^ R. H. Lovell, First Types of Du Christian Life, 271.
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He means that we are to grow in grace ; we are to " press toward the mark " ; we are to set our faces toward the holy temple.^
•[[ While coarse growths are apt to be rapid, all fine growths are apt to be slow, and come up through a long process of minis- tration and development. The reed grows, as it were, in a day ; but the sweetest things in my garden weary me with the tardiness of their maturing. The warmth of many suns must wait on them, and the moisture of many tranquil nights must coax them, before they feel bold enough to expose their inner life to the gaze of sun and stars, or the touch of the gentle winds. So it is with soul life. No one day answers for its growth. No single benefaction, coming with swift and sudden motion, matures it. It groweth after the growth of one that hath all eternity to grow in. The food on which it feeds comes to its mouth, not as by the hand of a special gift, but by the hand of a provision furnished by a benevolence which is general and for ever attentive. My soul takes of God's ministrations by grace, as my body takes of His administrations by nature. I know that while the body lasts nature will feed it. I know that while my soul endures God's grace shall supply its every need. I ask no more for my garden than that the sun shall continue to shine.^
5. We cannot lay down any fixed and rigid rule for the order of this growth. We may not say, for instance, that in every case the new life begins with contrition, and then passes through faith and assurance of forgiveness to perfect peace. No such rigid and uniform rule as this is laid down in Scripture. We may as well say beforehand in what order the leaves in spring should burst out upon the budding trees. In every true child of God all the phases of spiritual life will surely display themselves, but not all in the same order. In some the new life may begin in tears and agonies of sorrow, and pass on into smiles of joy and peace ; in others it may begin in quiet and peaceful trust and happy service, to be disturbed, it may be ere long, with deep contrition for sin, begotten not of fear but of love. It is the height of presumption to attempt to limit the manner of the Spirit's working, or to judge of His presence by any other test than the presence of the work of the Spirit, the conformity to the image of Christ. Where- ever there is a Christ-like soul, there is Christ and the Spirit of Christ ; wherever there is not this likeness, then, be the feeling or
1 J. Parker. = W. H. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit, 301.
2 PETER III. i8 205
emotion ever so strong, or ever so strictly according to the pre- scribed rule, there Christ is not.
^ Life claims freedom ; true freedom is life true to itself and its source. Every generation of men, like every year in nature, has its own independent characteristics. Every generation likes to hear its own accent ; to hold up its own " earthen vessel " for the blessing which comes from above ; to see the truth with its own eyes, and tell the vision in its own way. But the great facts contained in the message, and in those who receive it, are identical from year to year — human sin that has to be repented of, and Divine grace that is to be thankfully taken. There is nothing creative in the varying dialectics of the generations. It is faith that, in its essence, cannot alter which brings the power from God. Reason merely sifts and sorts : it has no originality, no creative power. What served Dr. Kidd's generation must serve ours. Nature is permanent in its principles and forces, though its aspects vary: so is Grace.^
No harsh transitions Nature knows,
No dreary spaces intervene; Her work in silence forward goes,
And rather felt than seen:
For where the watcher, who with eye Turned eastward, yet could ever say
When the faint glooming in the sky First lightened into day ?
And happy, happy shalt thou be. If from this hour with just increase
All good things shall grow up in thee, By such unmarked degrees ;
For the full graces of thy prime Shall, in their weak beginnings, be
Lost in an unremembered time Of holy infancy.^
IIL
The Eequisites of Growth.
1. The first requisite of growth is vital force. — A plant cannot grow unless it is rooted in its native element. Many plants get
* J. Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 94. • Trend), Poems, 23.
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all their food from the air, through leaf and branch, and yet if you cut the root the plant withers and dies, not for the want of food, but for want of that living touch with the ground by which it receives its power to live. What that vital force is no one knows ; we know some of its conditions and limitations, but the thing itself is mysterious as life. There is a force that makes life beautiful and death repulsive, a force that leaves a man's body when the beating of the heart stops, a force that we cannot see, weigh, or detect, and yet is real and mighty in our being. For want of a more defining term we, in our ignorance, call it vital force. Now, in the plant this vital force seems to find its store or reservoir in the root. The moment the root is disturbed the plant shows less of vitality and beauty, droops, fades, withers. The health of the root is the health of this force.