» S. S. Harris, The Dignity of Man, 229.
I JOHN III. 3 309
has set before men. And it is plain that unless it were so we should not enjoy the human freedom, the human faculties in that thing which most belongs to humanity — the knowledge and love of God.
^ See how he does not take away freewill in that he saith, " purify himself." Who purifieth us but God ? Yea ; but God doth not purify thee if thou be unwilling. Therefore, in that thou joinest thy will to God, in that thou purifiest thyself, thou purifiest thyself not by thyself, but by Him who cometh to inhabit thee.i
^ To have communion with Jesus Christ is like bringing an atmosphere round about us in which all evil will die. If you take a fish out of water and bring it up into the upper air, it writhes and gasps, and is dead presently ; and our evil tendencies and sins, drawn up out of the muddy depths in which they live, and brought up into that pure atmosphere of communion with Jesus Christ, are sure to shrivel and to die, and to disappear. We kill all evil by fellowship with the Master. His presence in our lives, by our communion with Him, is like the watchfire that the traveller lights at night — it keeps all the wild beasts of prey away from the fold.^
^ I saw a smith the other day cleaning his grimy workshop. Through one high and narrow window streamed a golden ray of sunshine, and where the beam fell the broom swept. But under benches and dark corners one caught a suggestion of cobwebs and long-gathered dust on them. The smith took a piece of burnished tin, and catching on its face the ray of sunshine, he flashed it into the hiding-places of ancient dirt and disorder, and straightway followed the cleansing. It is a homely parable. Every man with " this hope set on him purifieth himself " ; will send its flashlight into the dark places of the heart where hidden foulness still lurks, and by its revealing straightway set about self-cleansing. The vision splendid is greatly practical. You can do so many things by it. You can harness a stubborn temper with it, bridle an ill tongue, cauterize with the fire of it a hidden plague spot, yoke it to a sluggard self so slow to seek another's good at any cost of comfort. " Every man that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself." »
Then life is — to wake, not sleep,
Eise and not rest, but press From earth's level, where blindly creep
Things perfected, more or less. To the heaven's height, far and steep, * Augustine. ^ A. Maclaren. " T. Yates.
3IO THE POWER OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE
Where, amid what strifes and storms
May wait the adventurous quest, Power is Love — transports, transforms
Who aspired from worst to best, Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms!
I have faith such end shall be:
From the first, Power was — I knew.
Life has made clear to me
That, strive but for closer view,
Love were as plain to see.
When see ? When there dawns a day.
If not on the homely earth, Then yonder, worlds away.
Where the strange and new have birth, And Power comes full in play.^
* Browning.
The Bond of Brotherhood.
s»«
Literature.
Benson (E.), Fishers of Men, 33.
Binney (T.), Sermons in King's Weigh-House Chapel, 1st Ser., 191.
Buckland (A. R.)) Text Studies for a Year, 162.
Calthrop (G.), in Sermons for the People, v. 47.
Carter (T. T.), The Spirit of Watchfulness, 206.
Chadwick (W. E.), Social Relationships, 173.
Deshon (G.), Sermons for the Ecclesiastical Year, 254.
Dyke (H. van), The Open Door, 109.
Gibbon (J. M.), The Gospel of Fatherhood, 14, 22.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Sundays after Trinity, 1. 223.
Moberly (R. C), Sorroiv, Sin, and Beauty, 179.
Newman (J. H.), Parochial Sermons, ii. 51.
Scott (M.), Harmony of the Collects, Epistles and Gospels, 148.
Stevens (W. B.), Sermons (1879), 1.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), ii. (1870), No. 92.
Voysey (C), Sermons, iv. (1881), No. 42.
Christian Commonwealth, April 20, 1910, p. 533 (Campbell).
Christian World Pulpit, xxii. 72 (Butler) ; xxxii. 178 (Beach) ; liv. 20
(Alexander) ; Ivi. 107 (Holland). Churchman's Pulpit: First Sunday after Trinity, 450 (Farquhar), 454
(Lawrence), 456 (Taylor). Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., vii. 358 (Candlish). Homiletic Review, xxxii. 315 (Mcllwaine).
The Bond of Brotherhood.
Beloved, let us love one another : for love is of God ; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. — i John iv. 7.
1. The religion of the New Testament differs from all others in this: it affects and appeals to and governs the heart. Other systems have laid hold upon other powers of our nature, but the Gospel is distinctive in constraining the affections, in seizing the motive and controlling forces of the soul, and in bringing them into subjection to its loving claims. It is true, indeed, that the Divine revelation is not neglectful of any part of our being. Though it appeals to reason, enlightened and instructed by truth, it often addresses the imagination, bringing up before it the most lively images of good and evil, of blessing and cursing for time and eternity. Not infrequently it addresses itself to the sentiment of fear on the one hand, and of hope on the other, portraying the hour of death with its solemn realities, depicting judgment with its dread scenes, and unveiling heaven and hell with the objects which should awaken desire and aversion in every human soul. But all this is done only as a means to an end ; it is to move the heart, to draw the soul away from things of sense and sin, to introduce it into the love and fellowship of God, and to produce in it that holy sympathy with the Divine nature which shall cause it to dwell in love as it dwells in God.