Romans 13:13-14 Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.… There are two methods of moral improvement: first, acting from ourselves according to an abstract principle; and, secondly, living over again the example of actual excellence. It is the latter method to which the text points. It is certainly a very remarkable power which God has given us, of realising in ourselves a character different from our own. We cannot fail to see in such a constitution the Divine purpose, not only that we should enter into the feeling of others, but moreover that we should enrich our own nature; not be confined strictly to our native tendencies and original biases, but borrow others' wisdom, copy others' virtue, and incorporate into our own being a thousand exotic excellences. A consideration of some of the modes in which this representing, realising power operates may help us to understand it as a moral faculty, and consecrate it to the highest uses. Do we not see a very familiar display of it in the genius of the poet, by which he conceives of characters — creatures of his imagination, yet true to nature — distinguished from one another and from himself in their modes of thought and actuating passions, and, through all the variety of situations in which they may be placed, severally well sustained? Nothing is more common than this representation in the Bible itself. Sacred historian, psalmist, and prophet are continually figuring certain characters before our minds as examples or warnings. The parables of our Lord are commonly but portraitures to our spiritual fancy of diverse moral characters; and we can learn the lesson He intends only by a vigorous use of this representing and reproducing power. The exercises, too, of the human voice in recitation and oratory, only set before us in tones what the pen has first traced in simple words. From the child that is taught to speak the sentiments of some saint or martyr in his earliest declamations at school, to the grave debater in legislative halls; from the narrator at the fireside, to the lively rehearser of inspired pages of human composition, or the edifying reader of the sacred Word of God, what do we see throughout but this very endeavour of the soul to personate and put on the meaning and feeling of some other character, and, so far as it is understood and believed to be a noble character, to adopt, appropriate, and live over again its nobleness? Or, to illustrate the subject from more homely, universally known facts, the strong working of this assimilating power of the soul will not be doubted by any who have noticed how in daily life we continually fashion each other, and are fashioned by those we are with; who have observed the contagion of custom in a community, the transfer of manners, the mutual likeness often obtaining both of moral traits and visible expression between husband and wife, and more or less all the dwellers under a single roof, and, in short, the transforming force upon our own hearts from the scenes we enter, the presence we stand in, the books we read, the images we contemplate. This impersonation of the soul, in the use and actual bearing of every man, exceeds in subtlety and extent all the imaginations that poetry has ever expressed. Therefore is not the Divine wisdom toward us shown, when the Scripture fixes on this fundamental instinct as a moral power to be dedicated, for its main employment, to our spiritual growth? Like the painter who drew in a single likeness the transcript of what was best in each selected countenance, we shall be continually transferring from the vast galleries of Providence and Holy Writ, from the society of the present and the past, and from the face of those on earth or in heaven, the manifold moral beauty which is "every creature's best," and thus put that imitative and personating faculty, by which we pass into another's heart, to its highest designed use. The justice we admire, the charity we love, the holy zeal and endurance we revere, the fervent adoration and self-devotion which makes our hearts burn — all these we possess and become. The whole gospel is preached and summed up in that single exhortation. "To put on Christ"; "to be found in Him, not having our own righteousness"; to be "clothed" with His meekness and humility; to have "His spirit," and "the same mind in us that was also in Him"; to open our hearts for His "abode," and have Him "formed within us, the hope of glory" — who but recognises at once, in this so controverted and abused language, the burden of the New Testament? And wherein is the sense of this language, if not in the appropriation of His worth to our nature, by the force of sympathy, and of a twofold spiritual consciousness operating to unite Him to ourselves? Thus the Divine graces of His character are not impressed in the way of mere commandment alone; but, as the beauty of the landscape and the fragrance of flowers possess our outward senses, so these finer influences sink into the deeper perceptions of the spirit. No poet's imagination, no speaker's expression, no artist's fancy, no friendship's experience, and no other character on the historic pages can work on us the elevating transformation which we feel in gazing on our Master as He appears in the artless evangelic accounts, till our whole thought becomes identified with the object of our regard, and He appears to us, not in human articles of theoretic belief, but shines with a living glory into our real knowledge and love. Neither can any simple self-culture, which has perhaps been too much our method, any laborious efforts of will, any works or merits of ours, suffice for our salvation, and lift us into the highest Divine frame, without this admiring absorption of mind into the model and mould of perfection, by which we "put on Jesus Christ." (C. A. Bartol.) Parallel Verses KJV: Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. |
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