The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Timothy — Section 94

Ver. 8.-Religious recompense. "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life thnt now is." It is a fair charge against medimvalism that it left n11t of sight the Christianization of this present life, and became only another-worldisw. The host carrieJ t-0 the dying wits everything; the elevation of the earthly life was nothing. Marshes might remain undraiued, habitations unimproved, knowledge be itnprisoned, science be garotted, and this earth ueglected, provided the people became true sons of the Ul_iurch a!1d possessed the priestly passports to eternity I The religious nature (and there 1s that In every man) was perverted. Man became, the subject-power gf those who, in tLe name of God, darkened the moral sense, and degraded human nature under the pretence of saving it. The gospel has always had the promise of the life that now is; it saves men frum selfishness and sin, ns well as from Gehenna. I. THE LIFE THAT Now IS WAS CREATED BY Goo. Human life and human history are not accidents. God created us, and not we ourselves. Better to be born and to die in the same hour, than to live on through weary years, if human life ha.~ not a heavenly purpose in it. God thought out this world. God designed us to use it; and when we mourn over sin and ignorance and darkness, we rejoice that Christ came to put away sin, and to bring in an everlasting righteousness. Nature is ours, with all her mountains and seas, her pastures and flocks, the silvery thread of her rivers, and the Gothic arches of her forests, richly to enjoy. Obrist came to claim humanity, to redeem humanity, The broken harp he will restring and set to divinest music. We will not put sepia into all the pictures of earth's to-morrow; for " the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain : and the glory of the Lord be revealed, and all flesh see it together." II. THE LIFE THAT NOW IS IS TO BE MOULDED BY GOSPEL INFLUENCES. We read that Paul "persuaded and turned away much people." If the gospel has the promise, we must help in the fulfilment of the promise. When we see wrongs, we must try to remedy them. When God gives us the remedy, we must take care to point to the great Physician alone. We need not be afraid. The gospel is unique; it stands alone. It has done more for this sin-stricken world than any words of man can tell. And Christ still lives on, and his Spirit is one of restraint in men, even when it is not a salva- tion. If caricature could have crushed Christiariity, it would have been silenced long ago. The life that now is was moulded by the gospel, so that men who were once darkness had light in the Lord. Humanity breathed again; slavery felt its grasp grow weaker; polygamy became a cruelty and a shame; and as we look at its beneficent progress, and see orphanages and homes and refuges ri;ing up on every hand, we have abundant evidence that the gospel is promise of the life that now is. Suicide, that had been the euthanasia of Rome, ceased. Men who had lost their Jove of life in the satiety of its pleasures, and to whom death was a relief from its ennui, gave place to a race who found new hope and new joy in the pursuit and pleasures of the life that now is, under the lordship of Christ.-W. M. S. Ver. 8.-The grtt1,t beyond. "And of that which is to come." It is not too much to say that the gospel alone, in this age, is the witness to immortality-a witness preserved in three aspects: it is taught by Christ's words; illustrated in Christ's life; and attosted by Christ's resurrection. Outside the gospel we have materialism, which denies it; agnosticism, which says it does not know about it; and the modern school who use the word" immortality," but mean immortality of influence, or a life which has on earth its permanent pervasive power after we are gone: just as the oak is immortal which sends on, from acorn to acorn, its being. Before Christ came: 1. Immortality had its place as an instinct. The philosophers admitted that. 2. It had its place e.s an imagination. The poets made dreams out of it. 3. It had its place e.s an ancient revelation. The Hebrews had knowledge of it. But secularism, in the fashionable school of Sadducee.a, had darkened it. Christ came to bring life and immortality t.o light by the gospel It is this light in which the gospel i1, bathed ; the perspedve behind  OB. IV. 1-18.] THE FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 83