I THESS.-HEB. 9
130 THE VALUE OF GODLINESS
whose presence did not bring constraint but rather a perfect ease, and was an evocation of all that was best and finest in those near them.i
3. Now exercise means effort, often painful effort. No athlete is crowned unless he strives ; and he that striveth for the mastery- is temperate in all things. As Charles Simeon, whose influence was so great at Cambridge in the early years of the nineteenth century, quaintly put it : " My dear young friends, you can't go to heaven in an arm-chair." For exercise unto godliness means effort. It means self-denial, the practice of self-discipline. Every athlete, we know, goes into training. So must the man who will exercise himself unto godliness. There are many things which are harmless, and at times even useful, but the man in training avoids them that he may win the prize. He keeps under the body and is temperate in all things. We have, it is true, come to appreciate exercise so far as concerns the body, and any healthy-minded young man to-day is almost ashamed of himself if he has not a well-developed body, the ready servant of an active will. We have even begun to appreciate the analogy of body and mind, and to perceive that the exercise and discipline of the mind, like that of the body, reproduces its power. And yet it remains true that a great many people fancy that the soul can be left without exercise ; that indeed it is a sort of invalid, which needs to be sheltered from exposure and kept in-doors in a sort of limp, shut-in condition. Now the apostolic doctrine is this : " You do not grow strong in body or in mind without discipline and exercise. The same athletic demand is made on your soul." All through the writings of this vigorous, masculine, robust adviser of young men, we find him taking the athletic position. Now he is a boxer: "So fight I, not as one that beateth the air.' Now he is a runner, looking not to the things that are behind, but to the things before, and running, not in one sharp dash, but, with patience, the race set before him. It is just as athletic a performance, he thinks, to wrestle with the princes of the dark- ness of this world as to wrestle with a champion. It needs just as rigorous a training to pull against circumstances as to pull against time. It appears to him at least not unreasonable that
1 A, C. Bouson, Joyous Gard (1913), 200.
I TIMOTHY IV. 8 131
the supreme interest of an immortal soul should have from a man as much attention and development as a man gives to his legs, or his muscle, or his wind.
^ Another name which is exceedingly precious to me, I cannot forbear to mention here — that, namely, of Philip Edward Pusey — Dr. Pusey's only son. Disabled from taking Holy Orders by reason of his grievous infirmities (he was deaf and a cripple), his prevailing anxiety was to render God service in any way that remained to him ; and, by his father's advice, he undertook to edit the works of Cyril of Alexandria. In quest of MSS., he visited with indomitable energy every principal library — in France, Spain, Italy, — Russia, Germany, Turkey, — Greece, Palestine, Syria. At the Convent of S. Catharine at the foot of Sinai, the monks remembered him well. They asked me (March 1862) if I knew him. " And how is Philippos ? " inquired the monks of Mount Athos of their next Oxford visitor. With equal truth and tender- ness Dean Liddell (preaching on the occasion of his death) recalls " the pleasant smile with which he greeted his friends ; his brave cheerfulness under life-long suffering; his delight in children; his awe and reverence for Almighty God. Most of you must have seen that small emaciated form, swinging itself through the quad- rangle, up the steps, or along the street, with such energy and activity as might surprise healthy men. But few of you could know what gentleness and what courage dwelt in that frail tenement. In pursuing his studies, he shrank from no journey, however toilsome ; and everywhere won hearts by his simple engaging manner, combined with his helpfulness and liis bravery. To such an one death could have no terror: death could not find him unprepared."^
III.
The Peculiar Profit of Godliness.
" Having promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come."
1. "Having promise of the life which now is." That does not mean that the godly man is invariably the successful man. Looking only to the individual life of men, it would be absurd to maintain that there is any invariable connexion between religion and outward prosperity and happiness, or that prosperous infamy and goodness crushed by poverty and mis- ^ J. W. Burgon, Lives of Twelve Good Men, i. p. xv.
132 THE VALUE OF GODLINESS
fortune are sights seldom or never seen. It is easy to adduce innumerable instances in which health, wealth, worldly success, all the gifts of fortune seem to be showered on the selfish and the base, and the life of the best and noblest is embittered by ill- health or grinding poverty, or darkened by care, anxiety, and disappointment. But the answer is that, in judging of the ameliorating influences of religion, it is impossible to test its inherent power by looking only to the lives of individual men. For no individual, however good and holy, can isolate himself from otiiers, or keep off from himself those outward ills that are the fruit not of his own but of other men's sins. If we take not individual instances but the general experience of mankind, we shall find that from all the constituents and surroundings of human life a higher and richer profit is to be extracted than that which pertains to our outward welfare and happiness. And that profit has not only relation to a future world and our preparation for it ; it is to be got here and now. It is a harvest of inestim- able good which is to be reaped from and amidst the life that now is. It is the good or godly men who make the most of life — who extract the richest profit out of life.