And what I have said of the world, will apply also to life and to death. Oh, the infinite difference whether life is ours, or but stolen for an instant; whether death is ours, our subject, ministering only to our good; or our fearful enemy, our ever keen pursuer, from whose grasp we have escaped for a few short years, but who is following fast after us, and when he has once caught us will hold us fast for ever! Have we ever seen his near approach--has he ever forced himself upon our notice whether we would or no? But two days since he was amongst us,--we were, as it were, forced to look upon him. Did we think that he was ours, or that we were his? If we are his, then indeed he is fearful: fearful to the mere consciousness of nature; a consciousness which no arguments can overcome; fearful if it be merely the parting from life, if it be merely the resigning that wonderful thing which we call our being. It is fearful to go from light to darkness, from all that we have ever known and loved, to that of which we know and love nothing. But if death, even thus stingless, is yet full of horror, what is he with his worst sting beside, the sting of our sins? What is he when he is taking us, not to nothingness, but to judgment? He is indeed so fearful then, that no words can paint him half so truly as our foreboding dread of him, and no arguments which the wit of man can furnish can strip him of his terrors.
But what if death too, as well as life, be ours?--which he is, if we are Christ's; for Christ has conquered him. If he be ours, our servant, our minister, sent but to bring us into the presence of our Lord, then, indeed, his terrors, his merely natural terrors, the outside roughness of his aspect, are things which the merest child need not shrink from. Then disease and decay, however painful to living friends to look upon, have but little pain for him who is undergoing them. For it is not only amidst the tortures of actual martyrdom that Christians have been more than conquerors,--in common life, on the quiet or lonely sick bed, under the grasp of fever or of consumption, the conquest has been witnessed as often and as completely. It is not a little thing when the faintest whisper of thought to which expiring nature can give utterance breathes of nothing but of peace and of forgiveness. It is not a little thing when the name of Christ possesses us wholly; not distinctly, it may be, for reason may be too weak for this; but with an indescribable power of support and comfort. Or even if there be a last conflict,--a season of terror and of pain, a valley of the shadow of death, dark and gloomy,--yet even there Christ is with his servants, and as their trial is so is his love. Thus it is, if death be ours; and death is ours, if we be Christ's. And are we not Christ's? We bear his name, we have his outward seal of belonging to his people,--can we refuse to be his in heart and true obedience? Would we rather steal our pleasures than enjoy them as our own; steal life for an instant, rather than have it our sure possession for ever? Would we rather be fugitives from death, fugitives whom he will surely recover and hold fast, than be able to say and to feel that death, as well as life is ours, things to come, as well as things present, because we are truly Christ's?
LECTURE VIII.
GALATIANS V. 16, 17.
Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.
For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the
flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot
do the things that ye would.
"We cannot do the things that we would." These are words of familiar and common use; this is the language in which we are all apt to excuse, whether to ourselves or to others, the various faults of our conduct. We should be glad to do better, so we say and think, but the power to do so fails us. And so far it may seem that we are but echoing the apostle's language; for he says the very same thing, "Ye cannot do the things that ye would." Yet the words as we use them, and as the apostle used them, have the most opposite meaning in the world. We use them as a reason why we should be satisfied, the apostle as a reason why we should be alarmed; we intend them to be an excuse, the apostle meant them to be a certain sign of condemnation.
The reasons of this difference may be understood very easily. We, in the common course of justice, should think it hard to punish a man for not doing what he cannot do. We think, therefore, that if we say that we cannot do well, we establish also our own claim to escape from punishment. But God declares that a state of sin is and must be a state of misery; and that if we cannot escape the sin, we cannot escape the misery. According to God's meaning, then, the words, "Ye cannot do the things which ye would," mean no other than this: "Ye cannot escape from hell; ye cannot be redeemed from the power of death and of Satan; the power is wanting in you, however much you may wish it: death has got you, and it will keep you for ever." So that, in this way, sickness or weakness of the soul is very like sickness or weakness of the body. We cannot help being ill or weak in many cases: is that any reason why, according to the laws of God's providence, we should not suffer the pain of illness? Or is it not, rather, clear that we suffer it just because we have not the power to get rid of it; if we had the power to be well, we should be well. A man's evils are not gone because he wishes them away; it is not he who would fain see his chains broken, that escapes from his bondage; but he who has the strength to rend them asunder.
Thus, then, in St. Paul's language, "Ye cannot do the things that ye would," means exactly, "Ye are not redeemed, but in bondage; ye are not saved, but lost." But he goes on to the reason why we cannot do the things which we would, which is, "because the flesh and the Spirit are contrary to one another," and pull us, as it were, different ways. Just as we might say of a man in illness, that the reason why he is not well, as he wishes to be, is because his healthy nature and his disease are contrary to one another, and are striving within him for the mastery. His blood, according to its healthy nature, would flow calmly and steadily; his food, according to his healthy nature, would be received with appetite, and would give him nourishment and strength; but, behold, there is in him now another nature, contrary to his healthy nature: and this other nature makes his blood flow with feverish quickness, and makes food distasteful to him, and makes the food which he has eaten before to become, as it were, poison; it does not nourish him or strengthen, but is a burden, a weakness, and a pain. As long as these two natures thus struggle within him, the man is sick; as soon as the diseased nature prevails, the man sinks and dies. He does not wish to die,--not at all,--most earnestly, it may be, does he wish to live; but his diseased nature has overcome his healthy nature, and so he must die. If he would live, in any sense that deserves to be called life, the diseased nature must not overcome, must not struggle equally; it must be overcome, it must be kept down, it must be rendered powerless; and then, when the healthy nature has prevailed, its victory is health and strength.