^ A few years ago a famous book called attention to a definition of life, given by an eminent man of science, whose attitude towards Christianity can hardly be regarded as friendly ; and then proceeded to make good use of it. Perfect life was defined as perfect correspondence with environment. Working with that definition, the meaning of this verse becomes blessed indeed. For the environment of a man's soul consists on the one hand in God and in influences from God (always the most important things about a man), and on the other hand in the opportunities for the discipline and perfecting of character, which the ordinary circum- stances of life afford. It is Christ alone who can put a man into proper correspondence with the former part of that environment, or enable him to meet the urgent and ceaseless demands of the latter. A profitable, if not altogether necessary, exercise of thought would be the attempt to re-state some of the leading doctrines of Christianity from the same point of view. The Incarnation, for instance, might be regarded as " God opening up
1 W. L. Walker, The True Christ, 180.
436 GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD
to man the possibility of correspondence with Himself through Jesus Christ." Because Christ thus brings us right conceptions of what God is and of what we may become in relation to Him, and, better still, because He breathes into us the power to become it all, the statement of this verse admits almost of a scientific defence. It is Christ alone who can give men what science itself has to recognize as life ; and He gives that with such largesse and abundance that, if we like, it will survive all the dangers of this world, and last on in undecaying vigour and ever richer functions throughout eternity.^
(2) Life is service for other's. — What is the highest duty of life ? It is certainly not personal acquisition, but the rendering of the fullest service that lies within our power; it is also bestowing upon others the fullest possible opportunity of rendering that service. To enable men to do this Christ taught and healed ; but also, and this was His most important work of all, He transformed their characters from sin to holiness. In the light of Christ's teaching what is the joy of life ? It does not consist in thinking how much we have obtained. Does it not rather consist in inspiring others with life ? Is it not found in awakening others to high ideals ? Indeed, is it not the highest happiness to struggle, and to encourage others to struggle, after those ideals ? What, again, in the light of Christ's teaching, is the end or purpose of life ? Is it not to bestow life upon others, to impart to others that deep, personal, experimental knowledge of God which we have received through our own personal communion with God, which communion is the essence of eternal life ?
Many years ago religion became strongly individualistic. We need not underrate the importance, we should rather speak of the necessity, of cultivating individual knowledge and individual holiness, that is, of making individual effort after the closest personal communion with God in Christ ; for by these means we largely obtain that supply of life which it is our duty to bestow. But if we study the lives of some so-called religious people, we might imagine that the text read, I am come into the world that I may have life, that I may secure as much life as possible for myself. By these people life here is apparently regarded only as an opportunity of making themselves as sure as possible of heaven hereafter. But that is not the teaching of Christ. » R. W. Moss, T?ie Discipline of the SovZ, 27.
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We have now a deepening consciousness of the unity, the solidarity of mankind. The truth hes in the phrase, " The Word became flesh " ; He took to Himself not simply a human life but humanity. If the Gospel is necessarily addressed to the individual, it is not to the individual alone and isolated, but to the individual as a member of a body. And more than this : Christians are " a kind of firstfruits of God's creatures" (James i. 18). They are taught to look to an end in which the differences of race and condition and even the fundamental distinctions of sex shall be done away : " There can be," St. Paul writes, " neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female ; for ye are all one (man) in Christ Jesus " (Gal. iii. 28).
On all sides there is an indefinite desire for closer fellowship among men ; a restless, almost impatient, striving to alleviate distress and to remove its causes ; a willingness to acknowledge that all wealth, material, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is a trust to be administered for the common good. Numberless lines of reflection constrain us to confess that our life is in no sense our own either in its origin or in its development ; that the ideal which in " hours of insight " rises before us is not of our creation, but a Divine disclosure, " the fountain light of all our day, a master light of all our seeing." Many and unexpected lessons from the interpretation of history and the interpretation of nature press upon us the ennobling duty of taking our part in the fulfilment of a purpose of unimaginable grandeur and infinite hope, at length discernible in its broad outlines, of obeying the call addressed to our age and nation, the call to service of man and fellowship with God in Christ.