1 E. C. Moberly.
292 OUTWARD, INWARD, CHRISTWARD
^ A distinction must be drawn between the gifts of God and the gift of God. The gifts are natural endowments, energy, strength, sagacity, powers of body, mind, and character, all of them bestowed upon man without his asking. The gift is the Divine fire, the Spirit of God Himself, the gift of life, which is bestowed only on such as ask for it. Without the gift, the gifts may be put to the very worst uses. They may be a curse to him who has them and to his fellows. But if the gift be added to the gifts, then the gifts, as St. Paul would say, become the arms of righteous- ness wielded in God's cause. The more abundant the gifts, the richer the gift. The gift cannot create the gifts, it can only sanctify them. St. Peter had always been confident, vigorous, intrepid, fervid, and clear-sighted; St. Paul always logical, original, fiery, indomitable. They were both in nature leaders of men. When to these gifts the gift was added, St. Peter could not become a zealot, St. Paul could no longer remain a persecutor. They must work for God ; they could not work against God.^
^ The man of the last generation who of all men did most to reinvigorate the life of the English Church, although he died outside her communion, lets out the secret of his fertile and lasting influence when he relates how the thought grew upon him and possessed him, " that deliverance is wrought, not by the many, but by the few, not by bodies, but by persons," and how from his schooldays onwards he loved and prized more every day the motto he had chosen as his own — " Exoriare aliquis."
(2) The very first condition of this spiritual fervency is that clear insight into the Divine method of peace, or that belief of the truth as it is in Jesus, which casts out self-righteousness, self- seeking, and self-esteem. Then those old natural fires, which, when fanned by winds from the spiritual region, make the heart and bosom burn, are extinguished and die out. There is no room now for the feelings of keen self-torture, or hot and heady self- elation, which once by turns inflamed the unsteadfast soul. New fires are kindled ; feelings of an entirely new kind come in to occupy the place of the expelled. Ear more gentle are they, far more calm ! and yet how warm, how steadily and uniformly warm ! For the source of them continues always the same. That som'ce is Christ ; Christ living in us — " Christ in us, the hope of ^ glory."
^ I took this cutting from a newspaper the other day. " A
^ W. G. Sutherford,
ROMANS xii. II 293
vicar tried last winter, in his attempt to win the man in the street, twelve concerts, twenty dances, six lectures, three Christmas- trees, and several other things, and all in vain." I think that parish might try a real novelty — the Gospel. I am persuaded of this, that the energy the Lord is going to use is the energy of the Spirit.^
III.
Cheistward.
" Serving the Lord."
"Serving the Lord" — this is the supreme motive of the Christian life. Some think that the word " Spirit " may have suggested "Lord," which here refers not to the Father, but to Christ. There is another reading, " serving the opportunity," as the Greek words for " Lord " and " time " (or season, opportunity) are very much alike. But a great balance of manuscript authority is in favour of the reading " Lord." And, apart from the weight of authority on the side of the accepted text, the other reading seems to give a very incomplete climax to the Apostle's thought, while it breaks entirely the sequence which is discernible in it. In this, the closing member of the triplet, St. Paul suggests a thought which will be stimulus to the diligence and fuel to the fire that makes the spirit boil. In effect he says, " Think, when your hands begin to droop, and when your spirits begin to be cold and indifferent, and languor to steal over you, and the paralysing influences of the commonplace and the familiar and ^ the small begin to assert themselves, think that you are serving the Lord." Will that not freshen you up? Will that not set you boiling again ? Will it not be easy to be diligent when you feel that you are " ever in the great Taskmaster's eye " ?
1. But what is meant by " serving the Lord " ? It means in the first place that our work for Christ is not work that is voluntarily undertaken by us, but work that is imposed on us by a Master.
It is true that, as in Isaiah's case, the Lord may seem to put it to ourselves to come forward for His service of our own accord.
* HftrringtoD L««*.
294 OUTWARD. INWARD, CHRISTWARD
In great kindness and condescension He allows us the satisfaction of offering ourselves as volunteers. Our engagement with Him is to have the grace, or graceful aspect, of being not so much a stern command on His part, leaving us no alternative but to enlist, but, rather, in the first instance, a spontaneous act on our part, hastening to place ourselves and our services at His disposal. But let us notice two things.