^ It is told in the Memoirs of Br. Chalmers that he spent an evening at Edgarstoun in the house of Mr. Eutherford. "His amiable wife was by the library fire with her sister-in-law, and Mr. Brown, a remarkably large stout man of seventy-two. He had been a parishioner in Cavers when Dr. Chalmers was assistant there, and the greetings and cordial inquiries between them were quite animated. We fell into devout discourse presently, and conversed till late." At length the company retired to rest, but in the early morning they were roused by a cry. Mr. Brown had suddenly been stricken down by death, and in a moment had been called from time into eternity. Chalmers suffered an agony of self-reproach that he had not spoken to him urgently of Christ. " It was touching to see him sit down on a bank repeatedly with tears in his eyes, and say, ' Ah ! God has rebuked me ; I know now what St. Paul means by being instant in season and out of season. Had I addressed that old man last night with urgency it might have seemed out of season to human eyes, but how seasonable it would have been.' " ^
2. But the confession is also necessary to our own salvation. It is true we are saved by faith alone, but it is also true we are not saved, and cannot be saved, by faith that is alone. A faith kept to itself, confined within the soul, denied all expression, will soon cease to live. All deep emotion requires some kind of outward manifestation, or the emotion itself will die away. John Stuart Mill said that his father " starved his feelings by denying them expression " ; and what is true of human feeling is even truer of those more sacred feelings the heart has for Christ. To believe in Jesus and never to speak to any single soul about Him, to lock up the secrets of faith in our own heart, is not only to imperil the salvation of others, it is to endanger our own. Faithfulness and
^ Mevtoirs of Dr. Chalmers, ii 366.
ROMANS X. lo 199
faith are always closely connected ; we cannot retain the one if we refuse the other. " Confession is made unto salvation."
It is true that the life is the greatest and most impressive witness for Christ, and that without the witness of the life all that the lips may utter for Him is worse than worthless ; but this is not all the truth. Christ asks of us all more than the silent and daily witness of a holy life, He asks the testimony of our lips as well. He Himself lived a life that was the sublimest witness for God the world has ever beheld ; but He was not content with living for God, He spoke for God as well. He was the Word as well as the Life, and He asks us here, as everywhere else, to follow Him. We are to be "living epistles" — letters which speak — " known and read of all men."
^ One of the most serious dangers to the spiritual life is in its silence concerning itself. If there is peril in empty and light speech about sacred things, if there is little or no value in the glibness of a shallow heart that can chatter out all its most sacred experiences as if they were articles in the inventory of an auctioneer, there is even more peril in our never speaking at all of Him who has saved us. Much of the feebleness and depression of the spiritual life of to-day is owing to the fact that so many professed believers in Christ have forgotten that " with the mouth confession is made unto salvation " — their own as well as that of others.*
» C5^. S. Barrett.
The Body for God.
Literature.
Ainger (A.), The Gospel and Human Life, 14. Aitken (W. H. M. H.), Newness of Life, 98. Almond (H. H.), Christ the Protestant, 145. Browni(J. B.), The Divine Life in Man, 145. Buxton (W. H. J.), Day by Day Duty, 10. Chapman (J. W.), And Judas Iscariot, 375. Churcli (R. W.), Human Life, 31. Dewhurst (E. M.), The King and His Servants, 35. Greenliough (J. G.), The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 217. Hackett (B.), Memorials of a Ministry, 51. Hoare (E.), Sandification, 116. Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty, 97. Hort (F. J. A.), Cambridge Sermons, 119. Horwill (H. W.), The Old Gospel in the New Era, 79. Hutchings (W. H.), Sermon Sketches, ii. 88. Joscelyne (A. E.), TJie Voices of God, 44,
Jowett (J. H.), in British Congregationalist (January-June 1907), 564. Leach (C), Sermons to Working Men, 136. Lucas (H.), At the Parting of the Ways, 238. Maclaren (A.), A Year's Ministry, i. 315. Matheson (G.), Bests by the River, 130. Newbolt (W. C. E.), Counsels of Faith and Practice, 135. Page-Koberts (W.), Reasonable Service, 41. Pearse (M, G.), Some Aspects of the Blessed Life, 169. Pipe (H. E.), Reminders of Old Truths, 64. Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xu. No. 890. Westcott (B. F.), Peterborough Sermons, 326.
Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 33 (Duckworth); xxix. 372 (Dallinger); xxxviii. 88 (Robertson) ; xlii. 210 (Hocking).
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The Body for God.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. — Rom. xii. i.