The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one ; Yet the light of a whole world dies
With the setting sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one ; Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
^ A German student, who had strayed far into doubt and sin, went one day in a fit of desperate levity to see the aged pastor who had been in years past his spiritual guide. " My son," said the saint of God, " tell me your sins, that I may show you how to be delivered from them." Immediately the young man began to recite a shameful list of wrongdoings, and again and again, with passionate emphasis for each sin, pronounced the words : " But I don't care for that." The other listened patiently till he had done, and then quietly asked him to comply with a simple request. " To-night," he said, " and every night when you retire to rest, kneel down and say this : ' 0 Lord Jesus Christ, Thou hast died upon the Cross for me, that my sins may be forgiven ; — but I don't care for that,' and come back at the end of a week and tell me your sins again." Consent was lightly given, and for three nights the words were said. The fourth saw a penitent, white and
ROMANS v. 8 323
trembling, at the old man's door, asking for admission. " I can't say it, and I do care," was his faltering confession. The appeal of the Cross had reached his heart.1
0 healing Face, unto all men most kind,
Teach me to find Thee, lest I wander blind,
For as the river seeks the sea, and as its rest the rain,
So seeks my face for Thee, so pleads my prayer the pain
That pleads through Thee: "Behold and see,
Is there a sorrow that has no part in Me?"2
1 F. B. Macnutt. a Laurence Housrnan.
A Good Reckoning.
$»s
Literature.
Bishop (J. W.), The Christian Year, 205. Cunningham (W.), Sermons, 251. Druinmond (H.), Stones rolled away, 62. Hickey (F. P.), Short Sermons, 2nd Ser., 134.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year. Easter to Ascension Day, 138. Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., iii. 63. Maturin (W.), The Blessedness of the Dead in Christ, 317. Meyer (F. B.), Christian Living, 45. Kogers (J. H.), The " Verily, Verilys " of Christ, 53. Temple (F.), Sermons preached in Rugby School CJiapel, 1st Ser., 306. Thompson (R. E.), Nature, the Mirror of Grace, 19. Tyng (S. H.), The People's Pulpit, New Ser., ii. 197. "Wilberforce (B.), Feeling after Him, 29. „ New(?) Theology, 203.
British Congregationalist, Jan.-June 1910, 538 (Jowett). Christian World Pulpit, x. 169 (Bainton) ; xxxvi. 252 (Dods) ; lxxiv. 205
(Stooke). Churchman's Pulpit (Good Friday and Easter Even), vii. 172 (Temple) ;
(Easter Day and Season), vii. 198 (Keble); (Sixth Sunday after
Trinity), x. 385, 389 (Reynolds), 391 (How). Keswick Week, 1908, 51 (Lees), 68 (Mantle). Plain Sermons by Contributors to the " Tracts for the Times," vii. 111.
3»4
A Good Reckoning.
Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.— Rom. vi. IX.
1. St. Paul's object in this chapter is to exhibit the inconsistency of sin with the Christian faith and position. We are, he says, planted together with Christ, or engrafted into Him, and as little as the shoot can bear fruit different from the stalk, so little can we, if faithful to our position, live differently from Christ. We are baptized into His death that we may pass with Him through death into a new life. As interment is the evidence of death, so baptism, in Paul's view, is the outward symbol that we are done with the old life and have entered on the new. When a person is buried, that means that death has taken place ; when a person is baptized, that means that death to sin, with Christ and in Christ, has taken place. Paul asserts that in every genuine Christian there is a process going forward parallel to that which our Lord Himself passed through. The outward appearance of Christ's experience may be wholly different from that of His followers, but essentially and inwardly they are precisely the same. For us, as for Him, death to sin results in resurrection to newness of life. We can get to life, Paul would say, only through a genuine death, a death not indeed of the body, but a death as real and generally much more painful.
2. Now, though this is a style of teaching very common with Paul, there are some minds to which it always seems nearly mystical. They are baffled when they strive to bring it into connexion with their own experience. They think Paul speaks as if the process of sanctification worked with mechanical certainty, whereas they find that after believing in Christ they are by no means dead to sin. They cannot make Paul's teaching square with their own experience; it seems to them that the decisive severance from sin which he has in view does never in reality
328 A GOOD RECKONING
occur. This disagreement is merely superficial. Paul, in describ- ing the process by which the sinner passed into life, was, of course, compelled to describe the ideal process, and not the actual experience of any single believer. That ideal process may never be actually realized by any one, but it is more or less nearly approached by all. The professor of surgery in describing the actual history of a gunshot wound, from the moment of its infliction, on through treatment and convalescence to perfect health, may describe a process from which each patient finds his own case to differ in certain particulars, but the description remains on that very account a sufficient guide in essentials for all cases ; and Paul sufficiently indicates in this very chapter that there is nothing mechanical in his view of salvation. When he says, " Keckon ye yourselves to be dead unto sin . . . let not sin reign in your mortal body . . . yield not your members as instru- ments of unrighteousness unto sin," and so forth, he sufficiently shows that our salvation is in his view not finished and not complete by one act of faith, but is only slowly and painfully accomplished by the constant renewal of spiritual desire and spiritual energy. He appeals to what we all know to be the spring and source of character, the human will.