* A. H. Strong, Miscellanies, ii. 129. • J. Cameron Lees.
• F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul.
300 WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION
has given us ; we are each to work it out, as the skilled workman may work out in wood or metal the idea which lies already fully formed within his mind. We are not to work for life, but, as it were, from life, as being those who already have it and who are resolved, by Divine grace, to experience all that life implies. Just as God Himself works out in the history of creation His primeval thought, that thought which before the first creative word was uttered already embraced in itself every moment of history, and every atom of existence, so are we in the sphere of Christ Jesus, in whom potentially we have all things, to work Christ out with fear and trembling into the actual being, thought and character of our souls.
Salvation must be personal for the all-important reason that sin is personal. We have each chosen our own way. And God loves men in their individual capacity. This individuality must never be lost sight of, and our own private and personal interest in the events of Calvary must be ever present to our minds. Grand as is the doctrine of a universal atonement, yet to the man who has never proved his interest therein the contempla- tion can afford no real peace, no abiding joy. It is only as he cuts himself out of the mass, and realizes his own personal and specific relations to God in Christ, that he can share in the consciousness of His definite presence and delivering power.
^ We can never dismiss from memory the sadness with which we once listened to the confession of a certain foreign professor : " I used to be concerned about religion," he said in substance, " but religion is a great subject. I was very busy ; there was little time to settle it for myself. A Protestant, my attention was called to the Eoman Catholic religion. It suited my case. And instead of dabbling in religion for myself, I put myselJ in its hands." " Once a year," he concluded, " I go to Mass." These were the words of one whose work will live in the history of his country, one, too, who knew all about parasitism. Yet, though he thought it not, this is parasitism in its worst and most degrading form.'-
^ Nothing is of value unless it is individualized. For example, light is universal. It bathes the whole round world in living splendour ; but each individual optic nerve must take up its own set of vibrations, and convey them to the interpreting conscious- ness, or we shall have no sense of form, or colour, or perspective ^ Henry Drunimond, Natural Law in the Spiritiutl World.
PHILIPPIANS II. 12, 13 301
or proportion. The world is full of harmonious sounds, the singing of birds, the multitudinous laughter of the waves, and the sighing of the summer wind through the fragrant pines ; but unless each individual auditory nerve gathers up these waves of sound and carries them into the appreciating brain, the orchestra of Nature might as well be silent as the grave. The same is true of air. It is universal. It wraps the whole world round with miles of thickness. There is enough for millions more than tread the earth to-day ; but unless each individual pair of lungs operates upon it, and puts in its claim for supplies, it might as well be in a vacuum. Here, for example, we rescue a drowning man. He is laid upon the bank. We know how to render first-aid, and we proceed to induce artificial respiration. " What is wrong ? " a bystander asks. We say, " The man cannot breathe." " Is there not enough air ? " he asks. "Yes," we reply, "plenty of air. Miles of air, air pressing with the weight of nearly fifteen pounds upon every square inch of him ; but unless he can be made to draw upon it, his life will be a vanishing spark." So with salvation. It is as free as air. It folds us round like the atmosphere. It has a positive pressure. It whispers, it woos and waits, it feels round the door of the heart, and listens, and longs for entrance ; but unless it be personally admitted, all its universality will count for nought.^
^ It is a great moment in any man's history when he first of all grasps his own real and separate selfhood. To some men this comes suddenly with a great revealing flash that pales the brow and arrests the pulse, and smites the soul with speechless awe. To other men it comes gradually, like the dawning of the day. Tennyson has beautifully described the latter process —
The baby new to earth and sky. What time his tender palm is prest Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that "this is I."
But as he grows he gathers much. And learns the use of "I," and "me," And finds " I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch."
So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, As thro' the frame that binds him in