1 T. G. Selby, The Divine Craftsman, 210. ' A. Smellie, In the Hour of Silence, 289,
20 REGENERATION AND RENEWAL
to fall from grace ? " " No, it is not possible," said the minister. " Then," said the dying Cromwell, " I am safe, for I know that I was once in grace." ^
^ The efforts of an unregenerate man to resist evil may be compared to the waves that break away from the receding tide ; they are vain and constantly declining struggles against the backward movement of the heart. The falls of a regenerate man, on the other hand, are the recessions of the wave in an advancing tide ; the great progression will still be Godward. What we want is the flow of the new nature to overbear all the obstacles of wind and sand, and this must be given by attraction from above.^
2, Why should the grace which wipes out past sin, and renews the thoughts and affections of the heart, fill this commanding place in the religious history ? The Master forbids the idea that those successive effusions of spiritual influence, which keep the disciple in constant fitness for His uses, can coihpare in vital importance with this initial transformation. As He judges things, regeneration is a fact standing apart, and nothing must come into competition with it. The answer is many-sided. Initiation into the cleansing fellowship of Jesus is coincident with a deeper and more exhaustive self-discovery than is possible at the later stages of the religious history, unless indeed there has been flagrant, stupefying apostasy. The new convert has put off his disguises, making a frank and a full confession of sin and attaining a memorable release from its power. The whole manhood is moved by the fresh and dramatic disclosures of saving grace which attend the first surrender to the gospel call. The past is put off with a thoroughness which leaves little or no room for repetition. A man convinced of sin, and impelled by the new-born hope of redemption from its power, is passive under the processes of Divine mercy to an extent never perhaps equalled again. As those blessed influences which purify from the taint of the past immerse the soul, a strangely quiescent and submissive temper arises. The disciple is more conscious of God's act and less of his own than in those subsequent experiences in which the factors of self-discipline and self-direction tend to predominate. And because Divine power is so supremely conspicuous in this
* John ilorley, Oliver Cromwell, 506. •John Ker, Thoughts /or Heart and Life, 21.
ST. JOHN XIII. lo 21
purifying change its results abide, as perhaps grace sought through channels of daily edification does not.
^ Many and great gifts of the Holy Spirit do come really into a man, which yet are not regeneration; but they go and come. Whereas that is regeneration when and where God hath planted His habitation, and God is become one with man. In God, neither the world, nor pleasure, nor joy is suffered ; nature must want all these when the mind standeth in God.^
IL
Renewal.
1. When the gift which changes the moral habits, and puts away the dishonour and condemnation of the past, has been received, accessory processes are needed so that the disciple may be kept without spot. Christ's followers are moving in the midst of the unregenerate, and it is only through daily vigilance and faith that they can escape the mischances inseparable from their position in the world. Through this lowly ministry, commonly performed by the slave at the opening of a feast, Jesus wished to save His disciples from that loss of hope which their imminent backsliding might cause, to remind them of the gentle and compassionate view He took of their infirmities, and to prevent, where it might still be possible, infirmities from passing into flagrant sins. He is willing to treat their passing moods of envy and ambition as mere casualties of the way, like the dust and films of foulness cleaving to the feet of the pilgrim. Such things do not belong to the new manhood which has been called forth within them, but have in part happened through contact with the world.
^ Learn a lesson from the eye of the miner, who all day long is working amid the flying coal-dust. When he emerges in the light of day, his face may be grimy enough ; but his eyes are clear and lustrous, because the fountain of tears, in the lachrymal gland, is ever pouring its gentle tides over the eye, cleansing away each speck of dust as soon as it alights. Is not this the miracle of cleansing which our spirits need in such a world as this ? And this is what our blessed Lord is prepared to do for us, if only we will truat Him.^
» Matthew Weyer. • F. B. Meyer, Present Tenses, 22.
22 REGENERATION AND RENEWAL
^ As these men had with shame to lay their feet in Christ's hands, so must we. As His hands had to come in contact with the soiled feet of the disciples, so has His moral nature to come in contact with the sins from which He cleanses us. His heart is purer than were His hands, and He shrinks more from contact with moral than with physical pollution; and yet without ceasing we bring Him into contact with such pollution. When we consider what those stains actually are from which we must ask Christ to wash us, we feel tempted to exclaim with Peter, " Thou shalt never wash my feet ! " As these men must have shivered with shame through all their nature, so do we when we see Christ stoop before us to wash away once again the defilement we have contracted ; when we lay our feet soiled with the miry and dusty ways of life in His sacred hands ; when we see the uncomplaining, unreproachful grace with which He performs for us this lowly and painful office. But only thus are we prepared for communion with Him and with one another. Only by admitting that we need cleansing, and by humbly allowing Him to cleanse us, are we brought into true fellowship with Him. With the humble and contrite spirit which has thrown down all barriers of pride and freely admits His love and rejoices in His holiness does He abide.^