It is so in mental things. The freshness of intellectual vigour seems preserved to some men long beyond the wonted span of working years; but a time comes to the strongest when the climax of power has been reached and passed, when the old freshness of delight in new aspects of familiar things no longer exists, when the mind settles on the few certainties and deserts the speculative view of the world, when there is lacking the power to approach new subjects of investigation, or to undertake new tasks of practical life; when the mind turns back upon experience, and lives by the retrospect. And though at such a time some may still continue to delude themselves that their mental vigour is unabated, nature lifts up its testimony against the delusion, and declares, in the lost flexibility, in the absence of initiative and administrative power, in the failing memory, that the strength of the man has departed, though he wist it not.
So is it in the spiritual world. There is a loss that is more deadly than the loss of physical vigour, sadder than the decay of mental power. It is the weakening of the soul by almost imperceptible decline; the experience that issues in spiritual paralysis.
JUDGES XVI. 20 2H
And because we know we have breath in our mouth and think
we have thought in our head, We shall assume that we are alive, whereas we are really
dead.
The Lamp of our Youth will be utterly out: but we shall
subsist on the smell of it ! And whatever we do, we shall fold our hands and suck our
gums' and think well of it, Yes, we shall be perfectly pleased with our work, and that is
the perfectest Hell of it!^
(2) The Christian realizes his loss only when the moment of need comes, when he hears the words " the Philistines be upon thee."
A Christian may be in a society where the tone is agreeably worldly. And he finds it a little hard to maintain the distinct- ness of the Christian life. It is pleasant to him to stand well with his unconverted friends. And the temptation springs up in his heart to conform. It comes in the subtle form of present- ing to his friends a Christianity void of all that even the world may call narrowness or fanaticism. He hopes that by mingling as far as possible with those who are undecided, in their recreations and the pursuits that may be common, he may gain an influence over them that may be used for God ; but it leads himself to compromises, until the process of levelling down has gone so far that the distinctive attitude of the Christian life has gone. Now, just so far as this has taken place, a man's influence with others is killed. All the while that he was fondly imagining he was presenting to his friends the type of a Christianity shorn of all acerbities and angularities, his power over them has been quietly slipping away. And the awakening to this consciousness is an unpleasant experience. Some one of his careless, light-hearted acquaintances has become more serious — the breath of God's Spirit where it listeth has awakened a new longing in his soul ; and his life, so self-centred, so agree- ably undisturbed before, has become to him poor and miserable without Christ. He wants direction; he wants communion; he wants to hear the man speak who can tell the reality of these things to his own heart. And to whom does he resort ? — to the Christian who has lost his Christian savour and become worldly ?
^ Rudyard Kipling.
212 UNCONSCIOUS LOSS
No; but to the man about whom his Christianity is the most distinctive thing, who has not been engaged in minimizing this difference between himself and the world, and paring down the dimensions of that, but who has longed — and has got some part of that for which he longed — to be " transformed by the renewing of his mind." Why, thinks the Christian who has lost his influence, did my friend not come to me ?
3. A note of hope. — He that has vowed his strength to God,
he that has received some grace from God, some godliness of
feeling and aim, and yet yields — it may be to some wretched lust —
and loses his power, and is left helpless, ashamed, miserable, has
his power perished absolutely? Think of Samson — for there
is no better instance of the use which God can make of an
ill-spent life. He could never be the man he was ; but there in
his prison-house he saw the ruinous folly he had been guilty of,
saw his betrayal of the trust God had reposed in him, saw that
out of the best material for a life of glory that any man of that
period had received he had wrought for himself a life of shame
and a degrading end. His heart was broken; the strong man
was crushed, and had, like the weakest sinner, to cry to God,
to seek that last comfort which abides when all others are gone,
and which more than makes up for the loss of all others — to
seek that light, the light of God's own presence, which restores