Standards of Life and Service

by Thomas Henry Howard

Moses puts this in a simple but beautiful way to his people when he said, 'Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God, and to walk in His ways, and to keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His judgments, and to hearken unto His voice: and the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be His peculiar people, as He hath promised thee, and that thou shouldst keep all His commandments'. The appeal of the Apostle is also familiar to us all, 'I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service'.

Jesus always kept this before His disciples. He certainly talked of daily cross-bearing, and following and confessing Him before the world; but He was careful to say to them, 'There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting'.

Our songs and prayers are full of the same ideas, and we are again face to face with the appeal expressed by Jeremiah: 'Come, let us join ourselves unto the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten'. Now, there are certain features of this covenant-making that I should like to look at.

1. To begin with, it is to be an inward act, a thing of the heart. I believe in outward tokens of religious life and feeling, such as standing up, raising the hand, coming to the table, and similar modes of testimony; but if any of these outward acts are mere forms, they are next to useless. The heart must be in it if the covenant is to be properly made and maintained.

One frequently hears it said, 'Ah, yes, I do it in my heart. I can get the blessing in my seat or at home quietly. I do not believe in this public line of declaration, and this parade of one's sacred experiences'. Well, I believe, in both the inward and the outward. If, however, we cannot have both, by all means let us have the covenant made in sincerity of heart, for without that the whole thing is in vain.

We may learn much from an old Hebrew custom referred to in the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, which shows that the Jewish people understood the nature of true devotion. Under the Mosaic law a bondservant could only be held by his master for six years; in the seventh he was 'to go out free for nothing'. But if the servant came to his master, and said, 'I don't want to go; I love you; I will not go out free; I will serve you for ever', the master would reply, 'If you really mean that, let us have it settled, and settled in public'. The master would then bring the servant to the judges to register the agreement, and would also take him to the doorpost, and with an awl bore a hole through the man's ear, fastening him to the post. This was the sign of a perpetual covenant, and everybody who saw it knew that the man's self-surrender to his master was real, binding, and permanent.

We have no such ceremony in our public Meetings, but we can have the definite declaration, 'I love Thee, O Lord, and I will serve Thee; and here and now I bind myself in an everlasting covenant to serve Thee for ever'.

2. Then, again, a true covenant is a deed which commits you to active and definite service. Some covenant-makings are largely sentimental; a kind of religious IOU or promise to pay, and I fear some are treated as the Irishman treated his responsibility when, having signed a promissory note for a debt, he exclaimed, 'Thank God, that is done with!'

The vows and covenant-making which God wants are those which will be followed by something practical. The states of emotion and high spiritual contemplation are right in so far as they assist men to realize the presence of God and Divine things; but to answer their purpose they must carry men out to activity and self-denying service for God and those around them. The highest type of religion is a combination of the experimental and the practical, the inward and the outward, the personal and the relative. Our consecration must include what God can get out of us as well as what we obtain from Him.

I found a parable the other day in a legend of the Greek Church which is worth repeating. That Church has two favourite saints—St. Cassianus, the type of monastic asceticism, and St. Nicholas, the type of genial, active, unselfish, laborious Christianity. St. Cassianus enters Heaven, and Christ says to him, 'What hast thou seen on earth, Cassianus?' 'I saw', he answered, 'a peasant floundering with his wagon in a marsh'. 'Didst thou help him?' 'No.' 'Why not?' 'I was coming before Thee,' said St. Cassianus, 'and I was afraid of soiling my white robes'.