The Struggling Conscience
Genesis xxxii. 24 v.
“There wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.”
When conscience wrestles with me, it is always in the form of a man. It is my higher self that strives with me — the Christ within. We have all a higher self — a photograph which Grod took in some pure moment. We have left it behind, but it follows us. It meets us in our silent hours. It confronts us with the spectacle of what we might have been. It refuses to let us go until it has blessed us. It is the same thing as Paul felt when he spoke of the spirit lusting against the flesh. The spirit was his better photograph, his Christ, his hope of glory. It is to all of us our hope of glory. It is not the actual man that makes us feel immortal; it is the ideal man — the man that might have been. That is the reason that to me conscience is precious even when it wounds. It is no foreign hand that strikes me; it is my higher self, my inner man, my likeness as God sees it. It is the image of me that is hnng up in heaven — the picture on which my Father gazes to avert despair. It is not only with me that the man wrestles; he wrestles with the Father for me. He pleads my future possibilities. He suggests my coming glory. He tells what I would be in less vile raiment. He shows what I may be with the ring and the robe. He reveals how I shall look at the breaking of the day.
My Father, behold me in Thy Son. Let the Divine Man wrestle for me in Thy heart. See in Him my shield; look on the face of Thine anointed. When Thy heart is grieved for me, turn to the Man on Thy right hand. He is my true self — Thine ideal of myself. He is the likeness of what I shall be at daybreak; keep Thine eye on my daybreak, oh! my God. Let the sight of Him be my hiding-place from the storm, and my covert from the tempest; it will avert the tempest of Thy sorrow. In the hour of evil, a man cries in my heart, “thou shalt not “; let His cry answer for me. Impute to ine the inner Christ, the better self. The groanings of my spirit are the voice of Thy Spirit; let them intercede for me. Judge me by the Man whom Thou hast ordained — the wrestling man. Judge me by the high resolve, the lofty aim, the kindling thought. Judge me by the eager wish whose flight the flesh cannot follow, by the strong will whose stroke the hand cannot second. Judge me by the pain that succeeds to failure, the wound that conies from sinning, the remorse that waits on do in wrong. Judge me, not by the breaking of the mirror, but by the sight of the face I have seen in breaking it; for the face is the higher man — the Man Christ Jesus.