Lord, in asking for fervour, I am asking for Thyself, for nothing short of Thee, 0 my God, who hast given Thyself wholly to us. Enter my heart substantially and personally, and fill it with fervour by filling it with Thee. Thou alone canst fill the soul of man, and Thou hast promised to do so. Thou art the living Flame, and ever burnest with love of man : enter into me and set me on fire after Thy pattern and likeness.^
II.
The Sphere.
" In the inward man."
1. By the " inward man " is meant, not the new creation through faith in Jesus Christ which this Apostle calls " the new man," but simply what Peter calls the " hidden man of the heart," the " soul," or unseen self, as distinguished from the visible material body, which it animates and informs. It is this inward self, then, in which the Spirit of God is to dwell, and into which it is to breathe strength. The leaven is hid deep in three
* Newman's Meditations and Devotions, in Ward's Life of Cardinal Nevmian, ii. 367.
EPHESIANS III. i6 tn
measures of meal until the whole is leavened. And the point to note is that the whole inward region which makes up the true man is the field upon which this Divine Spirit is to work. It is not a bit of our inward life that is to be hallowed. It is not any one aspect of it that is to be strengthened; it is the whole intellect, affections, desires, tastes, powers of attention, conscience, imagination, memory, will. The whole inward man in all its corners is to be filled, and to come under the influence of this power, until there be " no part dark, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light."
^ The inward man, of which St. Paul speaks as delighting in the law of God, is the moral personality. When the inward man is regenerated, it becomes " the new man " ; but before this re- newal in the spirit of our mind (Eph. iv. 23), the inward man can recognize the goodness of Him whose holy law is the expres- sion of an ideal, which wins the admiration of him whose failures compel him to cry, " It is high, it is high ; I cannot attain unto it." To be " strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man " means therefore the invigoration of our noblest powers, the enriching of the higher self, the imparting of new energy to our whole conscious personal being. The result of the Holy Spirit's energizing is neither the gradual extinction of desire nor the enfeeblement of the will ; on the contrary, the Spirit- filled personality desires more ardently and wills more strongly. The difference is that the inward man is no longer "infirm of purpose." All, and more than all, that the wisest ethical teachers intend, when they extol the virtue of self-control, is a gift of grace to those who " walk in the flesh," but " do not war according to the flesh." Those who " walk in the Spirit " also war according to the Spirit, and in the Spirit's strength they are enabled to " bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ " (2 Cor. X. 5).i
^ The day came when Paul was led out along the road towards Ostia to his execution. There were priests and beggars and Arab merchants and sailors and camel-drivers who turned to look. What they saw was an armed guard with a Jewish culprit in chains ; a man of " mean presence " outwardly, but destined to walk through history like a giant. The place was reached ; there was the flash of a heavy sword; a head fell from the block. " There's an end of this zealot," said the executioner to his men. Little they knew ! The real Paul cannot be slain. He is
1 J. G. Tasker.
122 POWER IN THE INWARD MAN
destined to be heard from. The " inner man " will walk up and down in Church councils, a participant in all great theological controversies, until the end of time. His death is but the widening of his parish.
Out of sight sinks the stone In the deep sea of time, but the circles sweep on ! ^
2. Every one has an inward man, a better self, a potential perfection within him, which will awake and begin to flower when he feels in his soul the touch of God. There is laid down in the being of each man, or deposited there in germ, an ideal, a Divine ideal, which ought to become, under the nourishing powers of redemption and providence, the real. The man is not " him- self " truly, until he has at least begun to translate the ideal into the real in his daily life. So we read that the prodigal " came to himself" ; he had been heside himself until then, a kind of lunatic. For madness — so saith the Wise Man — is in the heart of the sons of men while they live ; he means in sin, and away from God. When they come to God they come to sanity, to self. In fact, coming to one's self in discovery, idea, desire, deep-grasping con- sciousness, is the first step in the way of return to God and happiness. That hour of full awakening is the supreme season of a man's life. How very far some men seem to be from it ! But there is this consolation — that they are not always so far from it as they seem.