Life and man are an insoluble enigma except on one hypothesis, and that is that this is a nursery-ground, and that the plants will be p.r.i.c.ked out some day, and planted where they are meant to grow. The hearts that feel after absolute and perfect love, the spirits that can conceive the idea of an infinite goodness, the dumb desires, the blank misgivings that wander homeless amidst the narrowness of this poor earth, all these things proclaim that there is a region where they will find their nutriment and expatiate, and when we look at a man we can only say, He that hath wrought him for an infinite world, and an endless communion with a perfect good, is G.o.d.
Still further, another field of the divine operation to this end is in what we roughly call "providences." What is the meaning of all this discipline through which we are pa.s.sed, if there is nothing to be disciplined for? What is the good of an apprenticeship if there is no journeyman"s life to come after it, where the powers that have been slowly acquired shall be n.o.bly exercised upon broader fields?
Why should men be taken, as it were, and, like the rough iron from the ground,
"Be heated hot with hopes and fears, And plunged in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the shocks of doom,"
if, after all the process, the polished shaft is to be broken in two, and tossed away as rubbish? If death ends faculty, it is a pity that the faculty was so patiently developed. If G.o.d is educating us all in His school, and then means that, like some wastrel boys, we should lose all our education as soon as we leave its benches, there is little use in the rod, and little meaning in the training. Brethren!
life is an insoluble riddle unless the purpose of it lie yonder, and unless all this patient training of our sorrows and our gladnesses, the warmth that expands and the cold that contracts the heart, the light that gladdens and the darkness that saddens the eye and the spirit, are equally meant for training us for the perfect life of a perfect soul moving a perfect body in a perfect universe. Here is a pillar in some ancient hall that has fallen into poor hands, and has had a low roof thrown across the centre of the chamber at half its height. In the lower half there is part of a pillar that means nothing; ugly, bare, evidently climbing, and pa.s.sing through the aperture, and away above yonder is the carved capital and the great entablature that it carries. Who could understand the shaft unless he could look up through the aperture, and see the summit? And who can think of life as anything but a wretched fragment unless he knows that all which begins here runs upwards into the room above, and there finds its explanation and its completion?
But there is the third sphere of the divine operation. As in creation and in providence, so in all the work and mystery of our redemption, this is the goal that G.o.d has in view. It was not worth Christ"s while to come and die, if nothing more was to come of it than the imperfect reception of His blessings and gifts which the n.o.blest Christian life in this world presents. The meaning and purpose of the Cross, the meaning and purpose of all the patient dealings of His whispering Spirit, are that we shall be like our Divine Lord in spirit first, and in body afterwards.
And everything about the experiences of a true Christian spirit is charged with a prophecy of immortality. I have not time to dwell upon one point gathered from the context, that I intended to have insisted upon, viz. that the very desires which G.o.d"s good Spirit works in a believing soul are themselves confirmations of their own fulfilment.
But if you notice at your leisure the verses that precede my text, you will find that the Apostle adduces the groanings of "earnest desire to be clothed with our house which is from Heaven," as a proof that we _have_ "a building of G.o.d, a house not made with hands."
That is to say, every longing in a Christian heart when it is most filled with that Spirit, and most in contact with G.o.d, and which is the answer of that heart to a promise of Christ--every such longing carries with it the a.s.surance of its own fulfilment. He that hath wrought it has wrought it in order that the desire may fit us for its answer, and that the open mouth may be ready for the abundant filling which His grace designs. He works upon us, therefore, by making us desire a gift, and then He gives that which He desires. So let us cherish these longings, not for the accident of escaping death, nor as choosing the path by which we shall reach the blessed issue, but longing for that great issue itself; and try to keep more distinct and clear before all our minds this thought, "G.o.d means for me the partic.i.p.ation in Christ"s glorified Manhood, and my attaining of that Manhood is the end that He has in view in all that He does with me."
III. So I must say one word about the last thought that is here, and that is the certainty and the confidence. "Therefore we are always confident," says the Apostle.
"He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is G.o.d." Then we may be sure that as far as He is concerned, the work will not be suspended nor vain. _This_ man does not begin to build and is unable to finish. This workman has infinite resources, an unchanging purpose, and infinite long-suffering. He will complete His task.
In the quarries of Egypt you will find gigantic stones, half-dressed, and intended to have been transported to some great temple. But there they lie, the work incomplete, and they never carried to their place.
There are no half-polished stones in G.o.d"s quarries. They are all finished where they lie, and then borne across the sea, like Hiram"s from Lebanon, to the Temple on the hill. It is a certainty that G.o.d will finish His work; and since "He that hath wrought us is G.o.d," we may be sure that He will not stop till He has done.
But it is a certainty that you can thwart. It is an operation that you can counterwork. The potter in Jeremiah"s parable was making a vessel upon his wheel, and the vessel was marred in his hand, and did not turn out what he wanted it. The meaning of the metaphor, which has often been twisted to express the very opposite, is that the potter"s work may fail, that the artificer may be balked, that you can counterwork the divine dealing, and that all His purpose in your creation, in His providence and in His gift of His Son for your redemption, may come to nought as far as you are concerned. "I beseech you that ye receive not the grace of G.o.d in vain." "In vain have I smitten your children," wailed the Divine Love; "they have received no correction." In vain G.o.d lavishes upon some of us His mercies, in vain for some of us has Christ toiled and suffered and died. Oh, brother! do not let all G.o.d"s work on you come to nought, but yield yourselves to it. Rejoice in the confidence that He is moulding your character, cheerfully welcome and accept the providences, painful as they may be, by which He prepares you for heaven. The chisel is sharp that strikes off the superfluous pieces of marble, and when the chisel cuts, not into marble, but into a heart, there is a pang. Bear it, bear it! and understand the meaning of the blow of the sculptor"s mallet, and see in all life the divine hand working towards the accomplishment of His own loving purpose.
Then if we turn to Him, amid the pains of His discipline and the joys of His gifts of grace, with recognition and acceptance of His meaning in them all, and cry to Him, "Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever, forsake not the work of Thine own hands," we may be always confident, as knowing that "the Lord will perfect that which concerneth us."
THE OLD HOUSE AND THE NEW
"We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."--2 COR. v. 8.
There lie in the words of my text simply these two things; the Christian view of what death is, and the Christian temper in which to antic.i.p.ate it.
I. First, the Christian view of what death is.
Now it is to be observed that, properly speaking, the Apostle is not here referring to the state of the dead, but to the act of dying. The language would more literally and accurately be rendered "willing to _go from_ home, from the body, and to _go_ home, to the Lord." The moment of transition of course leads to a permanent state, but it is the moment of transition which is in view in the words. I need not remind you, I suppose, that the metaphor of the home is one which has already been dwelt upon in the early part of the chapter, where the contrast is drawn between the transitory house of "this tent," and the "building of G.o.d," the body of incorruption and glory which the saints at the Resurrection day shall receive. So, then, the Christian view of the act of death is that it is simply a change of abode.
Very clearly and firmly does Paul draw the line between the man and his dwelling-place. Life is more than a result of organisation.
Consciousness, thought, feeling, are more than functions of matter.
No materialist philosopher has ever been, or ever will be, able to explain within the limits of his system the strange difference between the cause and the effect; how it comes to pa.s.s that at the one end of the chain there is an impression upon a nerve, and at the other there is pain; how at the one end there is the throb of an inch of matter in a man"s skull, and at the other end there are thoughts that breathe and words that burn, and that live for ever. That brings us up to the edge of a gulf over which no materialist philosopher has ever been able to cast a bridge. The scalpel cannot cut deep enough to solve this mystery. Conscience as well as instinct cry out against the theory that the worker and the tools are inseparable. For such a theory reduces human actions to mechanical results, and shatters all responsibility. Man is more than his dwelling-place. You crush a sh.e.l.l on the beach with your heel, and you slay its tiny inhabitant.
But you can pull down the tent, and pluck up its pegs, and roll up its canvas, and put it away in a dark corner, and the tenant is untouched. The foolish senses crown Death as last, and lord of all.
But wisdom says, "Life and thought have gone away side by side, leaving doors and windows wide," and that is all that has happened.
Still further, my text suggests that to the Christian soul the departure from the one house is the entrance into the other. The home has been the body; the home is now to be Jesus Christ. And very beautiful and significant with meanings, which only experience will fully unfold, is the representation that the Lord Christ Himself a.s.sumes the place which the bodily environment has. .h.i.therto held.
That teaches us, at all events, that there is a new depth and closeness of union with Jesus waiting the Christian soul, when it lays aside the separating film of flesh. Here the bodily organisation, with its limitations, necessarily shuts us off from the closeness of intercourse which is possible for a naked soul. We know not how much separation may depend upon the immersing of the spirit in the fleshly tabernacle, but this we know, that, though here and now, by faith which dominates sense, souls can live in Christ even whilst they live in the body; yet there shall come a form of union so much more close, intimate, all-pervading, and all-encircling, as that the present union with Him by faith, precious as it is, shall be, as the Apostle calls it in our context, "absence from the Lord." "We have to be discharged," says an old thinker, "of a great deal of what we call body, and then we shall be more truly ourselves," and more truly united to Him who, if we are Christian people at all, is the self of ourselves and the life of our lives. No man knows how close he can nestle to the bosom of Christ when the film of flesh is rent away. Just as when in some crowded street of a great city some grimy building is pulled down, a sudden daylight fills the vacant s.p.a.ce, and all the site that had been shut out from the sky for many years is drenched in sunshine, so when "the earthly house of this tabernacle" is ruinated and falls, the light will flood the place where it stood, and to be "absent from the body" shall be to be "present with the Lord."
May we go a step further and suggest that, perhaps, in the bold metaphor of my text, there is an answer to the questions which so often rack loving and parted hearts? "Do the dead know aught of what affects us here? and can they do aught but gaze on Him, and love, and rest?" If it be that there is any such a.n.a.logy as seems to be dimly shadowed in my text, between the relation of the body on earth to the spirit that inhabits it, and that of Jesus Christ to him who dwells in Him, and is clothed by Him, then it may be that, as the flesh, so the Christ transmits to the spirit that has Him for its home impressions from the outside world, and affords a means of action upon that world. Christ may be, if I might so say, the sensorium of the disembodied spirit; and Christ may be the hand of the man who hath no other instrument by which to express himself. But all that is fancy perhaps, speculation certainly; and yet there seems to be a shadow of a foundation for at least entertaining the possibility of such a thought as that Jesus is the means of knowing and the means of acting to those who rest from their labours in Him, and dwell in peace in His arms. But be that as it may, the reality of a close communion and encircling by the felt presence of Jesus Christ, which, in its blessed closeness, will make the closest communion here seem to be obscure, is certainly declared in the words before us.
Then this transition is regarded in my text as being the work of a moment. It is not a long journey of which the beginning is "to go _from_ home, from the body," and the end is "to _go_ home, to the Lord." But it is one and the same motion which, looked at from the one side, is departure, and looked at from the other is arrival. The old saying has it, "there is but a step between me and death." The truth is, there is but a step between me and _life_. The mighty angel in the Apocalypse, that stood with one foot on the firm land and the other on the boundless ocean, is but the type of the spirit in the brief moment of transition, when the consciousness of two worlds blends, and it is clothed upon with the house which is from heaven, in the very act of stripping off the earthly house of this tabernacle.
Nor need I remind you, I suppose, in more than a sentence, that this transition obviously leads into a state of conscious communion with Jesus Christ. The dreary figment of an unconscious interval for the disembodied spirit has no foundation, either in what we know of spirit, or in what is revealed to us in Scripture. For the one thing that seems to make it probable--the use of that metaphor of "sleeping in Jesus"--is quite sufficiently accounted for by the notions of repose, and cessation of outward activity, and withdrawal of capacity of being influenced by the so-called realities of this lower world, without dragging in the unfounded notion of unconsciousness. My text is incompatible with it, for it is absurd to say of an unconscious spirit, clear of a bodily environment, that it is anywhere; and there is no intelligible sense in which the condition of such a spirit can be called being "with the Lord."
So, then, I think a momentary transition, with uninterrupted consciousness, which leads to a far deeper and more wonderful and blessed sense of unity with Jesus Christ than is possible here on earth, is the true shape in which the act of death presents itself to the Christian thinker.
And remember, dear brethren, that is all we know. Nothing else is certain--nothing but this, "with the Lord," and the resulting certainty that therefore it is well with them. It is enough for our faith, for our comfort, for our patient waiting. They live in Christ, "and there we find them worthier to be loved," and certainly lapped in a deeper rest. "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord."
II. In the next place, note the Christian temper in which to antic.i.p.ate the transition.
"We are always courageous, and willing rather to leave our home in the body, and to go home to the Lord." Now I must briefly remind you of how the Apostle comes to this state of feeling. He has been speaking about the natural shrinking, which belongs to all humanity, from the act of dissolution, considered as being the stripping off of the garment of the flesh. And he has declared, on behalf of himself and the early Christian Church, his own and their personal desire that they might escape from that trial by the path which seemed possible to the early Christians--viz. that of surviving until the return of Jesus Christ from Heaven, when they would be "clothed upon with the house which is from Heaven," without the necessity of stripping off that with which at present they are invested. Then he says--and this is a very remarkable thought--that just because this instinctive shrinking from death and yearning for the glorified body is so strong in the Christian heart, that is a sign that there is such a glorified body waiting for us. He says, "we know that if our house ... were dissolved, we have a building of G.o.d." And his reason for knowing it is this, "_for_ in this we groan." That is a bold position to say that a yearning in the Christian consciousness prophesies its own fulfilment. Our desires are the prophecies of His gifts. Then, on this certainty--which he deduces from the fact of the longing for it--on this certainty of the glorious, ultimate body of the Resurrection he bases his willingness expressed in the text, to go through the unwelcome process of leaving the old house, although he shrinks from it.
So, then, Christian faith does not destroy the natural reluctance to put aside the old companion of our lives. The old house, though it be smoky, dimly lighted, and, by our own careless keeping, s.l.u.ttish and grimy in many a corner, yet is the only house we have ever known, and to be absent from it is untried and strange. There is nothing wrong in saying "we would not be unclothed but clothed upon." Nature speaks there. We may reverently entertain the same feelings which our Pattern acknowledged, when He said, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished." And there would be nothing sinful in repeating His prayer with His conditions, "If it be possible, let this cup pa.s.s from Me."
But then the text suggests to us the large Christian possessions and hope which counterwork this reluctance, in the measure in which we live lives of faith. There is the a.s.surance of that ultimate home in which all the transiency of the present material organisation is exchanged for the enduring permanence which knows no corruption. The "tent" is swept away to make room for the "building." The earthly house is dissolved in order that there may be reared round the homeless tenant the house eternal, "not made with hands," G.o.d"s own work, which is waiting in the heavens; because the power that shall frame it is there. Not only that great hope of the "body of His glory," with which at the last all true souls shall be invested, but furthermore, "the earnest of the spirit," and the blessed experiences therefrom, resulting even here, ought to make the unwelcome necessity less unwelcome. If the firstfruits be righteousness and peace and joy of the Holy Ghost, what shall the harvest be? If the "earnest," the shilling given in advance, be so precious, what will the whole wealth of the inheritance which it heralds be when it is received?
For such reasons the transitory pa.s.sage becomes less painful and unwelcome. Who is there that would hesitate to dip his foot into the ice-cold brook if he knew that it would not reach above his ankles, and that a step would land him in blessedness unimagined till experienced?
Therefore the Christian temper is that of quiet willingness and constant courage. There is nothing hysterical here, nothing morbid, nothing overstrained, nothing artificial. The Apostle says: "I would rather not. I should like if I could escape it. It is an unwelcome necessity; but when I see what I do see beyond," I am ready. Since so it must be, I will go, not reluctantly, nor dragged away from life, nor clinging desperately to it as it slips from my hands, nor dreading anything that may happen beyond; but always courageous, and prepared to go whithersoever the path may take me, since I am sure that it ends in His bosom. He is willing to go from the home of the body, because to do that is to go home to Christ.
There are other references of our Apostle"s, substantially of the same tone as that of my text, but with very beautiful and encouraging differences. When he was nearer his end, when it seemed to him as if the headsman"s block was not very far off, his _willingness_ had intensified into "having a _desire_ to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better." And when the end was all but reached, and he knew that death was waiting just round the next turn in the road, he said, with the confidence that in the midst of the struggle would have been vainglory, but at the end of it was a foretaste of the calm of Heaven, "I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness."
That is our model, dear brethren,--"always courageous," afraid of nothing in life, in death, or beyond, and therefore willing to go from home from the body and to go home to the Lord.
Think of this man thus fronting the inevitable, with no excitement and with no delusions. Remember what Paul believed about death, about sin, about his own sin, about judgment, about h.e.l.l. And then think of how to him death had made its darkness beautiful with the light of Christ"s face, and all the terror was gone out of it. Do you think so about death? Do you shrink from it? Why? Why do you not take Paul"s cure for the shrinking? If you can say, "To me to live is Christ,"
you will have no difficulty in saying, "and to die is gain." That is the only way by which you can come to such a temper, and then you will be willing to move from the cottage to the palace, and to wait in peace till you are shifted again into "the building of G.o.d, the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
PLEASING CHRIST
"We labour that whether present or absent we may be accepted of Him."--2 COR. v. 2.
We do not usually care very much for, or very much trust, a man"s own statement of the motives of his life, especially if in the statement he takes credit for lofty and n.o.ble ones. And it would be rather a dangerous experiment for the ordinary run of so-called Christian people to stand up and say what Paul says here, that the supreme design and aim towards which all their lives are directed is to please Jesus Christ. In his case the tree was known by its fruits.
Certainly there never was a life of more n.o.ble self-abnegation, of more continuous heroism, of loftier aspiration and lowlier service than the life of which we see the very pulse in these words.
But Paul is not only professing his own faith, he is speaking in the name of all his brethren. "We," ought to include every man and woman who calls himself or herself a Christian. It is this setting of the will of Jesus Christ high up above all other commandments, and proposing to one"s self as the aim that swallows up all other aims, that I may please Him--it is this, and not creeds, forms, opinions, professions, or even a faith that simply trusts in Him for salvation, that makes a true Christian. You are a Christian in the precise measure in which Christ"s will is uppermost and exclusive in your life, and for all your professions and your orthodoxy and your worship and your faith, not one hair"s-breadth further. Here is the signature and the common characteristic of all real Christians, "We labour that whether present or absent we may be well-pleasing to Him."
So then in looking together at these words now, I take three points, the supreme aim of the Christian life; the concentration of effort which that aim demands; and the insignificance to which it reduces all external things.
I. First, then, let me deal with that supreme aim of the Christian life.
The word which is, correctly enough, rendered "accepted," may more literally, and perhaps with a closer correspondence to the Apostle"s meaning, be translated "well-pleasing," and the aim is this, not merely that we may be accepted, but that we may bring a smile into His face, and some joy and complacent delight in us into His heart, when He looks upon our doings. That pleasure of Jesus Christ in them that "fear Him, and in them that hope in His mercy" and do His will is a present emotion that fills His heart in looking upon His followers, and it will be especially declared in the solemn, final judgment. We must keep in view both of these periods, if we would rightly understand the sweep of the aim which ought to be uppermost in all Christian people. Here and now in our present acts, we should so live as to occasion a present sentiment of complacent delight in us, in the heart of the Christ who sees us here and now and always.
We should so live as that at that far-off future day when we shall "all be manifested before the Judgment-seat of Christ," the Judge may bend from His tribunal, and welcome us into His presence with a word of congratulation and an outstretched hand of loving reception. Set that two-fold aim before you, Christian men and women, else you will fail to experience the full stimulus of this thought.
Now such an aim as this implies a very wonderful conception of Jesus Christ"s present relations to us. It is a truth that we may minister to His joy. It is a truth that just as really as you mothers are glad when you hear from a far-off land that your boy is doing well, and getting on, so Jesus Christ"s heart fills with gladness when He sees you and me walking in the paths in which He would have us go. We often think about our dear dead that they cannot know of us and our doings here, because the sorrow that would sometimes come from the contemplation of our evil, or of our misfortunes, would trouble them in their serene rest. We know not how that may be, but this at least we do know, that the Man Jesus Christ, who, like those dear ones, "was dead, and is alive for evermore," in His human nature has knowledge of all His children"s failures, as well as successes, and is affected with some shadow of regret, or with some reality of delight, according as they follow or stray from the paths in which He would have them walk. If it be so with Him it may be so with them; and though it be not so with them it must be so with Him. So this strange, sweet, tender, and powerful thought is a piece of plain prose, that Christ is glad when you and I are good.