^ Mr. Macgregor's nature presented a union, difficult for those who did not know him to understand, of feeling, of intellect, and strength of will. If feeling "overpowered" him for the moment, it was not suffered to carry him away. No im- pulse was allowed to master him for which he could not find intellectual justification ; and then what he felt and experienced his resolute will turned into a force of life. That these days at Keswick were a turning-point in his life, there is not the smallest doubt. That they made his later ministry what it was, is equally certain. To say that he sometimes appeared to claim for this experience and its effects more than the facts altogether warranted, is only to say that, though remarkably enlightened and strengthened by God's Spirit, he remained a fallible human being. But no one who knew George Macgregor, either as a man or a minister, before that crisis and after it, could question that
* D. J. Burrell, The Eeligion of the Future, 15.
EPHESIANS III. i6 123
he found then a new secret of strength both for his own life, and for his work.^
^ Paul's great solicitude is for the inner man ; if he can only get that strengthened he feels that his work is done. And he is right. The inner man is the metropolis, the capital, the chief city; all the provinces take their tone from there. No man must begin with the provinces if he wants to make his fortune. In vain you adorn the body, in vain you amass the gold, in vain you seek the sights and sounds of beauty; the capital is the heart, and if the fashion of the heart be sombre, the whole is sad. But if the fashion of the heart be bright, I have no fear for the provinces; these will soon follow. The body may be meanly clad, the gold may be scarce and dim, the sights and sounds of beauty may be shut out by lane and alley, but if in the heart there be voices of laughter, they will fill all the land. If there be songs in the metropolis, I shall not be able to keep down my singing. I shall sing through all the provinces ; I shall sing in the cold and in the snow ; I shall sing in the dark and in the rain ; I shall sing amid my struggles for daily bread. The life of joy is everywhere when there is gladness in the inner man.^
3. How then is the discovery made ? How does a man reach the centre and fountain of his own being ? find himself ? recover himself? bring himself home again to God? There are very great varieties of experience. But perhaps these things, or some- thing like them, will be found in all.
(1) First, there is what may be called a soul consciousness — a consciousness of having, or being, a soul ; not merely an animated something, to be covered with dress and beautified with manners ; not merely a thinking something, to be informed by knowledge and guided by morals; but a something spiritual, vast, deep, related to eternity, related to God.
(2) The next thing is the conscious relation to God. No sooner does a man become conscious of his true self than he in that very act becomes cognizant and sensible of God. Some philosophic thinkers say that the deep and true self-consciousness is also, in a sense, consciousness of God — that we are so related to the Infinite that we cannot become conscious of our truest selves without touching and feeling it, without touching and feeling God.
(3) The third thing, or the thing which goes along with this
1 Life of George H. C. Macgregor, M.A., 110. ^ G. Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 219.
124 POWER IN THE INWARD MAN
very often, is the consciousness of sin — " I will say unto him, Father, I have sinned." When the inward man is found, sin is found in it, or cleaving to it very closely. Yes, real sin, deep, soul- humhling sin. Not merely infirmity, mistake, and misadventure ; but sin, which makes the sinner guilty, which makes him unworthy of kindness, worthy of wrath.
(4) Then, further, he becomes conscious of goodness as well as of sin. Not the old formal goodness ; but goodness that is fresh and new and living ; with love in the heart of it, gratitude lending it a glow and a lustre, faith building it up. This new life of good- ness begins just with the other things we have named. Not after them, but with and in them. We are too apt to conceive of the religious life as consisting in a series of consecutive exercises, the beginning of the one waiting for the completion of the other. First repentance, then cleansing and forgiveness, then gratitude, then filial love, then active goodness. Not so. The moment a man comes to himself, all these things begin together, and go on together.
^ Some trees in early spring are yet covered with last year's leaves ; all withered now and begrimed. What says the new vegetation to these ? " I must wait until God sends winds strong enough to sv/eep them away ; rains heavy enough to wash the tree clean in every branch " ? Not at all. That new vegetation, that fresh leafage, comes out and pushes them off, and clothes the tree with virgin green, drawing food and beauty from the mould of the earth, from the wandering wind, from the passing cloud. So goodness throws off sin, and dresses and adorns the soul in the beauties of God's holiness.^