A NEW CREATION
By The Rev W.W. Tulloch, D.D.
"In Christ—a new creature."—2 Corinthians v. 17.
I fancy that we have all felt the need of a change of air, of life, of our physical surroundings, our mental and moral environment; and we have experienced the good that such a change has done us. We have toiled on through the bad weather, the hard work, the much worry of a long winter; or we have been kept at our post and laboured listlessly through a hot and oppressive summer. The wheels of life have dragged slowly. We have felt below par. Everything has been more or less a trouble to us. The routine of daily duty has become dismally monotonous. The zest has departed. Our very sleep is not refreshing. We lie down with our weariness and trouble about us and in us, and when we awaken we are still surrounded and dominated by it. The burden seems no lighter for our repose. No new strength seems to have been gained to face the calls of the new day—a day which it is a trouble even to think about.
Well, we are ordered a change, or, driven by our instincts, we seek one, or the blessed holiday season comes round at last. We go away, and in fresh air, in a change of occupation, amid new interests and associations, we begin to feel quite different. The old lassitude and weariness have passed away. We have not been long in our changed place of abode, when we begin to say to ourselves and to write home that we feel quite new persons—a different man, a different woman. And when we return our very appearance, our talk, the whole attitude in which we regard life, the eagerness with which we take up the old task, tell to all who are interested in us how much improved we are, how much healthier and better we look. More to the purpose, we ourselves feel better in every way. The change has done us ever so much good. In it we have found our old self and yet a new self, and we rejoice and are glad.
A somewhat similar experience often comes to us after reading some book which has influenced us strongly. It has opened to us a longer vista and a higher reach of life. It has given to us new views, new ideas, new aspirations, and made us live with a higher ideal before us. "It has made a new man of me," we say. Old things have passed away. Or we have come under the influence of some pure love, some self-sacrificing devotion, such as made the late Professor Tyndall say in writing of his wife to a friend that she had given him quite a new idea as to the possibilities of human nature. Or in daily association with some active brain, some large-hearted companion, we have formed at once new motives and new interests. All things have become new.
Or, again, we have found a new vocation. The consciousness of the possession of higher powers, of perhaps our real powers, has come to us. We have discovered that we have been endowed with the possession of some gift of which we were not aware. Some power has been lying dormant. It has now been awakened, and upon the very threshold of what we feel must now be a better and a higher life, we realise that we are new creatures.
I was lately reading the life of a famous singer, Jenny Lind, "the Swedish Nightingale," as she was called. She had been singing in public for some time, but she had only been feeling her wings, as the saying goes. But on a certain day there came the moment of moments. "I got up that morning one creature," she herself often said; "I went to bed another creature. I had found my power." And all through her life she kept that day with a religious solemnity. She would ask to have herself remembered on it with prayers. She treated it as a second birthday. And rightly, for on that day she awoke to herself. She became artistically alive. She felt the inspiration and won the sway she now knew she was given to hold. And this consciousness was not merely the recognition that she was singing better than ever. It was more of the nature of a new fact in her life, a disclosure, a revelation. "It was a step," says her biographer, "into a new world of dominion. She knew at last where it was that she stood and what she was to do upon the earth. She learned something of her mission. For to her religious mind the discovery of a gift was the discovery of a mission. She saw the responsibility with which she was charged, through the mere possession of such a power over men." The singer with the gift of God—that was what she became on that evening. She became a new creature.
Well, all these are only illustrations of the greatest truth in the world—that in Christ we may all become new creatures or a new creation.