Upon the marsh mud, dank and foul,
A golden sunbeam softly fell. And from the noisome depths arose A lily miracle.
* Mrs. RoTjertson, in The Life of James Eobertson, 25. » John G. Paton, ii. 278.
* J. W. Burgon, Lives of Twelve Good Men, i. 327. JAS.-JUDE— 25
386 THE RAY AND THE REFLECTION
Upon a dark, bemired life
A gleam of human love was flung,
And lo, from that ungenial soil A noble deed upsprung.^
* L. M. Montgomery.
Victory over the World.
Literature.
Arnold (T.), Sermons, ii. 8.
Banks (L. A.), John and his Friends, 166.
Brooke (S. A.), Sermons, i. 1.
Burrell (D. J.), The Church in the Fort, 306.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, ii. 76.
Deshon (G.), Sermons for the Ecclesiastical Year, 239.
Garbett (E.), The SouVs Life, 268.
Gresley (W.), Sermons Preached at Brighton, 315.
Gurney (T. A.), The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, 279.
Hare (J. C), The Victory of Faith, 3, 32, 63, 103, 151.
Hatch (E.), Memorials, 3, 283.
Hiley (R. W.), A Year's Sermons, i. 209.
Jerdan (C), Gospel Milk and Honey, 154.
Jones (W. B.), The Peace of God, 148.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Easter to Ascension Day, 201.
Kingsley (C), Village, Town and Country Sermons, 231.
Liddon (H. P.), Easter in St. Paul's, 253, 300.
Little (J.), Glorying in the Lord, 176.
Maclaren (A.), A Year's Ministry, i. 85.
Macleod (D.), The Sunday Some Service, 328,
Newman (J. H.), Oxford University Sermons, 120.
Pike (J. K.), Unfailing Goodness and Mercy, 67.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, iii. 81.
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Spurgeon (C. H.), Christian Warfare, No. 14.
„ „ Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xlvii. (1901) 589.
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Victory over the World.
And this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith. — I John V. 4.
1. These words occur in a letter written by St. John to all the different Christian communities in the cities and towns of the Empire. These little churches or congregations consisted of men and women of humble position, little or no wealth, not much learning, not much influence, and they were found in cities given up for the most part to modes of life wholly incompatible with Christianity. The little Christian communities had gone through the severest persecutions. Hundreds and thousands of Christians had been put to death for refusal to worship the Eoman Emperor ; they were condemned as disloyal subjects, as atheists — because they had no image of their God — as secret conspirators. The power of Eome was irresistible. They were surrounded with a society which tolerated evils and vices which would shock them, and on which at present they had made little or no impression. There was wild extravagance of luxury, and abject poverty and starvation side by side, with no poor law, no hospitals, and but very slender private charities. There was a cruelty towards slaves and children which was so common that it had ceased to shock people. There were vices which cannot be named, against which Christians set their faces like flint. This was the world that St. John saw, and these were the little communities to whom he wrote. And what he said was : " This is the victory that over- cometh the world, even our faith." Is it not an amazing, a sublime audacity, to say that the faith of these little insignificant churches was overcoming this great powerful world of Eoman armies, pagan vices, and heathen cruelties and superstitions ? Yet this is what St. John says : " Our faith is overcoming this world."
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390 VICTORY OVER THE WORLD
2. Of all the Apostles there was none that dwelt so constantly on " overcoming " as St. John. One can see that the idea of battle and triumph runs through his Epistles, as well as through the Book of Eevelation. It is he that speaks of " overcoming the wicked one " ; it is he that records those glorious promises which we find in the Epistles to the Seven Churches, promises that belong to the overcoming one. In all these references we have the thought of a victorious power overcoming a mighty, perpetual, opposing force. And yet, what is St. John's ideal of the Christian life ? Is it one of feverish excitement and strain ? No, it is the very opposite of this. He more than all the disciples had learned the secret of the rest of faith; he knew what it was to abide under the shadow of the Almighty. He it was that learned the meaning of the paradox that the secret of all real activity is stillness of soul, and that the condition of continuous victory is an attitude of repose on the power of God. Well, that teaches us that the man who knows most about victorious conflict is not the man of restless energy and intense human activity, but the man who realizes his own weakness and knows fully what it is to rest in Divine omnipotence. " This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."