He is not describing a merely inward spiritual experience when he says : " I have been crucified with Christ." He is describing his attitude of evangelical fidelity ; he has consecrated himself to have fellowship with Christ's sufferings — to die as Christ died. He is not indulging in poetical sentiments concerning suffering in general, or concerning the mission of pain, or concern- ing the general groaning and travailing of the moral world. He is not speaking in a parable of the griefs and burdens of moral and spiritual experience, for he could not thus teach the lesson of the cross. He is simply asserting that he has such communion with the gospel of Jesus and the purpose of the Messiah to abolish ritualism and its deceptions as to face even crucifixion.
^ We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another ; we can't tell where that will lie. We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will renounce that, for the sake of obeying the Divine voice within us — for the sake of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this belief is hard : it has slipped away from me again and again ; but I have felt that if I let it go forever, I should have no light through the darkness of this life.^
For the glory and passion of this midnight,
I praise Thy name, I give Thee thanks, 0 Christ!
Thou that hast neither failed me nor forsaken,
Through these hard hours with victory overpriced;
Now that I too of Thy passion have partaken, For the world's sake called, elected, sacrificed.
Thou wast alone through Thy redemption vigil,
Thy friends had fled; The angel at the garden from Thee parted.
And solitude instead, More than the scourge, or Cross, 0 tender-hearted.
Under the crown of thorns bowed down Thy head.
^ Maggie Tulliver, in Th^ Mill on the Floss,
GAL. II. 20 355
But I, amid the torture and the taunting,
I have had Thee! Thy hand was holding my hand fast and faster,
Thy voice was close to me, And glorious eyes said, "Follow me, thy Master,
Smile as I smile thy faithfulness to see."^
3. Death means separation, and life means union. By being brought more and more into sympathy with Christ's death unto sin, we become more and more thoroughly separated from its service and defilement. It is not merely separation from sinning it is separation from the old self-life. The great hindrance to the manifestation of the Christ-life is the presence and activity of the self-life. This needs to be terminated and set aside. Nothing but " the putting to death of the Lord Jesus Christ " can accomplish this. Conformity to His death means a separation in heart and mind from the old source of activity and the motives and aims of the old life. St. Paul's own descriptive phrase for this deliverance and transformation is — "I have been crucified with Christ." In every one there is something perfectly natural which is at the same time utterly ruinous, and the successful life must therefore be a life of crucifixion. Some insurgent sinfulness must be beaten down, slain, and extirpated. The unsparing devotion of Christ to us is to be reciprocated in the power of the Divine Spirit. We are not to stop short of complete crucifixion to every- thing that stands between us and obedience to His will. The spiritual life, strictly speaking, begins here with the principle of self-renunciation unto death.
^ Among the last letters which Madame Guy on wrote, was the following to her brother, Gregory de la Mothe; an humble and pious man, connected with the Order of the Carthusians : —
" Separation from outward things, the crucifixion of the world in its external relations and attractions, and retirement within yourself, are things exceedingly important in their time. They constitute a preparatory work; but they are not the whole work. It is necessary to go a step further. The time has come when you are not only to retire within yourself, but to retire fro7n yourself; — when you are not only to crucify the outward world, but to crucify the inward world; to separate yourself absolutely and wholly from everything which is not
* H. E. Hamilton Kine.
1
356 THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
God. Believe me, my dear brother, you will never find rest anywhere else." *
III.
The New Life in Faith.
St. Paul does not merely speak of crucifixion and death ; he connects it with life. ^!gwness of life is the one great character-^ jstic of his own experience. It is of the very essence of the Apostle's teaching. The Christian, according to his teaching, not only dies and is buried with Christ, but is quickened together with Him. He rises unto Christ, he lives in Christ ; nay, the Christian dwells in Christ, and Christ in the Christian.
1. The contradictions and contrasts of the text, on which the Apostle dwells so emphatically, are full of meaning. The idea which they express is that of the death of one life and the rising of another, and in no other way could he express it so forcibly. Had he simply said " I live," he would but have brought out the idea of a life coming from death. But by contrasting one with the other, by denying life, and yet asserting it, by saying, " I have been crucified: yet I live," he has shadowed forth, in the most powerful form, the thought of a new and beautiful life rising from the crucifixion in which the old and carnal life expires. " I live ; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me." " I have actually lost my own individuality in Christ " — that is what it comes to. These phrases give a precise statement of St. Paul's ideas concern- ing the relation between the disciple and his Lord. That the Apostle's own experience did not always touch these heights is of course true ; for one sets over against this passage other passages wherein he declares how the sin that still dwelt in him interrupted and spoilt this utter identification of himself with Christ which constituted his ideal ; but that it was his ideal, there is no manner of doubt.