More than even feeding on Christ, more than appropriating His qualities, is the soul's living touch of the living Christ. We are deeply conscious of the force and stimulus of some people's presence; we can speak better when they are present to listen ; we do our best and beyond it — we " excel ourselves " — when they praise us ; we feel helped to goodness and lowered to badness by some personal associations. But the true Christian man knows that far more than any human presence his spirit is sensitive to Christ's personality.
^ In all soils, earths, and rocks there are certain salts, which are as necessary to the life of the plant as iron is necessary to our blood. To get these salts out of the earth and to get them into the plant is the work the root has to perform. To do this it is furnished with a number of little fine wavy rootlets ; these are the subtle tongues of the root, by which it first tastes, and then separates and eats the diet on which its life, and the plant's, depends. When these are eaten the root performs another func- tion ; it does not always at once send all the nourishment up into the plant ; it is eminently a wise and thrifty housekeeper ; it stores up the nourishment, as in the bulb of crocus or hyacinth, or as in the radish, or carrot, or potato, and so the root becomes a store- house or refuge to feed the little plant in its infancy, and to protect it in bad and barren times if they should come. All this work of eating is done, not by the great thick roots, but by the little delicate wavy tips ; they choose, they appropriate, they con- vey, and their choice it is which gives the varied autumn tints to the separate trees.^
^ R. H. Lovell, First Tyim of the Christian Life^ 260.
2 PETER III. i8 207
There is a secret down in my heart
That nobody's eye can see; In the world's great plan it has no part,
But it makes my world to me. The stars regardless have onward rolled, But they owe my secret half their gold.
It lies so low, so low in my breast, At the foot of all else 'tis found;
To all other things it is the rest, And it makes their fruit abound ;
By the breath of its native life it lives,
It shines alone by the light it gives.
It fills my heart and it fills my life
With a glory of source unseen. It makes me calm in the midst of strife,
And in wmter my heart is green. For the birds of promise sing in my tree When the storm is breaking on land and sea.
2. The second requisite of growth is suitable food. — The waste and wear of the Christian life must be constantly repaired. Nor can it be repaired in public assembly or in seasons of religious fervour. Then and there you get the stimulus for repair, advice for repair, but the growth-processes are in quiet, in unseen medita- tion, and in more delicate and minute operations; they are eminently personal. Faith sometimes loses its force and realness, love loses its fire, our ideals become commonplace, our energy decreases, our enthusiasm wanes, our aspiration becomes dulled, our spiritual taste loses its piquancy, and our appetite becomes cloyed. Now the food necessary to remedy this is simply Christ, and only Christ. He alone can re-inspire ideals, re-create taste, nourish energy, fire love, make faith real, stimulate appetite. The personality and love of the living Christ are the only food of the Spirit's more sensitive roots. In a word, we live in Him, and the measure in which He nourishes us is at once the measure of our health, our strength, and our life.
^ This food never grows stale. The soul drives the spiral of its ascent upward into eternity, not by reason of strength derived from the gross food of the earth, but as that strange bird of which the mystics tell, whose food was grown for it in the air, and on
2o8 GROWTH
which it feasted as it flew, developing strength for motion, and finding food ever more plentiful to its mouth as it soared. So the soul finds on the crest of every moral altitude it reaches food prepared for its hunger, eats of it, and then moves upward to a loftier height — knowing that, on that farther crest, there too it shall find provision waiting for it.^
^ Where do we find Christ ? First and foremost in the Bible. Our staple sustenance is therefore to be derived from the Word of God. No other means of growth can take the place of this. We can no more develop Christian character by service without study of the Word and without prayer than we can make the thundering locomotive run along the track unless we feed its fires. We cannot live by work in the physical realm unless we have proper food. And to feed our soul we must not only read the Word and study the Word, but yield our whole life to the claim of the Word.
3. But for the soul's health there is also needed the vigorous and active use of all our poivers. — Disuse and decay are as clearly con- nected in the one as in the other. The grace which we do not exercise, like the limb we never use, or the faculty we never exert, withers and dies at last. The duties that are appointed us are not arbitrarily chosen, they are each of them designed to exercise and strengthen some one or other spiritual faculty. And the neglect of any one of these can never be compensated by any additional activity in the performance of any other ; we can never omit any one of these without injuring and weakening some corre- sponding grace, without making our Christian character one-sided and distorted, and therefore weak and sickly. Every talent is to be accounted for.