(4) Spiritual Life. — The moral life may not be the highest, although it is inseparable from it. However perfect in itself, it may still have its limitations. It may be bounded by time and limited to earth. While it has a due regard for others as having equal rights and mutual duties, it may fail to recognize a Will above us all, with which we are meant to be in harmony, which, indeed, seeks to operate through us. It may fail to rise to the Infinite, to expand into the Universal, to ally itself with the Divine, to become as far as possible one with God. To be alive to the world around us and our fellow-men therein, but dead to the Eternal Source of being, to whom we owe our all, is surely to come far short of the true life. The spirit of life that moves within us and seeks expression through us makes us feel and know that there is a still higher, wider, truer life open to us, inviting us, into which we ought to rise. It is in the life of religion, as Jesus Christ set it before us and called us to it, and as God by His Spirit in our heart moves us thereto, that we find the highest and truest life of man. For man is conceived in the image of God Himself, created and called to be His son and heir.
Sometimes the Bible speaks as if the spirit were non-existent in the natural man ; but in other places, and perhaps more exactly, it speaks of it as not developed. At all events, it has not attained
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its position of superiority and supremacy because the spirit ought to stand up above the other faculties of man and command life And so essential is this to the Divine conception of man, that where this spiritual element is not operative the Bible speaks of human beings as dead, however much they may be alive in the lower ranges of their faculties. For instance, as already quoted, " She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." Just look at a woman or a girl who lives in pleasure. Why, is not she the very picture of life ? Her body is so glowing with life that her beauty attracts all who see her ; her mental life may also be so rich that, wherever she moves in the circles where she seeks her pleasures, she is accompanied by a crowd who admire her wit and cleverness ; and her emotional life may be in so healthy a condition that she has a heart rich in love to give to the happy man who is able to win it. She seems to be the very picture of life. Yes ! but follow her into another sphere of existence, where a different set of powers comes into operation, and there you will find that she prays not, she thinks not of God, she neither loves nor serves Christ, she is not laying up treasure in heaven; in short, her spirit, the true glory of womanhood, in her is dead ; and so, as Scripture says, she " is dead while she liveth."
It goes without saying that Christ confers upon a man completeness of spiritual life. In most the spiritual principle lies latent, dormant. It is there, but overlaid by the physical instincts, the animal nature. Christ evokes it, kindles it, raises it to a passion ; and when the Spirit of Christ has its " perfect work," all the elements that go to a spiritual life are balanced ; faith with love; strength with sympathy; courage and steadfastness with tolerance and tenderness; so that there is produced a noble symmetry of character. Everything is full-grown and yet subordinated to everything else. The wliole man comes under the elevating and inspiring influence of Christ's life-idea.
^ The spiritual life is too much regarded as something quite distinct and separate from the other expressions of human faculty. This is a matter rightly urged by Eucken in his writings, and it deserves the serious attention of Christians. As the life of God in man — the life represented in Christ and proceeding from Him to the world — ought to be the deepest influence and the dom- inating power in the entire life of men, giving direction and character to what we term the secular life and its manifestations
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as well as to that which we mark off as religious — "bringing every thought," as St. Paul puts it, " into captivity to the obedience of Christ " ; as the whole lower life in the world contributes to the human, so should the physical and entire psychical life of man contribute to the spiritual. Ideally, that was first, although last in appearance. It is life in its truth and therefore should embrace all lower manifestations without exception.^
5. We are now able to see in some measure what Christ meant when He said, "I came that they may have life." He meant realization of self, service for others, and fellowship with God.
(1) Life is fellowshijy with God. — The life which Christ is and which Christ communicates, the life which fills our whole being as we realize its capacities, is active fellowship with God. " This is," not this shall be in some unimaginable future, " this is," Christ said, even now, in the light and shadow of our changing days, " life eternal, that they might know," with ever fuller knowledge, " thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent " (John xvii. 3). For the knowledge by which we live is a know- ) ledge which grows : not truth given and mastered once for all, but truth to be illuminated and interpreted by the ever increasing sum of human experience. Thus the coming of Christ, the Incarnation, binds together two worlds, and makes the earthly with all its workings a sacrament, so to speak, of the heavenly.