The harvest within; thoughts on the life of the Christian

Preface

AS a man nears the term of life, the question may properly arise whether experience has yielded him results which he should not carry away with him when he dies. It is a question of doubtful answer; for not only are personal inward experiences seldom — almost never — fit subject for communication to others, but even the practical results of such experience, realized in thought and conclusions, may have little value outside the individual, however decisive their influence upon himself. Self deception in such a matter is easy; the sense of proportion is readily lost; one may think too highly of his thoughts as well as of himself.

On the other hand, the fortunate provision that a man shall carry away with him no possession external to himself does not hold in the case of that most profitable of all the assets of living, the fixed and certain practical conclusions, the combined outcome of experience and reflection, which command allegiance and influence conduct. These may have value to fellow-combatants in the battle of life, and this can be assured only by committing them to writing. The effort so to do, moreover, is useful to the person himself^ and that in two ways. First, vi PREFACE

he will be forced generally to recognize that his thoughts and conclusions are fragmentary in character; that they need arrangement and coordination. Even though he already realize the supremacy of some particular one among them, the others need to be correctly grouped around that one, in their due relation to each other. Secondly, thus confronting admitted principles of action will bring home the shortcoming of conduct, in a manner and to a degree calculated to sober forever any undue self-appreciation.

One clear duty of old age, whether as regards personal character or unfulfilled purposes, is to gather up the fragments that remain; to redeem lost time and lost opportunity; to utilize what is left of powers which may have begun to fail, and the remnants of thought or knowledge lying still at loose ends. Such economy, which makes the householder to prosper, is still more needful to the life; as the one exceeds the other in importance. Never is this more urgently true than when the time, always short, has become surely scant.

That which is offered here is literally fragmentary, in origin and in essential characteristics; the purely occasional results, yielded to reflection and to experience in the course of life, noted as they occurred. It was the purpose of the author to emphasize this fact by a title: Fragments that Remain ; but this was found to have been used already

PREFACE vii by another writer. The attempt certainly has been made to weave these disconnected thoughts into a coherent whole, presenting a certain sequence of arrangement; but there is in this nothing of the elaboration which inheres in the word "system." The utmost that has been sought is the predominance of a particular thought, which, by a process resembling that of natural selection, has come to be the centre around which all else groups itself, in relation and subordination.

That thought is that man to-day is susceptible of an enthusiasm for Jesus Christ, resembHng, but surpassing, that which has been shown in past times for this or that historical character in many nations; and that this enthusiasm is love, because it is inspired less by His mighty deeds than by the sense of the excellence of His Person, and by realization of personal relation to Him. In this respect His supremacy is so absolute and unapproachable that He alone among the sons of men stands the adequate object of affection; not to this nation or that, not to this epoch or the other, but to universal mankind and to every age. The single motive, for the honor of Christ, — or as He put it for Himself, for the glory of God, — is alone full of light. It unifies all action and solves all perplexities. Nothing new ^ No; only always new.

An expression has been attributed to Napoleon, that the enthusiasm, which was stirred in his armies

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PREFACE by his presence on a battle field, was still aroused after eighteen centuries by the Name of Jesus Christ, in myriads who had never seen Him; so that for Him too they were ready to die. Whether truly attributed or not, the words are truth; and they are true because He lives now, and His unseen presence is the life of His followers.

There are many who apply to Christian life the test of our Lord's words : He that hath My Commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loves Me. Comparatively, little heed is given to His other saying, which observes the order of true sequence. If a man love Me, he will keep My Commandments. Life is impoverished by the conception which puts work first, love second; for this reverses the order of cause and effect. The riches of Christ are unsearchable; but chief among them is the gift of love for Himself. It is a gift, not an acquisition.

Contents

Chapter Page

I Power i

II Likeness 56

III Intercourse 88

IV Fulfilment 182

V Hope 248

The Harvest Within

Chapter I Power

THE "Life of the Christian" and "The Christian Life" may seem at first sight to be interchangeable expressions; but they are not. They are indeed closely related, as cause to effect. Yet the distinction is real; and it is not without purpose that The Life of the Christian has been chosen to designate the leading theme of this present writing.

The Christian Life signifies more exactly what we call in general the conduct of life, — the acceptance of principles, the establishment therefrom of habits and methods, the daily regulating of times and occupations, the whole issuing in a series of actions, a set course of life, conformed to the words and example of Jesus Christ. An instance of such systematized life, a model held up to us as an illustration, is the " Christian Year," ordered by the Church for the due and proportioned remembrance, and observance, of the chief historical events in the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ; preeminently those set forth in the

Creeds. By this means the Church keeps the characteristic features of that Life, in due order of succession, ever before her members, as the exemplar to which they are to conform their own; this graphic teaching being elucidated and enforced by set prayers and passages from the Word of God, bringing out the full significance of the historical facts. Further, these facts, when confessed by the mouth and embraced by the heart,^ become effectual in the Life of the Christian. Features in the Life of his Lord, manifesting His power, they are assimilated to, and become powers in, the life of the follower, by his union with Him. Thus it is written, "Your life is hid with Christ in God." ^ For the Life of the Christian is an interior condition, of which the Christian Life is the outward expression. The interior condition is that of Faith, and thereby of vital union with Jesus Christ,^ through the appointed joints and bands ;^ a union so complete as to associate, even to identify, us with Him in those historical sequences of His Life which are recited in the Creeds. This union, to use His own simile, is as close and real as that by which the vine-branch shares the root and vigor of the vine.^

Lest the nature of this Life of the Christian should be misconceived, it must from the outset be noted, and should be carefully distinguished, that this simile of Christ's does not warrant any pantheistic conception, any idea of loss of personality in a

* Romans, x, 8-11. ^ Colossians, iii, 3. ^ Galatians, iii, 25-29. ^ Colossians, ii, 19. Ephesians, i, 22-23; ^^y ^^' ^ St. John, XV, 1-6.

Divine essence. On the contrary, just because the Life of God is characteristically personal, this Life from Him deriving is personal, increasedly over that which for distinction v^e call the natural life. The branch does not cease to exist, distinct as a branch, because it draws its life from the vine. Thus we have union with Christ in that new human nature of which His Incarnation is the origin and the abiding source; union with Him in His Life of humiliation and obedience, of which His Birth, and acceptance of unsinful human infirmities, are the visible expression; union with Him in His Sufferings, in His Crucifixion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. In such wise are these incidents of His Life realized to those who live in Him, that it can be said of them with exactness, as does St. Paul : crucified with Christ, dead with Christ, buried with Christ, risen with Christ, ascended with Christ.^ Our Lord's simile embraces implicitly all these explicit amplifications of the Apostle, the life of the branch being the extension of the life of the Vine; contingent always, be it remembered, upon abiding in Him. Whatever of virtue — that is, of power — there was in those deeds of Him Who was God as well as Man abides in measure in His followers also; and this power — the dwelling in Christ and Christ in him — ^ is the Life of the Christian, his own in present possession, though not his own in origin, in accomplishment, nor in maintenance.

^ Galatians, ii, 20; vi, 14. Romans, vi, 4-1 1. 2 Corinthians, v, 14. Romans, vi, 2, 3. Colossians, ii, 20; 9-13; iii, i. Ephesians, ii, 4-6. ^ St. John, vi, 56, 57; XV, 4-6. i St. John, ii, 24.

This derivation of life is as actual as is that of natural life from the line of ancestry preceding it; but it differs in that the gift of natural life is mediate, through man though from God, and, once bestowed, is independent of the human medium; whereas the spiritual life, the Life of the Christian, is immediate in its derivation from Christ, who is the Personal giver, and the condition of dependence is perpetual. Severance is death. St. Paul speaks of this condition as being a new creation, a new man,^ created in Christ Jesus for good works. ^ Or, as St. Peter and St. James write, God has begotten us anew unto a living hope, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the Word of God which liveth and abideth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.^ All three but echo the saying of the Master, Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.* St. Paul again in a striking passage sums up the matter in these words : I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me; and that life which I now live in the flesh, I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.^

Here, at the threshold of the Life which is the Christian's, in the word Faith, we meet an impediment over which many stumble, needlessly and even wilfully, groping at noonday as in the night. So it was written beforehand concerning Him and them,

* 2 Corinthians, V, 17. Ephesians, ii, 13-16; iv, 20-24. Colosslans, iii, 10, 11. ^ Ephesians, ii, 10.

^ I St. Peter, i, 3, 4, 23. St. James, i, 18.

* St. John, iii, 3. ^ Galatians, ii, 20.

I lay in Zion a chief corner stone; and he that believeth on Him shall not be confounded. But unto them which be disobedient, the same stone which to the believing is the head of the corner, becomes the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence.^ For the subject matter of the Faith is a Person, — Jesus Christ.^ Faith is the condition of our union with Him, and through Him with that which He revealed : God the Father, and our true life. Faith is the act by which Man, on his part, lays hold upon the Life which God, on His part, tenders continually to all men.^ Hence, unbelief — towards God — and disobedience — to a revealed law of life — are interchangeable terms, the two sides of the same shield, and the fault common to both is in the will. Let not a violent disclaimer provoke the impatient here to close discussion by the premature assertion that Faith is not a matter of will. Rather let him consider whether his own conception of Faith be not responsible for a misapprehension of far reaching, yes, of decisive, consequence.

For, in considering the Life of the Christian, we must face the facts at once, and perceive that Faith, whereby the Christian lays hold on life, is on the human side an act of the will; and that therefore man is responsible for its presence or absence in himself. There is a Divine side to Faith; but to

^ Isaiah, xxviii, i6. i St. Peter, ii, 6-8. St. Matthew, xxi, 42-44.

^ Acts, xvi, 31; XX, 21; xxiv, 24; xxvi, 18. St. John, xiv, i. Ephesians, i, 15. Colossians, ii, 5.

^ St. John, iii, 17. i Timothy, ii, 4; iv, 10. Titus, ii, 11. 2 St. Peter, iii, 9.

that God will not be wanting. The full responsibility therefore rests on the man, nor can he shake it by any disclaimer. It remains, whether he will or not.

Dr. Johnson, as reported by Boswell, has summed up the case with his accustomed shrewdness and point. Speaking of human life in the general, he said, "A man must accept life on the terms upon which it is offered to him." His will must conform to the conditions as he finds them. In the immediate instance he was talking about drinking wine, as pertinent to both himself and his hearer. He had a strong head, but lacked self-control; if he drank at all he was constitutionally Uable to excess. He accepted the condition, and took refuge in entire abstinence. "Now, the wine on the table has for me no more attraction than for the dog under the table." Boswell had a weak head; in consequence was not seldom overcome. He did not accept the condition, and the weakness increased upon him to his destruction. It is the same with any bodily trouble. A man of consumptive tendency, of weak heart, or other infirmity, must accept the condition and order his life accordingly. If not, the condition proves too much for him. In either event, his action is one of his will. What is here noted, of certain particular conditions, is evidently true of all the circumstances, external or internal, environment or heredity, which attend upon any calling or personality. It is true also of those physical conditions which we style loosely the "laws" of Nature; for example, gravitation, and the inability of man's life to exist under water. We have to accept the condition that we cannot safely throw ourselves from a height or into the sea.

It may be presumed that all who are devotionally familiar with the text and spirit of the New Testament, the Christian Code and Charter, will agree that the decisive condition, upon which the gift of the Life of the Christian is offered to men, is summed up in one expression, "We walk by faith, not by sight." ^ The verb "walk," by a metaphor very common in the Bible, expresses the whole of living, the inner life and the ordered conduct. The condition by which both are to be ruled is "faith, not sight." We may, if we choose, refuse to accept the condition; but in that case we cannot reasonably expect the result. The Life of the Christian, with all its present powers, the powers of the Holy Ghost and of the world to come,^ and with its immense and glorious future, can be received and retained only under the condition that we will discipline our inner motives and order our outward lives, conform our principles and our practices, to the commands of One Whom we have not seen, and with reference to issues of which we have no other assurance than His words, credibly transmitted to us. To do this is an act of Faith ; it is also evidently an act of the will. A man may do it, or may not do it, as he chooses; but in either case he exercises his will, and incurs responsibility.

It will be recognized, of course, that this state-

^ 2 Corinthians, v, 7; iv, 18. Romans, viii, 18-25. See also Hebrews, xi, with special reference to xii, 1-12. ^ Hebrews, vi, 4-6.

ment confronts at once a strong prepossession. The minds of men are possessed beforehand with the impression that because one aspect of Faith is belief, intellectual acceptance, therefore that is the whole of Faith. A palpable non sequitur, true, but one endued with all the power of resolute ignorance. Faith is belief; a man cannot believe by an action of the will; therefore a man cannot by using his will exercise faith. So runs the unformulated syllogism which has resulted in a devastating practical fallacy.

It win be asked then : If Faith be more than belief, what is Faith .? A reply is due, yet categorical definition is impossible; if attempted, an essay of demonstration would be needed in explanation and support. Faith, like light, is complex; it can be analyzed into several components, as the prism resolves the light of the sun into several colors, each of which possesses its peculiar virtue and its particular influence in the whole result. Primarily, Faith has its subjective and objective aspects. It is on the one hand a faculty, or power, of the man himself; while on the other it is directed towards, rests upon, something external to him. The two correspond, are correlative. Faith appears in one form as a conclusion of the intellect, resting upon ' reasons which fall short of perception by the senses, and to this aspect modern prepossession has sought 1 to confine it; but the words "trust" and "confidence," closely cognate to Faith, as the etymology of confidence shows, represent phases of Faith which are moral in character.

Again, Faith is susceptible of growth, Hke any other faculty. On the intellectual side, it may be increased by the accumulation of evidence, or by deeper reflection; it will even gather vigor by simple abiding in the assurance in which it began, ^ unconsciously, as a plant grows. On the moral side, confidence and trust, in one's self or in Another, can develop under repeated experiences, which are the external or objective sustenance of Faith; or they do so by repeated exercise, which is an internal effort of the will. Thus it was charged as a moral fault against the Israehtes in the wilderness, that, though they had seen the works of God, had had experience of Him, they had not known His ways; ^ had not, as we say, profited by their experience, so as to perceive with the mind and obey with the will.

It is unreasonable to expect that the faith in which a man first comes to Christ, and accepts Him as Lord and Master, should have reached already the full power of belief expressed in the word "Conviction," which is the ripened harvest of Faith on the intellectual and moral sides. Conviction, both in common usage and by derivation, conveys an idea stronger than that of a certainty possessed. A convinced man does not so much possess, as is possessed by, "conquered'' {con-vinco) by, the belief which he holds. The first disciples followed Christ, when their faith was by His own definition less than a grain of mustard seed.^ It was inadequate as yet to full moral effect

^ Hebrews, Hi, 14.

^ St. Matthew, xvii, 19-21. St. Luke, xvii, 5, 6.

upon life; intellectually, it was for the time incapable of understanding His plainest speech; but it none the less held the germ of the mighty works of the Faith which revolutionized Europe, and will yet revolutionize the world.

The confidence, the trust, of a little child is probably the completest illustration of Faith on its moral side.^ It is unreasoning, and in so far defective; yet it is not unreasonable, for, however unconsciously, it rests upon experience, usually of the conduct, the "works," of a person whom the child knows. As a rule, an infant shrinks from those whom it does not know, of whom it has no experience. Doubtless, we all throughout life trust persons, but other considerations enter and modify. The confidence is not simple, single-eyed, as is that of a child. The child does not know what the person will do next, nor whither he is taking him at any particular moment; like the father of the faithful, "he goes out, not knowing whither he goes." ^ This manifests the power of Faith over action ; but does not supply the reasonable basis for a full grown man to trust a Person whom he has not seen, before he has experience of Him. The faith of the child befits the child; but the man not only must, but should, put away childish things. Yet what a loss of comfort and of strength that putting away means we all know, and what a weary way to travel back to reach once more the child's trust in the Father. To know Thee,

^ St. Matthew, xviii, 3; xix, 14. St. Mark, x, 15. St. Luke, xviii, 17.

^ Hebrews, xi, 8. Acts, vii, 2-5.

POWER II the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent, ^ is in chief measure a matter of experience, Hke that of a child's.

With these two examples before us, viz., the growth of the Apostles' faith and the realized completeness of a child's trust, — upon which his future as well as present depends, — together with the power over action which Faith in both instances shows, we have at once the motive for effort and the guide as to its direction and reasonable expectations. A man need not demand of himself at the beginning more than the less than the grain of mustard seed. The Apostles followed Christ, not because they saw in Him what Christians now believe, nor yet for purely unselfish reasons. "What shall we have therefor.?"^ was doubtless a question with the Twelve, and not with St. Peter only. Yet, with all the loss and doubts and uncertainties revealed by the question, they nevertheless had made a definite choice, moral in character and resting upon reasons. They had forsaken all and followed Christ, had made a choice between Him and seeming self-interest; and that choice was motived by the recognition, however imperfect and dim, of a character, of a Person,^ of Him. These two — the choice and the Person — are the chief elements of religious faith.

We may, therefore, without great probable error, and for present purposes, define Faith as being in its beginnings a moral choice, resting upon confidence in a Person, and carried into practical action, to which

^ St. John, xvii, 3. ^ gj.^ Matthew, xix, 27; xx, 20-24.

intellectual certainty is subordinate in place and may be subsequent in time. Thus St. Paul writes, If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved ; for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.^ Here also appeal may confidently be made to the conditions upon which the Life of the Christian is offered. From the Master Himself come the words. If any man willeth to do God's will, — will "walk" in the sense above defined, — he shall know the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself.' Moral choice, to do God's will, results ultimately in knowledge, a condition of the intellect. Yet not of the intellect only; there is heart knowledge as well as brain knowledge. There is a knowledge also which escapes analysis, the one accurate account of which is embraced in the word "conviction," a knowledge directly ministered to man by the Spirit of God. So also in moral choice the intellect enters, discerning good from evil; but that which chooses the good is the will. But, it may be replied. This is a natural process; many men thus choose good and reject evil without being Christians, with no claim or thought of a living union with Christ by Faith. Undoubtedly. Christianity — which is Christ — denies not the good that is in man. He came to fulfil,^ not only the Law and the Prophets, the best that man knew before His time, but whatsoever else of good is found in man and through man. A Christian may in no

^ Romans, x, 9, 10. ^ St. John, vii, 17.

wise presume to contemn those who follow righteousness as they understand it, nor to speak lightly of their good deeds. Nevertheless, the Christian may not be backward to affirm that there is a better way, — a best way — which alone will fulfil all this, even as Christ does the Law and the Prophets; and that they who by their own neglect (which is their own will) do not choose that best way, fall short of the life which is God's gift to the Christian. They fall short of its powers, and may fall short of its rewards, by incurring the responsibility of an erring moral choice. The commands of Christ are not fully obeyed, the deeds He commands are not perfectly done, if they are done on their own merits merely and not in devotion to Him.

The moral or spiritual value of acts depends upon the motive. A man may discipline his body to make it a fitting instrument in God's service, or he may do the same to win a match. To substitute self-approval, walking by the sight of one's own eyes or judgment, for the approval of God, which is to walk by faith, involves a radical change of motive. Though the act remain identical, its spiritual significance is altered, and therewith its spiritual worth. The term "sight" applies as exactly to any form of simple self-dependence as it does to the evidence of the senses on which Science bases its conclusions. Dr. Johnson justly remarked that even ** religious exercises, if not performed with an intention to please God, avail us nothing. As our Saviour says of those who perform them for other motives, *They have their reward.'^ " ^ St. Matthew, vi, 1-18.

The words of St. Paul, "They who run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize," ^ ^pply exactly to the competition of motives in the same person. If the supreme motive be Christ, the reward will be one; if self-approval, or other lawful motive, another; if unlawful, a third.

The highest moral achievement is not the will to follow righteousness, nor yet the following it. The supreme moral choice is to follow righteousness because it is the expression of God's Being and God's Will. Faith has to do with a Person; it is the choice of good because it is God's good. In nothing was more conspicuous the downward tendency of a recent falling from faith than when the man said, of the Sermon on the Mount, " These things I accept, not because Christ said them, but because they commend themselves to my conscience, to my own moral sense." It would be difficult to phrase more pathetically the distinction between human righteousness and God's righteousness; a phase of that which St. Paul teaches in his antithesis of Faith and Works.

Faith, therefore, is the choice of good in devotion to God. There is herein a fullness of life and of joy which exalts the creature as no following of righteousness for its own sake, or as satisfying one's own conscience can do; because the ground for satisfaction is shifted from the pleasing of self to the pleasing of God, from self-approval to God's approval. The reasonableness of this must be manifest to any who will discard prepossession and recognize human nature as it is, — the conditions ^ I Corinthians, ix, 24-27.

upon which our common life is offered to us. What we need in life is not only a right choice and effort. We need also fullness, power; and in human Hfe, as we know it historically, there is no force so universal and supreme as that of devotion — love

to a person. Where it enters there enters a fullness of motive and of energy to which naught else compares. "It is lord of all." That it is often transient; that it is often aroused by an unworthy object; that it is itself too often defiled with baser impulses, — all these deductions only emphasize the more its might, in that even when alloyed or debased it remains supreme. We may think it were better otherwise; but, Johnson again, there it is, one of the conditions — the greatest — on which even our common life is offered us. Give to love permanency, intrinsic purity of motive, growing intensity, and a worthy object, and there is added to the life of man a wealth, not of happiness only, but of power; and not of power only, but of a selfpurifying agency which by its own action continually exalts character by subjecting self. And let it be remembered, as a leading factor in the Christian argument, that this love is not merely a human love for God, but the "love of God"; that is, God's own love, made ours in our measure by our vital union with Jesus Christ. As man grows spiritually, God's love, almighty, pure, enduring "to the end," ^ is wrought in man and becomes his own. Consider what God's love is, as manifested to us; not in its fullness, intrinsically, for that we cannot