(2) In order to have peace of conscience. — Many of our great philosophers tell us that human nature can never attain content with itself. They tell us that our activity contradicts our ideal, that our carnal self is opposed to our rational self, and that our impulse dominates duty. So in the very nature of things a man cannot be at peace in himself. Thus one of the philosophers — Schopenhauer — asks this question, " Was there ever a man who was at peace with himself ? "
(3) In order to obtain spiritual knowledge. — We have not brought into our life the knowledge of God ; that is the secret of our dis-
1 W. L. Watkinson. 2 COR. & GAL. — 12
178 IN CHRIST A NEW CREATION
content. We want the miracle of creation working in nature. There was a time when nature stood great and material, but there came a day (if you like to express it so) when the Spirit breathed upon its rugged greatness, and all was changed.
^ Botanists tell us that there was a time when all the flowers were green and rough ; but there came a day when they received a spiritual touch, and in place of the full monotony of green they blossomed pink and blue, crimson and gold. That is the touch we want. Scientists tell us that there was a time when the birds did not sing (for these gentlemen inform us that music is very recent). All the birds were there, yet they had no melody nor song ; but there came a strange moment for the world of birds, and they responded to the touch of the Spirit and became the songsters of morning entering the realm of music. It is a touch like that we want ! There was a time, so thinkers say, when man existed in a certain shape they call the al most-man. One day the Spirit breathed upon the almost-man and he stood up as the man we know in Milton and Shakespeare, St. Paul and St. John. That is the touch we want. As these great scientists tell us, there was special breath which caused the green flowers to be decked with radiant glory, the silent birds to break out in the sweet minstrelsy of song, and the almost-man to arise to dignity, intelligence and spirituality; that is the great change which many people need. They have the material form, but they want the touch of the Spirit, which makes life higher, grander and nobler.^
III.
The New Ceeation Without.
Change the man and you change his world. The new self will make all around it as good as new, though no actual change should pass on it ; for, to a very wonderful extent, a man creates his own world. We project the hue of our own spirits on things outside. A bright and cheerful temper sees all things on their sunny side. A weary, uneasy mind drapes the very earth in gloom. Lift from a man his load of inward anxiety and you change the aspect of the universe to that man; for, if "to the pure all things are pure," it is no less true that to the happy all things are happy. Especially is the world revolutionized and
* W. L. Watkinson.
2 COR. V. 17 179
made new to a man by a noble and joyous passion. Any great enthusiasm which lifts a man above his average self for the time makes him like a new man, and transfigures the universe in his eyes. Even common natures know how the one pure, imagina- tive passion of youthful love, which to most people is the solitary enthusiasm of their life, works a temporary enchantment. All poetry and art, fastening on this as the commonest form of noble passion, have worked this vein and made us familiar with the transforming virtue of young love betwixt youth and maiden to turn the prose of life to poetry, to make the vulgar heroic, and the common-place romantic. The ideal lover moves in a world of his own. To him "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." Now, this power of human nature, when exalted through high and noble emotion, to make its own world, will be realized in its profoundest form when the soul is re-created by the free Spirit of God. Let God lift us above our old selves, and inspire us with no earthly, but with the pure flame of a celestial, devotion ; let Him breathe into our hearts the noblest, freest of all enthusiasms, the enthusiasm for Himself; and to us all things will become new. We shall seem to our- selves to have entered another world, where we breathe lighter air, see an intenser sunlight, and move to the impulses of a more generous spirit.
^ Science entirely fascinated him ; his first plunge into real scientific work opened to him a new life, gave him the first sense of power and of capacity. Now he read Mr. Darwin's books, and it is impossible to overrate the extraordinary effect they had on the young man's mind. Something of the feeling which Keats describes in the sonnet " On looking into Chapman's Homer " seems to have been his :
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken;