L
The Old Life Left BEfflND.
1. "Ye died." That represents a distinct element in Chris- tian experience. It means that the soul passes through a death to earthly things — to sin and the allurements of the flesh, just as the Lord died upon the tree. The crucifixion has its counterpart within us. We die to the attractions of the world.
The new life we enjoy had its birth in the death of the old nature ; it is preserved and flourishes now only by the continuous use of that cross on which the old desires were crucified and by which they must still be mortified right on to the very last, when the body itself is put off and earthly temptations cease. The inner life is one of continual joyful self-crucifixion, the doing to death of all that in tendency threatens the supremacy of the higher and better self. The power of the Cross alone can free from the guilt and stain of the past, as in it alone is found the secret of a new, sacred, ineffable hfe, named in St. John's Gospel " eternal," in one of Paul's Epistles " life indeed."
^ The old life, like the trees the backwoodsmen cannot wait to cut down, is ringed ; and, as when that strip of bark is cut out, its withering is only a question of time. Or, to change the figure, the channels in which its streams once flowed may now and then seem to run as copiously as ever ; but gradually the parent spring is failing, and one day it will cease, never to fill again. You who have the new heart, but are sorely plagued by the old, remember this. Do not complain that the struggle is unavailing. Do not even grow impatient with yourselves ; for not to have surrendered is itself a victory.^
^ Canon H. Hensley Henson.
2 H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God's Plan, 147.
COLOSSIANS III. 2-4 503
2. Paul is indicating a definite occasion in the past. Some- times the passage of a soul into God's Kingdom is a very sudden thing. It may even be as the flight of a bird for swiftness. We lie down one night our old selves, and ere we sleep again the revolution has occurred. In this text, however, suddenness of that kind is not necessarily implied. Men may die swiftly, or they may die slowly ; it matters nothing, once they have wakened on the immortal side of death.
^ At the Equator no visible line is stretched round the world for all to see ; nevertheless, the line is actually crossed ; at some definite point the ship leaves one hemisphere and enters on the other. Just so, when God's eye reads our past, many circum- stances may take on a bold prominence and fixity of outline that were concealed, or only half displayed to our feebler gaze. Where we saw nothing but an unbroken, imperceptible advance. He, it is possible, may discern a cleavage, sharp as though effected by a scimitar-stroke, between the old existence and the new. And the fittest metaphor to illustrate the transition that St. Paul can think of is that passage from one world to another which we call death}
Yet one more step — no flight
The weary soul can bear Into a whiter light.
Into a hush more rare.
Take me, I am all Thine;
Thine now, not seeking Thee Hid in the secret shrine,
Lost in the shoreless sea.
Grant to the postrate soul
Prostration new and sweet; Make weak the weak, control
Thy creature; at Thy feet
Passive I lie: shine down.
Pierce through the will with straight,
Swift beams one after one; Divide, disintegrate,
' H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God's Plan, 146.
504 THE HIDDEN LIFE
Free me from self, resume
Thy place, and be Thou there.
Yet also keep me. Come,
Thou Saviour and Thou slayer 1^
11.
The New Life Hidden in God.
1. Every one has two lives, the outward and the inward ; and although they are seemingly separate, having a different mode of manifestation, they are at the same time intimately connected. Even rude, undeveloped natures have that which they hide from men. Much goes on within them that does not show itself out- wardly. Their cunning purposes, their selfish greed, their lurid and lustful desires — if not shame, then self-interest and safety lead them to secrete these bad elemental forces ; and so the lowest natures have a hidden life of badness. Many men are bad outwardly who are a great deal worse inwardly.
But also when love has purified the soul; when men have risen through the social affections far above these vulgar condi- tions, they in like manner have secret lives, but of a different sort. Men revolve ten thousand thoughts which never find expression, and never can. We never can say our best things. We think a great deal better than we ever speak. Fancies thick as stars shine in the vault of souls elected to poetry. Our tender and affectionate natures are like nightingales, and will not sing in glare of day, nor without cover and retirement.
Every person of richness of soul will recognize the truth, that the dearest part of his life — that which seems to him the finest, the noblest, the deepest — never is fully and fairly exposed. And if we think a moment, we are conscious that all those subtlest sentiments, those rarest feelings, which, when they manifest themselves in us with power, give us some sentiment of divinity, are the strains of the soul which we cannot speak, and certainly do not. Our feelings towards each other, the feelings that parents have towards their children, are unutterable; and, surely, the feelings of affection which great natures have towards