201 (Armstrong), 221 (Hannah), 224 (Edmondstone). Keswick Week, 1905, p. 49 (Moore). Literary Churchman, xxv. (1879), 380.
Christ in the Heart.
I bow my knees unto the Father, , . . that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.— Eph. iii. 17.
1. This is the central petition of the Apostle's prayer — "that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." We may be inspired by the memory of Christ, to determine that we will be more lowly, more earnest, more faithful, more fervent in spirit ; that we will strive to be more like Him, kind and forgiving to others, trying to bless and do them good, and we may succeed and get a great deal of happiness from our resolve and endeavour. But we have not reached the centre of Christian joy and hope and strength until Christ dwells in our hearts by faith ; that is, until He becomes a living reality to us, and not only a living reality but a close reality ; until we can say in our measure, what the writer of this letter says in another place, " Christ liveth in me " ; until our rejoicing is not over One who was born and lived and died, and the influence of whose life and work has blessed mankind beyond all measure, not over One who triumphed over His enemies and is raised to a throne of glory, but over One who, in addition to all these, lives near us and in us, sharing our burdens and joys, and ruling our lives with His living will.
^ The indwelling Christ was a far greater and more wonderful thing to Paul than the birth at Bethlehem. He is never lost in wonder at that, he says very little about it. He seems to be lost in the far greater wonder that the Babe of Bethlehem and the Man of Nazareth lives and speaks to men and rules their spirit with His, and is so near to them that His person is more real than their own, and they are more conscious of Christ than of them- selves. So this man said, " I no longer live, Christ liveth in me, my will is merged in His, and my whole being is enveloped in His."i
* C. Brown, God avd Man, 55. 141
142 CHRIST IN THE HEART
^ Let us examine our faith in Christ by this text. Does He dwell in us by our faith ? If He does not, our faith is vain. It will not benefit us to call Him Lord, Lord, if He does not rule as Lord over the inward man. He is truly the Saviour of men ; but He has no other way of saving men than by acquiring whole and sole dominion in the house of the soul. If another spirit of life than His reigns within us, we may call Him Saviour, but He is not our Saviour. The only salvation which we want is salvation from the spirit of our own life, for we are exposed to hell, only because another spirit than that of God's only Son prevails in us, and no one can live in Heaven, unless the Son of God be his life. " He that hath the Son hath life ; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." ^
If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited. Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say — " This is not dead," And till thee with Himself instead.
But thou art all replete with very thoit^
And hast such shrewd activity, That, when He comes, He says — " This is enow
Unto itself — 'Twere better let it be : It is so small and full, there is no room for Me."^
2. In these central words of his great prayer, the Apostle teaches his Ephesian converts that the Gospel is to be found not in outward observances, but in the purity and Christlike holiness of the inward spiritual life. In every age this spiritual life has been in danger of extinction through the pressure of material influences swathing and crushing it with the coarse sensual bonds of outward forms ; sometimes in the shape of superstition, some- times in that of gross carnality, sometimes — and more especially in days like ours — in the shape of mere personal self-indulgence and comfort. It is always the tendency of ordinary men to turn away from the more refined and subtle beauty of the spiritual life and seek refuge in the tangible, the visible, the material, too often adopting, as the outward form, the product of some false extraneous idolatry, borrowed from a world that could no longer retain God
' John Pulsford, Christ and His Seed, 116.
- T. E. Brown, Old John and Other Poems, 151.
EPHESIANS III. 17 143
in its thoughts. The Jews were in constant danger of yielding to idolatry and sensuality through the pressure and bad example of surrounding nations, against which they were not firm enough to maintain the pure faith of their father Abraham. Pass into Church history, and you will find that the Christian Church has been constantly exposed to the full force of the same temptations. At this very day there are old pagan superstitions which linger in many parts of Christendom, and veil their real heathen character under the pretext of some Christian sense or application. Too often the historians of the Church have found it almost impossible to trace out the hidden stream of spiritual life, overshadowed as it was by the oppressive influence of a vast external system, which occupied the eye and filled the attention, yet destroyed religion by its fatal combination of an elaborate ceremonial with lamentable sensuality, amidst which purity of life and the spirit of self- sacrifice were blotted out and forgotten. When such times were at the worst God sent the reformer; and the message of all reformers who are worthy of the name has always been to proclaim that the spirit is incomparably more important than the framework, that it is a fatal mistake to sacrifice the end to the means, and that faith and holiness are the proper objects and the true characteristics of the Christian, Such declarations have in darker ages seemed like fresh epiphanies of Christ, bringing men back from the oppressive weight of an immoral religion to a new and keen sense of those eternal realities — faith in Christ, trust in His mercy, purity of heart, and righteousness of conduct.