(1) When once we are linked to Christ, that union breaks the terrible chain that binds us to the past. " All died." The past is broken as much as if we were dead. It is broken by the great act of forgiveness. Sin holds men by making them feel as if what has been must be — an awful entail of evil. In Christ we die to former self. As by changing the centre of a circle you change the position of all its radii, so, by changing the affections and the desires of the heart, Christ roots out every wrong action and implants the germ of every virtuous deed. His solution is not reformation, but regeneration — not new resolves, but a new birth.
*|J Augustine in his Confessions wrote it as with his blood : " For this very thing I was sighing — bound as I was, not with another's irons, but by my own will. For of a froward will was a lust made ; and a lust served became a custom ; and a custom not resisted became necessity. By which links, as it were, joined together, a hard bondage held me enthralled."
Augustine's Confessions tell us of his penal chains, but they tell us also how these chains were broken ; and the power that broke their links of iron was, in one word, Christ. This trans-
1 Cyprian, Epistola ad Donatum, 3.
72 HABIT
formation of a habit-bound slave of sin into a virtuous man of God is a moral miracle far more wonderful than any physical miracle recorded in the New Testament. When John Newton, the brutal swearing sailor, was changed into the saintly singer of such hymns as " How sweet the name of Jesus sounds," the Ethiopian changed his skin, the leopard his spots, and one "accustomed to do evil" learnt to do good. And there are multitudes alive among men and beatified before God who have been emancipated from the grip of evil habit and made "new creatures in Christ." There is no cant about it, nor any fond fancy ; it is as sure as nature's law itself.
That agnostic Positivist, the late Cotter Morison, gave away the most of his case against Christianity when he made the frank avowal : " Ardent love, gratitude and veneration for Christ, when kindled, are able to snap the chains of habit, and sometimes prevent their being welded together again." Explain it how you will — and better than staying to explain it is proving it by trial — the fact is certified that when Christ is sought and trusted with whole-hearted surrender, His Spirit works a moral revolution.1
(2) We are animated by a new motive. "The love of Christ constraineth." As is a man's love, so is his life. The mightiest revolution is to excite a new love, by which old loves and tastes are expelled. "A new affection" has "expulsive power," as the new sap rising in the springtime pushes off the lingering withered leaves. So union with Him meets the difficulty arising from inclination still hankering after evil. It lifts life into a higher level where the noxious creatures that were proper to the swamps cannot live. The new love gives a new and mighty motive for obedience.
T| Obedience is the essential spirit of the Christian life. Christ's command to us, as to His first followers, is " Follow me." We do not know whither He will lead us. The future is veiled before our eyes. It is no part of our business to inquire into the consequences of our discipleship. That is in His hands. Having heard the imperative of the Highest in His call, our task is to follow His leading in the practical conduct of daily life, and for all the needs of the future to surrender our lives to Him in the great obedience of trust. Like the disciples of old, we follow behind Him on the road of life in the spirit of wonder. Sometimes He comes graciously near to us as a Friend ; but at all times He is enthroned in our hearts as Lord and Master. "Ye call me
1 R. E. Welsh, Man to Man, 134.
JEREMIAH xni. 23 73
Master and Lord ; and ye say well, for so I am." That is His word. And the response for which He asks is a love that expresses itself in a life of obedience to His commands.1
(3) We are set in a new world which yet is old. All things are changed if we are changed. They are the same old things, but seen in a new light, used for new purposes, disclosing new relations and powers. Earth becomes a school and discipline for heaven. The world is different to a blind man when cured, or to a deaf one — there are new sights for the one, new sounds for the other.
Tj There is only one way in which the leopard can change his spots. It is by removing it to another locality where there are no trees, and no surroundings like those of its native place ; and there it would gradually lose, in the course of a few generations, its protective spots, and become like the new circumstances. Fixed as the spots of the leopard may seem, there is no creature in reality more variable. The panther is a variety of the leopard, whose spots are different, because it inhabits different places ; and the ounce is a kind of leopard which is found in cold and mountain- ous places, and therefore has a rougher fur, and its spots are not so sharply defined, and have a tendency to form stripes, while the general colour is paler. The American leopard or jaguar has got bold black streaks on its breast, and larger spots on its body, with a small mark in the middle of them ; while the puma or American lion, which is only a kind of leopard, has a uniform light tawny tint. And the remarkable thing is that the young puma displays a gradual change of fur like the lion cub ; its coat being at first marked by dark streaks and spots, which fade away into the uniform tawny hue when the animal increases in size. Thus you see that the spots of the leopard change with its changing circumstances.