Tf In this assurance we shall no longer beat our disheartened way through life in dumb despondency, and find expression for our passionate but hopeless longings only in the wail of the dreary poet of pessimism —
But if from boundless spaces no answering voice shall start, Except the barren echo of our ever yearning heart — Farewell, then, empty deserts, where beat our aimless wings, Farewell, then, dream sublime of uncompassable things.
454 THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT
We are not, indeed, relieved from the necessity for healthful effort, but we can no longer speak of " vain hopes." The way may be hard, but we can no longer talk of " the unfruitful road which bruises our naked feet." Strenuous endeavour may be required of us, but we can no longer feel that we are "beating aimless wings," and can expect no further response from the infinite expanse than " a sterile echo of our own eternal longings." No, no — the language of despair falls at once from off our souls. Henceforth our accents will be borrowed rather from a nobler " poet of faith," and the blessing of Asher will seem to be spoken to us also —
Thy shoes shall be iron and brass ; And as thy days, so shall thy strength be. There is none like unto God, 0 Jeshurun, Who rideth upon the heaven for thy help, And in his excellency on the sides. The eternal God is thy dwelling-place, And underneath are the everlasting arms.
The Spirit of a Son.
455
Literature.
Davies (J. LI.), Tlie Christian Calling, 29,
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Sundays after Trinity, i. 265. Kingsley (C), National Sermons, 403. Neale (J. M.), Sermons in Sackville College Chapel, ii. 117. Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, v. 313. Oosterzee (J. J. van), The Year of Salvation, i. 486. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxx. No. 1759. Vaughan (C. J.), Epiphany, Lent, and Easter, 441. Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), iv. No. 486. Christian World Pulpit, lx. 65 (Strong) ; lxiii. 150 (Body) ; 369 (Newsom). Churchman's Pulpit, xxviii. 37 (Roberts), 44 (Tait), 47 (Cotton), 49 (Newsom).
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The Spirit of a Son.
For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. — Rom. viii. 15.
1. In a remarkable letter which appeared in the Times, written by Professor Harnack, in which he was dealing with the letter of the Emperor of Germany upon the controversies gathering round the Higher Criticism, great prominence was given to the fact that there is no subject of graver importance for a man than his relation to God, and that everything depends on this relation. We would all say a full "Amen" to that sentence. A true relation to God lies at the bottom of all right-shapen life. A wrong conception of God will issue in a wrong shaping of life.
2. But what is a true relation to God ? It is beyond doubt
a filial relationship. Our Lord has taught us that, in the first
clause of the Lord's Prayer. He who prays, " Our Father which
art in heaven," believes that the relation in which he stands to
God is that of a child to his father ; and he who thus prays — if
his prayer be a reality — will find the primary shaping of his life
in the fact that his relation to God in every aspect of life is that
of a child to his father. Accordingly, St. Paul tells the Eoman
Christians that what the Holy Ghost does is to enable us with
fulness of utterance to say this first clause of the Lord's Prayer.
No man can call Jesus Lord but by the Holy Ghost. No man
can really call upon God as Abba, Father, unless it be through
the power of the witness of the Spirit. The Lord's Prayer can
be a reality only to those who are taught to utter it in the power
of the Holy Ghost. But the characteristic feature in the life of
the true Christian is this, that not having the spirit of bondage
again to fear, but the spirit of adoption, he is enabled to look up
into the face of the Eternal as He dwells in the light that no
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458 THE SPIRIT OF A SON
man can approach unto in the glory of the heavens, and with simplicity of utterance say, " Abba, Father."
3. What says the example of Christ ? For let us remember this truth — the model Christian is Christ Himself; and if we want to know what the ideal Christian life is, and the conditions under which we are to live it, we have simply to discover first of all what were the conditions under which Christ, in His humanity, lived that ideal human life. The most superficial study of St. John's Gospel will teach us this, that the whole life of Christ was lived in a spirit of filial relation to His Father in heaven. When we turn to St. John's Gospel and go through it with even the most cursory study, we find one expression in it again and again, with a repetition which seems almost to be unnecessary : " My Father, My Father." We see Jesus living with His eyes always fixed upon the face of the Father which is in heaven, with a blessed consciousness of His filial relationship to the Father, not only essentially in His Divine nature, but also in His human nature. His mind is lit with the light of this relationship ; His heart rejoices in its joy ; His will is always fixed in its posture and action by this relation ; and the life of the Christ is emphatically and pre-eminently the life of sonship.