^ The soul opens upward to the Infinite and Eternal through the Spirit, with its capacity for God, and downward to the Finite and Temporal through the Body, with its capacity for material objects. The spirit stands for our heavenly aptitudes, the body for our earthly ones. By the one we are able to seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God ; through the other we are apt to become entangled with the things that pertain to earth (Col. iii. 1-5).^
(1) The spirit stands first in this enumeration because the work within its unseen recesses determines the surrender of the rest of a man's powers to God's uses. Tliis is the point at which we touch the Eternal. Just as fire came first to the altar and from that central point spread in mystic and broadening illumina- tion to the outer courts, with their lamps, vessels, and sacred treasures, so, in the later dispensation, the process by which God claims men for His will and hallows their powers, begins with the spirit. Here is the golden altar, and God descends into soul * F. B. Meyer, The Soul's Pure Intention, 5.
54 A PRAYER FOR SANCTITY
and body by first stirring into movement those higher affinities which link our natures immediately with His own. The strict and uuhalting preparation of the outward life is imperative, but the mystery through which we become God's dawns at the inmost centre of our being. We can never level ourselves up to this state by bodily acts and exercises, however intense the emotion which pervades them. Here lie the sources of character, and in sweetening these God makes the life a fragrant sacrifice. The spirit was designed for sovereignty over soul and body, and when God's fiat restores its withered powers and puts within its grasp the sceptre of royalty, all other parts of man's nature fall into due subordination and attain that faultless co-adaptation of movement in which perfection consists.
(2) The sanctification of the somZ, which is the earthen vessel containing the lower passions and appetites, follows that of the spirit. When God possesses us for His own uses all natural instincts fulfil a Divine purpose, and fulfil it in harmony with providential plans. The forces of the nervous life may lend virility to a man's service.
(3) It is not in its own strength and beauty that the glory of the tody consists, but in its connexion with the other parts of man. It is the servant of man's higher nature. It is the medium of communication between it and the outer world, conveying to the mind, through the senses, impressions of the outer world ; and on the other hand, conveying the purpose of the higher powers of man, by means of its activity, into action in the outer world. It is in this service that the glory of the body consists. But the servant may become the master; this lowest part of human nature may become the ruling part. In that case the soul, with its strong and noble powers, becomes a shorn Samson in the lap of Delilah, and the spirit — that pure dove with wings of silver and feathers of yellow gold — has to lie among the pots, and bathe its breast in the mud of sensuality. Even the body itself, deposed from its true position and its true function, becomes degraded, and approaches towards brutality.
^ How well I remember when I was a young man, before I was ordained, being in a foreign town, just after leaving Oxford, and a boy came to me with a question which tested the truth of my manhood to the bottom. He was, T remember, five years
I THESSALONIANS v. 23 55
younger than I was ; I was twenty-three. He in that town had been spoken to in this manner by other young Enghshmen who were spending their winter in that town. They asked him to come with them to the low parts of the town. They said : " All young men of your age always act like this ; they are not men if they don't." He came to me; he was a very excitable, impulsive, lovable boy ; and he said : " I have asked for an hour before I would give them my final answer. If I can find one man of your age who will on his word as a gentleman say he has not done that, I will not go ; but, if not, I will go." So he came to me. I was on my honour to give him a true answer, and, although it is thirty years ago, I thank God to-day that I could look him in the face and say : " I have never gone ; I have never sinned in that way. I have many infirmities, many short-comings, but 1 have never misused my body in that way." " Then," he said, " I won't go with them." ^
^ If you would see what it is to be " sanctified," look to Jesus. His lody was sanctified ; for all its powers were used in absolute accordance with the will of God. His feet, to hasten to the bed of pain, or the haunt of the sin-stricken. His hand, to raise the dead and to save the sinking. His eyes, to look with ineffable pity on the city which spurned Him, or with silent rebuke on the disciple who denied Him. His voice, to teach with such ineffable wisdom and power as to constrain even His enemies to say, " Never man spake like this Man ! " Even in what we may call the ordinary scenes of His life there was the same sanctity. He took part in festivities ; and though some dared to say, " Behold, a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber," they knew the charge was false ; for by His holy presence He made every meal a sacrament, and every social gathering sacred. To be sanctified is to be like Him ; so that on the tables of the home, and on the ledgers in the office, on our warehouses and marts, it shall be as though in letters of light these words were blazoned, " Holiness unto the Lord." ^