Every clod hath a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, grasping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.
L
A Possession.
1. The possession is life through Christ's resurrection. — When Christ rose from the dead. He raised His people with Him into a new life. In St. Paul's conception, those who had not accepted Christ were "dead in trespasses and in sins." He looked upon
^ W. L. Watkinson, The Bane and the Antidote, 95.
COLOSSIANS in. i 481
the natural state of man as a state of spiritual death ; and every step out of that natural condition he regarded as corresponding to something in the life and experience of Jesus Christ. Thus, as Christ died for sin, men were exhorted to die unto sin: to be " buried with him in baptism," They were asked to crucify their flesh, as He was crucified. Then, after the crucifixion of the flesh — after the burial of the old man in baptism — they were said to " put on the new man " and to " walk in newness of life," after the pattern of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, The man who had thus died to his old life was made alive with a new life. The highest and best faculties, the spiritual faculties, which were lying, as it were, shrouded in the tomb, were called into new life and activity. And thus men were said to be risen with Christ, For himself, St, Paul says, " I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord . . . that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection."
^ The spiritual facts in a man's experience, which are repre- sented by these two great symbols of a death and a rising, are like the segment of a circle which, seen from the one side, is convex, and from the other, is concave. But however loosely we may feel that the metaphors represent the facts, this is plain, that unless a man dies to flesh, to self-will, to the world, he never will live a life that is worth calling life. The condition of all nobleness and all growth upwards is that we shall die daily, and live a life that has sprung victorious from the death of self. All lofty ethics teach that, and Christianity teaches it, with redoubled emphasis, because it says to us, that the Cross and the resurrec- tion are not merely imaginative emblems of the noble and the Christian life, but are a great deal more than that. For by faith in Jesus Christ we are brought into such a true deep union with Him that, in no mere metaphorical or analogous sense, but in most blessed reality, there comes into the believing heart a spark of the life that is Christ's own, so that with Him we do live, and from Him we do live a life cognate with His, who, having risen from the dead, dieth no more, and over whom death hath no dominion.^
2. Resurrection with Christ is a present experience. — There is a triumph over death for which we do not need to wait until the graves are opened. We may have it at once. There is a victory
^ A. Maclaren, After the Eestirrection, 133. EPH.-COL. — 3 I
482 RISEN WITH CHRIST
<r of life for which we do not need to look to some far-distant morning. We may feel it to-day. St. Paul felt it as he sat in his Eoman prison, writing to his friends at Colossae. Worn, and feeble, and aged before his time, bound with chains, waiting for his trial before a cruel and bloody Caesar, St. Paul knew even then that he was a risen man. By faith in the things that are unseen and eternal he had already won the victory over the world. In prison he was free, in weakness he was strong, in chains he was cheerful, in exile he was exultant, in trouble he triumphed, and in the drear winter of old age his spirit was quickened with an immortal spring. Surely this is a veritable resurrection, and they who have entered into such an experience
\ are risen indeed.
The higher Christian life, rightly conceived, not only does not separate itself from the present, or make the saving of the soul something distinct and apart from doing good now, but it finds its development in well-doing. It takes up into itself every aspect of our present existence — personal, social, even political — and throws around all its own hallowing lustre. It raises our whole life by rooting it in God ; and so far from discrediting or belittling any real interest of humanity, it really magnifies and exalts every such interest. It implies the cultivation of every noble quality and high affection of our nature ; the amelioration of human society ; the development of " whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, what- soever things are of good report." It embraces whatever tends to exalt or idealize man — to make him more of a true hero — courageous, temperate, and self-restrained in the hour of danger, as well as whatever makes him meek and lowly of heart; the zeal that may work for God and the bravery that may die for Him ; as well as the purity that can alone see God. The Chris- tian ideal is no one-sided development of our manifold nature; still less is it any mere longing after a heavenly Jerusalem with milk and honey blessed. Such pictures have their use. There is good in a vivid realization of the heavenly state if God grant us such a blessing. But there is a higher good in rightly setting the affections on things above — in the culture, that is to say, of all good within us, the achievement of every real virtue, the