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Life Eteknal.
1. What is the meaning of "eternal"? The answer of the ordinary man would be, " Something that lasts for ever," With him eternity would simply mean endless time; it would mean duration, or permanence, or endless succession, or unalterability ; it would mean adding so much time together that you could add no more. And so the sort of metaphors that people have used to express eternity have been the metaphors of the circle or the sand on the seashore. We have all been told that if we tried to count the sand on the seashore we should never reach the idea of
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eternity. Now, that sort of language is eminently misleading. " Time shall be no more." That " phantom of succession of time " is wholly inapplicable to the life of God. With God there is no time — no past, no future ; all is the everlasting now. It is only in consequence of our present limitations, only in consequence of that great condition of time under which we live, that we are unable to think of God as living out of time, and that we are compelled to think of Him as living only in endless time. The life eternal is the real life ; it is the life that is life indeed.
^ The Greek word hios and the Greek word zoe both mean " life " and are translated by " life " ; but they are words of entirely different significance in the Greek. The first word signifies chiefly animal life — the brief space of time, the brief space of life through which we have to pass; bare existence is the word used, for example, in such passages as " What is your life ? It is even as a vapour." But the other word zoe belongs to an entirely different and higher conception. In the New Testament, it is used almost, if not entirely, for the inherent principle of life which is involved in the very being of God Himself, so that the first word means conscious existence ; the second word means the sort of life of which God is capable, and we have it in all such passages as " should not perish, but have eternal life." " I am the resurrec- tion and the life," saith the Lord. " I am the bread of life." ^
•|[ Even so is man : No matter how well he may know the law governing his animal personality, and the laws governing matter, these laws do not give him the least indications as to how he is to act with that piece of bread which he has in his hands — whether to give it to his wife, a stranger, his dog, or eat it himself; whether to defend this piece, or give it to him who asks for it. But the life of man consists only in the solution of these and similar questions.^
2. There would be little worth or significance in the mere endless prolongation of life, apart from the question of the kind of life that is to be lived for ever. The life that Christ promises us is of an order altogether higher than the life of ordinary experience. It is a life that lifts us up to a new region above the cares and meannesses of this world, that makes us indifferent to most of the ends and ideals for which the mass of men live, aiid at least independent of the pleasures to which they are so wedded. Eternal life, in fact, is spiritual life. When the spirit, the highest
^ Archbishop W. Alexander. ' Tolstoy, Works, xvi. 281.
264 LIFE IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
part of our nature, is called forth unto full activity and matured to its full stature, and when it subdues and regulates the whole man, then we have entered on this new plane of existence.
3. This spiritual life may be ours here and now. It is an error to connect the thought of eternal life exclusively with the future. If we are of God's elect, we are now living this eternal life. At this very moment the eternal life of God is throbbing in our hearts. Every act of prayer and communion with God, every effort after righteousness and truth, every enterprise of love and mercy, is a manifestation of this life. The gift of eternal life is a present possession, not merely a future expectation. We have all been baptized into this life, we have all been made partakers of this life, we are all exhorted to show forth this life.
^ Too often is eternal life regarded as the reward of a life of active virtue, as the far-off hope which stimulates the fainting heart to " patient continuance in well-doing " ; too often is it supposed that only when the battle is over and the victory won shall we pass beneath the dark gateway of death into the bright peace of the heavenly Kingdom. But, on the other hand, the herald of Christ came with the cry, " The kingdom of heaven is at hand," a cry which Christ Himself confirmed by proclaiming to His hearers, "The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you." Eternal life, then, is not set before the world as the prize of patient purity, the reward of long-continued well-doing, or the stimulus to incite men to a life of holiness. It is not a glory which only after death will crown the successful endeavours of the faithful ; it is the purity, the well-doing, the holiness itself. It is the knowledge of God and Christ, with all the spiritual virtues which attend it — knowledge which, if the rational nature of man be no delusion, may be ours now ; virtues which, if the life of Christ have any significance, if His blessed example and exhortations have any meaning for us, may adorn our present earthly life.^