(2) Life in its pleasures is ours ; there is no bright or helpful pleasure that is not ours. There is no place on earth which a Christian man cannot transform and transfigure to be the very gateway of heaven. All mirth is ours, all laughter is ours, all amusements are ours. Amusement in our hands will turn to spiritual help, and to the making of manhood and womanhood. All music is ours, all poetry is ours, the drama is ours. Pleasure in its noblest, best, sweetest, truest sense belongs only to the Christian. It is only when we are really armed in Christ for the shocks and storms of life that we are safe to remember that we are made fit in Christ for a double enjoyment of its joys.
^[ Life is really so wondrous ; this fibrine, iron, sinew, bone, flesh, and colouring substance is so miraculous when alive, walking about and thinking, and the eye is so expressive, the tone so eloquent, the brain so active, and the heart so full of love and feeling, that the mere gift of life is a largess so grand and utterly magnificent that the dry bones breathed on should indeed rejoice. Man is king of the world, monarch of the air, which is his circum- ambient servant and puts colour in his cheeks and brightness in
128 YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS
his eye ; of the earth, which on her brown bosom bears him corn and wine and oil of gladness ; of the sea, which scatters its treasures at his feet and conveys him from land to land ; of the sky, which is peopled with winged servants of his ; of the caverns and hollows under the earth, which yield iron and copper and lead and gold to serve him, and give him precious stones to glitter in his sight, and the treasures of antediluvian woods, laid up as coal to warm him in the winter. Of the other inferior life that shares the earth he too is master. Yoked to his chariot the swift steed bears him ; and all animals, from the lion to the lamb, minister to his recreations, sports, desires, or wants.1
(3) Life in its disciplines is ours. To say that life is pleasurable is also to say that life is sad. To say that life is full of beauty is also to say that life is full of sorrow. There are minor as well as major chords in our life. There are none of us without our struggles, none of us without our failures, none of us without disappointments, none of us without bereavements, none without our sorrows. The old theologians and prophets used to look upon life as a probation. Life is not a probation; life is something nobler than that, it is an education. If we struggle, if we fight, if we are foiled, if we are down, let us not call it our sad destiny — let us call it God's educating force to make us perfect men or women in Christ Jesus.
Blaspheme not thou thy sacred Life, nor turn, O'er joys that God hath for a season lent — (Perchance to try thy spirit and its bent,
Effeminate soul and base !) — weakly to mourn !
There lies no desert in the land of Life;
For e'en that tract that barrenest doth seem, Laboured of thee in faith and hope, shall teem
With heavenly harvests and rich gatherings rife.2
(4) Life in its possibilities is ours. John Stuart Mill once said that no man could think of the heights of feeling that were possible to him. Do we not believe that ; do we not believe with all the future before us, and with all the love of God on our side, there are scarcely any stages which we cannot reach ? There are heights of purity to climb, valleys of humility to go through, all the magnificent possibilities of service, of self-sacrifice, and of life for others, a new start, and prospects which the grace of God
1 J. H. Friswell, This Wicked World, 269. 2 Frances Kemble.
i CORINTHIANS in. 21-23 129
alone can give. When we look back upon our life, the saddest thing is not that we have been dishonest, not that we have been impure, perhaps ; but the saddest thing is that our life has been so meagre when it might have been so grand, that it has been so petty when it might have been so sublime, so poor when it might have been so rich.
U From the first Christianity had proclaimed that the whole life of man belonged to it. This meant everything that made man's life wider, deeper, fuller; whatever made it more joyous or contented; whatever sharpened the brain, strengthened and taught the muscles, gave full play to man's energies, could be taken up into and become part of the Christian Bfe. Sin and foulness were sternly excluded; but, that done, there was no element of the Grseco-Koman civilization which could not be appropriated by Christianity. So it assimilated Hellenism or the fine flower and fruit of Greek thought and feeling; it appropriated Eoman law and institutions ; it made its own the simple festivals of the common people. All were theirs; and they were Christ's ; and Christ was God's.1
Thank God for life: life is not sweet always, Hands may be heavy-laden, hearts care full, Unwelcome nights follow unwelcome days, And dreams divine end in awakenings dull. Still it is life, and life is cause for praise, This ache, this restlessness, this quickening sting, Prove me no torpid and inanimate thing, Prove me of Him who is of life the Spring, I am alive ! — and that is beautiful.2