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to help these dear friends at Philippi and elsewhere who need him, as he knows. So love to them drags at his skirts, and ties him here.
^ " Other-worldliness " finds no place in the truly Christian conduct of life. Not so to wrap ourselves up in the Christ and in the things of Christ as to be oblivious of the duties and joys and sorrows that visit us, but so to wrap ourselves up in Christ and in the things of Christ as to be the more mindful of duties and joys and sorrows, remembering that by them, by our faithfulness in them, our Lord makes the triumph of His gospel to come. What worthier interest than that could life possess ? Christ calls to us, " If all your heart is Mine — if for you to live is Christ — you can best show it by caring, for My sake, for the common experiences of every day." He uses them, and makes them holy so. Christianity produce indifference to life ! No, to the Christian disciple every- thing that enters into life glows and burns with an interest unsur- passed, for Christ uses it ; by his heart's absorption in Christ the Christian disciple is sent back to his life with a care for it which will make him live it out to the full, for Christ uses it ; and when we can truly say "To me to live is Christ," then life becomes transfigured and glorified as by selfishness it could never be transfigured and glorified, for Christ uses it. And so Christian discipleship combines the most entire selflessness with the greatest practical sanity, if I may use the word. The more enthusiastic we are in the cause of Christ's gospel, the more will our life, even in the most commonplace incidents of it, come to have worth in our eyes, since by our life and by our faithfulness in life does the cause of Christ's gospel win its way.^
^ Eousseau once said that Christians could not make good citizens or good soldiers, " because, their hearts being fixed upon another world they must necessarily be indifferent to the success or failure of such enterprises as they take up here." But this theory is contradicted by facts. It will scarcely be denied that the most useful citizens and the bravest soldiers the world has ever seen have been believers in immortality, and loyal servants of Christ. This may easily be understood when we consider that God has set in man's heart the love of life and the law of self- preservation, over against the belief in another world, to keep the balance true and to adjust the claims of the life that now is in due relation to those of the life to come. It was because the Apostle was so evenly loaded on either side that he stood so erect and walked thus steadily under his burden. And hence it is that * H. W. Clark, Meanings and Methods of the Spiritual Life, 234.
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the Christian, though lie desires a better country, does not on that account despise his present lodging.^
^ Summing up the Bishop's character, a Dignitary of Lincoln says : " Saintliness and shrewdness were equally characteristic of him. He never touched a topic without displaying an original view. He was, in the best and highest sense, a man of the world, without an atom of worldliness." ^
"To me to live is Christ" — and yet the days
Are days of toiling men ; We rise at morn, and tread the beaten ways
And lay us down again.
How is it that this base, unsightly life,
Can yet be Christ alone ? Our common need, and weariness, and strife
While common days wear on ?
Then saw I how before a Master wise
A shapeless stone was set; He said, " Therein a form of beauty lies,
Though none behold it yet.
When all beside it shall be hewn away,
That glorious shape shall stand, In beauty of the everlasting day,
Of the unsullied land."
6. It is sometimes charged against the Christian religion that it leads men to take a false view of life, and a selfish view of death. It kindles an ecstatic rapture which makes men discontented with the prosaic realities of life and leads them to long for a luxurious, sensuous heaven. This contention, in so far as it has any truth, simply shows the unfairness of judging any religion or system of thought by the one-sided representation of its feeblest followers. Enthusiastic martyrs have welcomed death so eagerly that their enemies have been led to regard their religion as a fatal fanaticism, which kindled in their minds a blind hatred of life. Even the great teachers have been inclined to insist too much on the power " to die well," as the main proof of the inspiration and
^ A, E. Hutchison.
' G. W. E, Russell, Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, 113.
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solace that come from religion. Without such fearless enthus- iasm, without the high consciousness that even life may be purchased too dearly, great movements could never have fought their way in the face of fierce bigotry and cruel persecution ; but, on the other hand, it is well to be reminded that in rapturous exalted moods there is as much danger of a narrow selfishness as in any other form of life. Paul's balanced statement, his lack of prompt decision and definite choice, give us a noble vision of life and a sublime thought of death ; from this point of view, life is a sacred trust, and death a great deliverance,