MOTIVES OF WORK FOR GOD
‘I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.’
We are living in a day that will be remembered for the nobility of its aims. From the student in our colleges to the working-man in his club the world is pulsing with high aims.
I. Character is a product: what we need is the force that produces it.—If, with Mazzini, we set aside the house for the man who is to live in it, we must, if we are to succeed, set aside the man for that which is to reside in him if he is to be a man at all. We are not to tie clusters of grapes on to the branch. Our motive touches that very thing which will produce the grapes itself. Not conditions. Not character. ‘I came—that they may have life.’ There is our aim—Life. To link up life with Life: to wedge the graft into the Stock and fold it round with clay, till in that secrecy where no eye can ever penetrate the tiny sap-cells of the branch burst into the greater sap-cells of the Tree, and severed life is one with abundant Life— this is the compelling motive that brought the world’s supreme benefaction, and that accounts for all the wonder of that ‘I am come.’ And it is as we allow ourselves to be caught up into the passion of that Divine aim that we possess also a power that will reach to the extremest human need, and work out for victory in the end.
II. At what precise point, psychologically and spiritually, shall ‘life’ in Christ’s sense of the word be found?—The question is a concrete one. We have special men and women for whom we are anxious before our mind. The question is a religious one. We care not as to how, philosophically, life may be attained; but, quite practically, how has ‘life’ as an actual fact been won? Take the most potent lives you can find. How and where did this new force come into them? Take, e.g., John Wesley. What empowers him, according to his own Journal, is not so much the earnest self-discipline of his Oxford days, or the Holy Club, or of his work for the S.P.G. in the States, as his new experience at the age of thirty-five, realised first at the meeting in Aldersgate Street. ‘I felt,’ he says, ‘my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given unto me that He had taken away my sins.’ Or take John Bunyan, or St. Paul himself. How did these men, men in each case the movers of millions, receive Life? In each case by the assurance of an overwhelming love that embraced them there as they stood—an assurance of the rush of God into their souls, Who, by His own self-sacrifice, had cut out the intercepting barrier of sin, and their life was one with His. In a word, in each case the point at which they receive Life is the Cross.
Christ Jesus came that we may have life. He came, He tells us also, that we may have it abundantly. There are two supreme discoveries in our human experience. The first is the discovery of the Cross: there is life. The second is the discovery of the Blessed Sacrament: there is the ‘ abundant life.’ And happy are we if we know them both in their miraculous power. For these twain are one. And just as we never really know the Sacrament without the Cross, so do we never really know the continuous life that flows from Calvary without the Sacrament.
III. Here, it would seem, is the Christian’s aim in the present day.—Our aim is ‘Life.’ And by that we mean not conditions only, not education only, not character only; but that revivifying from within of man’s entire being. We mean that reanimation of his inner spirit which can only come by making proper contact with the great Divine Spirit. And, through the despair and gloom and paralysis and ruin produced by sin, this union with God is adequately secured by the acceptance of the Cross, and adequately maintained, by constant resetting and renewal, in that sacrament ordained to perpetuate this very thing. Thus, in a perfectly natural and personal way, love answers to love, and the man lives.
Rev. H. Gresford Jones.
Illustration
‘In the refectory of the Madeleine at Florence, there is a picture by Perugino, and in the central cartoon he reveals to us, in a fair sunlit valley, two figures alone—the Crucified Saviour and one kneeling at His feet. Words fail us before the world’s most glorious vision of perfect holiness and perfect love. The artist is true. When we do find ourselves there we are quite alone, and it is very beautiful and full of sunshine.’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE GIFT OF LIFE
Life is the gift of God. Look at it in the gift of nature. From the lowest to the highest, from the highest to the lowest, we see life given to man, and man, the creature, is to use it again. No mere effort of the mind, no mere emotion, no power of civilisation can grant to man the gift of Divine Life; that stands out in contradistinction to his natural life. We watch man as a complex being.
There are the two spheres, the two great kingdoms: the kingdom of the natural life, the kingdom of the spiritual.
I. In baptism the tiny seed is sown, and man in time becomes conscious of that life within him; is conscious of the throb of a strange life that is not his own—that life which strives to live amid all the adverse powers that surround it. Watch, I say, man at length conscious of the presence of that Divine Life in his being. See, first of all, the human will, uncertain, unreliable, afraid of this life that has entered into the being of man. See the heart stirred by the presence of this gift of Divine Life, and yet shrinking from it. It is a consuming fire that will burn up all that is contrary to the Giver of that Life, God Himself. Watch, again, as the passions one by one rally their forces and determine at whatever cost to destroy this gift of Divine Life. Reason stands on one side, and rebels against the demands made by this gift of life. Such is the seed of Divine Life sown in the being of man, so small that it looks as if it must perish, that it must give way before the natural powers.
II. This life has been developed.—It must be used, and so we kneel down and make our plans. We want to advance in the spiritual life. We cannot bear to stay exactly in the spot in which we find ourselves to-day. We make our plans for the future. We make good and true rules, and then, when the future comes, I dare say things do not work out exactly as we want them to. We are disappointed, we are cast down. We must wait for God to work in His own way. We must not hurry Him; we must leave all to Him. See, in the world of nature, the patient farmer casts the seed to the ground, he waits till the precious weeks are past; he may be disappointed, but he trusts. So surely we must trust God. We must trust Him as He has given this life to us, that it will increase more and more day by day.
III. What must I do with this great gift of life?—Use it for the salvation of my own soul? Use it in the life that I live upon earth, wherever it is lived, to glorify God? Is that all? God forbid! Go forth with the power of it, and bring some hope and consolation to those who know it not. That surely is the work of those who realise that they have the gift of life: that they go forth and use it. And nothing, if they will, shall conquer it, because to limit its power would be to limit the power of God. When you are tempted to despair, or to grow lax, or to give up, listen to those words rolling over the centuries that have passed, ‘I am come that they might have Life.’ And then, when perhaps the battle waxes sore, and you feel you must fall, you will never triumph, listen again, not only ‘that they might have Life,’ but ‘that they might have it more abundantly.’
Rev. G. R. Wynn-Griffith.
Illustration
‘The service of Christ is the business of my life.
The will of Christ is the law of my life.
The presence of Christ is the joy of my life.
The glory of Christ is the crown of my life.’