(1) To all, then, who really wish to lead such a life, let it be said that the first thing to be done — that without which all other efforts are worse than vain — is to devote themselves heartily to God through Christ Jesus. Much as has been said of the infusion of religious principle and motive into our worldly work, there is a preliminary advice of greater importance still — that we he religious. life comes before growth. The soldier must enlist before he can serve. In vain are directions how to keep the fire always burning on the altar, if it is not first kindled. No religion can be genuine,
1 J. M. Wilson.
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no goodness can be constant or lasting, that springs not from faith in Jesus Christ as its primary source. To know Christ as my Saviour ; to come with all my guilt and weakness to Him in whom trembling penitence never fails to find a friend ; to cast myself at His feet in whom all that is sublime in Divine holiness is softened, though not obscured, by all that is beautiful in human tenderness; and, believing in that love stronger than death which, for me and such as me, drained the cup of untold sorrows, and bore without a murmur the bitter curse of sin, to trust my soul for time and eternity into His hands — this is the beginning of true religion. And it is the reverential love with which the believer must ever look to Him to whom he owes so much, that constitutes the mainspring of the religion of daily life. Selfish- ness may prompt to a formal religion, natural susceptibility may give rise to a fitful one, but for a life of constant fervent piety, amidst the world's cares and toils, no motive is sufficient save one — self-devoted love to Christ.
^ There is a passage in a Greek drama in which one of the personages shrinks irresolutely from a proposed crime which is to turn out to his own and his companion's great profit; and the other says to him, " Dare — , and afterwards we shall show our- selves just." It is to be feared that this is the way in which many a man has spoken to his own faltering conscience, when it shrank from an unscrupulous act which promised a great worldly advancement. Dare, he has said to himself, dare to take this one step; this step will be the beginning of advancement, and when I am elevated in the world, then I shall show myself a good man, and have the reputation of one. Thus it is that people per- suade themselves that religion is not made for the hurry and the struggle of life. Now, they say or they think, now, in the very thick of the struggle, they must be allowed some little liberty, afterwards it will be different ; but now one cannot be impeded ; now there must not be this check, this shackle; now it is in- opportune, unsuitable to the crisis ; religion must wait a little.^
(2) But again, if we would lead a Christian life in the world, that life must be continued as well as begun with Christ. Wex must learn to look te Him not merely as our Saviour from guilt,-^ but as the Friend of our secret life, the chosen Companion of our solitary hours, the Depositary of all the deeper thoughts and
» J. B. Mozley.
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feelings of our soul. We cannot live for Him in the world unless we live much with Him, apart from the world. In spiritual as in secular things the deepest and strongest characters need much solitude to form them. Even earthly greatness, still more moral and spiiitual greatness, is never attained but as the result of much that is concealed from the world, of many a lonely and meditative hour. Thoughtfulness, self-knowledge, self-control, a chastened wisdom, and piety are the fruit of habitual meditation and prayer. In these exercises Heaven is brought near, and our exaggerated estimate of earthly things is corrected. By these our spiritual energies, shattered and worn by the friction of worldly work, are repaired. In the recurring seasons of devotion the cares and anxieties of worldly business cease to vex us; exhausted with its toils, we have, in daily communion with God, meat to eat which the world knows not of ; and even when its calamities and losses fall upon us, and our portion of worldly good is perhaps withdrawn, we may be able to show, like those holy ones of old at the heathen court, by the fair serene counten- ance of the spirit, that we have something better than the world's pulse to feed upon.
\ I say to my friend : " Be a Christian." That means to be a full man. And he says to me : " I have not time to be a Christian. I have not room. If my life were not so full. You don't know how hard I work from morning to night. What time is there for me to be a Christian ? What time is there, what room is there for Christianity in such a life as mine ? " But does it not come to seem to us so strange, so absurd, if it were not so melancholy, that a man should say such a thing as that ? It is as if the engine had said it had no room for the steam. It is as if the tree had said it had no room for the sap. It is as if the ocean had said it had no room for the tide. It is as if the man had said that he had no room for his soul. It is as if life said that it had no time 1 to live, when it is life. It is not something that is added to life. ^ It is life. A man is not living without it. And when a man says, "I am so full in life that I have no room for life," you see immediately to what absurdity it reduces itself. Aiid how a man knows what he is called upon by God's voice, speaking to him every hour, speaking to him every moment, speaking to him out of everything, that which the man is called upon to do because it is the man's only life! Therefore time, room, that is what time, that is what room is for — life. Life is the thing