III.
The Answer.
Job's life, as it is traced in the glowing, indignant, faith- inspired words of his complaint, is the triumphant answer. Job 1 A. R. Gordon, The Poets of the Old Testament, 204.
JOB I. 9 II
does fear God for nought : that is, his integrity is no vulgar barter for wages, as Satan supposes, but deeply founded in the truth of things — so deeply that he takes leave of friends, of family, of life, even of God Himself, as he has hitherto regarded God, in order to be true. And if Job, a man like ourselves, has wrought out the answer, then the answer exists in humanity. There is such a thing as disinterested piety, and it contains whole worlds of faith and insight. Or, to gather the history before us into a sentence : There is a service of God which is not work for reward : it is a heart-loyalty, a hunger after God's presence, which survives loss and chastisement ; which in spite of contradictory seeming cleaves to what is Godlike as the needle seeks the pole ; and which reaches up out of the darkness and hardness of this life to the light and love beyond.
1. We must admit that there are some forms in which certain doctrines have been presented and enforced which would seem to sustain the charge. And it is, perhaps, because we have dwelt too much on these aspects of the religious life that the thought has caused some vague uneasiness to ourselves.
(1) Has there not sometimes been too great a tendency to make our individual salvation the sole and exclusive object of the Christian life ? In some manuals of devotion, and in books which treat systematically of the religious life, this is painfully apparent. Take, for example, that treatise which has for many reasons justly obtained the reverence of ages, Thomas k Kempis' Be Imitatione Christi. This selfish aspect of Christianity is the one blot on that otherwise luminous and noble work. " His one view of the duty of man," writes Farrar, " is to be self-absorbed in accomplish- ing his own personal salvation, in securing his individual safety amid universal conflagration, to save himself on some plank of prayer or self-denial out of the fiery surges of some devouring sea."i
But let us not err on the other side any more than on this. Selfishness is certainly an evil, when it leads us to subordinate spiritual things to those which are temporal : but if understood as implying a supreme regard to our eternal interests, it is good and commendable ; for it is that very disposition which was exercised ^ T. Teignmouth Shore, Some Difficulties of Belief, 219.
12 UNSELFISHNESS OF TRUE RELIGION
by Mary, when she dismissed from her mind all inferior considera- tions, and chose that good part which should never be taken away from her. In this sense Christians are selfish ; and it may justly be said of them that they do not " serve God for nought." For they desire, above all things, the salvation of their souls. They know what they have done to offend their God, and what God has done to save them, and what promises of mercy He has given to all who repent and believe His Gospel. And, knowing these things, they desire to avail themselves of the opportunity afforded them, and to secure to themselves the proffered benefits. And is this wrong? If so, what can all the invitations and promises of the Gospel mean ? Why did Peter say, " Eepent, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out " ? or why did our blessed Lord say, " If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink ; and out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water"?!
(2) There is another point, which is perhaps of still more practical importance to ourselves ; for it not only seems to justify some of the accusations against our faith as being selfish, but it does tend in many of us, perhaps, really to give our religious thoughts and aspirations a selfish tinge. There is no word which we use more frequently in religious phraseology than the word " Salvation." " To be saved " is beyond all question the very end and object of every religious, anxious soul, so far as it can be summed up in so brief a formula. "To save us" Jesus Christ died. " To save perishing souls " is the one great practical end for which the Catholic Church of Christ exists. Is there not too great a tendency in many of us always to speak and think of that salvation which Christ purchased for us with His precious blood as solely an escape from some future punishment ? Have we not read and heard too, frequently, appeals to men to accept Christ as their Saviour from punishment and from hell ? Yet such is only a fragment — possibly to some extent a distorted fragment — of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. If we regard the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God as merely a means by which we are to escape some future pain, there may be a strong tinge of selfishness in our faith. There is a more awful thing than pain, or punishment, or hell itself, so far as we use the word merely to