To My Younger Brethren | Page 9

Cross and the dying Lamb; and the need of the sovereign grace of the Holy Ghost to begin and carry out the Regeneration of the soul; and the depth of our Fall; and the offered greatness and splendour of our New Creation; and "that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." [Tit. ii. 13.] It is just one wave of the great anti-supernatural tide of our time. Christian work is viewed as much as possible as man's work for man in this present world, under the example, doubtless, of the beneficent life of our Lord, but not under the shadow of Calvary, nor in the light of Pentecost, nor in the definite prospect of an immortality of holy glory.
HOW TO COUNTERACT IT.
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." [SN: 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