/ 2. It was when the will of Naaman was surrendered and the act of obedience completed that the change was wrought. It is
» in the act of obedience that the Divine blessing always comes. When Jesus bade the ten lepers who came to Him for healing go and show themselves to the priests, it is said that " it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed." The cure was wrought when faith was translated into obedience. It is here
^ Letters of Spiritual Counsel, xii. "^ D. Watson, In Life's School, 161.
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that multitudes fail. They expect the result of obedience before obedience is rendered. They expect to feel the thrill of new life before they have done the bidding of Christ. To obey is to enjoy.
Obedience through strict conformity to God's thought and purpose, as these may be revealed to us, is the ordinary channel through which His benefits flow to us. This is a universal rule operative in every realm of human interest. The laws of life must be obeyed, if we would possess health ; the laws of the natural world, if we would harness its mighty forces to enter- prises for human welfare ; the law of justice, if in our social life and our relations to one another we would fully realize the blessings of Christian civilization ; the law of faith, if we would find joy and peace in believing ; the rule of humble submission to God's truth — whatever it may demand of us and whitherso- ever it may lead us — if His will is to be done on earth as it is done in heaven, and the gladness of heaven irradiate our earthly existence in its wide range of experience and duties.
*[[ Mr. Gladstone, in a letter which his biographer tells us sets out the great work of religion as he conceived it, writes : —
" There is a beautiful little sentence in the works of Charles Lamb concerning one who had been afflicted. * He gave his heart to the Purifier, and his will to the Sovereign Will of the Universe.' But there is a speech in the third canto of the Paradiso, spoken by a certain Piccardo, which is a rare gem. I will quote only the lines —
In His Will is our peace. To us all things By Him created, or by Nature made. As to a central Sea, self-motion brings.
The words are few and simple, and yet they appear to me to have an inexpressible majesty of truth about them, to be almost as if they were spoken by the very mouth of God. It so happened (unless my memory deceives me) I first read that speech on a morning early in the year 1836 which was one of trial. I was profoundly impressed and powerfully sustained, almost absorbed by the words. They cannot be too deeply engraven upon the heart. In short, what we all want is that they should come to us not as an admonition from without, but as an instinct from within. . . . The first state which we are to contemplate with hope and to seek by discipline is that in which our will should be
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one with the will of God; not merely shall submit to it, not merely follow after it, but live and move with it, even as the pulse of the blood in the extremities acts with the central move- ment of the heart."
^ A woman's position is one of subjection, mythically de- scribed as a curse in the Book of Genesis. Well, but I ween that all curses are blessings in disguise. Labour among thorns and thistles — man's best health. Woman's subjection ? What say you to His ? " Obedient," a " servant " ; wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him. Methinks a thoughtful, high-minded Woman would scarcely feel degraded by a lot which assimilates her to the divinest Man : " He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister." I have always conceived that you had learned to count that ministry the sublimest life which the world has seen and its humiliation and subjection precisely the features which were most divine. The Greeks at Corinth wanted that part to be left out, and it was exactly that part which St. Paul would not leave out — Jesus Christ, but Jesus Christ crucified. Trust me, a noble woman laying on herself the duties of her sex, while fit for higher things — the world has nothing to show more like the Son of Man than that. Do you remember Wordsworth's beautiful lines to Milton ?—
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.^
3. It is well at times to shift the emphasis from faith to obedience. St. Paul preached " for obedience to the faith." Christ is " the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him." Christians purify their souls "in obeying the truth." Men are lost because they " obey not the gospel of Christ." The Gospel is not only something to be believed, it is something to be obeyed. Let no one wait for feeling. Obey, and feeling will come. Wash in the blood of Jesus, and the leprosy of sin will instantly pass away. Fill up the measure of your obedience, and the life and joy of heaven will come into your heart.