(2) The character is uplifted to a throne. — If He dwells in me, my nature becomes His palace, and He, my King, reigns there with unchallenged rule. He does His own sweet will therein. It is mine to obey Him. My King commands within me, and I delight to do His will. " Christ in you."
^ Obedience in its highest form is not obedience to a constant and compulsory law, but a persuaded or voluntarily yielded obedience to an issued command ; and so far as it was a persuaded submission to command, it was anciently called, in a passive sense,
^ J. B. Maclean, Tha Secret of the Stream, 34.
454 CHRIST IN YOU THE HOPE OF GLORY
" persuasion," or iriarig, and in so far as it alone assuredly did, and it alone could do, what it meant to do, and was therefore the root and essence of all human deed, it was called by the Latins the " doing," or fides, which has passed into the French foi and the English faith}
^ We are to do His will, and thus we shall gradually under- stand the doctrine which He has taught us concerning Himself. Thus it is that in our earthly relations we get to be acquainted with those who are higher and better than ourselves. We have first of all to learn to obey them whether we can see the reason or no ; and by and by we come to see the reason, and to understand the kindness of our advisers. Thus it is that a soldier gains confidence in his general, or a patient in his physician, or a son in his father ; thus it was that our Lord's apostles learned by degrees to acknowledge that in Jesus Christ they " beheld the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth " ; thus it is that each of us must learn to confess " The Lord is in this place and I knew it not." ^
(3) We know the ways of God. — Christ is the true " inward light." The Christian does not depend so much on arguments without as on illumination within. The indwelling Christ witnesses truth to me and rejects error. Many a dijfficult religious problem is easily solved if Christ dwell in us. He conducts a teaching ministry within us. He settles many a point of criticism, Biblical and theological. " We shall not full direction need " if Christ be in us. The indwelling Christ authenticates the things of God to our intellect and heart and conscience.
^ There is an incident recorded by the Archbishop of Armagh, in his book Primary Convictions, which illustrates this. He tells us how on board a great Atlantic steamer he happened on one Sunday evening to take down and read a certain chapter in Darwin's Descent of Man. It told him how back through incon- ceivable seons his origin can be traced to the amphioxus, a thing almost a worm, with scarcely a brain or rudiment of a vertebral column. From it through long lines of development can be traced the highest form of vertebrates, the human race. "I retired to rest," he says, "almost dismayed. The majestic induction, the colossal industry, was not to be gainsaid. But as I lay awake in my cabin I heard presently the burst of an organ, and voices went out over the starlit sea in chants and hymns.
^ Ruskin, Modern Painters ( Works, vii. 213). " Hurrell Froude.
COLOSSIANS I. 27 455
The vast ship was rushing along at over twenty miles an hour, and I could see through the little window of the porthole the water cut into white swathes of foam. What words were those ? 'Lead, kindly Light,' 'There is a green hill far away,' Then I felt that the question is, not what man may have been, but what he is ; not what he is like, but what he can do ; not what organism may have been employed in moulding his body, but what he has become. . . . The being who triumphs over the waves, who raises strains whose very sweetness ' giveth proof that they were born for immortality,' may have come from the humble amphioxus or from something lower still, 'the dust of the ground'; but he is the child of God by nature, and made for a yet higher sonship. 'Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.'"!
^ You say you want " proof " of the fact of God having a will which He wishes us to fulfil. But how is that to be proved to you as long as you refuse to try to fulfil the will ? It is like a starving man refusing to eat until he has " proof " that food will nourish him. If he eats he will find the proof in himself ; so will you, if you try to do God's will, find the evidence that there is a Divine will and that it is the life of a human creature to fulfil it. You do not know what is God's will in itself, but you know that what is right is according to that will, you can try to do what is right, and in that effort you will learn that what is right is Divine, and that only through faith in and union with the JDivine is the human perfected. I don't ask you to do right because it is God's will, but to do God's will because it is right, and when you are in doubt as to what is God's will, to do what your conscience bids you, and your doubt will disappear.^