Candid reader, what should I say ? In the light of Paul's great saying, " Nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," can it be denied that Patrick Daley was right ? ^
2. " No such change is possible," men say. " Character is not made in a day. All this talk about being born again — about becoming a new man — is misleading and mischievous." Yes, it may be, if you do not understand it. Perfection of Christian character is not reached in a day. The telephone was not per- fected in a day ; but the idea, the essential telephone, was born in a minute. So with the Christian character. "Complete realization," says President Harris, "lies in the future, but the type itself, in the principle and power of it, is already actual.
' A. J. Gordon : A Biography, 97.
174 IN CHRIST A NEW CREATION
Because the type now exists, its complete attainment is to be expected. I regard this as one of the most important considera- tions for Christian ethics as well as one of the most unique features of the Christian religion. It explains and combines the statements of Scripture that man is to be saved in the future and yet is saved in the present ; that he will have and that he now has eternal life."
^ In the life of every man has there been a day when the neavens opened of their own accord, and it is almost always from that very instant that dates his true spiritual personality. It is doubtless at that instant that are formed the invisible, eternal features that we reveal, though we know it not, to angels and to souls. But with most men it is chance alone that has caused the heavens to open ; and they have not chosen the face whereby the angels know them in the infinite, nor have they understood how to ennoble and purify its features — which do indeed but owe their being to an accidental joy or sadness, an accidental thought or fear. Our veritable birth dates from the day when, for the first time, we feel at the deepest of us that there is something grave and unexpected in life. Some there are who realize suddenly that they are not alone under the sky. To others it will be brusquely revealed, while shedding a tear or giving a kiss, that " the source of all that is good and holy from the universe up to God is hidden behind a night, full of too distant stars " ; a third will see a Divine hand stretched forth between his joy and his misfortune ; and yet another will have understood that it is the dead who are in the right. One will have had pity, another will have admired or been afraid. Often does it need almost nothing, a word, a gesture, a little thing that is not even a thought. "Before, I loved thee as a brother, John," says one of Shake- speare's heroes, admiring the other's action, "but now, I do respect thee as my soul." On that day it is probable that a being will have come into the world. We can be born thus more than once ; and each birth brings us a little nearer to our God, But most of us are content to wait till an event charged with almost irresistible radiance intrudes itself violently upon our darkness, and enlightens us, in our despite. We await I know not what happy coincidence, when it may so come about that the eyes of our soul shall be open at the very moment that something extra- ordinary takes place. But in everything that happens is there light ; and the greatness of the greatest of men has but consisted in that they had trained their eyes to be open to every ray of this light.^
* M. Maetorliuck, The Treaswe of th« Humble, 172.
2 COR. V. 17 175
3. Is not a great deal of moral effort to-day spasmodic and almost fruitless because men do not take themselves in hand with thoroughness ? To try to do something right here and there, while the bias of life is left in the wrong direction is a miserable piece of work; patching a rotten garment with bits of virtue; washing a hand when the whole body needs to be plunged in the cleansing fountain. We have known persons who found that their course of conduct was disastrous to them, and under com- pulsion they have changed it, but they are what they were though their habits have changed ; the old spirit still remains, the spirit that seeks its own advantage always. That was the motive in the old habits ; they have simply seen that other habits are necessary to serve their purpose. So they are not new creatures though they have new clothes. If a time came when the old habits would serve them again, they would take them on. They remind one of a fable in which the cat is transformed into a princess, but a mouse crosses her path, and in an instant the princess is a cat once more.
^ Christ did not come into this world to patch up an old religion, merely to mend a hole here, and beautify a spot there, and add a touch to this part or that ; He came to make all things new. And when He saves a sinner, He does not propose merely to mend him up a little here and there, to cover over some bad spots in him, and to close up rents in his character by strong patches of the new cloth of grace. Gospel work is not patchwork. Christ does not sew on pieces ; He weaves a new garment without seam throughout.^