Talking and Walking

Walk in newness of life.”’ — Rom. vi. 4.

Pernars I can best express the purpose of this meditation by reminding my readers of the fable of the young bear who was puzzled to know how to walk. ‘‘ Shall I,” said he to the old she-bear, ‘“‘ shall I move my right paw first or my left, or my two front paws together, or the two hind ones, or all four at once, or how?” ‘Leave off thinking and walk,” grunted the old bear. There are some people who will talk religious difficulties day and night. They want to know how to pray. They wonder how they are to love their neighbour. They are very keen to learn how to trust God. And they are full of eagerness as to how to help their fellow-men. And there are other talkers who are concerned about rank and priority in the scale of duties. Are they to do this first or the other? Should contemplation or action be the first interest, or should the two move together? I think talkers of these kinds, and perhaps of many other sorts, were in the Apostolic Church, for the Apostle Paul puts such startling emphasis on the necessity of walking. He seems to say to his readers, and to say it again and again, “Stop talking and begin walking! How are you to do things? Just do them! Step out and get them done.”

Let me recall some of the ways in which this counsel is given. Here is one. “Walk in love.” It is so easy to talk about love. I think it is still easier to sing about it. And it makes us feel quite earnest when we inquire about it, and ask what love would do along this road or on that road. And the Apostle’s answer to much of this talking is that we just begin walking. ‘* Walk in love.” Set out and do it, and do not spend in needless questioning the strength which ought to be used in chivalrous service. Just begin to love, and like the anxious young bear you will find that all your difficulties about how to do it are immediately over.

Here is another piece of Apostolic counsel: ‘* Walk in truth.” Perhaps some of these early disciples were more inclined to be theologians than saints. For theology can be divorced from piety. We can be eagerly interested in a theory and only very indifferently concerned about the life. Theology may become a sort of moral opiate, and it can put some very precious faculties into a deep sleep. The only escape from this peril is to make our theology walk. We ought to see our great Christian doctrines walking about incarnated in the common life of the streets. The truth of the atoning love of our Saviour ought to walk through our ordinary affairs in the reconciled lives of ordinary people. The truth of justification by faith should be recognised by its fine stature and by its free swinging stride in the forum and the market place. The truth of God’s forgiveness should not be merely enshrined in a fellowship of words. It ought to be embodied in forgiving men and women who are moving in the ways of the world, and who bear the seal of God’s grace on their foreheads. We are to walk in truth, and in our walk the truth will have its finest witness,

It is by walking that most of our theoretical difficulties are to be solved. Walking settles a heap of questions. ‘It came to pass that, as he was going he received his sight.’? We walk away from a crowd of needless embarrassments which always trouble the folk who are everlastingly waiting to know how to do things and never get them done. It is the life which is the light of men.