^ The brightest lamp will burn dim in an impure or rarefied atmosphere, but William Burns was enabled so to keep himself " in the love of God " that he was but little affected by his sur- roundings. Prayer was as natural to him as breathing, and the Word of God his God as necessary as daily food. He was always cheerful, always happy, witnessing to the truth of his own memor- able words : I think I can say, through grace, that God's presence or absence alone distinguishes places to me.^
At cool of day, with God I walk
My garden's grateful shade; I hear His voice among the trees,
And I am not afraid.
He is my stay and my defence; —
How shall I fail or fall ? My helper is Omnipotence !
My ruler ruleth all.
The powers below and powers above
Are subject to His care ; — I cannot wander from His love
Who loves me everywhere.
Thus dowered, and guarded thus, with Him
I walk this peaceful shade; I hear His voice among the trees,
And I am not afraid ! ^
* W. L. Watkinson, Themes for Hours of Meditation, 157.
2 Hudson Taylor in Early Years, 346. ^ c. A. Mason.
JUDE 20, 21 427
II.
The Means of Self-Keeping.
The means of self-keeping are twofold — "building up your- selves on your most holy faith," and " praying in the Holy Spirit."
1. Jude here employs an architectural expression to set forth his meaning. In the various temples and public buildings of an Eastern city were furnished beautiful and chaste examples of the builder's art, and the transition to man as a wonderful piece of architecture would be easy. Hence we find such expressions as " Ye are God's building," " Ye are temples of the Holy Ghost," and the words of the text, " Building up yourselves on your most holy faith."
This metaphor of building, so common in the New Testament, suggests patient industry, thoughtful method, graduated progress, upward aspirations. It indicates a design and plan. The house of the soul is being fashioned. The inward man is growing towards the pattern of the Heavenly Man, the type to which the Spiritual Architect conforms His handiworks. The structural principles are embodied in the faith.
(1) The Christian character is like a mosaic formed of tiny squares in all but infinite numbers, each one of them separately set and bedded in its place. You have to build by a plan ; you have to see to it that each day has its task, each day its growth. You have to be content with one brick at a time. It is a lifelong task, till the whole be finished. And not until we pass from earth to heaven does our building work cease. Continuous effort is the condition of progress.
^ A Christian character is not reared as a coral structure is, by instinct. It demands a sustained effort of intelligent will. The work is laboriously slow — slow, yet urgent. There is need we should bring to bear upon it something of the systematic steadiness which tells so marvellously in the meaner sphere of our worldly work — permitting to ourselves no half-heartedness in it ; setting upon it the banded force of all the faculties of body and soul and spirit ; pushing it on in frost and rain, and by light of torch when the daylight fails us.^
^ J. A. Kerr Bain, For Heart and Life, 87.
428 SELF-KEEPING
H Few things can be so offensive to an architect as a building erected in such a way as to show all the traces of the hurry, care- lessness, and incapacity of the workmen. There are structures whose very defects have gained them a world-wide notoriety. We have all heard of the leaning tower of Pisa, the top of which projects fifteen feet farther out than the base, and which presents the appearance of a building about to fall. The same impression is produced by the spire of a certain church in Yorkshire. Both structures are altogether out of plumb, and afford ocular demon- stration of bad construction. Such buildings are like some characters we meet with, into the building-up of which there have entered an unskilful handling of tools and a neglect of the proportions requisite in a properly constructed edifice. If we are to have a true character we must build wisely and well, looking for our specifications to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the dictates of conscience, the precepts of the Bible, and the peerless character of Christ.^
In the elder days of art.
Builders wrought with equal care Each minute and unseen part ;
For the gods see everywhere. Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen; Make the House where G-od should dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean. Else our work is incomplete —
Standing, in these walls of time, Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.
(2) The only adequate foundation is to be found in a right relation to Jesus Christ. This is involved in the expression, "building up yourselves on your most holy faith." Faith as a mere act is the same in all cases ; it involves the same conditions, and follows the same processes, in all its operations. Considered in itself, faith has nothing in it to make one of its acts higher than another. What, then, constitutes the most holy faith ? We answer, the object that faith apprehends and appropriates. The higher and holier the object believed, to that degree the faith exercised becomes higher and holier. And as the infinite Christ of God is the most holy object of faith, so the belief that brings