2. The fact that St. Paul should have felt justified in writing thus to inhabitants of Colossas is a remarkable evidence of the power of Christianity to touch hearts and change lives. Colossce, although no worse than the average contemporary city, can scarcely have been much better ; and a few years before, it is tolerably certain, the notion of sending a communication of this kind to people of the place would have been a melancholy sarcasm. But all that had been changed. There were men and women in its streets and lanes now who had believed in Jesus Christ, and who possessed the peace and joy of reconciliation. Kisen with Christ, they had the very springs of their being hid with Him in God. Once there had been no depths in their life ; all had been shallow, specious, external, busy with affairs that mattered little, crowded with trifles, pathetically wasted in worthless ambition and fleeting pleasure. Then God called them, as He calls us, into a new domain, and their whole experience was re-created. In the barren wastes fountains of water were springing up ; in wide ranges of unprofitable folly mines had been discovered that would yield the gold and gems of faith and hope and love. Once they were con- tent with a poor, starveling, fortuitous morality ; always untrust- worthy, always unequal to a new or sudden strain, whereas now their stores of power and gladness in service were held high above the reach of sorrow and temptation, because treasured and guarded well by Christ in the unseen.
3. There are here two similar exhortations, side by side. " Seek the things that are above," and " Set your mind on the things that are above." The first is preceded and the second is followed by its reason. So the two laws of conduct are, as it were, enclosed like a kernel in its shell, or a jewel in a gold setting, by encompassing motives. These considerations in which the commandments are embedded are the double thought of union with Christ in His resurrection and in His death, and, as con- sequent thereon, participation in His present hidden life and in His future glorious manifestation. So we have here the present budding life of the Christian in union with the risen, hidden Christ; the future consummate flower of the Christian life in
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union with the glorious manifested Christ; and the practical aim and direction which alone is consistent with either bud or flower.
^ Maeterlinck tells us of the threshold of "the third en- closure," behind which is the life of life. Browning, in his " Death in the Desert," expounds the doctrine of the three souls in man which, in ascending order of importance, make up one soul : " What Does, what Knows, what Is, three souls, one man." Matthew Arnold has written words about the "Buried Life" which can never be forgotten by those who know them, as he tells of those rare moments when a " bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, the eye sinks inward and the heart lies plain, and what we mean we say, and what we would, we know." Carlyle, in a well-known passage, declares : " Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom." That is hardly true. Not what I have is my kingdom ; we have learned that a man's life consists not in the abundance of the things that he possesses ; not what I know is my kingdom, so soon does knowledge become antiquated and obsolete ; not what I say — in words always inadequate and often unreal — is my kingdom; nor even what I do, so little can I accomplish of what I would fain achieve, and my reach so far exceeds my grasp. No; what I mn is my kingdom; and then the question presses. What am I ? We turn from philosophy and poetry to religion, and especially to the Christian religion, and we are reminded of the " inward man," the " hidden man of the heart," and hear the memorable words, " Your life is hid with Christ in God." That life is the one thing that counts for each one of us, and that alone.^
^ It was the passionate and unceasing insistence on the Christ-nature within every man as such that gave dignity and power to the preaching of the early Quakers. Eead George Fox's Journal, and this emerges out of an astonishing amount of fanaticism and unfairness. It runs like a thread of gold through the whole narrative. On all hands religious men were disputing about the limits of Church membership, the rights of hierarchies, the importance of sacraments, the decrees of God in election and reprobation, and so forth ; and there was immense excite- ment and vehemence and partisanship; Christianity seemed to have lost its moral force altogether; and the Image of Christ had faded from view. Then came this strange, youthful-looking man, with his long hair and brilliant eyes, and courage of a martyr blended with an extraordinary tenderness, and a fervent
^ "W. T. Davison, The Indwelling Spirit, 298.
502 THE HIDDEN LIFE
eloquence which held men spell-bound and called them away from the quarrelling Christians and their Churches, and pointed them to Christ within themselves. This is his habitual phrase. " I directed them to the light of Christ in them." " I exhorted the family to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and hearken to His teachings in their own hearts." " I directed them to Christ, the true teacher within." These and similar expressions are scattered freely through the journal, and give it a distinct character.^