My soul would lie All night long; and when the morning splendour
Flashed o'er the sky, I think that I could smile, could calmly say,
"Welcome His day."
But if a wondrous hand from the blue yonder
Held out a scroll, Upon which my life was writ, and I with wonder
Beheld unroll To a long century's end its mystic clue,
What should I do ?
ROMANS vi. 23 365
What could I do, 0 blessed Guide and Master,
Other than this — Still to go on as now, not slower, faster,
Nor fear to miss The road, although so very long it be,
While led by Thee?
Step by step, feeling Thee close behind me,
Although unseen; Through thorns, through flowers, whether the tempest hide Thee
Or heaven's serene, Assured Thy faithfulness cannot betray —
Thy love decay.
I may not know, my God; no hand revealeth
Thy counsels wise, Along the path no deepening shadow stealeth,
No voice replies To all my questioning thought, the time to tell,
And it is well.
Let me keep on, abiding and unfearing
That will always, Through a long century's ripening fruition,
Or a short day's. Thou canst not come too soon, and I can wait
If Thou come late.
Law or Love.
367
Literature.
Alford (H.), Sermons on Christian Doctrine, 42. Burrell (D. J.), The Wondrous Cross, 95. Campbell (J. M'Leod), Sermons and Lectures, i. 32G, 355. Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women, and Children, iv. 118. Hutcheson (J. T.), A View of the Atonement, 130. Maclaren (A.), Expositions of Holy Scripture : Romans, 130. Mitchell (R. A.), Sin Condemned by the Mission of the Son, 1. Robertson (J.), Sermons and Expositions, 204. Selby (T. G.), The Strenuous Gospel, 64. Thomas (J.), The Dynamic of the Cross, 161. Tipple (S. A.), Sunday Mornings at Norwood, 22. Biblical World, iii. 299.
Christian World Pulpit, xi. 266 (Beecher) ; xxxiv. 246 (Emerson) ; lxii. 52 (Bowran).
368
Law or Love.
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh : that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. — Rom. viii. 3,4-
1. The passage with which the previous chapter closes is one of the most interesting perhaps that St. Paul ever wrote, because, in describing there his own feelings and experiences, he has depicted so faithfully, so graphically, the feelings and experiences of all earnest souls. The passage reveals pathetic secrets of theirs, arrests them with a vivid portrayal of themselves. "What I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. To will is present with me, but how to perform I find not, for the good that I would, I do not, and the evil that I would not, I do. I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see a different law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bring- ing me into captivity to the law of sin that is in my members." What heart is there in which these words are not more or less echoed ? Have we not known what it is, while perceiving and admiring the right, to be baffled by contrary impulses in our wish and purpose to practize it ? We have seen its Divine claim and majesty, and have meant, have craved and struggled to respond to it, yet could not, held down and overborne by the weight of some- thing lower belonging to us.
As one whose footsteps halt,
Toiling in immeasurable sand.
And o'er a weary, sultry land,
Far beneath a blazing vault,
Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill,
The city sparkles like a grain of salt.
2. The question is how to be delivered from the thraldom of acts & ROM. — 24
370 LAW OR LOVE
moral evil. Man is in contact with law, the transgression of which recoils upon him at every step. He does not need to be for ever told of it. The question is how to take his feet from the toils ; how to get the desire and the power to love and obey ; how to silence that conflict between the conscience and the lower desires which makes the soul a house divided against itself. Here is man loaded down with his passions, coming into the world with heavy tendencies on the animal side, depraved, inheriting the sinful blood of generation upon generation, exposed to all evil and overborne by temptation, ignorant, weak, fallible, limited in his powers, finding causes for his sinfulness which inhere in the very structure of his body and his mind, how shall he keep the moral law ? How shall he get the desire to keep it ? To do that which is right, says Paul, is with me, but " how to perform " that which I would, that is the difficulty. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death — who shall deliver me from this spiritual deadness of the soul, this corruption of the affections, this impotence of the will, this unwillingness to love and obey ? That is the need of men in temptation. That is the cry of every heart who ever made a struggle to lead a clean and noble life. The law man knows ; and all religious teachers take care that he shall continue to understand it, and that he shall not forget it. But this is not the main trouble, the trouble is how to get the willing- ness, the desire to obey the law. Well, Paul answers that question. The Gospel is the answer to it. While men are still without moral strength, Christ dies for the ungodly. The power of the new life in Christ Jesus delivers us from the old power of sin and death. If Christ be in us, the flesh is dead in respect of sin, the spirit is alive in respect of rectitude and obedience. Christ creates the motive of love.