^ R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, 246. ^ The Life of William Eobertson Smith, 543.
EPHESIANS III. i6 129
we read that he was " full of power." According to the teaching of this Apostle, God hath given us the " spirit of power," which is also the spirit " of love and of a sound mind." So the strength that we must have, if we have strength at all, is the strength of a Divine Spirit, not our own, that dwells in us, and works through us.
^ There is in the human heart an inextinguishable instinct, the love of power, which, rightly directed, maintains all the majesty of law and life, and misdirected, wrecks them.
Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of man, and of the heart of woman, God set it there, and God keeps it there. — Vainly, as falsely, you blame or rebuke the desire of power ! — For Heaven's sake, and for man's sake, desire it all you can. But what power ? That is all the question. Power to destroy ? the lion's limb, and the dragon's breath ? Not so. Power to heal, to redeem, to guide and to guard. Power of the sceptre and shield ; the power of the royal hand that heals in touching, — that binds the fiend, and looses the captive ; the throne that is founded on the rock of Justice, and descended from only by steps of Mercy .^
(1) That indwelling Spirit will be a power for suffering. — The parallel passage to this in the twin Epistle to the Colossians is — "strengthened with all might unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness." Unless this Divine Spirit were a power for patience and endurance it were no power suited to us poor men. So dark at times is every life — so full at times of discouragements, of dreariness, of sadness, of loneliness, of bitter memories, and of fading hopes does the human heart become — that if we are to be strong we must have a strength that will manifest itself chiefly in this, that it teaches us how to bear, how to weep, how to submit.
^ Ill-health was Stevenson's always, but what he accomplished in the way of letters surpasses in amount and scope that which many a stronger man has done. It amounted to "nearly four hundred pages a year for twenty years," and of the conditions under which most of it was done he wrote to Mr, George Meredith in 1893 :
" Por fourteen years I have not had a day's real health ; I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary ; and I have done my day unflinchingly. I have written in bed and written out of it ; written in haemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness ; and for so ^ Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, ii. §§ 86, 87 {Works, xviii. 137). EPH.-COL. — 9
I30 POWER IN THE INWARD MAN
long it seems to me I have won my wager and recovered my glove. I am better now, have been, rightly speaking, since first I came to the Pacific ; and still few are the days when I am not in f some physical distress. And the battle goes on — ill or well is a ;_ trille, so as it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers ; have so willed that my battlefield should be this dingy, inglorious ■ ' one of the bed and the physic bottle." ^
(2) And it will be a power for conflict. — We have all of us, in • | the discharge of duty and the meeting of temptation, to face such ^ tremendous antagonisms that unless we have grace given to us ^ which will enable us to resist, we shall be overcome and swept I away. God's power from the Divine Spirit within us does not absolve us from, it fits us for, the fight. It is not given in order that holiness may be won without a struggle ; it is given to us in order that in the struggle for holiness we may never lose " one : jot of heart or hope," but may be " able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand."
^ The battle of life is a common phrase which, as generally used, means the struggle for bare existence in which the lives of so many are spent, or the effort to get on in the world by making money or attaining positions of eminence in society. The Apostle Paul's idea of the life battle is very different, it is higher, nobler, in every way better ; because it is no selfish conflict, it is a fighting \ for Grod and for the cause of God, The world's battle of life is i little better than a war of plunder, a fighting amongst beasts of prey, in which the strong endeavour to crush the weak, and the weak make desperate efforts against the strong — for the most part f a mean and miserable contention on both sides, and one in which f falsehood and trickery and cruelty and all other base stratagems \ are, without scruple, resorted to ; so that, as a rule, those who win j have more reason to be ashamed of themselves than those who , lose. St. Paul's battle of life is waged in the interests of humanity, the laws of the warfare being strictly honourable, and . its aim the establishment throughout the world of that Kingdom i which is " righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." ^ v