The Carnal and the Spiritual

To be carnally minded (R.V. “the mind of the flesh”) is death; but to be spiritually minded (R.V. “the mind of the spirit”) is life and peace.—Romans 8:6.

This is one of St. Paul’s keen contrasts. It is expressed in language that is difficult to translate. The most literal translation possible is actually given in the Revised Version—“The mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the spirit is life and peace.” (This is the translation also of the American Revised Version, except that “Spirit” is spelt with a capital.) But such a phrase as “the mind of the flesh,” or “the mind of the spirit” is scarcely English. The translation of the Authorized Version (though it is rather a paraphrase than a translation) is perhaps as intelligible as any that can be made—“To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”

I

Carnal Mindedness

“To be carnally minded is death.” The literal words are “the mind of the flesh is death.” Let us consider (1) what is meant by “the flesh”; (2) by “the mind of the flesh”; and (3) by “death.”

i. The Flesh

Here, as elsewhere in these chapters of Romans, the flesh is that side of human nature on which it is morally weak, the side on which man’s physical organism leads him into sin.

The word “flesh” occurs twenty-eight times in Romans, and frequently in St. Paul’s other Epistles, especially Galatians: it has various meanings which must be carefully distinguished, if we wish to have a clear understanding of the Apostle’s teaching in many important passages.

1. In its original and proper meaning “flesh” denotes the material of the living body, whether of man or of other animals, as in Leviticus 17:11. In this sense it occurs in Romans 2:28, “circumcision which is outward in the flesh.”

2. In the common Hebrew phrase “all flesh” (Genesis 6:12-13; Genesis 6:19; Genesis 7:21), all earthly living things are included with man, except where the context limits the meaning to mankind (Job 12:10; Psalm 65:2; Joel 2:28).

3. “Flesh” is applied by St. Paul to human kindred, as in Romans 9:3, “My brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh”; Romans 11:14, “My flesh.” This usage, like the preceding, is derived from the Old Testament: see Genesis 37:27, “He is our brother and our flesh.” In Romans 9:8, on the other hand, there is an express contrast made between the “children of the flesh,” and the “children of the promise,” equivalent to the contrast in Galatians 4:29 between him “that was born after the flesh” and him “that was born after the Spirit.” In this usage “flesh” represents man’s purely natural, earthly condition, a condition in which he is subject to infirmity, suffering, and death, subject also to the temptations which work through the senses and their appetites, but not originally or essentially sinful. It is in this sense that Christ is said in Romans 1:3 to have been “made of the seed of David as to the flesh,” and in Romans 9:5 to have sprung “as concerning the flesh” from Israel. In both passages “flesh” denotes what was simply and solely natural in His earthly life.

4. Though “the flesh” is not essentially sinful, it is essentially weak, and hence the word is used to describe man in his weakness, physical, intellectual, or moral.

(1) As connoting mere physical weakness “the flesh” is found in several passages of St. Paul’s Epistles (2 Corinthians 4:11; 2 Corinthians 7:5; 2 Corinthians 12:7; Galatians 2:20; Galatians 4:13) but not in Romans. We may remark that such a passage as Galatians 2:20, “The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God,” is decisive against the notion that “flesh” is something essentially sinful. Yet mere physical weakness of the flesh may be a hindrance to man’s spirit, as in Matthew 26:41, “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak”; and the human spirit thus hampered by the weakness of the flesh is so far unfitted to be the organ of the Spirit of God.

(2) This opposition of “the flesh” to all that is spiritual is more clearly marked when “the flesh” is regarded as the cause of intellectual weakness. This is the case in Romans 6:19, “I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh,” a passage which should be compared with 1 Corinthians 2:14; 1 Corinthians 3:1.

(3) But “the flesh” is regarded by St. Paul as a dwelling-place and seat (not necessarily the only seat) of sin. This judgment is the result of practical experience, not of any speculative analysis of the ideas of “flesh” and “sin.” He found as a fact sin dwelling in his flesh; and he regarded this as a fact of universal experience (Romans 3:9-20); but we have no reason to suppose that he regarded sin as inseparable from the very essence of “the flesh.” The flesh thus ruled by sin becomes a chief source of opposition, not only to the better impulses of “the mind,” but also to the law of God and to the influence of His Spirit.

ii. The Mind of the Flesh

The word used by St. Paul is not the ordinary word for mind. It is a word that expresses rather the contents of the mind—its thought, purpose, inclination or attitude, as in Romans 8:27, “God knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit.”

1. That life is carnal in which our spirit, meant for God, is dragged at the chariot-wheels of our lower life; and that is spiritual which is ruled and mastered by the Spirit. We must not suppose that we shall make our religion spiritual by disparaging external acts or bodily exercises of worship. No; that is spiritual which is ruled by the Spirit. The worship “in spirit and in truth,” for us men who belong to the religion of the Incarnation, must be a worship “in body.” But it will be spiritual if it is full of spiritual intention. Secular business, again, is spiritual if it is ruled by the Divine Spirit according to the law of righteousness. Politics are spiritual, commercial and municipal life are spiritual, art and science are spiritual, and everything that develops our faculties is spiritual, if we will allow the Divine Spirit to rule in all according to the law of righteousness, truth, and beauty. For the whole of our being, with all its sum of faculties, is made by God, and meant for God.

2. We see from the context of the passage before us, how the carnal mind manifests itself.

(1) It minds the things of the flesh. “They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh” (Romans 8:5). To mind them is to be intent upon them, to be engrossed by them. They stand first in the affections; and the “things of Jesus Christ” are nowhere. Thoughts, views, likings, desires, aims, and pursuits are all carnal.

(2) It is enmity against God. “The carnal mind is enmity against God” (Romans 8:7). It will accept an ideal God, a God of its own invention, a God who will wink at sin, and clear the guilty. But it hates the holy God revealed in the Bible. It has no liking for His people, His day, His word, or His salvation.

(3) It is in open rebellion against God. “It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Romans 8:7). Moral indisposition and moral incapacity are here conjoined. The carnal mind is not only disinclined to render to God any such obedience as He can accept, but is incapable of doing so.

Give us the earth’s whole heart but once to know

But once to pierce the secret of the Spring,—

Give us our fill,—so we at end may go

Into the starless night unmurmuring.

Gold lights that beckon down the dusky way,

Where loud wheels roll, impetuous, through the night:

The lamp-lit leaves, the maddening airs of May,

The heady wine of living, dark and bright.

Give us of these, and we are blest in truth;

The wandering foot, the keen, unflagging zest,

One with the glorious world’s eternal youth,

Of all that is, and is not, first and best.

Ah, vain desire, our straitened years to mar!

Troubled we turn and listen unreleased,

To music of a revel held afar,

Evasive echoes of a distant feast.1 [Note: Rosamund M. Watson.]

iii. Death

What is death? We may define death in its first aspect as ceasing to be, the cessation of existence; but if in physical death we ask what is the cause of the cessation of existence, we plainly perceive that it is not the cessation of the existence of the body, or even the decomposition of its material substances, but the absence in them of the principle of life. That principle keeps decay and decomposition at bay in the material form in which it resides, and death, or the absence of the principle of life, must take place before decay can commence. The spirit which gives beauty, expression, and activity to the body, and manifests itself through the body, must be separated from the body, and this separation is death. Consequently, on account of the strict analogy between physical and moral things, the word death is used throughout the New Testament as a term for moral separation—as “dead unto the law,” “dead unto sin,” etc.—meaning thereby that persons thus dead are separated from the power and principle of these things. But it is especially in connexion with the death which is the consequence of sin that the expression is used. Thus the Apostle, writing to the Ephesians, says, “You hath he quickened,” i.e. given life to, “who were dead in trespasses and sins”; and the meaning of this is clearly defined by a parallel passage, as in Ephesians 2:11-12, “Ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, without Christ, alien” (i.e. dead to, or separated) “from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope, and without God” (or separated from, or dead to, God) “in the world.” Again, speaking of the Gentiles generally, the Apostle describes them as “having the understanding darkened, being alienated” (or separated) “from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart, who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” And, again, writing to the Colossians, he says, “And you who were sometime alienated and enemies” (i.e. separated or dead) “in your mind through wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled.” Sin thus produces alienation and enmity towards God, or, in other words, a moral separation between the sinner and God, which is spiritual death; and the contrary to this is to be quickened, or given life, i.e. to be reconciled to God.

All the peoples and nations around Paul had borne witness that to follow the flesh was to make life hasten toward the end, and to an end inglorious. The glutton and drunkard and libertine, the man of violence, the man of wicked ambition, the brutalized criminal, all these marched along then even more shamelessly than they do in our age, and had made him realize that the passions of the flesh lead to death. In his time many a Herod was dying before his day; many an Antony and Cleopatra were hurrying through their careers; many a prodigal was spending his substance in riotous living; many thousands of young men were dying violent deaths; and as he viewed this spectacle, the philosophy of the hour came back with force to Paul’s bosom that the passions of the flesh lead to death, the passions of the spirit lead toward life. In the opening chapter of this letter to the Romans, there is a picture of Roman morals, and in that condition of society you will find the cause of that great generalization that the flesh brings ruin, the spirit brings triumph. What were the battles of Alexander and of the Cæsars but a fleshly vanity, gratifying itself in the tumult and blood of carnage, and in the applause which rewarded the conqueror?1 [Note: D. Swing.]

II

Spiritual Mindedness

“To be spiritually minded is life and peace.”

i. The Spirit

When St. Paul speaks of the mind of the Spirit in a man, he speaks of the entrance of a new factor, the Divine energy, into his inner life. He gives various descriptions of the experience. These are all involved ideally in the first genuine contact of the soul with God in Christ through faith. When the soul recognizes the love of God in Christ as the Saviour, and appropriates that forgiving love by faith, it is brought into touch with God as living, and dealing with it. There is now a new moral centre of the personal life. Yet we must not conceive the Divine Spirit as becoming identified with the subjective, regenerated life of the believer. For the Apostle always regards the Divine energy as continuing to act on the life of the believer as a distinct objective power.

ii. The Mind of the Spirit

What, then, is this mind of the Spirit or spiritual-mindedness?

1. It is not the same thing as being religious. A man may be exceedingly religious, exceedingly orthodox in his creed and punctilious in observing the forms of piety, and still have anything but a spiritual mind. Too sadly true it is that the priests and ecclesiastics and religious teachers of the world are not always the prophets of God. Men may deal in holy things and miss the holy vision. They may say, “Lord, Lord,” and know nothing of the mind of Christ. It was so in Israel; it has been so again and again in the Christian Church. Ages of ecclesiastical revival and of great religious activity are not necessarily ages of deep spiritual insight. God’s prophets and seers are quite as apt to come clad in goat’s hair and leathern girdles as in the more conventional millinery. How easy it is, in the Christian life as everywhere else, to mistake the form for the substance, the chaff for the wheat.

2. And, whatever it is, it is not the same thing as moral goodness—not quite the same. One may be very good, very kind, honourable, benevolent, and tender-hearted without being spiritual in one’s mind. Spirituality is moral excellence with something added. That additional something is what heat is to light. Has spirituality anything to do with one’s occupation in life? Is it a thing of temperament, or circumstances, or will? Is it something that men achieve, as they would win a fortune or acquire an education? Or is it a Divine gift, a supernatural bestowment, which only those have, or can have, who have had certain religious experiences?

3. The first feeling about spirituality, before it can come to any good and healthy growth, must be that it penetrates everywhere. There are not certain objects only for the spiritual mind to exercise itself upon, but every subject has its spiritual side; and each man carries for himself the responsibility as to whether he will deal spiritually or unspiritually with everything which the Lord puts in his way. For the truth is for ever true, and yet for ever forgotten, that spirituality is a quality of the human soul, and not of the things that the soul deals with. And so there is nothing high or low which the soul may not deal with spiritually or unspiritually, as it will.

(1) To begin with our worship. Worship is sanctified and intensified by this inward vision of God. “God is the king of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding” (Psalm 47:7). “I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also; I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also” (1 Corinthians 14:15). Neither the vain conceits of human philosophy, nor the outward show of ceremony, must come between our souls and God; or hinder the knitting together and concentration of all our hearts’ affections and powers upon the exaltation of His holy Name.

(2) In the use and application of the Scriptures we do not adapt them to our theories, or wrest words from their contexts to prove our point—mistaking for God’s guidance the tenacious grasp of our own will upon some isolated phrase out of God’s Word, as if it held the whole truth unbalanced by the teaching of other passages. But we yield sensitively to the Spirit’s leading as He orders our steps in the Word, reproving or correcting us, instructing us in righteousness or in doctrine, as He may see fit; bringing us through the Scriptures into living contact with God Himself, and forming in us the mind of Christ. Nevermore can we rest satisfied with the mere “form of knowledge and of the truth,” even though our familiarity with the “letter” of Scripture may have grown to that of the Scribes and Pharisees, and we may have become the teachers of others. From henceforth our hearts cry out for the living God in His Word, to hear His voice, to seek His face, to understand the secret of the Lord which is with them that fear Him.

(3) We learn to find God in everything. We perceive His power and purpose in the very things which before appalled or perplexed us; we trace His wisdom and His hand at work in nature, in providence, and in grace; being ever drawn closer to His heart in love, and more deeply convinced of the reasonableness and simplicity of faith. Visible and material things do not absorb or terrify us as before; or blind our minds to the light. The consciousness of God, and of the unseen forces at work for our provision and protection, are more real to our spiritual sense than are the things which are seen and passing, to our natural sight.

(4) A new inspiration enters into our prayer life, if this illumination of heart is ours through the Spirit and the Word. Our ignorance of how and what we should pray for as we ought is exchanged for the pleading of the Holy Ghost in and through us according to the will of God, “the mind of the Spirit” which is “the mind of Christ,” stirring within us such prayer as God has pledged Himself to answer.

(5) Surely, also, as we learn to know and understand our God more, we shall not rest satisfied with knowledge only. It must become experimental, fruitful; translated into a living factor and force in character and life. Every fresh view of Christ will become a new motive power within us for practical daily progress. Any opening of our understanding to apprehend the exceeding greatness of the Spirit’s power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, will mean a quickened faith to believe in the mighty power of the same Spirit of holiness to work in us and to energize us to more abundant life and hallowed Service. Yet in that service how careful shall we be to run only when and where we are “sent” by our Lord; and to wait on God for clear instructions that we may understand His pattern for the work, as well as His appointed time and method and means for its execution, by the writing of His Spirit upon us.

You say there is another kind of intelligence that men lawfully respect, which is called shrewdness, or practical acquaintance with affairs. But is not that, too, provided for in the New Testament? Do you suppose it was irrespective of their practical experience among men, that Christ chose His first disciples, the foremost representatives of His truth, from among tax-gatherers, fishermen, tent-makers, and physicians? Or will you look through literature or biography, or the marts of commerce, or the boards of the exchange, for a shrewder insight into all the ways and windings of human nature than lurked in the sharp eye and wakeful perception of that leading Apostle, who turned the world upside down with his calm hand, carried his points with the dignitaries of provinces, foiled Felix and Agrippa, foresaw and forearmed himself against all that men could do to him, and in his Epistles tears open even the most cunning wrappages of self-deception with his holy satire,—conquering Greek sophists and Roman disciplinarians with weapons out of their own quiver?

You instance courage; and is there not enough of that in that pioneering rank of the “noble army of martyrs,” whom there was no dungeon dark enough to terrify from Jerusalem to Rome, and who would not blench, or even revile or murmur, under all the scourges of Jewry, the whips of dainty Philippi, or the lion’s teeth in the Roman amphitheatre?

Generosity, you say, is manly; but who will so disown his own reason as to confess he finds no generosity in that faith whose primal lesson is self-sacrifice, whose chosen badge and emblem is a cross, and which was taught and sealed by Him who gave His very life for the life of His followers?

You mention hospitality; and is not hospitality enjoined, with repetition and emphasis, by both Paul and Peter, as the attribute of saints, the grace of bishops, and the duty of all believers?

Of patriotism; and who was He that cried, weeping, “O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! if thou hadst known how often I would have gathered thy children”?

Of the taste and love for the beautiful; but whose finger was that which pointed most admiringly, as He discoursed, to the summer glories, the waving wheat and nodding lilies, the trees and lakes and gorgeous skies of Palestine?—whose eye, that rested with sweetest satisfaction on the affluent and varied scenery?—whose word, that blended the mystic openings of the sunrise with the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, and so taught us how the relish of all that is sublime or lovely should rise at last and culminate in the worship of the Father, even as every manly and heroic quality is perfected only in the soul that is united to the ?Song of Solomon 1 [Note: F. D. Huntington.]

In one of the bright books of the day, I find a courageous and impulsive young English fox-hunter saying to a clerical Oxford cousin: “I feel that the exercise of freedom, activity, foresight, daring, independent self-determination, even in a few minutes’ burst across country, strengthens me in mind as well as in body. It sweeps away the web of self-consciousness. As for bad company, when those that have renounced the world give up speculating in the stocks, you may quote pious people’s opinions. We fox-hunters see that the ‘religious world’ is much like the ‘great world,’ and the ‘sporting world,’ and the ‘literary world’; and that, because this happens to be a money-making country, and money-making is an effeminate pursuit, therefore all sedentary sins, like covetousness, slander, bigotry, and self-conceit, are to be plastered over, while the more masculine vices are hunted down by your cold-blooded religionists. Be sure that, as long as you make piety a synonym for this weak morality, you will never convert me or any other good sportsman.”1 [Note: F. D. Huntington.]

4. One of the strangest things about this character of spiritual-mindedness is the way in which so many people think of it negatively instead of positively. To them, to be a spiritual man simply means to be incapable of the occupations and pleasures which make up most of their own life. There are many of the boldest struggles of ambition and the most applauded victories of popularity of which a man becomes incapable when he takes to himself the new life of spiritual-mindedness; as the artist, who learns to do sweet and subtle things with his fingers, finds those fingers incapable of wielding sledge-hammers, or lifting blocks of granite. And it is often hard, because of the worship we have for mere capacity independently of the value of the task which it can do, for one to own that his struggle after spirituality makes him incapable of many things which the world thinks it most fine and glorious to do. But think of the Divine incapacity of Christ! We dwell with wonder upon all that He could do, but it seems scarcely less wonderful to think of all that He could not do. He could not turn aside for ease and comfort; He could not covet the world the devil showed him; He could not be tempted into bigotry or tortured into rage. When we succeed in making Him our Standard, we shall know that there are inabilities as glorious and honourable as any ability can be. It is better always to be incapable of cheating and lying than to be capable of chivalrously laying down one’s life in some great stress of duty. But there is no less a positive power of spirituality; and that is most clearly seen in the way in which it brings out the best colours of the best experiences and thoughts of men; and the growth of a man from unspiritual to spiritual existence is largely witnessed by the way in which his virtues graduate from the partial to the perfect life.

You have struggled for personal purity against all the temptations of the flesh; you have fortified the castle of your will with every worldly bulwark—respectability, shame, ambition, health; you have struggled and you have conquered. But has not something better often hovered before you as a possibility, when, in a new spiritual-mindedness, purity should not be the poor, half-vital, fluttering thing that you have brought out of your conflict, but strong and luxuriant, full of life and peace? As that picture has come out before you, you have dreamed of heaven, where purity shall not be a struggle of the will, but a delight and passion of the soul. Ah, yes, it must come in heaven. It cannot come till heaven come. Only remember that spiritual-mindedness is heaven, come when it will; and if it come here and now, then here and now purity may catch this holier light, and be the perfect thing that it will be in the heaven that is to come.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks.]

For what is freedom but the unfettered use

Of all the powers that God for use has given?

But chiefly this,—Him first, Him last, to view

Through meaner powers and secondary things

Effulgent, as through clouds that veil His blaze.

iii. Life

“Life’ and “peace” are two words which certainly express the best desires of the best men. To be alive, to have all one’s powers in full activity; and to be at peace, to be free from distress and tumult and uncertainty—give a man both of these, and what is there left for him to desire? St. Paul tells us that the door to this perfect existence is spiritual-mindedness.

1. Israel had a full share of the natural and spontaneous life of antiquity. It lasted long, and it revived once and again after times of decline. But the life of Israel was lived in the presence of the Lord God; it was always subordinate to obedience and faith towards One above. He was always known as walking among the trees of man’s garden, a joy and glory to the worshipper, a terror to the transgressor. The sense of life which Israel enjoyed was, however, best expressed in the choice of the name “life” as a designation of that higher communion with God which grew forth in due time as the fruit of obedience and faith. The psalmist or wise man or prophet, whose heart had sought the face of the Lord, was conscious of a second or Divine life of which the first or natural life was at once the image and the foundation; a life not imprisoned in some secret recess of his soul, but filling his whole self, and overflowing upon the earth around him. It did not estrange him from the natural life which he shared with other men or with lower creatures, and which he was taught to regard as proceeding from God’s own breath or spirit. But it withheld him from seeking satisfaction within the lower life alone: and it made itself known not as a Divinely ordained substitute for life, for the sake of which life must be forgone; but as itself a life indeed, the crown of all life.

Among the most intensely spiritual lives in England in our time I should certainly put Ruskin and Tennyson and Browning. What did these men live for? They lived to spiritualize the conception of life, to break down the power of vulgar materialist ambitions. What is the keynote of Ruskin’s social reform? Just this: that man is a spirit, not a mere body, nor a machine, but a spirit—a being with Divine life in him, and destined for high ends. By the needs of man’s spiritual nature Ruskin would arrange his daily work and his wages; his political economy was a protest against the materialization of that science, and a plea for making it the science of man instead of a science of mere external wealth. You might almost sum up Ruskin’s teaching in the words of Jesus: “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.”1 [Note: T. R. Williams.]

2. What is St. Paul’s conception of Life?

(1) In many passages he uses “life” in the more or less colloquial sense of existence in the world: e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:19, “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ.”

(2) At the other extremity, life has for him the definite sense of a future reward or boon which God will bestow. This may be designated as its “eschatological” usage. In this sense, life is generally qualified by the adjective eternal. The phrase invariably denotes life looked at in prospect, in its complete realization. Thus in Romans 2:7, life is the recompense of perseverance in righteous conduct and of the quest for glory and immortality; in Romans 5:21, it is the goal and aim of the reign of grace through Jesus Christ; in Romans 6:22, it expresses the end or climax of the life of freedom from sin and bondage to God, and hence it is further defined as the gift of God (in contrast with the wages of sin) in Christ Jesus.

(3) But St. Paul always regards life as a present possession of the believer. As such, it is the direct result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and may even be termed the actual presence of the Spirit in the human personality. Most typical instances are: Romans 8:2, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death”; Romans 8:6, “The mind of the spirit is life and peace” (the present text); and Romans 8:10, “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”

3. The new life is a renewal of the old from its very foundations. It is a renewal not of one part, but of the whole. It embraces the physical as well as the ethical or religious. For St. Paul, the sum of the believer’s experiences is a unity. Life included the totality of his energies. It cannot be divided up into provinces, of which one may be contrasted with another. Its only contrast lies in Death. Death for the Apostle means the ruin of the whole personality. Life means its triumphant continuance in the power of the Spirit beyond the barriers of earth and time, in conformity with the nature of the glorified Christ, who is the image of the invisible God.

Spirit! whose various energies

By dew and flame denoted are,

By rain from the world-covering skies,

By rushing and by whispering air;

Be Thou to us, O gentlest one,

The brimful river of sweet peace,

Sunshine of the celestial sun

Restoring air of sacred ease.

Life of our life, since life of Him

By whom we live eternally,

Our heart is faint, our eye is dim,

Till Thou our spirit purify.

The purest airs are strongest too,

Strong to enliven and to heal:

O Spirit purer than the dew,

Thine holiness in strength reveal.

Felt art Thou, and the heavy heart

Grows cheerful and makes bright the eyes;

Up from the dust the enfeebled start,

Armed and re-nerved for victories:

Felt art Thou, and relieving tears

Fall, nourishing our young resolves:

Felt art Thou, and our icy fears

The sunny smile of love dissolves.

O Spirit, when Thy mighty wind

The entombing rocks of sin hath rent,

Lead shuddering forth the awakened mind

In still voice whispering Thine intent.

As to the sacred light of day

The stranger soul shall trembling come,

Say, “These thy friends,” and “This thy way,”

And “Yonder thy celestial home.”1 [Note: T. T. Lynch, The Rivulet, 1.]

iv. Peace

St. Paul never begins an epistle without a salutation containing the word “peace.” And in the body of his teaching “peace” plays a conspicuous part. God is a “God of peace.” The Christian has “peace with God.” “To be spiritually minded is life and peace.” It is obvious that he lays much stress on the possession of this golden treasure of in ward peace. With him it implies the removal of the guilt that separated us from God, the assurance of pardon, and the conformity of our will to His.

The peace which the Apostle has in mind consists of two elements: (1) the State of reconciliation with God; and (2) the sense of that reconciliation, which diffuses a feeling of harmony and tranquillity over the whole man.

1. Reconciliation. When the merit of Christ’s atoning sacrifice becomes ours, peace, sweet, satisfying, eternal peace, floods the soul. This is Christ’s promise. “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” The world’s peace is the peace of compromise; Christ’s is the peace of reconciliation. It is the peace of reconciliation that is musical. It is a song that can be sung only in sight of Calvary’s bloodstained cross, for without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. Without an altar of atonement there can be no song of reconciliation.

I sought for Peace, but could not find;

I sought it in the city,

But they were of another mind,—

The more’s the pity.

I sought for Peace of country swain,

But yet I could not find;

So I, returning home again,

Left Peace behind.

Sweet Peace, where dost thou dwell? said I;—

Methought a voice was given,

“Peace dwelt not here, long since did fly

To God in heaven.”

Thought I, this echo is but vain,

To folly ’tis of kin;

Anon, I heard it tell me plain,

’Twas killed by sin.

Then I believed the former voice,

And rested well content;

Lay down and slept, rose, did rejoice,

And then to Heaven went.

There I enquired for Peace, and found it true:—

An heavenly plant it was, and sweetly grew.

2. Tranquillity. There are certain elements in this peace of mind of which we can speak with some confidence.

(1) First we may be sure that it is the peace that comes of love, of love to God and man, free and abounding. What has peace to do with love, do you ask? Surely a great deal to do with it. For why are men so often not at rest within? Why do so many things trouble them and vex them? Why is there so much distraction of mind, so much bitterness of heart? Most certainly it is, in no small measure, because their love is so limited. There is no full stream that flows out from them towards all around them. That explains their unrest. It is the man who loves without stint that has learned the secret of the deepest peace.

(2) Again, it is the peace of perfect trust. Our want of peace is very often just want of confidence. We are not at ease in our mind, because we are not sure of those on whom some interests that are dear to us depend. We are not sure of ourselves. Great responsibilities are entrusted to our wisdom and skill; but we are not sure whether we are wise enough, or clever enough, to carry the business committed to us to a successful issue. Or we are not sure of some other persons who have under their control things that are of great value in our eyes. We are not sure of the captain of the ship in which we are sailing, or of the lawyer who is conducting our case, or of the doctor under whose charge we have placed ourselves. Or we are not sure of God, and of His wise and righteous government of the world. And the consequence is that we are nervous and restless. Everything would be different if we were more trustful. We may be dwelling in the midst of noise, and strife, and confusion, and yet we will not be disturbed or anxious if we believe in those who are at the helm any more than we would be anxious, amid all the racket and disorder incident to the building of a great house, if we had reason to trust the architect and contractor. To have peace, we must have faith.

(3) Once more, this peace is the peace of those who are fully occupied. There are other powers belonging to us besides the powers by which we love and trust; and our unrest in this world is due, in part, to the fact that these powers are not employed or only imperfectly employed. It is not our labours but our limitations which keep us in a state of disquietude. There is never such a sensation of perfect bodily contentment as when all the powers of the body are in full play, and yet not painfully fatigued or overstrained. And there is never such spiritual rest as when all the powers of the spirit have been brought fully into operation, and a man is, so to speak, carried wholly out of himself, and every part of him is engaged in the work for which it is fitted, and for which it was created. That is the rest of Heaven. There, they serve Him night and day. There, room is found, and opportunity, for every man, and not only for every man, but for every gift and power with which every man has been endowed.

The same Apostle who describes the peace of God as passing all understanding is he who laboured more abundantly than all. Let St. Paul be our type. Peace—the peace which Christ has left us—is not only consistent with the manifold occupations, energies, interests, cares of life; but through and in these we must seek it.1 [Note: J. B. Lightfoot.]

We ask for Peace, O Lord!

Thy children ask Thy Peace;

Not what the world calls rest,

That toil and care should cease,

That through bright sunny hours

Calm Life should fleet away,

And tranquil night should fade

In smiling day;—

It is not for such Peace that we would pray.

We ask for Peace, O Lord!

Yet not to stand secure,

Girt round with iron Pride,

Contented to endure:

Crushing the gentle strings

That human hearts should know,

Untouched by others’ joy

Or others’ woe;—

Thou, O dear Lord, wilt never teach us so.

We ask Thy Peace, O Lord!

Through storm, and fear, and strife,

To light and guide us on,

Through a long, struggling life:

While no success or gain

Shall cheer the desperate fight,

Or nerve, what the world calls

Our wasted might;—

Yet pressing through the darkness to the light.

It is Thine own, O Lord,

Who toil while others sleep;

Who sow with loving care

What other hands shall reap.

They lean on Thee entranced,

In calm and perfect rest:

Give us that Peace, O Lord,

Divine and blest,

Thou keepest for those hearts who love Thee best.1 [Note: Adelaide A. Procter.]

The Carnal and the Spiritual

Literature

Bright (W.), The Law of Faith, 234.

Brooks (P.), Christ the Life and Light, 41.

Campbell (A.), Spiritual Understanding, 83.

Garnier (J.), Sin and Redemption, 131.

Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, 55.

Hort (F. J. A.), The Way, the Truth, the Life, 97.

Huntington (F. D.), Sermons for the People, 362.

Hutton (W. R.), Low Spirits, 81.

Kennedy (H. A. A.), St. Paul’s Conceptions of the Last Things. 154.

Pope (R. Martin), The Poetry of the Upward Way, 79.

Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, viii. 89.

Pulsford (J.), Our Deathless Hope, 62.

Swing (D.), Sermons, 269.

Thomas (H. Arnold), The Way of Life, 100.

Williams (T. Rhondda), God’s Open Doors, 116.

Christian Age, xliii. 98 (Baldwin).

Homiletic Review, lvi. 135 (Cruttwell).

Treasury (New York), xix. 477 (Hallock).