3. This is the enduring life. — Such a life has nothing in it of the ephemeral and passing. It has no relation to the body, or the death of the body. Physical death is not its end, or its begin- ning, or its opposite. The life in God partakes of the Divine — uuchangeableness and infinity and eternity. All on earth passes away; even the everlasting hills will at last change and dis- appear ; but if we ourselves become in some way incorporate with the life of God, then we are safe for ever in His everlasting arms. Our life is verily " hid with Christ in God."
As Ralph Erskine puts it : " When risen with Christ you have
1 G. G. Findlay, The Things Above, 30. 2 g. H. Bradby.
512 THE HIDDEN LIFE
a Treasure, a Treasurer, and a Treasury. • Your Life ' — that is your Treasure ; ' is hid with Christ ' — He is your Treasurer ; * in God ' — that is your Treasury. Your life is hidden for secrecy and for security. The world knows not the sons of God ; they draw their strength and inspiration from a secret source, they fix their hopes upon things unseen. Their life is hidden from the eyes of men. This makes it all the more secure. The foundations are beyond the reach of pickaxe or dynamite. The believer's security does not lie exposed to the malice of man or devil. It is the security of a union which cannot be dissolved, of a trusteeship which never fails, of a covenant which cannot be broken. God the Father is the author of the Covenant. God the Son is the faithful guardian or trustee. God the Holy Ghost is the bond of the union. Secure indeed are those whose life is hid with Christ in God."
^ The uncertainty as to what awaits us ahead, beyond the limit of our spiritual vision — this uncertainty, this mystery — is the only possibility of our life, because it secures the forward movement. We walk, as it were, through an underground passage and see ahead of us the illuminated point of the exit ; but that we may reach this exit, ahead of us, in front of us must be an emptiness. The eternal life is eternal for the very reason that it deploys before us infinitely. If it were completely unfolded before us, and we could comprehend it here, in our temporal, carnal existence, it would not be the eternal life, as there would be nothing left beyond it.^
^ If you address any average modern English company as believing in an eternal life; and then endeavour to draw any conclusions from this assumed belief, as to their present business, they will forthwith tell you that " what you say is very beautiful, but it is not practical." If, on the contrary, you frankly address them as w?ibelievers in eternal life, and try to draw any conse- quences from that unbelief, — they immediately hold you for an accursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet at you.^
IV.
The Peesent Duty.
1. " Set your mind on the things that are above," The Apostle uses a word which indicates the application of the mind
^ Tolstoy, Thov,ghts and Aphorisms ( Works, xix. 81). 2 Ruskin, The Grown of Wild Olive ( Works, xviii. 392).
COLOSSIANS III. 2-4 513
to the observation and study of any object. It is a stronger word and means more than the word " seek " used in verse 1. And what we are urged to do is to let our minds go out upon these things, and rest in quiet contemplation of them. He would have us take them as settled and indubitable facts, clearly revealed to us, and make them the object of our deep, continuous, and interested study. He calls us not to pry into things hidden and recondite, but to ponder things manifest and revealed. It is not to a process of research but to a process of reflection that he urges us. He would have us stand, as it were, at the gate of heaven, and inspire its hallowed atmosphere, and bask in radiance of its unutterable splendour. A mere baptism with the waters of the river of life will not suffice ; what he exhorts us to is to cast ourselves into that heaven-born stream, and repose upon the bosom of its shining and ever-flowing waters. There must be the outgoings of the soul after those supernal realities, and the incomings of these into the soul in return. Our reflections must be after the similitude of those angels that are to be seen ascending and descending upon the Son of man, a continuous and reflexive process, yet ever finding in Him its alpha and its omega, its beginning and its ending, its first and its last.
One sunny day, as on my way I went,
And stooped to pluck the flowers I loved so well, I saw that on each bloom o'er which I bent.
My shadow fell; But when my wandering glances left the ground And travelled sunwards up the shafts of light, The shadow fell behind me, and I found That all was bright.
So when, with earthward gaze, we set our minds On flowers beside life's pathway blooming fair, Whoever stoops to seize their beauties finds