To raise Thy children from the strife With self and sin, with death and dark distress, That they may live to Thee in holiness?
Earth knows Thee not, but evermore
Thou liv'st in Paradise, in peace; Oh fain my soul would thither soar.
Oh let me from the creatures cease: Dead to the world, but to Thy Spirit known,
1 live to Thee, 0 Prince of life, alone.
Break through my bonds whate'er it cost.
What is not Thine within me slay. Give me the lot I covet most.
To rise as Thou hast risen to-day. I nought can do, a slave to death I pine, Work Thou in me, 0 Power and Life Divine!
488 RISEN WITH CPIRIST
Work Thou in me, and heavenward guide My thoughts and wishes, that my heart
Waver no more nor turn aside,
But fix for ever where Thou art.
Thou art not far from us; who loves Thee well,
While yet on earth in heaven with Thee may dwell.^
2. Where is it that Christ sitteth on the right hand of God ? Surely not in some distant region, invisible and inaccessible to mortals. To read the law of the risen life thus would be to rob it of its meaning and its power for the present moment. God is not secluded in some far-off heaven. He is dwelling and working in this very world where we live. His " right hand " is manifest in all His works of wisdom and righteousness and goodness and love. Christ sitteth on the right hand of His Father because He is exalted to share in all these glorious works, because He is the Mediator between the Divine and the human, because His spirit brings men into harmony with God and inspires the pure and holy thoughts, the just and noble deeds, the generous and blessed affections that lift the world. He is not far away from us. He is with us always, even unto the end of the world. He sitteth close beside us, breaks bread at our tables, walks with us in the city streets and among the green fields and beside the sea. The " things that are above " are the things that belong to Him and to His Kingdom, the spiritual realities of a noble life, what- soever things are pure and lovely and of good report. These are the things that we are to seek.
Tl There is a kind of life, that of the mole or of the worm, which burrows in the dark ; another life, like the reptile's which crawls. The life in the eagle makes it soar up to gaze at the sun. Put the eagle-life into the mole, and it would seek to rise. Put the mole-life into the eagle, and it would seek to burrow. By nature we have the mole and reptile life which burrows in the dark or crawls on the earth's surface. God gives us through Christ the resurrection life which looks up, and its very nature leads us to " seek the things above." ^
3. Let us practise the upward look : it brings heaven nearer. We stand on some height just before sunrise, gazing upon a dull, opaque mass of cloud and vapour, chilly and sad, till, presently,
^ Tersteegen. '■^ A. C. Dixon.
COLOSSIANS III. I 489
a broad band of gold appears on the horizon, broadens, changes into a ruddier glow, and the sun himself appears, and diffuses an unutterable glory over the whole scene. So there are times when the outlook on this life, with all its dulness under the show of activity, all its falsehood beneath the mask of a thousand hypocrisies, depresses, disgusts, saddens and chills us to the very heart. And the saddest of all is that we feel ourselves to be a part of this melancholy system, and as mundane as all the rest. And then it is that those magnificent inspirations and revelations of the Gospel burst upon us, and we feel that behind these life- long disguises, often so hideous, always so perplexing, something glorious is concealed.
^ A year or two ago, after the Lord's Day service, I was standing before the house of a friend with whom I was staying, and looking abroad upon one of the fairest scenes in Scotland. At the horizon's edge there was a great cincture of hills; the middle distance was filled with woods and fields yellowing into gold ; and just at our feet, at the bottom of a little hill, there was a town, with the smoke sunfilled rising into the windless heavens. An expression of unlimited admiration escaped me ; but a friend who stood by said : " Yes, it is beautiful, but it is too circum- scribed ; there is no outlook on the world beyond. It does not lie in a wide horizon."
If you were to ask me to describe in a sentence the difference between a Christian and another man, picking out the best natural man you know, the finest specimen you can, and putting him over against the Christian man, the grand difference is this: the Christian has an infinite horizon, and that infinite horizon dominates the whole situation.^
^ During the fifteenth year of the ministry of Horace Bushnell he had a marvellous revelation, enabling him spiritually to discern spiritual things. On an early morning of February (1848) his \yife awoke to hear that the light they had waited for had risen indeed. She asked, " What have you seen ? " He replied " The Gospel ! " It had come to him, not as something reasoned out, but as an inspiration — a revelation from the mind of God Himself. This new and glorious conception of Jesus Christ lifted Bushnell into a higher life, gave him new insight and power, and shaped all the remaining years of his quickening and extraordinary ministry. His voice, like the lark's, sang at heaven's gate.^