Ss LAG APIS se Su SRI RSS SN UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS L!8RARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN BOOKSTACKS. NOTICE: Return or renew all Library Materials! The Minimum Fee for each Lost Book is $50.00. The person charging this material is responsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for discipli- nary action and may result in dismissal from the University. » To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 ie UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN BP f | a tA AK BER V 0 199 2 th JUN 11 1997 JUN 14 1991 pan 0 Pit © Zz a er a oO mH JAN 2 7 2900 L161—O-1096 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS L'SRARY . AT URGANA-CHAMPAIGN BOOKSTACKS DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. The Greatest Thing in the World. Pax Vobiscum. The Changed Life. “First!” — A Talk with Boys. flow to Learn How. What is a Christian 2? The Study of the Bible. A Talk on Books vis NEW YORK: OPTIMUS PRINTING COMPANY, 45, 47,49 & 51 ROSE ST, ut at} | Ds4L- BIZ ea BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF PRO- FESSOR DRUMMOND. THE author of these remarkable addresses was born in Scotland in 1851, and studied for the University of Edinborough in private schools in his native city of Stirling. After gradua- tion here he continued his studies in Tubin- gen, Germany. He early gave signs of special promise, and it was decided that he should enter on the career of the ministry; and after his ordination he was appointed to a mis-. sion station at Malta. It was in the leisure of this rather solitary work that he was ena- bled to find time to turn his thoughts more entirely to the subject he has since treated in lecture and book, although it was not until long afterward that these efforts were made public. . ii iv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH On his return to Scotland he was appointed a lecturer in science at the Glasgow Free Church College; and it was at this period that his first book, “ Natural Law in the Spiritual World,” made its tremendous sensation, running through endless editions at home and abroad and in every language. The first edition of this book bears the imprint of 1883, and led to his promotion to a professorship in the same college. The success of the opening address in the present volume, when reprinted, was as instan- taneous, and even wider, than that of his first book. _ Professor Drummond never seemed to have been troubled with any absorbing ambition to publish his work, and the list of volumes which bear his name is small; at least one of them | being the result of finding a stenographer’s in- complete notes printed and for sale in a book- Store. - Doubtless part of the secret of his success is his simplicity and clearness of style, and the fortunate choice of subjects which, at the “moment of publication, were absorbing the OF PROFESSOR DRUMMOND. IV thinking world. He has something to say, and knows how to say it, and does so. without any reference to the number of pages it will make, should it ever be put in type. In this way he can take up even a commonplace sub- ject and discuss it with an original style and infuse freshness into it. There is no better example of this than the first two addresses in this book, the text of which is the oft-quoted eulogy of St. Paul’s for the love that never faileth and the promise of Christ of rest for the heavy-laden. Many a preacher would hesitate to select these well-known sentences for his sermon, but Pro- fessor Drummond has found the happy art of making them seem like new truths; and origi- nality, after all, is only the art of saying better what has been said before. Professor Drummond is an ordained minis- ter in the Free Church of Scotland, and is engaged Sundays, during the University ses- sions at Edinborough, in religious work among the students, where his meetings have . been attended often by as many as five or six -hun- vi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH dred; and while at home or abroad, his work has done much to help the cause of Christian living among young. men, the University Set- tlement School being the outgrowth of his words and example. During the week he is teaching science from his professor’s chair at Glasgow, which is a peculiar attachment for a divinity school, and one not found in America; but scientific study is earnestly pursued in such schools in Scotland. In the former work he has had as great suc- cess as in the latter, and has been the right- hand man of the evangelist, Mr. Moody, in many of his mass meetings, which shows the deep interest he takes in spreading evangelical truth. Professor Drummond’s appearance and man- ner are well known in this country; and, indeed, it was at Northfield that the first address in the present volume was delivered. A great scholar and divine has given the following analysis of the elements of his success : — “He has a certain magnetic quality, both as a writer and a speaker, but it can be analyzed. OF PROFESSOR DRUMMOND. Vii. He has a style, — not a style to move ‘the lonely rapture of lonely minds,’ but one which arrests the busy crowd, — clear, pleasant, flowing with faint hues of poetry. He is never allusive, supe- _Yior, strained; he does not condescend; he is always himself, —a courteous, unaffected gentle- man, with a sincere respect for his audience. He is an adept in the art of translating scientific ideas into common English, and can impart the touch that redeems the familiar from platitude. Then he has a message, a secret. No one can hope long to touch men by mere cleverness or rhetorical skill. Can he guide me? comes to be the question at last. Those who find the right road from the blows they receive on the right hand and the left when deviating into wrong roads are grateful for a wisdom which comes more easily; and Mr. Drummond is nothing, if not practical He has a system as well as a message. The man of one idea is not so pow- erful as he used to be. The age dreads nothing so much as the Bore, but it does not always dis- criminate. But a man with a system, provided he is not continually rattling the skeleton, is the Vill BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. man of influence. A brilliant preacher of the day humorously compares his sermons to little . heaps of earth flung up by a mole: they made a track. In the same way, Mr. Drummond’s ideas have a continuity. That one-half of his scheme of thought is studiously kept out of sight does not lessen the interest taken in it; and, like all men whose ideas are coherent, he gives the impression of being at peace in thought.” “THOUGH I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not Love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and under- stand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not Love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing. 5 Love suffereth long, and is kind; Love envieth not; Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, Seeketh not her own, Is not easily provoked, Thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we praphesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, Love, these three; but the greatest of these is Love.”—1 Cor. xiii. THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. VERY one has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the modern world: What is the sum- mum bonum—the supreme good? You have life before you. Once only you can live it. What is the noblest object of desire, the supreme gift to covet? We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the religious world is Faith. That great word has been the key-note for centuries of the It 12 THE GREATEST THING popular religion; and we have easily learned to look upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If we have been told that, we may miss the mark. I have taken you, in the chapter which I have just read, to Christianity at his source; and there we have seen, “The greatest of these is love.” It is not an oversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says, “If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.” So far | from forgetting he deliberately con- trasts them, “Now abideth, Faith, Hope, Love,” and without a moment’s hesitation the decision falls, ‘The greatest of these 1s Love.” IN THE WORLD. 13 And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to others his own strong point. Love was not Paul’s strong point. The observing student can detect a beautiful tenderness grow- ing and ripening all through his char- acter as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote, “The greatest of these is love,’ when we meet it first, is stained with blood. Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out love as the summum bonum. The masterpieces of Christianity are agreed about it. Peter says, “ Above all things have fervent love among yourselves.” I4t His life, and therefore share its con: sequences, and one of these is Joy. His method of living is one that in the nature of things produces Joy. When He spoke of His Joy remaining with us, He meant in part that the causes which produced it should continue to act. His followers, that is to say, by repeating His life would experi- ence its accompaniments. His Joy, His kind of Joy, would remain with them. The medium through which this Joy comes is next explained: “He that abideth in Me, the same bringeth forth | much fruit.” Fruit first, Joy next; the one the cause or medium of the other. Fruit-bearing is the necessary antece- 142 PAX VOBISCUM. dent; Joy both the necessary conse- quent and the necessary accompani- ment. It lay partly in the bearing fruit, partly in the fellowship which made that possible. Partly, that is to say, Joy lay in mere constant living in Christ’s presence, with all that that implied of peace, of shelter and of love; partly in the influence of that Life upon mind and character and will; and partly in the inspiration to live and work for others, with all that that brings of self-riddance and Joy in others’ gain. All these, in different ways and at different times, are sources of pure Happiness. Even the sim- plest of them—to do good to other people —is an instant and _infalli- HOW FRUITS GROW. 143 ble specific. There is no mystery about Happiness whatever. Put in the right ingredients and it must come out. He that abideth in Him will bring forth much fruit; and bringing forth much fruit is Happiness. The infalli- ble receipt for Happiness, then, is to do good; and the infallible receipt for doing good is to abide in Christ. The -surest proof that all this is a plain matter of Cause and Effect is that men may try every other conceivable way of finding Happiness, and they will ‘fail. Only the right cause in each case can produce the right effect. Then the Christian experiences are our own making? In the same sense in which grapes are our own making, 144 PAX VOBISCUM. and no more. All fruits grow — whether they grow in the soil or in’ the soul; whether they are the fruits of the wild grape or of the True Vine. No man can make things grow. He can get them to grow by arranging all the circumstances and fulfilling all the conditions. But the growing is done by God. Causes and effects are eternal arrangements, set in the constitution of | ‘the world ; fixed beyond man’s order-, ing. What man can do is to place himself in the midst of a chain of sequences. Thus he can get things to . grow: thus he himself can grow. But the grower is the Spirit of God. What more need I add but this — test the method by experiment. Do HOW FRUITS GROW. | 145 not imagine that you have got these things because you know how to get them. As) well try to feed upon a cookery book. But I think I can promise that if you try in this simple and natural way, you will not fail. Spend the time you have spent in sighing for fruits in fulfilling the con- ditions of their growth. The fruits will come, must come. We have hith- erto paid immense attention to effects, to the mere experiences themselves ; we have described them, extolled them, advised them, prayed for them — done everything but find out what caused them. Henceforth let us deal with causes. “To be,” says Lotze, “1s to be in relations.” About every other 146 PAX VOBISCUM. method of living the Christian life there is an uncertainty. About every other method of acquiring the Chris- tian experiences there is a “ perhaps.” But in so far as this method is the way of nature, it cannot fail. Its guarantee is the laws of the universe, and these are “the Hands of the Liv- ing God.” THE TRUE VINE. 147 THE TRUE VINE. “7 AM the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more-can ye, except ye abide in mererals ame theivine, (ye. are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much 148 PAX VOBISCUM. fruit: for without me ye can do noth. ing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them | into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my word abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is _my Father glorified, that ye may bear ‘much fruit ; so ye shall be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so _ have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” THE CHANGED LIFE. PREFACE. AST autumn, in a book-shop in California, the author found a little book with his name upon the title- page —a book which he did not know existed; which he never wrote; nor baptized with the title which it bore. This stray publication— taken from shorthand notes of a spoken Address — he does not grudge. Already, it seems, it has done its small measure of good. But owing to the imperfections which it contains it has been thought right to issue a more complete edition. 151 152 - PREFACE. The theme, like its predecessors in this series, represents but a single aspect of its great subject—the man-. ward side. The light and shade is apportioned with this in view. And the reader’s kind attention is asked to this limitation, lest he wonder at points being left in shadow which theology has always, and rightly, taught us to emphasize. It was the hearing of a simple talk by a friend to some plain people in a Highland deer-forest which first called the author’s attention to the practical- ness of this solution of the cardinal problem of Christian experience. What follows owes a large debt to that Sunday morning. We all : With unveiled face Reflecting As a Mirror The Glory of the Lord Are transformed Into the same image From Glory to Glory Even as from the Lord The Spirit. 153 THE CHANGED LIFE. | ““T PROTEST that if some great power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning, I should instantly close with the offer.” 3 HESE are the words of Mr. Hux- ley. The infinite desirability, the infinite difficulty of being good — the theme is as old as humanity. The man does not live from whose deeper being the same confession has not risen, or who would not give his all | : 155 156 THE CHANGED LIFE. to-morrow, if he could ‘‘close with the offer,” of becoming a better man. I propose to make that offer now. In all seriousness, without being “turned into a sort of clock,’ the end can be attained. Under the right con- ditions it is as natural for character to become beautiful as for a flower; and if on God’s earth there is not some machinery for effecting it, the supreme -gift to the world has been forgotten. This is simply what man was made for. With Browning: “I say that Man was made to grow, not stop.” Or in the deeper words of an older Book: “Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate . .. to be con- formed to the. Image of His Son.” THE CHANGED LIFE. vt 57 Let me begin by naming, and in part discarding, some processes in vogue already, for producing better lives. These processes are far from wrong; in their place they may even be essential. One ventures to dispar- age them only because they do not turn out the most perfect possible work. ‘The first imperfect method is to rely on Resolution. In will-power, in mere spasms of earnestness there is no sal-_ vation. Struggle, effort, even agony, have their place in Christianity, as we shall see; but this is not where they come in. In mid-Atlantic the other day, the Etruria, in which I was sail- ing, suddenly stopped. Something 158 THE CHANGED LIFE. had gone wrong with the engines. There were five hundred able-bodied men on board the ship. Do you think that if we had gathered together and pushed against the mast we could have pushed it on? When one attempts to | sanctify himself by effort, he is trying to make his boat go by pushing against the mast. He is like a drowning man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair of his own head. Christ held up this method almost to ridicule when he said, “ Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?” The one redeeming fea- ture of the self-sufficient method is this — that those who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the goal. THE CHANGED LIFE. 159 Another experimenter says: “ But that is not my method. I have seen the folly of a mere wild struggle in the dark. I work ona principle. My plan is not to waste power on random effort, but to concentrate on a single sin. By taking one at a time, and crucifying it steadily, I hope in the end to extirpate all.” To this, unfor- tunately, there are four objections: For one thing, life is too short; the name of sin is Legion. For another thing, to deal with individual sins is to leave the rest of the nature for the time untouched. In the third place a single _ combat with a special sin does not affect the root and spring of the disease. If only one of the channels of sin be ob- 160 THE CHANGED LIFE. structed, experience points to an almost certain overflow through some other part of the nature. Partial conversion is almost always accompanied by such moral leakage, for the pent-up energies accumulate to the bursting point, and the last state of that soul may be worse than the first. In the last place, reli- gion does not consist in negatives, in stopping this sin and. stopping that. The perfect character can never be _ produced with a pruning knife. - But a third protests: “So be it. I make no attempt to stop sins one by one. My method is just the opposite. I copy the virtues one by one.” The difficulty about the copying method is that it is apt to be mechanical. One THE CHANGED LIFE. 16E can always tell an engraving from a picture, an artificial flower from a real flower. To copy virtues one by one has somewhat the same effect as erad- icating the vices one by one; the temporary result is an overbalanced and incongruous character. Some one defines a prig as “a creature that is over-fed for its size.” One sometimes finds Christians of this species — over- fed on one side of their nature, but dismally thin. and -starved-looking on the other. The result for instance, of copying Humility, and adding it on to an otherwise worldly life, is simply gro- tesque. A rabid temperance advocate, for the same reason, is often the poor- est of creatures, flourishing on a single 162 THE CHANGED LIFE. virtue, and quite oblivious that his Tem- perance is making a worse man of. him and not a better. These are examples of fine virtues spoiled by association with mean companions. Character is a unity, and all the virtues must advance together to make the perfect man. This method of sanctifi- cation, nevertheless, is in the true direction. It is only in the details of execution that it fails. A fourth method I need scarcely mention, for it is a variation on those already named. It is the very young man’s method; and the pure earnest- ness of it makes it almost desecration to touch it. It is to keep a private note-book with columns for the days THE CHANGED LIFE. 163 of the week, and a list of virtues with spaces against each for marks. This, with many stern rules for preface, is stored away in a secret place, and from time to time, at nightfall, the soul is arraigned before it as_ before a private judgment bar. This living by code was Franklin’s method; and I suppose thousands more could tell how they had hung up in their bed- rooms, or hid in lock-fast drawers, the rules which one solemn day they drew up to shape their lives. This method is not erroneous, only somehow its success is poor. You bear me wit- “ness that it fails. And it fails gener- ally for very matter-of-fact reasons — most likely because one day we forget the rules. 164 THE CHANGED LIFE. All these methods that have been named — the self-sufficient method, the self-crucifixion method, the mimetic method, and the diary method — are perfectly human, perfectly natural, per- fectly ignorant, and, as they stand, per- fectly inadequate. It is not argued, I repeat, that they must be abandoned. Their harm is rather that they distract attention from the true working method, and secure a fair result at the expense of the perfect one. What that perfect, method is we shall now go on to ask. ~ FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 16 5 THE FORMULA OF SANCTI- FICATION. FORMULA, a receipt, for Sanc- tification — can one _ seriously “speak of this mighty change as if the process were as definite as for the pro- duction of so many volts of electricity ? It is impossible to doubt it. Shall a mechanical experiment succeed infalli- Dbily, and the one vital experiment of ‘humanity remain a chance? Is corn to grow by method, and character by caprice? If we cannot calculate to a certainty that the forces of religion 166 THE CHANGED LIFE. will do their work, then is religion vain. And if we cannot express the law of these forces in simple words, then is Christianity not the world’s religion, but the world’s conundrum. Where, then, shall one look for such a formula? Where one would look for any formula— among the text-books. And if we turn to the text-books of Christianity we shall find a formula for this problem as clear and precise as any in the mechanical sciences. If this simple rule, moreover, be but fol- lowed fearlessly, it will yield the result - of a perfect character as surely as any result that is guaranteed by the laws of nature. The finest expression of this rule in Scripture, or indeed in any lit- FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 167 erature, is probably one drawn up and condensed into a single verse by Paul. You will find it in a letter— the second to the Corinthians — written by him to some Christian people who, in a city which was a byword for depravity and licentiousness, were seeking the higher life. To see the point of the words we must take them from the immensely improved rendering of the Revised translation, for the older Version in this case greatly obscures the sense. They are these: :.* We. all, with un- veiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.” 168 THE CHANGED LIFE. Now observe at the outset the entire contradiction of all our previous efforts, in the simple passive “we ave trans- formed.” We are changed, as the Old Version has it— we do not change ourselves. No man can change him- self. Throughout the New Testament you will find that wherever these moral and spiritual transformations are described the verbs are in the passive. Presently it will be pointed out that there is a vationale in this; but mean- time do not toss these words aside as if this passivity denied all human effort or ignored intelligible law. What is implied for the soul here is no more than is everywhere claimed for the body. In physiology the verbs de- FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 169 scribing the processes of growth are in the passive. Growth is not volun- tary; it takes place, it happens, it is wrought upon matter. So here. “Ye must be born again” — we cannot born ‘ourselves. ‘‘ Be not conformed to this world, but de ye transformed’ — we are subjects to transforming influence, we do not transform ourselves. Not more certain is it that it is something outside the thermometer that produces a change in the thermometer, than it is some- thing outside the soul of man that produces a moral change upon him, That he must be susceptible to that change, that he must be a party to it, goes without saying; but that neither his aptitude nor his will can produce it, is equally certain. 9 170 THE CHANGED LIFE. Obvious as it ought to seem, this may be to some an: almost startling revelation. The change we have been striving after is not to be produced by any more striving after. It is to be wrought upon us by the moulding of hands beyond our own. As the branch -ascends,:and the bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under the co-operation of influences from the outside air, so man rises to the higher stature under invisi- ble pressures from without. The radi- cal defect of all our former methods of sanctification was the attempt to generate from within that which can only be wrought upon us from without. According to the first Law of Motion: Every body continues in its state of - FORMULA OF. SANCTIFICATION. 171 rest, or of uniform ‘motion in a straight line, except in so far as it may be com- pelled dy impressed forces to change — that state. This is also a first law of Christianity. Every man’s character remains as it is, or continues in the di- rection in which it is going, until it is compelled dy impressed forces to change that state. Our failure has been the failure to put ourselves in the way of the impressed forces. There is a clay, and there is a Potter; we have tried to get the clay to mould the clay. Whence, then, these pressures, and where this Potter? The answer of the formula is “By reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord we are changed.” But this is not very clear. What is 172 THE CHANGED LIFE. . the “glory” of the Lord, and how can mortal man reflect it, and how can that act as an “impressed force” in mould- ing him to a nobler form? The word “glory ’’—the word which has to bear the weight of holding those “impressed forces’? — is a stranger in current speech, and our first duty is to seek out its equivalent in working English. It suggests at first a radiance of some kind, something dazzling or glittering, some halo such as the old masters loved to paint round the heads of their Ecce Homos. But that is paint, mere matter, the visible symbol of some unseen thing. What is that unseen thing? It is that of all unseen things the most radiant, the most beautiful, FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 173 the most Divine, and that is Character. On earth, in Heaven, there is nothing so great, so glorious as this. The word has many meanings; in ethics it can have but one. Glory is character, and nothing less, and it can be nothing more. The earth is “full of the glory of the Lord,” because it is: full of His character. The “‘ Beauty of the Lord” is character. ‘‘The effulgence of His Glory” is character. “The Glory of the Only Begotten” is character, the character which is “fulness of grace and truth.” And when God told His people Avs name He simply gave them > His ees His character which was Himself: “And the Lord pro- claimed the name of the Lord .. . 174 THE CHANGED LIFE. the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and. abundant in goodness and truth.” Glory then is Bat something intangible, or ghostly, or transcendental... If it were this. how could Paul ask men to reflect it? Stripped of its physical enswathement it is Beauty, moral and spiritual Beauty, Beauty infinitely real, infinitely exalted, yet infinitely near and infinitely com- municable. | With this explanation read over the sentence once more in paraphrase: We all reflecting as a mirror the char- acter of Christ are transformed into the same Image from character to charac- ter — from a poor character to a better , one, from a better one to one a little FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 175 | ‘better still, from that to one still more ‘complete, until by slow degrees the | Perfect Image is attained. Here the Solution of the problem of sanctification lis compressed into a sentence: Reflect "the character of Christ, and you will \become like Christ. All men are mirrors—that is the first ‘law on which this formula is based. None of the aptest descriptions of a Vedran being is that he is a mirror. lAs we sat at table to-night the world lin which each of us lived and moved [throughout this day was focussed in the room. What we saw as we looked ‘at one another was not one another, \but one another’s world. We were » (an arrangement of mirrors. The 176 THE CHANGED LIFE. scenes we saw were all reproduced; the people we met walked to and fro; they spoke, they bowed, they passed us by, did everything over again as if it had been real. When we talked, we were but looking at our own mir- ror and describing what flitted across — it; our listening was not hearing, but seeing — we but looked on our neigh- bor’s mirror. All human intercourse is a seeing of reflections. I meet a stranger in a railway carriage. The cadence of his first word tells me he is English, and comes from Yorkshire. Without knowing it he has reflected his birthplace, his parents, and the long history of their race. Even phys- lologically he is a mirror. His second FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 177 sentence records that he is a politician, and a faint inflection in the way he pronounces. Zhe Times reveals his party. In his next remarks I see re- flected a whole world of experiences. The books he has read, the people he has met, the influences that have played upon him and made him the man he is—these are all registered there by a pen which lets nothing pass, and whose writing can never be blotted out. What I am reading in him meantime he also is reading in me; and before the journey is over we could half write each other’s lives. Whether we like it or not, we live in glass houses. The mind, the memory, the soul, is simply a vast chamber 178 * THE CHANGED LIFE. panelled with looking-glass. And upon this miraculous arrangement and en- dowment depends the capacity of mor- tal souls to “reflect the character of the Lord.” But this is not all. If all these varied reflections from our so-called secret life are patent to the world, how close the writing, how complete the record, within the soul itself! For the influences we meet are not simply held for a moment on the polished surface and thrown off again into space. Each i retained where first it fell, and stored up in the soul forever. This law of Assimilation is the sec- ond, and by far the most impressive truth which underlies the formula of FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. ‘179 sanctification —the truth that men are not only mirrors, but that these mirrors, so far from being mere reflectors of the fleeting things they see, transfer into their own inmost substance, and hold in permanent preservation, the things that they reflect. No one knows how the soul can hold these things. No one knows how the miracle is done. No phenomenon in nature, no process in chemistry, no chapter in necro- mancy can ever help us to begin to- understand this amazing operation. For, think of it, the past is not only focussed there, in a man’s soul, it is there. How could it be reflected from there if it were not there? All things that he has ever seen, known, felt, 180 THE CHANGED LIFE. believed of the surrounding world are now within him, have become. part of him, in part are him—he has been changed into their image. He may deny it, he may resent it, but they are there. They do not adhere to him, they are transfused through him. He cannot alter or rub them out. They are not in his memory, they are in him. His soul is as they have filled it, made aty left it.) These: things) taese books, these events, these influences are his makers. In their hands are life and death, beauty and deformity. When once the image or likeness of any of these is fairly presented to the soul, no power on earth can hinder two things happening —it must be FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. I8I absorbed into the soul, and forever reflected back again from character. Upon these astounding yet perfectly obvious psychological facts, Paul bases his doctrine of sanctification. He sees that character is a thing built up by slow degrees, that it is hourly changing for better or for - worse according to the images which flit across it. One step further and the whole length and breadth of the appli- cation of these ideas to the central problem of religion will stand before US. 182 THE CHANGED LIFE. THE ALCHEMY OF INFLU- ENCE. F events change men, much more persons. No man can meet an- other on the street without making some mark upon him. We say we exchange words when we meet; what we exchange is souls. And when inter- course is very close and very frequent, so complete is this exchange that rec- ognizable bits of the one soul begin to show in the other’s nature, and the second is conscious of a similar and growing debt to the first, THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 183 This mysterious approximating of two souls who has not witnessed? Who has not watched some old couple come down life’s pilgrimage hand in hand, with such gentle trust and joy in one another that their very faces wore the self-same look? These were not two souls; it was a composite soul. It did not matter to which of the two you spoke you would have said the same words to either. It was quite indifferent which replied, each would have said the same. Half a century’s reflecting had told upon them; they were changed into the same image. It is the Law of In- fluence that we become like those whom we habitually admire: these had be- > 184 THE CHANGED LIFE. come like because they habitually admired. Through all the range of literature, of history, and biography this law presides. Men are all mosaics of other men. There was a savor of David about Jonathan and a savor of Jonathan about David. Jean Valjean, in the masterpiece of Victor Hugo, is Bishop Bienvenu risen from the dead. Metempsychosis is a fact. George Eliot’s message to the world was that men and women make men and wo- men. The Family, the cradle of mankind, has no meaning apart from. this. Society itself is nothing but a rallying point for these omnipotent forces to do their work. On the doc- trine of Influence, in short, the whole — vast pyramid of humanity is built. THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 185 But it was reserved for Paul to make the supreme application of the Law of Influence. It was a tremendous infer- ence to make, but he never hesitated. He himself was a changed man; he knew exactly what had done it; it was Christ. On the Damascus road they met; and from that hour his life was absorbed in His. The effect could not but follow—on words, on deeds, on career, on creed, | The ‘impressed forces’”’ did their vital work. He be- came like Him Whom he habitually loved. ‘‘So we all,” he writes, ‘re- flecting as a mirror the glory of Christ, are changed into the same image.” Nothing could be more simple, more intelligible, more natural, more super- 186 THE CHANGED LIFE. natural. It is an analogy from an every-day fact. Since we are what we are by the impacts of those who surround us, those who _— surround themselves with the highest will be those who change into the highest. There are some men and some women in whose company we are always at our best. While with them we cannot think mean thoughts or speak ungen- erous words. Their mere presence is elevation, purification, sanctity. All the best stops in our nature are drawn out by their intercourse, and we find a music in our souls that was never there before. Suppose even Zatz influence pro- longed through a month, a year, a life- time, and what could not life become? THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 187 © Here, even on the common plane of life, talking our language, walking our streets, working side by side, are sanctifiers of souls; here, breathing through common clay, is Heaven; here, energies charged even through a temporal medium with the virtue of regeneration. If to live with men, diluted to the millionth degree with the virtue of the Highest, can exalt and purify the nature, what bounds can be?set tom, the influence’ of. Christ? To live with Socrates— with unveiled face — must have made one wise; with Aristides, just. Francis of Assisi must have made one gentle; Savonarola, strong. But to have lived with Christ must have made one like Christ; that is to say, A Christian. 188 THE CHANGED LIFE. As a matter of fact, to live with Christ did produce this effect. It pro- duced it in the case of Paul. And during Christ’s lifetime the experiment was tried in an even more startling form.