Of all that is, and is not, first and best.
Ah, vain desire, our straitened years to mar !
Troubled we turn and listen unreleased, To music of a revel held afar,
Evasive echoes of a distant feast.1
1 Rosamund M. Watson.
ROMANS viii. 6 391
iii. Death.
What is death ? We may define death in its first aspect as ceasing to be, the cessation of existence ; but if in physical death we ask what is the cause of the cessation of existence, we plainly perceive that it is not the cessation of the existence of the body, or even the decomposition of its material substances, but the absence in them of the principle of life. That principle keeps decay and decomposition at bay in the material form in which it resides, and death, or the absence of the principle of life, must take place before decay can commence. The spirit which gives beauty, expression, and activity to the body, and manifests itself through the body, must be separated from the body, and this separation is death. Consequently, on account of the strict analogy between physical and moral thirjgs, the word death is used throughout the New Testament as a term for moral separa- tion— as " dead unto the law," " dead unto sin," etc. — meaning thereby that persons thus dead are separated from the power and principle of these things. But it is especially in connexion with the death which is the consequence of sin that the expression is used. Thus the Apostle, writing to the Ephesians, says, "You hath he quickened," i.e. given life to, " who were dead in trespasses and sins " ; and the meaning of this is clearly defined by a parallel passage, as in Eph. ii. 11, 12, "Ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, without Christ, alien " (i.e. dead to, or separated) " from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope, and without God " (or separated from, or dead to, God) " in the world." Again, speaking of the Gentiles generally, the Apostle describes them as " having the understanding darkened, being alienated " (or separated) " from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart, who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lascivious- ness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." And, again, writing to the Colossians, he says, " And you who were sometime alienated and enemies" (i.e. separated or dead) "in your mind through wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled." Sin thus produces alienation and enmity towards God, or, in other words, a moral separation between the sinner and God, which is spiritual death ; and the contrary to this is to be quickened, or given life, i.e. to be reconciled to God.
392 THE CARNAL AND THE SPIRITUAL
f[ All the peoples and nations around Paul had borne witness that to follow the flesh was to make life hasten toward the end, and to an end inglorious. The glutton and drunkard and libertine, the man of violence, the man of wicked ambition, the brutalized criminal, all these marched along then even more shamelessly than they do in our age, and had made him realize that the passions of the flesh lead to death. In his time many a Herod was dying before his day ; many an Antony and Cleopatra were hurrying through their careers ; many a prodigal was spending his substance in riotous living ; many thousands of young men were dyirfg violent deaths; and as he viewed this spectacle, the philosophy of the hour came back with force to Paul's bosom that the passions of the flesh lead to death, the passions of the spirit lead toward life. In the opening chapter of this letter to the Eomans, there is a picture of Roman morals, and in that condition of society you will find the cause of that great generalization that the flesh brings ruin, the spirit brings triumph. What were the battles of Alexander and of the Caesars but a fleshly vanity, gratifying itself in the tumult and blood of carnage, and in the applause which rewarded the conqueror ? 1
II.
Spiritual Mindedness.
" To be spiritually minded is life and peace."
i. The Spirit.
When St. Paul speaks of the mind of the Spirit in a man, he speaks of the entrance of a new factor, the Divine energy, into his inner life. He gives various descriptions of the experience. These are all involved ideally in the first genuine contact of the soul with God in Christ through faith. When the soul recognizes the love of God in Christ as the Saviour, and appropriates that forgiving love by faith, it is brought into touch with God as living, and dealing with it. There is now a new moral centre of the personal life. Yet we must not conceive the Divine Spirit as becoming identified with the subjective, regenerated life of the believer. For the Apostle always regards the Divine energy as continuing to act on the life of the believer as a distinct objective power.
1 D. Swing.
ROMANS viii. 6 393
ii. The Mind of the Spirit. What, then, is this mind of the Spirit or spiritual -mindedness ?
1. It is not the same thing as being religious. A man may be exceedingly religious, exceedingly orthodox in his creed and punctilious in observing the forms of piety, and still have any- thing but a spiritual mind. Too sadly true it is that the priests and ecclesiastics and religious teachers of the world are not always the prophets of God. Men may deal in holy things and miss the holy vision. They may say, " Lord, Lord," and know nothing of the mind of Christ. It was so in Israel ; it has been so again and again in the Christian Church. Ages of ecclesiastical revival and of great religious activity are not necessarily ages of deep spiritual insight. God's prophets and seers are quite as apt to come clad in goat's hair and leathern girdles as in the more conventional millinery. How easy it is, in the Christian life as everywhere else, to mistake the form for the substance, the chaff for the wheat.