will pay homage to the eternal
even at the cost of immediate suffering
what will be the influence of such a life upon
the world? Assume that the “unseen and
eternal” receives the emphasis, that the temporal is denied at all costs if it conflict with
the eternal, how will such a life of mingled
restraint and loftiness affect the world? Here
is the answer. “They think it strange that ye
run not with them into the same excess of riot.” [
Getting Ready for the End.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 4:7-11" parsed="|1Pet|4|7|4|11" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.4.7-1Pet.4.11" />The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore of sound mind, and be sober unto prayer: above all things being fervent in your love among yourselves; for love covereth a multitude of sins: using hospitality one to another without murmuring: according as each hath received a gift, ministering it among yourselves, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God; if any man speaketh, speaking as it were oracles of God; if any man ministereth, ministering as of the strength which God supplieth: that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, whose is the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
THAT is a most momentous conviction which
is expressed in these words: “The end of all
things is at hand.” [
And now here is the Apostle Peter confronted
by the same prevailing and insidious inclinations. What will be the character of his
message? Let us make the matter directly
pertinent to our own condition that we may
appreciate the strong, cooling, controlling influence of the apostle’s counsel. For us,
too, “the end” may be at hand. Death
looms on the not-distant horizon. The King
is at the gate! What shall be the nature of
our preparations, and the character of our
behaviour? “The end of all things is at hand:
be ye therefore of sound mind,” [
And now the apostle proceeds to add a third
element to those already mentioned. “Above all things being fervent in your love among yourselves.” [
But we have not yet done with the apostle’s characterisation of the qualities of love. He
adds a third word which confirms and enriches
the other two. True love, “stretched-out” love, all-sheltering love, “uses hospitality without
murmuring.” [
Now, brethren, the King is at the gate!
Soon His hand will be upon the latch! How
shall we prepare for Him? In sound-mindedness,
in spiritual sobriety, and in a love which is ever
straining after more and more spacious breadth
of gracious and generous hospitality. How
shall these dispositions express themselves?
What shall be the medium of affection? What
shall be the line of our ministry? The apostle
provides the answer: “According as each hath received a gift.” [
Here then, I conclude. I think that no one can be made to stumble by any narrowness and irrelevancy in the apostle’s counsel. His commandment 171is exceeding broad. How shall we prepare for the coming of the King? What can be more reasonable than the response I have attempted to expound? In sound-mindedness, in spiritual sobriety, in an affection which is ever seeking greater inclusiveness, and working through the distinctive gifts of the consecrated individual life. I tell you, if this be my condition, I shall not be afraid “at His coming.” He may come in a moment, and very suddenly, in the noontide, or the midnight, or at the cock-crow; come when He may, I shall “love His appearing.” Living calmly, in the atmosphere of affection, and in the mystic strength of consecration, I shall know Him as my friend. The present Bishop of Durham has told us of a beloved friend of his who narrated to him a strangely vivid dream which he had long, long years ago. Let me tell it in the Bishop’s words. “Through the bed-chamber window seemed to shine on a sudden an indescribable light; the dreamer seemed to run, to look; and there, in the depths above, were beheld three forms. One was unknown, one the Archangel, One the Lord Jesus Christ. And at this most sudden sight that soul, the soul of one over whom, to my knowledge, the unutterable solemnities of the unseen are wont to brood with almost painful power, was instantaneously 172thrilled with a rapturous joy . . . unspeakable and full of glory: ‘My Saviour, my Saviour!’”
I pray that when that light breaks upon us, not in the ministry of a dream, but in the veritable coming of the Lord; when for you and for me “the end of all things is at hand,” may we have so brooded on “the solemnities,” and so laboured in the gracious ministry of affection, that we too, “when He cometh,” shall be “instantaneously thrilled with raptuous joy, unspeakable and full of glory: ‘My Saviour, my Saviour!’”
173The Fiery Trial.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 4:12-19" parsed="|1Pet|4|12|4|19" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.4.12-1Pet.4.19" />Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you: but insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of His glory also ye may rejoice with exceeding joy. If ye are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are ye; because the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God resteth upon you. For let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief , or an evil-doer, or as a meddler in other men’s matters: but if a man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God in this name. For the time is come for judgement to begin at the house of God: and if it begin first at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear? Wherefore let them also that suffer according to the will of God commit their souls in well-doing unto a faithful Creator.
“The fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you.” [
Then let us just note this: our sufferings do not prove our religion counterfeit. Our many temptations do not throw suspicion on our sonship. Our trials are not the marks of our alienation. Do not let us think that we are strangers because our robes are sometimes stained with our blood. “Think it not strange,” says this much-schooled apostle, “Think it not strange!” Don’t think you have never been naturalised—super-naturalised—that you are 175still a foreigner, an outcast from the home of redemptive grace! These are the happenings of the home-country! They are not the marks of foreign rule. They are the signs of paternal government. You are in your Father’s house! God will convert the apparent antagonism into a minister of heavenly grace. The oppressive harrow, as well as the genial sunshine, is part of the equipment needed for the maturing and perfecting of the fruits of the earth.
“What, then, is the purpose of “the fiery trial”? What is the meaning of this permitted ministry of suffering? Well, in the first place, it tests character. It discharges the purpose of an examination. An examination, rightly regarded, is a vital part of our schooling. It is a minister of revelation. It unfolds our strengths and our weaknesses. And so it is in the larger examination afforded by the discipline of life. Our crises are productive of self-disclosures. They reveal us to ourselves, and I think the revelations are usually creative of grateful surprise. In the midst of the fiery trial we are filled with amazement at the fulness and strength of our resources. When the trial is looming we shrink from it in fear. “We say one to another, “I don’t know how I shall bear it!” And then the crisis comes, and in the midst of the fire we are calm and strong; and when it is past, 176how frequently we are heard to say, “I never thought I could have gone through it!” And so “probation worketh hope”; the heavy discipline is creative of assurance; the terror becomes the nutriment of our confidence.
But the fiery trial not only tests by revealing character, it also strengthens and confirms it. Hard trial makes hard and much-enduring muscle. The water that is too soft makes flabby limbs; it is not creative of bone. And circum stances which are too soft make no bone: they are productive of character without backbone. Luxuriousness is rarely the cradle of giants. It is not unsuggestive that the soft and bountiful tropics are not the home of the strong, indomitable, and progressive peoples. The pioneering and progressive races have dwelt in sterner and harder climes. The lap of luxury does not afford the elementary iron for the upbringing of strong and enduring life. Hardness hardens; antagonism solidifies; trials inure and confirm. How commonly it has happened that men who, in soft circumstances, have been weak and irresolute, were hardened into fruitful decision by the ministry of antagonism and pain. “Thou art Simon”—a hearer, a man of loose hearsays and happenings; “Thou shalt be called Peter”—a rock, a man of hard, compact, and resolute convictions. But “Simon” became “Peter” 177through the ministry of the fiery trial. The man of “soft clothing” is in the luxury of kings houses; the hard man with the camels hair and the leathern girdle is away out in the hardships of the desert. “We must through much tribulation enter into the Kingdom of God.”
But the fiery trial not only reveals and hardens the character, it also develops it by bringing out its hidden beauties. I am using the word develop as the photographer uses it. You know how he brings out the lines of his pictures. The picture is laid in the vessel, and the liquid is moved and moved across it; it passes over the face of the picture, and little by little the hidden graces are disclosed. “All Thy billows are gone over me.” That is the Lord’s developer; it brings out the soft lines in the character. Under its ministry we pass “from strength to strength, “from grace to grace,” “from glory to glory.”
And so the fiery trial tests and confirms and
develops the character. I do not wonder that
with conceptions such as these, and with such
outlooks, the apostle calls upon his Christian
readers to lift up their heads, to walk not as
children of shame, but as children of rejoicing.
And look at the motives he adduces to create
the spirit of rejoicing. “Look at your companionship,” he seems to say. “Ye are partakers
178of Christ’s sufferings.” [
And look at the character of the Operator. “The Spirit of glory resteth upon you.” [
And look at the splendid issues of it all. “At the
revelation of His glory ye may rejoice with exceeding joy.” [
Well, now, if this be the ministry of trial, surely the fiery trial is a solemn necessity. Luxurious ease would destroy us. If the winds remained asleep we should remain weak and 180enervated. Life would drowse along in effeminate dreams. The glory of the perfected life would never be ours. And so life must have its crises. Judgments are necessities. Judgment must “begin at the House of God.” Even the consecrated folk need the testing, the strengthening, the confirming discipline of suffering and pain. Even Paul must be thrown into the fiery furnace! Even John must feel the bite of the stinging flame! And if that be so with Paul and Peter and John, how much more for you and me! “If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?” What a work is our salvation! These wills, these desires, these yearnings, these bodies!” What work God has with us, to lift us into His own glory!
181Tending the Flock.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 5:1-7" parsed="|1Pet|5|1|5|7" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.5.1-1Pet.5.7" />The elders therefore among you I exhort, who am a fellow-elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, who am also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight, not of constraint, but willingly, according unto God; nor yet for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as lording it over the charge allotted to you, but making yourselves ensamples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd shall be manifested, ye shall receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away. Likewise, ye younger, be subject unto the elder. Yea, all of you gird yourselves with humility, to serve one another: for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time; casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He careth for you.
“I exhort.” [
And now let us listen to the scarred old warrior’s counsel. He is giving fatherly instruction to the officers of the Church. He is speaking to the elders, the overseers, the appointed leaders of these hallowed primitive assemblies. I wish to give the counsel the widest application, that it may include the outermost circle of Christian service. If we limited the counsel to bishops, then we should 184all listen to the tremendous charge as critical or unconcerned spectators. If we included all pastors and deacons, still the unconcerned majority might listen with perilous relish to the implied indictment. The counsel applies to every kind of Christian leadership. Wherever man or woman assumes the post of leader of souls, guide to the home of God—whether it be among children or adults, in visiting the hospitals or in going from house to house, in the pastorate or in the class, in the obscure mission or in the conspicuous phases of cathedral labours—the Apostle’s counsel is pertinent, and unfolds the primary dispositions which are the secrets of prosperous service.
Mark, then, the opening word of the counsel.
“Shepherd the flock of God which is among
you.” [
How, then, is this ministry of feeder and fender to be successfully discharged? How is it to be saved from offence and impertinence? How shall we gain admission to move among the needs and perils of our brother’s soul? How shall we gain an entrance into his secret 186place? “What dispositions are required in order to back the ministry and make it spiritually effective? The apostle acts as our counsellor, and gives us detailed instruction in all these things.
First of all, it must be the service of willingness. “Not of constraint, but willingly.” [
But there is a loftier constraint than the pressure of importunity and the failure of the supply of excuse. There is the constraint of conscience, which sends men into service impelled by the sense of duty. But even the conscience-labourer may toil and toil away in a fruitless task. Men may do their duty unwillingly, and the absence of the will deprives their service of the very atmosphere which would render it efficient. Duty, without the inclination of the will, is cold and freezing, and never makes a warm and genial way into the hidden precincts of another’s soul. If I were stretched in pain and sickness I would not care to be nursed by duty. All the attentions might be regular and methodical, and yet I should mourn the absence of the something which makes the ministry winsome and alive. “I just love to have her near my bed,” said a hospital patient to me the other day, speaking of her Christly and consecrated nurse. That is duty with an atmosphere. It is duty transfigured. Duty may make people righteous; alone it will not make them good. “And scarcely for a righteous man, will one die; yet peradventure 188for a good man some would even dare to die.” I do not think that duty will carry us far into the deep hungers and weaknesses of our fellow-men. We need the “plus,” the gracious inclination of the will, the leaning of the entire being in the line of service. We need to be swayed, not by the compulsion of external pressure, not even by the lonely sovereignty of the moral sense, but by an inward constraint, “warm, sweet, tender,” the unfailing impulse of grace, abiding in us as “a well, springing up into eternal life.” “Not of constraint, but willingly.”
Secondly, our service must be the service of
affection. “Nor yet for filthy lucre, but of a ready
mind.” [
The service of willingness! The service of affection! It must
also be the service of humility! “Neither as lording it over the
flock . . . gird yourselves with humility, to
serve one another.” [
To the humble soul God gives the very dynamics of fruitful service. In all spiritual ministry it is only grace that tells. Nothing else counts! Other gifts may amuse, may interest, may allure, but grace alone can engage in the labour of spiritual redemption. The servants of the Lord are to be filled with grace, and their overflow will constitute their influence upon their fellows. Out of them shall flow “rivers of water of life.” ” God giveth grace to the humble.”
Lastly, it must be the service of trustfulness. “Casting
all your anxiety upon Him, because He careth for you.” [
And what is to be the reward of such services?
“When the chief Shepherd shall be manifested
. . .” [
Through Antagonisms to Perfectness.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="1 Peter 5:8-10" parsed="|1Pet|5|8|5|10" osisRef="Bible:1Pet.5.8-1Pet.5.10" />Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom withstand stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are accomplished in your brethren who are in the world. And the God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered a little while, shall Himself perfect, stablish, strengthen you.
“The devil . . . walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” [
I think there is something very suggestive in the figures employed by the Bible to describe the approaches of the powers of evil and night. The devil has a fairly extensive wardrobe, but his common and more familiar guises are of three types—a serpent, an angel of light, and a roaring lion. It is in one or other of these three shapes that the forces of sin most frequently assail us. They come in the guise of the serpent. They beguile our senses. They pervert our judgment. They enchant our imaginations. We are fascinated, bewitched, paralysed by the influence of some illicit and unclean spell. The love of money becomes a fascination. It holds a man as under a wizard’s spell. Gambling becomes a bewitchment, a kind of spiritual bondage, in which the poor soul, in mesmerised inclinations, is slowly drawn towards its own destruction. The devil approaches as a serpent, and like fixed 196and stupefied birds we are in peril of dropping into his devouring jaws. He comes also in the guise of an angel of light. He poses as an evangelist. He plays the rôle of one whose ministry it is to deepen our conception of the love and graciousness of God. He tells us that we do not think highly enough of God. He loves us too much to be pained by our small neglects. In fact, we best show our confidence in God by disregarding these neglects. Our trust is altogether too elementary and straight. We should cast ourselves down from a few pinnacles, and display to all men what a wonderful confidence we have in the out stretched everlasting arms of God! Such is the devil as an angel of light. Such is the devil as the preacher of the exceeding breadth of our Father’s love. Such is the devil intent on easing the strain of our religious life, relaxing its severities, and putting our feet into the way of a more spacious providence and peace. He would turn religion into thin refinements; he would convert a deep devotion into a glozing plausibility; and he would transform a hallowed trust into light and flippant presumption. And the devil also comes as a roaring lion. The subtlety of the serpent is laid aside; he discards the sheen of the angel of light; he appears as sheer brutal force, an antagonist of terrific and 197naked violence, bearing down his victims under the heavy paws of relentless persecution. “When the apostle wrote this letter, the lion was about; Nero was at work; the Christians were being hunted unto death, in the vain attempt at stamping out their faith and devotion to the Man of Nazareth, their Saviour and their Lord. He comes as a serpent, as an angel of light, as a roaring lion. He came to the Master as a serpent when he offered Him worldly power. He came as an angel of light when he sought to deepen and enrich His trust. He came to Him as a roaring lion in the blows and blasphemies of the bloodthirsty multitude. This antagonism we have got to meet. How can we meet it in the hope of certain triumph? Let us turn to the apostle’s counsel.
“Be sober.” [
“Be watchful.” [
“Stedfast in the faith.” [
Now, let me carry your minds forward a
moment to the contemplation of the all-sufficient
dynamic, which may be ours in this inevitable
conflict with the powers of evil and night. The 201culture of
sobriety, the culture of perceptiveness, the culture of faith will open out our
lives to Him whom the apostle calls “the God of all grace,” [
And what is to be the ultimate glory? “The God of all grace . . . shall Himself perfect, stablish, strengthen you.” [
Now, see the glorious range of the entire
passage. “The God of all grace, who called
you unto His eternal glory.” [
The Second Epistle of Peter.
Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="2 Peter 1:1-2" parsed="|2Pet|1|1|1|2" osisRef="Bible:2Pet.1.1-2Pet.1.2" />Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained an equally precious faith with us in the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
WHEN I had read this passage through many
times in my effort to discover the inwardness
and sequence of the apostle’s thought, there
leapt into my mind the great watchword of the
French Revolution, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!” My text seemed to accept the proffered ministry of the watchword, and deigned
to express itself through the heightened and
glorified clarion of the Revolution. Here is
the secret of liberty: “A bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ.” [
Here is the secret of liberty: “A bondslave of
Jesus.” [
Now let us lift the argument up to the highest type of freedom, the glorious freedom of the spirit. A great writer has denned the French notion of liberty as political economy and the English notion of liberty as personal independence. The Christian conception of liberty is inclusive of these, but infinitely greater. The most spacious of all liberties is liberation from self, and this kind of freedom springs from initial bondage. True freedom in the spirit begins in bondage to the Lord of Life. I am not surprised, there fore, that the; Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul, men who sing so loudly and so triumphantly of the wealth and plenteousness of their freedom, should begin by proclaiming themselves the Master’s slaves. “Paul, a bondslave of Jesus.” “Peter, a bondslave and apostle of Jesus Christ.” Bondage is the secret of freedom.
“Peter, a bondslave.” Let us see what is implied in this suggestive word. First, the term “bondslave” implies the acknowledgment of a fact. He is a slave. He has been bought. He is the Lord’s property. A great price has 208been paid for him. The apostle thought of his Master’s weary days and nights, of the tears and agonies of Gethsemane, of the shame and darkness and abandonment of Calvary. By all this expenditure on the part of the Saviour the apostle had been bought. He acknowledged his Master’s rights; he was his Master’s slave. Secondly, the term “bondslave” implies the assumption of an attitude. The apostle puts himself in the posture of homage and obedience. His eye was ever watching the Master, his ear was ever listening. He was a slave, but not servile. I do not know what word just expresses it; I have been unable to find one. But this I know, that if we would learn what “slave” means in my text we must go to the love-sphere and seek the interpretation there. We must go where the lover slaves for the loved, and yet calls her slavery exquisite freedom. A real loving mother, slaving for her child, would not change her slavery for mines of priceless wealth or for unbroken years of cushioned ease. “Thy willing bondslave I.” And thirdly, to be a slave implies the discharge of a mission. “Peter, a bondslave and apostle.” He is sent forth to do the Master’s will. The Master bids; he goes. Anywhere! Through the long, dusty, tiring highways of righteousness, or to the valley 209of gloom; “through the thirsty desert or the dewy mead.”
<verse> <l class="t1">His not to reason why,</l> <l class="t1">His not to make reply,</l> <l class="t1">His but to do and die!</l> </verse>But in that bondage the apostle finds a perfect freedom. All the powers of his being are emancipated and sing together in glorious liberty. Life that is fundamentally bound be comes like an orchestra, every faculty constituting a well-tuned instrument, and all of them co-operating in the production of a harmony which is well-pleasing in the ears of God.
And here we
have the basis of equality: “To them that have obtained an equally precious faith with us in the righteousness of our God.” [
And lastly, we have here the genius of fraternity. “Grace to you and peace be multiplied in the knowledge of God and of Jesus.” [
The Christian’s Resources.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="2 Peter 1:1-4" parsed="|2Pet|1|1|1|4" osisRef="Bible:2Pet.1.1-2Pet.1.4" />Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained an equally precious faith with us in the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His Divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that called us by His own glory and virtue; whereby He hath granted unto us His precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust.
HERE is the apostle reckoning up his resources
in the spirit. What has he got in the bank?
Divine power, glory, virtue. [
Well, now, ours is not the privilege of hearing that story from the lips of the fisherman-saint; but if I look at my text aright I think that here Peter puts his finger upon what he conceived to be the three great characteristics of his Master’s life. It is something to have the words this man employs when his eyes sweep across the marvellous experiences which he had 216been privileged to share. What does he think about it all? What are the things which stand out in predominant distinction? If there are hills and mountains in a life altogether superlative, what are the mountains? And here, I think, is the apostle’s answer, given in three of the great words which lie like the great foundations of my text—His “Divine power,” His “glory,” His “virtue.”
That is supremely interesting as coming to us from one so human, so altogether akin to us as the Apostle Peter. When he flings his mind back in the contemplation of his Master, he summarises his ever-fresh impressions in the words, “power,” “virtue,” “glory.” That is what Peter found in the Lord: and that is what we may find in the Lord to-day.
What have we in the bank? Divine power. [
But Peter had also witnessed the Master’s power over others. He had seen His trans figuring influence over their souls. He had seen faces illumined by His touch. He had watched the lighting up of a darkened life. 218He had seen the rekindling of a Magdalene and the restoration of a Zaccheus. He had seen the cold, paralysing burden of guilt fall away at the imperative of the Lord’s command: “Thy sins be forgiven thee.” And when the once paralysed body buoyantly stepped away from the Master’s presence, Peter detected behind the released body a quickened and liberated soul.
Peter had also seen the transfiguring power of the Lord upon the minds of others. He had seen Him break the tyranny of mental bondage, the sovereignty of vicious thinking, and he had seen the oppressed stand clothed and in his right mind. He had finally witnessed the Lord’s power over the bodies of men. He could command the forces of health, and they came at His bidding. He could marshal them as an army and antagonise disease and drive it away. He had seen leprosy pass out of a man’s face like a tide retiring from the beach. He had seen the mystic element of life return into a vacant body, and all its functions and faculties were restored. Is there any wonder that, when Peter gazed back upon all these things, his soul should bow in holy reverence in the contemplation of the Master’s power?
What else did the apostle find emphasised
in his retrospect? He was confronted by the 219all-predominant peak of the Lord’s “virtue.” [
And there is one other peak on which the
apostle gazed when he surveyed the three
wonderful years—the peak of Divine “glory” [
Having named these three great significant
wealths in the Lord Jesus, the apostle now proclaims them as the possible resources of all men.
Because these riches are in the Lord Jesus they
constitute a reservoir of treasure from which all
His disciples can draw. It is wealth in the bank,
and to us is given the privilege and the right to
draw out from the bank and find mercy and
grace in every time of need. What, then, may
we get from this Lord of power and virtue and
glory? We may obtain “precious and exceeding great promises.” [
And so we have looked at our wealth in
the bank, the power and virtue and glory of
the Lord. And we have looked at what we
can draw out of the bank—“exceeding great and precious promises”; “all things that pertain
unto life and godliness.” And what is to be
the end of it all? What is our possible
destiny? “That through those ye may become
partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped
from the corruption that is in the world by lust.” [
He found a leopard in the way, a beast which typified the love of sensual beauty, and in this beastliness many souls are enslaved. And then he met a lion
<verse> <l class="t1">Who seemed as if upon him he would leap, </l> <l class="t1">With head upraised and hunger fierce and wild.</l> </verse>In the lion he typified the pride of strength, the vanity of perilous independence. And in this servitude how many souls are enslaved? And then he met a she-wolf—
<verse> <l class="t1">A she-wolf with all greed defiled,</l> <l class="t1">Laden with hungry leanness terrible,</l> <l class="t1">That many nations had their peace beguiled.</l> </verse>And the she-wolf typified the spirit of greed, the imprisoning bondage in which many souls are enslaved. These three beasts are ever 226found in the way of the man who would leave the level plain and take the shining slope. He will meet the leopard and the lion and the wolf. But in Christ we have the means of deliverance. We can pass the beasts in safety, and “escape the corruption that is in the world through lust.” And with the deliverance there comes the glory of adoption. From the company of beasts we are translated into the fellowship and family of God. We “become partakers of the Divine nature.” We draw upon the power of the Lord, the virtue of the Lord, the glory of the Lord! More and more does the beauty of the Lord rest upon us and within us. We become ever more finely endowed with the unsearchable riches of Christ. “We are transformed into the same image from glory to glory.”
227Diligence in the Spirit.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="2 Peter 1:5-9" parsed="|2Pet|1|5|1|9" osisRef="Bible:2Pet.1.5-2Pet.1.9" />Yea, and for this very cause adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue; and in your virtue knowledge; and in your knowledge temperance; and in your temperance patience; and in your patience godliness; and in your godliness love of the brethren; and in your love of the brethren love. For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to be not idle nor unfruitful unto the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he that lacketh these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins.
IN our previous meditation we were considering
the vast resources which are the inheritance
of every believer in Christ Jesus. “We gazed
upon our bullion in the bank. We reverently
contemplated the “exceeding great and precious
promises,” and we bowed in awe before the
overwhelming ministry of God’s redeeming
grace. And now what shall we do with these
stupendous resources? “We must not allow the
Divine wealth to soothe us into slumberous
and perilous impotence. If the Lord makes
us to “lie down in green pastures,” it is only
that by the gracious renewal wo might be
228enabled to walk in “the paths of righteousness
for His name’s sake.” Therefore “for this very cause add on your part all diligence.” [
Assuming, then, that these business qualities
and aptitudes are being brought into the
ministry of the Spirit, we must now address
ourselves to the expansion of our spiritual traffic,
to the enrichment of our souls, and the enlargement of our spiritual stock. “In your faith
supply virtue; and in your virtue knowledge; and
in your knowledge temperance; and in your
temperance patience; and in your patience godliness; and in your godliness love of the brethren;
and in your love of the brethren love.” [
But here, now, is a vital principle; every added virtue strengthens and transfigures every other virtue. Every addition to character affects the colour of the entire character. In Ruskin’s great work of Modern Painters, he devotes one chapter to what he calls “The Law of Help.” And here is the paragraph in which he defines the law: “In true composition, everything else not only helps everything else a little, but helps it with its utmost power. Every atom is full of energy. Not a line, not a speck of colour, but is doing its very best, and that best is aid.” It is even so in the composition of character. Every addition I make to my character adds to the general enrichment. The principle has its reverse application. To withdraw a single grace is to impoverish every element in the religious life. “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, is become guilty of all.” We cannot poison the blood in one limb without endangering the entire circulation. But it is the positive application of the principle with which we are now concerned. And the graces are a co-operative 233brotherhood, they are interpervasive, and each one lends energy and colour to the whole. We cannot possibly supply a new grace to the life without bringing wealth to all our previous acquirements. For instance, here is “godliness.” Godliness by itself may be very regular, and at the same time very icy and very cold. It is like a room without a fire. But now “in your godliness supply love.” And what a difference a fire always makes to a well-furnished room! Love brings the fire into the cold chamber, and godliness becomes a genial thing with a new glow upon it, and a new geniality at its heart. But the love thus supplied not only enriches godliness, but every other grace as well. What a tenderness it gives to patience, and what a soft beauty it brings to self-control! Take love away from the circle of the graces, and they are like a varied landscape when the sun is hid behind the clouds. “In your faith supply . . . love.” And so on, with never-ceasing additions, for ever enriching the entire life of the soul.
Men who bring such business-like qualities
into the sphere of their religion, and who are
continually enriching their spiritual stock, make
a lasting contribution to the common weal. “For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to be not idle nor unfruitful unto the
234knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” [
What then? If we are businesslike, continually adding to our spiritual stock, and
thereby contributing to the common weal, what
will be the issue? The apostle expresses the 235issue in negation. “He that lacketh these things is
blind.” [
The Sanctification of the Memory.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="2 Peter 1:12-15" parsed="|2Pet|1|12|1|15" osisRef="Bible:2Pet.1.12-2Pet.1.15" />Wherefore I shall be ready always to put you in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and are established in the truth which is with you. And I think it right, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; knowing that the putting off of my tabernacle cometh swiftly, even as our Lord Jesus Christ signified unto me. Yea, I will give diligence that at every time ye may be able after my decease to call these things to remembrance.
“I shall be ready always to put you in remembrance of these things. [
“I shall be ready always to put you in remembrance of these things.” It is vital that we remember this connection between soil and fruits, between capital and labour. It is all-important that we hold the apostolic teaching that the Christian gospel is not a theory to be defended, but an inheritance to be explored and enjoyed. The Christian is not first an apologist, or even an evangelist, but an experimentalist, dealing personally with the proffered grace and power of his Lord. At every moment the Christian is both passive and active, passively receiving the redemptive power of grace, and actively working it out in rich and perfected character. He is both suppliant and ambassador; he communes with God, he intercedes with man. He is not separately a man of the cloisters or a man of the street; he is both in one. He keeps in touch with the tremendous background of grace in order that he may fill his foreground with the fruits of grace in Christian life and duty. He brings the infinite into the trifle, and he knows that without the powers of eternal salvation he cannot redeem the passing day. 239In a word the Christian takes knowledge of his resources and does not dare to seek to live his life without them. He remembers “these things.”
But is it not a strange thing that we should ever be inclined to forget them? We should surely assume that whatever other things we might be inclined to forget we should always remember that we are spiritual millionaires. Is it possible that in doing the little business of life we can ever forget our buried capital in the Lord, the treasure laid up for us in heaven, and seek to win spiritual success without it? Yes, all this is a grave possibility, and therefore the apostle ardently labours to keep our remembrance alert. Memory is such a child of caprice, even in purely human matters! The memory is in the habit of playing curious pranks. We can remember people’s faces, but we forget their names. We remember a story, but we forget its date. We can repeat all the marriage relationships of the royal house, but we forget the steps of even a short argument. We can recall the unessential, and we forget the fundamental. “Memory is a capricious witch; she husbands bits of straw and rag, and throws her jewels out of the window.” And certainly in higher relationships our memory gives us no better 240service. We remember a single injury and we forget a multitude of gracious benefits. We remember material experiences and incidents, but we forget the things which most profoundly concern our peace. There is therefore surely great need for the strenuous word of the apostle. And it is as urgent upon us as upon the men and women of his own day that we vigorously set about to exercise and sanctify the powers of our remembrance.
Now, what can we say about it? Let us begin here. The intensity of our remembrance very largely depends upon the depth of the original impressions. Some incidents bite deep into the mind, like acid into metal; they are not printed, but graven; not written, but burned. Other impressions are like the writing upon the steamed window-panes of a railway carriage; let the outside atmosphere get a little warmer and they pass away in an hour. Now the depth of the impression is determined by the vividness of the vision. If our gaze is cursory the impression will be transient. How does all this bear upon our remembrance in the spirit? It has this most crucial bearing; our impressions are fleeting because we do not give sufficient time to receive them. The vision does not bite! What can a man know of the country of Uganda by careering through it in a railway 241train? What can a man know of the wealth and glory of our National Gallery if he takes the chambers at a gallop? If he is to retain a lasting and a vivid remembrance he must sit down before one of the masterpieces, and allow himself to steep in the contemplation of its glory. It is quite impossible to take a snapshot of the interior of a cathedral. If the exquisite tracery, and even the dim outlines of the structure, are to be captured, it will be done as the issue of a long exposure. And so it is with the vastness of our inheritance in Christ. Our visions come from long exposures; we have got to sit down reverently and gaze upon the glory of the Lord in prolonged contemplation. We sometimes sing, “There is life for a look at the Crucified One!” That is scarcely true if by look we mean a transient glance, a passing nod, a momentary turning of the eyes. “There is life for a gaze” and that life is continuous only so long as the gaze is retained. If we only glance upon the Master we shall forget the impression at the next turning of the way; the enemy will come, and will snatch away that which was sown in our hearts. The strength of our memory depends upon the depth of our impressions.
It is equally true that the intensity of the remembrance also depends upon the studied 242preservation of the impressions. There are forces ever about us that minister to erasion and oblivion. I noticed the other day that the workmen were engaged upon a very conspicuous monument in London, deepening the inscriptive letters which told the heroic story. The corrosives of time had been at work upon the once deep impressions, and they were being gradually effaced. And so it is with the lines in our memory; time is hostile to their retention, and is ever at work seeking their effacement. And so the impressions need to be periodically deepened and revived. Have we any ministries for effecting this purpose? Yes, I think we have many. A place can do it. If you go back to the little village where you spent your early days, how the old life comes back to you as you tread the accustomed ways and turn the familiar corners! How the sight of an old well can recall an experience, and even a drop upon the bucket can revive feelings which carry you back to your youth. And a place can sometimes refresh and deepen a spiritual impression. I wonder if Simon Peter ever went back to the court of the High Priest’s palace! I warrant he never passed near the door without the fountain of tears being unsealed, and the stream of penitential feelings flowing anew. There was a little place in a garden to which Thomas 243Boston used to repair whenever he wanted to quicken his early love for the Lord. It was his spiritual birthplace, and the very place seemed to abound in the ministry of regeneration. It would be an amazingly fruitful thing if some of my readers, whose spiritual fervour is growing cool, and whose early conception of the Lord is becoming faint, would spare a day to go to the place where first they knew the Lord, and I warrant that the sacred spot would re-deepen the lines of their early covenant, and they would find themselves revived. It would be a great day in many a man’s life if he would go back to the little village church, and sit for one Sunday in the seat which he occupied when there broke upon his wondering eyes, the vision of the glory of his Lord. For a place can renew the lines of our remembrances.
And a thing can do it. An apparently commonplace thing can recall a conspicuous history. I have known the scent of a flower unveil a day which seemed to have been buried in permanent obscurity. I never get the fragrance of the common dog-rose without my memory leaping back to an old-fashioned garden in the North, and peopling that garden with presences now gone, and awaking experiences which are pregnant with inspiration and peace. But the principle has higher applications still. A piece 244of broken bread can recall the broken body of the Lord, and a cup of wine can become the sacramental minister of the blood of the Lamb. Can we afford to forget these helpmeets of grace? Even the superlative verities of our faith sometimes grow dim to our eyes, and we temporarily lose our hold upon them. Let us make use of every means appointed by the Lord, if perchance our memory may be revived and these fruitful sanctities may be retained.
<verse> <l class="t1">When I survey the wondrous Cross</l> <l class="t2">On which the Prince of Glory died,</l> <l class="t1">My richest gain I count but loss, </l> <l class="t2">And pour contempt on all my pride.</l> </verse>An incident can do it. How frequently it happens that the hands busy themselves in doing a thing which has not been done for many years, and the little action draws the curtain back from our youth. I played a little game the other day which I had not played since boyhood, and in very literal feeling I was a boy again, and all the past environments round about my feet. And it is even so with activity of a higher kind. That bit of Christian work you dropped, and the dropping of which has brought such a heavy penalty of spiritual degeneracy and recoil! Take it up again! Your Lord’s grace was very real to you then! Take it up again, and you will find 245that in that God-blessed work your remembrance is revived, the effaced impressions have deepened again, and you have the old inspired vision of the glory of the Lord. Go to it again, I say, and your soul shall be restored. In all these ways, by a diligent determination to give ourselves time to receive our spiritual impressions, and by cherishing all the ministries by which the impressions can be preserved, it is possible to sanctify our memories and to make them temples of the living God.
But in our text the apostle puts himself
forward as a helpmeet of other men’s remembrances. “I shall be ready always to put you in remembrance of these things.” [
And this ministry of remembrancer is one that
must not be delayed. The man’s memory is
getting numb. His early spiritual impressions
are being effaced. The glory of the Lord is
waning. The distant heaven is growing dim.
Let not the remembrancer wait; let him set
about his Christlike work in the assurance that
the King’s business requireth haste. “I think
it right . . . knowing that the putting off of my tabernacle cometh swiftly.” [
Let us reverently and diligently see to the sanctification of our memories. Let us periodically inspect our impressions. Let us watch if we are in any way forgetful of our spiritual inheritance. Are we remembering our capital? Do we look like millionaires, or are we like beggars whose memories have utterly lost the significance of their grand estate? Lord, help us to remember what we ought never to forget!
249The Transfigured Jesus.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="2 Peter 1:16-18" parsed="|2Pet|1|16|1|18" osisRef="Bible:2Pet.1.16-2Pet.1.18" />For we did not follow cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: and this voice we ourselves heard come out of heaven, when we were with Him in the holy mount.
“We were eyewitnesses of His majesty” [
What preceded the journey up the mount? What had taken place before the disciples and the Lord took their journey away to the mount? Can we get at their mind? If I may use a somewhat common phrase to-day, what was 252their “psychological mood”? What was their mental content when they began to climb the hill? What had been the last emphasis of the Master’s teaching? Had they any fear? Had they any special hope? How had they begun to climb the mount with Jesus? What were the last things in His private expositions which probably filled their minds? Happily for you and for me the matter is made perfectly clear. The very last thing we are told about our Lord’s converse with His disciples is this: a , little while before, and for the first time, the shadow of the Lord’s death was flung upon their sunlit and prosperous way. “From that time”—this was only just before the climb began—“From that time began Jesus to shew unto His disciples how that He must go unto Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed.” I want you to think of that as suddenly entering into the programme. It had never been whispered before, and now, when the way was becoming more and more sunny, and the crowds becoming more and more loyal and multiplied, when the day was just dawning, and the Lord’s kingdom just appearing, He begins to talk about His own suffering and death. I do not wonder that the announcement from the Master’s lips startled and staggered and paralysed them. Why, the teaching 253darkened the whole prospect!” That shall never be unto Thee, Lord,” cried the ardent and impulsive Peter. “Get thee behind Me!” I think there is no preacher who can say that word in the Master’s tones, “Get thee behind Me!” It was not said in savage severity, but in the pleadings of love. He felt the allurement of the disciple’s words, “That shall never be unto Thee, Lord!” “Don’t, don’t, My beloved friend! Tempt Me not away from the gloom; thy friendship is seeking the victory of the evil one.” And then He gathered them round about Him and began to expound unto them the law of life. “Whosoever will take thy way, Peter, whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life shall find it.” He began to expound unto them the law of life through death, fulness through sacrifice. If we would live we must die; if we would find ourselves we must give ourselves away. He began to say unto them that He would suffer and be killed! And then He laid down for them the great condition of fellowship: “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”
Well now, that is the mental furniture, that is the psychological mood which possessed the disciples as they turned to climb the slopes of 254the mount. They were under the shadow! To them had just been made a suggestion of the coming death of their King. They had had teaching about crosses, and losses, and sacrifice; and yet, through it all, a wonderful promise woven of ultimate victory. We must go back to that word about the cross, and self-denial, and the law of life; and when we climb the mount of transfiguration we must take it as a key to the glory, and to all that awaits us there.
“And then,” we are told, “Jesus taketh with him Peter,” with his mind filled with these things, “and James,” and his mind filled with these things, “and John.” “Jesus taketh!” That word “taketh” is an exceedingly feeble and unsuggestive English word. The word that lies behind it is full of pregnant significance. It is precisely the same word which, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is translated “offered.” “He taketh with him.” It is not an ordinary journey. It is the solemn beginning of a walk which is to end at an altar, and that an altar of sacrifice. “He taketh with Him Peter, and James and John,” and they begin the solemn walk leading them up to the great surrender, the place of glorious sacrifice. “He taketh them into a high mountain, apart,” and this too, in the evening time. Let us pause there for a moment. There 255is always something so solemnising about the evening.
<verse> <l class="t1">Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, </l> <l class="t1">And all the air a solemn stillness holds.</l> </verse>Somehow in the gathering twilight God seems to come very near. And this experience receives emphasis when it is evening time upon the heights, when the clouds are coming back like tired vagrants to rest awhile upon the summits; when there is nobody near, and nobody can be heard, except, perhaps, some belated shepherd, gathering his flock together for the night. He led them unto a mountain apart, “and He prayed.” Let us get the scene well fixed in our imaginations. The Master is away up in the mountain; the heavy dews are lying upon the grass: that breeze is softly blowing, the breeze which seems to be always moving upon the lower slopes of Hermon, perhaps cooled by the snows beyond. And there He kneels, the Master, the Lord, and He prays! I want us to realise that all prayer is more than speech with God. Prayer is infinitely more than pleading. I sometimes wish I say it with the utmost deliberateness—I sometimes wish we could drop the word “plead” quite out of our religious vocabulary. We so frequently pray as though we had got an indifferent and unwilling God with whom we have to plead. 256The cardinal necessity in prayer is not pleading, but receiving. I do not believe—I say it with, a full sense of responsibility—I do not believe we have any more need to plead with God to bless than to plead with the air outside to come into a building. It is not so much pleading that is required as the making of an inlet. God is willing. Prayer is simply communion; the opening up of channels of companionship; the opening out of mind, the opening out of will, in order that into the open mind and will and conscience there may flow the Divine energy and the Divine grace. “Jesus prayed,” and I know that when it is said “Jesus prayed,” it means that He was absolutely open to the infinite. Surely that is the meaning of prayer. When a man prays, if he prays aright, he is simply opening himself out to the incoming of God. God says: “Behold! I stand at the door and knock; I enshrine and surround you like the atmosphere.” Prayer is conscious receptiveness in the presence of the Divine. Jesus, upon the mountain height, in the evening time prayed, He opened Himself to God, the Infinite, and the Infinite began to possess Him.
“And as He prayed He was transfigured.” I am not surprised at that. Even among men we have seen the ministry of transfiguration, even though it be in infinitely smaller degree. You 257remember that Moses had been so opened out to God, and so possessed by the Divine light, that when he came down from the mount his face shone with mystic radiance. “We are told concerning Stephen that he was so opened out to the Infinite that they saw his face as it had been the face of an angel. He was simply possessed and pervaded by the Divine power. And surely one may say, as I can say, that in far humbler life than that of Moses, in life in which there has been little of what the world calls “culture,” little of mental furniture, little of dialectical power, but in which there has been great spiritual receptiveness, in the lives of the illiterate there has shone “a light that never was on sea or land.” But here with the Master, whose life was absolutely and uninterruptedly opened out to the glory of the God-head, the inflow of glory transfigured and transformed Him, and in superlative and supreme degree “His face did shine as the sun.” The very expression of His countenance was altered. And then the historians go even further, for we are told that the glory, the energy, I scarcely know how to describe it—one uses an almost violent phrase in seeking to give expression to it—the Divine effluence which flowed into the Lord not only transfigured His flesh, but in some mystic way transfigured even His outer vesture. “His 258garments became white as snow.” All of which just means this: that this man of Nazareth became so absolutely filled with God that His very material vesture was transfigured and transformed. “We were eyewitnesses of it.”
Now, I would like to pause there a moment, to offer an opinion for which I cannot quote Scriptural authority. “This say I, not the Lord.” I would venture to ask: What would have happened if man had never sinned? I think, just what happened on the mount. I have a conviction that this experience on the mount was just the purposed consummation for every life. I have a conviction that if there had been no sin you and I would never have known an open grave. We should have known a transformation, a transfiguration; there would have been a consummation in which the material would have been transfigured and transformed through the importation of the Divine glory. The corruptible would have put on incorruption, but not through the ministry of decay and death; just by the ministry of an inflow of Divine glory. I think that was our purposed end, and our purposed glory. I think that from the very day of our birth our road would have led ever forward and ever forward into light. There would have come a certain moment in the temporal life of 259everybody when the glory of the Lord would have absolutely possessed us, when the material shrine would have been transfigured, and we should have reached the higher plane of the immortal life. But sin came, and that consummation could never be. Instead of on some quiet evening just being transfigured into the immortal, we have now to take the way to the shades, the way of the grave. But Jesus never sinned, and therefore I think that upon the mount His life was naturally consummated, and He could have entered into the permanent glory which then possessed Him.
But now, mark you, I say that our Master, with a perfectly holy life, came there to a natural consummation, in which His life was transfigured, and He might, I think, then have passed into the state of enduring glory. But He divests Himself of the glory, lays it aside, turns His back, as it were, upon the natural consummation, and takes the way to the grave. He turns from the appointed way of glory, the glory of sinlessness, and He takes the way appointed of sin. That is what I call the great renunciation; and I sometimes think that instead of calling it the Mount of Transfiguration we might call it the Mount of Renunciation. He would not claim the natural consummation. He would not claim 260the transfiguration. He takes up the cross even upon the mount; He takes the way of His brethren in sin; He came to do it; He leaves the glory, and He comes down the mount that by coming down the mount He might make for you and for me a new and living way by which we, too, can reach the consummation. “See, He lays His glory by!” He turns His face towards the grave.
Do you think there were no fears in His renunciation? I very frequently wish that we did not so divest our Lord of all attributes common to the flesh. Do you think our Master was altogether delivered from the common fears of man in the prospect of death? No fear of death, and that a death of such absolute abandonment, and of so unspeakable and un thinkable isolation? I think when He turned His back upon that glory, glory to which He had a right, and faced towards the grave, He felt a chill, the chill of a nameless fear. I know that on another mountain, when the devil came and tempted Him, and He then turned His back upon the offered sovereignty, “angels came and ministered unto Him.” And I do not wonder that now, when, upon the mount of another renunciation, He turns His back upon the glory and contemplates death, there appeared unto Him two other ministers—Moses 261and Elijah: Moses who died no one knew how, and was buried no one knew where; and Elijah, who was transfigured that he should not see death. And then we are told in just one phrase, which although it does not satisfy, yet relieves our wonder, that they spoke together of the decease that He should accomplish at Jerusalem. Perhaps it is permitted us to indulge in a little reverent imagination? Here is the Lord turning His back upon glory and facing the chills of death, and there appears to Him from the other side of death Moses and Elijah, and surely their conversation about His decease would be heartening! It would be feeding speech, and sustaining speech, by which He would be able all the more boldly and all the more fearlessly to take His journey into twilight and night. And so, I say, our Saviour began His descent from glory to grave. It is not the going up the mount that cheers me, it is the coming down! Every step He took in that descent gives confirmation to your hope and to mine. Our ascent becomes possible in His descent.
And as He turned to go, and laid His shining
glory by, behold! a voice, “This is My beloved Son.” [
The Mystery of the Prophet.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="2 Peter 1:19-21" parsed="|2Pet|1|19|1|21" osisRef="Bible:2Pet.1.19-2Pet.1.21" />And we have the word of prophecy made more sure; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a squalid place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts: knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost.
THE prophet, his prophecy, how to understand
it! This passage is about as compact and concentrated as a crystal. It is compressed and
solidified thinking, every sentence being as
essential and as unwasteful as a passage of
Browning. Just cast a glance at the crowded
contents. I say it enshrines a description of the
true prophet, it unveils the nature and significance of true prophecy, and it defines the only
methods by which the secrets of prophecy can
be disentangled and understood. Here is the
vignette of the prophet: “No prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being
moved by the Holy Ghost.” [
“Well, now, I think it is quite as well at once, when we are speaking about prophets and prophecy, that we detach ourselves almost entirely from the modern and popular interpretation of the word. Prophecy is not synonymous with prediction. When we use the sentence which has almost become a proverbial phrase in our ordinary speech and say, “I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet,” we are employing the words almost entirely in the sense of forecast, in the meaning of prevision, with the significance of unbosoming the secrets of the morrow. The element of prevision and of forecast is not entirely absent from the true equipment of the prophet, but it is not the 265primary element. I do not think any one can declare principles without forecasting issues; but the burden of a true prophet is not the fore casting of an event, but the proclamation of a principle. True prophecy is declaration, not anticipation; it is vision, not prevision. A prophet is a man who foretells, but who primarily forthtells, tells forth a message which God has given to him. The prophet is a forthteller of great truths, of dominant principles; he is a revealer of the great broad highways along which all the affairs of men move to inevitable destiny. I want, then, at once to put that primary meaning which we use in our modern interpretation of the word on one side, and as far as possible to leave aside this secondary element of prevision.
With this introductory assumption, look at the
picture of the prophet himself. “No prophecy ever came by the will of man.” [
So much, for the prophet. Now I turn from
the prophet to the prophecy; and what, according to my text, is the abiding characteristic of
ail true prophecy? Here is the guiding word:
It is “as a Lamp shining in a squalid place, until the day dawn, and
the day-star arise in your hearts.” [
Arid lastly, how shall we receive a prophet
and understand his message when he comes?
Here is the guiding word: “No prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation.” [
Destructive Heresies.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="2 Peter 2:1" parsed="|2Pet|2|1|0|0" osisRef="Bible:2Pet.2.1" />But there arose false prophets also among the people, as among you also there shall be false teachers, who shall privily bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master that bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.
THIS is a dark and appalling chapter. There is nothing quite like it elsewhere in the entire book. The misery and desolation of it are unrelieved. It is so like some wide and soddened moor, in a night of cold and drizzling rain, made lurid now and again by lightning-flash and weird with the growl of rolling thunder. Everywhere is the black and treacherous bog. The moral pollution is over whelming. I confess that I have stood before it for months, in the hope of seeing my way across, and even now I am by no means confident of a sure-footed exposition. The gutter conditions are ubiquitous. The descriptive language is intense, violent, terrific. There is no softening of the shade from end to end. It begins in the denunciation of “lascivious 280doings”; it continues through “pits of darkness,” “lawless deeds,” “lust of defilement,” “spots and blemishes,” “children of cursing”; and it ends in the gruesome figure of “the dog turning to his own vomit and the sow that had washed to wallowing in the mire.” It is an awful chapter, borrowing its symbolism from “springs without water,” and from “mists driven by a storm,” and recalling the ashes of “Sodom and Gomorrah “to enforce the urgency and terror of its judgment.
Is there any road across this dark and swampy moor? Has the bog a secret? To drop my figure, has this wide-spreading pollution an explanation? Amid all the cold mystery and darkness of the chapter, one thing becomes increasingly clear as we gaze upon it, that the depraved life is the creation of perverse thought, that in “destructive heresies” is to be found the explanation of this immoral conduct. I say this is one of the clear and primary emphases of the apostle’s teaching. A man’s thought determines the moral climate of his life, and will settle the question whether his conduct is to be poisonous marsh or fertile meadow, fragrant garden or barren sand. The pose of the mind determines the dispositions, and will settle whether a man shall soar with angels in the heavenlies or wallow with the sow in the 281mire. What we think about the things that are greatest will determine how we do the things that are least. “What are your primary thoughts about God? The prints of those thoughts will be found in your courtesies, in your intercourse, in the common relationships of life, in the government of commerce, in the control of the body, and in all the affairs of home and market and field. All the corruption of this chapter is traced up to unworthy conceptions of Christ, to the partial, if not entire, dethronement of “the Lord of life and glory.” The immorality has its explanation in “destructive heresy.”
“What think ye of Christ?” In what was their thought defective? What was the essence of the heresy? The secret is here, they had no adequate sense of His holiness. All true and efficient thinking about God begins in the conception of His holiness. If you begin with His love, you deoxygenate the very affection you proclaim. If you begin with His mercy, you deprive it of the very salt which makes it a minister of healing and defence. If you begin with His condescension, it is a condescension emasculated, because you have not gazed upon His lofty and sublime abode. You cannot get a glimpse of the unspeakable humility of Calvary until your eyes are filled with the glory of the 282great white throne. If you would know the depth you must begin with the height! Our thinking concerning the Lord must not take its rise in His compassions or His love. We must begin with the pure white ray. We must begin with the great white throne! When the man Isaiah was refashioned for the prophetic life, it was not some softened glimpse of a wistful family circle in glory which absorbed his gaze. It was the vision of a throne, “high and lifted up.” And those who stood about the throne were not moving in light and familiar liberty. “Each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet.” How solemn, and how reverent, and how worshipful! And the voices which he heard were not the jaunty songs and liltings which are sung at the fireside. “And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts.” It was in circumstances like these, and upon heights like these, that the prophet’s thinking began! Do not think that grave and venerable experiences of this kind make life severe and hard and rob it of its juice and freedom. There is no man who has more to say about the throne and the awful splendours that gather about it, no man who tells us more about the thunders and lightnings that proceed out of it, than just the apostle who has given 283us the most exquisitely tender letter in the New Testament Scriptures. John Calvin is a name that has become almost synonymous with hardness, unbendableness, severity, with high and austere contemplation, but you do the man a grave injustice and you miss the interpretative secret of his life if you ignore or overlook the wells of most delicate compassion in which his life and writings abound. Our softest water is the water that flows over granitic beds. If you would know what it made of Isaiah, read through his message and examine his life. The rivers of tenderness and compassion which flow in this book are not anywhere to be surpassed except by “the river of water of life” which “flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” When you have read the sixth chapter of Isaiah, when you have tremblingly gazed upon the throne, “high and lifted up,” when you have looked upon the veiled and stooping seraphim, and when you have listened to the solemn sound of holy voices “chanting by the crystal sea,” then turn to the fortieth chapter, and hear the sound of running waters, the rivers of compassion “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith the Lord. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. . . . He shall feed His flock like a shepherd!” 284The soft compassion of the fortieth chapter finds its explanation in the solemn severities of the sixth. I stood by a Swiss chalet, on the lower slopes of a lovely vale, and by the house there flowed a gladsome river, full and forceful, laughing and dancing in its liberty, and instinctively I prayed that my life might be as the river, full of power and full of song, clearing obstacles with a nimble leap, and hastening on to the great and eternal sea. And to my voice less prayer there came reply, “Follow up the stream to its birth!” And I tracked the buoyant river, and I reached the snow-line, and I found that in the spreading wastes of virgin-snow the singing minister had its birth. And then I knew that full and forceful Christian lives must have their source in sovereign holiness, that only above the snow-line, near the great white throne, could they find an adequate birth. “Hast thou forsaken the snows of Lebanon?” That is the “destructive heresy,” to begin one’s thinking and one’s doing otherwhere than in the holiness of God. To begin elsewhere is to be sure of impoverishment, and to have a life-river which will lose itself in unwholesome swamp and bog, and become the parent of moral corruption and contagion. “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts.”
But let me still further analyse this “destructive 285heresy.” If we do not begin with the Lord’s holiness, we can have no discernment of the Lord’s atonement. Dwell below the snowline, and you want no atonement! And for this reason. The man who does not begin his thinking in divine holiness will have no keen and poignant perception of human sin. “What you see in a thing depends very much upon its background. John Ruskin has shown us how the whitest notepaper, exposed before the tribunal of bright sunshine, reveals its inherent grey. It all depends upon the back ground. If your background be gas-light, your notepaper will appear superlatively white; but if the background be the all-revealing flame of God’s resplendent sun, the apparent white will darken into grey. I have seen a sea-gull in flight, with a black cloud for a background, and the bird seemed white as driven snow; I have seen the same bird upon the water, with a back ground of snowy foam, and the wings were grey. Yes, what is your background? If you do not begin with the holiness of God you will never see the blackness of sin. If your back ground be some indifferent human standard, some halting expediency, some easy policy, human life, and your own included, will appear passably clear. I think I am no pessimist, but I confess I look with some alarm at what I 286cannot but regard as the lessening sense of sin which seems to hold our modern thought and life. One’s fears are difficult to express because the dark symptoms themselves are so difficult to disengage and define. But I feel a certain dulness, a certain drowsiness, in the spiritual life. I feel a certain close, enervating mugginess in the moral atmosphere; a want of alertness, of sharp and sensitive response. Our modern Churches are too indolently contented, too prematurely satisfied, and are much too willing to take easy advantage of the compromises offered of the world. We must become suspicious of an indulgent terminology. A violent antagonist of the Christian faith, a man whose method of attack is of the slap-dash kind, declared, only a few days ago, “There is no such thing as sin; there is only error.” The man who begins with that diagnosis can never prescribe for me. But we must see to it that we do not take advantage of this indulgent term, and the Christian pulpit must proclaim the holiness of the Lord, and allow no web of wordy sophistry to hide the great white throne! We have frequently been told that we need to recover the word “grace”; we need first to recover the word “holiness”; holiness will recover the word sin. And if sin does not appear sin, but passes muster as imperfect virtue, wherein 287comes the need of atonement? No holiness, no sin; no sin, no Saviour! Redemption is a superfluity, and the ministry of Jesus is a wasteful toil, and His passion is a fruitless death. The man who has no vision of holiness has no perception of the Atonement, and he “denies the Lord that bought him.” It is the man who has ascended above the snow-line, who will wail in his secret soul, “Woe is me, for I am unclean,” and who will smite upon his breast, saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner!”
Well, now, see the consequence of these things. I have been trying to expound the “destructive heresy “which I think is the initial cause of the pollution which is so terribly unfolded in this chapter. If these cardinal conceptions are dull or eclipsed, other precious things will be destroyed. Cast your eyes over this widespread corruption. There are some “conspicuous absences.” There are many missing treasures, whose absence accounts for the filth. I miss the instinct of reverence! They tremble not “to rail at dignities.” It is an ill thing in a life when a man has no sovereignty before which he bows in reverent awe. Take out the august, and life is reduced to flippancy, and levity is the master of the feast both day and night. A man who never reveres will find it impossible to be true. The 288man who never kneels in spirit can scarcely be upright in life. To bow to nothing is to be master of nothing. If we have no sense of the august to worship, we shall have little sense of sin to expel.
I know that in using this word “august” I am using and borrowing a characteristic expression of my great predecessor Dr. Dale, and I hope I am using it with something of his own reach and loftiness of thought. I do not know anything which is more needed in our Free Church life and worship than an awed and reverent consciousness of God. I could wish that we moved about our very sanctuaries with a softer step, and that our very demeanour was that of men who are held in a subdued wonder at the majestic presence of God. I sometimes think that our very detachment from any prescribed order of service, our boundless freedom, our familiarity with the Lord, our easy intimacy in communion, need to be guarded from besetting perils. Even when we rejoice in the Gospel of Calvary let us “give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness.”
<verse> <l class="t1">Before Jehovah’s awful throne </l> <l class="t1">Ye nations bow with sacred joy.</l> </verse>I do not think we are in danger of “railing at dignities,” but I do think we are in danger of 289forgetting the supreme dignity of them. In one of his letters to Matthew Mowat, Samuel Rutherford uses these words: “Ye should give [God] all His own court-styles, His high and heaven-names.” I think we are a little lacking in the court-style, in this use of the high and heaven-names. But the use of the high names will come back when our souls are humbly gazing upon the high things. “When we shall see Him as John the Evangelist saw Him, we, too, “shall fall at His feet as one dead.” Our souls will always have the stoop of reverent adoration while we keep in view the vision of the holiness of our Lord. In all this revelling, sweltering chapter I miss the sense of sin.
And amid all the movements I miss another treasure, the sense of a large and noble free dom. I know there is a talk of freedom, but freedom is not enjoyed. “Promising them liberty,” and the poor fools are deluded into the thought that they are in possession of it. I know they are “doing just as they like,” but of all forms of bondage that is the worst; for this great world, and the laws of its government, are not built upon the “likes “of men, but upon the rights and prerogatives of God. How can a man be free, even though the song of freedom be ever on 290his lips, if all the powers in grace and nature are pledged to overthrow him? I tell you every flower of the field is ranked against defilement, and all the forces of this wonderful planet are arrayed against the man whose only arbiter is his own “likes,” instead of being determined by the arbitrament of the will and purpose of God. A man who is in sin, and assumes he is in liberty, and is satisfied with his position, has not risen to the contentment and liberty which are the glory of humankind, but is sunk to the animal bondage of the sow, which gloats and wallows in the mire.
There are other missing treasures which I might name, but I will content myself in mentioning only one the absence of any perception of the drift and purpose of history. When the great things go out of life, when the sublime is exiled, when reverence dies and the days decline in triviality, men lose their sense of history, and yesterday has no voice. “And I heard a voice behind me, saying!” That is the voice of yesterday, and it is the privilege of those who are in the fellowship of God to know its interpretation. Sodom and Gomorrah shout through the centuries, and so do Nineveh and Babylon, and Greece and Rome! “If God spared not the ancient world, 291but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when He brought a flood upon the ungodly”; and if God turned “the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes. . .”—that is the voice of history, the shoutings of experience, and by the people in this chapter the voice is unheeded because unheard. All these “conspicuous absences”—the instinct of reverence, the feeling of sin, the sense of a noble freedom, and the recognition of historical witness—are accounted for by perverse thinking, by “destructive heresies,” by the degradation of the Godhead, by the eclipse of the great white throne. Having no sense of holiness, they “denied the Lord that bought them.” The lack of lofty summit explains the corrupt and stagnant plain.
Now this particular species of heresy may not be prevalent to-day. I do not know that we could find its precise lineaments in our own time. But we may give the teaching wide dominion. Our primary conception of the Lord will determine the trend and quality of our own life, and the depth or shallowness of its ministry. Whatever dethrones or disparages Christ will impair and impoverish man. Anything that cheapens the Saviour will make us worthless. Any teaching which puts Him out of account, which removes Him from the 292front place, which relegates Him to the rear, which in any way “denies” Him, is a “destructive heresy,” and is fraught with peril and destruction. Is there any modern peril?
There is a prevalent teaching to-day which is usually known as the “New Thought.” I do not speak as its antagonist, but as one who wishes to preserve it from becoming a minister of weakness and destruction. I welcome much of its teaching. I believe that in discovering and clarifying psychological laws it may render unspeakable help to the living of a Christian life. I believe that we are now standing upon the borderland of a marvellous country, and that mystic forces are to be revealed to us of which hitherto we have only dimly dreamed. I believe that the marvellous phenomena of telepathy and hypnotism, and all the discoveries we are making in this dim and impalpable world, may mightily help us in the fortification of pure and resolute habit. But I see a danger, an ominous danger, a danger real and immediate. I know the literature of this new teaching, the literature both of this country and of the United States; I speak from first hand knowledge, and I say that the teaching gives no adequate place and sovereignty to Jesus Christ our Lord. He is of little or no account; lie is occasionally mentioned, but only 293as one of a crowd, and He is not accorded that unique and solitary pre-eminence which He claims. In one of the latest, and in some respects the ablest, of these books I have looked in vain from end to end for even the bare mention of the Saviour’s name. He does not count! He is a negligible and therefore neglected factor, and is left entirely out of the reckoning. And because He is absent, other things are missing. I find no mention of guilt. Rarely do I stumble upon the fact of sin. In the “New Thought” there is no confession of sin, no sob of penitence, no plea for forgiveness, no leaning upon mercy. The atonement is an obsolete device, the pardonable expedient of a primitive day. “A man must acquire the art,” says one of the best of these teachers, “the art of allowing the past, with whatever errors, sins, faults, follies, or ignorances entangled, to slip out of sight.” How easy the suggestion, how tremendous the achievement! For the most of us that burden slips away only where the pilgrim’s burden rolled away, at the foot of the Saviour’s cross, where it rolls into the Saviour’s grave. I care not what veins of helpful ministry these men and women may strike, if they ignore the Saviour and the ministry of redeeming grace, they are dealing with essentially surface forces as compared 294with the mighty powers born of personal communion with Him. It is a teaching which practically “denies the Lord that bought us,” and so far it is a “destructive heresy” which offers no adequate ministry for the liberation of sinful men, and for the attainment of a full and matured life. All thinking is initially wrong which does not begin with the unique holiness of the Lord, and which does not reserve for Him a supreme and sovereign place in man’s redemption. And that, too, is the severest indictment of spiritualism. It has little or nothing to do with the Lord. It concerns itself with meaner folk, with smaller themes, and with trivial communion. Who ever heard of a spiritualistic campaign for the reclamation of the lost? That’s where its sense is dull. “Saviour!” That’s where the vision is dim. We must bring all teachings, and all ministries to the touchstone of our exalted Lord and Saviour. What do they do with Him? What think they of Christ? We must suspect any thing and everything which lays Him under eclipse. Do they deny the Lord that bought us? Do they dim His glory, and rank Him in the indiscriminate crowd? Then we must label them as “destructive heresies,” whose forces can never achieve the redemption of human kind.
295What, then, shall we pray for ourselves and for others? First of all we will pray that we may never lose sight of the heights of the Divine holiness! We are told that they, who dwell beneath great domes, acquire a certain loftiness and stateliness of bearing which distinguishes them from their fellows. Let us pray that about our brethren and ourselves there may be a mystic significance, a breadth and height of character, a nobility of life, telling of the sublime abode in which we dwell. May we dwell in the truth, live and move in the truth, and by no perilous emphasis of minor themes and things deny the Lord that bought us.
296Worse Than the First.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="2 Peter 2:20,21" parsed="|2Pet|2|20|2|21" osisRef="Bible:2Pet.2.20-2Pet.2.21" />For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the last state is become worse with them than the first. For it were better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after knowing it, to turn lack from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
“The last state is become worse with them than
the first.” [
The realisation of moral deliverance. “They have escaped the defilements of the world.” What is this “defilement” of the world in which these souls have been imprisoned? Who can define it? “Who can lay hold of this subtle and varying corruption, and give it an interpretative name? Its metamorphoses are extraordinary. It has a hundred different guises, changing its attire continually, but amid all its shifting appearances it remains essentially the same. You have the same essential elements in solid ice, in flowing water, in hissing steam, in wreathing vapour, in moving cloud. In all the multiplex forms you have the same essence: the reality abides; it is only a change of attire. 298You can have the same poison in varying preparations, mingling with different compounds, appearing in diverse colours, and confined within dissimilar flasks. The incidentals are many, the poisonous essence is one and the same. And so it is with this “corruption” of the world; it pervades different sets of circumstances; it enshrines itself in different compositions, but everywhere and anywhere it is the same destructive minister. It is the same in Whitechapel and Belgravia, in the House of Commons and on a racecourse, in the King’s palace and the peasant’s hut, in the Church and on the Exchange. You may have “the defilements of the world” palpable and gross, and you may have them tenuous and refined. They may be rank and offensive as “the lust of the flesh”; they may be rare and vain and elusive as “the pride of life.” Yes, many forms, but one spirit! “The fashion of this world passeth away.” The “fashion” changes; the thing itself abides.
“The defilements of the world.” Every age seems to have its own characteristic corruption, its own destructive, worldly form and colour. When St. Anthony went out into the Egyptian desert as a protest and safeguard against the corruption of his time, it was a different form of worldliness to that which encountered St. Benedict in a succeeding century, and which 299drove him to found his great Monastic Order; and the worldliness against which St. Benedict contended differed from the corruption which surrounded St. Francis when, at a later day, he established the Order of the Mendicant Friars. All these forms of monasticism fought the same essential corruption, but it appeared here in the shape of a decaying individualism, and there in the shape of social and political dissolution, and yonder in the shape of a proud and luxurious Church. “The fashion of this world passeth away.” How different is the worldliness which forced the Salvation Army into existence from the worldliness which prevailed at the time of the evangelical revival! John Wesley and General Booth looked out upon quite different conditions, but the difference was only in the shape of the flask and the colour of the compound; the essential adversary was the same. The corruption of our own day wears a different guise from the corruption of twenty-five years ago. It has transferred itself to other spheres, and has pervaded new sets of relationships, and you have to look for it in new attire. The fashion changes; the pollution abides! Behind all the shiftings of the centuries the defilement persists, and it manifests itself in a mode of thinking, a mode of working, and a mode of living which is essentially anti-Christian. It 300is the anti-Christian drift in the life of a generation which constitutes its pollution, and such drift may be found with equal certainty in Mayfair and the Seven Dials. It is a subtle spirit, now enshrining itself in an individual, now in a society, now in a Parliament, now in literature, now in art, now in the acquisition of treasure, now in the apportioning of leisure, in a hundred different vestures, but remaining always the anti-Christian drift, and ever degrading its victims into Christian negations.
Now this “defilement of the world” is an infection, and propagates itself like a foul contagion. It is a significant and suggestive thing that the word which our version translates by “defilements” is our English word “miasma.” It is the suggestion of the process by which the corruption works. “The miasma of the world!” And what is a miasma? Medical science has a synonym for the word which gives us much enlightenment. “Aerial poison!” A miasma is an aerial poison, an emanation or effluvia rising from the ground and floating in the air. “The miasma of the world.” It is pervasive as an aerial poison, it distributes itself like a destructive contagion. Let an unclean miasma, some foul immorality, infest one lad in a public school, and the school will seek its 301own security by his immediate expulsion. One polluted lad can infect a thousand. “The miasma of the world.” We know the workings of the principle in social clubs. It is amazing how soon the miasma can pollute a society. It has happened before: now that one man has degraded a social fellowship, and has created a malaria which pure men have refused to breathe. What has happened in smaller communities has also prevailed in civic fellowships and in the larger life of the State. “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” Sometimes we can withdraw ourselves from an evil contagion, and our withdrawal may tend to destroy it by neglect. But we cannot altogether get away from “the miasma of the world.” We are in the world, and the air is infected, and we have got to breathe it. How then?
There is a way of escape. “They have
escaped the miasma of the world.” We can be
rendered immune, as medical science can make
us immune in the presence of some particular
contagion. “I pray not that Thou shouldest
take them out of the world,” but that Thou
shouldest make them immune—“that Thou
shouldest keep them from the evil.” Regard
it or disregard it as we may, this is the claim
of the real Christian science, the promise of the
Gospel of Christ: “If they drink any deadly 302thing it shall not hurt them.” It is possible for a man to
move amid the prevailing miasma of his day, to live and move and have his being
in its very presence, and yet to remain in robust moral health. Now, mark you,
this moral deliverance is attained through a spiritual fellowship. “They have
escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ.” [
But now the apostle unfolds a dark sequence.
The moral deliverance may be followed by a
moral relapse. “They are again entangled therein and overcome.”
[
And what is the moral status of the back
slider? “The last state is become worse with them than the first.”
[
Can such a man be recovered? Oh yes! Backsliders may be converted and recovered. “He is able to save unto the uttermost!” “I will recover thee of thy backsliding.” “All things are possible to him that believeth.”
<verse> <l class="t1">Though earth and hell the word gainsay,</l> <l class="t2">The word of God can never fail:</l> <l class="t1">The Lamb shall take my sins away,</l> <l class="t2">’Tis certain, though impossible:</l> <l class="t1">The thing impossible shall be,</l> <l class="t1">All things are possible to me.</l> </verse> <verse> <l class="t1">All things are possible to God, </l> <l class="t2">To Christ, the power of God in man,</l> <l class="t1">To men, when I am all renewed, </l> <l class="t2">When I in Christ am formed again,</l> <l class="t1">And when, from all sin set free,</l> <l class="t1">All things are possible to me.</l> </verse> 307The Leisureliness of God.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="2 Peter 3:4-9" parsed="|2Pet|3|4|3|9" osisRef="Bible:2Pet.3.4-2Pet.3.9" />Mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His presence? . . . One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
“Where is the promise of His presence?”
[
“Where is the promise of His presence?” It is not only the shout of the scoffer, it is the low, poignant cry of the devout. The voices in this Book are many and manifold. You can hear the loud, laughing jeer of the mocker, rising in the very midst of prophecy and psalm: and you can hear the wail of the perplexed, like a low, long moan of pain. “How long wilt Thou forget me, Lord?” “Lord, how long wilt Thou look on?” “How long, Lord, how long?” The defiant and reckless scorn, and the agonising doubt, concern themselves with one thing—the apparent heedlessness of God.
What, then, is the problem? It is this. Men are confronted with an apparently undiscriminating and uncompassionating juggernaut. No hand seems to be busy in human affairs engaged in just and discerning judgment. There is no selection determined by moral worth. The vast movement is blind and capricious. The gigantic machine staggers along, like some untended traction engine, and its huge, grinding wheels bruise and break all things into a common mass, stones and little children, the wasteful and the useful, the sinner and the saint.
Let me read to you a short passage from one of the most delicate and sensitive of our present-day writers, who thus expresses a part of this sharp and burdensome problem: “Last summer, 309as I walked in my garden, I heard a fledgeling sparrow chirruping merrily under a bush. Possibly he had by accident dropped out of his nest, and, by making parachutes of his wings, had so broken his fall as to reach ground without taking hurt, and was now in a flutter, between pride and fear, at his own daring. For a few minutes I watched him ruffling it as roguishly as a robin, now cocking his glossy head at a sprawling worm, now stropping his tiny beak, razor-wise, upon a twig, and twittering lustily meanwhile for very joy of his freedom and of his merry youth and of the summer morning. . . . I insinuated myself into my hammock, and with my ringers between the pages of a book, lay a-swing in the sunshine as in the centre of a golden globe. For a time I forgot both book and bird. Then suddenly my golden globe shattered into darkness at a sound—a mere thimbleful of sound—a scream of terror and agony, so tiny and yet so haunting and so horrible, that I seem to hear it even now. A tame rook that has the run of my garden had pinned the sparrow, breast upward, under his talons, and, as I looked, was stabbing the life out of him with iron beak. For that wee bird no happy warbling among the leaves: no happier rearing of his young. . . . The sight of that helpless nestling, done to death in the June 310sunshine, and by one of his feathered kin, turned me sick and faint with horror.” “Where is the promise of His presence?”
I had just written these words when an urgent letter was placed upon my desk. I paused in my work to open and read it, and this sentence gave its crimson hue to deepen the colour of my page: “We have had another physician to see her, and he pronounces the disease to be cancer.” The victim is an incarnate angel, who has moved along the hard roads of life with all the sweetening and reviving ministry of a perfume. Her life has been a daily death; she has acquired only that she might give again, she has spent herself in order that by the energy of sacrificial blood others might be made alive. And now, cancer! “We have had another physician to see her, and he pronounces the disease to be cancer.” That cancer should have come to her! “Where is the promise of His presence?”
The same morning I had read these words in my daily paper: “The 6th Company of the 23rd Siberian Regiment reached the summit, and rushed in the Japanese defences. They were, however, received with fixed bayonets, the captain being lifted into the air by several Japanese on the points of their weapons. The rest of the company all perished before the companies following could get up. This is the 311tenth day such a butchery has been going on. The Turkish War was a joke to this! Over all this vast field of action, an area of thirty miles, the ground is strewn with the dead, and tens of thousands of human wrecks are being carried south and north from this unexampled battlefield.” Let that gory record add its quota to the already deeply dyed and troubled page. “Where is the promise of His presence?”
And that is not all. The difficulty is accentuated when one turns from the victims to some of those who apparently escape. Notoriously bad men are housed in comfort, and useless women are clothed in silks and satins, and walk the sunny side of the way. Dishonesty sweeps by in the carriage, while integrity creeps foot sore by the kerb. “Fools ride on horseback, while princes walk by their side.” The sleep of the beast is untroubled, while the saint moans through the night in pain. The contrasts are apparently appalling, and fortune does not favour the brave! “Where is the promise of His presence?”
What shall we say to these things? Let us say, first of all, that we are very ignorant, that our eyes are only endowed with short range, and that our knowledge has severe and almost immediate limitations. Do not let us regard our uncertain guessings as final judgments. 312Let us admit the mystery, and cease our bitter dogmatisms until the mist has rolled away. How little we know! That little fledgling, done to death by the rook, how little we know about him! The dropping from the nest, his little chirp, his material equipment, the scream and . . . we know no more! “If God saw fit,” says our literary friend, “to set that little creature singing in the green groves of Paradise (and who dare say that God has no place in His universe for the sparrow, that God Himself has told us is evermore within His care!), if God saw fit, at the cost of a moment’s pain, to take His bird—where danger shall menace never more, what is that to you?” Our range of vision is ineffective, and we haven’t the evidence to justify a harsh and bitter verdict.
My cancer-stricken friend, how little I know about her! And sometimes in my thinking I do not include all the little I know. I called her “victim”; the strange thing is that she would never use the word about herself, and her thoughts about herself are part of the case. I refuse to allow any verdict upon her which takes no account of her peace, and resignation, and deep and unsmitten faith. I can hold no parley with judges who keep their eyes glued upon the corroding disease, and pay no regard to her long and radiant vista of immortal hope. I say that 313the “victim’s” assurance is part of the problem, and must not be ignored in the verdict.
The fact of the matter is, our thoughts are
moving upon an altogether inadequate scale.
That is the teaching of this chapter to troubled
and doubt-stricken men. “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years
as one day.”
[
Just fifty years later the same hand wrote these words, when the writer’s name was known throughout the world. “Of my many advantages in early life, I place easily first my parents, whose particular method of training me was beyond all praise. . . . In looking back upon my first school, I can think of it only with affection, for the manner in which the masters treated |my inert tendency of character was entirely admirable. To their insistence at that period I owe one of the keenest delights of my maturer years, a love for the Latin authors. . . . In the matter of physical soundness, also, I am certainly much indebted to the school runs, which were compulsory, and to the wholesome and sensible diet on which we were fed, without which I should not possess to-day the virility which has kept me free from disease to a quite unusual extent.” Need I point the moral of the contrasts? The boy’s 315entry enshrines a verdict fashioned upon the scale of a day: the man’s entry declares a judgment fashioned to the scale of fifty years. It is all a matter of scale!” One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” In things of the day He has in view the thousand years; the thousand years being the full maturing of the designs that moulded the little day. “Where is the promise of His presence?” Think upon the scale of a thousand years.
But in the chapter before us the mocker’s scorn primarily concerns the heedlessness of God in the face of human sin. They are happy and untroubled in their lust! The jeer is this, that God is heedless of sin or virtue, and that there are no signs of discriminating judgment between the open sinner and the professed saint. Is God heedless about sin? “Where is the promise of His presence?” Are there any signs of His whereabouts? Let us ask ourselves this searching question—how do things trend? Is God heedless concerning sin? To what tribunal can we make our appeal? We can appeal to the testimony of the purest instincts. We can appeal to the witness of personal experience. We can appeal to the proclamation of the Christian Scriptures. And what is their united teaching? It is this that 316there is nothing more sure than “the everlasting burnings.” I do not refer to some remote and unseen hell, the appointed destiny of an impenitent race. I refer to a present conflagration, the everlasting burning, in which the sinner is even now being inevitably consumed. I say that instinct and experience agree in this, that sin has to encounter an unavoidable Nemesis, and that wrong moves on to certain destruction. Our proverbial lore, the findings and expressions of the common life, gives emphatic utterance to the same truth. “A man’s chickens come home to roost.” “The whirligig of time brings round its revenges.” “Sin doesn’t pay in the long run.” What the proverb declares, our experiences confirm. There is not a single sinner in this town to-day who is not, even now, in “the devouring fire,” “the everlasting burnings.” You say that some of them seem very happy in the fire! Yes, they do, but don’t you see that their happiness is not a disproof, but the very proof of the conflagration. Degradation is penalty. Loss of fine perception is penalty. The destruction of the coronal powers is penalty. Is it no sign of horrible judgment that a man is satisfied with the pleasures of the kitchen, when the oratory of his life is ablaze? This is the plane of true and cogent 317reasoning; manhood maimed is manhood penalised. That men are contented to be as pigs in the mire is the clearest evidence that their crowns and dignities have been burnt away. In the early stages of their sin men are conscious of their loss, and they busy themselves in fashioning counterfeits. They employ divers kinds of religious cosmetics. They strive and strive to “keep up appearances” even when the internal treasure is destroyed! My God! no judgment in the world? No Nemesis? No fire? Is not this a most awful judgment, more awful than any other, that when the very virtues of a man are consumed away, he should move about in self-satisfaction, wearing a hollow and painted pretence? You want to see visible lightning appear and strike him! Our God uses the ministry of a more secret consumption. “Our God is a consuming fire.”
As it is with individuals so it is with peoples. Judgment haunts the footsteps of the sinful state. We can trace the decline and fall of Rome. We can track it step by step through increased idleness, through demoralising employment, through heated sensuality, through the decline of agricultural pursuits, through the lapse of military virtue, on through all to Imperial perdition. There are grave and sober-minded 318men who are beginning to think that Nemesis is revealing a visible hand in the Russia of to-day. As for Britain, let her remember that, whatever adhesion may be found in material and commercial communion, it is not in these things that she will find the cement of an enduring and indestructible empire. “Righteousness alone exalteth a nation.” In men and in peoples we may be sure that our sin will find us out. All sin works towards decline, insipidity, impotence, and night. Of all sad spectacles, the saddest is the spectacle of the candle smouldering out in an ill-spent life! “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, ere the evil days come,” the insipid, burnt-out days, “when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.”
And yet, after all, God does appear leisurely. Why does He not
hasten His goings? Why are not sin and perdition more closely joined? Why does
He move at such a leisurely pace? Why is He so slack? Listen. “The Lord is
not slack concerning His promise, as some count
slackness; but is longsuffering to you-ward,
not wishing that any should perish, but that
all should come to repentance.”
[
Preparing for the Judgment.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="2 Peter 3:10-14" parsed="|2Pet|3|10|3|14" osisRef="Bible:2Pet.3.10-2Pet.3.14" />But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? But, according to His promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for these things, give diligence that ye may be found in peace, without spot and blameless in His sight.
“Seeing that ye look for these things.”
[
And now with this foreground of severe and sanctified
expectancy, the apostle proclaims the following challenge: “Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved,
what manner of persons ought ye to be?”
[
Now let us look a little more closely at those
features of the character which will stand triumphant in the judgment. “Found in peace.”
[
Let us investigate a little more in detail this manifold organ of the individual self. There are my powers of body. These are to be “found in peace.” They are to work in harmony with one another, and under the control of the sovereign will of God, and they are to move as common subjects of the King. “Present your bodies.” We must bring our basal energies to the Lord, and have these bodily forces subdued to the higher harmonies, like the profound notes of the organ that give body and fulness to its tender and sweetening strains. “Let the ape and tiger die,” sings Tennyson. But there is a better way. And the better way is to transform them. I do not want my passions annihilating; I want them turning to useful force. I want the sword changed into a ploughshare, and the spear into a pruning-hook, and I want the beast at the base harnessed to the imperial and holy purpose of God. If a man consecrates “the ape and tiger” 328to the Lord, and these are brought into obedience under the Lord’s control, the life will receive a tremendous driving-power, and every holy ambition will be pursued with almost violent zest. “I keep my body under,” says the Apostle Paul. “I allow no ciphering!” Every bodily desire is held in the leash, and all work together, and are “found in peace.”
There are my powers of mind. We speak of wandering thoughts, thoughts that are rebellious to the general dominion, and that steal away to forbidden fields. “We have unrestrained imaginations, fancies that go off on their own charges and ask no question concerning the lands in which they roam. “Bring every thought into captivity to Christ.” It is possible for all our mental powers to be “found in peace.” We have more power over our thoughts than we frequently conceive. There is much reserve of authority which has not yet been exercised. We can refuse a thought expression, and that refusal enormously strengthens our self-control. “Give no unproportioned thought its act.” Make every thought bow down to Jesus before you give it utterance! But if we still find that our sovereignty is ineffective we can refer our weakness to the Spirit. We can take these rebel thoughts and imaginings, and we can 329say to the Holy Spirit, “These thoughts, my great Companion, are beyond me! I have no power to deal with them! I hand them over to thee!” And marvellous is the efficacy of the reference! Marvellous is the re-arranging of this disordered world, and the subjection of the mental chaos into harmony and peace.
And there are my powers of soul. There are the superlative senses in my life. These also must be “found in peace.” Our sense of right must not be allowed to join the rebel forces of mere expediency. Our sense of the sublime must not be permitted to career after degrading superstitions. Our highest powers must pay obeisance in the holy place, and acknowledge in awed communion the holiness of the Lord. All this is peace, for this is harmony, the powers of body and of mind and of soul all co-operating in producing the music of the spheres, the melody which is well-pleasing unto God. And this is the character with which one can confidently meet the day of judgment. “Give diligence that ye may be found in peace.”
Now turn to the second of the characteristics
of the triumphant life: “found . . . without spot.”
[
And the third characteristic of the triumphant
character is described in the succeeding phrase,
“without blame.”
[
Here, then, is a great ambition—that on the
awful day of unveiling we may thus be “found
in peace, without spot, and blameless.” And
see with what intensity this apostolic ambition
is to be pursued. The apostle uses three very strenuous figures of speech. “Be diligent.”
[
A life like that, hiding in Christ and always cherishing the Father’s business, need fear nothing that the morrow may bring. For that kind of life the judgment will have no terrors. If we live toward God we shall not fear to see Him. Nay, here is the apostle bold enough to use these very daring and exuberant words, “earnestly desiring the coming of that day.” It is the very music of this Epistle. “That day!” “At that day!” I say it is music to the apostle, as indeed it was music to the Apostle Paul, who gloried in “the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day, and not unto me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing.”
334Growing in Grace.
<scripCom type="Meditation" passage="2 Peter 3:18" parsed="|2Pet|3|18|0|0" osisRef="Bible:2Pet.3.18" />Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
IF these words, and indeed the nature and contents of all this wonderful chapter, were not penned by Simon Peter, they were composed by his “double” in the spirit. Their hearts are fashioned alike. The writer of this counsel has had Simon Peter’s experience, and he is possessed by Simon Peter’s penitence, and he shares Simon Peter’s trembling confidence and hope. If some firmly authenticated and altogether non-suspicious letter of the great apostle were to fall into my hands, this is the kind of matter, and this the manner, which I should expect in its intense and impetuous pages. I should expect much about pitfalls and snares, much about finely attired and specious seductions, much about secret treachery, cowardly denial, and open revolt. I should expect strong and jubilant evangels, proclaiming the capacity of frail and fragile man to 335become the loyal and bosom friend of God Almighty. I should expect glorious vistas of distant possibility, bright and alluring, the ultimate bourn of human life in fellowship with the Divine. All these I should expect from the hands and lips and heart of this great apostle—once impulsive, and cowardly, and disloyal, but now recovered, emboldened, glorified in the recreating power of the Holy Ghost. And they are all here, messages full of heartening, serious with warning, kindling with inspiration, and all of them culminating in this cheery word of sanctified Christian optimism, “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Yes, it is Simon Peter, or his “double,” the man who had the two-fold experience of weeping bitterly in the cold twilight of the betrayal morning, and of gazing, with hungry, loving eagerness into the reconciled countenance of the risen Lord.
Well, here in my text there is suggested a marvellous dignity, the supreme prerogative and endowment of human-kind, our capacity to receive the Divine. “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Let us humanise it. To grow in a thing implies that I have the power to acquire it. Acquisition implies susceptibility, power of reception. When a man counsels me to grow, 336he suggests that I am in possession of a germinal aptitude, in the development of which the growth consists. “Grow in Art, and in the knowledge of the Masters of Art!” Such counsel implies that I possess initial artistic instincts, a certain elementary sensitiveness, which will respond to the revelations of each succeeding stage in the unfolding apocalypse of form and colour. If I am to grow in the grace and knowledge of Turner I must fundamentally possess the primal instincts of which the ultimate Turner is made. Growth implies a germ, an initial bias or tendency, an original aptitude or gift. And if I am to “grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ,” the consoling and inspiring suggestion is this, that I am not passive and ungifted like a splint from a planet, or a mineral in the mine, but that to me has been given an original capability, an innate possibility of holding commerce with the infinite God. We are fragments of Divinity!
Here then, I start with this glorious and marvellous implication, that the children of men have the power to apprehend and to growingly appropriate the “things” of the Spirit of God. Let us look at the capacity. “Grow in grace” We have the capacity to receive the Divine energy, to receive it more and more; to so grow in the appropriation of it that we are at last 337“filled with the fulness of God.” For Grace is an energy; it is the Divine energy; it is the energy of the Divine affection rolling abundantly to the shores of human need. Oh, it is this, and much more than this! Its manifold wealth eludes the span of human speed, and refuses to be defined. Grace is indefinable. Dr. Dale, with his strong hands and yet most exquisite touch, endeavoured to express its secret in a pregnant phrase, but he laid down his pen in despair. “Grace,” he says, “is love which passes beyond all claims to love. It is love which, after fulfilling the obligations imposed by law, has an unexhausted wealth of kindness.” Yes, it is all that; but when we have said all that, the half hath not been told. It reminds me of an experience in my life a little while ago. Some minister of the Cross, toiling in great loneliness, among a scattered and primitive people, and on the very fringe of dark primeval forests, sent me a little sample of his vast and wealthy environment. He sent it in an envelope. It was a bright and gaily-coloured wing of a native bird. The colour and life of trackless leagues sampled within the confines of an envelope! And when we have made a compact little phrase to enshrine the secret of grace, I feel that, however fair and radiant it may be, we have only got a wing 338of a native bird, and bewildering stretches of wealth are untouched and unrevealed. No, we cannot define it. Who can define an Alp? We may describe the varying aspects of a mountain, some of its ever-changing moods; we can add feature to feature, characteristic to characteristic, but we can never say that we have exhausted the significance of its wealthy face. And so it is with grace. We may have glimpses of its features and varying moods. Even when we can not construe its ultimate secret, we may describe when we cannot define. Now that is just what the New Testament permits us to do. It gives us a glimpse here, and a glimpse there, and we can put bit to bit, feat Lire to feature, until we are overwhelmed with the glory of the revelation of God’s redeeming grace! Let us put them together. Grace is energy. Grace is love-energy. Grace is a redeeming love-energy. Grace is a redeeming love-energy ministering to the unlovely, and endowing the unlovely with its own loveliness. Wherever I see grace at work in the Christian Scriptures it is ever a minister of purity, and joy, and song and peace. Cast your eyes over these! “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” Like as you have seen the shore littered with filth and refuse, and the infinite deep has rolled in, and gathered up the uncleanness into its own 339purifying flood! “We have good hope through grace.” Like as the light in the lighthouse burns clear and steadily through the night, because of the unfailing and carefully administered supplies of oil, so the light of a cheery optimism burns strong and calmly in the night of life, because of the unfailing supplies of grace! “Singing with grace in your hearts unto the Lord.” Didn’t I say that grace is the mother of song? Grace makes a light and nimble atmosphere; the soul becomes buoyant, and breaks into music as instinctively as the bird sings in the soft airs of the dawn. All this is the work of the love-energy of the Eternal God, and the evangel is this, that to you and me is given the capacity to receive it, to grow in it, to appropriate it more and more, to more and more become its home. “He giveth grace for grace,” until every tissue and function in body, mind, and soul are saturated and sanctified in its redeeming ministry. “Grow in grace!”
“And in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Then we have not only capacity to receive the Divine energy, but capacity to perceive the Divine character. Gifts of reception are succeeded by gifts of perception. We are to “grow in knowledge” too. I heard a great Bible student say the other day—he is a 340man of most delicate spiritual insight, and has worked and walked with his Lord for many years—and he was speaking among a few familiar friends, and he said, “I feel as if I have only investigated a small garden-bed, and there’s a continent still before me!” Have we not all shared his feelings? Is there a minister worth his salt who, as his experience broadens and deepens, does not realise that he has only touched the hem of his Master’s garment, and that the more glorious intimacy is all before him? Yes, so far as the Lord Jesus is concerned we have all pottered about a little garden-bed, with a continent awaiting us. But do not let us be despondent or afraid. We must not measure ourselves by the size of the garden-bed, but by the possibilities of the continent. We are not scaled to the size of the garden-bed; we are scaled and endowed to the ultimate demands of the continent. “Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known!” The continent is to be as familiar to us as the garden-bed. We can “grow . . . in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Does not that sound continental, that great, all-comprehensive name—Lord—Saviour—Jesus—Christ? Into the secrets, the deep, bright mysteries of that most wonderful name we are to enter, little by little, and we are to 341apprehend and appreciate things which have been “hidden from the foundations of the world.” Our capacity may at present be infantile, but infantile capacity is real, and the undeveloped germ carries in its heart the promise and power of its own prime. Caliban may be dark and imprisoned in contrast with the enlightened and appreciative Paul, but Caliban is a Paul in embryo, and even Paul himself, while he walked the ways of time, had but the comprehension of a babe in comparison with many a poor peasant who had “left his native lea” and had awakened amid the unveiled secrets of the Eternal day. Yes, we can grow; it is our dignity and our privilege to grow; we can grow “in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” “Now are we the sons of God,” aye, even now! And to what shall we grow? “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” What then? “We know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” For what superlative glories we are made! Let us even now wear our crowns as kings and queens.
How, then, can we increase our capacity for God? How may we best “grow in grace and knowledge,” in the two-fold gifts of reception and perception? I only know three ways; but I think they are all-inclusive, and they would 342bring a man at length into “the measure of the fulness of the stature of Christ.” You will not be surprised when I mention, as the first means of growth, the ministry of fervent prayer. That is an old counsel, almost threadbare by incessant reiteration, but we can no more ignore it than we can ignore the fresh air when we are reckoning up the conditions of physical health. When I speak of prayer I am thinking of a very active and businesslike thing. I think of something far more than speech; it is commerce with the Infinite. It is the sending out of aspiration, like the ascending angels in the patriarch’s dream; it is the reception of inspiration, like the descending angels that brought to the weary pilgrim the life and light of God. When we pray, we must drink in, and drink deeply, quietly, consciously, deliberately, the very love-energy of the Eternal God. Marvellous is the ministry of that inspired and inspiring grace! Shall I tell you how I heard one man speak of another man a little while ago? The one of whom he spake had appeared weary and worn, and dark, tired lines were pencilled here and there upon his face. And this weary man knelt and prayed! “And,” said my friend, “when he rose from his knees, I saw for the first time the significance of Pentecost! The weariness had gone! The dark care-lines were 343wiped out! His face was all aglow with a renewed flame! And I verily believe that if my own heart had been pure enough I should have seen a radiant nimbus enveloping his exalted head!” What had the weary man been doing on his knees? He had been growing in grace, and therefore in the knowledge of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
And the second means of growth is found in the ministry of honourable and consecrated labour. If we could not “grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” while we earn our daily bread, life would be very largely a dark and fruitless waste. But if the hours of labour afford a congenial season for spiritual growth, then life presents a vast and glorious opportunity. It was while the Man of Nazareth was yet working at the carpenter’s bench that we are told “He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” “In favour”—our very present word “grace”: the love-energy of the Eternal streamed into His soul while He engaged in the lowly toil of a humble village craftsman. The business of the little day was so done that at the same time it was commerce with the Infinite! Every business transaction was so scrupulously pure and honourable as to afford a dwelling-place for the Holy Spirit of the Eternal God! While He 344earned His daily bread He was drawing into His hungry heart the very bread of life. He and His Father were inseparable partners in the making of a household chair, or in the fashioning of a yoke for the ox of the field. Was not that, too, the restful boast of Stradivari?
<verse> <l class="t3">This is my fame—</l> <l class="t3">When any master holds, </l> <l class="t1">’Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine,</l> <l class="t1">He will be glad that Stradivari lived, </l> <l class="t1">Made violins, and made them of the best. </l> <l class="t1">The masters only know whose work is good: </l> <l class="t1">They will choose mine: and, while God gives them skill, </l> <l class="t1">I give them instruments to play upon,</l> <l class="t3">God choosing me to help Him.</l> </verse>The man who goes out to his labour in the morning in that spirit, must and will grow in grace and knowledge, and he will find that the common path of duty is even now “close upon the shining tableland to which our God Himself is sun and moon.”
And the third means of growth is to be found in the ministry of unselfish service. In the sphere of the spirit, expenditure is ever the condition of expansion. We get while we give. We grow while we serve. “He that would be great among you let him be your minister.” “He giveth grace to the humble.” Aye, it is along that path that we come upon the crown 345jewels of the King of Kings. “He that loseth his life shall find it.” The man who goes out to serve his brother shall meet his God, and shall be partially transfigured into the Saviour’s likeness: he shall pass into ever richer acquisitions of grace, and he shall be taken into the deeper secrets of his Lord.
Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury
Indexes
Index of Scripture References
1 Peter
1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3-5 1:4 1:5 1:5 1:6 1:6 1:6 1:6-7 1:7 1:7 1:7 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:8-9 1:9 1:13 1:13 1:13 1:13 1:13-16 1:14 1:15 1:16 1:17 1:17 1:17 1:17 1:17-21 1:18-19 1:19 1:22 1:22 1:22 1:22 1:22 1:22-25 1:23 1:24 1:25 2:1 2:1-10 2:2 2:2 2:3 2:4-5 2:5 2:7-8 2:9 2:9 2:10 2:11 2:11-17 2:12 2:13-14 2:15 2:16 2:17 2:19-21 2:21 2:21 2:21-22 2:21-25 2:22 2:22 2:23 2:23 2:23 2:23 2:24 2:24 2:25 3:1-8 3:2 3:4 3:6 3:7 3:7 3:7 3:7 3:8 3:8 3:8 3:8 3:8 3:8-15 3:9 3:13 3:14 3:14 3:15 3:15 3:15 3:18 3:18 3:18 3:18-22 3:19 3:19 3:20 3:22 3:22 4:1 4:1 4:1 4:1-6 4:2 4:3 4:4 4:4 4:7 4:7 4:7 4:7 4:7-11 4:8 4:8 4:9 4:10 4:10-11 4:12 4:12-19 4:13 4:13 4:14 5:1 5:1-7 5:2 5:2 5:2 5:3-5 5:4 5:7 5:8 5:8 5:8 5:8-10 5:9 5:10 5:10 5:10
2 Peter
1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1-2 1:1-4 1:2 1:2 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:4 1:4 1:4 1:5 1:5-7 1:5-9 1:8 1:9 1:10 1:12 1:12 1:12 1:12-15 1:13-14 1:15 1:16 1:16-18 1:17 1:19 1:19 1:19 1:19-21 1:20 1:20-21 1:21 1:21 1:21 1:21 2:1 2:20 2:20 2:20 2:20 2:20 2:20 2:20-21 3:3 3:3-4 3:4 3:8 3:8 3:9 3:9 3:10 3:10-14 3:11 3:13 3:14 3:14 3:14 3:14 3:14 3:14 3:17 3:18
Index of Scripture Commentary
1 Peter
1:3-5 1:6-7 1:8-9 1:13-16 1:17-21 1:22-25 2:1-10 2:11-17 2:21-25 3:1-8 3:8 3:8-15 3:18-22 4:1-6 4:7-11 4:12-19 5:1-7 5:8-10
2 Peter
1:1-2 1:1-4 1:5-9 1:12-15 1:16-18 1:19-21 2:1 2:20-21 3:4-9 3:10-14 3:18
Latin Words and Phrases
Index of Pages of the Print Edition
i ii iii iv v vi viii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345
[1]Blake’s A Reasonable View of Life.