Holiness

It would appear, then, that the great miracle is Saiictijicahon, variously described as Holiness, a New Creature, and a New Man, The demand for this, on the part of Christ and His apostles, is unequivocal, — it is, indeed, the very life of their word; thus: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect:” “As He that hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation;” “That ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.” The Christian affirmation is that there is a Holy Ghost, and that His function is to regenerate and sanctify human nature: and the question arising out of that startling statement is. How far has the Holy Ghost succeeded in His work? if He has completed it there must be facts enough on every hand to prove the completion; or if He has not fulfilled His purpose there must be some ascertainable reason for the failure or delay. Let us say at onccj that the Christian church, as we now know it in ally ’ evangelised countries, is as perfect as God Himself is perfect. The very statement would be received by the church itself, not only as ironical, but as an impious taunt. Yet the Holy Ghost has been working in the Christian church for many centuries. Other miracles were done instantaneousl), but this miracle lags with stubborn reluctance. Why? Is the word of the Lord without power, or is the prey taken from the mighty? We have not to answer the mockery of bad men, or to repel the charges of false accusers, but to meet the honest and humblino confession of the church itself that sanctification is a miracle not yet accomplished.

But society is better than it was, say, a century ago.’* Probably; but everything depends upon the exact meaning of the word “better.” Manners have certainly undergone a favourable change in several respects, and many gross social enormities have been outgrown, yet society may be only outwardly not ’ inwardly the better. Morals may be artificial, and as for manners they may have been treated merely, as a branch of the fine arts. Your host no longer considers himself bound to conduct you to the point of intoxication and helplessness in order to show the generousness of his hospitality, but that he is therefore a better man, in the Christian sense of the word, does not follow. The disease which showed itself in a noisome form may be reappearing very subtly. It may be a critical question in the correlation of moral forces, whether the force “bacchanalianism” has not its equivalent in the force “covetousness” or “hypocrisy.” Possibly enough, as every man knows, a passion may not have been extinguished, but only, so to speak, put further down in the heart so that it is not so easily awakened as it used to be, and certainly not so noisy, but still there! A man boasts that he is not SD irritable as he was twenty years ago, but he does not say that his self-control Is used as an element of strenoth in doinof bad deeds with a steadier hand and a calmer effrontery. In the old days he would have fumed and made himself heard in angry words; but now he waits, he strikes with cold steel. He has replaced fury with a heartless and bitter sneer, and he boasts that he has grown in the grace of self-control! He gets credit, too, from society for marked improvement. His acquaintances who now see him under provocation, say that they have seen the day when he would have flown into a rage for one tenth of the reason, and they wonder at his patience and forbearance! They do not know that wtiat they praise so much is the result of calculation, and has in it a strong infusion of malignity. Their. friend has said to himself, “My opponents get the better of me when I am in a rage; I miss my aim; my blows are wasted in the air; I must hold my temper dowm with a strong hand, and bide my time, and then I can do more with one finfjer than I can do now with my whole strength; I will be cooler now.” If such reasoning precede the self-control which society applauds, the self-control is not only vicious In itself, but Is actually an aggravation of the original offence. It may be the same with other social changes and judgments. The reformed drunkard no longer dishonours public decency, but if he has sunk into miserliness he is not a whit the better for his reformation. We change our vices and call them virtues. We have cleansed the skin, but driven the Impurity back upon the heart.

Cliristlan men will honestly say so in speaking about themselves; they will own that in their heart of hearts there is a root of offence and bitterness, and that beyond all their prayers there is a shadow which can only come from the presence of the devil. Yet the Holy Spirit has been operating in the church for centuries, and in the hearts of those very Christians it may be for most of a lifetime!

We may get further knowledge if we give full liberty of speech upon this whole subject to a cynical critic; he shall have his own way of stating the case, and it will be for each of the parties adjudged to say how far the disagreeable observations are true. We shall imaginatively invest our cynical critic with the largest conditions of relationship, confidence, and insight, and thus invested he shall find speech for himself: —

“Take my own spiritual adviser, and see what the Holy Ghost has done for him. He is an ordained minister of Jesus Christ, and his profession of godliness is distinct and emphatic. He goes / amongst men for a good man, and is respected in ’ the most respectable circles. Yet look at him. When he composes his sermons he writes between the lines that he is a clever man, and that no one can hear such sentences without applauding their taste, their beauty, or their rhythm; he chuckles over their shapeliness and grace, and is pleased, as a child is pleased with a toy, when he hits upon some novel conceit in phraseology: he says It will strike, it will gratify, it will be talked about, it will be declared original and piquant. His sermons are all composed for a selection of his hearers, not for his congregation as a whole. He calls an eclectic circle round his desk, and nods to them and receives their smiles, and he says, ‘If yotc be absent when this discourse is delivered my labour will be lost. I am making it for you; I am studying your taste and measuring everything by your judgment; yoic are my real hearers, the others are but so much padding; if they can get any good they must get it through you’ He preaches self-denial, but secretly leaves no appetite ungratified; he denounces worldliness, but insists upon ‘the pound of flesh’ for which he himself has bargained; he bears other people’s trials with elaborate and pompous patience, but yields to fretfulness and petulance when the sting of care pierces his own life; he will unctuously mourn the decay of his intellectual power, but if any man even seem to believe him that unhappy man will be marked and distrusted. My spiritual adviser boasts of the high respectability of his cure; he says that the educated and the intelligent are his most appreciative hearers, and it is known that he will change any appointment to meet the wishes of the chief attendant upon his ministry, — the parishioner who comes to church in the sumptuous chariot, or the pewholder who dictates the decisions of the leading bank. This is my spiritual adviser! He will talk by the hour to his rich visitors, and assure them that his delight is to know his parishioners more and more intimately; but when a poor man calls upon him he is just at that moment going out to an appointment, or is in the agony of composing his next brilliant discourse. Am I to believe that this man has been baptized Into the spirit of Jesus Christ, or that he is living under the special benediction of the Holy Ghost? You tell me that he has all the appearance of being a most amiable man, and so he is when all things go his way; but oppose him, and you will find that his words are no longer soft than butter. Many a man who makes no profession of religion, and whose voice has no pretence of amiability, has In reality a far more genial and noble nature. He speaks with tender softness when all things are sunny and blooming, but he can frown like nioht when his oraln Is reversed. I want to know If this man Is a temple of the Holy Ghost and a specimen of Christian sanctificatlon?”

Again —

“Take literature as It Is conducted by avowedly Christian men, and observe what degree of holiness it represents: that literature Is professedly conducted for the * glory of God,’ as In the first Instance It was projected at the bidding of conscience: the editor Is in high office in the temporal section of one church, and the reviewer Is as dignified In another; an unpopular cause, however, Is never espoused; It is agreed that nothing be said about the circulation, so that the advertising agent may draw upon his imagination when seeking for ‘clients.’ It is a standing rule in the office to proclaim the ever-Increasing and unexampled popularity of the publication, and to encounter the appearanc of every rival with the bold announcement that such appearance has been followed by a twofold or a tenfold extension of its own constituency. The reviewer determines his criticism by his liking or dislike of the author; he sneers broadly at unpopular or struggling men, and kicks with great vigour the cause that is down; he endorses the most worthless trash if it issue from a successful or influential school, and snubs with rude audacity the efforts of men whose very shado he is intellectually unworthy to touch. And the publisher is equal to his colleagues in duplicity and meanness. He never speaks the truth wholly and simply; he has meanings which are unknown beyond ‘the trade’; he pays his advertisements by one scale and charges the unhappy author by another; he inserts a dozen advertisements for a guinea, and then charges a guinea to the account of each writer; he promised me ’ half profits ’ for my book, and returned a statement showing that at the end of the year my profits were exactly nothing, and I know that in the case of a dozen other writers the result was precisely the same; yet he rides in a carriage of his own, and we have hardly the necessaries of life! All these are strictly religious men. They combined in an anti-ritualistic movement, and denied slumber to their eyelids until a reredos was taken down and the table of commandments set up in stead; they hunted one clergyman out of the diocese because of his cloudy notions respecting the Fall of

Adam, and they protested against another on grounds which they were too “indignant to explain. Are these holy men? Is this the work of the Holy Ghost? When we ask for sanctifi cation, are these its living tokens and symbols?”

Again —

“Take the case of general business as it is conducted by professional Christian men. There the one law is, ‘Every man for himself: ’ the pure truth is never told; yea never means yea, and nay never means nay; business is a process of sounding,, tempting, luring, compromising, and sharp practice. - I bought a house, and immediately I had paid the money I was told that one thing had slipped the memory of the vendor, namely that the foundations were giving way at one corner; and when I asked him to return the money, he said, ‘Business is business, and you should have asked more questions,’ — yet this man ’ takes the communion ’ regularly. I had a horse to sell in order to meet a pressing obligation; I knew the horse to be sound in wind and limb, and to be in every way good and useful. I offered it to a church-going man, violent in the nopopery controversy, and fond of the uppermost seat in the synagogue, and he told me that in his judgnient the animal was not worth more than about half the sum I was asking; the animal was wrong in the knees, faulty in the neck, not up to the mark in the hind quarters, and, in short, not to be compared to a horse which he himself had almost given away. I was pressed for money, and the man took the horse

R at his own price. Next day he told his friend that he had bought the best horse in the county, and that he would not take twenty pounds for his bargain. Knowing this, I asked him if he was satisfied with the arrangement, and he told me that I had just got rid of the animal in time! The next thing I heard of this benevolent and public-spirited man

( was, that he was about to preside at the annual I meeting of a great missionary society. What is i true of one business man is substantially true of all. They vary In method, in tone, and in several particulars, so that the one can blame the other, and point to himself as a model of commercial honour; but in-

( spirit and purpose they are in reality all alike, and

all bad.”

We have not restrained the speech of the cynical critic, for it is better to know all sides of a case than to be deceived by the flatteries of partisans. Instead of asking the cynic to bate something of his harshness, let us take his statement exactly as it is given, and in full view of it let us ask, Is the miracle of sanctification ever likely to be accomplished in human life? Its progress is slow, we admit. St Paul himself did not claim that it was completed in his own case: “I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, I press toward the mark for the prize of my high calling in Christ Jesus.” And in the same connection he says, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect, but I follow after.” As for those whom the cynical critic has just described, it must never be forgotten that nowhere are they condemned with severity so keen as in the very book h)- whose precepts they profess to be ruled. It is important to repeat the observations we have already made upon this point, to show that it has not been left for an enemy to find out that Christian professors are often inconsistent and unworthy. “Many walk of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ” (Phil. iii. 18), “By good words and fair speeches they deceive the hearts of the simple” (Rom. xvi. 18). “These are spots in your feasts of charity; clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foamino out their own shame; wanderincr stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever” (Jude 12, 13), The cynical critic never rose to that dignity of accusation. He pointed out with cruel care his details and particulars, but where he used the point of a pin the apostles used the edge of a sword. We thus first of all dispossess the cynic of all claim to originality; for in his criticism he is only putting into vulgar terms the lofty impeachments of infinitely superior men. In the next place, we have to remind him that how great soever may be the inconvenience which he suffers from the imperfections of professing Christians, the one great sufferer in this case is God Himself. If God can be patient in the outworking of this holy miracle, is it a great thing that man should be asked to restrain his tongue from unwise and unmerciful judgment? It was in some such light that God stated the case of Nineveh to the petulant and sensational prophet. “Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: and should not I spare Nineveh?” This is the principle upon which the sanctification of the world proceeds, — spare mankind; spare the tree yet another year; do not break the bruised reed; do not quench the smoking flax! God requires time for this last all-crowning and all-glorifying miracle, simply because man is indisposed towards the highest goodness: partly good he is quite willing to be; good for the occasion, and then at liberty to return to his old ways; but to be good as God Himself is good is not in his heart, for then, he thinks, his whole pleasure would die, and he would mope and chafe under a harsh discipline, with no relief but the promise of a remote heaven.

But this is the miracle, that any man should ever have felt any desire towards holiness! Consider the view of human nature which is given in Holy Scripture, and then hear that same human nature pray, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” and there is the miracle which outshines all other wonders. We need not wait for absolute holiness, for holiness is a growth; the miracle is at the begiiDiiiLg, not at the end. — in the prayer for mercy, not in the completed character. We hear of people in India who would rather perish in time of famine than accept relief under conditions which would even seem to compel them to become nominal Christians. Now, suppose that such, people could be brought to see the meaning of Jesus Christ’s cross, and to seek Jesus Christ’s mercy, at that point the mirachj has been wrought, — a very wonderful miracle considering the stubbornness of the orio-inal conditions. As to fallinof short of the completeness and glory of perfection there may be some aspect of a miracle even in that failure; for it is of the very nature of holiness to be dissatisfied with its atta’nments so long as there is any accessible point beyond; holiness always has some further prayer to offer; and so long as there Is any desire towards God unsatisfied must there be a sense of shortcoming and imperfection. But the divine promise abides to soothe and assure the soul; those who are now afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, shall yet rest on foundations of sapphires, their windows shall be of agates, their gates of carbuncles, and all their borders shall be of pleasant stones (Isa. li. it, 12).

The Christian aspirant says that he sees holiness afar, in the figure of a shining angel, and that he longs with ardent desire to seize the prize. Then why not seize it instantly? Because between himself and the angel there is a wide battle-field on which a deadly fight is proceeding without break or pause, and the combatants are his own passions and his own better nature. The miracle is that he slill wishes to penetrate the opposition and find his way to ti“ie oth’jr side; the temptation is to surrender, but he is saved from that humiliation by the assurance that he that endureth to the end shall be saved, and that he who overcometh shall eat of the tree of life, and live for ever. “Holiness” is a word not easily written on the rugged surface of human life, but it shall in the long run be graven upon it indelibly. It is to be written upon the bells of the horses, and to be inscribed upon the lintels and the doorposts of human dwellings. All unriglitcousness is to be driven awa)’ by its benign power, and all weakness, and all death. It aims at no partial empire, — at nothing less than universal dominion! It is now the one condition of seeing the Father Everla; ting: “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” It is the peculiar characteristic of the sanctuary in the heavens: “Nothing that is unholy shall enter therein.” It is the appellation of the Inhabitant of Eternity: “His name is Holy.” Towards “holiness” human life is being moved, how slowly soever, by the ministry of the Holy Ghost, and when the end comes there will be no such miracle in the universe. Is this a picture? Meanwhile perhaps it is. But how poor the world would be but for its pictures! They are prophecies and promises; inspirations towards high action and noble patience; and presently, even whilst men are looking upon them, they will cease to be pictures by becoming real and immortal.