^ To those in Christ all things are not only new, but they are growing continually newer. In the old world, and with the old man, it is just the other way. Things are always getting older, until life gets to be an insufferable burden, a dreary round, a wretched repetition, and we see backs bent with nothing but pure sorrow, and heads white with none other sickness than vexation of spirit, and men brought to the grave because life was too wearisome, and time too intolerable, and existence too aimless and stale, to be supported any longer. But in the new world, and with the new man, the whole is reversed ; and the new cry ever waxes more frequent and more loud. " Look, and look again, how the old is passing, how the new is coming, how things are getting new." Every day more of the old is weeded out, more of the new is coming in. Life is " fresher and freer " and fuller of promise. There are new discoveries of the Father's love, new revelations of Christ's grace, new experiences of the Spirit's comfort. Life becomes interesting, and entertaining, and signifi- cant, and splendid, and grand beyond belief. What views of life
192 THE NEW AND THE OLD
Christ's world contains ; what heavens of expansion overarch it ; what hills of attainment are reared upon it; what distances of outlook are discernible from it ! Yourself, Christ, God — what thoughts about them all you could never have conceived before ! History, Time, Eternity — what feelings they stir in you, you never could have felt before ! Purpose, Progress, Achievement — what mighty motions of the will they produce ! ^
3. Now the principle here laid down by the Apostle is one of the greatest importance when regarded as a principle of recon- ciliation between opposing tendencies. For both political parties and religious parties may be said, as a rule, to range themselves respectively under the banners of the past and of the future. " Old things " is the watchword of the one ; " new things " is the watchword of the other. The one would try to resuscitate the past, would cherish it, even in its fossilized forms would try to galvanize it into life ; the other would sweep away its every vestige, or leave it only as a subject of curious inquiry to the archaeologist, or of inspiration to the poet. The one dislikes all change ; the other thinks that no change can be too radical and too sweeping. The one hugs the shore or keeps to the harbour ; the other riots in the tumult of winds and waves, if only a new world may be given to its eager quest and dauntless courage. But both these extreme parties are alike at war with the very constitution of the world. You cannot stereotype any phase of human existence. Change is God's law ; progress is God's law.
^ The claim of a new thing to be old is, in varying degrees, a common characteristic of great movements. The Reformation professed to be a return to the Bible, the Evangelical movement in England a return to the Gospels, the High Church movement a return to the early Church. A large element, even in the French Revolution, the greatest of all breaches with the past, had for its ideal a return to the Roman republican virtue or to the simplicity of the natural man. I noticed quite lately a speech of an American Progressive leader claiming that his principles were simply those of Abraham Lincoln.^
4. " The old things are passed away " ; and quite rightly we are slow to see it. He has little sense of holiness who tramples on
» B. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 130.
' Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Seligion^ 58.
2 COR. V. 17 193
the past, or scorns the words of those whom God has taken from us. Yet the old things do pass away, and often silently. We seem to wake of a sudden to find that the old hand has lost its cunning, the old custom is turned to wrong, the old teaching emptied of its living force. Then what are we to do ? We have a carnal craving for something fixed in this world, some rock of adamant on which the storms of time shall beat in vain. Meaner men simply will not take the trouble to give up the old things. The foolish mother would like her baby to be always little ; the stupid politician shrinks from needful reform ; the cowardly Christian looks out for a master upon earth, or hides himself among the trees of dogma, that no fresh voice from heaven may unsettle the thing he is pleased to call his faith.
All purely natural things must pass away. The beauty of our childhood fades, the proud powers of our manhood fail us, and words that were spirit and life to our fathers are empty sounds to us whom God has changed. Who cares now for the battle-cry of the Crusaders ? The old things are passed away, and the glory seems departed with them from the earth. We look wistfully to the culture of Greece, the splendour of Eome, the fervour of the early Christians, the simple faith of the Middle Ages, the strong righteousness of Puritanism ; but we can no more recall them than we can wake the dead. They have passed away for ever, and we must face as we best can the work of a world which without them seems cheerless and commonplace.