To counteract this tendency, and to do so in the right way, is one of the very noblest tasks set before the younger Clergy of the English Church in our time. It is for them, under God, in a pre-eminent degree, to find out the secret, and then to live it out, how to be at once the perfectly genuine man, devoted to the service of men, carrying what he is and what he believes into the actual surroundings of modern life, not allowing illusions and poetic day-dreams to come between him and facts; and also the convinced, unwavering, spiritual Christian, conversant with his own soul, and with his living Lord and Saviour, and with that sacred, unalterable written Word which that Saviour put into His people's hands, never to be taken out of them. Nothing is more wanted at present in the sphere of "Church life and work," unless I am greatly mistaken, than a generation of young Clergymen (soon to be seniors) who shall conspicuously combine the best forms of practicality with an unmistakable chastened personal spirituality which is seen to be "the pulse of" their busy "machine." And if the spirituality is to be indeed genuine (away with it if it is anything but genuine to the centre), if it is to be quite different on the one hand from a thing of artificial phrases, and on the other from merely formulated and regulated devoutness, I am deeply sure that its only secret and preservative is a fully-maintained secret walk with God.
"GOD, I THANK THEE."
"I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing." [Rev. iii. 17.] Such was the thought and word of the Laodicean long ago. Is it not in effect the thought, if not the word, of not a few hard workers and energetic enterprizers now? "What do I want with the dialect of 'Christian experience'? What have I, with all these irons in the fire, and a strong hammer and a strong hand with which to strike them, what have I to do with 'old-world faiths' about sin and salvation, about grace and conversion, about pardon and justification? What have I so pressingly to do with much prayer, save in the form of much work? God, I thank Thee that I am a worker; let it be for others to dive into spiritual secrets, if it is good for them to do so."
"THOU KNOWEST NOT."
I would not overdraw the picture. And the words I have put into a possible mouth are words which, if I heard, I hope I should hear with every wish to judge them fairly and to see where any truth lay in them. But none the less I am sure that those words not unjustly represent a type of thought widely prevalent among even ministerial workers, and that it is a type of thought pregnant with disaster for Christian work. "Thou knowest not that thou art poor"; "I counsel thee, to buy of Me"; "I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice and open the door I will come in to him and sup with him, and he with Me." [Rev. iii. 17, 18, 20.] So said Jesus Christ to the Laodicean. And though it may seem paradoxical to compare a man involved in the rush of modern "Church work" with the Laodicean, the comparison may not be always far astray, nor the words of the Lord in Rev. iii. 18 out of place accordingly. To be "neither cold nor hot" towards Him is all too possible for us, alas, even when "the irons in the fire" are most numerous, and even when they are being most briskly hammered.
TO KNOW CHRIST IS INDISPENSABLE.
So let us listen, making a pause to do so. Perhaps just now the knock may be audible, and certain articulate sounds may come from outside, saying that a Person waits for readmission to His place in our busy, multifarious life, and that He can be content with nothing short of heart-intimacy with us, and that we, if we would not forsake our own mercy, must be content with nothing short of heart-intimacy with Him.
"I counsel thee to buy of Me." Let us do it; let us pay over, at His feet, our poor fancied wealth of self's energies and undertakings (as regards our own good opinion of them), receiving from Him the heavenly "gold" of His own glorious grace and peace, and the "white robe" of a living and loving conformity to His likeness, and the "eye-salve" of His illumination, in which we see things as He sees them. It is better, as von Machtholf says it is, to have Him within the heart's chamber, at once as Guest and as Host, in that blessed inter-communion, than to be apparently the most successful of organizers or of toilers, strong in ourselves, but without the secret of the Presence of the Lord.
It is scarcely needful, I trust, to explain what I do not mean. My very last intention is to speak slightingly of devoted work and self-sacrificing endeavours, whether or no they take the line which most approves itself to me. A fainéant in the English Ministry to-day is something worse than even a cumberer of the ground; he is, I dare to say, like a upas upon it, blighting where he throws his shadow, so conspicuous and so deadly must be the example of such a life in the Minister of such a Gospel. But what I mean, again and again, is this, that the days demand, along with a thoroughgoing while prudent practicality, more and more also of a profound reality of spiritual knowledge of the Lord in those who labour in His Name. With the growing stress of our time we must have not less but more of this, in those who are called to meet that stress. This is vital, if we would not be stifled and succumb as Christians altogether.
So this is my plea, dear Brother in the Ministry, now making your first essays in some great city parish, or wherever it may be: cultivate, as for your life, secret intercourse with God.