^ E. B. Pusey.
330 THE EXCELLENT EXCHANGE
or choose what we prefer. It is a surrender to a great and awful Will, of whose workings we know little, but which means to triumph, whatever we may do to hinder or delay its purpose. We must work indeed by the best light that we have. We must do the next thing, and the kind thing, and the courageous thing, as it falls to us to do. But sooner or later we must yield our wills up, and not simply out of tame and fearful submission, but because we at last see that the Will behind all things is greater, purer, more beautiful, more holy than anything we can imagine or express. Some find this easier than others — and some never seem to achieve it — which is the hardest problem of all. But there is no peace without that surrender, though it cannot be made at once ; there is in most of us a fibre of self-will, of hardness, of stubbornness which we cannot break, but which God may be trusted to break for us, if we desire it to be broken.^
2. Paul's estimate stood the final proof. The test of a true religion is that it meets all the legitimate demands of the soul ; that in it our past, present, and future shall find their meaning. There must be rest at the centre if there is to be living move- ment all round. A man like Paul would have worn his spirit down by restless chafing, if he had not found a satisfactory relation to God and his fellow-men. He did find such reconciliation ; and the rich result we see in his life. It was real life that he found, life with a large outlook and an undying hope. To know what is meant by " winning Christ " we must pass in review the many- sided statements of truth and the lofty ideals of conduct that he set before himself and his followers. It was not merely the for- giveness of past sins, though that was a proper subject for warmest gratitude; it was not simply the vision of future blessedness, though that was a consoling power in many a trying hour ; it was a present satisfaction that linked these into living unity, and proved that faith in the unseen world is the mightiest force to equip a man for stern tasks and tender ministries.
^ I believe there is no means of preserving rectitude of con- duct and nobleness of aim but the Grace of God obtained by daily, almost hourly, waiting upon Him, and continued faith in His im- mediate presence. Get into this habit of thought, and you need make no promises. Come short of this and you will break them, and be more discouraged than if you had made none. The great * A. C. Benson, Buskin : A Study in Personality, 224.
PHILIPPIANS III. 7-9 331
lesson we have to learu in this world is to give it all up. It is not so much resolution as renunciation, not so much courage as resignation, that we need. He that has once yielded thoroughly to God will yield to nothing but God.^
•[f Nearly half a century after Sartor Rcsartus was written, Carlyle addressed the students of Edinburgh University as their Lord Eector, and then again, after having tested its worth in a life of heroic labour, he deliberately referred to Goethe's interpre- tation of the moral significance of Christianity and doctrine of the reverence due by man to his God, to his brethren, and to himself, as what he would rather have written than any other passage in recent literature. " It is only with renunciation," says the great poet and philosopher, who is supposed to have been hewn from ice, and to have had no object in life but to polish himself up, so that the ice might show to advantage, " it is only with renuncia- tion that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin."*
Unveil, 0 Lord, and on us shine
In glory and in grace; This gaudy world grows pale before
The beauty of Thy face.
Till Thou art seen, it seems to be
A sort of fairy ground. Where suns unsetting light the sky,
And flowers and fruits abound.
But when Thy keener, purer beam
Is pour'd upon our sight, It loses all its power to charm,
And what was day is night.
Its noblest toils are then the scourge
Which made Thy blood to flow; Its joys are but the treacherous thorns
Which circled round Thy brow.
And thus, when we renounce for Thee
Its restless aims and fears, The tender memories of the past,
The hopes of coming years,
1 Ruskin, in Life by E. T. Cook, i. 387.
2 P. Bayne, Lessons from My Masters, 24.
332 THE EXCELLENT EXCHANGE
Poor is our sacrifice, whose eyes
Are lighted from above; We offer what we cannot keep,
What we have ceased to love.^
3. He says he has suffered the loss of all things. " All things " must include more than those old elements of fleshly confidence already enumerated. It must include everything which Paul still possessed, or might yet attain, that could be separated from Christ, weighed against Him, brought into competition with Him — all that the flesh could even yet take hold of, and turn into a ground of separate confidence and boasting. So the phrase might cover much that was good in its place, much that the Apostle was glad to hold in Christ and from Christ, but which might yet present itself to the un watchful heart as material of independent boasting, and which, in that case, must be met with energetic and resolute rejection. " All things " may include, for instance, many of those elements of Christian and Apostolic eminence which are enumer- ated in 2 Cor. xi. ; for while he thankfully received many such things and lovingly prized them " in Christ Jesus," yet as they might become occasions to flatter or seduce even an Apostle — betraying him into self-confidence, or into the assertion of some separate worth and glory for himself — they must be rejected and counted to be loss.