From the commencement of the twelfth chapter to the close of his Epistle we find the Apostle presenting those mercies, the nature and fulness of which he had previously unfolded in doctrine, as motives to Christian activity. They do not produce the effect which they ought to have if they do not produce righteous and holy living. It is accordingly on the valid founda- tion which these mercies supply that the Apostle raises his practical exhortations.
2. St. Paul addresses men here on the hypothesis that in some sense or other they ar3 responsible for their surroundings. He says : " Be not conformed to this world." He would not have us for a moment listen to this suggestion of a necessity. " Be not." He speaks as to people who make their own circumstances for themselves. And yet, in fact, the freedom of our will does not
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lie in any power to create or to fashion circumstances or facts or motives outside ourselves; oui' will has none of that properly creative or constructive power, but what it can do is to select among the actual facts and motives which lie in our circumstances already. Our freedom lies in selecting, in paying attention to, this or that element in our actual surroundings, and by thus attending to it we have the power to give it such predominant force that all the other elements in our surroundings sink by the side of it into insigniticance. Thus, in fact, men can do what in effect comes to making their own surroundings.
^ In this London of ours there are the same surroundings for all of us, and, for the most part, they are ugly enough, grimy enough, in our atmosphere ; but the artistic spirit selects, it looks to those particular buildings where it can find something which will gratify its sense of form. As the man of artistic sensibility walks up Whitehall he looks not to all the buildings indiscrimin- ately. He selects and distinguishes the Banqueting Hall on his right. He loves its form. It is something which responds to his sense of beauty and of fitness. As he gets to the top of Whitehall he selects and distinguishes that one statue of incomparable beauty which is the distinction of London — Le Sueur's statue of Charles l. Under the grime with which the London atmosphere has incrusted it, his eye can distinguish the lines of beauty and the majestic pose of the beautiful figure and the horse. A little farther and his imagination penetrates through the walls of the National Gallery and recalls those countless forms of beauty and of grace which have already passed into his memory from the pictures of Flemish or Italian or English School. He selects, and, by selecting, makes his own atmosphere.
So he knows what are the special glories of the sunset as it slopes along the Serpentine, what are the extraordinary beauties of the low and lurid lights which are always to be found as he walks along the Thames Embankment by day or by night. The artistic temperament selects ; by selecting it attends to particular objects ; it is not indiscriminate ; it takes what it chooses. Thus it makes its own environment, and though it moves, in fact, among exactly the same multitudinal and througii^g objects amidst which we all move, it makes its own world by that incomparable power which is possessed by the human will, of attending to what it pleases and, by attending to it, giving it the predominant force which makes that real and all the rest of little account.
And 80 it is with the rehgious man. He creates hia
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atmosphere by what he attends to. He penetrates behind the fihow and glamour of the world, back to what lies behind.^
The question which St. Paul invites the Christians in Eome to decide is whether they ought to be in fashion with the world or in favour with God. He urges them not to be " fashioned according to this world," but to be " transformed " or transfigured, i.e. changed from the figure or fashion of things belonging to the world into likeness to Christ. In that way they will be in harmony with God's will, and will discover how good God is.
Thus we may separate the good advice of the Apostle into three parts, and ask —
I. What is meant by being fashioned according to this world ? II. What is meant by being transformed by the renewing of the mind ? III. What is meant by proving that God's will is good and acceptable and perfect ?
I.
Fashioned according to this World.
i. Fashion.
1. It is a custom of St. Paul to make a distinction between the " form " of a thing, which really and necessarily belongs to it, and the " fashion," which is only a matter of outward seem- ing, or at bfest is subject to change ; and so it is misleading here to talk of being " conformed " or " transformed," when St. Paul speaks of only the good thing as a " form," and of the bad one as a mere " fashion." In another Epistle he says, " The fashion of this world passeth away" (1 Cor. vii. 31); here he reminds us that it is a passing thing, by the mere user of the word " fashion."