^ Take a water-bottle, and if that water-bottle be only half full, every time you move the bottle, the water in it washes to and fro. Why ? How is it that it feels every motion ? Because it is not full. But if you fill that water-bottle right up till it cannot hold another drop, and then cork it in, you may turn the bottle which way you like, and the water within it will not move. There is no movement, no washing about. Why ? Because it is too full to he agitated. The reason why you and I live such poor restless lives is that we are not filled up with the fulness of God.^
^ When she knew that she was close by the opening gateway of death, I asked her if she desired to see any one who would speak to her of what was to come. " That would be but a waste of time," she replied, " I have always been ready. Let us praise God together for what has been. He has been very good to me in giving me my work, my friends, and my faith. At the end of the day I go gladly to Him for rest and shelter." She was convinced that life and time were not the sum and substance of experience, and went away as though but starting upon a journey which, beginning in darkness, would proceed through light. She would hold my hand, she said, till those who had gone before gave her greetings.^
(3) It is to be full of righteousness. — In Phil. i. 11 we read, " Filled with the fruits of righteousness " — not just a stray fruit here and there upon our boughs, but all our boughs filled with fruit until, through the very weight of their load, they bend down and kiss the ground. The more fruitful the branch the lower it will hang. The more fruit there is upon a believer, the less
^ Josiah Royce. 2 ^^ q Brown.
^ J. Ramsay MacDonald, Margaret Ethel MacDonald, 62. EPH.-COL. — 14
2IO OUR HIGH CALLING
conceit and pride there will be about him. The branch, heavily laden, bends beneath the weight of its own fruitfulness.
^ What an aspiration for a band of fishermen, peasants, slaves ! It was an aspiration after more than Eoman dominion, after more than Judaic empire. The proudest dreams of Pantheism never dared to soar so high. The Brahman had aspired to be lost in God, to have the little spark of his individual being absorbed in the mighty fire of the universe; that was rather humility than pride. Here was a company of men aspiring to reach God yet not to be lost in God, aiming to touch the brightness of the Infinite Glory without losing the spark of their own individual being. Was not this presumption, was not this impiety, was not this fitted to destroy all the tender graces of the Christian life — the poverty of spirit which had been promised the Kingdom, the meekness of heart which was to inherit the earth ?
Nay, but who was this God with whose fulness they desired to be filled ? His name was Love. If His name had been aught else than Love the desire of these men would have been indeed pre- sumption. But to be filled with the fulness of love is not pride ; it is the deepest, the most intense humility. He that is filled with love is thereby made the servant of all ; he repeats the life of the Divine Man, and becomes heir to His burden. To him belong sorrows not his own. He labours in the labour of humanity, he suffers in the tears of affliction, he is wounded in the battle of the weak. His glory is his pain. That which fills him with God is that which fills him with sadness, which bows him down with the sense of nothingness ; the love that makes him great is the power that makes him gentle.^
^ They speak of ideals. But they cannot separate man's ideals from the Man Christ Jesus. They speak of truth. Questions about truth involve the question, What about Christ? They speak to us of goodness. And — more faintly or more vividly, more lightly or more seriously — does there not rise on their memory a Face, marred more than any man's, that carries an image and message of goodness, leaving all else of goodness behind it and below it ? ^
* George Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 129. ' The Life of Principal Rainy, ii. 174.
Grieving the Spirit.
Literature.
Atkin (J. W.), The Paraklete, 62.
Barrett (G. S.), Musings for Quiet Hours, 40.
Boyd (A. K. H.), The Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson, ii. 54.
Bright (W.), Morality in Doctrine, 88.
Burrows (H. W.), Lenten and other Sermons, 120.
Calthrop (G.) In Christ, 128.
Chapman (J. W.), The Power of a Surrendered Life, 81.
Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, ii. 307.
Lowry (S. C), The Work of the Holy Spirit, 87.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : The Epistle to the Ephesians, 262.
Moore (E. W.), The Spirit's Seal, 45.
Selby (T. G.), The Holy Spirit and Christian Privilege, 91.
Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pnlpit, v. 425.
De Teissier (G. F.), Village Sermons, iv. 254.