1 John Smith, in The Keswick Week, 1899, p. 156. 2 f, ^^ Cuylcr.
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4 The vision of the ideal influences and controls our daily life. In morals every man is subject to the highest he knows. The standard is that which is absolute and ideal, according to the measure of a man's knowledge and feeling. The only things worthy of man's seeking are " with Christ at the right hand of God." The unrest which destroys men's lives and the sense of dissatisfaction with themselves arise from their aim being below their conscious standard of conduct. And it is here that the practical value of fellowship with Christ is clearly seen. Through the life which men thus obtain, they are helped to do what they see and acknowledge to be right. And in nothing is this more apparent than in men's efforts at moral reformation. It is a great matter that men desire to reform themselves. But when they enter upon their task they speedily discover how true are the words of Christ, "Every one that committeth sin is the bond- servant of sin." One of the penalties of sin is impaired will- power. What men most need in such cases is an accession of spiritual energy. It is new life they want, and this new life they receive who are risen with Christ: and in its power they are able to free themselves from the accursed fetters of old sins, and to find a new desire for higher things, a new joy in seeking them.
^ This natural world is part of a grand universal system ; its vital forces stream in from wider regions, its tides and seasons are governed from above ; so man is the subject of a vast spiritual kingdom, whose influences penetrate, whose laws determine, all his mundane and physical interests. To seek other things in preference to that kingdom and its righteousness is to subvert the rational order, to subordinate the higher to the lower, the principal to the secondary ; it is to take the surest way to failure even in our secular pursuits, which lose their vitalizing elements and true savour so soon as they are cut off from the springs of spiritual motive and experience.^
^ As the culminating point of a mountain-chain bears on the lower hills that for miles and miles buttress it, and hold it up, and aspire towards it, and find their perfection in its calm summit that touches the skies ; so the more we have in view, as our aim in life, Christ who is " at the right hand of God," and assimilation, communion with Him, approbation from Him, the more will all immediate aims be ennobled, and delivered from the evils that else cleave to them. " Seek ye first the kingdom of God," and all
1 Q, G. Findlay, The Tilings Above, IX.
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your other aims — as students, as thinkers, as scientists, as men of business, as parents, as lovers, or anything else— will be granted by being subordinated to the conscious aim of pleasing Him. That aim should persist, like a strain of melody, one long, holden- down, diapason note, through all our lives. Perfume can be diifused into the air, and dislodge no atom of that which it makes fragrant. This supreme aim can be pursued through, and by means of, all nearer ones, and is inconsistent with nothing but sin.^
III. A Pursuit.
1. " Seek," says the Apostle — " seek the things that are above." That is the pursuit. It is an image based on our moral nature, local elevation being the instinctive symbol of spiritual aspiration and refinement. They were to seek above what they had once sought below — above the level of the ordinary pagan desire and aim ; higher things than money, place, selfish gratification, or any material and secular good, and distinctively those things for which Christ had been distinguished, and which prevailed at their best and brightest, which ruled, and were everything in that upper realm to which He had passed — truth, righteousness, purity, and noble love.
The real aim of the Christian is an upward one. " Things that are above " are of supreme consequence to him, and the setting of his affection on them determines the fashion of his whole life among men. His spiritual conceptions and aspirations are expressed in the ordinary activities of his life before others, and he makes all its necessary duties but stepping-stones to the realization of the higher realities. Indeed, the direction of all our external doings is in the nature of things determined and con- trolled by the power of our inner life. Hence to realize that we are " risen with Christ " lends to all life a sanctifying force which manifests itself in every sphere and realm.
^ Apart from all revelation, we find in ourselves instincts seeking upward, aspirations towards things higher than those of time and sense ; we look beyond the physical life ; we conceive ideas and hopes touching the unseen and the eternal. However
^ A. Maclaren, After the Jlesurrection, 138,
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it may be explained, we persist in dreaming great dreams, we aspire to higher spheres, we seek to realize ourselves in an upper universe — we impatiently long for a sky in which to spread our wings as royal birds do, we reach yearningly towards a central light in which our being may glow and blossom like the flowers. Much about human nature and life seems poor and disappointing, but this impetus and this passion for the transcendent shed a wonderfully redeeming light on our apparent mortality and meaness.^