" Is not the evidence of Ease on
the very front of all the greatest works in existence? Do they not
say plainly to us, not `there has been a great effort here,' but
`there has been a great power here'? It is not the weariness of
mortality but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognise in all
mighty things; and that is just what we now never recognise, but think
that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration; alas!
we shall do nothing that way, but lose some pounds of our own weight."
RUSKIN.
"Consider the lilies of the field how
they grow."--The Sermon on the Mount.
" Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia
dicit."--Juvenal.
WHAT gives the peculiar point to this object-lesson
from the lips of Jesus is, that He not only made the illustration, but
made the lilies. It is like an inventor describing his own machine. He
made the lilies and He made me--both on the same broad principle. Both
together, man and flower, He planted deep in the Providence of God; but
as men are dull at studying themselves He points to this companion-phenomenon
to teach us how to live a free and natural life, a life which God will
unfold for us, without our anxiety, as He unfolds the flower. For Christ's
words are not a general appeal to consider nature. Men are not to consider
the lilies simply to admire their beauty, to dream over the delicate strength
and grace of stem and leaf. The point they were to consider was how
they grew--how without anxiety or care the flower woke into loveliness,
how without weaving these leaves were woven, how without toiling these
complex tissues spun themselves, and how without any effort or friction
the whole slowly came ready-made from the loom of God in its more than
Solomon-like glory. `So,' He says, making the application beyond dispute,'
you care-worn, anxious men must grow. You, too, need take no thought for
your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink or what ye shall put
on. For if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow
is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little
faith? `
This nature-lesson was a great novelty in
its day; but all men now who have even a "little faith" have
learned this Christian secret of a composed life. Apart even from the parable
of the lily, the failures of the past have taught most of us the folly
of disquieting ourselves in vain, and we have given up the idea that by
taking thought we can add a cubit to our stature.
But no sooner has our life settled down to
this calm trust in God than a new and graver anxiety begins. This time
it is not for the body we are in travail, but for the soul. For the temporal
life we have considered the lilies, but how is the spiritual life to grow?
How are we to become better men? How are we to grow in grace? By what thought
shall we add the cubits to the spiritual stature and reach the fulness
of the Perfect Man? And because we know ill how to do this, the old anxiety
comes back again and our inner life is once more an agony of conflict and
remorse. After all, we have but transferred our anxious thoughts from the
body to the soul. Our efforts after Christian growth seem only a succession
of failures, and instead of rising into the beauty of holiness our life
is a daily heartbreak and humiliation.
Now the reason of this is very plain. We
have forgotten the parable of the lily. Violent efforts to grow are right
in earnestness, but wholly wrong in principle. There is but one principle
of growth both for the natural and spiritual, for animal and plant, for
body and soul. For all growth is an organic thing. And the principle of
growing in grace is once more this, "Consider the lilies how they
grow."
In seeking to extend the analogy from
the body to the soul there are two things about the lilies' growth, two
characteristics of all growth, on which one must fix attention. These are,--
First, Spontaneousness.
Second, Mysteriousness.
I. Spontaneousness. There are three lines
along which one may seek for evidence of the spontaneousness of growth.
The first is Science. And the argument here could not be summed up better
than in the words of Jesus. The lilies grow, He says, of themselves; they
toil not, neither do they spin. They grow, that is, automatically, spontaneously,
without trying, without fretting, without thinking. Applied in any direction,
to plant, to animal, to the body or to the soul this law holds. A boy grows,
for example, without trying. One or two simple conditions are fulfilled,
and the growth goes on. He thinks probably as little about the condition
as about the result; he fulfils the conditions by habit, the result follows
by nature. Both processes go steadily on from year to year apart from himself
and all but in spite of himself. One would never think of telling a
boy to grow. A doctor has no prescription for growth. He can tell me how
growth may be stunted or impaired, but the process itself is recognised
as beyond control--one of the few, and therefore very significant, things
which Nature keeps in her own hands. No physician of souls, in like manner,
has any prescription for spiritual growth. It is the question he is most
often asked and most often answers wrongly. He may prescribe more earnestness,
more prayer, more self-denial, or more Christian work. These are prescriptions
for something, but not for growth. Not that they may not encourage growth;
but the soul grows as the lily grows, without trying, without fretting,
without ever thinking. Manuals of devotion, with complicated rules for
getting on in the Christian life, would do well sometimes to return to
the simplicity of nature; and earnest souls who are attempting sanctification
by struggle instead of sanctification by faith might be spared much humiliation
by learning the botany of the Sermon on the Mount. There can indeed
be no other principle of growth than this. It is a vital act. And to try
to make a thing grow is as absurd as to help the tide to come in
or the sun rise.
Another argument for the spontaneousness
of growth is universal experience. A boy not only grows without trying,
but he cannot grow if he tries. No man by taking thought has ever added
a cubit to his stature; nor has any man by mere working at his soul ever
approached nearer to the stature of the Lord Jesus. The stature of the
Lord Jesus was not itself reached by work, and he who thinks to approach
its mystical height by anxious effort is really receding from it. Christ's
life unfolded itself from a divine germ, planted centrally in His nature,
which grew as naturally as a flower from a bud. This flower may be imitated;
but one can always tell an artificial flower. The human form may be copied
in wax, yet somehow one never fails to detect the difference. And this
precisely is the difference between a native growth of Christian principle
and the moral copy of it. The one is natural, the other mechanical. The
one is a growth, the other an accretion. Now this, according to modern
biology, is the fundamental distinction between the living and the not
living, between an organism and a crystal. The living organism grows, the
dead crystal increases. The first grows vitally from within, the last adds
new particles from the outside. The whole difference between the Christian
and the moralist lies here. The Christian works from the centre, the moralist
from the circumference. The one is an organism, in the centre of which
is planted by the living God a living germ. The other is a crystal, very
beautiful it may be; but only a crystal--it wants the vital principle of
growth.
And one sees here also, what is sometimes
very difficult to see, why salvation in the first instance is never connected
directly with morality. The reason is not that salvation does not demand
morality, but that it demands so much of it that :he moralist can never
reach up to it. The end of Salvation is perfection, the Christlike mind,
character and life. Morality is on the way to this perfection; it may go
a considerable distance towards it, but it can never reach it. Only Life
can do that. It requires something with enormous power of movement, of
growth, of overcoming obstacles, to attain the perfect. Therefore the man
who has within himself this great formative agent, Life, is nearer the
end than the man who has morality alone. The latter can never reach perfection;
the former must. For the Life must develop out according to its
type; and being a germ of the Christ-life, it must unfold into a Christ.
Morality, at the utmost, only develops the character in one or two
directions. It may perfect a single virtue here and there, but it cannot
perfect all. And especially it fails always to give that rounded harmony
of parts, that perfect tune to the whole orchestra, which is the marked
characteristic of life. Perfect life is not merely the possessing of perfect
functions, but of perfect functions perfectly adjusted to each other and
all conspiring to a single result, the perfect working of the whole organism.
It is not said that the character will develop in all its fulness in this
life. That were a time too short for an Evolution so magnificent. In this
world only the cornless ear is seen; sometimes only the small yet still
prophetic blade. The sneer at the godly man for his imperfections is ill-judged.
A blade is a small thing. At first it grows very near the earth. It is
often soiled and crushed and downtrodden. But it is a living thing. That
great dead stone beside it is more imposing; only it will never be anything
else than a stone. But this small blade--it doth not yet appear what
it shall be.
Seeing now that Growth can only be synonymous
with a living automatic process, it is all but superfluous to seek a third
line of argument from Scripture. Growth there is always described in the
language of physiology. The regenerate soul is a new creature. The Christian
is a new man in Christ Jesus. He adds the cubits to his stature just as
the old man does. He is rooted and built up in Christ; he abides in the
vine, and so abiding, not toiling or spinning, brings forth fruit. The
Christian in short, like the poet, is born not made; and the fruits of
his character are not manufactured things but living things, things which
have grown from the secret germ, the fruits of the living Spirit. They
are not the produce of this climate, but exotics from a sunnier land.
II. But, secondly, besides this Spontaneousness
there is this other great characteristic of Growth--Mysteriousness. Upon
this quality depends the fact, probably, that so few men ever fathom its
real character We are most unspiritual always in dealing with the simplest
spiritual things. A lily grows mysteriously, pushing up its solid weight
of stem and leaf in the teeth of gravity. Shaped into beauty by secret
and invisible fingers, the flower develops we know not how. But we do not
wonder at it. Every day the thing is done; it is Nature, it is God. We
are spiritual enough at least to understand that. But when the soul rises
slowly above the world, pushing up its delicate virtues in the teeth of
sin, shaping itself mysteriously into the image of Christ, we deny that
the power is not of man. A strong will, we say, a high ideal, the reward
of virtue, Christian influence,--these will account for it. Spiritual character
is merely the product of anxious work, self-command, and self-denial. We
allow, that is to say, a miracle to the lily, but none to the man. The
lily may grow; the man must fret and toil and spin.
Now grant for a moment that by hard work
and self-restraint a man may attain to a very high character. It is not
denied that this can be done. But what is denied is that this is growth,
and that this process is Christianity. The fact that you can account for
it proves that it is not growth. For growth is mysterious; the peculiarity
of it is that you cannot account for it. Mysteriousness, as Mozley has
well observed, is "the test of spiritual birth." And this was
Christ's test. "The wind bloweth where it listeth. Thou hearest the
sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth,
so is every one that is born of the Spirit". The test of spirituality
is that you cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. If you can
tell, if you can account for it on philosophical principles, on the doctrine
of influence, on strength of will, on a favourable environment, it is not
growth. It may be so far a success, it may be a perfectly honest, even
remarkable, and praiseworthy imitation, but it is not the real thing. The
fruits are wax, the flowers artificial--you can tell whence it cometh and
whither it goeth.
The conclusion is, then, that the Christian
is a unique phenomenon. You cannot account for him. And if you could he
would not be a Christian. Mozley has drawn the two characters for us in
graphic words: "Take an ordinary man of the world--what he thinks
and what he does, his whole standard of duty is taken from the society
in which he lives. It is a borrowed standard: he is as good as other people
are; he does, in the way of duty, what is generally considered proper and
becoming among those with whom his lot is thrown. He reflects established
opinion on such points. He follows its lead. His aims and objects in life
again are taken from the world around him, and from its dictation. What
it considers honourable, worth having, advantageous and good, he thinks
so too and pursues it. His motives all come from a visible quarter. It
would be absurd to say that there is any mystery in such a character as
this, because it is formed from a known external influence--the influence
of social opinion and the voice of the world. `Whence such a character
cometh' we see; we venture to say that the source and origin of it is open
and palpable, and we know it just as we know the physical causes of many
common facts."
Then there is the other. "There is a
certain character and disposition of mind of which it is true to say that
`thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.' . . . There
are those who stand out from among the crowd, which reflects merely the
atmosphere of feeling and standard of society around it, with an impress
upon them which bespeaks a heavenly birth. . . . Now, when we see one of
those characters, it is a question which we ask ourselves, How has the
person become possessed of it? Has he caught it from society around him?
That cannot be, because it is wholly different from that of the world around
him. Has he caught it from the inoculation of crowds and masses, as the
mere religious zealot catches his character? That cannot be either,
for the type is altogether different from that which masses of men, under
enthusiastic impulses, exhibit. There is nothing gregarious in this character;
it is the individual's own; it is not borrowed, it is not a reflection
of any fashion or tone of the world outside; it rises up from some fount
within, and it is a creation of which the text says, We know not whence
it cometh.
Now we have all met these two characters--the
one eminently respectable, upright, virtuous, a trifle cold perhaps, and
generally, when critically examined, revealing somehow the mark of the
tool; the other with God's breath still upon it, an inspiration; not more
virtuous, but differently virtuous; not more humble, but different, wearing
the meek and quiet spirit artlessly as to the manner born. The other-worldliness
of such a character is the thing that strikes you; you are not prepared
for what it will do or say or become next, for it moves from a far-off
centre, and in spite of its transparency and sweetness, that presence fills
you always with awe. A man never feels the discord of his own life, never
hears the jar of the machinery by which he tries to manufacture his own
good points, till he has stood in the stillness of such a presence. Then
he discerns the difference between growth and work. He has considered the
lilies, how they grow.
We have now seen that spiritual growth is
a process maintained and secured by a spontaneous and mysterious inward
principle. It is a spontaneous principle even in its origin, for it bloweth
where it listeth; mysterious in its operation, for we can never tell whence
it cometh; obscure in its destination, for we cannot tell whence it goeth.
The whole process therefore transcends us; we do not work, we are taken
in hand--"it is God which worketh in us, both to will and to do of
His good pleasure." We do not plan--we are "created in Christ
Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk
in them."
There may be an obvious objection to all
this. It takes away all conflict from the Christian life? It makes man,
does it not, mere clay in the hands of the potter? It crushes the old character
to make a new one, and destroys man's responsibility for his own soul?
Now we are not concerned here in once more
striking the time-honoured "balance between faith and works."
We are considering how lilies grow, and in a specific connection, namely,
to discover the attitude of mind which the Christian should preserve regarding
his spiritual growth. That attitude, primarily, is to be free from care.
We are not lodging a plea for inactivity of the spiritual energies, but
for the tranquillity of the spiritual mind. Christ's protest is not against
work, but against anxious thought; and rather, therefore, than complement
the lesson by showing the other side, we take the risk of still further
extending the plea in the original direction.
What is the relation, to recur again to analogy,
between growth and work in a boy? Consciously, there is no relation at
all. The boy never thinks of connecting his work with his growth. Work
in fact is one thing and growth another, and it is so in the spiritual
life. If it be asked therefore, Is the Christian wrong in these ceaseless
and agonizing efforts after growth? the answer is, Yes, he is quite wrong,
or at least, he is quite mistaken. When a boy takes a meal or denies himself
indigestible things, he does not say, "All this will minister to my
growth"; or when he runs a race he does not say, "This will help
the next cubit of my stature." It may or it nay not be true that these
things will help his stature, but, if he thinks of this, his idea of growth
is morbid. And this is the point we are dealing with. His anxiety here
is altogether irrelevant and superfluous. Nature is far more bountiful
than we think. When she gives us energy she asks none of it back to expend
on our own growth. She will attend to that. " Give your work,"
she says, "and your anxiety to others; trust me to add the cubits
to your stature." If God is adding to our spiritual stature, unfolding
the new nature within us, it is a mistake to keep twitching at the petals
with our coarse fingers. We must seek to let the Creative Hand alone. "It
is God which giveth the increase." Yet we never know how little we
have learned of the fundamental principle of Christianity till we discover
how much we are all bent on supplementing God's free grace. If God is spending
work upon a Christian, let him be still and know that it is God. And if
he wants work, he will find it there--in the being still.
Not that there is no work for him who would
grow, to do. There is work, and severe work,-- work so great that the worker
deserves to have himself relieved of all that is superfluous during his
task. If the amount of energy lost in trying to grow were spent in fulfilling
rather the conditions of growth, we should have many more cubits to show
for our stature. It is with these conditions that the personal work of
the Christian is chiefly concerned. Observe for a moment what they are,
and their exact relation. For its growth the plant needs heat, light, air,
and moisture. A man, therefore, must go in search of these, or their spiritual
equivalents, and this is his work? By no means. The Christian's work is
not yet. Does the plant go in search of its conditions? Nay, the conditions
come to the plant. It no more manufactures the heat, light, air, and moisture,
than it manufactures its own stem. It finds them all around it in Nature.
It simply stands still with its leaves spread out in unconscious prayer,
and Nature lavishes upon it these and all other bounties, bathing it in
sunshine, pouring the nourishing air over and over it, reviving it graciously
with its nightly dew. Grace, too, is as free as the air. The Lord God is
a Sun. He is as the Dew to Israel. A man has no more to manufacture these
than he has to manufacture his own soul. He stands surrounded by them,
bathed in them, beset behind and before by them. He lives and moves and
has his being in them. How then shall he go in search of them? Do not they
rather go in search of him? Does he not feel how they press themselves
upon him? Does he not know how unweariedly they appeal to him? Has he not
heard how they are sorrowful when he will not have them? His work, therefore,
is not yet. The voice still says, "Be still."
The conditions of growth, then, and the inward
principle of growth being both supplied by Nature, the thing man has to
do, the little junction left for him to complete, is to apply the one to
the other. He manufactures nothing; he earns nothing; he need be anxious
for nothing; his one duty is to be in these conditions, to abide
in them, to allow grace to play over him, to be still therein and know
that this is God.
The conflict begins and prevails in all its
life-long agony the moment a man forgets this. He struggles to grow himself
instead of struggling to get back again into position. He makes the church
into a workshop when God meant it to be a beautiful garden. And even in
his closet, where only should reign silence--a silence as of the mountains
whereon the lilies grow--is heard the roar and tumult of machinery. True,
a man will often have to wrestle with his God--but not for growth. The
Christian life is a composed life. The Gospel is Peace. Yet the most anxious
people in the world are Christians--Christians who misunderstand the nature
of growth. Life is a perpetual self-condemning because they are not growing.
And the effect is not only the loss of tranquillity to the individual.
The energies which are meant to be spent on the work of Christ are consumed
in the soul's own fever. So long as the Church's activities are spent on
growing there is nothing to spare for the world. A soldier's time is not
spent in earning the money to buy his armour, in finding food and raiment,
in seeking shelter. His king provides these things that he may be the more
at liberty to fight his battles. So, for the soldier of the Cross all is
provided. His Government has planned to leave him free for the Kingdom's
work.
The problem of the Christian life finally
is simplified to this--man has but to preserve the right attitude. To abide
in Christ, to be in position, that is all. Much work is done on board a
ship crossing the Atlantic. Yet none of it is spent on making the ship
go. The sailor but harnesses his vessel to the wind. He puts his sail and
rudder in position, and lo, the miracle is wrought. So everywhere God creates,
man utilizes. All the work of the world is merely a taking advantage of
energies already there. God gives the wind, and the water, and the heat;
man but puts himself in the way of the wind, fixes his water-wheel in the
way of the river, puts his piston in the way of the steam; and so holding
himself in position before God's Spirit, all the energies of Omnipotence
course within his soul. He is like a tree planted by a river whose leaf
is green and whose fruits fail not. Such is the deeper lesson to be learned
from considering the lily. It is the voice of Nature echoing the whole
evangel of Jesus, "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest."