Here, then, lies our duty. It is, first and above all, to realize this life, and then to display it. It is our task not merely so to argue that the world shall listen to us when we ask, " Why do you not believe as we do ? " but so to act that the world of its own accord shall ask, " Why cannot we live as you do ? "
^ I believe that the great reason why so much of our toil and giving, our work and self-denial, counts for so much less than it should is because so many of us men and women are living on the
440 GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD
wrong side of our power — as somebody has put it — on the wrong side of Pentecost. Chronologically, we are living on the right side. Many of us know Christ, are following Christ, some closer, some further off; but some have not claimed our own Pentecost, and sought at Christ's hands that equipment without which all other equipment counts for nothing, the Holy Ghost of God in the life, that which is to the Christian more of what genius is to the artist, and without which, whatever his technique, there can be no soul because there is no life. All Christians have the Spirit, but all Christians have not the fulness of the Spirit, and it is the fulness of the Spirit that is the clamant want to-day, as it is the clamant want of every day.^
^ Since most remote times and among the different nations, the great teachers of humanity have revealed to men ever clearer definitions of life, which solve its internal contradiction, and have pointed out to them the true good and the true life that are proper for man. Since the position of men in the world is the same for all men, and, therefore, the contradiction between his striving after his personal good and the consciousness of its impossibility is the same also, all the definitions of the true good and, therefore, of the true life, as revealed to men by the greatest minds of humanity, are by their essence the same.
"Life is xthe dissemination of that light which came down from heaven for the good of men," Confucius said, six hundred years before Christ.
"Life is a wandering and perfecting of the souls attaining a greater and ever greater good," said the Brahmins of about the same time.
"Life is self-renunciation for the sake of attaining blissful Nirvana," said Buddha, a contemporary of Confucius.
"Life is the path of humility and abasement for the sake of attaining the good," said Lao-tse, another contemporary of Confucius.
"Life is that which God blew into the nostrils of man, in order that he, fulfilling the law, might attain the good," says the Jewish wisdom.
" Life is subjection to reason, which gives men the good," said the Stoics.
" Life is love of God and of our neighbour, which gives man the good," said Christ, including all the former definitions into His own.2
* A. Shepherd. * Tolstoy, On Life {CompUte Works, xvi. 244).
ST. JOHN X. lo 441
II.
Abundance of Life.
"And may have it abundantly."
What does this mean ? It can hardly denote that some further gift will be added to that of life, inasmuch as spiritual life in its processes and issues includes all that even a God can give. It means that the life will be given so plentifully that there will be no need for a devout soul ever to languish, that its life will become buoyant, possessed always of just a little more vital energy than is really needed either for its endurance of pain or for its triumph over sin. One of the greatest of Methodist theologians once expounded the phrase as a pledge of "more spiritual life than Adam lost, more than unfallen man could ever have known, more than eternity itself can contain."
^ Holy Scripture is fond of large promises. In one passage, for instance, the writer was unable to find in the language he was using a word that was adequate, and so he coined a new one, and in that way managed to express what the Authorized Version renders, God " is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." Even in the Old Testament large words are occasionally met with, especially when there is any reference to the patience or bounty of God. Jeremiah teaches one or two ethical truths more forcibly than they are taught in any other part of Scripture, but he is probably regarded, justly or unjustly, as the dullest and most depressed of inspired writers. Even Jeremiah represents Jehovah once as saying, " I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness." This verse goes beyond that; for, whilst that speaks of satisfaction and satiety, this speaks of superfluity. It sets forth the purpose of Christ's coming as being to bring to man God's gift of a life that can never be exhausted, the energies of which may always exceed our duties, and the range of which has no limit.^
1. The abundant life is a life of great vitality. — In the spiritual world, as in every other sphere of being with which we are acquainted, various degrees of vitality are to be found. The rule obtains among all organisms on the globe that the unknown force which we call " life " exhibits itself with feebler intensity in some